Stray Dog Winter

by David Francis

  Surreptitiously, he glanced about under the console for a furry transmitter but saw none, just an apple core under his feet. He wondered if only Aurelio was under suspicion.

  I don’t know your real name, he said. I call you Svetlana.

  Then call me Svet, she said, as in no svet. She smiled and it made her look younger, the hints of cheek rouge, her red and white dotted scarf. He wanted to beg her to help him but all he asked was why she had this job.

  Better than work each day in a factory. She smiled with a certain camaraderie.

  As they crossed the river, he cracked the window to allow icy air off the water. I’m a painter, he said.

  Svetlana nodded. You will not be painting today.

  As they turned west on Zubovsky Bulvar, nearby the Chayka swimming pool, he felt the can-opener and notes pushed against his ankle. If I paid enough roubles and American dollars could you get me to Finland?

  Svetlana chortled softly. I cannot get me to Finland, not even myself. She pushed her scarf back higher up on her hair. And it would not please your friend Aurelio.

  Darcy thought of Aurelio last night, his slightly hunted look. Is he okay? asked Darcy.

  Svetlana looked over. You miss him? she asked.

  Darcy massaged his elbows with his gloves as if it might keep him together. Is he not your friend too? he asked.

  Svetlana took another pull from her cigarette and shrugged. Darcy imagined being more like that, free of people, desires, Aurelio, Fin. Was he really with the Bolshoi? he asked.

  With Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Svetlana said. Her fingers enfolded the steering wheel but her knuckles weren’t tight like Aurelio’s last night. Then he was with the Bolshoi for a short piece, she said. She seemed neither impressed nor judgmental. She turned from the ring road down smaller streets until Darcy lost his feel for where the river was. He concentrated on the landmarks; a modern statue, Pushkin maybe, stood on the edge of a fenced wooded park.

  Is he Castro’s love child? he asked.

  They stopped at a light and Svetlana looked at him, confused, perhaps unsure what a love child was. These are not questions for you, she said. She stubbed the remains of her cigarette on the dash and pushed the butt into the ashtray. Darcy imagined unleashing the opener from his sock and brandishing it, Svetlana just laughing. A bullet in his arm from a pistol produced from the folds of her coat.

  She coughed a sort of knowing smoker’s laugh. In a way you are brave, she said, and he wondered if fear and the cold had somehow numbed him. And in a way you are foolish.

  What should I do? he asked.

  The cigarette poised in her lips, Svetlana reached and pulled a piece of paper from the glove box. Memorise yourself this, she said. She’d taken his question more literally than he’d meant it. A licence plate number. If he were a local he’d have deduced specifics from it—the year of registration, the region the car had come from. He committed the first three digits to memory: Xu3. He didn’t tell her he was a transposer of numbers, dysnumeric Fin called him.

  His car is black, Svetlana said. A Borgward. It is Swedish.

  She motioned for Darcy to take a cigarette, nodding at the pack on the dash. A gesture of familiarity, or perhaps granting a last wish. He took a first drag, the smoke warm and ghostly in his throat. What if he doesn’t like me? he asked.

  He like you before.

  He ran away, said Darcy. He remembered the man’s afflicted expression.

  They crossed a canal where a rowing eight leaned forward and back, oaring a skiff that somehow plied over the top of the frozen water, on tracks. A radio tower loomed up above and then they turned and drove down the road to the pleshka. Everything similar to last night yet not quite mirrored in daylight, except for the travesties at the bus shelter, one outside, draped against the chain-link fence, a black trilby hat and baggy trousers despite the cold, the other two perched on the wooden railing, buried in coats.

  Svetlana reversed the car into the lane where Aurelio had parked, where passers-by couldn’t see. You be the hitchhiker on the corner. She pointed. He usually passes by soon.

  Darcy felt again the insects inside him, buzzing up from their slumber. Does he speak English?

  He is studied, she said, you will talk to him. She adjusted the sunglasses on top of her scarf. Time that you go now. She retrieved the piece of paper from Darcy’s fingers in exchange for a small device. The face of a compass, no larger than his watch. You press this. She pointed her pink-coated fingernail to a tiny red button. They want all sound and talking.

  Darcy carefully pressed the button.

  Once to start it and once to stop, she said.

