Blackmailed by the beast

by Georgia Le Carre

  As I get to my best friend Lina’s house, I pop into her front garden and stuff the jacket in the blue recycling containers left outside. It must be collection day. I know the trucks don’t come until mid-morning. I’ll either come back in a couple of hours and retrieve it, or I’ll just call Lina and ask her to keep it for me until later.

  When I get closer to the house I take out my mobile phone and call my grandmother. Although it is five-thirty in the morning, she answers her phone on the first ring and sounds completely alert. My grandma wakes up at four every morning to do her prayers. She prays for hours for my father’s soul.

  ‘Tasha,’ she says.

  ‘Baba, can you give me a hand?’

  For a moment she is silent. Then she exhales the breath she is holding. ‘Of course.’

  I walk to the wall at the back of the house and wait across the road. The gates have CCTV cameras running 24 hours a day, but the walls only have cameras that swivel on a 180% arc. So if you time your journey to or from the wall carefully you will never appear in it. I wait, half hidden by a cherry tree. Five minutes later a rope comes over the wall and I run to it.

  I have less than 45 seconds before the camera will return to that spot. I run across the road and climb the ladder nimbly. I have been doing this since I was six years old. I jump onto the springy grass and pull the ladder up behind me. I carry it with me and run to the ancient Yew tree. Less than ten seconds left. I reach into the roots of the tree and pluck the rope out of the metal hook hidden within. I yank it but it gets stuck.

  Shit.

  Five seconds left.

  I get on my haunches, untangle it, it comes off, and I heave it free. Clutching the ladder and rope to my chest, I roll on the ground and get behind the tree. I push myself upright and lean against the back of the tree. My heart is hammering and adrenaline is buzzing through my veins, but I’m smiling. Three Rottweilers are licking my hands and face.

  I made it.

  I speak softly to them, patting their muscular, well-trained bodies, and fishing little treats from my cardigan top to give to them. ‘Go on. Off with you,’ I tell them, and they trot off to resume their guarding duties.

  I stand up and wait for the camera to do its complete sweep before I run back to the house. I throw the rope ladder back into its black bag and dust myself off. Thank god, it is not raining. Although I have made this trip in the rain, I would have made a right mess of myself, rolling on the wet ground. Carrying the bag, I walk coolly into the kitchen.

  It is empty, but for Baba. She is sitting at the kitchen table wearing the thick housecoat she wears to bed and a dressing gown over it. Her short, coarse iron-gray hair is uncombed, and her face is pale without her lipstick. There is a pot of tea and two cups and saucers laid out on the table. I walk up to the table and, dropping the bag on the floor, sit in front of her. Silently, she fills the cups with tea.

  ‘Isn’t the appointment for your wedding dress fitting today?’ she asks in Russian. Baba is the only one who speaks to me in Russian.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At what time?’

  I look down at the steam rising from my tea. ‘Half past eleven.’

  She pushes the container of sugar towards me. ‘Where have you been?’

  I look into her deep set, dark eyes. They’re similar to Papa’s in coloring, but while his are cold and dangerous, grandma’s are warm and full of concern.

  ‘I was with a man,’ I confess.

  Tasha Evanoff

  A look of deep sorrow and fear comes into her eyes. She clasps her pink, shiny hands on the table top because they have started trembling.

  I love my grandmother and though I knew she would not approve, I never expected to see her look so desolate or frightened for me. It’s not like I’ve hurt anybody. I just took something for myself and I have been careful not to cause consequences to anybody. I reach for her hands and cover them with mine.

  ‘Oh, Baba, please, please, don’t be sad or scared,’ I plead. ‘Nothing bad happened and nothing will. I wanted him for a long, long time and I would have always regretted if I had not taken this night for myself, but now I’ve had him I can move on. I can put it all behind me and be a dutiful daughter to Papa.’

  She blinks slowly. ‘You wanted him for a long, long time?’ she echoes in a daze.

  ‘Yes, for a very long time.’

  She shakes her head in disbelief. ‘Have I not known you at all, Solnyshko?’

