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 sky 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.
Aurelio, he whispered, glad his lips could still shape the word, but the name was drowned by a crackle from tinny loudspeakers hooked on trees, dirge music piping out into the morning as if it were Darcy’s own death being mourned a day prematurely. The venom from the general’s lips, the repulsive jolting, had Darcy starey-eyed out here in the wind, far from weeping, the fact of it grasping hold.
He merged with a huddle fanning from the window of a Beriozka, where the proceedings in the square were being televised. On the screen, a tribune beneath the clock on Spasskaya Tower with a rose-wreathed casket, then a podium with dignitaries dribbling into their seats, waiting. Armoured vehicles motored past, columns marching with guns in the air past the striped onion domes of St Basil’s. Raincoats and umbrellas covered the square like a field of wet flowers. Alas, poor Yuri, thought Darcy. Vodka so cheap they cleaned their windows with it, called it Andropodka. Alas, poor everyone, he thought.
If he steered them to Fin, he knew he’d not garnered himself any guarantees, just two venues and a couple of hours, a chance in hell. The KGB like a giant bear, pawing at him, no doubt suspecting he’d strung them along. His breath felt shallow, barely reaching his chest in the gathering crowd drawn down the avenue to assure themselves Andropov was gone. Craggy plaster faces strung on a line between the spindly birches and, beneath them, a mask seller who wore a plaster Brezhnev, secured by elastic. He wagged his finger at Darcy, making a speech, and a few people laughed brittle laughs.