Babayaga

by Toby Barlow

  Almost immediately, he found himself wandering down through his old neighborhood on rue Mouffetard, which was almost as he recalled it, though now periodically punctuated by curious interruptions: a brook running through an alleyway, an Irish bar with a sign reading “Casey’s” standing where the old man Bourdon’s barber shop should have been. As Vidot kept walking, the unrecognizable elements of the landscape began to outnumber the familiar ones, the hat shop was now a stand of willows, the watchmaker’s now a record store, until, turning a corner by the old library, he came upon the sight of Will kneeling in a muddy field, a man holding a gun against his head. Their backs were both to Vidot as the entrance to Vidot’s old metro stop blossomed out of the field in front of them. Distracted by this, the man with the gun did not notice Vidot’s approach. Nor did he hear the detective lift the heavy branch from the ground and swing it round his head with all his might.

  Moments later, the man with the gun lay at their feet as Will rose and dusted himself off. Vidot felt light-headed with excitement. He was not sure how to explain the situation, there was too much to say, so many odd and unbelievable circumstances had stacked themselves up, one upon the other, but then, at the very moment when he was shaking Will’s hand and preparing to start with a simple hello, Will completely vanished, disappearing right before his eyes, leaving the detective alone in a landscape that was now suddenly and completely Paris.

  After that, Vidot walked around for what felt like hours, lost in his thoughts amid scenery that was at once surreal and all too familiar. He found himself missing Adèle with his whole heart, completely abandoning the deep hurt of her betrayal. He longed to sit with her again at their little dining room table, where he could relate to her all the colorful details of this incredible adventure. He had just saved a man’s life! It was, perhaps, the most richly satisfying act he had ever accomplished, and yet without Adèle there as a part of it, he felt empty and hollow. He realized that for him nothing existed in the world of any importance until he shared it with her. Adèle was his sole audience, his only validation. He had no eyes of his own and he was completely deaf without her. He was nothing, truly, but a vessel that carried his small puzzles and great triumphs home to her. Only after she absorbed them or interpreted them or merely smiled at his detailed and perhaps occasionally tiresome recital of them did the many dimensions of his existence finally bloom within him as well, opening up like rosebuds in water. This was, he realized, a perspective of their relationship he had never appreciated before, because he had never been so very far away from it.

  A great wave of exhaustion overwhelmed him and he lay down on a park bench across from a vision of the Place d’Italie. He liked the neighborhood quiet like this, without the cars endlessly running around the city circle. Closing his eyes, he found himself thinking about all those people who were always on the move, continually driving and darting about the city streets and the country roads. Where are they going? What do they need? They wanted bread and cheese and wine, they sought laughter and sex and company, and then they chased the money they needed to start it all over again. It was a mad carousel, rotating faster and faster to an accelerating scream of a calliope song; the music never stopped, never rested, and now he was so very tired.

  He did not know how long he slept. He felt the wind blowing softly against his body and heard the distant whinnying of a horse. Coming to, he was alarmed to find that his tiny body was on the verge of slipping off Will’s head as the strand of hair he was only tenuously attached to was now waving wildly in the wind out an open car window. Vidot pulled hard and managed to climb up the cord of brown hair back to the safety of the scalp. Gathering himself, he was frustrated by the fact that he was still trapped in the confines of this little flea body, yet his brief sojourn as a human had lifted his hopes considerably, for now he knew that he was still, in his soul and spirit, essentially, a man. The rest was only a trick.

  He worked his way up to the peak of Will’s brow and took a look around. They were traveling through the night in a Chevy Bel Air, out past the city limits. The passengers were a cast of characters that had by now become all too familiar. Will was in the passenger seat, Zoya lay across the backseat sound asleep, and Oliver was driving, rambling on in his droll, desultory manner. “Impressive, really, I must say. Never had a woman fight like that for me, even when I was truly in love.”

  “When was that?” Will sleepily asked.

