Babayaga

by Toby Barlow

  “That’s right!” Oliver said, lightly slapping his forehead. “I was, wasn’t I?”

  “Right, so I’d like to pick that up, but I also need to talk to you, privately, about another issue. It’s very important.”

  “Fine, fine, ladies, please excuse us for a moment.” Oliver led him down the hall and into the main bedroom. Will could not help but notice the top sheet and blankets were all off the bed. He saw Zoya’s shoes and blouse on the floor on one side, the skirt lay in a bundle on the other, signs of a night and maybe a morning’s passion that caused some emotion, envy, or jealousy perhaps, to well up inside Will. He tried not to think about it. “What’s up?” Oliver asked.

  “Okay, well now, we have some trouble,” said Will, focusing on the issues at hand. “In fact, we have some very serious trouble.” He then told Oliver about the photographed Hoffmann-La Roche file and the Soviet embassy. As Will sketched out the details, Oliver sat down, stunned, on the corner of the bed and stared at the floor, quietly taking it all in. He looked as close to being serious as Will had ever seen him.

  “How did Brandon know the file came from your office?” Oliver asked. “There was no letterhead on any of it.”

  “The agency knows what our files look like,” Will said, feeling as though he was confessing. “They’ve seen a lot of them before.”

  “Yes, I see.” Oliver gave Will a funny look. “You’ve been keeping secrets, Will.”

  “Here’s the deal,” Will said, ignoring the accusation. “I’m supposed to hand our personnel files over to the two guys Brandon has working on this—”

  “What are their names?”

  “I don’t remember their names, Mitchell and something.”

  “Odd that Brandon wouldn’t take care of it himself—you’re his boy, right?”

  “No, I’m not his boy. He says he’s working on something more important, he says he doesn’t have time for this.”

  “More important than espionage at the Soviet embassy? Very interesting. The man does stay busy.”

  “The point is, I’m not going to hand over personnel files to his guys so that they can go digging around in a bunch of innocent people’s lives. Who knows what they’ll uncover? Maybe they’ll find our janitor’s a member of the Communist Party, and then what?”

  “Well, I doubt they’d be surprised at that. All the janitors in Paris are Communists,” said Oliver.

  “You know what I mean. It’s serious, very serious.”

  “Yes … Christ, of course it is … it’s the Soviets.” Oliver didn’t say any more as he drifted into thought, and then he nodded, as if reaching a decisive conclusion. “The wisest plan is to do as you say, confess the whole truth. Make a clean breast of it.”

  Will exhaled with relief. He had not expected such a straightforward and simple solution from Oliver. “Yes, okay, that sounds right.”

  “But of course,” said Oliver, “the only way you’ll come out of this completely unscathed is if you actually hand over the double-crosser. If you don’t, they’ll make you the fall guy. You see, a leak like this, it’s too important, they’ll need someone to go down for it. Lucky for us, we know who the culprit is.”

  “That big guy Boris?”

  “Absolutely not Boris.”

  “He’s a Russian, isn’t he?”

  “Boris hates the Russians because he hates Reds, and the Russians hate Boris because they hate queers.”

  “Boris is a homosexual?”

  “My god, you’re not very intuitive about these things, are you? They’re both queers. Boris and Ned. That’s what makes them such a good fit, they’re like an inverted husband and wife. But Ned’s the one we need to find, she was in charge of handling the drop-off, told me she was going down to the embassy personally. Foolishly, I forgot to ask exactly which embassy. I was never very good at details. Anyway, we’ll have to track her down.” He rose from the bed and began dressing. “Why don’t we leave the girls here for a bit and pop over to the Monaco Bar, it’s nearly lunchtime so she’s probably already there, or if she’s not, we’ll find Boris and he’ll tell us where she is. Either way we’ll talk to her, that’s probably our best shot at mopping this mess up.”

  “What, we’re just going to ask her to turn herself in?”