  The recorder seemed stylish for such a primitive country. He put it in his pocket as if it might explode. Stay hopeful, he told himself, but he felt as if he was heading to war without a weapon.

  They will be watching you, Svetlana said. She tightened her lips in sympathy or pity, or just as a warning. Aurelio says you must please be careful.

  Darcy dipped his head to get out into the cold, unsure how much Aurelio cared. He turned. Are we doing this for Gorbachev?

  Svetlana regarded him curiously. Gorbachev who? she asked, and smiled.

  The transvestites stared, silent and knowing, as the cold wind welled in Darcy’s eyes. He was here to ensnare who they couldn’t. He thrust his hands in his pockets as he turned the bend and stood where he was supposed to, waiting; the ache in his glands, a chill already in his feet. He cursed himself, then Fin and Aurelio, all that had led him here. He checked about himself for reference points: a disused railway line, an old apple orchard, a high-tensile perimeter, a prison perhaps. He felt the small recorder in his pocket, breathed and felt the iced air fill him; he was the perpetrator this time, a feeling that lay heavily, like an anger turning sour. He wanted to vomit in the snow.

  He let out his breath at the sound of a car. The same as Svetlana’s but a middle-aged woman who passed, ignored him standing there. Another and then a black car approaching, sloped like an old Vanguard, a driver alone. The licence plate beginning Xu3. Darcy pushed his fringe up under his beanie thinking he should hold out his cold, gloved hand, extend a thumb for a ride, but his hand stayed somewhere over his mouth. He just stood there.

  Through the curve of the driver’s side window he could make out the narrow face and horn-rimmed specs. It was him, slowing, then rolling to a halt up ahead in the slush. Darcy turned but his feet seemed frozen; the back window of the car, oval and small, mirrored the dull white sky. There was a pulse in Darcy’s neck as he tried again to imagine himself on a Lufthansa jet on a runway. Cautiously he found himself drawing alongside the vehicle, a panicked stare reflected in the side mirror. Darcy wondered if it was his own but then he stood at a crack in the window. The face almost ferocious, as if Darcy was an apparition.

  What are you doing here? the man asked in a clipped British English. Gingerly reaching behind him, he unlatched the rear door. Get in and keep low.

  Darcy’s first instinct was to shake his head no, but there was something like hope in the son-in-law’s watchful eyes, a glimmer of understanding. Darcy climbed inside, lying down on a cracked leather seat, the warm car about him, the smell of dog and pipe tobacco. The son-in-law drove off. The same slender whippet laid his chin on the console between the bucketed seats, a stark recognition in everyone’s eyes.

  The son-in-law drank from a silver hipflask. Are you American? he asked, a soft vibration in his voice.

  Darcy coughed softly. Australian, he said, knowing it was little consolation. The son-in-law took another swig, looking at Darcy in the rear-view mirror as if the road ahead was incidental. Who sent you? he asked.

  Darcy felt again for the tape recorder, pocketed against his chest. He’d planned on saying the pleshka was in the Spartacus Guide under cruising in the outskirts. Can I sit up? he asked instead.

  Nyet, said the son-in-law, not yet.

  Darcy raised himself on his elbow. The dog was monitoring him, the son-in-law gaug
ed the risk in the mirror, his wavy salt-and-pepper hair above the seat back. The ride was heavy and smooth and the engine rumbled dimly. A bundle of maps in the seat pocket facing him, an empty ashtray.

  Can I see your passport? the son-in-law asked.

  I don’t have it with me, said Darcy.

  The son-in-law slowed suspiciously at a roundabout and Darcy quietly switched on the tape in his pocket. You have so many maps, he said, a bleak attempt at conversation. Are you travelling a lot?

  The son-in-law turned and glanced down. What you are doing in Moscow? he asked.

  I’m an artist, said Darcy, but Svetlana was right, he didn’t feel like an artist today. There was also doubt in the son-in-law’s greying eyebrows, the way they strained into an arch of fear.

  A fellowship to paint industrial landscapes, Darcy added. He peeked above the level of the window. Low undulating country dotted with wooden houses, patches of skeletal deciduous trees; the industrial landscapes were fading away. What about you? he asked. His voice sounded choked with weeds.

