The bulb came back on. A creak at the door and the wrenching of locks. A baba shuffled into the angle of light. Darcy squinted at her; the same old woman from the interview room, in her pale blue coat with her bucket, her unfeeling eyes. She placed the bucket on the chair with a sliver of white soap and the ripped end of a towel.
The bucket like an altar and the cement like ice beneath his knees, Darcy dabbed his bruised cheek with tepid water, pushed his wet hair back over his scalp, his head still unshaven, no grey prison pyjamas. He thought again of his mother. Would it be Sunday there or still Saturday? Who would she tell?
The baba placed a beaker of watery porridge and a metal cup of tea on the floor then left. Darcy wolfed the porridge and tea without tasting, then promptly threw half of it up on the cement, a whirring in his head. There was a guard observing through the half-open door, a narrow gaze, a head too small for the brim of his cap, a sparrow’s mouth. A handgun in its holster and a truncheon he knocked against the door. If it was morning already, Darcy knew he’d lost all track of time. He wiped his lips, unsure he’d be able to stand.
The guard viewed Darcy with a blankness he found unnerving as they waited behind tall iron gates. Under a yellow light a distant prisoner was pushed into an empty cell and as the light went off, Darcy realised it meant they could pass. No display of the cadaverous boy they’d shown him in the hall, no tattooed opuscheny this time. They entered an open elevator cage that ratcheted up. The muted stench of the drains. Darcy stared down at the guard’s black boots and focused on breathing, keeping the vestiges of oatmeal down. He scuffed along a corridor, a guard now in front and one behind, and thought of Aurelio’s last words. Your face it is sore but it is nothing. Maybe my father likes you.
In the interview room, the general was already seated, his silver lunch box beside him, an astrakhan coat draped over the back of his chair, a picture of Lenin now hung directly behind him. The general stared up at Darcy from the folder of photos, but didn’t say anything, softly tapped his glasses on the table and nodded for Darcy to sit in the same wooden chair as before. Just a creepy, knowing smile. Darcy looked over to where the dog had been. The cage was gone.
The general rose slightly but didn’t get up as a man in a pair of rimless specs appeared, a brown felt fez with a small tassel. He had a pursed mouth and crow-black eyes, and a cold sweat rose on Darcy’s back as the man removed his fez and placed it fussily on the table, smoothed his neatly parted toupee. He acknowledged the general but didn’t shake his hand as he sat beside him, assessed Darcy. I am with Turkish intelligence, he said.
Say Dobry den to Consul Tugrul, said the general.
Darcy felt like a sheep emerged from a river. He avoided the perfect hairline, the moustache trimmed close along the thin upper lip. He looked instead at Lenin.
This is for you, said the Turk. He placed a photo of his own on the table, and Darcy noticed the clear-polished nails. A colour shot of Jobik in a baseball cap, leaning on a chain-link fence, a bombed-out building behind him. Jobik was younger, posing cockily in a tight-fitting T-shirt as though the bomb might have been one of his own. The fluorescent light buzzed in a way that had Darcy struggling to concentrate.
You must know something of this man, said the Turk, inquisitive, patient, his English almost perfect. If you can help us, maybe General Sarfin can help you. We extend you a leaf.
Darcy looked up at the general, who seemed slightly bemused, as if aware Darcy had nothing to offer the Turk, but Darcy tried to put himself back in the kitchen on Baden Powell Drive, his father telling him that Fin had disappeared to Queensland, but he couldn’t yet conjure the last name. He swallowed. When I was a boy in Australia, he said to the Turk, he went by the name of Jostler. I knew who he was but I didn’t really know him. Darcy looked up again at Lenin and it appeared like a gift in three syllables. His surname was Garabed, he said, back then.
Yes, said the Turk, nodding. Arman Garabed. He’s the leader of the military wing of the Dashnak party. He spoke slowly, as if trying to sense what else Darcy had for him. He reached across the table, curled a long narrow hand about Darcy’s forearm, and squeezed the muscle tightly. What else? he asked. He let Darcy go.
The light from the bulb seemed to increase as though monitored from elsewhere. Darcy looked down at the whorls in the wooden tabletop. He remembered Jobik in jeans against his burgundy Monaro, on the beach at Flinders, how he almost drowned. He said nothing.
