Two Cousins of Azov

Vlad thought for a moment. ‘BMW.’

‘BM-what?’

He snorted with a smile. ‘It’s a make of car. Big engines, broad.’ His hands shaped the car in the air. ‘Leather seats; German engineering.’

‘German? I see.’ Anatoly Borisovich nodded and turned his gaze to the lone pine on the horizon. ‘Drawing is my particular love. I find it deeply calming. I can lose myself for days … I spent my life in illustration. They gave me a beautiful watch when I retired – a Poljot, the Soviet Union’s best. I believe it’s in here.’ He turned to open the drawer of the bedside cabinet but it jarred, the cabinet rocking on its feet as he tugged.

‘Don’t worry, Anatoly Borisovich, show me another time. We really should—’

‘I keep asking them for crayons and paper, Vlad. I know it would do me good. You know it would do me good. But they shrug and tell me maybe tomorrow … I need to get my thoughts straight. I am hoping to be discharged, you see, before the frosts set in. I might go south – the Caucasus, maybe, or further. Somewhere warm – Angola …’

‘Angola?’ Vlad stifled a laugh and glanced at his watch. ‘That’s as maybe. But Matron won’t refer you to the doctors for sign-out until she’s had “consistently good reports”, will she? Like at school, you remember? And at the moment your reports are not consistently good. So, that’s what we must work towards.’

‘Oh yes, I remember our little school. That’s lovely to remember! I received a rosette. Baba pinned it to the wall. She was very proud. And so was I. It was for drawing.’

‘Good. So, perhaps if you are ready … You were telling me on Tuesday, back in Siberia, you lived with your baba, that is, your grandmother …?’ Vlad referred to his notes lying in scratchy blue lines across the notepad and read as the old man began humming.

‘You were telling me about the thing that made you afraid. The boys at school told you to close your eyes and cross your fingers if you heard the moth boy at the window? Remember?’

‘Baba?’ the old man burped quietly. ‘Oh, I know what happened to Baba! I remember! It wasn’t my fault! It wasn’t me! Don’t blame me!’ His voice rose to a shriek and the feet under the covers began to kick.

‘I’m not! My dear Anatoly Borisovich, don’t get agitated! I’m sorry. I was just trying to move us along. I’ll say no more. Just let the words flow. As you want to tell it.’

The old man slurped from his cup, but said nothing.

‘Your grandmother told you that she’d seen something, or dreamt something … she talked of the shaman, and a boy going out into the forest …’

‘The moth boy and the moon!’ Anatoly Borisovich leant forward, coughing with the effort and scattering pryaniki crumbs over the bed. He wagged a short, fat finger in Vlad’s face, so close it grazed his nose. ‘It wasn’t just talk, it wasn’t a story. There was a creature – in the woods.’

‘Did you see it? What did it look like?’ The joints of the chair cracked like frosted wire as Vlad leant forward, and his pen wobbled the words ‘imagination, or hallucination – childhood psychosis?’ on his notepad. He forgot about drilling for facts. ‘Go ahead! Talk!’

Tolya’s favourite chore was sweeping the yard. Baba stood at the doorway watching him as he stumbled around, twig broom in hand, running after the blackened, soggy leaves, chuckling to himself as the wind threw them in the air around his head. He tried to catch them, as if they were butterflies and the broom a net, scattering gravel and laughter as he went. Lev followed at a slower pace, flicking his tail this way and that and occasionally mouthing a low woof. Baba clucked her tongue and left them to it.

The leaves danced around Tolya’s head and he dropped the broom, arms outstretched, pink fingers curling into the air, feeling the swell of the breeze pushing out of the pine forest across his corner of the earth. The world felt mysterious. How many thousands of kilometres had the wind come, and where was it going? What was it carrying, this rush of air: whose voices, animal or human? What smells were being swept around the pine trunks, over the streams and rocks, across the bed of brown needles and stumpy cones that covered the forest floor? Lev raised his head and sniffed the air, blind to all but the visions brought to him by his black, wet nose. Tolya did the same.

‘What is it, boy? A bear? A wolf? A wood spirit?’ Tolya crowned the dog with a handful of mashed leaves. ‘You and me, we are hunters.’ He imagined jumping over the fence into the trees, leaping from the branches onto that fragrant carpet of needles and tumbling into the wooded gloom, deeper into the forest, where the only sound was you and the crunch of twigs beneath your feet. He would hunt down the smells, the voices, the history. He would hunt down the shaman. He would track him to his hut hidden in the gloom and tell him about Stalin. No need for magic now, comrade shaman. We, you and me, we are Communism! We have the new magic, in Stalin’s word. It will cure our ills, and keep us safe. Your forest belongs to us all now. Tolya gripped the top of the gate and stared out into the trees, looking for movement.

