Two Cousins of Azov

‘Too late, I’m afraid. It has gone down the chute.’

‘Oh dear!’

‘This is no criminal investigation, Sveta. It’s just some no-good hooliganism.’

‘Well, you were upset, no doubt. My news is good though – I have telephoned my contact.’

‘What contact?’

‘The psychic lady. Remember, I told you about her on Tuesday?’

Gor closed his eyes and swallowed before he spoke.

‘And?’

‘She can do it a week today.’

‘Ah.’

‘Is that too long? I’m afraid she is all booked up until then. Something to do with Greco-Roman wrestling at the Elderly Club. I couldn’t really tell: she can be a little vague on the telephone.’

‘No, no, that is very good. Next Friday it is. I do hope you haven’t gone to a lot of trouble on my account, Sveta, I’m really not—’

‘No trouble! I want to help. And Madame Zoya can certainly help us divine what, exactly, is going on here. She has a marvellous gift.’

‘Quite.’

There was a pause.

‘You sound low. Like you need cheering up.’

‘I am quite cheery.’

He grimaced into the mirror by the telephone table, baring his teeth in an attempt at a smile. It looked more like a snarl. He could almost scare himself with those eyes and teeth.

‘Come to the theatre with us!’ Sveta’s voice bounced off his eardrum. For a moment he was speechless.

‘Wh … what?’

‘I just … well … you seem sad, Gor, and lonely, and well, Albina is in a dance show, with lots of girls and boys from school, and she asked specifically if you could come, and I thought, well, why not? It will be fun! And there’s a craft show going on in the foyer at the same time. And pensioners get in for free.’ Her voice crumbled to quiet as she reached the end of the sentence. A long pause followed.

‘Hello?’ whispered Sveta.

‘That is kind of you, Sveta, to think of me.’

‘It’s the least I can do, after giving you such a scare with that nasty sandwich. You’ll come?’

‘Very well: I shall be pleased to escort you both to the show. What day, and at what time?’

‘Ah, hurrah! Albina will be so pleased! It is actually tonight, at seven thirty p.m., at the Palace of Youth.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Yes!’

‘At the Palace of Youth?’

‘You know where it is? Just past the circus, and then the bus station, but before you get to the brick factory. It’s opposite Bookshop No. 3.’

‘No. 3? Where they sell stationery and records?’

‘That’s the one.’ Sveta took a breath. ‘You’re not busy, no?’

Gor looked at the cats, the piles of music, his lunch tray still lying beside his armchair.

‘No, I’m not busy. But I can’t promise to be good company.’

‘Your presence is company enough! We shall not burden you with conversation if it’s not welcome, dear Gor! Albina will be so pleased. She is not so confident in dance, and it will be nice for her to have the extra support!’

Gor nodded and said his goodbyes and, looking up in the hallway mirror, noticed the vague shadow of a smile playing across his face. The calendar on the wall behind him winked. The smile faded, his face became set, and he stalked off to the bedroom, avoiding gambolling kittens as best he could, to select a clean shirt for the evening.

He didn’t feel like driving, so took a trolleybus as far as the centre of town, and then walked.

Long strides brought him quickly from the central crossroads to the wide boulevard named after Mayakovsky, where milk-bars and furniture shops turned wide, hungry eyes on trudging shoppers and workers. He averted his gaze from the windows and the price tags. He hurried on, away from town, heading past the circus, which shone like paste jewellery half-way up the hill. Round, almost majestic, its curved concrete walls were bathed in jagged, multi-coloured reflections thrown by the glass of its windows. It looked like a space-age Colosseum with a giant Frisbee for a roof. Gor took in its curves and its permanence as he hurried on. He had heard that, years before, circuses had been travelling affairs, housed in huge tents borne by troupes of gypsies from town to town. They entertained the masses, taking stories and characters from place to place, fertilising minds and more with ideas and characters picked up and scattered across the continent from the Baltic to the Sea of Okhotsk. For generations, travelling circuses had roamed like this, tossing ideas like seeds on the wind. But Stalin didn’t like it. The travelling circus meant danger. He ordered permanent circuses to take their place in all major towns, staffed by troupes trained in state circus schools. So circuses were tamed: tethered in one place, telling one, state story, and doing one show … the one that Stalin liked. They were cleansed of magic and mystery, and made safe for the masses. No more tents and ideas blowing in the wind; no more transience. The circus was castrated, to become a harmless eunuch, no danger to anyone.

