Two Cousins of Azov

‘Ah, I see, madam, I see. My eyes are … tired.’ He crossed to collect it, hips and ankles clicking as he went. He examined the blade in the puny light of the lamp.

‘Yes. The saw: good! We’d better move on, before I forget something else. Do you feel … stable?’

She considered briefly, and nodded carefully. Gor did not respond. He was stroking his chin and staring through her. She swallowed.

It wasn’t that his face was old: no, any face can make you wonder how it once belonged to a baby. But this – it was a face that was so mournful, so haggard and frayed, with such huge eyes, it could make a priest cry. Sveta shuddered, and the box rattled softly. On top of the piano, the white cat lay in abandonment, upside-down, and eyed her with mild interest.

‘Svetlana Mikhailovna, hold fast. All will be well. I have to pause to think … I am an old man – you may have noticed. We take our time, in all things.’ As he spoke, he waved a large, thin hand in the air, and then let it flap down again, the gesture both artistic and defeated. He did not smile. In fact, he looked exceedingly morose. ‘Strange, you may think, as time is against us, but there it is.’

Again Sveta pursed her lips, and tried not to look at Gor or the cat, which now seemed to be winking at her with its sapphire eyes.

‘I am holding fast. You may have noticed – I have no choice.’ She eyed the window and the rain swirling against the murky sky. The light was fading, and it made her anxious: she had a hair appointment at six. ‘Do please hurry.’

The old man stood beside her, the top of his head not far from the ceiling above.

‘You may feel some vibration, I fear. But there should be no more than that. It is a long time since I have attempted this action, so I have had the saw cleaned and sharpened. There will be no rust. My last assistant, God rest her soul, was quite against rust. She had an allergy.’ Gor shrugged.

Sveta offered him a tight-lipped smile. ‘I am not against vibration.’ Her chin rose. ‘And I have no known allergies.’

He nodded, and rolled up his sleeves. ‘When we attempt this action on the stage, of course, you will not be balanced in the box between two chairs. I will have my whole magical cabinet at my disposal. It is just our misfortune we cannot use it today.’

‘That’s a relief. But why can’t we use the cabinet today? I think I would feel a lot more “in character” if I were in a magical cabinet rather than balanced on two chairs. It was a lot of fuss getting into this box. And it seems quite unprofessional, to me.’

Sveta did not feel in character, or professional, or magical, at all. In truth, she did not know what the character of a magician’s assistant should be, but she was fairly certain that it should be more glamorous than this. What was the point in her lipstick and her impending hair appointment if she were just to be packaged up in a musty apartment in the suburbs, laughed at by cats and repeatedly observed by an off-putting old man with a face like death? She chewed her lip.

‘Since you ask so directly … we cannot use the cabinet, dear Sveta, because Dasha, my queen cat, had a litter of kittens in it, and they cannot be moved for a few days yet. She would tear you to pieces if you tried. She is a very … protective mother.’

Sveta felt the blood drain from her face.

‘How unhygienic!’

‘It was a safe place for her, I suppose. I don’t worry about these things. We have bigger things to worry about, you and I.’ He flicked a switch and the room was bathed in an acid lemon light. ‘That’s better! Now I can see!’ He engaged the saw into the metal groove at the centre of the box and Sveta gritted her teeth. The light reflected off the blade and stabbed at her eyes as the saw’s angle sharpened, and it made her angry, like a blow to the head.

‘You’re not …’ she couldn’t get her words out.

Gor began with a few experimental swipes of the blade. It made a noise like hell. She persisted.

‘… you aren’t seriously expecting me—’

Metal on metal rang out across the apartment; sharp and piercing. She gulped in air.

‘… to engage in magical expositions … in a cabinet …’

The saw twanged and Gor muttered under his breath.

‘… in which a cat has had kittens?’ Sveta shouted, voice yodelling with the effort. The sawing stopped.

‘Oh yes, Sveta. I expect that: most definitely,’ he said softly. He examined his handiwork and the blade, and added, ‘But do not fret. I will sweep it out, and administer some disinfectant. All will be well.’

Sveta’s eyes bulged. He took up the saw and again worked its blade forwards and backwards, beads of sweat gathering on his forehead. It screeched and sang into Sveta’s ears.