  ‘You’ve known all of me, Baba. This is just something my heart wanted.’ I smile. ‘It’s like how you sometimes still crave for your babushka’s smokva.’

  ‘Smokva? Yes, we called it dried paradise apple in our village,’ she says, her eyes misting with the memory. ‘It was very precious, but I have never crawled over a wall in the middle of the night, or … risked a man’s life for it.’

  I take my hands away from hers. ‘Papa will never find out.’

  She shakes her head. ‘You could have been caught. Someone could have seen you.’

  ‘No. I was very, very careful. I told no one. Not Mama, not even you.’

  She sighs sadly. ‘Do you know smokva originally meant dried figs, but because they were too expensive for the ordinary person, somebody had the idea to boil up locally available apples, quinces, plums and rowanberries in honey or sugar syrup? Smokva was the poor man’s substitute for figs. You don’t need to make do with a substitute, Tasha. You can have the real thing.’

  I stare into her eyes and whisper, ‘That was the real thing, Baba. That was the real thing. What I will have after him will be the substitute.’

  Her eyes widen and she gasps. ‘Who is this man?’

  ‘You wouldn’t know him.’

  Her eyes narrow. This is when she looks closest to Papa. ‘But my son does?’

  I nod.

  She draws her breath sharply. ‘This man, will he tell, boast to anyone about you?’

  I shake my head. ‘He’s not a kid. He understands it could cost his life.’

  ‘And he will not try to make trouble?’

  I shake my head again.

  ‘Will you see him again?’

  ‘No,’ I say and it is a wretched sound. I can see that it startles my Baba. ‘It was just the once,’ I say miserably, ‘so I’d know what dried figs taste like.’

  ‘Oh, Solnyshko, you don’t know what you have done.’

  ‘I have done nothing. It was just this once. I did it for me. My whole life has been one long Lent and just this once I indulged.’

  ‘You think you have had one taste of carnal pleasure and now you can walk away and never look back? You have only awakened the demon of desire.’

  We are both staring at each other when the door to the kitchen suddenly opens. Both of us jump and swivel our heads towards it. Papa is standing at the doorway. He is still dressed in the clothes he went out in last night. My father is a balding, short, barrel-shaped man. If you saw him in the street you wouldn’t even notice him, but if ever you chanced to look into his black eyes you would shudder with something unnameable. Like looking into the eyes of an insect. Not evil. Just soulless. This man could kill a man with the same emotion with which he sneezes or takes a piss.

  His cold, pitiless eyes narrow at the sight of us: my grandmother in her dressing gown and me all dressed as if to go out or … no, the thought will not even occur to him that I could engage in a dirty stop out night. Surreptitiously, slowly, I push the black bag with the rope ladder deeper under the table.

  ‘Good morning, Papa.’

  ‘Why are you dressed at this time of the morning?’ he asks, a frown marring his forehead.

  ‘The child has her first wedding dress fitting this morning and she is so excited about it she woke before the birds were up.’

  My father’s face relaxes. He turns to me. ‘Who are you going with?’

  ‘Lina.’

  ‘Good.’ He comes into the kitchen. I stand and, walking over to him, dutifully peck him on his cheek. He smells of alc
ohol and perfume, a strong cloying scent. It makes me step away from him quickly, afraid that he will smell Noah on me, but he absently rubs his cheek where I have kissed him, and turns to look at his mother. When I was younger, I thought he didn’t want me to kiss him, and he was actually rubbing away the kiss, but when I stopped kissing him the next time I saw him, he looked at me with his cold eyes and asked me why I did not kiss him. ‘Never forget to kiss your Papa,’ he told me sternly.

  ‘Vasily is coming from Moscow this afternoon,’ Papa tells my grandma, ‘and he is bringing Ptichie Moloko from The Prague restaurant for you.’

  Ptichie Moloko or Birds’ Milk Cake is made from French marshmallows and chocolate and set on a cake base. It is the king of all Russian desserts and Baba’s favorite.