The Turk produced a sheet of paper and read from a list. Sarik Ariyak, he said, Turkish Consul-General, Melbourne. August 1983. Again he watched for Darcy’s response.
Blinking, Darcy pretended not to understand; the sound of the sea returned in his ear, the light now brilliant as halogen. He shielded his eyes as the general pushed another photo across the table—Fin smoking a papirosa on the steps of a theatre that wasn’t the Bolshoi. Wearing her red twenties dress, the print with black fireflies on it, under a green coat. The Turk ordered Darcy to stop his nervous humming, his tone increasingly hostile. He now stood over the table, over Darcy and this new photo. He lit a dark unfiltered cigarette. Then what do you know about her? he asked.
She brought me here to paint, he said.
The general grunted, examining a separate photo.
A picture for an exhibition, said Darcy. I painted it for her.
We know she is not much of an artist, said the Turk. He balanced his cigarette on his lower lip and turned the matches in his fingers. A turbaned horseman adorned the matchbox cover. How long do you know her?
Darcy looked at the general again, a curve at the corners of the general’s mouth. She’d only changed her last name three years before, but maybe the Turk didn’t know. I met her at university, said Darcy. He counted it as truth—they’d met up in the Ming Wing, Fin by his side like an apparition.
The Turk put his cigarette down on the edge of the table and reached into his leather folder for a piece of paper. Monash University, he said. Clayton, Victoria. A hotbed, no? He put the paper down. Before that she was at Berkeley, California. He paused. Were you religious? he asked.
He saw Darcy’s puzzlement.
The Dashnaks are Orthodox Christians, he said.
Darcy shook his head cautiously. I was a Marxist, he said. But I’m not sure now.
The Turk fished for another document, showed Darcy a sheet of red paper. Sixty-one killed since 1973. He pointed at the page. Attachés, consuls, ambassadors, wives. Vienna, Vatican City, Ottawa, Paris, Los Angeles. He reattached his cigarette to his lips, took another pull. Funded by Armenians from west of the Bosporus. From United States, Australia, you can name it.
Darcy couldn’t remember if the Bosporus was a river or a mountain range but the Turk was treating him like he knew these things. How many did Jobik kill? asked Darcy.
The Turk looked slightly deflated. That’s what we want to know, he said. He flicked ash on the floor. In 1979 the Archbishop of the Armenian Church in New York was shot dead. He searched Darcy for a hint of recognition.
I thought you said the Dashnaks were Christians, said Darcy.
The skin around the Turk’s wrinkled mouth tightened, the smell of his cigarette was strong. The Archbishop supported Soviet Armenia, he said. He reached for the general’s silver lunch box, turned it to face Darcy.
Darcy sat perfectly still. You can’t suspect me of being with a party I’ve never heard of, he said softly.
The general smiled lazily, folded his arms, as the Turk removed a zippered plastic evidence bag from the lunch box. What about this? he asked.
A panic ran up inside Darcy like he’d never felt, his throat closing. The money belt held up like a ragged leather pendant, the back of it hacked open. A sleeve in it after all. The Turk’s weathered finger like a small gnarled branch, poked at it through the plastic. What was inside dis? he asked, his accent suddenly thick.
Darcy struggled for air. Airline tickets, he murmured. Some money. My passport. The leaf they’d extended sailing down into a well.
It was a present, said Darcy. Delivered to my flat in a padded yellow envelope.
Do not pretend you know nothing, said the Turk. You are not so stupid. He dropped the evidence bag back in the tin and his chair scraped on the floor. As he walked around the table and stood close, Darcy felt himself cringe. I was stupid, he said, but the Turk leaned down and twisted his ear, the foul cigarette right next to Darcy’s hair.
There is no immunity in ignorance, the Turk whispered. Your friends are killing my people.
Darcy let out a stifled cry as the Turk reefed his ear and looked in his eyes, his pupils narrow and black. Sarik Aryak was my friend, he said.
Darcy looked up at him beseechingly—No, I don’t know—but the Turk jabbed his neck with the lit cigarette and sizzled it deep and Darcy remembered the name of the restaurant as his mouth yawed open with an otherly howl and he flung himself down to the cement, writhing in agony. The Jaguaroff, he tried to say but the word was sewn into his screaming.
