He glanced back up. Solyanka Ulitsa, he said, a reminder, his tone too anxious, he knew. He explored the clean-shaven back of this taxi driver’s head, afraid of being picked up by him especially. Darcy felt Fin’s knife in his boot, its fold-out hawk-bill blade; he’d never believed he had the potential for violence but the act of the general upon him had changed something. Could he slit a taxi driver across his Adam’s apple, like Jobik could?
Darcy left the painting behind on the counter, sneaked out through the shadows and down the unlit side street, then running for blocks, panting, he found this cab all the way over on Pyatnitskaya Ulitsa. It couldn’t have known he was coming. He stared out, thirsty again already. His chest so tight it felt like someone was chiselling at it, wondering if he shouldn’t have chosen GUM direct from the funeral, the maze of arcades and cross-walks, up and down stairs and escalators. Darcy knew he mustn’t keep searching out the back window, the silent driver’s eyes in the rear-view mirror, so he looked back down at the restaurant description in his lap. He’d read it three times already. No mention of Armenians or terrorists, just a throwaway reference to some fare from southern provinces. He stared back out into the grizzling night, trying to keep air in his lungs, as the cab crossed the drainage canal. A tug with sidelights searched the banks and bluestone drains, cutting through the shelves of ice. The gates of the old heated pool that Fin said was once the site of St John the Divine back when God was allowed.
Darcy had St Nicholas the Wonder Worker circled in biro on his plastic map, described elsewhere in Fodor’s as a small redbelfried church. Maybe it would be open, he could hide in there among the pews, pray for his own survival.
Sporadic lights from high metal poles shed their dim bluish sprays on the pavement. He could get out and walk among the glazed-eyed men moving home through the Kitay Gorod with their vinyl briefcases, drift among the heavyset women with their justin-case bags, see if he was being followed.
Stoitye, he said, thrusting too many notes at the driver, abandoning the taxi mid-block. He walked fast without looking back, paused in a windblown doorway, then walked on again until he noticed the dark portal of a church, sooner than he’d imagined. He couldn’t be sure the belfry was red, but a narrow cobbled lane branched off, unmarked, between two plain stone buildings. The church was locked. Darcy knocked timidly on the wood but God wasn’t home, not even his servants answered, so he leaned against the door, inhaling through his scarf, his fissured lips, the wind whining under the dark cover of eaves. You’re a beautiful child of God, said the missionary. Perhaps, thought Darcy, but a child nonetheless. And yet the need in the general’s eyes made the missionary seem like a first love, innocent as the Mount Eliza days.
Darcy leaned against the door of St Nicholas, the ache in his chest and arms like a fixture, knowing if he crouched he might sit and if he sat he might never get up. He closed his eyes and waited; the sound of footsteps and tyres compressing the snow, car engines, buses. Darcy appealed to a wonder worker: Keep me. He’d spent his life sneaking around, prayed he’d become good enough at it. If he’d been set loose on purpose, to think he was on his own, he prayed he might be now—he’d been quick across the streets from the apartment, no footsteps behind him, no cars following. He’d always run faster than anyone he knew, even racked with aches and pains. He listened out into the empty shadows; if he had led them to Fin, she’d left him no choice. He walked resolutely to the alley as if it held some final promise.
The lane was dark and wet and quiet, splitting around an angled wooden building a hundred metres up. He moved along a solid wall until he saw the sign in a draped plate-glass window and old-fashioned door. HET BXOH. He knew that meant ‘closed’ but knocked anyway. Through the curtains he thought he saw the dull shapes of small tables, some lit with candles, and there were vague kitchen smells, yet no one appeared at the window or door. A restaurant not open to everyone.