  “No, I sincerely doubt she’d do that, but I’d wager we can get some information out of her, she won’t know that anyone at the Russian embassy has been talking to the Americans. Who knows who’s playing whom here, this whole thing might be straight up or it could be as sideways and dirty as the damned Dreyfus affair. So let’s get Ned’s side of the story first. I wouldn’t want to hand her over to Brandon’s boys without giving her at least a chance to explain. Rather like your concern for those janitors, tu comprends?”

  “Okay,” Will said, though he didn’t like it. He would have preferred if Oliver had simply picked up the phone and called the U.S. embassy to sort the whole thing out. But that did not look like it was going to happen.

  Oliver smiled. “Excellent, let’s go.”

  Back in the kitchen they found the two women sitting in awkward silence over coffee. Oliver clapped his hands together. “Pardon us, ladies, Will and I are going to pop over to the Monaco, see if we can’t find a friend. Don’t think there’s much fun for you two, so…”

  “Fine with me, I’ve got loads of work waiting at the office,” said Gwen, getting up quickly.

  “Yes, of course. I will see you later,” said Zoya. As she said it, she gazed steadily at Will, giving him a broad, warm smile. He felt caught in the focus of her attention. Normally it would have been flattering, but with her sitting there in Oliver’s kitchen, wearing Oliver’s shirt, with Oliver standing only inches away, it was, at best, confusing. But she wouldn’t look away. Gwen was busy putting on her coat, and Oliver was clearing the coffee cups to the sink, so nobody else seemed to notice.

  It was then that she started moving her lips, as if speaking but with no sound; not even a whisper emerged. He knew the old trick of mouthing out a silent phrase, but this was different, she was making no effort to slow or overenunciate the shape of her words to help him comprehend whatever she was saying.

  Finally she stopped and broke her gaze, quickly rising to kiss Oliver on the cheek as he put on his hat and started toward the door. Will didn’t know what to say, so with a confused blush and somewhat flustered, he mumbled his goodbyes to both women and followed Oliver into the outer hallway and down the stairs.

  Out on the street, waiting as Oliver tried to find a cab, Will experienced a curious feeling. The words Zoya had been saying moments earlier seemed to catch up with him, coming clearly to life in his mind, as if she were there beside him saying them out loud. Perhaps she had said them in the kitchen after all and he had for some reason been deaf in their presence then, but apparently nobody else had heard them either. It was strange but it did not matter, for he heard the words now, quite clearly. “I will find you later, I can help. You feel foolish and nervous, even scared, but you are merely lost.”

  IX

  When the priest walked into his farmhouse he found the young girl sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of hot stew. He went to the sink and poured himself a glass of water.

  “So, you’ve escaped?”

  The girl looked up at him. “Elga says you are not a real priest.”

  “Oh, I am real. Maybe not as much as most, but far more than some.” He looked at the girl. Her hair was brushed out and she wore an aquamarine blouse that made her clear blue eyes shine. He could tell she would have grown up to be a beautiful woman someday. Perhaps she would still if she could stay alive. It was possible; Zoya and Elga had both survived against long odds and countless years. But even if she did, she would not be a woman until centuries had passed. Time had become different for her now.

  “Elga says you are an old friend,” the girl said.

  “Well, I am old. That’s true. I’ve known her since I was only a few years older than you.” He finished the
water and rinsed out the glass. “How is your stew?”

  “It’s delicious! She cooked it this morning while I was still asleep. She said I should leave it on the stove for you in case you were hungry.”

  “What kind is it?”

  “She said it was a meat stew.”

  “Here is a little advice for you. Try to avoid eating things that are only called ‘meat.’ Especially when they’re cooked by Elga.” He looked in the pot on the stove. He could see carrots, small onions, and red potatoes simmering along with the meat, but he did not feel tempted. “Where is she now?”

  “She is working at the hospital. She told me she will finish there today and then she will take me into the city.”

  “When do you plan to go?”

  “As soon as she comes home.”

