Wolfhound Century

by Peter Higgins

  ‘Get dressed at least.’ Maroussia went towards the wardrobe.

  Her mother whimpered quietly. ‘Don’t open it,’ she breathed. ‘Maroussia. Please. Don’t.’

  Maroussia began to set out food on the table for their breakfast. There’d been a time when she would have dragged her mother across to the window or even out into the street, to show her that what she feared wasn’t there. Hoping to shake her out of it. Sometimes she had literally grabbed her and shaken her by the shoulders, hard, until it must have hurt, and shouted into her face. It’s all right. It’s all right. There’s nothing there. Please, just be normal. But it made no difference. Nothing did. The nights were the worst. Maroussia would wake to find her mother piling up their few bits of furniture against the door. ‘They’re coming back,’ she would be muttering. ‘The trees are coming back.’

  She still called her ‘mother’, though the word had long ago stopped being even the empty shell of an exhausted, bitter joke. ‘Mother’ was the faded inscription on an empty box.

  Maroussia touched her mother on the shoulder.

  ‘Come over to the table,’ she said. ‘You must be hungry.’

  There was bread, sausage, a potato. Her mother looked at it. ‘Where’s it from?’

  ‘Issy and Zena’s’

  ‘Oh no, I couldn’t touch anything from there.’

  Maroussia couldn’t say that the falling of the shadow across her mother’s life had come as a surprise. Although she had never been sat down and told the story of their lives, she had pieced it together over the years.

  Her mother had been Feiga-Ita Shaumian, and then Feiga-Ita Kantor, and then Feiga-Ita Shaumian again. The Shaumians had been one of the great families of Lezarye, and Feiga-Ita’s marriage to Josef Kantor was a grand occasion: he the firebrand orator and Hope of the Future, she his loving and industrious amanuensis. When Josef was sent into internal exile in the aftermath of the Birzel Rebellion, Feiga-Ita had gone with him, though she didn’t have to. But then, suddenly, she’d abandoned her husband, even though she was pregnant, and gone back to the city. She endured the long journey to Mirgorod alone and ill. It had been a difficult pregnancy. In Mirgorod she had reverted to her former name, borne the child, called her Maroussia, cut off all contact with her old life, her family, the dreamers of Lezarye, brought up the daughter in a succession of obscure and shabby attics.

  At first there had been good times. Maroussia remembered the games and stories, the small adventures out into the city and beyond, to the sea and to the suburban parks that ringed the city, but Feiga-Ita had lapsed at last into this permanent darkness of the heart. Maroussia had got used to sharing their room with the dark predatory walking shadows of trees and the spies and accusers that followed her mother down the street and waited in the darkness of alleyways, stairwells and wardrobes.

  She cut a slice of hard black bread and some sausage and ate it herself.

  Her mother, feeling herself watched, looked across at her with wide, watery eyes.

  ‘Maroussia?’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  You won’t tell them will you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t ever tell them what I did.’

  ‘I have to go now,’ said Maroussia. ‘I have to go.’

  36

  Lom sat at the desk in Vishnik’s apartment, turning over the pages of the Kantor folder again. Wondering where to go from here. Chazia wanted her file back. She was a dangerous enemy: she had tried to kill him once, and she would try again. Kantor was Chazia’s agent. So much was obvious from the file. It was proof — enough to take to Krogh and let him deal with Chazia. But it was unsatisfactory. Would Krogh deal with Chazia? Could he? And Lom wanted more. He wanted Kantor.

  He was about to close the folder when he noticed a paper he had overlooked before, because it was out of date order, torn loose and tucked inside the flap at the back of the file. It was just a routine official instruction, concerned with Kantor’s removal to Vig. The accompanying report said that his wife had already returned to Mirgorod. Wife’s name: Shaumian, Feiga-Ita. Chazia had added a note in pencil: ‘There is a daughter. Not his. KEEP IN VIEW.’ The last three words triple underlined. Pinned to the back of the instruction sheet was a typed half-sheet with an address:

  Shaumian, Feiga-Ita & Shaumian, Maroussia

  387 Velazhin, Apt. 23

  Oyster Bridge

  White Side

  Chazia had written against each name a series of letters and numerals. Lom recognised them as file references for the Gaukh Engine.

  Kantor had a wife, and Maroussia Shaumian was her daughter?

  Circles of contact.

  Shit.

  37

  The paluba and her companion of forest air stood in the doorway of an empty building, watching the entrance to the Shaumians’ apartment block across the street. They were waiting for the daughter to leave. They wanted to find the mother alone. It was the mother they knew. From many years before. She was their better hope.

