Stray Dog Winter

by David Francis

  Darcy snatched the yellow flowers from the soup can, to hurl them after her, but she turned. That’s what your mother would do, she said.

  She’d throw the can as well, said Darcy. And then the toaster. They sniffed a laugh almost simultaneously then stopped.

  She had a stroke, said Darcy.

  The flower stems dripped water onto the floor. Fin said nothing.

  It was only minor, he said. She just lay on her chaise pretending she was okay, her cigarette shaking, then she had a day in hospital. He thought how he’d visited her just once after that—to return her car. He’d told her he was going to Sydney.

  Mount Eliza, Spring 1975

  Darcy was baking a cake in the kitchen, whipping cream by hand, while his father poured a bottle of Remy Martin down the sink. The school says she’s disappeared, his father said. He never mentioned Fin by name when Darcy’s mother was in earshot, but she was sitting at the dining-room table and Darcy could tell his father wanted her to hear.

  With some New Australian boy. Older. Apparently he took her off to Queensland. Did you know about this?

  Darcy stood at the fridge with a bowl of cream in his hands, sinking. She hadn’t said goodbye; he’d barely seen her since the day at the beach. Darcy moved to lean against the bench, told his father he knew nothing. But he’d seen Jostler just a week ago, the Monaro stopping on the corner of Mountain Road, offering a ride down the hill. Jostler, who’d come from the Somerville pub.

  Darcy began whipping cream furiously. Yes, he knew Jostler. Darcy still remembered the holes in the knees of his jeans. He’d fantasised about being alone with him and some tinnies up at the old quarry on Two Bays Road. And now Jostler had taken her away.

  His mother stood silent in the doorway as his father drained sherry from the stem of a tulip-shaped bottle. Apparently his last name is Garabed or something, he said. The police are searching for them.

  Darcy mouthed the name: Garabed. I wish they’d taken me, he mumbled, but his father pretended not to hear, his mother glaring at the loss of liquid. A mix of envy and rage unbuckled inside Darcy, images of the endless beach at Surfers Paradise swirling white before him, Fin’s head on Jostler’s thigh in white sand as the clouds ran silent above, shadows on that phosphorous ocean. Fin knew first-hand about being abandoned, had left Darcy knowing how he’d feel. Jostler made her promise, he thought.

  Darcy’s mother drew on her smoke. She came, she went, she said sarcastically, and look at us.

  Darcy threw the bowl of cream across the room. Most of it landed on the stove, dolloping down into the electric elements, some like semen on the walls.

  Tut, tut, said his mother. Now we’ll have to clean that up.

  His father had an emptied bottle of her Gilbey’s in his hand. He didn’t look at the mess. Maybe we should go on a trip, he said.

  Not to Queensland, said his mother.

  Darcy hated her dismissal of every idea with a word or a wave of a cigarette. He felt a sudden desire to run from them, catch the bus to Surfers Paradise, or just walk out into the darkness, search the roads for the missionaries. He’d been right—Fin was the lucky one.

  Ulitsa Kazakov, Wednesday morning

  Darcy waited on the street, standing alone in Aurelio’s coat under a black elm whose roots had fissured the pavement. Fin appeared beside him in her fur hat and headscarf, her lips pursed anxiously. Darcy liked how she didn’t want him to go. She knew whose coat he had on now.

  Fitfully she pushed at the fingers of her gloves. You shouldn’t have told him where you live, she said.

  He already knew, said Darcy.

  Icy air funnelled alongside the stucco apartment block, stung his face as he stared at a car navigating the corner, the same rusty Lada from yesterday. At least let me see what he looks like, said Fin, in case you disappear.

  Darcy didn’t mind her protective and jealous, but her paranoia unnerved him. I can take care of myself, he said.

  This isn’t Dandenong, she reminded him curtly, and it made him feel more wary, his trust in the hands of strangers. The Lada double-parked.

  His mother knows Castro, said Darcy.

  Fin cast Darcy a sidelong glance from behind her scarf. That’s a comfort, she said.

  Aurelio rolled down the fogged-up window and there he was in wrap-around reflective sunglasses. Is there a chance of sun? Fin said. But Aurelio seemed larger than the life that surrounded him, a turtleneck sweater and overnight stubble, he could have easily been in an Aston Martin, departing for the Alps.