  I am teaching at the university, said the son-in-law, staring out, his pipe tight between his teeth. The clouds were so low you could stand on the car and touch them. Distant people in the wintry fields, a cart pulled by a pair of Clydesdales through the snow. Soviets are now the most literate people in history, the son-in-law added almost proudly. He sucked at the embers of his tobacco, still pensive and wary behind his glasses. They sent you, didn’t they? he said.

  Darcy smelled the worn leather seats, heard the drum of the tyres on the bitumen, the fields an eiderdown of snow pocked by trees, flat and unprotected. No evidence of a car behind them. No, he said, I found it in the Spartacus Guide under cruising in the outskirts.

  The car suddenly turned down a narrow side road and rolled to a halt beside a low drainage channel. The son-in-law left the engine running for the heat, ordered the whippet to the floor so he could sit on the passenger side himself. Breathing uneasily, the son-in-law ordered Darcy to take off his coat, then gestured with the stem of his pipe for him to climb forward between the seats.

  Darcy paused, felt the can-opener against his ankle as he began to struggle through, over the console. He slipped behind the steering wheel as the son-in-law, his free hand shaky, reached back for Darcy’s overcoat. Russian chewing gum fell from the pocket, a few roubles in an elastic band in the son-in-law’s fingers.

  They pay you? he asked, searching Darcy’s face.

  Darcy surged with misgivings, the insects again and the pangs in his underarms. Against his every instinct he mustered a gentle look, not of pleading but understanding. No, he said.

  The son-in-law kept watch in the rear-view mirror, placed a narrow hand on Darcy, nodding almost imperceptibly. Can you take your trousers down? he asked. Everything risked for this.

  As Darcy slipped from his Levis, he felt a rent inside himself in a way he hadn’t foreseen, his jeans and thermal long johns slid around his feet, the can-opener pressed against his ankle, uselessly concealed in his socks. He looked away. In the distance farmers were high up on round bales of hay that had been covered in canvas. He lifted the bottom of his thermal undershirt to reveal the contour in his underwear and the son-in-law ran his fingers over it. Why are you doing this? asked the son-in-law.

  Darcy couldn’t say anything real without tears. Why are you? he asked.

  I look for love, he said, removing his horn-rimmed glasses, then as the son-in-law lowered his face and kissed Darcy there, Darcy wondered how it could have been different, the way he romanticised things, this accidental collision with history. He gazed out in disbelief as a lorry approached with a hayrick, silent in the wind. A truck from the Second World War, the faint whine of its engine and a farmer peering through the frosted window.

  Not in front of the peasants, said Darcy, and the son-in-law rose abruptly and said something in Russian. He grabbed his pipe stem and held it to Darcy’s ribs. Drive, he said, please, motioning at the wheel. Darcy turned the ignition but the engine was already on. He lurched the Borgward into gear and forward against the handbrake, down the gravel lane. The pipe stem relaxed against him as the lorry diminished in the mirrors and they came to a T, a wide paved road. Darcy slowed to a squeaking halt. I haven’t driven in my underpants since I was a child, he said, but the son-in-law frowned, distracted by two babushkas leaning on a gate, their heads side by side like two woolly birds. He gestured to the left but before Darcy could turn a semitrailer with a load of concrete pylons passed close and the Borgward was sucked momentarily into a gap in the wind and then cast back out. He could have driven out in front of it, but he knew he wasn’t brave enough for that kind of annihilation. Instead, he drove on in his Fruit of the Looms and the son-in-law stroked him gently. The whippet, sylph-like, turned away as if embarrassed, but there was no sign of anyone following.

  Can we drive to Finland? asked Darcy.

  The son-in-law reached for his flask and then for the radio knob, dialed through the crackling chan nels, speeches and oompah marches. He quietly turned it off. When you come to a red grain silo turn left, he said.

  Are you going to kill me? asked Darcy. Another truck passed and Darcy looked back in the rear-view mirror; still nothing.

  Is that what you want?

  Darcy saw the red silo and made the turn without indication, crept the Borgward through the icy puddles. No, he said. I want to get home to Australia.

  The driveway was framed by an avenue of poplars bare as twig brooms in the snow, and beyond, a small evergreen forest. Why are we here? asked Darcy. He didn’t see the house at first, surrounded by conifers, a place you might drive by and wonder who lived among the palisade of trees. Two storeys of black-stained wood, light blue shutters, some of them hanging on by a hinge.

  I grew up here, in this house, said the son-in-law.

