Stray Dog Winter

by David Francis

  On the main road, Darcy put his thumb out into the beams of an approaching semitrailer but the driver didn’t see him. Darcy watched the red tail-lights recede until there was nothing but silence and dark. The corrupt individual travels alone, the words recalled from somewhere, but the dog was back by his side. Darcy kneeled and held its face, the whippet shaking, the smell of the son-in-law’s blood on its breath. The lights of another truck like distant pinpoints, dividing the night as they got closer, then flooding the frozen asphalt to reveal Aurelio’s small grey Lada on the roadside not a hundred yards up. Darcy stayed crouched with the dog in the shadows to keep out of sight as the lorry passed with the lengths of the shadows and spaces, then there was only the sound of Darcy’s breath, the noiseless road, the dog. For a moment Darcy imagined driving the son-in-law and the Borgward back to the city and smashing through the embassy gates. He picked up the dog and its body folded up as he buttoned it inside his coat and waded out through the soundless night, stumbling up the road to the Lada. The dog’s heartbeat against him.

  The car was unlocked but no sign of Aurelio, no keys in the ignition. The dog let out a whimpering bark and Darcy let it down and it slid inside the car. Darcy reached into the snow at the road’s edge, rubbed his hands then pressed his icy fingers to his eyes. Stains on his cheeks from where the dog had been licking, the son-in-law’s blood on his hands for a passport. Aurelio out there taking photos.

  He got in and the whippet curled up at his feet. Darcy hugged himself, stunned in the thick-shadowed night. Fear like throbs of bile. Aurelio climbing through the roadside fence now, scraping his boots on the wire. Another semitrailer shunting past, bathing them in light. Aurelio seemed unlike himself, dishevelled, night-vision glasses around his neck, his hair all tangled when he took off his hat.

  He is dead, he said.

  Darcy nodded.

  Aurelio nodded too, but for a long time, then turned the key in the ignition. Did you touch the gun? he asked.

  Darcy shook his head and leaned forward awkwardly, the hem of his coat about the dog, turned on the heater. He was a nice man, he said. The way he spoke so matter-of-factly made him realise he was in shock. His hands against the vent in the hope of heat, staring.

  Aurelio suddenly slammed the car into gear then reached down and ripped the oval transmitter from beneath the dash, tossed it out into the dark like a stone. I will say you did that, he said.

  The dog shifted in the blackness at Darcy’s feet, but Aurelio didn’t notice. Darcy said nothing, his fingers thawing, Aurelio drove. They monitoring me, he said. They threaten me. Article 121. Criminal acts. They know about us. He steered out onto the bitumen and drove too fast for the ice on the road.

  Who is they? asked Darcy.

  My father, he said. They is my father. The general. He looked over at Darcy but Darcy had nothing to say, one hand on the dog’s head, but he heard the words like a rock in his gut. The dacha, the room, the retarded girl was his sister. The wedding. It all made sense and yet it seemed so unlikely. Can we just go away somewhere? he asked. You must know a safe place.

  We are not in Sweden, said Aurelio. We are not in that kind of country. He drove back towards the city. You do not know my father, he said. The last place we went we are followed.

  They both watched the white lines disappearing beneath them, swallowed under the car like endless cigarettes. Where are your gloves? asked Aurelio.

  Darcy was confused, he didn’t know about the gloves, left with his socks and the can-opener, his money. I took them off to drive, he said, but it made no sense. He’d taken them off to masturbate.

  You were driving?

  He wanted me to, said Darcy. He took me to another place first, out among farms, but a lorry went by us. Aurelio passed a dilapidated bus that seemed lodged in the snow.

  Where’s the recorder? he asked.

  Darcy fished out the tiny tape machine from his damp denim jacket, handed it over. As Aurelio steered he tried to turn it on. Darcy’s muffled voice: You have so many maps, then something inaudible, then nothing. Aurelio regarded him, bewildered, thumped the steering wheel, then seemed to hold himself in, shaking his head at everything gone sideways.

  He was a teacher, said Darcy, at the university.

  Aurelio looked over as if knowing Darcy wasn’t suited for this. Darcy felt the dog nuzzling his feet, the memory of the son-in-law blowing warmth on his toes. He was just lonely, said Darcy, that’s all. He shouldn’t have lived in this country.