‘Come on, Tolya!’ cried Baba from the porch, ‘there’s work to be done. Where’s your broom, eh? Forgotten on the ground, and Lev is going to chew it up – watch out!’

Tolya knew damage to the broom would be punished and jumped down from the gate to retrieve it. The trees sighed and waved. He was lucky he had trees to look at, and not some neighbour’s house. Take Comrade Goloshov, for example: if his house was opposite Comrade Goloshov’s, all he would see would be an old man with a red nose sitting by the window all winter and on his porch all summer. And his house smelled funny, like the inside of Lev’s ears.

He looked down the track towards the village. Smoke straggled from every crooked chimney. Chernovolets was little more than one road lined with wooden houses on each side, all higgledy-piggledy, not a straight line between them. To Tolya, it seemed a busy, people-filled place – after all, there was a school, and a shop, and a village hall, his auntie and uncle – even a doctor. The houses were ancient: indeed, not one was under fifty years old. The climate moulded the dwellings: the wooden walls and floors gradually bowed and buckled and sank in on themselves, producing façades as individual as the faces of the tenants. This was his village: four thousand kilometres east of Moscow, and home to five hundred and eighty-nine people, various chickens, some dogs, cats, rats, a few pigs, a riot of boys and girls, and a bucketful of stories and myths. Baba called his name. He leant the broom on the fence and joined her at the well.

‘When will Papa be back?’ he asked as they drew the water up.

‘Late. He’s busy.’ The words came out like whacks of an axe as she puffed. When they’d finished with the water she added, ‘Comrade Stalin needs more paper, to print more information, and for that the paper mill needs more trees, and for that Papa needs to work more, to make sure the trees are ready and the paper gets made. Otherwise he gets in trouble. It’s all in the plan, and we don’t want any trouble.’

‘Baba, will I work in the forest when I’m grown up? Is that in the plan?’

She laughed and wiped finger trails on her apron. ‘Well, Tolya, I don’t know. Maybe.’ Kind eyes crinkled under a frown.

‘That’s good. I like trees.’

‘Boy, it’s hard work. You’ve seen Papa when he gets home: he can hardly walk. You won’t have much time to like trees if you work in the forest. You’ll be cutting them up.’

‘But it’s good work, Baba?’

‘It’s work. But you … you’re different, Tolya. You’re not like your papa. With your drawing and your writing, and all that …’

‘But I could do it!’

‘I’m sure, I’m sure, my treasure,’ she said, smiling at him suddenly, the cracks in her face deepening. ‘But we’ll see. They’re moving people out here to help with the work. Outsiders, from Moscow, and out that way.’

‘Really? I’ve not seen any, Baba.’ Tolya was intrigued by the idea of outsiders: what did they look like? What did they smell like? What language did they speak? Would their children go to his school?

‘They don’t live in the villages. They are kept to themselves: they have their own camps.’

‘Our teacher told us about Pioneer camps, where children go for holidays if they’ve been very good. Are they like that?’

‘Something like that, son, something like that …’ Baba turned away and headed off back to the cottage, shaking her head. Tolya patted Lev on his soft, brown neck and tugged at his ears.

‘Hard work, Lev-chik, hard work is required! We will work hard, and Comrade Stalin will be pleased, and say thank you to us! We will make him proud. That’s what Papa does, and that’s what we will do.’ He looked around the yard with a critical eye. ‘Where’s the broom? There are leaves in the yard, and we must get them all! Every one! Not one leaf will be left!’ He grabbed the broom and darted around the yard, chasing down the leaves and pushing them into the black wooden bucket.

Dusk quilted the trees, blurring their outlines as Tolya waddled about, pretending the leaves were goats and he was herding them. Baba had lit a lamp and it glowed orange in the window, but still Tolya stayed out. He was bending down, talking to himself and stuffing handfuls of leaves into the bucket, when a crackling sound, close by in the trees, made him stop. Something heavy had moved. Between his legs, looking back towards the house, he could see Lev. The dog was no longer snuffling around the feed bin. Instead he stood rock still, ears clamped to his skull and tail tucked between his legs. He was staring past Tolya into the trees. The wind disappeared, and for a moment all there was in the world was silence, and the thud of his own heartbeat.