  Uninvited, Fin approached him. Dobry utra, she said. Aurelio removed his glasses and Darcy watched her embark on her charming Australian-but-fluent-in-Russian thing. Darcy got in the passenger side, the heater belching stale air, but Aurelio didn’t greet him. He would forgive him, but he wondered if he could trust him. Darcy looked at his profile, waiting, noticed the ends of his hair poking from below his hat, that the space between his eyebrows looked shaven. Darcy’s father said never to trust a man whose eyebrows met—but who could trust Darcy’s father?

  Fin’s gloved hands gesticulated through Aurelio’s window, her smooth unintelligible smoker’s voice. Spasiba, she said, thank you, and Aurelio wound up the window, sat his sunglasses up between the brim of his hat and his harvest eyes.

  He turned to Darcy, at last. We ready?

  Gently Darcy took the sunglasses from Aurelio’s forehead, put them on himself. They made the snow turn green, that light moss green of Fin’s pupils. Sure, he said. He resolved to stay optimistic. Fin’s arms gripped her shoulders, hugging herself in the cold, and he waved as they drove. Glancing back in the side mirror, he made out her slightly raised arm. Standing in the cold of the newly green street she looked puzzled, but he wouldn’t be sucked into her suspicions; he had nothing to hide. Everything was green, he’d pretend it was beautiful. Why was she thanking you? asked Darcy.

  She is worrying, said Aurelio. You are not with your passport. Darcy turned to regard him, the smudges now olive under his big dark eyes. Try to keep light, like yesterday, he thought; don’t get complicated. And yet there was nothing playful about Aurelio now, steering with a military confidence, his hands solid in his driving gloves, as they turned from the street into the sparse mid-morning traffic.

  Her Russian is surprising, he said, your friend.

  Darcy surmised that gleaning information was probably part of this deal, but he refused to let the quid pro quo disappoint him. Fin had already put her spanner in the works, and he was niggled again by the memory of the money belt against him like a strip of swollen skin.

  She studied Russian at university, said Darcy. He stared out as they crossed the lime ice river and passed the back of the Kremlin, the stone gates to Alexandrovsky Gardens. Too cold out there for birds except the occasional all-weather pigeon. He could pretend they were parrots through these lenses.

  Did you meet her there, at the university? asked Aurelio.

  Darcy nodded. Partially true. This, he knew, was exactly what Fin had feared, this conversation. Keep it light, Darcy Bright, keep it light.

  Were you lovers? Aurelio asked.

  Would you care? Darcy made an effort to smile.

  Maybe.

  Darcy’d have to guard his heart as well as his mouth, he knew this. Aurelio was different today, inquisitive in a less intimate way, but Darcy tried to ignore it. He’d say nothing of the money belt and nothing of Jostler who was now Jobik. He glimpsed a corner of the monolithic Rossiya Hotel and thought of yesterday’s wedding down in its shadow, Aurelio and his friend Sofia; their eye contact mixed a subtle duty and flirtation. Was Sofia your lover? asked Darcy.

  Aurelio smiled to himself as if it was hardly Darcy’s business. We are connected by history, he said. He raised his crescent-moon eyebrows. Flirting, finally.

  Darcy nodded, he understood about that, and while it felt better to be asking the questions, he still felt out of his depth.

  The street seemed as wide as a landing strip, a slushy roundabout
with the blunted shape of a workers’ memorial, a determined-faced woman carved in granite, a sickle thrust from one hand and a flag from the other. She looked ready for anything. Darcy pulled out his map to get his bearings. So where are we going? he asked.

  To the general’s country house, Aurelio said. He is gone to Odessa on his honeymoon. He arched his back to get comfortable and Darcy found himself doing the same.

  What will we do at the dacha? asked Darcy, pleased to know the word. An aubergine crow stooped on top of a lamp, burying its head.

  I will get to know you, said Aurelio.

  Will I get to know you?

  Why not?

  Darcy watched the stark city trees whip by, patterning buildings with their webs of twigs and bare branches. I know it sounds naïve, said Darcy, but is it true they cut the corners of gay men’s mouths here?

  Aurelio tossed his head back, laughed, then coughed. Who is telling you this?

  I read it.

  A story, he said, from the West.

  Darcy feigned relief. How long have you been here? he asked. He pretended it was like a date, finding out about each other.

