Darcy smelled the worn leather seats, heard the drum of the tyres on the bitumen, the fields an eiderdown of snow pocked by trees, flat and unprotected. No evidence of a car behind them. No, he said, I found it in the Spartacus Guide under cruising in the outskirts.
The car suddenly turned down a narrow side road and rolled to a halt beside a low drainage channel. The son-in-law left the engine running for the heat, ordered the whippet to the floor so he could sit on the passenger side himself. Breathing uneasily, the son-in-law ordered Darcy to take off his coat, then gestured with the stem of his pipe for him to climb forward between the seats.
Darcy paused, felt the can-opener against his ankle as he began to struggle through, over the console. He slipped behind the steering wheel as the son-in-law, his free hand shaky, reached back for Darcy’s overcoat. Russian chewing gum fell from the pocket, a few roubles in an elastic band in the son-in-law’s fingers.
They pay you? he asked, searching Darcy’s face.
Darcy surged with misgivings, the insects again and the pangs in his underarms. Against his every instinct he mustered a gentle look, not of pleading but understanding. No, he said.
The son-in-law kept watch in the rear-view mirror, placed a narrow hand on Darcy, nodding almost imperceptibly. Can you take your trousers down? he asked. Everything risked for this.
As Darcy slipped from his Levis, he felt a rent inside himself in a way he hadn’t foreseen, his jeans and thermal long johns slid around his feet, the can-opener pressed against his ankle now, uselessly concealed in his socks. He looked away. In the distance farmers were high up on round bales of hay that had been covered in canvas. He lifted the bottom of his thermal undershirt to reveal the contour in his underwear and the son-in-law ran his fingers over it. Why are you doing this? asked the son-in-law.
Darcy couldn’t say anything real without tears. Why are you? he asked.
I look for love, he said, removing his horn-rimmed glasses, then as the son-in-law lowered his face and kissed Darcy there, Darcy wondered how it could have been different, the way he romanticised things, this accidental collision with history. He gazed out in disbelief as a lorry approached with a hayrick, silent in the wind. A truck from the Second World War, the faint whine of its engine and a farmer peering through the misted window.
Not in front of the peasants, said Darcy, and the son-in-law rose abruptly and said something in Russian. He grabbed his pipe stem and held it to Darcy’s ribs. Drive, he said, please, motioning at the wheel. Darcy turned the ignition but the engine was already on. He lurched the Borgward into gear and forward against the handbrake, down the gravel lane. The pipe stem relaxed against him as the lorry diminished in the mirrors and they came to a T, a wide paved road. Darcy slowed to a squeaking halt. I haven’t driven in my underpants since I was a child, he said, but the son-in-law frowned, distracted by two babushkas leaning on a gate, their heads side by side like two woolly birds. He gestured to the left but before Darcy could turn a semitrailer with a load of concrete pylons passed close and the Borgward was sucked momentarily into a gap in the wind and then cast back out. He could have driven out in front of it, but he knew he wasn’t brave enough for that kind of annihilation. Instead, he drove on in his Fruit of the Looms and the son-in-law stroked him gently. The whippet, sylph-like, turned away as if embarrassed, but there was no sign of anyone following.
Can we drive to Finland? asked Darcy.
The son-in-law reached for his flask and then for the radio knob, dialled through the crackling channels, speeches and oompah marches. He quietly turned it off. When you come to a red grain silo turn left, he said.
Are you going to kill me? asked Darcy. Another truck passed and Darcy looked back in the rear-view mirror; still nothing.
Is that what you want?
Darcy saw the red silo and made the turn without indication, crept the Borgward through the icy puddles. No, he said. I want to get home to Australia.
The driveway was framed by an avenue of poplars bare as twig brooms in the snow, and beyond, a small evergreen forest. Why are we here? asked Darcy. He didn’t see the house at first, surrounded by conifers, a place you might drive by and wonder who lived among the palisade of trees. Two storeys of black-stained wood, light blue shutters, some of them hanging on by a hinge.