A snap shot into the air and the blood surged in Tolya’s veins. He swallowed and dropped the two fistfuls of leaves to the sodden earth. Lev churned out a growl. The wind blew a flapping sound into Tolya’s ears: like sheets on a line, or maybe wings.

With eyes squeezed shut he drew himself upright, fingers crossed like the boys had said. He began to pray to Stalin for help. Before he’d got a word out, Lev’s bark ricocheted off the trees, snapping Tolya’s eyes back open. He stared into the gloom, groping in the darkness, dreading to see, but unable to turn away. At any moment, he knew, moth boy, with the throbbing, hairy thorax and wavering antennae, would reach out for him. For a moment he saw nothing but leaves and clouds and shadows. Then, among the lower branches of the nearest pine, something stirred.

Floating in the darkness there was a face, sharp and pale, with black-ringed eyes that glowed like fireflies. A human face? Maybe … he could make out two arms, perhaps, or were they wings? They flapped against the figure’s sides as it hovered in the undergrowth. Tolya raised his chin. He should be brave. He should protect Baba. He was about to speak when he saw the figure was not looking at him at all: its eyes reflected the lamp, in the house. It was looking past him. It might not even have seen him. He took a step backwards, then another, and felt the wall of the well behind his heel. The creature did not react. He couldn’t go backwards all the way to the house. But if he turned and ran, it might give chase, swooping onto his neck with talons sharp as knives. What if it caught him, or worse, followed him in? He creased his eyes towards the cottage, face taut. The thing in the woods began flapping again, and a gurgle spewed from its mouth, somewhere between laughter and choking.

‘What are you?’ Tolya called out, his voice small and frightened against the wind.

It did not reply, but hunched down, almost hidden in the shadows.

‘You can’t hide! I’ve seen you! And … and I have a fierce dog! Baba will be out any minute. She knows about the old ways, and she won’t be scared! She’ll give you a good hiding!’

There was no reply. Tolya could see nothing, but Lev knew more, and a growl shuddered through him. A twig snapped not three metres from Tolya. He turned and fled, dashing on ship-wrecked legs back to the house as a tempest of barking filled his ears.

‘Baba, Baba, there’s something in the trees!’ He burst through the door. ‘A spirit! Moth boy! He’s flapping in the trees – I saw him!’

She was busy, knife in hand, a pile of bloody bones resting on the table in front of her. ‘What are you on about, boy? I’ve bones to boil, and you’re shrieking about spirits?’ A pot was already bubbling on the stove. ‘And look at this kindling – it won’t split itself!’ Baba jabbed her knife towards the stack of wood in the corner. ‘You and your stories—’

‘Really Baba, I really, really saw it! Look: Lev is still out there, he won’t come in! He’s growling at it. It’s in the trees! Look!’

He grabbed Baba’s arm and tugged her towards the window. She pulled away from his grip.

‘I see nothing, boy. Get the dog in. If he gets in the forest we won’t see him for a week.’

‘But he won’t come, Baba!’ cried Tolya, desperate. ‘Please!’

‘Akh!’ she spat, and grabbed up the lantern from the windowsill. Together they hurried out into the yard. ‘Lev! Come!’ shouted Baba, but the dog was at the gate, intent on the trees, still growling, ears back and dagger teeth shining. Baba made towards him with swift strides but stopped short at the well, head cocked to one side, sniffing the air.

‘It’s there, Baba!’ Tolya pointed into the darkness, where the eyes had glowed and the arm-wings had flapped. She said nothing, but held the lantern higher. Still Lev snarled, front paws coming off the ground in fierce jerks.

‘Show yourself!’ she bit out at last. ‘We know you’re there.’

Nothing stirred but the wind and the leaves.

‘No harm will come to you, that I promise. We are good folk.’

Tolya looked up at her, questions bubbling to his lips.

‘Hush!’ she commanded.

Lev growled, then split the dusk with a volley of barks.

In the darkness below the pines, a greyness rose, shaking the air like a mirage. A wretched, flapping, scarecrow figure emerged, cloaked in rags; an apparition as thin as paper, filmy like the skin on a pond. Baba eyed it carefully, frowning and squinting, and clicked her tongue, muttering under her breath.

‘Come closer, come here in the light – slowly, mind!’

The figure flickered, taking form out of the green and grey, solidifying from apparition to …

‘You’re no spirit. There’s no magic at work here,’ she said to Tolya, and then more loudly. ‘You’re no moth, are you? Who are you?’