This was not what she had envisaged when she answered the advert on the lamp post. There was no glamour here, only vibration and screeching, dark eyes and cats: on and on it went. She began to feel ill, stomach clenching, like that time she had rashly decided to take the ferry across the Kerch Straits to Crimea shortly after lunching on a basket of cherries and a litre of kvas. So long ago … She began to pant.

‘Be still, Sveta. Don’t wriggle.’

‘Oh, but … the noise! The vibrations … they are going … straight through my …’ Sveta’s face turned pale olive.

‘Sveta?’ He ceased sawing. ‘Is everything …?’ She groaned and waved her hands weakly in the holes at the side of the box. ‘No, not hands at the moment, Sveta, move your feet: it’s your feet everyone will be interested in.’

She groaned and made vague twitching movements with her big toes.

‘Yes, that’s it! Waggle away! Keep it going. Is everything else … normal?’ His tone suggested concern, but his face remained unchanged, intent on the saw.

‘Ugh … yes – no … I don’t know!’ She gritted her teeth and smiled, her expression manic. ‘Am I cut in half yet? That’s the main thing!’ Colour, of a sort, was returning to her cheeks.

‘Erm, more or less. You require quite a good deal of sawing.’

She did not know whether this was a compliment or not. ‘I see.’

‘I think that will suffice for the moment.’ He drew out his handkerchief with a slightly trembling hand and mopped his brow.

‘Oh! That’s all? But you haven’t drawn the two halves apart.’

‘No. To be frank, I don’t think we have sufficient stability to draw the two halves apart. And, again to be frank, I am not sure I have the strength. It’s been a long time since … Well, would you be distraught if, on this occasion, we just assume that you have been bisected? After all, there is no audience here to please, apart from Pericles.’

Gor reached up a hand to fondle the cat and it puffed into his palm, a translucent globule of spit rolling from its open jaw onto the parquet below in an expression of feline ecstasy. Sveta shuddered.

She was disappointed by the whole experience, and felt an odd urge to cry. She had been cut in half, and it had been most unpleasant, but he couldn’t even be bothered to draw the two halves apart! This mysterious magician, this person about whom she had heard so much gossip and legend, was turning out to be a disappointment. His apartment was clogged with books and cats and pianos, his demeanour was morose, and as for the rumours of wealth and fortune and gold in the cistern: well, frayed shirt collars and darned trousers told their own story. She found no evidence of treasure, of any sort.

‘Very well, Mister Papasyan,’ she said in clipped tones. ‘If that is it for today, could you release me? I really have to be going – I have other appointments.’ The old man nodded and bent to undo the clasps, stopping short as a sharp rap rang out on the apartment door.

‘What now?’

‘It was the door,’ Sveta explained, still in clipped tones.

‘Yes, I know, I—’ Gor began, but thought better of completing the sentence. The woman seemed displeased. ‘Bear with me, Sveta. I should see who it is. I won’t be a moment.’

‘But—’ she rattled slightly in her box, and then, as it rocked on the chairs beneath it, realised stillness was the better option. Gor patted down his hair and headed for the front door.

He thrust an eye to the spy hole before opening up, and saw no one. But it had definitely been a knock, and definitely his door. He stepped back, released the safety chain and pulled the door open. The empty hallway lay before him, dark and silent. He peered left and right, sniffed the air, scratched his head and shrugged. There was no one. He was about to shut the door when a scrap of something on the floor caught his eye, and he looked down. There, on his doorstep, lay a huddle of brilliant white and damson red. He touched the object with his foot, stirring it slightly to better make out what it was. His breath caught and, ignoring the disgruntled rattling coming from the living room, he bent to his haunches for a closer look. Eventually, he realised: before him lay the body of a white rabbit, an oozing straggle of tendons marking the place where its head had once been.

A door slammed along the corridor and he shot to his feet, trying to make out who was there. Had it been the door to the staircase? He squinted into the gloom, but saw no one. He held his breath as he listened to the stillness: the patter of rain on the windows, occasional notes from his neighbour’s TV. The headless rabbit made no sound. Gor gazed down on it and rubbed his chin.

‘Help!’

Sveta’s cry forced him back to movement.

‘One moment!’ he called, and stooped to gather the limp body from the doorstep, noting that it was still softly warm. Its nose must have been wiffling up until about an hour before. Taking one last glance down the corridor, he turned and shut the apartment door.