Gor had no love of the circus. He could not abide a white-faced clown or a leering, drug-addled lion. It was all fake, all manufactured, with a predictability that bored him rigid.

He snorted as he passed the queue snaking out of the door. He shook his head and tutted, but despite himself, remembered a night more than twenty years before, when he’d been there, to this very building, and laughed. How he’d laughed. Not at the miserable animals and their antics, nor at the lackey clowns, but at his own daughter as she sat beside him, her face a delight as each act had unfolded. Such a young life: such a happy child. He had loved the circus that night, because she had loved it; little Olga. A smiling face in the queue caught his eye and he glowered, turning away sharply. He huddled his shoulders further into his coat, and quickened his steps. The circus was rot.

He came to a halt outside what he surmised was the Palace of Youth. It was not a place he had been before. Great columns rose from the crumbling wash of the pavement to hold a canopy of dark grey concrete above windows that shone with a fizzing orange glow on Azov’s youth. An abundance of small girls with buns and huge pom-poms flocked in and out of the lights in front of the building, their anxious mamas in tow, blocking the doorway and holding up the traffic as they alighted from buses and communal taxis. They were a myriad fluff-encrusted fledgling birds, shrieking and dashing, peppering words with pi-pi-pi noises as they came and went through the warped double-doors. Gor stood very still, towering above the faeries and their mothers, silent, grey, dark. He held his arms stiffly by his sides and every so often made a little hopping movement to one side or the other, attempting to avoid a collision. Still they flocked, an occasional mama looking up at him with startled concern as she steered her charge away from his shins and elbows. They seethed and rolled around him, a throng of girls in pink and white, chattering like sea-gulls. Gor’s brow began to sweat.

‘Gor! Coo-eee! There you are!’ Sveta came breaking through the crowd like a steam tug, dragging an unwilling and extraordinarily gangly Albina in her wake. The girl bumped off every available surface, tangling limbs with her ballet-dancing colleagues, the tiny speckled waifs crumpling to the floor as Albina bobbed past in her grubby moon-boots, walrus grey. Her hair was piled into an elaborate bun, much like a nest. Gor smiled to the ladies and held out his hands in greeting. They drew together in the sea of fluff.

‘Good evening, Sveta. Good evening, Albina. I am glad to see you! But whatever is the matter?’

‘I don’t want to do it! Don’t make me! Please!’

Together they ploughed through the dancers, heading for the clogged doors. They pushed their way through with elbows held high and struck out for the cloakroom.

‘But I’ve come specially to see you, Albina,’ said Gor with some concern, as they took off their coats and handed them to the stout woman behind the counter. ‘I am sure you will be … spectacular.’ His goatee twitched as he attempted a kindly smile.

‘But I hate it, and I don’t feel well.’ She gripped her stomach under her bright blue jumper.

‘Now, now, petuchka, we’ve had all this at home. Gor has come here specially to see you dance, so don’t disappoint him. No one is going to laugh at you. I promise!’

‘But I can’t even see properly! My hair is in my eyes!’ said the girl, screwing up her face to squint around her.

‘Look, Albin-chik, there is your teacher, waving – see?’

The girl pretended she was unable to see and crashed heavily into yet another dancing nymph.

‘Now Albina, that is enough! Go over to Madam immediately, or I shall get cross. She needs you in the dressing room.’ Sveta’s brows were drawn into a tight furrow, and her eyes bulged. She was wearing blue eye-shadow and large amounts of mascara, Gor noticed with concern.

‘I hate you,’ Albina hissed.

Sveta blinked, sniffed, smiled brightly, and pushed the girl sharply between the shoulder-blades in the direction of her dance mistress.

‘She’s so glad you’ve come, Gor. And so am I. It is difficult, when we have no man around the house.’ She smiled up at him, eyes wide, and wiped imaginary lipstick marks from the corners of her raspberry red mouth. ‘Shall we take our seats? We’re in the balcony. I can’t wait!’

Gor stared after her receding form as she made her way up the glistening concrete steps. He frowned. He was not sure he should have come at all.