The apparition moved closer, and in the soft light of the lantern, Tolya could see it was, in fact, just a boy. Older than him, taller, maybe sixteen or seventeen, but thin and strange. The boy stood still a while, then slowly raised his hands and flapped them in front of his face, in and out, in and out. Yellow-white teeth like standing stones split his mouth in a strange grin.

‘Hey!’ shouted Baba, and the flapping stopped. He shivered, round eyes standing out from skin as pale as milk, as pale as the moon. He reached out a hand, emaciated and ground with dirt, as if to touch the rays from the lantern in Baba’s hand. ‘Come closer!’ she said. ‘Come see! We won’t hurt you.’

The boy shuffled through the long brown grass until he stood at the fence on the edge of the yard. Again the hand reached out to the lantern, and this time gently tap-tap-tapped on the glass.

‘Baba!’ whispered Tolya, eyes round.

‘Who are you?’ asked Baba.

‘Yuri,’ answered the boy, his voice coming slowly to his lips, stilted and hoarse, pushed out on a sigh.

‘Where are you from, Yuri?’

The boy said nothing, and simply pointed over his shoulder in the direction of the forest.

‘Where are your people?’

The boy shrugged and stared at the lamp.

‘Are you hungry?’

He reached out slowly with the same emaciated hand, and nodded. His gaze hadn’t left the lamp, but Tolya saw his eyes were never still, flickering across-across-across as he looked into the light.

‘Is warm, your house?’ Yuri asked suddenly, smiling his strange toothy grin as his eyes oscillated in their sockets.

Lev sniffed at the boy’s calves, jaws hanging open, but made no sound.

‘It’s warm. And you are welcome.’

‘No, Baba! He scares me!’ Tolya pulled on her arm, but she flicked him off with an angry glance.

‘Quiet, Tolya! Come, we’ll have some broth, and you can warm yourself by the stove, Yuri.’ Baba’s eyes were watchful, and she peered in every direction as she strode back towards the cottage. Over the yard a silver moon rose, bright as a frozen sun, bathing the boys in its cold, blue light – one flapping, and one creeping behind.

The forest sighed, and wood smoke rose to meet the heavens.

‘Anatoly Borisovich!’

A jolt thumped through his chest. Strong hands clamped his shoulders and his head snapped back and forth.

‘Wha—? Who— oh!’ The shaking stopped. Green eyes stared into grey.

‘Did I fall asleep?’ Wings were flapping in his mind, shifting memories like leaves in the wind.

‘Yes,’ said Vlad, releasing his grip and easing himself back into the visitor’s chair. ‘I thought maybe … Well, you gave me a fright. You stopped talking and made a choking sound, like you couldn’t breathe. Like you were …’

‘Sleep, Vlad. There’s nothing to fear in sleep. It brings relief. You’ll learn that, as you get older.’

Vlad snorted and slowly smoothed the blankets across the old man’s bed.

‘Maybe so. But I’m glad it was just a … nap.’

‘I must sleep more. But I feel we made progress, don’t you?’

‘Well …’ Vlad pushed the chair onto its two back legs and regarded the old man with a small smile. ‘I can’t really see it, myself. Hearing about your childhood in Siberia is very interesting, and I can see that just talking, just reliving things, is making you feel better. There’s colour in those cheeks, Anatoly Borisovich!’ The old man returned his smile with a grin. ‘But I need to know about your breakdown in September, and I’m still interested in those scars, for my case study. I have to write a report on you – for my medical degree, and for your best interests.’ He leant close to the old man’s face, seeking his eyes. ‘And my report can’t really be about your babushka and Lev, and this moth boy, can it? Do you understand?’

‘Ah.’ Anatoly Borisovich’s hand floated up to his face and his fingers felt into the relief of his cheek, following the crevices and smooth patches: the map of his past. ‘But it’s all related … you need to understand … family …’

As the old man spoke, the kindly orderly appeared in the doorway.

‘You’re wanted,’ she said to Vlad with a coquettish grin, ‘in the office. It’s your girl again, and I think she’s in a temper!’

‘Blin,’ said Vlad, looking at his watch. He lurched from the visitor’s chair, its feet squealing sharply across the floor. ‘I’m going to be late.’

‘Tsk! Even with your fancy imported watch?’ She shook her head with a laugh and walked away up the corridor.

Anatoly Borisovich pulled a face as he closed his eyes. ‘Your girl is cross. That won’t do.’

