LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

in a frame.

      ‘He’s the papa of my real father.’

      The picture is much the same as the ones that line the tenement hall, but these men are wearing a uniform subtly different from Grandfather’s own. In the image they stand in a row against a brick wall, each with a rifle in the crook of their arm.

      ‘He was in police, in the war.’

      Yuri seems inordinately proud, and lands a plump finger on the man who is his Grandfather.

      ‘What did your papa do, in the war?’

      The war was a thing that happened in the long ago, in a time beyond all reckoning. In that age there were heroes and winters that lasted for seasons on end. There were kings with companies and they waged battles on ice-bound tundras, and took up brave quests. In truth, the boy does not know if Grandfather was in a war or not. It might be that those winter wars happened in his great-grandfather’s time, or even an aeon before that. In the war, soldiers rode on woolly mammoths and unleashed great wildcats into battle, to cut down evil mercenaries with teeth like sabres.

      ‘I don’t know,’ he says.

      ‘My mama says I’m not to know, but I do. He was a police and he kept people safe.’

      At that moment, the bedroom door flies open and Yuri’s mother reappears. On a tray she has pastries, dusted with sugar, like the ones mama would take him to marvel at in the baker’s window. She is about to set it down when she sees that Yuri is holding the photo.

      ‘I told you! Put that dirty thing away or it goes in the rubbish!’

      Yuri scurries to squirrel it back in the box, ducking his mother’s hand.

      Without another word, she tosses the tray on the bed and sweeps out of the room.

      ‘It’s because of my stepfather,’ Yuri explains, deliberating over which of the identical pastries he should devour. ‘My stepfather says the police were wicked in the war, but he doesn’t really know. How can a police be wicked, when he’s there to help?’

      The boy shrugs.

      ‘Maybe I can come to your house again. Then we can play without getting bashed.’

      The boy nods, but it doesn’t seem a thing that could happen, to have boys or girls to play in the tenement. The tenement is a place like that photograph now stashed away, where time is out of step and the real world awry.

      They play on, and in stages the tray is cleaned of pastries, shreds, and crumbs. To lick the tray clean is a forbidden thing, but the crumbs taste better for being forbidden.

      Soon, the snow is so thick against the windows that there is absolute dark. Through the walls, the boy can hear the tinny buzzing of a television set; Yuri’s mama is, he says, watching her stories and mustn’t be disturbed. There is the clinking of a bottle and, intermittently, she barks at the cavorting characters on screen, even though she cannot be heard. To Yuri, this appears to be the end of the world. He flushes crimson red, refuses to catch the boy’s eye and mutters about a new game, anything to distract the boy from what is happening on the other side of the walls.

      A clock above the door ticks – and the longer the games go on, the more persistent the ticking seems to be. Yuri chatters on, explaining new portions of his map and new games to be played, but all his words are drowned out by that simple, unchanging tick.

      On the clock’s face: seven o’clock, now eight, now nine.

      Yuri has dragged a new piece of card to the foot of his bed, and is cultivating a dark pine forest in its corners, when the boy thinks he can detect another ticking in the air. This one comes with a different rhythm; it sounds more heavily, with a dull reverberation.

      Time slows down. The hands of the clock drag, each tick tolling with a tortuous lag.

      There come three short raps, of hands knocking at the front door.

      Yuri spins around, as if caught in some mischief. ‘But my stepfather isn’t home until the weekend!’

      It is panic that seizes Yuri, as he endeavours to tidy the room, but the boy sits still and listens to Yuri’s mother crossing the flat to answer the door.

      ‘Come in,’ she says – and he hears, once again, the click of those jackboot heels.

      After that, he knows what is coming. There is nowhere to run, and hiding would be useless. Yuri’s mother appears again in the doorway. She does not speak, but a soft look in her eyes compels the boy to stand and follow her, back through the flat, into the living room where the door stands open, with winter flurrying up in its frame.

      There stands Grandfather. His white hair is emboldened by ice, and his whiskers carry their weight as well. In that frozen mask his eyes are piercing bolts of cobalt. He wears gloves through which bitten fingers show.

      The boy goes to him, stalls, goes to him again, crossing the flat’s endless expanse in a stuttering dream. ‘Is she in hospital again?’ he says, with a tone that some might say is even hopeful.

      Grandfather steps forward with clicking jackboots, crouches, and opens his greatcoat to put old and weathered arms around his grandson.

      ‘No, boy,’ he whispers with the sadness of mountains, of winters, of empty tenement flats. ‘No, boy, she won’t be going to hospital ever again.’

      On the ledge by the window, its underbelly lit up by slivers of light shooting up through the floorboards: the little Russian horse that was a present from his mother.

      It is cold in the tenement, and has been cold throughout the long, empty days. The boy counts them in his head: five, six, seven days since the jackboots clicked on the frigid metal stair, their steps tolling out the news. Now, with his eyes lingering on the little Russian horse, he waits for their clicking again. Today there has been nothing to do but wander up and down the hall, brooding on every photograph of the long ago, wondering at such things as soldiers and jackboots and guns.

      When headlights roam the road outside, the Russian horse is trapped, monstrous, in the sweeping beams. The boy creeps up, as if he might peep over the ledge and look into the street below, but the creature leers at him and he is not brave enough to come near. He turns back, meaning to sit on his haunches in the corner of the room, but the horse’s shadow dominates the far wall. The boy starts, turns back to the tiny wooden toy just as the headlights pass on. Now, it is just a flaking Russian horse again, with its painted eyes and preposterous eyelashes, its ears erect like a fox, a twisted little creature he must always look after, no matter how malevolent it has become in the week since mama disappeared.

      It is only when the headlights are dead that the boy goes to the window. On tiptoes he can heave himself up and look out onto the tenement yard. Mama’s car is parked at an awkward angle, one wheel up on the kerb. Ice still rimes the windscreen, so that the driver must have driven half-blind. Inside, a little heart of light glows.

      When Grandfather appears, he is clutching a brown parcel to his breast. He takes off, but does not lock the car behind him. Soon, after he has crossed the tenement yard, he disappears from sight. The boy listens out for the click of his boots on the concrete. Then, he drops from the window ledge, upending the little Russian horse, and creeps to the bedroom door.

      He will, he decides, make Grandfather a hot milk.

      In the hallway, the photographs stare at him, and he in turn stares at mama’s door. He has not been through since the night Grandfather brought him home from Yuri’s, but he knows that Grandfather goes in there at night – not to sleep, but to make the sad baby bird sounds that the boy has started to hear after dark. Inside, a lamp burns; the boy can see the light in the sliver under the door. He drops to his hands and kneels and presses his nose to the crack, like the pet dog he has never been allowed. He thinks: I’ll smell her still, in the air trapped like a tomb. But all he draws into his nostrils is dust and carpet strands.

      He is in the kitchen, with the milk pan rattling on the stove, when he hears the familiar click of Grandfather’s heels.

Скачать книгу