The sight of Fin had an instinct well deep in Darcy, their secret call from school, elly elly etdoo, the warning from outside her window, but now he could barely walk, the sight of her returning, wet through as a child coming in from a rainstorm. Jobik, as he opened the door like a husband might, relieved she’d made it home. If Fin had found love, Darcy felt forgotten, like some forfiture, out here among these dripping trees and guns. His loyalty washing from him like rain as the lamp was snuffed and he looked into the spattering snow from a forest full of crouching men, waiting for their signal.
Go to the door, the general beside him now, whispering. You congratulate them on Tbilisi, he said. Showing them what you holding. Make it a ceremony.
Darcy looked up at the barbarous smile, then into the speckled dark. A door to be kicked in, planks hanging from hinges. The Turk’s bared teeth, the gold in them almost visible—he seemed to know it as lunacy too. His reluctant nod still held its invitation. Darcy stared again at the general’s massive face. Aurelio, as he’d known him, was gone.
You are primitive, said Darcy, and the general looked out into the night as if he knew.
Darcy turned and walked from them, no sound but himself, no barking dog now, just the rhythmic contraction of his heart as he scraped his way through dripping tree trunks, his feet on pine spindles in dark quilted snow, waiting for a shot in his back or a battle cry, in a godless zone among histories and atrocities he barely understood. He didn’t hurry, he couldn’t; the porch lamp wasn’t there for him like it had been for Fin and if he were noisy Jobik would hear, the dogfight would begin. All of them killers, warming themselves on the blood of others. He tried to remember Aurelio’s face as it had been, a last memory to hold, piecing his way through sodden branches, snow like gauze.
He wasn’t sure why, but he drifted, drawn to a pine-encased window, he stood there, divided. Waiting. A gap in the blind, a simple, dimly lit kitchen, old cream cupboards and faded wooden floors, a washboard and enamel sink, the black worn through to a flea-bitten grey. A last window. He made no sound as Fin came in and pushed life into the fire with a poker, watched the embers ignite. A kettle on the rusted iron of an ancient Aga, a yellowpainted mantelpiece. She warmed herself by the flames for a moment, before she closed the stove door. Just her and Darcy, and muffled voices from the other room, the innocent chitchat of terrorists. The kettle began its whistle and she poured herself tea, black with a dash, how she liked it. She opened an iron drawer below the ash-catch at the bottom of the stove and took out a shallow tin, then sat at the end of the table, warming her hands on her cup. Darcy knew he’d not see her apartment again, but in a way he’d been happy there. Above her a cross with a carved wooden Jesus hung on the wall, shadowed behind from the light. It had given the Saviour a dark side. Fin put her tea bag on the table and watched it form a small brown puddle on the wood. And Darcy felt the restlessness behind him, preparing.
Dully, he hummed out loud and then she looked up with an artificial calm. Tilda, he said, the name of the baby his mother had lost. He held up the document but Fin never saw it, she only saw him as she ran to the next room and Darcy heard shouting inside and a rush through the woods as he flung himself down deep under the eaves of the window, alongside the house; among the wet stove wood, he lay like he was dead already as the waves crashed around him and nothing to be done save listen to the gunshots and running, someone rushing for him. Give it to me, the Turk grabbing at him then bullets splintered on the boards above, shattering the window, the Turk on all fours like a beast beside him, and then face down and glass on Darcy’s legs. Darcy’s face bandaged in the crusted snow, the document held like a biblical thing, his eyes tight, sinking, imagining Fin tearing through black pines, feeding herself to the frozen river. Come to Moscow, she’d said, it’ll be fun, but she’d fallen in love with a savage and Darcy, drowning, reduced to a hum.
Moskva River
Sunday, 8.20 pm
There were no more shots, just cries in the night from the direction
There were no more shots, just cries in the night from the direction of the river. A figure disappeared around the house into darkness and Darcy scrambled up blind among the snowy logs, so numb with cold and not even sure if he was wounded. More shouts and he kneeled. The Turk face down in the dark beside him, he didn’t dare kick him to see if he was dead, just felt the document inside his own wet coat, and then he was running back through the firs, away from the hut, stumbling through the black underbrush, back towards Aurelio. More gunfire behind him, the pine branches whipping his face, and he imagined Fin somewhere down near the river, scooting across the ice, covering ground on her elbows like one of those frogs that run across water, or laid out on the edge, riddled with bullets, the general inspecting his kill.
Darcy felt feverish, heaving for air at the sight of the Lada, its parking-light eyes shining orange. But the general was here—he leaned against the car smoking in a black velvet overcoat, a dress coat. No shape of Aurelio in the car. Run, thought Darcy, turning back to the forest, but the general was opening the driver’s side door. You will drive us back, he said, waving a pistol produced from a holster under his coat. You can trust me, he said. I take you to a nice place now.
Where’s Aurelio? asked Darcy, his voice faraway.
He is better now, the general nodded, and waved the pistol.
Get in.
But Darcy didn’t move. What have you done? he asked. I deal with him, send him out into the night, said the general,
like I deal with Tugrul, like my men are doing with your Armenians. He fired a silenced shot into the grey-black snow near Darcy’s feet. Like I can deal with you.
Darcy approached the car slowly, doubting his will to survive, if he should just turn back into the gun-yielding trees and receive the shot in the back, fall face down and be gone like the Turk, or just die of exposure on his own, out where the dogs barked. But he got in the Lada and sat where he’d last seen Aurelio, the general resting the gun against the velvet of his coat, the tinny smell of a weapon just fired. Opera on the radio. The heater. As if civilised. Darcy didn’t flinch as the general reached over into his wet coat pocket for the plastic bag.
He try to take this from you, said the general. Now he is dead. He placed the document inside his own fresh coat.
Darcy fixed on the narrow track that appeared in the car lights, looking for eyes in the night, for witnesses, but there were just shadows and blackness. He changed roughly through the Lada’s gears, drove where Aurelio had driven, trying to the fight the blur of tears and his imaginings—Aurelio out in the splintering night, the blood from his cuts, from his mouth, run thin.
What did you do to him? asked Darcy, his voice hardly his own.
He has been digging his own grave, the general said. Digging your graves, all of you. His calm had a shiver that ran through Darcy, a calm that filtered psychosis, and the flourish of horns and operatic voices from the radio. That he dared listen to music. But as the general tapped his cigarette ash onto the floor he looked away, and Darcy thought he saw the slightest shake in the leathergloved hand. A hand like a black claw that now rested on Darcy’s leg, smoke curling from it, and Darcy imagined accelerating off into the tree trunks, their heads dashed against glass. He tried to ingest the warm tobacco air but all he could feel was an animal panic. Then, at the main road, the general directed him, the pistol like a wand, back towards the city. And now all Darcy saw in the gliding darkness was the light that had left Aurelio’s eyes. You killed him, he said.