Babayaga

by Toby Barlow

  “I agree,” Oliver said, shaking his head as he repeatedly turned the key, “but I’m afraid our car’s being a bit stubborn.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it doesn’t work. Could be I left the lights on and drained the battery. Could be the starter. The quality on these Chevys is so damn spotty.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Well, there’s a phone booth right on the corner there. I could call a taxi service, though I’m not sure any cabdriver will be up for helping us rescue Will. They used up all their heroics at the Battle of the Marne. Let me see…” He fumbled through a small red notebook he had pulled out of his jacket pocket. “There are a few people I could ring up, though it’s hard to figure whom exactly we can trust at this point. For instance, if Gwen were alive she would have been the first one I called. Ha ha. Ah well, we’ll simply have to take our chances with whomever answers. Might take a few tries.” He dug in his pocket. “Luckily I’ve got some jetons for the phone.”

  She watched and waited as he went down to the phone booth and started dialing. One call followed another, and with every coin Oliver dropped into that phone, she felt the weight of her conviction to find Will grow. If he were almost any other man she had known in her past, she would have been long gone by now. She knew that she had probably played the situation entirely wrong from the start. She could have stayed with Oliver. He would have been easy to leave when the time came, and leaving was what a majority of her bones was urging her to do right now. But her heart told her to stay.

  A hair-trigger instinct to run had always been strong in her: she had charmed her way onto ducal carriages, hidden in the beds of hay wagons and dairy lorries, tucked herself into the claustrophobic baggage holds of freight trains, stolen countless horses, bicycles, and automobiles. She had even once driven a hotwired BMW R75 motorcycle across the Latvian countryside while a bundled and dour Elga rode sullen in her sidecar. Of all her many skills, knowing when to flee was one of Zoya’s most pronounced; she would be long gone before the empty vault was discovered, the forged checks reached the bank, or the bloated body washed up on the riverbank. She knew she could slip out of the Chevy now, leave Oliver to his phone calls, and vanish backward into the night, holing up in a nearby hotel or rooming house, sleeping until her strength returned in full. Then, in a few days, she could find her way to some other town, perhaps breaking from her old trail, heading south to Madrid, Milan, or Rome, or maybe finding a berth on a steamer to a distant port, Capetown, Hong Kong, or Buenos Aires. Making the journey alone, with no sister beside her, would be alien and dangerous, though perhaps, like Elga, she could find some poor urchin to train in the arts, beginning the cycle all over again. All she needed to do was pull the shiny door handle right beside her, and then she could go, never stopping, never looking back.

  The trouble was, she couldn’t. The strange knots binding her to Will kept her rooted in the car seat, waiting impatiently for Oliver to return with whatever scheme he could muster. There was some feeling, some ephemeral spirit working here. She could feel its strange strength clutching at her soul with a grip too strong to resist. It felt like a spell—she knew all the signs of those, but she knew too that this was no bewitching, it was her own choice, born from some kind of affection, which overrode all her old patterns and habits. So instead of bounding off into the briar, she stayed. It was greater than a sense of debt or obligation—Will had shown up in time to save her life, yes, but he had only been her unintentional hero, stumbling in at a lucky moment—the fact was there was more between them, in how their sleeping bodies curled together like a punctuation mark, how his kiss fit against her lips, how their tongues danced along chest and nook and thigh, and how his simple, assured presence calmed her, taking her mind from the constant focus on the hunt, making schemes and stratagems evaporate. It was different than a simple debt. This bond with him made her slightly nauseous, the way all magic did.

  Oliver finally came back to the car. “Well, I’m happy to report the cavalry is on its way, though they’ll take a bit to get here.”

  She nodded, saying nothing. Oliver took out a cigarette. “I must say, I find your affections for our friend Will quite touching. I’m not sure there’s a soul on earth who would go to such great lengths to rescue me.”

  She looked up at him. “You have to want to save someone in order to be saved.”

  “Yes, well, now there’s a brain-teaser…” Oliver said, pausing midsentence as he thought it over. He lit his cigarette and smoked it as they sat silently together. For twenty minutes, nothing happened except for the occasional car passing by.