He made for the living room with quick steps as the cause of Sveta’s discomfort became clear. She was twisting and turning her head, writhing this way and that as best she could, trying to escape the attentions of Pericles. The naughty cat was seated on top of the box, clinging on with the sharpest claws of one paw and fishing for the whites of her eyes with the other. As she twisted, the box rattled and tipped, working itself towards the edge of the chairs. Gor swore under his breath and dashed across the room.

‘Pericles! Away, sir!’ He took a threatening stride towards the cat and brandished the body of the rabbit like a rolled-up newspaper. The cat dodged the blow and sprang from the box, arcing through the air to land with a thump in the doorway before retiring from the room with an indignant flick of his fluffy white tail.

Gor stood panting as he observed Sveta with a deep grimness: she was still in the box, and the box was still balanced on the chairs. But now she had a trail of sticky rabbit blood stretching from ear to lipsticked mouth, and her eyes, round and wet and shivering, were fixed on the contents of his right hand. There was a moment of silence.

‘My dear Svetlana Mikhailovna—’ he began in his business baritone. It was interrupted by a high-pitched shriek.

‘Let me out of here! Let me out!’

‘Yes.’ He concurred, and placed the rabbit corpse in the nearest suitable receptacle – a fruit bowl on the sideboard – before approaching the box. ‘I am sorry about this, Sveta. This is most peculiar.’

Her response was a mixture of words and sounds and wateriness, unintelligible and upsetting. Gor undid the clasps with tacky fingers and lifted the lid, offering Sveta his hand so that she could climb out safely. She stared at his bloody fingers, tutted and turned away, instead making her own route out of the box, backing out, behind first, wobbling, sniffing and shaking her head.

‘You may want to, er, freshen … your appearance, Sveta. I am sorry … this is most unfortunate. Please, follow me – the bathroom is this way.’

She nodded and he led her to the hall, pointing out the way to the bathroom with a gentle, blood-stained hand. Sveta locked the door behind her. He heard her shriek as she looked in the mirror, but her snuffles and cries were soon masked by the knocking of the pipes as water ran in the sink. He washed his own hands in the kitchen, rolling them over and over in the stream of cold water and the froth of the soap.

Back in the living room, he sat on the piano stool, shoulders hunched, and observed the small, furry corpse in the fruit bowl. It was a domestic rabbit: someone had owned this little creature, most likely as a pet, not for food or fur. The rain beat on the windows and thunder rumbled in the distance. He observed the rabbit, and wondered why it was not wet. There was a movement in the hall.

‘Do your cats always knock on the door when they bring you a trophy?’ Sveta asked. She already had on her coat and scarf. Gor couldn’t blame her. She eyed the fruit bowl with curiosity and disgust. ‘You’re not going to eat that, are you?’

‘What? No! Sveta, really, what sort of man do you think I am?’

‘Well, I’m not at all sure. You hear all sorts of things.’ She pulled a face. ‘Each to their own, I suppose. It’s been … well, anyway, I must be going.’ She tightened her headscarf, and added, ‘But where’s its head?’

‘That is the oddest thing. I have no idea! My cats do not go out: they are far too valuable. So the perpetrator of this act was not my cat. I really don’t know why this creature was on my doorstep. Or who saw fit to alert me to it. Or how it met its end. Or where its head might be.’

‘It’s a mystery,’ said Sveta, pulling white faux gloves over hands that shook very slightly, and still eyeing the rabbit.

‘Yes. But not one that I find attractive. In fact, there have been a few things lately—’

‘Honestly, in other circumstances I would willingly stay and chat, but I have to go,’ she broke in. ‘I have a hair appointment.’

‘Oh yes, of course. Well, thank you for your help today. I think it went well, all things considered.’ He coughed and paused, but she did not respond. He would have to try harder. While she was far from perfect, he needed an assistant, and with bookings starting to come in for the new year, he needed one now, to get things in order. She would have to be charmed. ‘I hope you are, um, uninjured, by your experiences? I am sorry about the rabbit and the, er, consequences – I was trying to prevent Pericles from doing something he’d regret.’

Sveta’s mouth twisted, and she nodded, but again said nothing.

‘We have the whole of the autumn to rehearse, and I was very impressed by your … by your … determination, today.’ He struggled to find kind words. ‘So, if you are willing, I think we can be ready for the new year.’ He spoke slowly. ‘I think we can become a convincing magical act, if we rehearse. What do you say?’

