If he’s leaving he’d take more than eggs, said Darcy.
I’m going in, his mother said.
She disappeared up the drive and Darcy decided he should follow in case she got into trouble. But in the street he felt embarrassed, fourteen in his flannel pyjamas, his bare feet in the rain, tender on the gravel. He spied his mother at a window, around the side past a garden of collapsing wet lilies, and he wondered if she’d been there before. She stood on a fruit box and motioned for Darcy as though she were watching a cat having kittens. But it was cold without his shoes on. She stepped down when Darcy got there, sat on a bench by a small pond and lit a cigarette.
Darcy stood on the box like she had, looked in between the orange pots and leafy hydrangeas. His father sitting at a table drinking tea with a woman, his legs crossed to the side. He looked handsomer than usual, the woman smiling, a clasp in her brown-grey hair, her eyes on Darcy’s father. A ray of light appeared through a skylight above them, from a sky that seemed full of clouds. A house so clean it made Darcy’s house seem dirty, the kitchen big as their living-room. The egg cartons there on the bench, the teapot had a green cover.
Darcy’s mother threw a small rock and Darcy turned. She pulled her coat around her, motioned him away with a flick of her head. Enough, she whispered, the weight already in her face. She dropped all her cigarettes in the woman’s fishpond and smiled sadly to herself.
Darcy’s feet were freezing as they walked back down the drive to the street. His mother pulled out her lipstick and wrote on the window of the kombi: Careful Daddy. Letters that looked like a child’s.
What do you reckon? she asked.
Darcy didn’t tell her he thought his father had looked happy. He drove home in his bare feet and she smoked her Virginia Slims. You’re old enough to smoke on weekends, she said. He could hear from her voice she was crying. He didn’t mention he’d been smoking since he was twelve, she never noticed him gone, riding his bike down the street where Benton lived, just to be near him, or to Fin’s dorm, returning to the gully. When the Austin overheated Darcy didn’t stop; his mother put an apple core in front of the temperature gauge.
At home they left the Austin steaming. His mother closed the curtains and went to bed. Darcy sat in his damp pyjamas on the wattle branch that ran along the edge of the single garden bed. He reached down and pulled out a capeweed. The soil smelled stale and sweet from the compost and chicken manure his father brought home. He knew in spring the capeweed would have a bright yellow flower like a daisy. He wondered who decided which were the flowers and which were the weeds, who decided whether his father would come home.
Then he heard the burr of the kombi and wasn’t sure he was pleased. His father pulled in and parked under the trees, a red smudge on the window where the lipstick had been smeared. He leaned on the steering wheel for a moment before he got out, looking more spent than usual, then walked over and sat on the branch with Darcy, the sleeve of his shirt stained from where he’d wiped the glass. His good blue Arrow shirt. What did you get up to today? he asked.
Driving, said Darcy. He leaned over and yanked out another weed, shook dirt from the roots. I followed you. He didn’t look over at his father. I saw you with the lady in the kitchen off Glenferrie Road.
Where was your mother?
She never got out of bed, said Darcy, but it was harder to lie when his father didn’t believe him. And now there weren’t enough secrets to keep things together.
His father looked over towards the house, the drapes drawn shut, clasped his knotty fingers. You’re as stubborn as her, he said. He brushed at the smudges on his sleeve, kept watching the house as if it held an answer. Everything looked smaller than it used to, the dark brown weatherboard and green canvas awnings. The incinerator smouldering with the wet leaves from yesterday and the faint smell of smoke; the fresh innards of a cantaloupe and eggshells on the compost.
What’s her name? asked Darcy.
Ranita, his father said.
Darcy leaned down and touched the grass, felt it damp against his fingers. Does she have a husband?
She used to, he said.
Darcy thought how easy it was for people to leave each other. The way Fin had gone, Benton dumping him without saying anything. Darcy stood and brushed the seat of his pyjama pants, took the capeweed and replanted it, pushed at the soil with his fist. She looked like she was from somewhere else, he said.
She’s Israeli, his father said. From Tel Aviv. Her name means joy.
Darcy somehow doubted that; he’d never met an Israeli. Will you become Jewish? he asked.