  Aurelio rubbed his eyes then looked at Darcy, his brown eyes despondent. Do you think he had a choice? asked Aurelio.

  Darcy stared out into the Soviet night. Not now, he said.

  None of us has choices now. Aurelio lit a papirosa and sucked on it tightly as they drove back towards the city in silence. The lit windows of villages then the relentless concrete apartment blocks, lapping the outskirts like towering tombstones, the dog a curled-up creature, still unannounced at Darcy’s feet. Images of the slumped body, the pistol on the biscuit tin. Darcy felt bloodless himself, his breaths came to him irregular and shallow, the consequences passed like the car lights. What about my fingerprints in the car? he asked. He didn’t admit to the socks, his money.

  At first Aurelio didn’t reply, walled in by the night and a canopy of sullenness. He lit a second cigarette. Suicide, he said, a scrape in his voice. They can process as suicide.

  Who is they this time? asked Darcy. Aren’t you the militia?

  We are independent, said Aurelio.

  Are we?

  Aurelio pulled up outside Fin’s apartment on Kazakov, his face half-lit from a nearby street lamp, his aspect so tired he’d barely be noticed in a room. I have to go, he said.

  Darcy felt another movement at his feet and, as if by invitation, the dog’s slender head appeared, timid and anxious, at the gearstick. Aurelio shouted a Spanish oath as the dog moved up onto Darcy’s lap, Aurelio reeling with fright. What are you doing with this?

  Darcy pulled his coat back around the whippet’s tapered body, holding it like a captive bird against him. The dog that had chased Aurelio into the dark and torn back to the Borgward whimpering. He belongs to Chernenko’s daughter, said Darcy, as if something had to be salvaged.

  The dog eyed Aurelio carefully and Aurelio looked at it in disbelief. You must keep this hidden, he said. Stay in that apartment and wait.

  What about my passport? asked Darcy.

  I have only a photo of you in Chuprakov’s car. And photo of him dead. Same car, but later. His English was deteriorating. You are my friend, but we have no choices. You must do what I say. Trust me, he said. Fin’s words when she’d phoned St Kilda the first time, to make her invitation.

  Aurelio held out a hand to touch Darcy’s cheek but the dog emitted a long low growl. I did trust you. A pleading shrouded Darcy’s voice. He held the whippet to him as if it were a weapon of his own.

  It is my job, said Aurelio. They punish me too.

  But Darcy had slid beyond any sense of jobs and consequences, he felt faint now, his mind askew as he closed the car door behind him, looked back through the misted window. Aurelio’s big haunted eyes, searching to be understood, and tears came to Darcy’s that turned to frost on his lashes. He let the whippet down in the snow and it stood there, silvery, like a stolen ornament, suddenly unafraid.

  Ulitsa Kazakov, Friday evening

  The donkey drawing looked out from the easel, called Darcy back. It was too late to say sorry or return to a car that was gone.

  Fin yelled out from her bedroom. Darcy felt too cold and stupefied to answer but the timorous whippet pricked its ears. The usual cabbage steam in the corridor had been overtaken by something in her room, a smell of suet. The whippet was sniffing under the door.

  Darcy pulled his freezing feet from sodden boots, shaky, his bridges ached, toes caressed by dead hands, Aurelio gone. Shutting the whippet out behind him, he guardedly opened Fin’s bedroom door. She stood alone in her Joan Armatrading T-shir
t, the portable hotplate on the ironing board, tins of lard. She was pouring from a pot into a mould but she stopped, rested her eyes on Darcy, shocked. What happened, little brother?

  He glimpsed himself in her mirror, faint mud smeared around his eyes, cheeks daubed with the dog’s saliva.

  It didn’t go well, he said, brushed past her into the bathroom and turned on the shower, hoping that water might scald him of feeling, rid him of the ache in his chest and the pain in his feet. As he stripped, Fin came in behind him and together they regarded the mud and slush on his jeans, the telltale absence of socks. Did you have sex with him under a bridge? she asked.