  “Ah. I see.” The priest got up and went back outside. It was a cool day and he had wanted to get his tulip bulbs in before the frost came. He went to the barn and climbed into the loft where the bulbs were stored. He saw that Elga had filled up much of the space with her cluttered stash of jars, herbs, and old texts. She had not asked his permission, but he was accustomed to her using his property as she wished, coming and going at will. (More than once Andrei had awoken in the night to the rough stony sounds of digging in the yard. He knew it was most likely a night badger or raccoon, but there was always the possibility that Elga or Zoya was burying a corpse in the vegetable bed. Knowing there was nothing he could do about it, he would roll back to sleep, consoling himself with the thought that the cadaver’s blood and tissue would be good for the soil.)

  Andrei took the bulbs, found his shovel, and returned to the garden bed. Digging into the soft rich earth, he thought about Noelle, back in the kitchen, remembering how he had been at her age, so wrapped up in himself, waiting like a tulip bulb, through the cold and the darkness, for a blossoming season.

  This was over a half century before, when the tsars still ruled Russia. Born to a struggling merchant and his pious wife who both passed away from fever, he and his brother had been sent off by relatives to seminary as young men, the last of the family money entrusted to their care. Neither Andrei nor his brother, Max, were impressive students, though Andrei certainly believed he had been more diligent than Max. He labored at the catechetical courses and zealously obeyed the rules and rituals of the order, while the more mischievous and prankish Max was regularly caught and beaten. Once they were ordained, they both lived in the monastery, where Max continued to try the elders’ patience. When they were sent off on missions to other eparchies, the elders made them travel as a pair, hoping Andrei would be a moderating influence on his errant brother.

  On their last mission together, their destination was a small, remote village in the northern Ural Mountains. They never arrived there. On the eighth day of their journey, Max absentmindedly let their small carriage drift off the edge of the road into a deep, dry rut, splintering the wheel and breaking the axle. In the blistering heat, the two brothers loaded their luggage onto the back of their bony gray mare and trudged five miles to the nearest town, Ivdel. Arriving at dusk, they found the blacksmith’s shop closed and so they dragged their weary bodies to the inn for the night. The town was crowded and the innkeeper tried to gouge them at first, but ultimately, out of shame and reverence, he offered the two young priests a narrow room above the saloon with a small horsehair mattress to share.

  Ivdel was a prosperous gold town, booming in those days, and the brothers had arrived on the night of a saint’s festival. The bars and hotels were choked with loud miners, all scrubbed pink clean and roughly cologned with the scent of sweating vodka and pipe smoke, all of them hungry for rough stimulation after their deadening days of labor. Raucous music, shouting voices, and the rhythm of loud, dancing boots rattled and shook the thin paneled walls of the brothers’ small room, keeping the young priests awake. A grinning, invigorated Max finally insisted they go down to investigate, and a nervous, tired Andrei hesitantly followed.

  The bar was packed with the broad-shouldered miners and their rouged, laughing whores. Unused to scenes such as these, Andrei blushed at each flirty wink and batted eye, and the barman roared when he timidly asked for a pot of hot tea. Max meanwhile had wandered over to the far corner of the room, lured in and transfixed by the rattle of the ball on the roulette wheel. Later, Andrei realized it had been the perfect trap, neither of the two had ever faced any true temptations and yet here they were sunk deep in the bottom of the devil’s great belly. Before the next clock chimed, Max had coaxed their last coins from Andrei and was busy, betting fast and winning slow; it did not seem like he would last long. Nobody appeared surprised to see a young man in a clerical cassock throwing money down on the table, and they only roared the louder as his winning streak began and then picked up its pace. “You’re truly blessed, my father!” shouted the roughnecks, slapping him on the back as the nine other players dropped to five and then the five to one. When the last ball rattled and dropped into the red slot, Max’s pants and jacket pockets were stuffed full with rubles and kopecks, and, in a sight that made his brother blush, he had his arm firmly wrapped around the waist of a full-breasted grinning brunette. Grabbing a tall bottle of beer, Max announced he was off to find them better accommodations, and amid cheers from the host of drunken miners, the young priest swept the girl out the side door. Looking back over his shoulder as he left, Max held the bottle up, toasting an embarrassed and crestfallen Andrei with a wide, beaming smile. That was the last time the priest ever saw his brother, Max, in the flesh.