‘I think it’s all the stress! I thought a date would be different, but she’s …’ Vlad sighed, grabbing up his pens and paper.

‘Anywhere nice?’

‘Palace of Youth.’

The old man grunted. ‘You’d better go then!’ His shoulders shook momentarily with silent laughter. ‘But come back,’ he gurgled eventually, ‘as soon as you can, and I will tell you all: everything you want to hear! We will get your case study complete!’

He sank back on the pillows, feeling as if he had been sweeping the yard all day, catching the leaves above his head and breaking the ice on the well with his knuckles; exhilarated, and exhausted.

‘Very well. But listen, please.’ Vlad’s voice was hurried. ‘I will bring more pryaniki next time, or a cake perhaps?’ Anatoly Borisovich opened an eye. ‘Cake? You like cake? OK, so next time there will be cake, and you will get to the point, and answer some questions, and we will both be happy.’ He turned for the door, and then looked back. ‘You’ve spent almost the entire session talking about leaves and trees today, Anatoly Borisovich, and it won’t do: they’re not what caused your breakdown, are they? I need to know about you. I’ll be back when I can.’ The door slammed.

The blinds were still up. In the distance, Anatoly Borisovich could make out the lone tree beyond the fence shifting in the wind, its branches outstretched, shivering.

A knock at the door accompanied the scrape of its opening.

‘Do you need the toilet?’

It was the grumpy orderly.

‘No, thank you. But I would like some paper and crayons.’

‘Matron said no: said it might excite you.’ The orderly stomped towards him and held out a small steel cup filled with a viscous green liquid. ‘Drink this, and settle down. You shouldn’t get excited. That Vladimir shouldn’t be exciting you. He’s only a student.’

‘Maybe so. But talking … is much better medicine than this.’ He took the cup and swirled its contents. She drew down the blinds with a clang.

‘Come on, drink up! I’ve got others to be seeing to,’ she snapped, returning to stand over him, hands on hips.

Anatoly Borisovich held his nose, gave the orderly a wink and gulped down the medicine. ‘I drank it all.’ He grinned. ‘Do I get a prize?’

‘There’s no need to snatch,’ he whispered, after she had slammed out of the room.

The Palace of Youth

‘My dear Gor!’

‘Good afternoon, Sveta.’

‘I am sorry to disturb you.’ She didn’t sound sorry. Her voice was warm and husky, like fresh rye bread.

‘That is quite all right.’ Gor frowned at the receiver.

‘But I wanted to know how you were.’

‘How I am? I am quite well.’

‘No ill effects at all? From the moth, the other night, I mean?’

Gor considered for a moment, and ran his tongue around his very clean teeth.

‘None,’ he said firmly. ‘All residue was swept away when I returned home. I have had no problems with my stomach, or anything else. All is well.’

‘That is good. I have to say, Albina insists it was nothing to do with her.’

‘Of course.’

‘And I believe her.’

‘Of course. We must all believe her. She is a child.’

‘Yes. So … I was curious. Well, not curious. I was worried … has anything else happened to you, since Tuesday?’

‘Since Tuesday?’

‘Since, since the moth incident.’

‘Of course, the usual has continued.’

‘The usual?’

‘The phone ringing out in the night. Generally around midnight, sometimes earlier, sometimes later.’

‘Do you answer it?’ Her voice was quick.

‘Occasionally. I don’t know why.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing. No one.’

‘How odd. Anything else? Any other foodstuffs disappeared?’

‘Thankfully, no.’ He paused. ‘But I got a letter.’

‘A letter?’

‘A letter.’

‘Who from? What did it say?’

‘I did not read it.’ Gor did not want to discuss the letter, shoved into his mailbox down in the foyer. How had it been delivered? Not by the postal service, that was clear enough. Someone had got in through the locked front door, delivered their message, and left. The dusty pot plants and the shiny brown floor tiles could tell him nothing. Baba Burnikova, nodding behind the desk, could also tell him nothing, apart from that a hand-delivered letter could not have come without her knowing. The empty courtyard, glistening with last night’s rain and a thousand snail trails, could tell him nothing. He had opened the letter there in the foyer, leaning against the solid mass of the radiator, warming the backs of his thighs as he read. His name and flat number had been written in a childish hand, no doubt to disguise the writer. Inside it contained six words in an ugly scrawl.

‘You didn’t read it? But it could have given us clues, Gor! It might have been a spirit letter!’