The general sitting on the sofa in the parlour, consoling Anyetta Chernenko, holding her to him in front of the fire, and it looked like she was weeping. He eyed Darcy through strands of her hair and the maid, waiting for Darcy to put his glass back on the tray, emitted a grunt of annoyance, as if she didn’t care for what she saw. As if she were Nikolai Chuprakov’s maid.
She ushered Darcy down the corridor, the old man in a doorway, his rugged poet’s face, and Darcy remembered the roll of notes in the hem of his coat. These people might help him, he thought, as he wrestled for the money deep in the hole through a pocket. He found himself in a bathroom with plum-coloured carpet, the maid gesturing to a towel and a shower, and Darcy showed the roll of roubles, offered them in the flat of his hand. Pazhalsta, said Darcy, please, he will kill me, and the maid glared at the fat little wad of money, wanting but not understanding, her button-like eyes full of fear. Help me, he pleaded, but she retreated, afraid.
He grabbed the green jug of vodka from her tray as she slithered out the door and he drank and felt himself unravelling, his pledge broken again when he knew he needed clarity most, the buzz about his face like a quiet sponge and the sound of a key as it turned the bolt; she’d locked him in. He searched frantically for an exit, found only a vent and a too-tiny window, a long wroughtiron dresser with a silver shaver and a wooden-handled brush, two small framed drawings from covers of Vanity Fair. A candy-striped toothbrush dry in a mug. Nikolai Chuprakov’s?
Darcy caught sight of himself in the mirror above the sink, his face bruised purple and strafed with mud, lines where dimples had been. He took a swill of vodka as if that would help him think, washed dirt from his face, the water steaming hot straight from the tap, scabs on his lip and cheek tender. In his face he saw Fin, lying dead out on the ice. Wishing he had the whole bottle to upend in his mouth, something caught his eye in the mirror’s reflection; by the toilet was a niche with a black phone. He left the taps running, turned on the shower to add to the noise, and fumbled in his coat for Fin’s slip of paper, a wet folded piece with ink that had run, but numbers. He crouched on the toilet and dialled hastily, listened to the beeps, the most-tapped phone in Moscow or, if he was lucky, the least. He stared at the bolted door with his chest pounding like there were animals fucking inside it and listened, the pungent smell of dread that he now knew lived in his sweat. The shower water smacked the tiles.
Hello? A woman, well-spoken, accented.
Darcy knotted his eyes in supplication. Ulli Breffny? Hysteria in his whisper.
I’m listening, she said.
My name is Darcy Bright. I am in the house of Anyetta Chernenko. I am in danger.
You must get to the embassy, she said. I will be here. The gates will open for you. She paused for a moment.
General Sarfin is killing people.
We cannot come there, she said. You must get yourself here. She hung up and Darcy couldn’t breathe enough to cry but he peed and didn’t know what else to do so he knocked on the door for the maid and prayed that the old man might help him but it was the general who answered. You talking with someone?
Darcy stood petrified, unsteady. No, he said. Myself.
The general undid his holster belt and placed it on the vanity, the pistol clipped inside it. You think we don’t hear you, he said, you think we don’t know where you are? He grabbed Darcy, vice-like, by the upper arm, ripped a brass-covered button from Aurelio’s coat and thrust it up at Darcy’s eye like some gold signet. This is device, the general said through the steam, blood vessels bulging at the black rims of his glasses.
Darcy arched up with the pain, the general’s thumb dug deep in his bicep, but Darcy didn’t struggle, he felt the knife in his pocket with his free hand, the general shaking him savagely. We track you like this every day. Aurelio did give you this coat. You think he did not know? You think he love you so much? He turned Darcy around, wrenching him from the coat but the knife had already unfolded, the rumble again in Darcy’s head. I clean you up, the general hissed, I clean you, jerking the coat sleeves off Darcy from behind but Darcy bent his arms up, struggled now, the knife cold in his palm. He let the sleeves fly free, his arms unthreading and turned, the general losing his balance, his glasses falling through the thick white air and Darcy reached through it, quick as a diving bird he swung across the general’s face, for his eyes as the general slipped on the tiles, lurching back with a stifled wail, big hands all over his bloodied face, he kicked and slid as his great head made a hollow sound against the lip of the iron bath, hitting, and Darcy’s head went deaf as the general’s hands flopped down like slabs and Darcy lunged and stabbed through the vapour, went for the eyes through the blood on the flesh of the general’s bloated face, plunging the blade deep, until he retched vodka at the sight of what gushed from the eyes to the salivating lips, the surge of dark red onto the wide bristled chin, onto the white ruffles of the shirt. He could neither speak nor hear nor think, his mind glazed; blood on the knife, the knife still in his hand, he knew he had to rinse it, fold it back into itself, blood on his hands as he grabbed the holster from the counter, the jug knocked over, smashed on the floor, a river of vodka clear through the curtain of steam towards blood that coursed from the spigots of the general’s hacked-up eyes, the body still not moving. Darcy felt his chest constricting, everything upside down, reaching, as if into the pelt of an injured, stunned animal, its heart still pumping, he searched the pockets of the general’s tuxedo. Repulsed by the blood-infested face, the mouth laid open, accusing, he had to turn away, the tremor in his own body, in his hand as he felt for the Lada’s keys, the pistol in his free hand, the keys in his fingers as the general’s arm twitched.
Darcy jumped up as if swept outside his consciousness, the fact of what lay there, half-alive or dying, the fact of a gun in his own hand, and, bathed in steam and the drum of the pouring water, Aurelio’s coat behind him, a black lake on the floor, the brass button that had been listening all along, floating like a tiny crucible. Darcy found himself out in the dark abandoned corridor. The gun in a hand that didn’t feel like his hand, his blood-smudged fingers turning the key in the door, locking the general in. Darcy stood there in a hallway silent but for the whippet skulking in the shadows as if sent down to check, the dull thrum of the shower. As Darcy pocketed the key he began to shake, a trembling rippling through him, and he knew only violent people should be violent. Darcy knew he had to keep moving, that if he’d stabbed a man in the eye, he could use a gun. The echo in his head of the general’s hollow contact with the bath, skull on iron, the stolen car keys and knife now stuffed in the pocket of his denim jacket, his vision seemed altered as he searched for a servant’s entrance out into the cold black coatless nothing, but the corridor ended so he moved towards the entry hall, rubbing the blood on his pants, the dog by his side licking up playfully as he walked.
In the entry hall stood the widow by the Laika picture, not hiding but standing, pale and stricken, the old man by her side. They were expecting the general. Darcy held the gun in the air like a quivering grenade but the old man had no weapon, and Darcy saw his face in the light for the first time. Nikolai Chuprakov, older, the same mournful dark eyes, Nikolai Chuprakov’s father. I’m so sorry, said Darcy, he slipped the general’s dress coat from the hallstand, soft as mink, and he was crying as the old man opened the door for him as if he somehow understood.