‘Please don’t make me jump,’ she said. ‘Make the trees go away. Please.’
‘The Pollandore must be opened, Feiga-Ita. The time has come. You or she must do it. There is no one else now. It needs to be done.’
Inside the room there was only breathing.
Silence.
The paluba laid her dry simulacrum of a hand against the door as if she were going to push it aside. But she didn’t.
‘Do this thing, Feiga-Ita Shaumian. Or tell the daughter. The daughter can do it. Will you tell her?’
Silence.
The paluba brought a small object out from under her garment. It was an intricate hollow knot of tiny twigs, feathers and twine, somewhat larger than a chicken’s egg, with a handful of dried reddish berries rattling around inside it. Globules of a yellowish waxy substance adhered to the outside. She put it to her mouth and breathed on it, then laid it on the floor in front of the broken door.
‘When you see your daughter, Feiga-Ita, give her this. It is a gift from him. It is the key to the world.’
She waited a moment longer, but there was only silence. The paluba turned away. Her time was ebbing. And so was hope. She and her companion descended the stairs.
Some time later — an hour — two hours — there came the sound of furniture scraping across the floor inside the room. Slowly. Hesitantly. Then nothing.
Then the broken door was pulled aside and Feiga-Ita Shaumian came out.
She saw the small object left for her on the landing, picked it up gingerly with her fingertips and slipped it into a small, flimsy bag. Holding the bag carefully in both hands she went slowly down the stairs and out into the street.
38
An hour later Lom arrived at the Shaumians’ apartment and found the door broken off its hinges and thrown to one side. He went in and looked around. Furniture was overturned and the window stood wide open: thin unlined curtains stirred in the cold breeze. He pulled open a drawer in the table. There was nothing inside but a few pieces of cheap and ill-matched cutlery. What had he expected?
‘You’ve missed them. They just left.’
The woman was standing behind him in the doorway. She was wearing slippers and a dressing gown belted loosely over some kind of undergarment. Her hair, bright orange, showed grey roots. She held out her hand to him with surprising grace.
‘Good morning sir. Avrilova. I am Avrilova.’
The way she said her name implied she thought it should mean something to him. He smelled the sweet perfume of mint and aquavit on her breath.
‘They went out and left it like this?’ he said.
‘I mean, you’ve missed the other police. Or were they militia? What is the difference? Could you tell me please?’
‘Madam…’
‘I told you, I am Avrilova. You must have heard me sing. Surely you did. I was at Mogen’s for many years.’
‘What did the police want here? The other police.’
‘The same as you, of course. Looking for the Shaumian women.’
‘And did the police do this to the door?’
‘Of course not. Police don’t break down doors. It was like that before. She’s mad, the old one. She never goes out, but you hear her all the time, shouting to herself. You wouldn’t think she had the voice for it.’
‘But she has gone out. She is not here now.’
‘Well, obviously.’
Lom walked round the room some more. There wasn’t much else to see. A bed. A few books. Poetry. That surprised him. And Modern Painters of Mirgorod, a cheap-looking edition with poor-quality plates. The author was Professor R. t-F. M. S-V. Vishnik.
When he looked up from the book Avrilova was still there.
‘What does she shout?’ he said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You said you hear Madam Shaumian shouting to herself. So what does she shout about? What does she say?’
Avrilova shrugged. ‘Does it matter? Rubbish. Craziness. I told you, she’s mad.’
‘Mad enough to wrench her own door off its hinges?’
Avrilova shrugged again. ‘It would be a mad thing to do.’
‘There must have been some noise when that happened to the door. Did you hear anything?’
‘I sing every morning without fail. The house could blow up while I am singing and I’d know nothing about it.’
‘Madam Avrilova, I need to talk to them. It’s a police matter.’
‘It’s the daughter you want.’
‘Why would you say that?’
‘Well, she’s the trouble, isn’t she? She’s the intellectual.’
‘Do you know where she is?’
‘Why ask me? Haven’t you read the file? I’ve told Officer Kasso all about her several times. He gave me money and wrote it down.’
‘What did you tell Kasso?’
‘He knew the value of good information. Those other ones hadn’t read the file either, but they gave me ten roubles. You only just missed them. You might catch them if you run. Then you could ask them, couldn’t you? So many policemen for one broken door.’
Lom fished a handful of coins from his pocket.
‘Madam Avrilova—’
‘The daughter sews. At Vanko’s. The uniform factory.’
39
Maroussia Shaumian worked without thinking, and that was good. She let the dull weight of work squat in her mind, smothering memory.
Vanko’s uniform factory had been an engine shed once, but it was a hollow carcase now, a stone shell braced with ribs and arches of old black iron, the walls still streaked with soot, the high windows filmed with grease and dust. Parallel rail tracks sliced across the stone floor and the ghost of coal haunted the air, mingling with newer smells of serge and machine oil. The cutting machines clattered and shook under an old tin sign pitted with rust: MIRGOROD—CETIC AMBER LINE. From the iron arches Vanko had slung a net of cables sparsely fruited with bare electric bulbs, but he only switched them on when it was too dark to work by the dirty muted light of day. Vanko himself sat in his high glass cabin underneath the clock, warmed by a paraffin stove, drinking aquavit from a tin mug and watching the women work.
Maroussia was on buttons. The serge roughened and cracked the skin of her hands. She sat at a trestle with a tin of threaded needles and a compartmented tray of buttons — heaps of cheap brass discs and ivory pellets — while the endless belt of rubberised cotton jerked slowly past her. She had to pick a garment, sew four buttons on it, and replace it on the belt before the next one reached her. If she looked up, she saw the hunched back of the woman in front, who would add the next four. The row of women’s bent heads and backs stretched away before her and behind, mirrored by an identical row across the conveyor belt, facing the other way. On the other side they worked pedal-powered sewing machines, black and shiny as beetles. They did pockets, collars, seams. Each woman worked in silence under the thin shelter of her own woollen scarf or shawl. You couldn’t make yourself heard above the clatter of the belts and the cutting machines, and if you tried Vanko saw you and docked your time. He kept a plan of the tables on his desk and he knew the name of every woman by the number of their position.
‘Hey!’ Vanko’s voice squawked on the tannoy. ‘Get that old witch out of here! Who let her in? Blow away, Granny! Hey, Fasil! Where the hell is Fasil?’
Maroussia looked up. The small woman coming down the aisle was her mother. Her hair was a wild, sparse corona of grey, and she was clutching a small bag in both hands, holding it high against her chest as if it would defend her against the indifference of the women and Vanko’s yelling. Scattered melting flakes of snow on her face and in her hair. She had no coat. Fasil was working his way towards her from the direction of the cutting machines.