I don’t expect so, his father said, but as Darcy looked over at the lines in his father’s weathered cheeks, he sensed this answer as a confirmation. His father would be disappearing soon.
They turned as Darcy’s mother opened the curtains, the wooden rings scraping along the rod. She looked out into the distance as if the two of them weren’t there.
Don’t leave me alone with her, said Darcy.
Boyarski Prospekt, Thursday night
The wind whipped off the snow and bit Darcy’s face as he got out of the taxi. He covered his mouth with his cold gloved hand and looked about. The banya seemed innocuous enough, even though the windows were cemented up, but no one entered or left, just hurried by in the dark with their heads down. It was nine forty-five, he was early, alone in Aurelio’s coat in the gaze of a thousand frosted windows over Lermontov Square, a towering ministry skyscraper lit with a galaxy of eyes. Lost in thought on the couch, he’d noticed an envelope under the door. It had his name, not Fin’s, pencilled on it, a note that read Meet me tonight at 10 pm. Banya opposing the metro at Lermontovskay. Look forward on Boyarski Prospekt. Your passport is with me. Your friend always, Aurelio.
Darcy braced himself and slipped between parked cars towards the scraped iron door. He knew a banya was a bathhouse. A ticket out or a ticket in deeper, he wasn’t yet sure, but Fin had left him little choice. He opened the door.
Inside, a taste of sulfur settled on his tongue as he gazed at an old Tartar woman in the vestibule, her hair pinned up like a second set of ears. There was no caviar or salmon, no crowd to surprise him in the blue mosaic entry hall, to tell him it was all an intricate joke, life hadn’t turned on him really. There was just a bluestone floor and steam wafting through walls where algaed tiles had fallen. No Aurelio.
The woman searched Darcy’s face as if she’d seen pretty boys here before and knew they were trouble. As he gave her a handful of kopeks she gestured warily to a stack of grey towels in a basket, to a locker room where the bench was covered in Astroturf. A row of pigeonholes and an elderly comrade wrestling with the elastic in his underpants. He cast covert glances as Darcy pulled off his boots and socks. The floor scunge was familiar from afternoons spent in public showers. He should have been comfortable here, but naked in the towel he felt a sickening uncertainty. Gingerly, he pushed open the steamroom door.
A young boy threw a bucket of water on a barrel of piled rocks and a wave of steam billowed. A plump-bellied Russian appeared through the vapours, his backside on the concrete; he was scrubbing the back of someone in front of him, leaning as if sanding furniture. For a moment Darcy thought it was too hot to stay; he shielded his eyes, beads of hot sweat coursed down his brow, salty and burning, scalding water dripped from the ceiling. There was still no Aurelio, no men on all fours being lashed with bunches of wet juniper leaves. Instead, apparatchiks with paunches lay about on raised concrete benches like beached seals. They noticed him but barely.
Two younger men watched him from the entrance to the showers, their heads shaven and rib cages showing, towels slightly low, seductive. A test or a trap, or maybe Aurelio was waiting in there. Darcy walked towards them, to where the air was suddenly cooler. Showers ran even though no one was under them. He went to the furthest and folded his towel on a ledge, let the cool water wash through his hair. One of the shaved boys came over and showered in the other corner, a sore on his shoulder
and a small tattoo on his arm. He furtively shielded his uncut erection but Darcy wasn’t triggered now, just light-headed from heat and steam, faint. He stared at the wall so he wouldn’t respond, ashamed he might find the hollow-eyed boy alluring, and aware that he was likely being filmed.
A harsh light filtered through a crack in the whitewashed dome, spreading against Darcy’s leg and onto the wood-slatted floor. He closed his eyes into the pressure, a momentary escape, as voices rose and feet appeared on the concrete. A militiaman stood under the arch in uniform and a gust of panic rose in Darcy as he realised he was being motioned for. If it was a trap he felt almost yielding. What grated inside him was the quality in Fin’s voice as she’d suggested Aurelio was his best bet, how she’d closed her bedroom door.
