Blood Russian

by R. D. Zimmerman

  Kyril rose again and pulled her against him with his good arm. Knowing how to convince her, he kissed Musya, rubbed his cheek against hers.

  “Musya, we have to go when it’s dark. Boris would see us otherwise. But in the shadow of night we’ll be able to sneak up on him.” His thick hand slid down to her breast. “Listen. We won’t go now. We’ll wait until tomorrow night. That way we’ll have the apartment to ourselves all day. And when the sun sets, we’ll go out to the dacha, this strange place, and put an end to Boris.”

  She sighed and leaned into him. Brushing back a whisp of his hair, she kissed him on the forehead.

  “Well, all right.” Suddenly she shivered. “But I tell you, Zarekino scares me.”

  Chapter 26

  Some ten kilometers out of Leningrad, Boris spotted a pair of lights lurking behind them. Panicking he swerved off the highway, steered behind a clump of trees, and waited. Minutes later, a slow truck churned past.

  “Relax,” said Lara, resting her hand on his knee. “Everything’s going to be all right. No one saw us leave.”

  “But…”

  With images of Sergei and guns and corrupt officials ricocheting in his exhausted mind, Boris checked the road behind them yet another time. Reticent to believe their good fortune, yet unable to spot anyone, he drove on to Zarekino, which lay to the south, a few kilometers from Pushkin, closer still to Pavlovsk.

  Once they were hidden, once he’d had some sleep, he’d be able to sort out matters and choose a course of action. His mind sifted through a list of his father’s powerful friends. Since there definitely appeared to be governmental corruption, he would have to be careful whom he contacted. Even now, though, he could think of three or four trustworthy and influential men. The old guard who’d weathered much worse and who would know how to handle this storm. Without realizing it, Boris had already established his priorities: protect Lara, assure Musya’s safety, and bring to trial the one who’d killed Sergei. There was also the prospect of getting a divorce from Musya, but that could come later. Whatever the authorities did with him after that really didn’t matter. He was enervated by not living the truth.

  The route out of the city quickly melted from a highway to a narrow road to a grassy lane until it was choked off by the dense birch forest of Zarekino. A mass of white-barked trees—all once part of the princely estate—extended for kilometers in every direction.

  “There wasn’t much left of the forest after the war.” As he followed the ruts of the lane, he kept one eye on the rearview mirror. “Tanks plowed over most of the trees—too bad the old palace can’t grow back as well.”

  With only one or two exceptions, all of the country palaces around Leningrad had been captured by the Fascists then sacked and burned. Petrodvorets, Peter the Great’s version of Versailles, had been reduced to a pile of ashes and a few standing walls. The royal palaces of Pushkin had also licked the sky with flames, and Zarekino was no exception. The ballrooms and galleries in one wing had been used as a stables, the rooms in the other wing as a barracks. Just before their retreat—just after the murder of Ttyotya’s family and her bloody revenge—the Hitlerites soaked the hay in the ballrooms and ignited it. Deathly black spires of smoke, seen for miles, slithered into the sky for days.

  Boris swung the car to the side, brought it to a stop between two birches, and shut off the engine. Twisting in his seat, he stared out the smashed windows of the car and down the lane. No lights, no sounds of car engines greeted him. He looked at Lara with a flat, exhausted smile.

  “We have to walk in from here. It’s not far. We don’t have a flashlight. Will you be able to see?”

  “Sure,” said Lara, gathering their belongings. “The moon’s terrifically bright.”

  A misty mushroom rain had ended and the moon, a large white saucer, rolled in and out of the rocky clouds. The birches pulsed light and dark around Boris and Lara, and their skin alternately glowed and faded into shadow.

  Standing behind the car, Boris took one look at the back of the smashed Zhiguli and was filled with dread.

  “The car—it’s so obvious, what if… what if…”

  “Boris, you’re getting more nervous, not less. Relax. We’re here. If someone were really after us they wouldn’t have let us get out of town. They would have—”

  Behind him dry leaves rattled. He jumped as if jabbed with a knife, then held two fingers to his lips.

