Beneath the cushion is the framed photograph of the young woman named Tonya, and the children.
I don’t recall putting it on the floor yesterday. I open my mouth to say something but Alexey’s holding the frame, staring at it, and his expression drains like someone’s pulled out a bath plug. He quickly plants the frame back beneath the cushion. He dusts off his hands and stands up, but it’s too late.
Now I’m sure.
There’s something behind that smooth surface of his, that public persona. Something with serrated edges. It’s shifting around, like Nessie in the depths of Loch Ness, never so much as making a ripple up above.
‘It’s not the vendor from last time.’ Lev holds up a hand to block out the sun that blazes over the Vernissage. ‘But somebody is waiting there.’
We’ve stopped far away enough to be able to turn back without being seen.
‘We could just go,’ he continues. ‘We could get ice cream instead.’
‘I left Moscow when I was ten,’ I say. ‘I’m not ten any more.’
The man standing by the matryoshka stall is silhouetted against the sun, so I can’t make out his appearance clearly, but it’s a good sign. Eduard Dayneko will have sent one of his lackeys to investigate, some gangly gang member who will be young and ill-tempered, who will ask who I am and why I want to meet the artist. The colonel warned that it would take pressing, patience and pocket money to secure meetings higher up the food chain, but I will get there.
‘Good morning,’ the man says, as we approach.
This is all wrong.
Lev steps in front of me, as if he can sense that too, but my mind is already unspooling. I am ten. I’m still ten years old, after all these years; I’m still standing in that living room. I’m still looking at a man dressed in dark clothing, his gloved hands holding a pistol, himself an island in the middle of all that blood, his gaze resting on me as if he wanted me to see him. As if he wanted to get caught.
He must still want to get caught.
‘You may not remember my face,’ he says. ‘My name is Eduard Dayneko.’
PART TWO
The New King
In a faraway kingdom, in a long-ago land, rain began to fall. The new king stayed dry in his castle, and he gave special coats to his soldiers so that they could protect themselves. But the townspeople were not given coats. The townspeople learnt not to look into each other’s eyes, in case they should get rain in their own.
One day a soldier stopped to talk to one of the townspeople.
‘I’m sure the rain will be over soon,’ the soldier reassured her.
‘I have heard,’ she said, ‘that even soldiers are not safe now. That our new king will take your coat when he has a fit of temper.’
‘That is true,’ said the soldier.
‘I have heard,’ she said, ‘that the only way for someone like me to gain a coat is to betray someone else to the king.’
‘That is also true,’ said the soldier.
‘Why is our rain so red?’ she asked. ‘Is all rain, in every country, as red as this?’
The soldier only smiled at her. He was already telling her too many things, and it would not help her to know the truth. The rain was red because the new king made the rain. He made it from the people.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Antonina
Tula province, spring 1924
The birch forest has more jackdaws than ever before. Their eyes are so dark Tonya can’t make out the pupils. A bit like her own. They perch on the house at Otrada, on all the edges, and sometimes when she opens a window, there is an explosion of black feathers. But this only happens during the day. Every night before bed she goes outside to the balustrade, sees the marble of a moon overhead. And at night, the jackdaws do not move.
‘Tonya?’
Sasha walks on kitten-soft feet, and he is suddenly right behind her, putting his arms around her, resting his chin on the top of her head.
‘Do you want me to stay?’ he asks.
‘I’m only restless.’ She twists around. ‘Go ahead home.’
‘I hate these birds,’ he says. ‘I’d shoot them, if I didn’t think they were already dead.’
For some reason this makes her smile. Sasha kisses her goodbye and he heads back inside, picking up his things as he goes, his shirt, his coat, his shoes, sweeping the bedroom of all traces of a visitor. Though she shouldn’t consider him a visitor any longer, should she? They’ve been together since she and Lena first moved into Otrada, years ago now.
The house had been standing empty for so long the wood was rotting, and it had been gouged out from the inside by the mobs. Like a melon. Sasha was the one to help her make it liveable again.
So why is his place not in it?
Tonya turns for one last look at the view, but all she sees are the jackdaws, sitting there, staring at her with her own eyes, like they are all the siblings she almost had.
‘Mama!’ Lena has appeared on the veranda. At six years old, her eyes are bright as she speaks, starry, like Valentin’s. ‘Mama, somebody’s here to see you!’
Tonya stands up from the garden plot, wipes her hands. It could be Nelly, but Nelly never calls. No matter how much Tonya apologises, Nelly comes no closer. Such a long friendship can’t have been destroyed so quickly, Tonya has said to Kirill, it’s not possible, and Kirill agrees, which makes Tonya think it was destroyed years before. Destroyed when Tonya was not even looking.
‘From the village?’ asks Tonya, despising her own hope.
‘She says she’s from the capital,’ says Lena sunnily. ‘Do you know people in the capital, Mama?’
Tonya follows where Lena leads. Lena has stashed their visitor in the front parlour, like a proper hostess. The front parlour of Otrada, of course, is nothing like the Blue Salon in the house on the Fontanka, with its portraits and chandeliers and Savonnerie carpeting. Here, the original furniture was looted, and Tonya has furnished the room simply, with wood-backed chairs to go with the hazelnut wall panels, and a table that Sasha carved by hand.
This is why, perhaps, the visitor stands out like a skin rash.
It is a tall, voluptuous woman, sheathed in lace that hangs off her arms and waist. The woman turns, and her mane of red hair turns with her, now pearly at the roots. From her fingers is draped a long, yellow-tipped cigarette in a holder. She looks as if she has stepped out of a dinner party from ten years ago.
‘Honestly, darling,’ says Natalya, ‘the look on your face! It’s only me. Do you know, the locals told me this place was haunted. Earned yourself a reputation, have you?’
‘It’s haunted now,’ Tonya retorts, though she can’t help the way her body bloats with anxiety. How is this possible? Will she never be rid of this woman? ‘You’re supposed to be dead.’
‘Oh, yes, that is what they say about me.’
‘It’s what your children said about you.’
Natalya’s smile turns wary. ‘My children?’
Tonya’s alarm begins to subside. The Countess Burzinova that she knew in Petrograd did not smell fishy and did not have skin like the sides coming off a cabbage. The yellow-tipped cigarette is not even lit. It is for appearance’s sake. Just like the sardonic laugh, the pointed barbs, the darlings.
The old Natalya would have pulled every white strand from her hair. Would have worn a wig.
Tonya asks Lena to go fetch some tea and invites the Countess to sit. It is a story that she never thought she would have to telclass="underline" Akulina and Little Fedya were put in a state facility for orphans after Natalya’s arrest in Petrograd in 1920. They endured a year there, and then escaped. In their innocence, they returned home, only to discover that the Burzinovs’ former mansion on the Zakharevskaya had been converted into housing for some twenty-odd families, none of whom felt like adopting two runaways.