He slipped his towel about his waist as the soldier escorted him past the grey shapes through the steam and a row of old naked men along a wall, corralled by a guard with pockmarked cheeks and fogged-up glasses. Everyone’s hair looked greasy. They glanced at Darcy uneasily, unclear if he’d been singled out or privileged. The militiaman moved him on through to the changing room and pointed to Darcy’s pigeonhole; even that was no secret. All Darcy heard was the ceiling drip and his heart, palpable as a clock.
Wet in his Henley singlet, his jeans and multiple pairs of socks, pulling on Aurelio’s coat, Darcy stepped back out into the night, into a floodlit darkness that was blinding by comparison, his sight adjusting to a car parked opposite, the Lada. He saw Aurelio in it, lighting a small cigarillo. He beckoned Darcy over with a flick of his head.
Darcy pushed his wet hair from his face and breathed, tried to regain his composure, but he was nauseous from the sauna, thirsty and confused, asking himself if he should run this time. Aurelio leaned to open the passenger door and Darcy slid onto the vinyl seat, into the now familiar smell of spicy aftershave and Cuban cigarillos. He saw the pistol in Aurelio’s holster as Aurelio reached over Darcy to close the door, brushed his hand past Darcy, the way he’d done at the dacha.
You are looking like the wreck of the Hesperus, he said, slightly mocking, but he glared at Darcy, his expression urgent, not matching the tone of his voice. He passed Darcy a note and he read it: Careful what you say. Don’t talk about where we are being yesterday.
Are you well? asked Aurelio, then pressed a finger to his lips, pointed to a small furry button affixed to the side of the radio.
Darcy tried to understand; Aurelio being monitored now, a small transmitter like he’d seen in the jar in the apartment. Darcy stared at it, not knowing what to say. It’s just I’m still wet, he said.
No need for you being scared, said Aurelio. Darcy looked over at him, his brown fur hat, a fawn polo neck that looked like cashmere and a black sheepskin jacket. Clothes that weren’t from here. You’ll be drying as we are talking, he said. He pursed his brow intently, pushed his tongue tight between his teeth.
I don’t know what’s real here, said Darcy.
Aurelio picked a piece of tobacco from his tongue then brushed his mouth with the palm of his hand. There was a pleading in the way he stared at Darcy. What is real is you are in some trouble. Before I can give you your passport, we have to discuss, he said, almost in a monotone. I like you, Darcy Bright, and I can be looking after you. But you must help us. Aurelio looked away, his eye on the door of the banya. The situation is one as follows, he said. In lieu of the persecution there is a project for you. He spoke clearly, as if rehearsed for the transmitter. Darcy was transfixed by the small oval device. He wanted to ask who was listening, the general or someone else, but Aurelio was shaking his head. There is an influence person who is driving past the pleshka, he said.
Darcy had no idea what that was or if he’d meant persecution or prosecution. He searched Aurelio’s face and it still shook in a slight warning. I will be showing you the pleshka, he said, it is in a different quarter of Moscow. He cracked his window to allow the smoke to waft outside; it hung languid in the icy air then disappeared. If you can be having sex with this man, and it is recorded, Aurelio chose his words carefully, it will be very useful.
Darcy’s gut was acid—he was being pimped, for politics. An influence man. I’m not a hustler, he said. I’ve done things but not this. He didn’t care who was listening. The hollow sense that it had been part of the pretence all along—the shower at the dacha, the kiss on the risen clearing. Those cold soft lips, for this.
Aurelio met the disbelief in Darcy’s eyes. It is the way I can get the return of your passport, he said. Your only way out. He smiled but the torment was in his eyes also. Think of it as an adventure, he said.
The ache moved up to the pit of Darcy’s chest as Aurelio produced a narrow stack of dull black and white photos and showed them to Darcy. This is what we have, he said. A woman getting into a taxi, numbers in pen across the bottom. A fat man in a rumpled suit having abrupt-looking sex with a woman on a bare wooden floor. A tall transvestite at what might have been the pleshka, getting into the back of a burgundy Volga, the licence plate circled in red. Why are you showing me these? asked Darcy. Aurelio kept flipping—two older men in anoraks kissing among hydrangeas in a park. It must have been summer. This is what we do in druzhinniki, he said. We spy on the blues. Especially important ones.