  It was old but more impressive than the general’s dacha. Darcy rolled to a stop in front of a chained and padlocked gate. The garden was overgrown, long winter grasses with rounded bellies of snow. Cumquat trees in collapsing whisky barrels and dormer windows extending from upstairs like afterthoughts. There was no sign of recent life.

  The farmers used the banisters for firewood, said the son-in-law. There was once a circular staircase. He carefully took a tartan biscuit tin from under the seat. A crest on the lid, Product of Aberdeen, Scotland. He selected a shortbread for himself, gave one to the dog, and then one to Darcy. Pushkin visited here, he said without pretence, unlike the way Aurelio had tried to impress by mentioning Nabokov. The son-in-law seemed more composed out here. The only noise was the hum of trucks from the highway and the sound of them eating. Mid-afternoon and already the daylight was fading.

  We had horses, the son-in-law said.

  Darcy’s feet were cold from the steel pedals, despite the air belching from under the dash. He pulled his knees up and removed his boots and rubbed his toes. I will warm them, the son-in-law said kindly.

  Darcy pulled his thick double-layered socks free, the can-opener wrapped in notes, still concealed in their folds, now under the seat. He rested his back against the wood-panelled door and placed his feet in the son-in-law’s lap. Sucking quietly on his pipe as the afternoon darkness descended, the son-in-law rubbed them. Darcy thought of what he’d been recording. A conversation of two men getting to know each other. It made him feel sick to his stomach.

  The son-in-law put down his pipe and blew smoke over Darcy’s pale toes as if lighting embers, then softly kissed them. The son-in-law nodded to himself, clasped Darcy’s soles, massaging them. He looked up at Darcy with tears in his eyes.

  Does your wife know? asked Darcy.

  The son-in-law shook his head slightly and Darcy masturbated himself dutifully, sadly, as the dim light gloved the house. The son-in-law just watched, held Darcy’s feet and followed the movement of Darcy’s stroke with his watery eyes, then a sudden flash appeared from among the trees. A camera flash.

  The son-in-law pushed Darcy’s feet from h
is lap, the whippet barked against the passenger door. The window rolled down, the son-in-law squinting out into nothing but shadows in the undergrowth. They mock me in my misery, the son-in-law whispered as if he’d known the moment would come. He let the dog out to chase through the trees. You knew, he said to Darcy, but Darcy was shaking his head as they heard the dog yelp. The son-in-law called it by a name that sounded like Boyar, then he stared at Darcy. You must go now, he said emphatically. The dog re-emerged from the trees and jumped back in, whined unnaturally as the son-in-law bent down and touched its rib cage. Go, he said without looking at Darcy.

  Darcy was wrestling back into his jeans and boots, finding his way into the arms of Aurelio’s coat. The son-in-law glowered out into the trees as if Darcy was already gone. Darcy was drawn to apologise, explain, but instead he found himself fumbling away through the grey towards the highway, the wind’s fierce chill seeping back through him. He’d left his socks, Fin’s socks, all of his money, under the seat. Then he heard the muted sound of choral music and stopped. As he turned, the shape of the whippet appeared from the early darkness. Shoo, said Darcy, shoo, but it wouldn’t go back, it jumped up on Darcy lightly, craned its neck like a gargoyle, whining, its fine coat moist in the glacial air. Reluctantly, Darcy picked it up and folded it in his arms and picked his way back, seeking the edge of the gravel track, so dark now it was hard to make out the hump of the Borgward. The music was loud and the car door was open, the son-in-law slouched in the passenger side, his head collapsed as if sleeping. Your dog, whispered Darcy. The dog jumped in and cringed in the corner, its ears pinned back. The son-in-law was motionless. Darcy turned on the interior light. The pipe on the biscuit tin, blood from the son-in-law’s chest flooding the front of his sweater from under his jacket, pooling on the seat beside him. A gun with a silencer lay on the floor. Nikolai, said Darcy.

  Then Darcy saw a shape coming towards them through the trees and he found himself running blindly to the road as if he knew it by feel, leaning into the blackness, the mud crisp beneath him. Breathless, his cheeks damp with sweat, he turned back just once to see a flash of light behind him, then another, someone taking different photos—the insides of the Borgward, the son-in-law’s blood congealing on the seat. A straggled formation of fighter planes formed high shadows overhead.