  Grandma keeps her eyes on me while she smiles, but her smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

  ‘Oh good. No one makes it like they do at The Prague restaurant. All the rest are plastic imitations.’

  A dull heat spreads up my throat and into my face. My father looks at me. ‘You’re blushing. Why?’

  I swallow hard.

  ‘Leave the child alone, Nikita. She is excited about her appointment,’ Baba says reaching for her cup of tea. She sips the cold liquid calmly.

  Papa just grunts.

  It never fails to amaze me the tone my grandmother uses on her son. This is the man who makes grown men shiver. He has never raised a hand to me. He has never needed to. The only time I saw something cruel and frightening in his face was when I came home from school and called him Daddy. Like all the other children in my school did. His head swung around so fast it was like the strike of a snake.

  ‘What did you call me?’ he asked, so softly I felt goosebumps rise on my hands. Anyone would have thought I’d used the f or the c word.

  I thought he must have had misheard. ‘Daddy,’ I repeated.

  ‘I’m not your daddy. I’m your Papa. Don’t ever try to be like those miserable creatures you go to school with. You can mix with them and pretend to be one of them, but never forget you are Russian and only Russian. You have my blood in your veins. Never let me hear you exchange your culture and your Russian ways for theirs again.’

  He had totally discounted my English heritage. The blood of my mother. Of course I never said anything. My mother tells me. Let sleeping dogs lie. Wake them up and they will bite you.

  ‘Yes, Papa,’ I said immediately, and since then I have never done anything that has earned that soft, menacing tone from him again.

  The kitchen falls suddenly silent.

  ‘It’s been a long night. I’m going to bed,’ Papa says into the strained silence.

  ‘Sleep well, Papa,’ I say, and step forward to kiss his cheek again. My father reaches out a hand and plucks a one-inch-long twig from the elbow of my cardigan and drops it to the ground. I freeze with fear, but he doesn’t realize the significance, and turns towards the door. I watch him go out of the door with relief and hear the sound of his shoes on the marble floors echo through the empty house.

  ‘I suppose I better go to my room as well. Sergei will be waiting,’ I tell my grandmother.

  She nods.

  I bend to pick up the black bag and she grasps my hand suddenly in hers. The steely strength of her grip surprises me and my eyes fly to meet hers. Something strange and dark lurks in them.

  ‘Solnyshko, if you ignore your dreams they will limp away from you to die a sad death,’ she warns urgently.

  Tasha Evanoff

  Moving through the high-ceilinged, gilded, pillared excesses of my father’s home, my heels clicking on the marble, and the relief of not being discovered gone, I feel oddly hollow, as if I have left an important part of me back in Noah’s home.

  I go up to my room, open the door, and immediately my beloved four-year-old blue Doberman, Sergei, rushes over to me and throws his sleek body at me. I crouch down to have my face and neck thoroughly washed, but he suddenly stops and sniffs me curiously.

  ‘I know,’ I whisper. ‘I’ve been with a man, a beautiful, strong, powerful man.’

  Sergei stops sniffing me and licks my face gently, as if he understands that I am sad and lost. I hug him tightly.

  ‘Oh, Sergei, Sergei, what am I going to do? I never thought it would be like that. I thought I had built it all up in my mind and it would fall flat. He would be a selfish brute, but he was just beautiful. Just beautiful. Indescribably beautiful.’

  I lie on my bed, Sergei’s head on my stomach, while my mind replays last night. I think of Baba’s expression when she grasped my hand and told me ignored dreams die sad deaths. I think of my father’s chilling eyes and then I think of Mama.

  When I was five years old my parents separated, no, that would be giving the wrong impression, that the decision was in some way mutual or amicable. Nothing could be further from the truth. My father kicked my mother out. Literarily opened the front door and kicked her out so she fell sprawled on the front door steps. He spat on her and forbade her to ever see me again. He did all this with me watching and screaming with fear while Baba held me in her arms. I still remember Mama, getting up to her feet, her knees were bleeding, but she was staring at me, desperately memorizing my face, when the door shut on her.