  “Oh, some time ago now,” said Oliver, “when I was first in Paris. I met her when she was studying at the Sorbonne. You would have adored her, Will. Jacqueline was beautiful, black hair, pale skin, your Zoya reminds me of her a bit. My Jacqueline was more petite, but with the same broad cheekbones and the same perfect nose. I fell hard for her right away. We had mutual friends, all ex-pats, and we would take our wicker baskets filled with fruit, bread, brie, and champagne down and picnic in the Luxembourg, playing boules or badminton and lounging about like creatures off some Bastida canvas. At night we’d sit and play canasta in the Spanish cafés while the Gypsy guitar players strummed. I pursued Jacqueline quite energetically, but she was a wary one. I suppose I had a reputation for being a bit louche, even back then. But eventually my charms did win her over and she started staying at my flat, first a few nights a week, then every night. Things grew fairly domestic. Frankly, until then, I’d always been the sort of boy who races madly about, forever late to the station. But the whole pace of life changed with Jacqueline, seconds seemed to tick slower, and while she stayed busy with her studies, I began writing, real writing, not the trite stuff, but actual earnest stabs at it. I sent packets off to New York and London editors who were honestly encouraging. I have to say, my life was as solid as it’s ever been, I was wide-awake in the world. Then, as I grew comfortable, for the first time in my life I was finally able to let my true self emerge.”

  “That sounds great,” said Will.

  Oliver gave him a dark grin and his voice dropped a bit. “Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Though in this particular case my true self turned out to be a complete ass: sarcastic, remote, and glacially cold. A Jewish psychiatrist later told me it was due to a deep, unformed Oedipal anger, not enough imprinting with Mama, or some such bunk. In any case, it was not the best thing to unleash on this innocent girl. I tell you, I loved Jacqueline as much as I’ve ever loved anyone, but that doesn’t mean I loved her very well. I made her miserable. She began losing weight, dramatically, ten pounds, twenty pounds, as if her entire self was trying to escape from me but only her flesh could get away. Finally, she got so thin doctors got involved. It was heartrending. And then, well, it ended.”

  This got Will’s attention. “She died?”

  Oliver looked shocked. “God, no, she shipped off back home, on the Cunard line. Settled into D.C. society and wound up marrying into a family of some prominence. Actually”—Oliver smiled to himself—“I believe her husband Jack’s likely to become the next president of the United States.” He slowed the small, rattling car and turned it up a bumpy old farm road. “You should probably wake your girl up. I believe this is where she told us to stop.”

  XII

  The priest was awake in his small bed when the car pulled in. He had been lying there, blinking up into the darkness as he did almost every morning. Now somewhere deep into his eighth decade—even he wasn’t sure of his age—he savored the beginnings of the day, before early prayer. Most mornings he lay indulgently counting through his deep aches, sorrows, and regrets as the waking thrushes and starlings outside punctuated his silence with their optimistic counterpoint. With arthritic hips sore from his daily bicycle route, the priest had, over time, learned to sleep on his back, a pose that used to bother him, seeming too much like rehearsal for the coffin. His slow respiration mirrored the morning’s own breath as the day awoke in soft tones, bird flutters, and tentative stirrings. For some reason, today the world did not hang as heavily on him as it did most mornings, and as he lay there he nursed a fledgling, unsettling feeling that re
minded him, eerily, of hope. It was an emotion he had long distrusted. He suspected the cause this time was the night jasmine that bloomed out on his arbor trellis. One of the windowpanes in his bedroom had cracked months before, he wasn’t sure how it had happened, and he had planned on replacing it before winter came, but then the arrival of the blossoms had made him delay. Some nights, the gap in the jagged open pane brought in the rain, but more often the pure fragrance came through it, wrapping its essence around his body and filling his lungs as he lay in his bed. He was amazed that it was still blooming so late in the season, and he breathed it in now, deeply inhaling the scent, feeling as if he was wrapped in the romantic arms of its embrace. He had never been with a woman, had actively suppressed that desire for his entire life, but he felt as though some part of the feeling, its profound and reassuring comfort, could be found within the soft aroma of that jasmine. It made the coming day feel ripe with beauty. Who could hunger for any sin, he thought, when so much satisfaction could be found in the wandering fragrance of a simple flower?