  “Ts-s-s!”

  “What? Stop being silly.” With care and concern, she touched him on the arm. “You’re just exhausted.”

  “Didn’t you hear that?” he whispered. “Steps. Someone’s out there.”

  She was quiet for but a moment. “Boris, you’re imagining things.”

  “Ts-s-s!”

  There it was again, the crackling of coarse fall leaves. Boris heard it for certain this time. Something was in the forest, a living creature. Bozhe. How had they been followed? He’d kept checking, hadn’t seen anyone. Could it be, he hoped, the wind? Nyet. He glanced up, only to see the semi-naked branches hanging with perfect stillness. He heard a whoosh again, looked to his right, and this time saw it. A huge shape moving swiftly through the birch jungle. He grabbed Lara’s arm.

  “Get down!”

  “Boris, wha—”

  “Ts-s-s!”

  Huddled behind the car, Boris heard something from the other side. He spun around and saw a figure racing in and out of the trees. His heart began to pound. He hadn’t figured on this, wasn’t quite sure what to do.

  Suddenly, from far away an animal cried out, long and thin. An immediate answer split the night just a few meters from Boris and Lara.

  “Ai!” cried Lara.

  Boris twisted to the side, spotted a tall white and sable creature that had nearly blended in with the birches. It stopped howling and stared at them like a regal tsar. Elegant and of great height, the animal focused on them with dark, intense, confident eyes. One thick, curly-haired paw rose, then another, as the animal slowly stalked them. Boris pushed himself up, took a step forward. Remembering how Tyotya had dealt with the animals, he leapt out, shouted and swung his arms. The hound bolted, the padding of its paws fading in the distance.

  “Bozhe,” said Lara, clasping her hand to her chest. “What was that? A dog?”

  “Half of one, anyway.” He scanned the trees which were as thick as the white hairs on a babushka’s head. “They’re part wolfhound and part wolf.”

  “What? You recognized it?”

  He nodded. During the Revolution, the Prince and every symbol of aristocracy had been attacked by the peasants. That included his kennel, which was superior even to the tsar’s in its quantity and quality of Russian wolfhounds, the borzoi. Almost three hundred precious dogs were slaughtered, but a few escaped along with their caged quarry: Siberian wolves.

  “Zarekino was as famous for its borzoi as it was for its hunts,” said Boris still searching the woods. “All the nobility came here, the tsar and all the grand dukes. Only the most enormous wolves from Siberia were used. They were released during the hunts and there was great sport to see whose dogs could capture them.”

  In the years following the Revolution, what few borzoi and wolves had escaped eventually found each other in the wilds of the birches, and mated. The result was an enormous creature of great strength, part hunter and part hunted, with the tall, sleek body of a coursing hound and the thick skull and powerful jaws of a wolf.

  “Oi!” gasped Lara at the sound of another distant howl. “They’re not dangerous, are they?”

  Purposely avoiding her question, he said, “Come on. They’re running loose tonight and we shouldn’t be out.”

  Years ago Tyotya had tamed a handful of the hounds with great clumps of raw meat. She now bred them and they lived with her in the palace ruins and were her sole means of support. In all his years of coming to the dacha, however, Boris had never seen them run free.

  Within a few meters the forest broke, a line of trees that stopped and f
ormed a sheer wall bordering on an open meadow. Before stepping into the clearing, Boris searched the knee-high grass, saw no sign of the hounds. His steps hesitant, he led the way along the uneven path worn through the earth’s skin. When the moon appeared again and illuminated the swells of the countryside, he stopped.

  “There, that’s the palace of Zarekino.”

  Across the damp grasses and beyond another strand of birches rose the ruins of the palace. Placed majestically at the top of a hill, its shattered mass broke the natural flow of the land and trees, a black hulk that continued to die even after its death. At one end, iron skeletons of onion domes—their copper skins peeled away revealing their empty innards—poked into the sky. In the center, where a vast dome had once risen over the grand staircase—and where the angry peasants had hung the Prince—a crater now lay. Crippled brick walls, with no roof to shield them and no rooms behind them, stood like images of a nuclear holocaust.

