CHAPTER 4
THE OWL emerged from the Twilight the moment I stepped inside the door. She launched into the air – for just an instant I felt the light prick of her claws – and headed for the fridge.
‘Maybe I ought to make you a perch?’ I asked, locking the door.
For the first time I saw how Olga spoke. Her beak twitched and she forced the words out with obvious effort. To be honest, I still don’t understand how a bird can talk. Especially in such a human voice.
‘Better not, or I’ll start laying eggs.’
That was obviously an attempt at a joke.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you,’ I replied. ‘I was just trying to lighten things up.’
‘I understand. It’s all right.’
I rummaged in the fridge and discovered a few odd bits and pieces. Cheese, salami, pickles … I wondered how forty-year-old cognac would go with a lightly salted cucumber. They’d probably find each other’s company a bit awkward. The way Olga and I did.
I took out the cheese and the salami.
‘I don’t have any lemons, sorry.’ I realised just how absurd all these preparations were, but still … ‘At least it’s a decent cognac.’
The owl didn’t say anything.
I took the bottle of Kutuzov out of the drawer in the table that I used as a bar.
‘Ever tried this?’
‘Our reply to Napoleon?’ the owl asked with a laugh. ‘No, I haven’t.’
The situation just kept getting more and more ridiculous. I rinsed out two cognac glasses and put them on the table, glancing doubtfully at the bundle of white feathers. At the short, crooked beak.
‘You can’t drink from a glass. Maybe I should get you a saucer.’
‘Look the other way.’
I did as she said. There was a rustling of feathers behind my back. Then a faint, unpleasant hissing sound that reminded me of a snake that’s just been woken up, or gas escaping from a cylinder.
‘Olga, I’m sorry, but …’ I said as I turned round.
The owl wasn’t there any more.
Sure, I’d been expecting something like this. I’d been hoping she was allowed to assume human form sometimes at least. And in my mind I’d drawn this portrait of Olga, a woman imprisoned in the body of a bird, a woman who remembers the Decembrist uprising. I’d had this picture of Princess Lopukhina running away from the ball. Only a bit older and more serious, with a wise look in her eyes, a bit thinner …
But the woman sitting on the stool was young, in fact she was really young. About twenty-five. Hair cut short like a man’s, dirt on her cheeks, as if she’d just escaped from a fire. Beautiful, with finely moulded, aristocratic features. But that dirty soot … that crude, ugly haircut …
The final shock was the way she was dressed.
Stained army trousers 1940s style, a padded jacket, unbuttoned, over a dirty-grey soldier’s shirt. Bare feet.
‘Am I beautiful?’ the woman asked.
‘Yes, as a matter of fact, you are,’ I replied. ‘Light and Dark … why do you look that way?’
‘The last time I assumed human form was fifty-five years ago.’
I nodded.
‘I get it. They used you in the war.’
‘They use me in every war,’ Olga said with a sweet smile. ‘In every serious war. At any other time I’m forbidden to assume human form.’
‘There’s no war on now.’
‘Then there’s going to be one.’
She didn’t smile that time. I restrained my oath and just made the sign to ward off misfortune.
‘Do you want to have a shower?’
‘I’d love to.’
‘I don’t have any woman’s clothes … will jeans and a shirt do?’
She nodded. She got up – moving awkwardly, waving her arms bizarrely and looking down in surprise at her own bare feet. But she managed to walk to the bathroom as if it wasn’t the first time she’d taken a shower at my place.
I made a dash for the bedroom. She probably didn’t have much time.
A pair of old jeans one size smaller than I wear now. They’ll still be too big for her … A shirt? No, better a thin sweater. Underwear …
‘Anton!’
I raked the clothes into a heap, grabbed a clean towel and dashed back out. The bathroom door was open.
‘What kind of tap is this?’
‘It’s foreign, a ball mechanism … just a moment.’
I went in. Olga was standing naked in the bath with her back to me, turning the lever of the tap left and right.
‘Up,’ I said. ‘You lift it up for pressure. Left for cold, right for hot.’
‘Okay Thanks.’
She wasn’t even slightly embarrassed. Not surprising, considering her age and rank … even if she no longer held one.
But I felt embarrassed. So I tried to act casual.
‘Here are the clothes. Maybe you can pick something out. That is, if you need anything.’
‘Thank you, Anton …’ Olga looked at me. ‘Take no notice. I’ve spent eighty years in a bird’s body. Hibernating most of the time, but I’ve still had more than enough.’
Her eyes were deep, fascinating. Dangerous eyes.
‘I don’t think of myself as a human, or an Other, or a woman any longer. Or as an owl, either, come to that. Just … a bitter, sexless old fool who can sometimes talk.’
The water spurted from the shower. Olga slowly raised her arms and turned round, revelling in the sensation of the firm jets.
‘Washing off this soot is more important to me than … the embarrassment of an attractive young man.’
I swallowed the ‘young man’ without argument and left the bathroom. I shook my head, picked up the cognac and opened the bottle.
One thing at least was clear: she was no werewolf. A werewolf wouldn’t have kept the clothes on its body. Olga was a magician. A female magician about two hundred years old who’d been punished eighty years ago by being deprived of her body, but still hoped for a chance to redeem herself. She was a specialist in conflicts involving physical force and the last time she’d been used for a job had been about fifty years earlier …
That was enough information to search the computer database. I didn’t have access to the complete files, I wasn’t senior enough. But fortunately senior management had no idea how much information an indirect search could yield.
Provided, of course, that I really wanted to find out who Olga was.
I poured the cognac and waited. Olga came out of the bathroom about five minutes later, drying her hair with a towel. She was wearing my jeans and sweater.
I couldn’t say she was transformed … but she was definitely looking a lot more attractive.
‘Thanks, Anton. You’ve no idea how much I enjoyed—’
‘I can guess.’
‘Guessing’s not enough. That smell, Anton … that smell of burning. I’d almost got used to it after half a century.’ She sat down awkwardly on a stool and sighed. ‘It’s not good, of course, but I’m glad of this crisis. Even if they don’t pardon me, it’s a chance to get clean …’
‘You can stay in this form, Olga. I’ll go out and buy some decent clothes.’
‘Don’t bother. I only have half an hour a day.’
Olga screwed up the towel and tossed it on to the windowsill. She sighed:
‘I might not get another chance to take a shower. Or drink cognac …Your health, Anton.’
‘Your health.’
The cognac was good. I took a sip and savoured it, despite the total muddle in my head. Olga downed hers in one and pulled a face, but she observed politely:
‘Not bad.’
‘Why won’t the boss let you assume your normal form?’
‘That’s not in his power.’