  He heard the gravel kick as a car turned off the main road and started up the drive; then the engine cut off and a car door slammed. Perhaps it was the police again with more questions, or Elga returning with the girl, or maybe it was a Soviet stranger coming with an ax. (He was always nagged by the slight worry that a stranger from the old land would come after him, not because he was important, but simply because the state was so random in its violence. Even with Stalin dead, the bear still seemed intent on mauling the world.)

  The knock came at the door, and he pulled his robe on as he crossed the dark room to answer. He was surprised to see Zoya standing there. She had dark circles under her eyes and gazed at him with a solemn look that was both nervous and penitent. “Come in,” he said.

  He put the kettle on the stove. She found a chair and sat staring out the kitchen window. It was still mostly dark out.

  Andrei tried to open things up with small chatter. “Things have been busy around here. The farmer next door died last month, a flu killed him. One cough and he dropped like a stone. There is trouble with the will so now his sons are fighting over the land, tearing his little empire to pieces.”

  She was silent. Andrei kept talking. “Yesterday a policeman came out from the city asking about Elga. Have you seen her?” He poured the tea.

  “Yes,” she said and continued to stare out the window. “I have seen her. Only days ago. Maybe it was yesterday? I can’t even remember. So much has happened.” She sighed. “I have news to tell you.”

  Andrei sat down across from her. “What is it you have to tell me, Zoya?”

  She looked up. “Max is dead. I am sorry.”

  Andrei closed his eyes and instinctively prayed for grace.

  “There was a fight,” she bluntly went on while he kept his eyes shut. “I was attacked by Elga; she was insane and she wanted me to die. She had a girl there with her. They had me trapped in their spells. I needed a distraction to break the girl’s concentration. So I killed Max and the girl screamed and I got the time I needed to escape. Again, I am sorry.” She stopped talking and he looked at her again, her fingers nervously tapping the handle of her teacup.

  For almost sixty years, Andrei had watched his little brown brother scratch and sniff across the continent in a strange otherworldly state. Part of him had been waiting for the spell to end so that they could be reunited, while another part had hoped Max would vanish completely into the ether, taking all this unwanted mystery with him. Andrei had never thought Max would die before he did, he believed his brother was protected, his mortality locked up within the whorls of magic. Hearing the news, Andrei’s first thought was not grief but worry that this spell had been sustaining them both, as though participating in the strangeness of Max’s adventure had been what kept him going, either magically or because he refused to end his days unsure of how the grim fairy tale ended. How many wars had been waged, how many cities conquered, how many maps redrawn, while his brother was tucked inside wool coat pockets or stashed in steamer trunks or scurrying to and fro across gutters and granaries as the circumstances demanded? Throughout it all Andrei had never lost the connection to his brother. But now it was done. Max was gone. A door unlatched in his heart and Andrei felt something slip out; he wondered if he needed it. Sitting quietly at the table with Zoya, a new emptiness inside him, all Andrei knew was that he was honestly not sad at the loss of Max, he was only aware that his own shadow of time had just grown a full length longer, crossing some unseen line.

  He looked up and saw the anxious expression of the woman across from him. She was waiting for his answer. “I must thank you for coming and telling me this yourself. It is surprisingly thoughtful of you. But I guess in a way we were all family. Do not feel bad, though. My brother truly died many years ago, Zoya,” he said. “He was drowned in his own black sea even before you met him.” Zoya still looked worried, so he told her what she needed to hear, a fact he suspected she knew already. “In his heart, my brother was always a rat.” Now she did look relieved. Andrei gave her a half smile and patted her hand, thinking to himself, Well, here we are, a lost witch seeking absolution from a broken priest. These must be modern times.

  “Where are you heading to?”

  Zoya shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m here with some people, we are leaving Paris,” she said. “But I’m not sure where we’re going.”

  The priest thought about how many times he had asked that same question and heard some version of that same answer from Zoya. He realized a woman as beautiful and self-possessed as Zoya never needed to know where she was heading, she only needed to know what to do once she got there. “Who are your friends?”