  First I had scholarship to the Bolshoi, said Aurelio, and I was very strong. I’m sure, thought Darcy. But they only like Russian boys, so I am recruited to a special job. And today is my big day off, so I am with you. He gripped Darcy’s knee and Darcy imagined Aurelio’s dancer’s body, Aurelio undressed. He wanted to stare at him but looked instead at the Byelorussian Station outside the window, foreboding and classical, surrounding three sides of a square; it looked different in daylight. That’s where they took my passport, said Darcy.

  I will do what I can, Aurelio said earnestly, tomorrow. Then he pointed out the Pravda building, a constructivist block of reinforced concrete and glass. Pravda is meaning truth, he said, and Darcy was relieved at the irony in his tone, his irreverence felt safer than his questioning.

  At an intersection where snow ploughs stood fallow they turned. We’re going direction Zagorsk, said Aurelio. Darcy couldn’t read the signs and he’d lost track on his map; they could have been going to hell. A boy ran alongside them with old-fashioned ice skates over his arm and Aurelio regarded the stark multi-sided structure behind the fading figure. Dynamo Sports Palace, Aurelio said. Then they headed what felt like east past a plantation of high-rise flats, their cement-grey made green through the glasses, matching the sky. A fat man walked a cold, reluctant dog.

  I’m not sure I could live here forever, said Darcy.

  Aurelio understood. Why is your Finola in Moscow? Really?

  Darcy felt Aurelio’s coat around him—hearing her real name from his lips seemed strange. She has a grant from the Ministry of Culture, said Darcy. I came to help with one of her projects. He looked out as if uninterested, unsure if he’d already divulged too much. Buildings lower now, a tract of old wooden houses, snow-flecked shingle roofs. He’d only told what he knew.

  She looks like you, said Aurelio, your friend. Actually, you are both looking Slavic. Like cousins of Navratilova.

  We’re just Australian, said Darcy, though he was sure Aurelio already knew that. He just hoped he didn’t know they had American mothers. Being Australian felt more benign in Reagan’s empire of evil.

  Unexpectedly, Aurelio turned up a narrow windswept road and Darcy grabbed the leather roof strap, felt suddenly less certain. A tractor came out of a driveway and Aurelio slowed to swerve around it. Siblings of destiny then, he said. If he’d caught Darcy in the lie, Aurelio didn’t acknowledge it.

  They stopped at a guardhouse; Aurelio produced a laminated pass from his breast pocket and they were ushered on, winding quietly through a scant birch forest where a woman wrapped in a shawl collected wood. She stopped to watch them go by. It is close now, Aurelio assured him, and it felt like they’d entered a rarified place. They motored by a log house set back in the trees. Nabokov once was writing here, said Aurelio.

  Darcy said he thought Nabokov wrote in exile.

  Aurelio shrugged. Pasternak, maybe. Darcy couldn’t tell if Aurelio was unconcerned with the truth or just trying to keep the trip interesting. They turned up another fresh-swept asphalt path and parked among the trees. Did you read Lolita? asked Darcy.

  Aurelio leaned over, his mouth barely open, his stubble near Darcy’s cheek. No, he said, and Darcy thought they might kiss but Aurelio reached to open the passenger door. He pushed the sunglasses up high on Darcy’s hat like ski goggles.

  Lolita is amazing, Darcy said. It always reminded him of the missionary, stamping a child with that. He wondered how he’d have been without it, if he’d have been in and out of so many strange men’s cars.

  Outside, the cold was piercing but it was nice to be rid of the city; no smell of fumes or sweaty polyester, just Aurelio’s leather scent in the lining of the coat as Darcy pulled the collar up. He looked over at Aurelio’s velvet skin and wondered if he felt the chill as deeply, his Cuban blood so thin the wind might blow through him too.

  Aurelio unhinged the windshield wipers, put them in the trunk. People are stealing all things here, he said. Bad as Havana. He wrapped his burgundy scarf around his throat and ushered Darcy forward down a track flanked with low vines and fallen branches. Darcy wanted to reach for Aurelio’s hand, to feel romantic, a longing that felt unfamiliar, no clear procedure like with the soldier in Prague. Where’s the dacha? asked Darcy.

