‘Exactly. Yes. Fuck yes. Do you see what this means, Teslom? Do you see?’
‘The paluba also said the Pollandore itself was broken, or leaking, or failing, or something. The point was unclear, I think. I was not there myself.’
‘What did the Committee do?’
‘Nothing. They refused to countenance the paluba’s message at all. They wanted nothing to do with it. They sent it away.’
‘So…’
‘I was appalled when I heard what they had done. But they’re too frightened to act. The pogroms have begun again, worse than ever. Did you know that? The Vlast is clearing the ghettos. People are being lined up and shot. Lezarye is being rounded up and put on trains to who knows where. Whole neighbourhoods are being emptied.’
‘I didn’t know. I’ve seen the rhetoric in the papers, but I didn’t… What are you — I mean the Committee…?’
‘The Committee is too frightened to move. There is talk of arming ourselves and fighting back. Getting money and mounting a coup. Young men on the rooftops throwing down bombs on the militia. Others, of course, hope that if we keep quiet the troubles will fade away again, like they have done before. But already people are dying. ‘
‘And you? The Collection?’
‘My duty is to protect it. It has survived such times in the past. I’ve begun to pack it away, but… it is so much work for one man. The Committee offers no help. They will not consider departure.’
‘Where would you go?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps the woods, if I can find a way to transport the collection there. Or one of the exclaves. Koromants. Or maybe I will get it on a ship and go across the sea to the Archipelago. But with the winter coming…’
Vishnik held out the Child’s Book of Wonders.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Take it.’
‘But you know I can’t… it may not be safe…’
‘Take it, Teslom. Find a way. And if you think I can help you, my friend, ask me. Ask me.’
50
Maroussia must have fallen. She was lying hunched on the floor of her room. Aching, exhausted, she pulled herself carefully, with steady deliberation, up onto the chair. The feel of the trees, the buried sleeping god, swam in her head. The paluba was watching her.
‘That’s real,’ she said. ‘It’s there. Isn’t it? I didn’t know.’
The paluba said nothing.
Maroussia saw it and the companion now for what they really were: a weaving of light and will and contained, living air. The moulded breath of forest trees. Trees rooted in the body of the buried god.
But her mother was still dead. The militia would come. They were already coming. That was real too.
‘How long was I…? I mean, when did you come? How long have I been lying here?’
The paluba shrugged jerkily. The question meant little to her.
‘I’ve done what I can for your wounds. They will heal quickly now.’
Maroussia pulled up her skirt and looked at her leg. The raw gash had crusted over. The pain was dulled.
‘Who was he?’ she asked. ‘The man I saw?’
‘Your father?’
‘Yes. My father. He must have a name.’
‘Oh, he’s Hasha.’
‘Hasha?’
‘Hasha. He can’t come to you here. He can’t leave the forest.’
‘Will I… Could I go there, to him?’
‘Eventually. Perhaps. It is possible. But… I’m sorry, there’s something more.’
Maroussia stared into the paluba’s wild, fathomless eyes.
‘Show me.’
51
Rain was tumbling out of the sky. A heavy black downpour. Lakoba Petrov the painter had walked a long way, out to the northern edge of the city, no longer Mirgorod proper but the Moyka Strel, in the wider Lezarye Quarter, out beyond the Raion Lezaryet itself, an ageing halfway place where the houses were made of wood. Although they had been there for centuries, they were skewed, temporary-looking buildings of weathered planking, with shuttered windows and shingled roofs. Their eaves and porches and windows were mounted with strips of intricately carved wood, pierced with repeating patterns and interlaced knotwork. It was like embroidered edging. Like pastry. Like repeating texts printed in a strange alphabet. The woodwork was salt-bleached, and broken in places, but even so the houses looked more like musical cabinets or confectionery than dwellings. They were made from trees that had grown on the delta islands long before the Founder came.
Petrov had been born in this place, but he hardly knew that now. New thoughts filled him so full of wild energy that he could not keep body or mind still, he couldn’t even walk straight. Uncontainable and superabundant, he tacked back and forth across the road, advancing only slowly and zig by zag in stuttering steps, muttering as he went, hissing random syllables under his breath in a new language of his own.
Lost in his fizzing new world, he walked smack into the line of soldiers that blocked his path.
In the face of one a mouth was moving, but Petrov heard no words, only the soft swaying of the sea and the hissing of the rain, until the soldier struck him in the shoulder with the butt of his rifle, hard, and he fell.
‘Go down there. Get in line with the others.’
Petrov struggled to his feet, his shoulder hurting. The soldier who had hit him was young, not more than a boy, his face white as paper. He seemed to have no eyes.
‘Get in line.’
‘No,’ said Petrov. ‘No. I can’t.’
The soldier jabbed the muzzle of the rifle hard into his stomach.
‘Do it. Or we shoot you now.’
Some of the soldiers had circled round behind him. A hand shoved Petrov sharply in the back, so that he stumbled forward, almost falling again. The soldiers in front of him moved aside to let him through.
‘Down there. Walk.’
Petrov realised then that he knew this place. It was a piece of waste ground, cut across by a shallow gully. Boys used to play there when he was one of them. They had called it Red Cliff, having never seen cliffs. There was a small crowd of people there now, lined up on the lip of the slope, in silence, in the rain. Soldiers to one side, waiting. Three army trucks drawn up in a line. Soldiers unloading stuff from the tarpaulined backs. An officer, fair-haired, neat and pale, was giving orders. Petrov knew he smelled of soap.
Some of the people were naked, and others were in their underclothes. Some were undressing under the soldiers’ gaze. Women crossed their arms over their breasts and shivered. The rain soaked them. There was a pile of rain-sodden clothes. Alone, at some distance, an earth-coloured mudjhik stood, sightlessly swaying, attendant. The soldiers were arranging their mitrailleuses in a row on a raised mound.
Petrov realised that one of the soldiers from the street had followed behind him, and was standing at his shoulder.
‘Go over there and join the others, citizen,’ the soldier said in his ear. His young voice was drab with shock. ‘Leave your clothes on the pile. If we can, we will be quick.’
The people smelled wet and sour. They were as silent as trees. Petrov was aware of bare feet, his own among them, cold and muddy in the rain-soaked, puddled red earth.
Time widened.
Somewhere — distant — it seemed that someone, a woman, was berating the soldiers with loud, precise indignation. Three echoless shots repaired the silence and the rain.
Then the mitrailleuses began to fire.