The samovar hissed.
These daydreams, Temerity told herself, have simply got to stop.
This time, Temerity pinched her forearm. Then she straightened her posture, checked locks, sought keys, checked locks again, read Izvestia, cut Izvestia into squares and took them to the bathroom, where the blue tiles shone.
The fat one’s voice as he injected her hand: Now, not a sound.
She stifled a moan and placed the scissors on the table with great care. She knew, she knew perfectly well, she’d imagined the man’s voice, for no one else in this moment occupied the flat. Just her. Locked in.
She slammed cupboard and pantry doors until she found scouring powder and rags, and then set to scrubbing the bathroom tiles clean. Her fingernails softened; her cuticles swelled and stung. Then, praying the futile prayer for sufficient heat and water pressure, she took a shower. She got a good three minutes before the pressure changed and the water cooled, best shower yet. Sighing, she tugged on her clothes: the same skirt and blouse for days now, and no underwear.
I still feel dirty.
She strode to the stenka in the front room, yanked opened a drawer, and took an undershirt and pair of shorts from Kostya’s supply. In the bedroom, she removed her Temerity West passport from the blouse lining and studied it a moment. The same photograph and date of birth as in the Margaret Bush passport: a young woman with curly hair pinned up yet still escaping, and a look in the eyes that a Roedean history mistress had called pure spitfire. It will get you in trouble one day, West, trouble you can’t get out of. Mind yourself.
Mildred Ferngate, Margaret Bush, Nadezhda Ivanovna Solovyova, and still, Temerity West.
She shoved the passport between mattress and bed frame.
Kostya’s underclothes, too large, at least felt clean. She buttoned one of his shirts and then slipped on a pair of his civilian trousers, snug on her hips and gaping on her waist. Amused, she hunted again in the stenka and found a pair of frayed braces, affixed those to the waist of the trousers and adjusted them over her shoulders. It didn’t help. Then she rolled up trouser cuffs and sleeves, rigged a clothesline in the kitchen from two high hooks, and set to washing her clothes in the kitchen sink. No mangle to be found; she must wring the clothes by hand.
Hands aching, clothes hanging to dry, she returned to the front room and stood before the white, white wall.
White. White silk dress for one’s debut. White stationery marked Kurseong House. White vision when Kostya shot wide in the clinic and hit the tin of blood.
She recalled the touch of the Basque boys’ cardboard name tags. Why did I help him? I was another woman in another country. Is that it?
The lock clicked.
Temerity checked her watch. Too early for Kostya or Efim to return.
The door opened. A little cough, as if testing for a response.
Vadym Minenkov?
A louder cough.
The door shut. Leather soles tapped beneath a heavy tread; the male visitor had not bothered to remove his boots.
Bloody hell. —Kostya?
The tread paused, then hastened.
He stood by the kitchen, and Temerity emerged from the front room to meet him.
She gasped.
The fat one with the moustache, the host of the party, and, according to Kostya, a guardian angeclass="underline" Arkady Dmitrievich Balakirev. Today he wore his uniform, the clothes and their meaning adding menace and bulk. Temerity recalled her father’s voice as he read to her of Mandeville’s crocodiles: And in the night they dwell in the water, and on the day upon the land, in rocks and in caves. And they eat no meat in all the winter, but they lie as in a dream, as do the serpents. These serpents slay men, and they eat them weeping.
Arkady looked up at the blouse and skirt on the clothesline, then down at this petite woman wearing a man’s clothes. Kostya’s clothes. —So, you’re the whore.
— I’m no one’s whore.
Arkady stared at her a moment, eyebrows raised, astonished at not just her defiance but the speed of it. He almost laughed. —Get me something to drink. What’s your name?
Brazen it out. —Solovyova, Nadezhda Ivanovna. Tea?
— If I must.
His quiet voice put Temerity at ease, which in turn made her tense up. She approached the samovar with a confidence she did not feel. Zavarka, she reminded herself, then water.
Arkady settled himself into the armchair in the front room—And how long have you lived here, Nadezhda Ivanovna?
She made her voice nonchalant. —Oh, just a few days.
— Come here.
She got close enough to pass him a glass of very dark tea.
He sniffed it, looked at her in some horror, and placed the glass on the floor. Then he stared at her throat. —Did you cook the mushrooms the way Vadym Pavlovich told you to?
Kostya cooked them. —Yes.
— Do you care for him?
— Vadym Pavlovich?
— Kostya.
— That’s a very forward question, uh…I didn’t catch your name.
— I think you know who I am, but, as I’ll be arrested five minutes after the two of you are, fuck secrets. Here.
Arkady passed her a red leather wallet like Kostya’s. She opened it and looked at the initialed photograph and the ornate form bearing the words Balakirev, Arkady Dmitrievich, Major, NKVD.
She gave it back. Get him talking. —You’re Kostya’s father?
— Is his surname Balakirev? Your papers, please.
She stared him down, no gasp, no plea, not so much as a twitch.
Arkady nodded in admiration. —I see why he’s fallen for you.
Temerity did not drop her gaze, and Arkady read the danger in her eyes: something focused and determined. Disciplined. He’d seen it in women before, in the old Komsomol meetings. He’d avoided those women, called them hard, preferring the naive ones who understood that their duties to the Party included fetching tea, typing correspondence, and servicing the needs of male members.
He stood up and leaned in to kiss her cheek. —What a shame I didn’t get to sample you first. But then you’re so tiny I’d split you in half.
Queasy, she kept still. —What do you want, Arkady Dmitrievich?
He kissed her other cheek. —I know who and what you are, Margaret Bush: the ruin and death of Kostya Nikto. So, I want you to disappear.
She took a step back. —If I am arrested—
— If?
— If I am arrested, I will tell them about that night at your house.
He seized her by the face, pressing her cheeks and wrenching her neck. —No one will believe you. Even if they did, it would mean nothing. But that’s the future. Right here, right now, you need to listen to me.
Wine, onions, fish, and something uric: the fumes on his breath sickened her. Faster than she knew, she broke his hold, kicked his ankle and ruined his balance, seized his arm — and refrained. She did not throw him, instead releasing his arm and darting out of reach. Her eyes sent a new message, one which withered Arkady’s sense of himself as he stumbled upright.
Pity? Oh, there’s venom in the spit of this old dragon yet, my dear. Fucking venom.