  Finally, a little gray Citroën deux chevaux came rattling fast around the corner and pulled to a hard stop in front of them, its beat-up bumper almost kissing the Chevrolet chrome. The doors opened and Zoya watched three large black men draw their sizable bodies out from inside the tiny vehicle’s. Moments later, Oliver was making introductions: “Zoya, may I introduce Red, Flats, and Kelly. Gentlemen, this is Zoya.”

  “Bonne nuit, mademoiselle,” said the one named Red, tipping his hat. She smiled politely. She had guessed they were American even before they started speaking English. She was not especially skilled with that tongue, but she had known her share of sailors and could follow them well enough. “Okay, Oliver, how about you tell us a bit more about this job?”

  “And this had better be good, friend, not some wild fairy-tale goose chase,” said Kelly. “We had plans to connect with Basie’s crew backstage at the Olympia tonight.”

  “No, it’s no fairy tale,” said Oliver, pulling out his wallet and taking all the cash out of it. “First of all, as promised, here’s the down payment on the fee. It’s all I have on me at the moment, but there’s plenty more where that came from. Now, did you bring the jumper cables? I’m going to need them to get this damn Chevy moving.”

  “Yep, though I’m not sure our little car’s gonna be able to get that big ol’ Chevy going,” said Red.

  “Well, let’s give it a try. And the shovels?”

  “We got ’em,” said Red. “We had to, um, borrow them from the building manager.”

  “Fine, excellent. If all goes to plan you’ll be able to return them by morning. Now, let’s see, where to next?” Oliver said, taking a folded-up document out of his wallet and laying it out gingerly across the hood of the car.

  Kelly looked down over his shoulder. “What you got there, Oliver?”

  “Looks like some crazy-assed treasure map,” Flats said.

  Oliver flashed a grin. “An astute observation, Flats. It actually is a treasure map of sorts. It shows where, back during the war, you see, a man I know hid—”

  “—crazy-assed treasure map,” said Red.

  Kelly shook his head. “And we could be hanging with Basie.”

  V

  The chef looked down at the little girl. Noelle held the egg up. “Fry it on both sides, please, and keep the yolk soft, then place it on a piece of dry white toast.”

  The chef looked around impatiently. “You should not be here. The house manager will be very upset. And you cannot bring me some random ingredient in off the street and expect me to simply cook it up. If we start here, where will it stop, will you bring in a cow? Will you walk in a pig? If I do this for you, there will soon be a line of people from here to Les Halles asking me to boil their cabbages and bake their bread.”

  But the little girl did not move, she just kept holding the egg up to his face.

  Noelle had found the egg that morning, still warm, and tucked in the yellow folds of her hotel bedcovers. Sitting across the room from her, atop the couch in a pose that was both haughty and aloof, the chicken pretended not to notice that the girl had found it.

  The little girl had risen late, feeling rested though slightly nervous that Elga had still not returned. She hoped the old woman turned up soon, before any employees came knocking at the door with questions about the hotel bill. But Noelle did not let herself worry too much, t
he chicken was there with her, after all, and it had already proved itself very useful in keeping her out of trouble. Noelle picked up the big black phone and called room service, ordering a crème brûlée, some sherbet, a half dozen beignets, and a slice of chocolate cake for breakfast. She ordered a bowl of raw rice for the chicken—that was what Elga had been feeding it and the bird seemed to like it. Then Noelle nestled into the high pillows and studied the egg.