Lubyanka, Sunday, 4 am
Darcy lay restless, his eyes clenched, his breathing erratic, the cigarette burn throbbing. He’d slept for a spell and dreamed of his mother in the dark, her scrabbling around for a pen and then scrawling names in red all over her bedroom walls—Russian names like Davydov, Katkov, Kosygin, Bogdanova, Chekhov, all of them wrong. At a creaking he woke in fright, disoriented. Through the thin weave of blanket, a broad shape at the end of the flimsy prison bed, seated quietly with his black-framed glasses on, the general looming silently, as a parent might watch a child.
Darcy lowered the blanket, edged up, a tremor that began in his chest, juddered out into his arms. The general in a black dinner suit, his bow tie hanging loose down his shirtfront. He raised an imaginary glass in a cupped hand, as if toasting. Anyetta Chernenko says many thank-yous for being shepherd of her dog, he said.
Darcy smelled anise liqueur on the general’s breath as the general pulled up his dinner jacket sleeve, smiled ruefully at Darcy’s Longines watch, its silver band stretched about his massive wrist. Visiting hours, he said, showing his yellowed teeth.
Darcy half sat up on the slatted wooden bed, his aching back against the cold brick wall. He clasped his knees up under the raggedy end of the blanket, then noticed Aurelio’s coat draped on the chair back, the roll of currency on the seat. How do you say in English? said the general. Your things.
Darcy found himself rocking slightly, suspiciously, the chance of being released, the general placing a thick pale hand on Darcy’s covered foot as if to still him. First we have some business, he said.
A siren wailed somewhere and Darcy hugged the blanket tight, up over the sore on his neck, in a kind of hopeless defence, but the general reached forward, carefully pulled it down to inspect the wound. Ah, yes, he said. Consul Tugrul is quite cruel.
Darcy nodded in nervous agreement but recoiled even further; he’d known the feel of the general’s great open palm in the same interview room, slapping him almost through the air, but it was coupled now with a memory, the missionary looming over a small boy’s body. He clutched the stringy blanket like a rope out at sea as the general reached to touch his cold unsteady fingers, as though fascinated by fear, his hand almost twice the size of Darcy’s.
You are shaking, said the general.
Darcy looked up at the general’s moist, late-night smile, tried to slide his fingers from the touch, but then he felt the blanket tethered tight over his knees, stretched like a threadbare tent. Death felt like a not-so-timid visitor, waiting outside in the snow. He felt the quiver deep within him, to be left bloody on this greasy floor, ruptured.
I did not come to hurt you, said the general. I need you. His great square knees shifted over, corralling Darcy’s huddled feet.
My mother is contacting the Australian Embassy, said Darcy, his voice just a shadow.
I thought you were Polish, said the general with a lascivious smile. He extracted the burgundy passport from his jacket pocket, and shoved the photo of a black and white Fin up against Darcy’s blistered lips. Kiss her, he said. Kiss your naughty sister.
Darcy drew back from the tasteless laminated page against his mouth, blood from the cut on his lip as it smeared Fin’s small, determined face. Fin, what have you done to us?
You agree she is with Armenian Dashnaks, the general said. He removed his glasses thoughtfully, put one arm of the frames in his mouth. I am supposing she gave a place to find her? He seemed to choose his English words carefully, as if he had only a few, his tongue remaining on his lower lip. His hand gripped Darcy’s ankles like they were sparrows in a vice.
Darcy’s own lip throbbed; he squirmed to free his ankles, the whirr in his ears began like the dull sound of propellers approaching. He knew this was his window, the restaurant—if things go bad, the Jaguaroff sat like a jewel in his sore dry mouth. Maybe I can find her, he said.