  “I knew it was in ruins, but I didn’t expect…” She spotted the faint outline of a narrow river between them and the hill on which sat the structure. “Za reka.” Beyond the river. “Zarekino.”

  “What’s left of the place, anyway. It’s hard to imagine it was once a glittering palace of over two hundred rooms.”

  He motioned further to the right, down at a curve in the river. Against a mass of white birches sat a cluster of small dark buildings.

  “The dacha’s over there—see? We cross the river up ahead.”

  He started off again, leading Lara across the meadow and into another grove. Just as soon as they reached the birches, another cry—deep and mean at the start, thin and high at the end—split the night. The howl came from somewhere within the palace, followed by a trio, a quartet and more.

  Boris said, “Hurry, we—”

  A single howl, then two, rose from the meadow right behind them. Boris grabbed Lara by the hand and they ran to the safety of the trees. Pressed against a birch, Boris studied the moonlit meadow as the crying, flute-like voices of the animals filled his ears. At first he couldn’t see anything, then gradually he saw a huddled mass out from which arose a long, lean, arching head. Not ten meters away and also crouched in the grass, the second creature’s voice rose, a half-note lower than the first. As the animals howled, their heads continued to rise until their noses pointed almost straight up.

  Lara held the bags close to her. “I don’t like those things.”

  “And they don’t like us.”

  The wails of the hounds continued from the palace and from the meadows behind. He glanced through the strand of birches. The bridge across the river wasn’t far at all.

  “Come on, hurry.”

  To the cry of the hounds, Boris and Lara ran. Hand in hand, they bolted down the narrow path, struggling to see the way. Boris tripped on a branch and nearly toppled over, pulling Lara down with him. She yanked back, steadying them both. Not slowing, Boris charged on, all the time wondering why the hounds were roaming free. Through the birches he saw the faint outlines of the way across the river. The dacha was still a good distance from that.

  Lara glanced back in the dark. “Boris, I—”

  The crying had stopped, both at the palace and in the meadow behind. Boris could only make out the sounds of their own running, their own panting. Then, rising above that, the rhythmic padding of fleeting paws. Boris glanced to the left and saw an all-white creature flitting through the birches like a swift cloud. He heard the same noise to his right and saw the white and sable creature bounding in and out of the trees. Bozhe, thought Boris. They’re playing with us. But how long would the amusement last?

  The gray shape of the bridge emerged right before them, a narrow passage of old wood with a railing on one side. Boris glanced to his right, heard a series of powerful legs skimming over the fallen leaves. He couldn’t see either one of the animals, but did see a large branch lying on the floor of the grove.

  “Help me!”

  Together the two of them jumped off the path and grasped the limb. Working as one, they dragged it toward the bridge. They backed themselves into the wooden crossing, pulling the mass of branches behind them until it blocked the bridge completely. They hurried across the rippling water but were not even a quarter of the way across when they heard a rush of noise behind them. Taking shape out of the strands of birches were the two enormous borzoi-wolves. Boris, shuddering, held onto the single railing, and didn’t stop until he and Lara reached the other side. They kept moving toward the dacha, Boris’ eyes fixed on the creatures across the waters. As if made of stone, the hounds stood perfectly still, staring at Boris and Lara.

  “I’m sorry,” said Boris. “Tomorrow I’ll have Tyotya pen them up at the palace.”

  “Oi,” gasped Lara, the fear ebbing. “I’ve never seen anything like them before.”

  He kissed her cheek, wrapped his arm around her as they made their way along the river’s edge. The old palace loomed up on their left, a black mass at the top of the hill. Squinting, Boris stared up but could not see a lamp burning from Tyotya’s side window.

  The log cabin, its butterfly roof—a v-like peak pitched out over each end—slowly emerged in the night. Carefully set along a curve in the river, the small structure sat low to the ground, its face to the water, its back to still more hectares of birches.

  “Oi, a real izba. A real Russian cabin,” she said, charmed.

