The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [61]
‘After the raven took Galina’s grandfather,’ Vadim continued, ‘the family went down to the river Neva. There was a pipe that ran to it from the NKVD cellars. Some days the water in that spot ran red with the blood washed down from the executed. Galina’s family didn’t know whose blood was staining the river that day, but they threw flowers into the Neva anyway and said goodbye.’
Their feet crunched on through the snow. Stevie kept glancing over her shoulder at the hungry dog. He looked a little crazed, his tongue hanging out. She was glad to have Vadim with her. He went on with his story unperturbed.
‘Galina then lost one of her sons in Chechnya. A rocket attack, the military said. Could have been anything. She only ever got half of Alyosha’s body back.’
‘Poor Galina.’
‘And Masha.’ Vadim looked down at Stevie. ‘Her son was seven years old when he first looked under the family car for a bomb.’
As they walked on through the snowy ruins, Stevie thought about the staggering load that had been brought to bear on the people of Russia, and how it had crushed down with the weight of eternity, ground them into gunpowder and sand, and about how that same pressure produced, every now and then, a diamond of extraordinary brilliance.
They reached the university gates and stopped. Vadim let go of Stevie’s arm.
‘You are safe from the dogs here. They won’t follow you outside the grounds.’
But was she safe from whoever she was sure was following her?
Vadim hurled his stick into the trees. ‘I can’t get that man’s voice out of my head,’ he confessed to Stevie. ‘I wanted to crawl into that tape machine and break his throat.’
‘We’ll find him, Vadim.’
‘It seems crazy that we know what his voice sounds like, and who he is, and yet . . .’
‘It’s not certain that Gregori Maraschenko took Anya.’ Stevie was suddenly worried Vadim might do something rash.
‘No? Looks pretty likely to me.’
Stevie could only agree with silence.
As if he could read her thoughts, Vadim leaned in and kissed her cheeks. ‘I won’t do anything. Don’t worry.’
Stevie wanted to say something reassuring but managed only an enormous sneeze, then another. Her eyes were streaming. Vadim considered her, head cocked to one side. ‘You need gorchichniki, mustard pads—you stick them to the soles of your feet and to your kidneys. Trust me. They’re the only thing that works.’
The security guard at the pharmacy door (this was Moscow) scowled at her. Inside, there were three windows with a pharmacist—like tellers at an old-fashioned bank—long queues in front of each. Stevie joined the shortest.
The customers were all old, or old before their time, bundled and wrapped and swaddled to the point of impaired mobility, their faces incurious and impenetrable. No one spoke. Finally, it was Stevie’s turn at the window.
A stocky young woman in a white coat looked up. ‘Gavaritye. ’ Speak.
Stevie asked politely: ‘Izvinite pozhaluista, I need some gorchichniki.’
The pharmacist just looked at her blankly. Nothing. Stevie tried again, more in the pharmacist’s style, ‘Gorchichniki!
’ This time there was the slightest relaxation deep in the rigid cognitive functions of the pharmacist’s brain.
‘Ah. Gorchichniki!
’ Stevie knew her Russian pronunciation was not good, but she could have sworn there could have been only the smallest difference in her version of gorchichniki, such as might have been produced by an old man with loose dentures, say, or a swaddled babushka mumbling through her layers. The pharmacist pointed to the window next to hers and proceeded to read her papers.
Stevie, burning with frustration, went to the back of another queue and waited. She had been there