  She was still mulling it over as the breakfast cart was rolled in. Sitting on the end of the bed, she carefully tucked the white napkin into her nightgown and gobbled down all the deliciousness, while keeping one eye focused on the egg. She pondered the very real possibility that it was magical and might grant her a series of wishes, like the magnificent genies from the storybooks. She ticked off her possible wishes. First, she thought, she wanted to become the most splendid and celebrated prima ballerina in the world. She imagined a sea of roses falling at her feet as bouquets were tossed up to her on the Opera House stage. Next, she thought, she wished to be a movie star, like her idol Audrey Hepburn, wearing glistening pearls and diamonds that sparkled as the flashbulbs went off, capturing her kissing her tall, handsome husband on the Cannes red carpet. Oh yes, she thought, who will my husband be? Who? Who? With her mouth full of chocolate cake, Noelle was now bouncing on the mattress, tickled by all the possibilities. She quickly ran through her options, deciding she did not want to marry another film star, because they always had to kiss the other pretty actresses in other movies and she did not like to share. She did not want to marry a president or king, they were often overthrown or guillotined; and she did not want to marry a soldier, even a heroic one, because they were always being shot. Businessmen were boring, doctors came home with diseases, and race-car drivers had a tendency to crash and burn. She thought about a young man who worked in her village, helping a local beekeeper. He was a tall, thin boy with curly brown hair whom she knew only from watching him walk through town carrying his smokers and gear, often awkwardly weighed down by his harvested honey. He was shy, and she was shy, but by the time she scraped out the last bit of crème brûlée from the bottom of its ramekin, she had decided on her course of action.

  First, however, she had to get the kitchen to prepare this egg for her, which was turning out to be difficult. “Please, sir,” Noelle said, “it is only one egg.”

  The stubborn chef threw up his hands. “I have said no, and little girls need to learn that no means no.”

  “No only means no until you say yes,” she said with a smile.

  He returned to the onions he had been mincing.

  Noelle thought for a moment, wondering what Elga would do in this situation. “Hmmm, well, I am sorry,” she finally said, looking around the kitchen. “The chef at my father’s house would cook it for me. You know, his kitchen is a lot like this, only a little bigger.” The hotel chef kept chopping at his onions. “He is an old chef, Louis is his name. Sweet Louis,” she continued. “I think he has grown half blind and now Papa does not like his food at all, he says his broths are flavorless and watery and his roasts are so dull even salt cannot help them.” The chef slowed, listening as Noelle spun her story. “Yes, it won’t be long before Louis is gone and Papa needs a new chef. Have you ever been to Monte Carlo?”

  The chef put down his knife and came over to the girl. “How do you want your egg?”

  “Cooked on both sides, but keep it runny, and then put it on a slice of dry white toast.”

  He took it from her hands. “You are a silly little girl. I will put it between two pieces of toast, then you can eat it like a sandwich.”

  “Thank you.” She curtsied and the chef shook his head.

  A few moments later, she carefully carried the fried-egg sandwich on its white china plate down the long, high-ceilinged hallway back to her suite. There, she hopped into the big, comfortable velvet chair and gave the chicken a conspiratorial wink before opening her mouth wide and taking her first bite.

  Within seconds she was lying in convulsions on the floor, kicking her legs spasmodically, flailing her arms, and snapping her neck back and forth. Her eyes had rolled up so that only the whites showed and her veins bulged and pulsed out from her skin as the visions flooded her mind with the force of a storm’s foaming waters breaking through an overwhelmed dam.

  Over the next two hours, in the muscular thrall of this unrelenting seizure, Noelle saw many things, but she did not see the beekeeping boy.

  VI

  Will was in Detroit. He wasn’t sure how he had gotten there, but it was a sunny day and he was walking down Congress Street toward Woodward Avenue. There was the Guardian Building straight ahead, with the classical Buell Building towering up on his left. He could smell the yeast from the Stroh’s brewery and hear the distant clickety-clack of a streetcar traveling down Michigan Avenue. Then Will stopped, puzzled. On the corner where the Ford Building should have been there stood a weathered saltbox farmhouse with white clapboard siding. A little beyond that a Holstein cow grazed on a patch of grass by the intersection with Griswold.

  The screen door of the farmhouse slammed opened and Oliver’s friend Jake stepped onto the front porch. He had a cup of coffee in one hand and a copy of Le Figaro under his arm. He gave Will a friendly smile and waved. Will did not know what to make of this and stood there dumbfounded. He got that he was experiencing some induced form of dreaming (he knew the electric trolleys on Michigan had been out of commission for years now), but it came with a tangible sense of reality that confused him. Jake gestured for Will to come over to the house and then disappeared back inside. Unsure what to expect, Will crossed the street, walked up the flagstone path, climbed the creaky porch steps, and followed Jake into the dark, old home.