  Not exactly. He stepped under the water, so hot it felt cold, pouring into his upturned mouth. Fin waited for details, a streak of lard in her umbered hair, and Darcy felt her watching him through the plastic curtain, then he noticed the shape of the dog behind her; baleful and silent, it stood on the threshold. It must have nudged the bedroom door and now its front legs lifted lightly onto the lavatory seat, it dipped into the bowl, long-necked as an ibis drinking. Fin shrieked and jumped aside. He’s mine, said Darcy, stepping from the shower.

  Fin turned on the taps in the sink to add to the noise so they could talk. She placed a towel around Darcy’s shoulders.

  Nikolai Chuprakov shot himself, he said. This is his dog.

  Fin cocked her head. The pink rims of her eyes seemed to deepen to red as she opened them wide. Chuprakov is dead? she whispered.

  In his car on the farm where he grew up, he said. Speaking the words and seeing Fin’s shock seemed to tranquillise Darcy into a false, heightened calm as the shower cascaded behind him and the truth took hold in the green of Fin’s eyes.

  And you have his dog, she said.

  I couldn’t just leave it. Darcy didn’t tell her he’d looked after it briefly once before. As he dried himself, Fin kneeled for the curious dog, stroked its spine. It belongs to the next General Secretary’s daughter, she said.

  Darcy thought of the woman in the indigo suit at the Bolshoi, up in the balcony. The Lady and the Dog, he said.

  Jesus.

  Darcy put on Fin’s sheepskin slippers, tried to keep his thoughts from careening.

  Fin pushed her sallow red-tipped fingers through her hair. How did you get back here? she asked.

  Aurelio, he said. He took a photo of me in the car with Chuprakov, then photos of him dead. Darcy now felt a deliberate tone in his voice that was tinged with accusation, implicating Fin. He wanted to blame her.

  What are you supposed to do now? she asked.

  He told me to wait for him here, said Darcy, unless you have a better idea.

  Fin’s face seemed even paler against her hair and flat brown lipstick. Did you get your passport? she asked.

  Darcy stared at his garments curled up on the floor; jeans and sweatshirt and woollen jumper. I just saw a man bleeding to death, he said. He picked up his clothes and stuffed them into the shower, let the water wash away evidence. The dog looked up at him, showing the self- conscious whites of its eyes.

  Fin dipped a Q-tip in dark make-up. Aurelio’s last name is Sarfin, she said. He’s that general’s son.

  Darcy stood dumbstruck. Who told you that?

  Jobik found a source, she said. She ran the Q-tip over her eyebrows. General Sarfin was stationed in Cuba during the Missile Crisis, she said, leaned and petted the anxious dog.

  Darcy dried his hair, felt himself being drawn back into her world. He thought of Aurelio’s face through the frost-rimed window of the Lada—right country, wrong general, driving his father’s car, carte blanche at the dacha, the sister with the spoon.

  His mother still lives in Havana, said Fin. Darcy looked over at his own sister crouched in the steaming bathroom, regarding him in bewilderment as he took his Longines watch from the basin and put it on.

  Get dressed and come with me, she said. Maybe Jobik will help you this time.

  Darcy turned off the taps. It’s not safe for me to leave now, he said, unless you can get me into an embassy.

  I can’t go to the embassies, she said.

  The ache twinged in Darcy’s underarms. Why’s that?

  I just can’t right now. She went back into the other room. I’ll wait here with you, she said, and they worked in silence, carving dried casts with what looked like dental instruments, tiny picks and cutters. The room smelled like an abattoir. The ancillary piece Fin promised the curator, a sculpture of the same museum. Art from dried lard, the innards of a pig—Darcy had once told her it hardened like marble. She remembered everything; what he remembered was the son-in-law, his poet’s eyes and owlish glasses, his old-fashioned English, his torturedness.

  Fin turned on the radio, her hands caked, her neck streaked where she’d wiped it. Dirges for Andropov played still. She’d poured hot lard into Russian Tupperware the shapes of horses’ hooves, hardening. He took the teardrop painting knife he’d used to shape wax and chose a dry hoof-shaped cast, began to carve small columns, indents for windows, the Atomic Energy Pavilion. All he could do was look at what was right before him, no sense of the future, he’d flapped his wings in Prague and led himself to this. His breath now warm inside him, butcher’s grass resting on top of the trestle table, the lake in the middle cast with blue-painted lard, tacky as folk art. He watched her pin the foldout postcards on the wall for shapes and reference. She looked over. I’ve made mistakes too, she said.