  When they saw the daughter go, they crossed the road and climbed the stairs. No one saw them. There were people there, in the street, but they were not seen.

  The paluba paused outside the apartment door, on the tiny landing at a bend in the stairs. She could feel the Pollandore as a strong presence in the room and seeping out of it. She could feel its thrilling touch. New things were possible here. She scratched and tapped at the door with her fingers of birch twig and squirrel’s tendon.

  ‘Feiga-Ita Shaumian, let me in.’ Her voice buzzed and rattled like gusts of air in the strings of a wind harp. There was no answer. Nothing moved behind the door, but the paluba sensed a listener in the dark.

  ‘Feiga-Ita Shaumian, open the door.’

  Silence.

  ‘Feiga-Ita Shaumian. You know me. Let me in. I have a message. From him.’

  Silence.

  ‘Feiga-Ita Shaumian!’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  It was quieter than a whisper. The old woman was talking to herself, her words drained of energy by a fear so old and heavy it was like listening for the trickle of dust under stones. But the paluba heard.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘He is alive.’

  ‘He is dead.’

  ‘No. He sent you letters, but you never replied.’

  ‘There were no letters.’

  ‘He is your daughter’s father.’

  Silence.

  ‘Feiga-Ita Shaumian, open the door.’

  Silence. No, not silence. Short, harsh breathing. The scraping of furniture across a wooden floor. Bumping against the other side of the door. Being piled up.

  ‘Feiga-Ita Shaumian, I have a message for you.’

  ‘There are trees in my room. Get them out of my room. Leave me alone.’

  ‘He needs you now. He needs his daughter. You must hear his message. Let me in.’

  ‘I am standing by the window. If you try to come in I’ll jump.’

  The paluba heard the casement opening. Heard the faint sounds from the street become louder. Felt the stir of air from outside.

  ‘You could come with us. We will take you with us. Back to the woods.’

  Silence. Quiet, ragged gulps of breath.

  ‘We will take you both, the daughter too, when what must be done is done.’

  Silence.

  The figure of air made a slight motion and the door blew inwards, splintering off its hinges, but the furniture piled behind it budged only a few inches. Inside, Maroussia’s mother moaned.

  ‘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.

  Maroussia stood up, spilling a tin of pins across the floor. By the time she reached her, her mother had come to a bewildered halt.

  ‘Mother? What are you doing here?’ said Maroussia. ‘Do you want to lose me my job?’

  Her mother’s eyes wouldn’t focus properly. She was pressing the little bag to her breasts. Fasil was coming closer. Maroussia put her mouth against her mother’s ear and shouted.

  ‘Come on. We have to get outside.’

  Her mother didn’t move. She was saying something, but her voice couldn’t be heard. Maroussia put her hands on her shoulders — they felt as soft and strengthless as a child’s — and turned her towards the way out, pushing her gently forward. They had reached the door and
Maroussia was pulling it open when Fasil gripped her roughly by the elbow and pulled her backwards.

  ‘You’re holding up the line. Will you pay for the pieces?’ He turned to Feiga-Ita. ‘Will you?’

  ‘Look at her, Fasil. She’s ill.’

  Fasil pulled Maroussia closer against him. His cheeks were striated with fine red veins. His small eyes were narrowed, his mouth slightly open. There were damp flecks of stuff in his heavy tobacco-gingered moustache.

  ‘Superior little whore,’ he breathed. ‘You think we’re shit.’

  ‘Fasil, please, I just need a moment…’

  He moved his hand down her back. She felt him trace the curve of her spine down into the valley of her buttocks, probing with his fingers through the thin material of her coat.

  ‘Whore,’ he hissed in her ear. ‘You can pay me later.’

  Maroussia shoved her mother out and followed, pushing the door shut behind her and leaning against it, her eyes closed. Fasil was a bastard. There wouldn’t be an end to that, now.

  Her mother was talking rapidly.

  ‘They’ve come for me. He’s back. We have to go. Run. Hide.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘He’s alive. He’s come back. He sent a message. He wants us. He says for us to go with her. To the forest, Maroussia. Back to the trees.’ She held out the bag she was clutching. ‘Take it,’ she said. ‘Take it. It’s here. You can feel it here.’

  Maroussia pushed the shabby little bag aside.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come here, Mother. I have to go back inside now.’

  ‘No!’ Her mother was pleading with her. She held the little bag forward again, her thin white fingers like frail claws. ‘There were trees in the room. He wants you.’

  ‘He’s not in the forest! Josef is in Mirgorod. And he doesn’t want us, mother, of course he doesn’t. And we don’t want him.’

  Her mother looked at her, puzzled. ‘Josef? No. Not him — not Josef — the other one.’