  He did all that because he suspected her of being unfaithful to him. Of course it was not true, but my father was, is, and will probably always be highly paranoid. Every shadow is a Judas waiting to betray him, steal from him, plot his murder. He even did a paternity test to confirm that I really was his child. And since then Papa has been married three times. None of them could bear him any children. He divorced the first one. I think she went back to Russia. She hated me and I didn’t like her. The second one was more cunning. She made a huge pretense of liking me, but disappeared one day. I don’t know whether she ran away because she was so afraid of my father, or my father did away with her. Papa’s third wife died in a car accident. Brake failure. When he was informed of it, he nodded slowly, then put another forkful of calves’ liver into his mouth. We went to her funeral dressed in black. Nobody shed a tear.

  After my mother went I cried for days. I never stopped begging Baba to let me see my mother. At first she told me to forget Mama. Mama had left the country.

  ‘But where could she have gone? All her clothes and shoes are here?’

  ‘You can’t see her. The sooner you accept that the better it will be for everybody.’

  ‘I’ll run away,’ I threatened.

  ‘There are bad men outside these walls. They will catch you and do terrible things to you.’

  ‘Can’t you ask Papa to bring Mama back?’ I begged.

  ‘No, Solnyshko, I can’t.’

  But I wouldn’t relent. I was determined. Every day without fail I begged her. Sometimes I wouldn’t even eat.

  Then one day she took me shopping and we ‘accidentally’ bumped into Mama. Oh the unexplainable joy. I can still remember how I wrapped my arms tightly around her neck and howled when it was time to part. Then Mama started crying and Baba scolded me.

  ‘If you don’t stop that we’ll never be able to see Mama again.’

  Every time I turned back I would see her standing where we left her, watching us sadly until we turned a corner, or the crowd swallowed us.

  In the car, Baba cautioned, ‘Remember you can never ever tell anyone about this. If you do you will never see your Mama again.’ Her eyes stared at me earnestly. ‘And perhaps not even me.’

  My mouth opened in horror. ‘Will Papa kick you out of the house too?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said softly.

  From that day on I learned to be ultra-secretive. To keep my mouth shut. To watch everything that came out of it.

  As I grew older, Baba taught me how to use the rope ladder. Ever since then I have been using it to go visit my mother.

  Sergei suddenly lifts his head, jumps off the bed, and goes to scratch at the door. I let him out and call Lina. It is nearly nine o’clock.

  ‘What
?’ she says sleepily.

  ‘Hey,’ I say. ‘I … uh … left a jacket in your recycle bin. Would you mind very much putting it into a bag? I’ll pick it up from you when we go to my fitting appointment.’

  There is a slight pause. ‘A jacket?’

  ‘Yes, a brown leather one.’

  ‘In my recycle bin?’

  ‘Right,’ I confirm.

  ‘Uh … huh. Am I going to get any kind of explanation?’

  ‘Um … not, right now.’

  ‘‘Fine, go ahead and be mysterious, then.’

  ‘It’s important.’

  She sighs. ‘What do I do with it again?’

  ‘Just bring it with you when we go for our appointment.’

  ‘Okay. What time are you coming?’

  ‘About ten thirty.’

  ‘Are you excited?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Sure, I am.’

  Tasha Evanoff

  Lina thanks Anatoly, our driver, and slips into the back of the car next to me. She thrusts the John Lewis plastic bag at me as Anatoly closes the door behind her and goes around to his seat.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say air kissing her cheeks.

  ‘No problem,’ she says. Lina is American. She has a thick head of shining, chestnut hair, chocolate eyes and a blood red mouth. She gets her dusky coloring and her sultry looks from her Italian mother.

  ‘Are you excited?’ she asks with a grin.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, trying to inject enthusiasm into my voice.

  ‘So, you want to tell me about the jacket?’

  ‘Not just yet.’

  ‘Okay. I was under the impression there was a fairly innocent explanation behind it, but now I’m having to revise it up to scandal category.’

  I squeeze her. ‘I’ll tell you later. I promise. We’ll go somewhere for tea and cake.’