Lom didn’t say anything.
‘Well,’ said Vishnik. The colour had drained from his face. ‘Yes, I suppose he is a policeman. Of a sort. But a good policeman. Not really a policeman at all.’
‘Raku?’ said Maroussia quietly. ‘What have you done?’
‘It’s OK,’ said Lom. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t—’
But Maroussia was on her feet, gathering her coat. Her face was closed up tight. She looked… alone. He wanted to reach out to her. He didn’t want her to go, not like this.
‘Maroussia—’ he said.
‘Leave me alone. Don’t say anything to me. I’ve made a mistake. I have to go.’
Vishnik was aghast.
‘No.’ he said. ‘Don’t go. Not when we’ve just… Fuck. Fuck. But it’s fine. Vissarion is a friend. Your friend.’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Raku,’ said Maroussia. ‘That could never be.’
Lom watched her walk out the room, straight and taut and brave. He felt something break open quietly inside him. A new rawness. An empty fullness. An uncertainty that felt like sadness or hunger, but wasn’t.
24
In a train travelling west towards Mirgorod there is a first-class compartment with its window blinds drawn, which the guards think is empty and locked. The guards know — though they couldn’t say how they know — that there’s something wrong with it, something ill-defined which needs a mechanic, which makes it unsuitable for occupation, and which they themselves should keep clear of. That’s fine. No inconvenience for them. It’s the end compartment of the furthest carriage, and first class is barely a quarter full. When they arrive in Mirgorod there’ll be the fuss of detraining, and by the time that’s done the episode of the closed compartment will be forgotten. When the train’s ready to leave again, the compartment will be fine, except — should anyone notice, which isn’t likely — for a lingering trace of ozone and leaf- mould in the air.
Just at the moment there are two figures sitting opposite each other in the darkness of the closed and blinded compartment. They are making a long journey. Should anyone happen to see them — which nobody does — they would appear to be human: two women, not young, riding in composed, restful, silent patience, swaying slightly with the movement of the train. Both appear to be dressed in layers of thin cloth in muted woodland colours of bark and moss. Their heads are covered, their faces lost in shadow. Or they would be, if they had faces, which — strictly speaking — neither does.
One of them — the one facing the direction of travel, as if eager to reach her destination, for her purpose is to arrive — is a paluba. The word is complex: its possible meanings include old woman, witch, hag, female tramp, manikin, tailor’s dummy, waxwork, puppet and doll, none of which is exactly accurate here, though all have some bearing on the true nature of the figure, which is an artefact carefully constructed of birch branches and earth and the bones of small birds and mammals. The paluba is a kind of vehicle, a conveyance, currently travelling inside another conveyance, artfully made to carry the awareness of its creator and act as a proxy body for her, while she herself remains in the endless forest, in the safety of the trees which she can never leave.
The paluba’s maker has placed a little gobbet of herself, a ball of bees’ wax nestled inside the paluba’s chest cavity, approximately where the heart would be. The wax has been mixed with many intimate traces of its maker — her saliva, her blood, her hair, a paring of fingernail, smears of sweat and other fluids, a condensation of breath — and many intimate words have been whispered over it, as the maker kneaded it between her warm palms for many hours over many days, making it well, making it strong, so that she would remain connected with it as the paluba travelled ever further westward. The maker doesn’t stay with the paluba all the time. That would be exhausting and unnecessary. She can find it when she needs to. She can guide its steps, perceive with its senses and speak with its tongue, which is the tongue of a hind deer. When she needs to. For now, the paluba is empty. It’s waiting, endlessly patient, facing its direction of travel. Facing westwards. Facing Mirgorod.
The paluba’s companion faces opposite, eastwards, back towards the border of the endless forest. And whereas the paluba has a hand-made body, a material caricature of the living human form, the companion is the opposite of this also. For while she is not an artifice but a living creature, she has no body at all. Inside her shrouds of cloth there is nothing but air, only air — collected, coherent, densely-tangible forest air. She is the breath of the forest, walking.
As the train edges slowly closer to Mirgorod, the paluba’s companion feels the widening distance between herself and the forest as an ever-increasing pain. She wants to go home. She needs to go home. Nothing would be easier for her than to leave, but she cannot. It is only her presence close to the paluba that enables it to continue to hold together and function so far from the forest. If she were to abandon the paluba it would fall apart. It would become inert, nothing more than the heap of rags and stuff of which it is made. Without her, the paluba’s mission would fail, and with it would fail the hope of the forest, the only hope of the world.
25
The next morning, Lom took the tram back to the Lodka. He had a lead from Safran — the name of the painter, Petrov, who was one of Kantor’s gang and had betrayed the Levrovskaya raid — not much of a lead, but something. A link to Kantor. Lom tried to keep his focus on Kantor, but his thoughts kept sliding sideways. Chazia was a presence in the background, unsettling him. A dark, angel-stained presence. She had showed herself to him deliberately. Playing a game with him. He was sure of that, though he didn’t understand why. Yet it wasn’t her face he kept seeing in the street on the other side of the tram window, but Maroussia Shaumian’s. She had got under his skin. He hadn’t liked the way she looked at him as she left last night: the mixture of fear and scorn in her face had cut him raw. For the first time, it didn’t feel so good, being a policeman.
The tram had come to a stop. The engine cut out. A murmuring broke out among the dulled morning passengers.
‘We’re going nowhere,’ the driver called. ‘They’ve cut the power. Traffic’s all snarled up. I guess there’s another march somewhere up ahead.’
Lom sighed and got out to walk. It wasn’t far.
A few hesitant snowflakes twisted slowly down out of the grey sky and littered the streets. People kept their heads down. As he got nearer the Lodka, Lom noticed the crowds getting slower and thicker. There was a sound of distant music. Hymns. He turned a corner and was brought up short by a mass of people passing slowly down the street.
They were singing as they came, not marching but walking. There were old men in sheepskin hats and women in quilted coats. Students in threadbare cloaks. Workers from the Telephone and Telegraph Office and the tramcar depot. Schoolchildren and wounded soldiers, bandaged and hobbling. There were giants, shuffling forward, struggling to match the slow pace. Faces in uncountable passing thousands, following a hundred banners, shouting the slogans of a dozen causes. STOP THE WAR! PAY THE SOLDIERS! FREE TRADE UNIONS! LIBERATE THE PEOPLE OF LEZARYE! The finest banners belonged to the unions and free councils. They were made of silk, embroidered in beautiful reds and golds and blacks and hung with tassels. Each took three men to hold the poles and three more to go in front, pulling the tassels down to keep the banner taut and straight against the wind. The banner men wore long coats and bowler hats.
They were going his way, so Lom stepped into the road and walked along beside them. These people weren’t terrorists or even dissidents. They were ordinary people, most of them, ordinary faces filled now with energy and purpose and an unfamiliar sort of joy. Lom felt the warmth of their fellowship. It was a kind of bravery. He almost wished he was part of it. A few people in the crowd looked at him oddly because of his uniform, but they said nothing. The traffic halted to let them pass. People on the pavement watched, curious or indifferent. Some jeered, but others offered words of encouragement and a few stepped off the kerb to join them. Gendarmes in their plywood street-corner kiosks fingered their batons uncertainly and avoided eye contact. They had no instructions.