  Aurelio pointed ahead, along a path hemmed in by firs and pines, Fin far away on the green-tinged street, left behind for once. With the crackling twigs underfoot and each crunch of snow it felt like there were others with them, but when Darcy looked back there was nobody. Then Aurelio stopped and put one hand on Darcy’s shoulder, gestured to an expanse of snow. In the spring there is a field of yellow dogs, he said, as if he wanted Darcy to know it was prettier then.

  Darcy thought of the vase of flowers on Fin’s counter, a common variety, how he’d wanted to hurl them at her. He saw the field was white now; Jobik must have bought her flowers from a hothouse. No wonder they had wilted. Darcy wished it were spring as he followed Aurelio over planks set above a frozen seep. Do you know what a wild-goose chase is? he asked.

  Aurelio looked up as if there might be geese but there were only two military planes flying low but surprisingly quiet overhead. The dacha came into view. No evidence of a garden, just the ashy trunks of birches and the pine logs of the cabin, a weathervane with a rooster and a red star above a door. Aurelio searched for keys in the pocket of his coat, halted at laughter and banging from inside the house. Darcy tugged at his sleeve. I thought we’d be alone, he said.

  Never mind her, said Aurelio.

  A television blared as they walked to a shuttered window. Aurelio waved at a drooling girl who ate an apple wildly. She sat in a wheelchair surrounded by toys, their limbs torn off and their fluffy innards on the floor. She threw the apple at the television, then picked up a wooden spoon and started slamming on her eating tray. Her short brown hair was dipped to one side in a manner that was almost seductive. It was as if she couldn’t see them out there.

  That’s Kapka, Aurelio whispered, the general’s daughter; she’s like a little girl.

  He pointed up to a second-floor room with a filmy curtain. That’s the room where I stay, he said and ushered Darcy up wooden ice-capped steps. Through an upstairs door they entered a small bedroom, but proceeded on to a small, beamed bathroom. The water’s very hot here, said Aurelio. He turned on the taps to cover the sound of the retarded girl slamming her wooden spoon and wailing, and eased unselfconsciously from his coat and jeans, his coppery dancer’s legs, his chest. He got in the shower and held his head up for a long time, let the water run over him like he was drinking from the sky. His skin slightly matt until the water hit it, then it glistened darkly. His body so smooth Darcy wondered if it had been shaven. He felt awkward, not certain if he was supposed to join in, but he found himself undressing, gingerly stepping into the steam.

  Darcy hugged himself shyly as
Aurelio turned and held him close, the pebbles of water on Darcy’s back as he buried his head in Aurelio’s chest, sensed the beat of his own heart. Aurelio soaped him and their bodies lathered and softened into each other like animals nesting, not as libidinal and eager as Darcy’d imagined. He felt Aurelio’s big hands about him, the contrast in their skins and the flow of the water, and everything silent now save for Aurelio’s breath in his ear, the softness of his touch. Darcy felt a surrender, a closeness that wasn’t familiar, in this privacy, and a peaceful shuddery feeling rippled through him as it dawned on him that this was what he’d always wanted. He kept his eyes closed, to sense if it could be real. He thought of his time in the school showers with Benton in fifth form, how they’d meet behind the handball courts and make out in the late afternoons, but then Benton got a girlfriend and Darcy went down behind the courts alone. He kissed Aurelio’s neck, and as the water washed over his mouth and eyes, he knew how afraid he was of this feeling, how Aurelio didn’t seem to want more.

  O

  As they drove back into the city, Darcy clasped the roof strap tightly, feeling slightly dissatisfied, the water no longer pouring, the world no longer green through the sunglasses that lay on the dash like another set of eyes. Do you take men there often? he asked.

  Not men like you, said Aurelio. Something unabashed about him that Darcy wasn’t used to. He wanted to give him the benefit of his misgivings, but he realised they hadn’t yet kissed, not really, just been intimate in a way that made Darcy now feel disquieted.

  Aurelio pulled into the slush at the approach of a siren. A bulging limousine with tinted windows splashed by, a motorbike escort in front and behind. A ZIL, said Aurelio, for Politburo. Other cars moved further to the side.

  A classless society, said Darcy, and he thought of Chernenko’s daughter and mentioned how he’d seen her at the Bolshoi, the night he’d first seen Aurelio.

  Her name is Anyetta. Aurelio smiled. She is beautiful, no? Her mother is coming from Balkans. He said it as if the Balkans meant pretty, and it was true, she’d not inherited her father’s bready features. My mother is coming from Spain, said Aurelio.