  “Da, da. All built without a single nail,” said Boris, pleased with her enthusiasm. He checked behind them again, but saw no sign of man or creature. “We’re almost there. At last.”

  The dacha’s heavy log walls, the little bench of dirt built around the base, and the lace-like carved wood around the deep windows took shape in the dark. It appeared as if from a book of fairy tales, not the cabin on chicken legs that belonged to the wicked witch Baba-yaga, but a safe place for a good, hard-working peasant and his family.

  Lara said, “We’ll be happy here, I—”

  From the darkness alongside the dacha emerged a white shadow. A huge hound, lips curled back over its teeth, stepped furtively around the edge of the cabin. A master of its domain, it stopped directly in front of the dacha’s door.

  “Don’t move,” Boris said.

  Lara, with no intention of even flinching, did not speak. For a full minute, she and Boris stood frozen, staring at the hound. Then, one small movement at a time, Boris slipped his hand into the string bag. He felt a jar, the hunk of cheese, and dug deeper.

  A grave churning emerging from its throat, the borzoi-wolf began to growl. Boris ceased his movements. The animal hunkered as if preparing to spring.

  “Oi,” gasped Lara, her voice barely audible.

  Quickly, Boris jabbed his hand to the bottom of the bag and felt the black bread. He yanked out one of the loaves and in the same movement flung it to the side of the hound. The animal flinched but held firm. Then its nose began to quiver and it raised its snout. With quick whiffs, it caught wind of the food, though it never took its eyes off Boris and Lara. Finally, it ducked to the side, bit into the black bread, and disappeared into the birches behind the cabin.

  Boris relaxed at once and turned to Lara. “They won’t be a problem tomorrow, I promise.”

  Lara glanced into the woods, then shook away the memory. “Let’s go inside.”

  With a large iron key, Boris opened the door, led the way into the single-room structure, and carefully shut the door behind them. Like a blind man who knew perfectly his house, he crossed through the dark room to a table. He felt a drawer, opened it, then reached for a box of matches in the upper right corner. He lit a kerosene lantern and placed it on a table in the middle of the room. Just as he had always done, just as his father and mother had always done before him, he crossed to the side window, opened the shutter, and cracked the window.

  “A little musty, but nice, eh?”

  She set her clothes, books, and the guitar on the bed and spun around with big eyes.

  “It’s beautiful and, lo
ok, it even has an old stove.” It was a big mass of clay for both cooking and heating. She stepped on its bench. “I haven’t seen one of these since my great-aunt died. When it’s cold out, we’ll even be able to sleep up top here.”

  Pushing away thoughts of Leningrad and the hounds outside, he reached out for her. He loved that stove too. Loved napping up on top on a cold fall day. Da, da.

  Suddenly, as he gazed into her eyes, all expression drained from her face.

  “Lara?”

  “Boris, I…” She pointed past him and out the window. “I… I saw someone….”

  He spun around to the glass. “What?”

  “Someone’s out there. I saw a face. In the window….”

  “You sure it wasn’t a dog?”

  “Someone’s out there, I tell you! A person!”

  He rushed to the window, peered out, and saw only white trees poking into a black night. Lara stood by the table. Then, breaking the tranquility of the dacha, the door was kicked open, and a dark figure stood there, shiny knife in hand.

  “What—?” began Boris.

  But before he could do anything, the arm cocked itself back, then hurled forward. Like a tumbling bolt of lightning, the knife cut through the air toward Lara.

  Chapter 27

  Musya’s eyes opened as quickly as tightly sprung shades. Bozhe. Were those footsteps she just heard? Was someone in the apartment? She lay still, stopped her own breathing, and concentrated everything on her ears. All she could hear, though, was her own pounding heart and the heavy breathing next to her.

  Carefully she touched the sleeping mass at her side, a body that filled and swelled out of the dent Boris had left in the mattress. At once she felt strange and wonderful. It was odd not to have her husband lying beside her, a pleasant shock to have her lover there instead. She was tempted to reach over and kiss him, crawl atop his massive body, but then she retracted her hand. Kyril needed his sleep. He needed rest to heal his wound.