  The next day, waking alone on his stiff horsehair mattress, Andrei had waited until midafternoon before finally going out in search of his brother. He was not worried at first, sure that he would find Max in some nearby brothel, sleeping off his sins. Wandering through the town, Andrei prepared a sternly worded sermon for the foolish Max. But by nightfall he had begun to worry. The desk clerk claimed not to have seen Max since he had first checked in, and the local constable only shook his head—it was the sort of town where people came and went all the time, the policeman said. Perhaps his brother had eloped? Who could blame him, after all. Why remain a priest when you can run off, rich and happy, with a pretty young girl?

  Andrei remained a few more days in the town, walking up and down Ivdel’s streets, knocking on every door, until the innkeeper finally lost patience with this penniless priest and forced him to leave. Loading up the gray mare, a bereaved Andrei led the horse out of town, beginning the long journey back to the monastery with a heart heavy with shame. He trudged down the dusty roads, making a rough camp in the soft beds of the arbor stands and washing himself in the cold spring water of mountain creeks. As he was setting up camp in the dusk of the fifth day, he heard the distant sound of low flute music drifting softly through the trees. Lonely for company, he poked his way through the saplings and brush until he reached the source of the music, a campsite with five women gathered around a small cooking fire. It was a curious sight. He wondered if they were the wives of prospectors or tradesmen, or perhaps part of a traveling circus. One was playing the dancing tune on the flute as two others danced by the fire. The remaining two were seated on the ground, clapping and singing along. Then, with a shock, he recognized one of them, the dark-haired woman with whom he had last seen Max. Impulsively, Andrei broke through the trees and stumbled out in front of them, now wild-eyed; with a shaking voice he cried, “Where is my brother? What did you do to him?”

  The women froze, stunned, and stared at him for a long moment. The woods were absolutely silent except for the bubbling rapids of a nearby stream. Then one of the women broke out with a snort and they all started laughing. Taking him by the hand, they drew him gently into their campsite. “Come sit. Come, rest by the fire.” Still trembling and confused by their reception, he stumbled forward and sat down on a log. Tears filled his eyes and he began weeping at his misfortune as they poured him a mug of bitter coffee, stroked his hair, wiped the tears off his cheeks, and handed him
roasted pine nuts and dried apricots to eat. “You will find your brother, don’t fear, you will find him,” they reassured him, their voices warm and soothing.

  He held the hand of the woman who had been with his brother. “Tell me what happened. Please. Tell me.”

  She looked him in the eyes. “I will tell you, of course. I know where he is; your Max is safe, he is happy, but drink first, rest. It is a story, nothing more than a story.”

  The oldest one, a stout silver-haired creature with a face like a toad, leaned forward, into the steely light of the fire. Her question came with a wary tone: “How did you find our campsite, my friend? Were you following us from town?”

  No, he insisted, suddenly a hair nervous, sensing the air of prickly suspicion that had slipped into the circle. He told of his lonesome journey and how he had heard their music through the trees. They looked at one another, as if weighing the truth of his tale. Then the old one nodded, seemingly content with his answer, and they all seemed to relax again. A bottle of wine came out and was passed between them; he timidly sipped at first but then the warmth of the alcohol flooded him with comfort and so he drank more fully. Soon the dark woods were swimming around him and the stars above him seemed wildly strewn, like clouds of yellow pollen blown across the night. As he giggled and then laughed with the women at their bawdy jokes, he could feel himself floating away from the burdens of his ordeal as, one by one, the binding and long-strained ropes of conscience and duty were severed. He felt relieved from all the responsibilities that had long held him down. Finally, the old one, grinning mischievously as she sized him up with her mottled eye, said to the pretty one, “Yes, I think he is ready now. Let us show him.” He looked around, bemused, confused, but still laughing along. The younger woman reached into the pocketed folds of her dress and when her hand emerged again it was holding a black rat.