Lastly, the shivering whippet tied to the bench in Mandelshtam Park, and, blurred among the snow-covered trees behind it, the slender man with the grey-flecked hair and specs. Darcy obscured by branches. The babushka worked for Aurelio, Darcy remembered, the one he’d taken a Polaroid of. She’d shot a picture of her own.
It’s him we want, Aurelio said. His name is Nikolai Chuprakov. We never seen him do a thing before, he said. All he does usually is walking the dog, and every Tuesday drives by the pleshka just looking. Aurelio quietly took the picture back from Darcy. He liked you, no?
Darcy stared at the glove box.
He’s Chernenko’s son-in-law, said Aurelio. He’s married to Chernenko’s daughter.
The iron door of the banya opened and the two narrow Russian boys came out in loose pants and torn T-shirts, their thin feet flat and bare on the icy pavement. One of them caught sight of Darcy in the Lada and his gaze tracked Darcy reproachfully. Darcy felt weirdly disloyal.
We call them opuscheny, said Aurelio. They are the degraded ones, just out from the gulag. Homosex prisoners. They get many times raped.
Darcy now realised he’d been summoned here to see them, to watch as they were herded out quietly by the damp plainclothesmen to the back of the white police van. They will go back now, they must eat all scraps from the floor. Many die, he said. He looked at Darcy with moist eyes now, apologetic. But I can look after you, he said, so this will not happen to you.
Darcy wished he hadn’t said it twice. He remembered his first morning here, the panic-struck man in the park, and then the fine-looking woman at the Bolshoi. He watched the opuscheny climb docilely into the back of the van, their shaved heads like owls in the window as they were driven away. What if I say no? asked Darcy.
I cannot help you then, he said. He reached from the wheel to the sleeve in the door and produced Darcy’s passport, blue with the Australian crest, emu and kangaroo. He flipped open the cover and showed Darcy it was actually his. Darcy pressed his fingers into his thighs, restraining himself from grabbing it. You cannot be having it now, said Aurelio, but if you are helpful, you will get this back. He stowed the passport in the door and started the Lada, slapped it into gear. I will now show you the pleshka, he said.
Aurelio quietly reached for the note and Darcy saw the word yesterday. As Aurelio folded it away, Darcy felt crumpled; even his tailer was under surveillance. Aurelio who hadn’t seemed worried at all now drove and smoked in what appeared like a terrified silence. Perhaps they’d been seen at the dacha. The retarded girl sending morse code, banging her wooden spoon on the eating tray, cameras in the bathroom walls.
They didn’t follow the tracks the police van stamped in the slush but drove off in another direction. Dar
cy wondered who would be listening, in a room in a faceless building, a group of white-haired men. He looked at Aurelio as the Lada rattled through the perpetual sulk of the suburbs. You will help make change here, said Aurelio.
They proceeded in silence, overtook a heavy snowplough, and turned down a narrower road, further from the river, in a part of the city Darcy had not seen. The night sky lay low as a trough, wanting to snow. Mostly factories, an industrial area, abandoned buildings, some with broken windows, but no people visible. He could hurl himself from the car but he wouldn’t get far in the dark.
Where are you taking me? he asked.
I want to familiar your eyes, he said. So you can prepare. Aurelio pulled over opposite a narrow, dimly lit park, beside an unused railway line, reversed into a place where they were hidden among conifers. He turned the ignition off and pointed at three women waiting under a streetlight in the distance; they leaned on a low wooden fence under the cover of a tin bus shelter.
Travesties, said Aurelio.
Transvestites, Darcy corrected him.
A car went by, driven by a man alone, slowing down.
The same men are passing, explained Aurelio, but rarely do they make a stop.
The three figures smoked cigarettes in a snowy drizzle, one drank from a hipflask; they didn’t acknowledge the Lada, just moved about to stay warm, hugging themselves in their coats. They work for us, said Aurelio. He raised his eyebrows as if to say that’s how it is—the government uses them as lures and you will now work for the government too.
A black Chaika with embassy plates but no flag on the hood pulled over. It had tinted windows. The three hookers came down and leaned against it, then the tallest one was getting in. Finnish, said Aurelio. He could tell by the licence plate. They have a diplomat immunity, he said.
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