The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [42]
His words were a bullet to Stevie’s heart. Vadim was just a boy but he knew the whole world. He had understood the nature of evil, how it began in frigid indifference to other people, and then slid slowly down the scale of good, towards evil. That end . . . that just blurred into a black fog of distance, a horrible, cold, endless stretch.
‘You’re right, Vadim. I think we comfort ourselves with the idea that evil is confined to master plans conceived in great detail by bald men stroking Persian cats with a long manicured fingernail. This puts evil beyond the reach of ordinary men.’
Stevie herself believed that evil began in small acts of selfishness, banal cruelties in a normal day; their horror was that they were casual. To be casual with the lives of others was evil. This was an uncomfortable idea because it meant that everyone had the potential to influence the balance of good and evil on the earth. It demanded that we take individual responsibility. We would all prefer to leave that to someone else.
Stevie’s eyes drifted back to the protest. ‘I don’t think there is ever a clear demarcation between good and evil. There’s no line drawn on the scale that declares, “From here be evil” like those old explorer’s maps of the world that say “Here be monsters”. I think what matters is your place on the scale.’
She blew on her lemon tea. ‘Evil is the downward creep, in small, millipede steps, while goodness is the struggle to move up; trying to lift others with you is heroic.’
Real evil required a total absence of the moral imagination. Without the capacity to empathise with the position and pain of others, their suffering, even their existence, somehow didn’t seem real.
‘And your officers, Vadim, are a terrible example,’ Stevie continued. ‘Once the humanity of others has been denied, there is nothing too cruel that cannot be done to them.’
And so now, the core of society, its glue, its respectable members— the mothers and the grandmothers, the pensioners—had to take to the frozen streets with placards. It was proof enough that there was no other way to be heard.
Grey militzia poured like ants from the back of the trucks and surrounded the mothers.
No one was listening.
_________
Even the most robust and glamorous fantasy is difficult to sustain in a hospital. The setting is designed to strip people of all illusions. There is nothing more real than the sick, the injured and those who care for them. Stevie was just managing to hang on to her Mary Poppins music-teacher whimsy, but it was taking effort. At the tangy odour of the lunch trolley (boiled cabbage loaf? chicken gelatine?), she almost came unstuck. But her imagination, often problematically powerful, found a certain satisfaction in the challenge and she soon regained her equilibrium.
Petra Koshka. Her surname meant cat. As they wound their way through long linoleum corridors and swinging double doors, Stevie thought about her cat at home in Zurich. Actually, she shouldn’t say her cat at all. They had simply met one day, walking in opposite directions along the river, she towards the lake, he towards the Bahnhof. Stevie’s romantic disappointment in the Alps was only a week old.
The cat had recently been shaved. Only his head and the tip of his tail retained their former majesty. He was obviously furious and embarrassed and ashamed. Stevie could relate. He had snapped up the end of Stevie’s Bratwurst mit Senf, her grilled veal sausage and mustard lunch. The fact that he had not minded the mustard told Stevie the cat was starving, and she invited him home. She had offered him shelter, at least until his majesty grew back.
Stevie had asked if she could call him Peter. He had turned out to be a gentleman. He was staying with her grandmother at the moment. Peter was clever and polite. He never took food without asking first.