  He moulded a tray for the People’s Friendship Fountain. Was wanting to sleep with me one of them?

  At least I’ve always known how to say no, she said.

  To Jobik? he asked, but didn’t look up for an answer. Instead he glanced about anxiously—the ironing board in here now, the dog by the bed on the sheepskin rug. The son-in-law who wouldn’t be teaching, not quoting from Turgenev and Dostoyevsky; he’d not told Darcy what he taught, but Darcy imagined it had been literature. He also imagined the scene of the suicide, if it was still unattended, what Aurelio would be telling his father now. The way the general had stared straight at him then right through him: the new recruit, the one in the photo, was now in the fold. Aurelio doing his job.

  Dust rested in the air and on the blades of Fin’s scissors. The faded places on the wall where her peasant dresses had hung. She cut squares from a roll of chalky plaster bandage and for a time all Darcy heard were the subtle sounds of their instruments.

  We could never have been everything to each other, said Fin. She dunked plaster in a plastic bowl of water on the ironing table. But you being here, I feel kind of broken in two, she said.

  That’s how I’ve always felt, said Darcy. Since I was a kid. The parts in him that lived in their separate compartments: sex, love and affection, trust. In Aurelio he’d sensed them just barely coalescing. He reached for her fine-toothed pick and tucked foil into the crevices of his building, making the lard look gilded, his fingers tipped with bronze. He looked over at Fin with nothing to lose. When I was nine, there was a Mormon missionary, he said, down in the gully.

  Fin didn’t look up at him.

  He laid me out in the grass on my shirt and rubbed himself off on me. I felt like it was my fault. I followed him down the drive in the car.

  The gully where you took me? she asked. She cautiously layered plaster on two toilet rolls taped end to end, moulding the swoop of the obelisk. She focused thoughtfully on her work. Do you think that’s why you’re like you are?

  Darcy uncupped a new mould. I recreate it, he said, the intensity, the adrenaline rush, public places. He knew it needn’t define him. But it had.

  She took her blade and cut the edge of a section of silver foil. Did anyone know?

  My mother guessed, he said, but she was too drunk to know what to do except taunt me.

  Fin turned on her hairdryer, melted the foil on the blood-veined lard, gilding it with heat. Then she stopped. You don’t think that made you gay?

  Darcy shook his head. I’ve never wanted to be with a woman, he said, other than you.
>
  She turned the hairdryer back on. The way the heated foil hugged the lard had the dulled effect of pewter. He could read her mind: what sort of family is this? Again she flipped the dryer off. I’m sorry, she said.

  For what? asked Darcy.

  The other night, she said, and back then.

  You couldn’t help back then, he said. He thought of their American mothers, Fin on the drive in Mount Eliza, just left there, the same drive Darcy rolled down in the Austin and where that had taken him.

  I’m sorry I disappeared, she said.

  Darcy nodded to himself and looked at her make-up, the colour in her transparent brows, the line carefully traced around her lips. The prospect of being alone here lay about him like a prison, the way she’d brought him here. He reached for some of her wet plaster bandage, aware of the subtle shake in his fingers, laid the plaster to soften the edge of her man-made lake, to firm up where her building met the butcher’s grass. She placed her implements on the trestle and folded a sheet of bronze-leaf foil then went into the bathroom.

  Darcy watched her cigarette burning low in a saucer. The dog walked over and licked from a bucket of lard, and Darcy closed his eyes to the sounds of her getting ready, the running of the tap, the click of her make-up case, her mirror check. He fashioned a small wax dog and perched it on the nose cone of the obelisk, and painting it red he found himself crying. The whippet watched him from the sheepskin. Fugitive and guardian.

  Fin appeared in her skinny jeans and a snug-fitting cardigan, her hair a new brunette like a Russian Sloane Ranger; all she needed was a string of pearls. Are you sure you don’t want to come with me? she asked. She pressed her lips and spread her gloss evenly.

  Darcy knew she was going to Jobik. I’ll wait here, he said, for Aurelio. He looked at the half-finished sculptures, some mottled cream, others bronzed or silver. I’ll finish this. He spoke uncertainly, not quite avoiding the break in his voice.