How do you know all this? asked Darcy.
It was in a village near Archangelsk, she said.
A myth or a story? he asked. He dabbed at the dress with the remnants on the paintbrush. Again he’d left part of the picture bare.
What does it matter? she said. It was just that I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I drew it.
What happened to the babies? asked Darcy.
One died, she said.
He kneeled back to get a sense of it, the ghostly shape of the sister healer, crouched on the stool, unfinished.
I think it’s about our mothers, she said.
Darcy drew his head back. He doubted Aunt Merran had ever looked out for his mother. He smudged some colour onto the manger with a linseed cloth. Maybe it’s about us, he said.
Fin walked back to the window and looked out into the night and its new depth of snow. You shouldn’t have kissed me like that, she said as if it were his fault. She stared into the gloom. It doesn’t mean I don’t love Jobik.
Darcy remembered her and Jobik together, an image that was always slightly intoxicating.
He needs me in ways you wouldn’t understand, she said, but she sounded to Darcy as if she was convincing herself. He’s the one who believes in something.
Darcy could tell she talked less of a faith than a crusade and he heard the subtle comparison. Does he believe in something good? he asked.
Fin stared out as if that remained to be seen. An ashy pallor seemed to veil her face all the time now. The shine had been washed from her. I hope so, she said. Did you know he’s an Orthodox Christian?
Darcy was wary of anything orthodox, especially in the name of Jesus. The missionary had taught him that. You need to get away from him, said Darcy. We need to go home.
Fin’s eyes turned back and fixed on the curious painting, nodding as if she knew. There’s something I still have to do, she said. The more vulnerable she seemed, the grimmer their chances appeared. She was scared to death. He reached to hold her, afraid of how fragile she’d feel in his arms, but she pulled away.
Ulitsa Kazakov
Friday morning
Darcy slept fitfully, aware of a vague fear of waking, visions of the petrified face of the man in the park, his yearning eyes carved out of wood, empty sockets, the stare of Aunt Merran’s blind ram. He woke to murmurs of Russian in the hall, a vague ache edging around his head. He lay fully dressed under the duvet on the couch with a panic that had seeded in him overnight, sprouting like an infestation of jittering insects.
Fin stood behind the couch. Svetlana will be waiting, she said. Darcy stood, looked out the window at the apartment opposite. A figure appeared in the kitchen, an elderly baba who opened the window and sprinkled seed on the sill.
Fin opened Aurelio’s overcoat. He inserted an arm at a time, an ache in his underarms already, the place where confusion and anxiety seemed to dwell. Outside, sparrows swarmed to Svetlana’s sill.
Keep your wits about you, said Fin.
What about you? he asked.
Jobik will look after me, she said.
Darcy turned and looked at her with a sudden sense he might
not see her again. There are those in more imminent danger, she said. It looks like you’re working for Gorbachev’s people. Think of it as a cause. For something like freedom.
She let him hug her this time. She spoke like an American and sometimes he forgot that part of them was. In the name of freedom and hardly breathing he held her for an extra second, felt her body tight and narrow and volatile, and yet he had a sense her core was stronger than his. We are just butterflies, his mother had whispered long ago, slightly tipsy, as she’d played with Darcy’s hair.
He stowed the stab-and-pick can-opener in his sock, wrapped in three hundred roubles. He didn’t show Fin, she would laugh. She sent him out but wouldn’t look at him.
Alone in the hall, he had a momentary thought of fleeing down the back stairwell and then taking his chance, the scaling of fences out into the winter. There may have been those in more imminent danger, planes going down in the Urals, sinking boats in the Bering Straits, abominations, but Darcy just stood there as if his life had flown away. The bull-headed neighbour at the end of the corridor, observing with a dampened expression, eyes dug deep beneath his brow. Just sex with a stranger for a passport, thought Darcy, and then let me go.
Outside, a white gloom draped the morning like a drop cloth. A low porcelain sky, not even the ghost of a sun. Darcy glanced back up at the apartment window. A shirt hung stiffly next door and then he noticed Fin’s small open hand pressed to the glass. It seemed melodramatic from where he stood, unlike her, but it reminded him of the part of her he loved. He wanted to wave but feared if he lifted his hand he might not make it. He pulled his beanie down over his ears.
In the small car park there was no Lada, just a beige Zhiguli. Svetlana inside it, heavy mascara and smoking, her fringe in strands like frosted vines from under a thick polka-dot scarf. She pushed open the passenger door.
You ready? she asked impatiently, a clotted ‘r’ and an absence of humour.
As Darcy slid inside she didn’t say anything, just started the car. There’s an old woman in your apartment, he said. She was feeding the birds.
Svetlana expelled smoke into her corner of the windscreen then reversed. I am finished there, she said, and Darcy looked at her light pink lipstick, her lime dress with a vague pink pattern under a heavy coat, a pair of dark glasses pushed up high on her scarf as if it were a different season. Not in the mould of police or militia.
She considered Darcy almost sympathetically. Do not be so afraid, she said with a hint of apology, and Darcy wondered if it was her job to make him feel safe.
Surreptitiously, he glanced about under the consol for a furry transmitter but saw none, just an apple core under his feet. He wondered if only Aurelio was under suspicion.
I don’t know your real name, he said. I call you Svetlana.
Then call me Svet, she said, as in no svet. She smiled and it made her look younger, the hints of cheek rouge, her red and white dotted scarf. He wanted to beg her to help him but all he asked was why she had this job.
Better than work each day in a factory. She smiled with a certain camaraderie.
As they crossed the river, he cracked the window to allow icy air off the water. I’m a painter, he said.
Svetlana nodded. You will not be painting today.
As they turned west on Zubovsky Bulvar, nearby the Chayka swimming pool, he felt the can-opener and notes pushed against his ankle. If I paid enough roubles and American dollars could you get me to Finland?
Svetlana chortled softly. I cannot get me to Finland, not even myself. She pushed her scarf back higher up on her hair. And it would not please your friend Aurelio.
Darcy thought of Aurelio last night, his slightly hunted look. Is he okay? asked Darcy.
Svetlana looked over. You miss him? she asked.
Darcy massaged his elbows with his gloves as if it might keep him together. Is he not your friend too? he asked.
Svetlana took another pull from her cigarette and shrugged. Darcy imagined being more like that, free of people, desires, Aurelio, Fin. Was he really with the Bolshoi? he asked.
With Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Svetlana said. Her fingers enfolded the steering wheel but her knuckles weren’t tight like Aurelio’s last night. Then he was with the Bolshoi for a short piece, she said. She seemed neither impressed nor judgmental. She turned from the ring road down smaller streets until Darcy lost his feel for where the river was. He concentrated on the landmarks; a modern statue, Pushkin maybe, stood on the edge of a fenced wooded park.