Where? Where are they? The general’s whisper so vehement, the blood vessels pushed at his skin, his scalp darkened red. Garabed’s men. Tell me where or I will fuck it out from you. Is that what you want? Darcy’s ankles felt close to snapping as he fought the general flipping him over, writhed against the weight and screaming, the blanket deftly stuffed in his mouth like a choking sock and held there, the general’s fingers cupping Darcy’s chin from behind like a claw, the breadth of his wrist across Darcy’s eye, the sharp metal catch of the watchband. Darcy contorting, trying to breathe as his belted pants were forced to his thighs and the sound of the general unharnessing, climbing up over him, on top of him, the weight of a piano as Darcy now shoved against the putrid blanket, heaving for air, shunted over the cot on an angle and pinned there, the general whispering like a madman in Darcy’s ear. Do you scream when you are doing fuck with my son? In my dacha. The general the size of a fist shunting near the base of Darcy’s spine, forced lower as Darcy’s eyes crunched deep in their sockets, the suffocating bulk on top of him, his bloodied lips contorting against the fleshy hand, the general prying apart Darcy’s narrowed buttocks. Darcy’s chin twisted against the bricks, the wrong red names that ran the length of his mother’s bedroom wall, and the fervent spittled anise whispers in his upturned ear. You like fuck with men. You think you like that? I show you fuck with men. Thrusting but not finding, like a blunt axe determined to split a narrow log. Then Darcy heard urgent whispers through the slot in the door, footsteps and clanking in the corridor. The general withdrew from him, the weight of a hand in the small of Darcy’s back, and Darcy pulled the blanket over himself, heaving for air, and lay like a rag, his face against the wall.
The general, panicking, tucked in his studded shirtfront and fumbled for his glasses, his fallen bow tie. He towered over Darcy like a fuming building, wrenched Darcy around so he could see. Next time I clean you up pretty and rip you out a new hole like a real Polish boy. Sweat fogged up the general’s glasses, the savage way he turned his mouth. Where is she?
Darcy lay very still, the tremor rippling all through his body, but all sound suddenly gone from his head. He knew he had been lucky this time, the unexpected voices in the hall.
She told me she’d meet me at Andropov’s funeral, he said, in the square, and if not near the Ploshchad Revolyutsii for the opening of the exhibition. It sounded like the truth.
The general’s face untwisted slightly but a squinting doubt lingered. There will be many at the funeral, he said.
Darcy braced himself against the cot. She said she would find me.
The general leaned down and pulled at Darcy’s greasy hair and Darcy closed his eyes again, flinching. We will be watching you like a glove. Set foot near any embassy, talk with any person and I finish you next time, I split you in pieces. The general took a long last look into Darcy’s eyes and then prepared to leave. Rearranging himself, he lumbered towards the voices outside the door. Fin’s suede mittens, small as a pair of bats, floated from the pocket of his trousers to the floor.
Lubyanka Square, Sunday, 10.30 am
Darcy stood under a high white s
ky in a wind that chased snow across the square and stung the wound on his neck through his scarf and coat collar. He felt like a hunted species, let go briefly for his tormentors to observe him, in case his kin might emerge from the tundra and lick at his wounds. He never imagined he’d be homesick. His breath and the sky and buildings—everything smoky and white as frozen milk. His sight blurred, searching for the oxidised Lada, but what could he say to Aurelio now? The rabid anise-breathed whispers of the general still fresh, the cavernous sound that now lodged there, a violence behind him like a twisted slingshot, shoving him out into this gelid square as if Fin might dart out from among these sallow figures in black fur hats and usher him off to her coven.
The aches in him deep, his bones as if splintery, he ventured towards the metro entrance, to a single snow-swept food stand, the frosted street lamps like arrows planted in ice. A woman with plastic shopping bags, her face enveloped in a woollen balaclava, the two brown-hatted men in an angle-parked Volga, a sense they all watched. No choice other than to proceed as he’d said he would to the multitude amassing in Red Square. He bought three steaming piroshki from the street vendor who winced at the sight of his cheekbone, bruised black and red as a tsarist flag, but she said nothing, just handed him the first one, steaming lamb and onion buried in pastry. Gde Jaguaroff? he wanted to ask, but didn’t speak either, didn’t chance it, the mustard-coloured building still glowering behind him like a monstrous warning. He stuffed another in his mouth, let the mealy cheese and cabbage heat burn deep inside him, then he kneeled and dipped the napkin to moisten it in the snow. He wiped his face as best he could, dabbed at his cheek and pressed the dampened paper against his neck. He knew he had to keep moving, on among the Muscovites, the other piroshkis pushed deep in his pockets for warmth, his scarf up over his mouth to keep his lips from the fresh pellets of snow. He knew if he didn’t lead them to Fin there’d be no limping out here into this winter a second time; he’d be splayed in his own pooling blood or shipped east over the Urals on a train, the prettiest face in some gulag.
Stray Dog Winter Page 18