The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [168]
Suddenly loss and death were all around her and it was too much. Stevie leaned against pillar and wept until she shook. Spent, her nose so blocked she had to breathe through her mouth, Stevie felt a small hand.
Anya was behind her, holding out her gold chain and the evil eye that hung from it like a tear drop. Irina had kept it safe. Anya now wanted Stevie to have it.
Stevie took it from her with a small smile but she still couldn’t speak. She held up her hand in a half-wave, half-salute and walked away, losing herself a little unsteadily in the crowds, hoping the passers-by would blame her swollen red nose on a nasty cold.
She headed for the soothing shores of the lake. Horizons seemed to shrink troubles and she needed proper fresh air.
Where the river Limmat flowed into the lake, by the Bellevueplatz bridge, the water was not frozen. Against the snow, and the ice further out, it looked black. The lake front along it was coated in ice, a phenomenon Stevie hadn’t seen for years.
The wind, coming down from the Alps, skims the Zürichsee and sweeps droplets of water up onto the shore. They freeze where they land, swaddling steel railings, tree branches, lamp posts, even parked cars, in cocoons of white ice.
It was impossible to walk by the shore. The pavement was frosted in ripples. The wind had shaped the ice with a genius sculptor’s hand into the wild shapes of Dali or God. Stevie stood on the bridge and looked out, a small figure in a dark coat, lost to the wind.
The lake ferry was not running, but the ferry master, bristling in his heavy jacket, his seaman’s cap, was smoking a cigarette clamped in an ebony cigarette-holder. He was standing on the dock watching his ship.
Stevie wandered over and asked if she could go aboard. If the ferry master thought the request odd, he didn’t show it. Perhaps he realised that Stevie’s red nose wasn’t a cold, that she needed to be on the water and alone.
Like everything else, the deck was covered in ice; a pair of small brown ducks was sheltering in the lee. The boat moved gently on the patch of black water. Opposite, Stevie could see the wooden Schwimm–bad, in summer full of sunbathers and swimmers in coloured caps, but today grey and dusted with snow. The renovations were still unfinished and the place looked forlorn, the sky above it heavy with the unshed snow.
Things had come to an end and Stevie felt lost. Irina, Anya and Vadim were moving to Zurich. She had insisted and they had been glad to comply. Moscow was no longer home—the bad memories overshadowed the good and, in any case, it was too dangerous for them now.
Stevie hoped Vadim’s revenge fantasy had played itself out in that horrible scene he had witnessed. Revenge was not justice, but she found it hard to find fault with Vadim. When a society could no longer have faith in its government to uphold the laws and to redress their grievances, then people would begin to take matters into their own hands. They could see no other choice. Every man in power was, after all, just a man.
Wasn’t that the universal hero’s story, the wresting back of control for the individual life from forces larger than yourself—monsters, earthquakes, madness, despotism—and the restoration of dignity? There was glory in that struggle, Stevie thought as she lit her last cigarette, and it was what Masha and Kozkov and so many others had died for. It was important to remember them.
We were all capable of small heroics; we were all capable of being masters of our own destinies if we chose to be. It was time, Stevie decided, to think about the future.
She would lend the Kozkovs her flat until they got settled. It would make a good excuse to get away. She would tell Rice she needed a break and disappear until the cold shadows had melted.
Somewhere hot, she thought. Very hot.
Along the bridge, walking against the wind, she saw a tall figure in a herringbone overcoat.
Henning and Stevie stood on the frozen deck looking out at the ice and said nothing for a long time. The tips of Stevie’s eyelashes had frosted where they had been wet.