  Entering the parlor, Will immediately smelled bacon and heard the telltale spitting and sizzling sounds of frying fat coming from a room in the back. Going down the long shotgun hall, he came out into a low-ceilinged kitchen, where Jake had all the gas burners on the cast-iron stove cooking, with scrambled eggs in the wide skillet and tomatoes and thick slabs of bacon on the grill. “I didn’t really have time to make anything fancy, the boys only called a few minutes ago to tell me you were coming. But bacon’s good, right? That’s honestly the only food I miss from the States. America sure knows how to make bacon.” He took a plate from the cupboard and, piling the eggs on high and topping it with the mix from the grill, set it on the small table in front of Will. “Eat up. It’s hot and delicious.”

  Will did not know why he felt so comfortable; perhaps it was the odd familiarity of being back in Detroit, or the safe, comforting reassurance of knowing he was in a dream. He sat down and dug in. The food was delicious. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was, he could not remember the last meal he’d eaten. “Where are we?”

  “Good question,” said Jake, pulling up a chair across from him. “Simple answer is that we’re in a mix of your mental landscape and mine. Very confusing to move through at first, and tricky to get orientated in, but you get used to it. But basically, like I said, we’re wandering around in a blend of my subconscious and yours.”

  “How’s that work?” Will asked, taking another bite.

  Jake shrugged. “Beats me. I ain’t the pharmacist. As I understand it, the prime ingredient of the drug is extracted from a common root, one plant, and in some way we are both somehow connected back to that single source. I guess this is what lets it blend the different visions of its visitors. Impressive and very deluxe stuff, light years ahead of what the other guys have got. I mean, putting aside how incredible it is that we’re commingling our individual and unique hallucinations, there ain’t many drugs out there can conjure up a decent breakfast, am I right? That doctor is a genius.” He leaned over to the window and pointed past the faded gingham curtains. “Your vision out there. What is it, Chicago?”

  “Mmmn, no, iz Detroight,” said Will, his mouth full.

  “All right, well, see, we’re also in my grandparents’ house, up in Acco
rd, New York. Upstate. So, this here is a mishmash of pieces of your unconscious world mixed with chunks of mine. Now, I don’t know why my mind would conjure up this sad sack memory for me, I’ve been in plenty nicer places, but I guess it’s some sort of symbolic recollection for me. Like I said, it’s fascinating. When Bendix described what he was up to, I volunteered right away.”

  Will mostly wanted more breakfast, but he thought he should ask more questions first. “How do you know Bendix?”

  Jake shrugged. “He’s been doing various tests with us ever since the war. Initially, he was mixing up Thorazine with variations of crank to try to change a soldier’s sense of time, you know, so that things would seem very slow while the GI was actually moving very fast. It had potential, but there were big physical setbacks, massive strokes and coronaries. Then he had an idea for how to interrogate suspects under doses of lysergic acid. That went kinda badly too. Bendix sent over some LSD batches from Bern that were way past the point of potent. Test subjects were flying out of hospital windows to escape the purple dragons and pink elephants. Two strikes were enough, and Washington sent me back here to smoke him. Then he pulled out this ace from up his sleeve, right in the nick of time, too, ’cause his number was up. But he put this on the table and everyone saw the potential right away. This could be huge. If he’s got what he says he’s got—and it sure the hell looks like he does—then it’s going to be the biggest thing since ol’ Madame Curie discovered radium. But like I say, I don’t know what it is exactly, Bendix is using some mix of ergine, DMT, ibogaine, and other stuff. I don’t ask many questions, the guy spooks me, honestly. The lab boys can sort out the details, all I care about is what we can do with it.”

  “Yes. Very interesting. Really, fascinating,” said Will, only half listening while slathering butter on his toast. He felt entirely at ease; it was nice to be back in the States again, even if it was only in a fantasy. He liked Jake too; the man spoke with a down-to-earth straightforward style that reminded him of home. It made sense to Will that Jake came from good upstate country people. He wasn’t like the other New Yorkers, with their obtuse, long-winded ways. Will wondered how Oliver and Jake had ever become friends when their personalities were so clearly miles apart.