She looked into the shadowed pools of his eyes, eyes that were so full of sadness, eyes that were asking her a question: could she, would she? He needed her, that was clear. She hesitated, and pursed her lips.

‘Very well.’

He smiled, the skin stretching over his cheekbones and making him look even more like a corpse.

‘Although I have to say, I won’t stand for any more funny business. And next time, I really insist – no chairs, and no cats!’

‘Yes, Sveta, very well. I think next Tuesday afternoon, at around four p.m., if you can spare the time, would give us a golden opportunity to perfect your … your fine performance under the saw? And I will try to make sure that the magical cabinet is ready for you by then. On reflection, I agree – we would be more “in character”, as you say, with the cabinet in use, and with the cats quartered in the kitchen, perhaps.’

Sveta suppressed a shudder at the thought of the kitten-infested cabinet, but said nothing. Instead, she opened her mouth as if to yawn, and ran her finger and thumb across the corners of her mouth – a movement originally designed to remove excess lipstick, but now a nervous habit. ‘I look forward to it,’ she said when she’d finished, her hamster-like face embellished with a smile.

After one more shriek and tussle as she spied Pericles perched on her hugely bulky brown handbag, she was gone, leaving only a vague impression of lily-of-the-valley and mothballs. Gor took a seat in his old armchair, stroked the worn leather of its familiar arms, and stared at the body of the rabbit. He would have to dispose of it somehow – but the rubbish chute did not seem fitting, and anyhow, it was blocked again. He’d better take it to the dacha and give it a proper burial in the soft, brown earth of his rambling vegetable patch. It would have to be tomorrow, though. Night was falling, dropping with the rain out of the lowering sky.

Usually, damp weather made Gor feel content. But not today. The drumming on the windows was making him uneasy, making it impossible for him to hear anything else. Still the rabbit lay in the fruit bowl, the cats circling on the floor below, tails raised like shark fins, their eyes disappearing as their faces creased into silent mews of desire. The rabbit would have to go now, he realised. He pulled himself out of the chair and headed for the kitchen, intent on finding some paper to wrap the body. Lightning flashed across the sky as he moved and he counted for the thunder clap: one-Yaroslavl, two-Yaroslavl, three-: a boom shook the apartment block. Only two kilometres away. It was odd to have a thunderstorm in the autumn: there had been no real heat today.

He gathered up the body and wrapped it in the brown paper, tying up the package with an abundance of string found in a kitchen drawer. He then placed it in the long-empty freezer compartment, so that it was out of the way of the marauding cats, and safe from the effects of decomposition.

Back in the living room Gor shut the old yellow curtains and pulled out the piano stool. He cracked each knuckle in turn, placed his fingers over the keys, closed his eyes and began a finger race up and down the notes. Today was no day for music – his quarry was the scales: every scale, every key, major, minor, arpeggios, contra-motion, two-three-four octaves. These were sets of notes that could only be one way. They held no surprises, and were beautiful in their perfection. He played until his fingers ached and his heart pounded. He played until he forgot about the rabbit, and the thunder, and the woman with the wobbly cheeks and the lipstick. He even forgot about the mewling kittens in the cabinet. His fingers burned and his hands began to shake as each scale and its every variation was practised, and mastered. He didn’t hear his downstairs neighbour knocking with a broom on his ceiling in disgust: for this was what baby-grand pianos were for.

He didn’t even hear the phone ringing, trilling on and on as the thunder crashed. Ringing with persistence. Ringing to be heard. Ringing as if somebody was desperate: desperate he should know they were there.

A Shiver in the Trees

The steaming tea was placed at his elbow just as before, but this time Vlad had brought a small parcel tucked under his arm. The old man’s teeth chattered with anticipation as he pulled away the brown paper. Within, there lay a nest of honey-brown buns, fragrant with ginger and cloves. They shone in the cold glow of the strip-light.

‘Pryaniki!’ Anatoly Borisovich clapped his hands. ‘How I love pryaniki! So very kind of you, Vlad! May I?’ Without waiting he took a bun from the top of the pile and stuffed it into his mouth, lips stretching around the splitting shards of icing. His eyes closed in rapture.