Row B2 was very full. The short battle to claim their seats combined with the damp heat of the auditorium brought a glow to Sveta’s cheeks and nose. Once roosted in her rightful place, she pulled out her compact to repair the damage and, angling it for a suitable light, spied the most beautiful man she had ever seen, sitting just behind her. A young man with curly brown hair, full lips and a strong, angular jaw. She wiggled her mirror for a bit more. She observed his neck: smooth pale skin stretched taut over muscular flesh, sporting what appeared to be a love-bite. She squinted and adjusted the mirror once more: his eyes were the clearest grey, framed by long, dark lashes, so sensitive … almost feminine. His gaze bounced off hers in the mirror, and she snapped it shut, almost bursting into a giggle. Here, just behind her, was a sentient statue straight from the olive groves of the Roman world: a living David-cum-Hercules. She stowed her mirror, and, after waiting a few seconds, turned her head to have a proper look. Yes, there he was, not more than a few metres from her, a living god bursting out of a cream-and-grey patterned roll-neck sweater. He must be a swimmer, she thought, or a gymnast, perhaps. He was reading the mimeographed programme and holding the hand of a dark-haired girl, his thumb stroking the inside of her wrist. Her face was turned away, dark locks hiding her expression, but Sveta could see a strong nose and her jaw, set firm. She felt her own brittle hair with her fingertips, and her small, soft chin. The man spoke and played his fingers through the tips of the girl’s hair as if to discover her face.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘I know how much it means to you.’

‘Oh really? I’m not sure you do. You’re just not trying hard enough!’ the girl replied loudly.

‘I’m doing my best,’ he said.

‘Well, you need to do more.’

His programme dropped to the floor, and Sveta turned back in her seat. She smiled to herself: young love could be hard work. She could well believe the gorgeous young man wasn’t trying hard enough.

Gor turned to her, humming a little tune, vague ‘pom-pom-poms’ escaping his mouth. He looked a little less severe than usual.

‘Isn’t this nice?’ She wiped imaginary lipstick from the corners of her mouth.

‘It is certainly different,’ he nodded, looking around the auditorium. ‘Such excitement! Such babble!’

The young couple behind her were still at loggerheads, now embarking on an exchange of urgent whispers. She sighed contentedly and turned her attention to the stage.

Fifty minutes later, Gor looked at his watch for the sixth time. They had so far endured ballet, folk dancing, a spot of folk singing, folk rock, some sort of modern expressionism, and something noisy and energetic that Sveta informed him was ‘disco’, beloved of black people in America. Gor harrumphed and expressed a hope that the black people in America performed it with more aplomb than the children of School No. 2 in Azov. At this point, Sveta had dug him in the ribs with her elbow, and tutted loudly.

Albina had looked miserable throughout her eight minutes of the modern expressionist segment. She was supposed to represent ‘technology’. Her hands had flailed and her feet had stumbled as she tried to convey the positive global outcomes of mechanisation. Things got worse when she caught her toe in a thread hanging from her costume. She wobbled and fell, crushing the white papier-mâché dove placed centre-stage to represent world peace.

‘Oh, that’s a poor omen,’ said Sveta, ‘I don’t think we want technology to do that, do we?’ She smiled a brave smile, and waved to her daughter as she stomped off stage, sniffing and carrying pieces of mashed dove.

At the interval, Sveta propelled Gor towards the ice-cream queue, where their stoical patience was eventually rewarded with a pair of stubby brown cornets. They were squished, chewy looking, each with a small paper disc stuck atop an ice-cream permafrost, becoming part of it. Sveta sucked hers off quickly and bit into the ice-cream, while Gor hesitated, looking perplexed, then applied long fingers to peel off the disc with a great deal of care. Sveta watched, strangely enthralled, as he took a tiny wooden spatula from his pocket and began to chip away the ice, flicking milk crystals onto the steps where they stood on the edge of the heaving foyer.

‘My teeth,’ he explained as he caught her gaze. ‘They are all my own, which I sometimes think is a disadvantage. Cold or hot, it can all be a problem.’ He curled his top lip to reveal fangs that went on and on, right up towards the base of his nose, almost like those of a rodent. Sveta shuddered and looked away, straight into the dark eyes of the Roman god’s girl. She was staring at her, across the room, really looking at her this time – with the ghost of a smile on her lips.

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