I grew up here, in this house, said the son-in-law.
It was old but more impressive than the general’s dacha. Darcy rolled to a stop in front of a chained and padlocked gate. The garden was overgrown, long winter grasses with rounded bellies of snow. Cumquat trees in collapsing whisky barrels and dormer windows extending from upstairs like afterthoughts. There was no sign of recent life.
The farmers used the banisters for firewood, said the sonin-law. There was once a circular staircase. He carefully took a tartan biscuit tin from under the seat. A crest on the lid, Product of Aberdeen, Scotland. He selected a shortbread for himself, gave one to the dog, and then one to Darcy. Pushkin visited here, he said without pretence, unlike the way Aurelio had tried to impress by mentioning Nabokov. The son-in-law seemed more composed out here. The only noise was the hum of trucks from the highway and the sound of them eating. Mid-afternoon and already the daylight was fading.
We had horses, the son-in-law said.
Darcy’s feet were cold from the steel pedals, despite the air belching from under the dash. He pulled his knees up and removed his boots and rubbed his toes. I will warm them, the son-in-law said kindly.
Darcy pulled his thick double-layered socks free, the can-opener wrapped in notes, still concealed in their folds, now under the seat. He rested his back against the wood-panelled door and placed his feet in the son-in-law’s lap. Sucking quietly on his pipe as the afternoon darkness descended, the son-in-law rubbed them. Darcy thought of what he’d been recording. A conversation of two men getting to know each other. It made him feel sick to his stomach.
The son-in-law put down his pipe and blew smoke over Darcy’s pale toes as if lighting embers, then softly kissed them. The sonin-law nodded to himself, clasped Darcy’s soles, massaging them. He looked up at Darcy with tears in his eyes.
Does your wife know? asked Darcy.
The son-in-law shook his head slightly and Darcy masturbated himself dutifully, sadly, as the dim light gloved the house. The sonin-law just watched, held Darcy’s feet and followed the movement of Darcy’s stroke with his watery eyes, then a sudden flash appeared from among the trees. A camera flash.
The son-in-law pushed Darcy’s feet from his lap, the whippet barked against the passenger door. The window rolled down, the son-in-law squinting out into nothing but shadows in the undergrowth. They mock me in my misery, the son-in-law whispered as if he’d known the moment would come. He let the dog out to chase through the trees. You knew, he said to Darcy, but Darcy was shaking his head as they heard the dog yelp. The son-inlaw called it by a name that sounded like Boyar, then he stared at Darcy. You must go now, he said emphatically. The dog re-emerged from the trees and jumped back in, whined unnaturally as the sonin-law bent down and touched its rib cage. Go, he said without looking at Darcy.
Darcy was wrestling back into his jeans and boots, finding his way into the arms of Aurelio’s coat. The son-in-law glowered out into the trees as if Darcy was already gone. Darcy was drawn to apologise, explain, but instead he found himself fumbling away through the grey towards the highway, the wind’s fierce chill seeping back through him. He’d left his socks, Fin’s socks, all of his money, under the seat. Then he heard the muted sound of choral music and stopped. As he turned, the shape of the whippet appeared from the early darkness. Shoo, said Darcy, shoo, but it wouldn’t go back, it jumped up on Darcy lightly, craned its neck like a gargoyle, whining, its fine coat moist in the glacial air. Reluctantly, Darcy picked it up and folded it in his arms and picked his way back, seeking the edge of the gravel track, so dark now it was hard to make out the hump of the Borgward. The music was loud and the car door was open, the son-in-law slouched in the passenger side, his head collapsed as if sleeping. Your dog, whispered Darcy. The dog jumped in and cringed in the corner, its ears pinned back. The son-in-law was motionless. Darcy turned on the interior light. The pipe on the biscuit tin, blood from the son-in-law’s chest flooding the front of his sweater from under his jacket, pooling on the seat beside him. A gun with a silencer lay on the floor. Nikolai, said Darcy.