‘My landlady makes them,’ said Vlad, unable to look away, revolted and fascinated by the bun-induced ecstasy as pastry crumbs writhed in the old man’s mouth. ‘She bakes every night, for no one. I don’t eat them.’ He patted a hand on his lean stomach and smiled, shrugging. ‘So they’re always going spare.’ Vlad was determined to be business-like this time. They would get to the salient points quickly: this was research, with a purpose; he was a professional, and he needed only facts.

‘She takes good care of you?’ the old man grunted, ‘this landlady?’

Facts, facts, facts. Don’t get distracted, thought Vlad. ‘She washes and irons very well,’ he said. ‘And there is always good food. She’s lovely, really, but I don’t get much privacy. I can’t have my girlfriend round, for example. Anyway—’

‘And your family?’

‘Family?’

Anatoly Borisovich’s eyes slid from the second bun, which he was now pushing into his mouth, to Vlad’s grey eyes. ‘Family,’ he repeated with difficulty.

‘Oh.’ Vlad shrugged. ‘In the country, forty kilometres or so from here. Mother, sister: I see them on holidays. We’re not close. They’re not like me.’

‘No?’

Vlad perched on the visitor’s chair, heels bouncing against the worn lino of the floor, impatient to start. He ran an eye over his subject. He looked better today: there was less puffiness about his face, his eyes twinkled and the knobbled toes that poked from beneath the bedclothes were pink. It was a turn-around. Maybe having someone to talk to was doing him good? You could never tell with the elderly: that was one reason Vlad found them increasingly fascinating. He hadn’t imagined he would find gerontology interesting: his focus at the start of medical school had been purely the physical – the body, how it worked, how to make it stronger, how it collapsed. But the more he studied, and the more patients he met, the more absorbing he found their thoughts, their backgrounds, the sum of their lives. He hadn’t quite got the gist of how it all worked yet, but he was fascinated by the idea that he could influence those thoughts, to promote a change, and achieve a goal, through stimulation. Facts, facts, facts, thought Vlad, fiddling with his pen.

‘They’re farmers. They live on a collective, in the middle of nowhere. We’ve been apart a long time.’

‘How’s that?’

He definitely had a good appetite: a third bun was now disappearing within his cheeks.

‘I went to residential school: sport and science. Up in Rostov. I haven’t lived at the farm for ten years or more. I’ve been lucky.’

‘Sent away to school? How fascinating! And now you’re going to be a doctor, because you must help your fellow citizens!’

‘Well, I suppose … I was going to go for physics, but the girls in the medicine queue were much prettier.’

Anatoly Borisovich smiled as he chewed, and nodded. Surely the boy was joking?

‘But enough about me,’ said Vlad, ‘we’re here to talk about you.’

The old man was eyeing a fourth iced bun when a loud, low howl resounded in his belly. A steady diet of soft brown boiled things had left his digestion ill-prepared for food that was rich or easily identifiable.

‘Drink your tea, Anatoly Borisovich,’ directed Vlad with a smile as the old man clutched at his side and winced. ‘It will help them go down. There is no need to hurry. The pryaniki have no legs, they will not run away.’

‘That is good advice, thank you. Are you sure you won’t have one?’

‘No.’

‘No sweet things for athletes, eh?’

‘I’m no longer an athlete.’

‘Why not?’

‘Injury.’

‘Ah, a pity!’ Anatoly Borisovich tried a different tack. ‘If oral delights don’t interest you, what does?’

A steady green stare captured Vlad’s eyes and all other details of the old man’s face, including the smear of crumbs and the lattice of scars, melted away.

Vlad coughed. ‘Well, you know: sport, cars, girls. Money.’

‘That all sounds very … And how old are you, if you don’t mind so bold a question?’

‘Twenty-two.’

‘You’re not married?’

‘Married?’ Vlad’s curls shivered as he laughed through his nose. ‘No. Like I said, I have a girl, she’s really … I really … Her name is Polly. She’s beautiful. And she loves me. But marriage is not a priority.’

‘So what is, tell me?’

‘Well, you know: a car, an apartment, textbooks, travel. And I want to buy shares, get into investment, but I lack capital …’

‘How romantic. And the arts, Vlad?’

‘The arts?’

‘What makes your heart soar? What makes you shiver with delight? What fills you with angels’ breath? A painting, a piece of music, a modern ballet perhaps, you’re an athlete, after all—’