Darcy felt weak and fuzzy in the head as he ventured on along the side, skirting past crates and piled cartons, then froze at the sight of a pocked, ferrety teenager out in the cold, clad in a stained apron with a cigarette clasped between thumb and index finger, the way Jobik smoked. He smirked at Darcy knowingly and mumbled something Darcy couldn’t understand, then motioned him into a narrow-countered kitchen. The waft of cabbage and warmth felt like bottled rays of possibility.
Inside, pots of broth were set on a stove and a dish-filled sink, sepia pictures of vintage sports cars lined the walls. Jaguars! A cook in a traditional patterned vest looked up then returned to his chopping but, at the beaded archway into the dining room, Darcy turned back and the cook stared him down, narrow hooded eyes set below an olive headband. Mozhna? asked Darcy. May I? He felt like someone walking in from the treeless plains of the north, emerging from moss and lichen after being mauled by bears.
The cook nodded deliberately and Darcy pulled back the beads. A dining room with burgundy tablecloths lit only by candles in bottles, threads of dried wax draped from their necks. A boy sat alone in a chair in the corner, his old man’s eyes watchful and unblinking. Fat paper dolls on the sill. Then a sharp-faced woman in a print folk dress slipped through and showed Darcy to a booth beneath a coat of arms with a double-headed jaguar.
Darcy sat, didn’t yet mention Fin’s name, unclear if he should. Tabaka, kartofel, pomidor, the woman whispered respectfully, without producing a menu. Her eyes held a quiet understanding, her grey hair thickly braided, a minute silver star around her neck and a silk shawl with salmon-coloured flowers. Kvass, she added. These were not questions. Darcy noticed her star pendant had eight points—not a Star of David but a pagan or Balkan star, an Armenian symbol maybe. Did you know I was coming? he asked.
She retreated, nodding reassuringly, but Darcy guessed she hadn’t understood. Maybe she was Jobik’s mother, Jobik’s little brother sitting against the wall, his other brother smoking, keeping watch. Darcy’s ear hummed a low refrigerator sound, the jitter still in his hands as he took off his gloves. He left his coat on in case, pulled back a corner of curtain to spy out but the boy made a tsking sound, warning him, then shook his head quickly. Nyet.
That boy could be dangerous, thought Darcy. He was tempted to say the name Jobik, to see the boy’s reaction, but the woman returned with a jug on a wooden tray, a stern expression as she poured into a water-spotted glass. Kvass; the bread drink. Darcy took a sip and tried not to wince. She offered him a steaming brown cloth and he held it to his cheek and lip and said Spasiba. Then the hooded-eyed cook slid a plate before him and nodded: pressed chicken, potatoes and tomatoes, slices of ashy cheese. Darcy knew food served in minutes was a rarity here. He felt himself still as if for the first time in a week. Fin might never come but these people could help him; he pictured himself in a truck heading south to the Caspian Sea.
Darcy was eating, shovelling food but stopped dead when he heard men’s voices in a small adjoining room. They entered by some other door and Darcy caught glimpses of them through a slender archway as they stood in dark suits by a mantelpiece, filled and raised vodka tumblers, then laughed as a girl with a balalaika began singing for them. Kalinka, kalinka, kalinka. The boy in the chair watched Darcy as if guarding his corner, folding napkins. A cracked-glass fixture in the ceiling shed light in sections that divided his face. He smiled at Darcy and nodded as though the men and the entertainment were just part of the ruse. Darcy heard murmurs in the kitchen and then Fin appeared in the doorway like a mirage. She glanced at the men being serenaded, then at the window, and Darcy felt his chest constricting as she gestured to him not to move. Without make-up she looked softer but worn down, a dullness to her eyes with no mascara, nervous, pale and beautiful. Her face mostly hidden by a black beanie, she wore a man’s grey argyle sweater. Darcy half stood but then didn’t as she walked over; all he did was hold onto himself as she perched on the edge of the banquette. He watched her in the flickering candlelight, in a new light, knowing why she was in this city, why she’d called him to this winter. He’d been her faithful, gullible pigeon. Her pigeon and her painter.