Two younger men watched him from the entrance to the showers, their heads shaven and rib cages showing, towels slightly low, seductive. A test or a trap, or maybe Aurelio was waiting in there. Darcy walked towards them, to where the air was suddenly cooler. Showers ran even though no one was under them. He went to the furthest and folded his towel on a ledge, let the cool water wash through his hair. One of the shaved boys came over and showered in the other corner, a sore on his shoulder and a small tattoo on his arm. He furtively shielded his uncut erection but Darcy wasn’t triggered now, just light-headed from heat and steam, faint. He stared at the wall so he wouldn’t respond, ashamed he might find the hollow-eyed boy alluring, and aware that he was likely being filmed.
A harsh light filtered through a crack in the whitewashed dome, spreading against Darcy’s leg and onto the wood-slatted floor. He closed his eyes into the pressure, a momentary escape, as voices rose and feet appeared on the concrete. A militiaman stood under the arch in uniform and a gust of panic rose in Darcy as he realised he was being motioned for. If it was a trap he felt almost yielding. What grated inside him was the quality in Fin’s voice as she’d suggested Aurelio was his best bet, how she’d closed her bedroom door.
He slipped his towel about his waist as the soldier escorted him past the grey shapes through the steam and a row of old naked men along a wall, corralled by a guard with pockmarked cheeks and fogged-up glasses. Everyone’s hair looked greasy. They glanced at Darcy uneasily, unclear if he’d been singled out or privileged. The militiaman moved him on through to the changing room and pointed to Darcy’s pigeonhole; even that was no secret. All Darcy heard was the ceiling drip and his heart, palpable as a clock.
Wet in his Henley singlet, his jeans and multiple pairs of socks, pulling on Aurelio’s coat, Darcy stepped back out into the night, into a floodlit darkness that was blinding by comparison, his sight adjusting to a car parked opposite, the Lada. He saw Aurelio in it, lighting a small cigarillo. He beckoned Darcy over with a flick of his head.
Darcy pushed his wet hair from his face and breathed, tried to regain his composure, but he was nauseous from the sauna, thirsty and confused, asking himself if he should run this time. Aurelio leaned to open the passenger door and Darcy slid onto the vinyl seat, into the now familiar smell of spicy aftershave and Cuban cigarillos. He saw the pistol in Aurelio’s holster as Aurelio reached over Darcy to close the door, brushed his hand past Darcy, the way he’d done at the dacha.
You are looking like the wreck of the Hesperus, he said, slightly mocking, but he glared at Darcy, his expression urgent, not matching the tone of his voice. He passed Darcy a note and he read it: Careful what you say. Don’t talk about where we are being yesterday.
Are you well? asked Aurelio, then pressed a finger to his lips, pointed to a small furry button affixed to the side of the radio.
Darcy tried to understand; Aurelio being monitored now, a small transmitter like he’d seen in the jar in the apartment. Darcy stared at it, not knowing what to say. It’s just I’m still wet, he said.
No need for you being scared, said Aurelio. Darcy looked over at him, his brown fur hat, a fawn poloneck that looked like cashmere and a black sheepskin jacket. Clothes that weren’t from here. You’ll be drying as we are talking, he said. He pursed his brow intently, pushed his tongue tight between his teeth.
I don’t know what’s real here, said Darcy.
Aurelio picked a piece of tobacco from his tongue then brushed his mouth with the palm of his hand. There was a pleading in the way he stared at Darcy. What is real is you are in some trouble. Before I can give you your passport, we have to discuss, he said, almost in a monotone. I like you, Darcy Bright, and I can be looking after you. But you must help us. Aurelio looked away, his eye on the door of the banya. The situation is one as follows, he said. In lieu of the persecution there is a project for you. He spoke clearly, as if rehearsed for the transmitter. Darcy was transfixed by the small oval device. He wanted to ask who was listening, the general or someone else, but Aurelio was shaking his head. There is an influence person who is driving past the pleshka, he said.
Darcy had no idea what that was or if he’d meant persecution or prosecution. He searched Aurelio’s face and it still shook in a slight warning. I will be showing you the pleshka, he said, it is in a different quarter of Moscow. He cracked his window to allow the smoke to waft outside; it hung languid in the icy air then disappeared. If you can be having sex with this man, and it is recorded, Aurelio chose his words carefully, it will be very useful.
Darcy’s gut was acid—he was being pimped, for politics. An influence man. I’m not a hustler, he said. I’ve done things but not this. He didn’t care who was listening. The hollow sense that it had been part of the pretence all along—the shower at the dacha, the kiss on the risen clearing. Those cold soft lips, for this.
Aurelio met the disbelief in Darcy’s eyes. It is the way I can get the return of your passport, he said. Your only way out. He smiled but the torment was in his eyes also. Think of it as an adventure, he said.
The ache moved up to the pit of Darcy’s chest as Aurelio produced a narrow stack of dull black and white photos and showed them to Darcy. This is what we have, he said. A woman getting into a taxi, numbers in pen across the bottom. A fat man in a rumpled suit having abrupt-looking sex with a woman on a bare wooden floor. A tall transvestite at what might have been the pleshka, getting into the back of a burgundy Volga, the licence plate circled in red. Why are you showing me these? asked Darcy. Aurelio kept flipping—two older men in anoraks kissing among hydrangeas in a park. It must have been summer. This is what we do in druzhinniki, he said. We spy on the blues. Especially important ones.
Lastly, the shivering whippet tied to the bench in Mandelshtam Park, and, blurred among the snow-covered trees behind it, the slender man with the grey-flecked hair and specs. Darcy obscured by branches. The babushka worked for Aurelio, Darcy remembered, the one he’d taken a polaroid of. She’d shot a picture of her own.
It’s him we want, Aurelio said. His name is Nikolai Chuprakov. We never seen him do a thing before, he said. All he does usually is walking the dog, and every Tuesday drives by the pleshka just looking. Aurelio quietly took the picture back from Darcy. He liked you, no?
Darcy stared at the glove box.
He’s Chernenko’s son-in-law, said Aurelio. He’s married to Chernenko’s daughter.
The iron door of the banya opened and the two narrow Russian boys came out in loose pants and torn T-shirts, their thin feet flat and bare on the icy pavement. One of them caught sight of Darcy in the Lada and his gaze tracked Darcy reproachfully. Darcy felt oddly disloyal.
We call them opuscheny, said Aurelio. They are the degraded ones, just out from the gulag. Homosex prisoners. They get many times raped.
Darcy now realised he’d been summoned here to see them, to watch as they were herded out quietly by the damp plainclothesmen to the back of the white police van. They will go back now, they must eat all scraps from the floor. Many die, he said. He looked at Darcy with moist eyes now, apologetic. But I can look after you, he said, so this will not happen to you.