  “Two Americans. They’re waiting in the car. I told them you could help us. We need to find a place to hide, very serious people are after us.”

  “You can stay here,” said Andrei. “The policeman told me they had Elga in jail for stealing a car. I doubt they will keep her for long, but she won’t be here for at least a few days.”

  Zoya thought this over, then nodded. “We will stay one day, then we will be on our way. We’ll take the train.”

  “Didn’t you come in a car?”

  “One of the Americans is taking it back. The other is coming with me. You can drive us to the station after we’ve rested.”

  Andrei grinned. He knew Zoya was kinder than Elga, but years with the old woman had made her almost as presumptuous and demanding. “I’d be happy to. Perhaps they would like to come in for some tea?”

  “They are American, I think they prefer coffee.”

  “Well, I have tea.”

  She went to fetch her friends. Andrei rubbed his forehead; he felt guilty for calling his brother a rat. He had only wanted to relieve Zoya’s guilt, but he knew it was a truly terrible priest who only says what a confessor wants to hear. Max deserved a better eulogy.

  As Andrei put his clothes on he realized it had been three-fourths of a lifetime since he had last laid eyes on his brother’s true flesh, but he could still vividly recall Maximilian that last night, his sparkling eyes and devilishly wicked smile bobbing above that sea of unwashed and unruly miners all shouting in a drunken mad din as the roulette wheel rattled round. His brother’s expression had been so bright, so flush with joy. Perhaps Max had been lucky after all. If all men could vanish there, thought Andrei, in that moment of pure satisfaction, aglow with good fortune, fiercely confident in their futures, then the benevolence of God’s grace would be much easier to acknowledge. Instead, time had rolled on, washing through that barroom door, taking not only his brother away, but all of them, the miners, the gamblers, the witches, and the priest, all torn out into the driving river of war and waste, so many now lying enmeshed in unmarked mass graves or freed to the skies in the steady smoke that wafted through the camps’ barbed wire. We assume so much, thought Andrei, and forget how little we are promised.

  Zoya came back in the room with two men. Weary-eyed, they looked like a
pair of naughty seminary boys, their suits wrinkled, one with a fading bruise on his cheekbone and blood on his arm, the other one mud-stained and tousled. This is what happens, thought Andrei, when you fall in with a girl like Zoya.

  As she introduced the two, there was an expression on her face that the priest had not seen for some time. Was that a blush, he wondered. Ah, perhaps she had fallen for one of these two. Zoya had always possessed a persistent romantic streak. Elga complained about it all the time, saying that it made Zoya soft. But Andrei knew otherwise, he had watched her turn too many of her lovers into corpses. She was not soft, but she could be sentimental. Yes, he could see she had something for this one with the bruised cheek. What a miraculous fountain love was, Andrei thought, ever flowing, ever refreshing, with a force too exhausting to even contemplate. He rose and gave them a polite smile. “Welcome,” he said in his rough French. “I am making some tea. Would you like some?”

  The two both shook their heads. “No thank you,” said the taller one, in French but with an accent that sounded somewhere between British and American.

  “Fine, then. In that case, you will have to excuse me.” Andrei took his old cassock off the wall hook and put it on. “I have a morning service to attend to. You are all welcome to stay, and if you are hungry you’ll find dried lentils and some potatoes in the pantry. There’s some Cantal cheese in the icebox too, but no bread.”

  “Thank you, but I think—” the taller one began to say, but the priest was already out the door and did not hear the rest. Climbing onto his bicycle, Andrei started down the gravel road. The sun was not all the way up yet and he was already tired of this day.

  XIII

  Noelle had the chicken in her lap when Elga finally came back to the suite. The room stank of stale air and ammonia. “Mmmn, mmmn, little girl, what have you been up to?” growled the old woman, who looked beat-up and tired, with her eye now almost swollen shut. She trundled by Noelle on her way to the dresser, patting the girl’s head as she passed. “Come now. There’s a man out front with a car for us.” Noelle did not move.