by Kim Wilkins
“Yeah,” said Daniel. “I’d better get sorted.”
Rosa found the bear uppermost in her thoughts and wondered about its enchantment. Its odd human-like face—Slavic eyes above the bear snout, a knowing smile on full lips—waited just behind the veil of her perception, ready to peek out as she fell asleep or when she gave her imagination over to idle thoughts. What did it want?
“What’s that dirty piece of rubbish?” said Larissa, Vasily’s lady friend, bustling into the office as though she owned it. Maybe she thought one day she would.
“The men found it at the building site,” Rosa said.
“It needs a good scrub,” Larissa sniffed, rubbing a well-manicured thumb over the bear’s mouldy belly. She strode through to Vasily’s room, purple scarves and French perfume streaming in her wake.
“Maybe you do need a good scrub,” Rosa said to the bear, picking it up and taking it into the kitchenette with her. She cleared a space between empty coffee cups and searched for a soft cloth, pausing for a moment to consider the bear.
Rosa’s second sight was untrained, but she had learned over the years how to open it up and close it down at will; now she took a breath and opened it, feeling the rush of magic upon her eyes and ears. Pale vaporous ribbons snaked around the bear, and Rosa couldn’t deny there was something sinister about them. She closed her second sight and used the cloth to gently rub away the dark stain of centuries. The bear was yellow-bright underneath. Rosa took it to the table.
Vasily came in as she sat down.
“It’s a pretty thing,” he said, falling into the chair opposite.
“That’s a long face, Uncle Vasily.”
“I broke it off with Larissa.”
Rosa raised an eyebrow, feigning surprise. “Any reason?”
“It simply didn’t feel right.”
Rosa nodded. Vasily had never married, and Larissa was the latest in a long string of lady friends who seemed to last two months at most. Rosa’s suspicion was that Vasily preferred the company of men, but he was the kind of man who would never admit such an inclination. It made Rosa sad to know the passing years might leave him lonely.
“When it feels right, Uncle Vasily, will you ask one to stay, no matter who it is?” she said.
“What a strange thing to say, Rosa. Of course I will.” He smiled at her. For everyone else he had terrifying mood swings, but for her he always had smiles. “It was better to finish it now, before I go away.”
“You’re probably right, Uncle Vasily.” Vasily was leaving for Moscow that afternoon for a business conference.
He touched her cheek. “You are so much like Ellena,” he said softly.
Rosa couldn’t meet his eye.
“Rosa, why won’t you talk about your mother?”
“I can’t, Vasily. It was so awful at the end.”
“Then talk about the beginning, or the middle.”
Tears brimmed and she swallowed hard. “You talk about her. What was she like when she was twenty-seven, like I am?”
“She was beautiful and clever, like you are. Her own mother had just died, and she met a handsome man named Petr Kovalenko. He had red hair and blue eyes.”
Rosa smiled and looked up. “Go on,” she said, although she knew the story.
“He was an architect and he dreamed of the West. We hated him for it, because he took our beautiful Ellena away, and their tiny girl named Rosa. They escaped to Prince Edward Island and lived in a misty valley and they were happy for a time. But all times pass.”
Rosa nodded, thinking of her father’s death when she was only eight. “They do.”
“Now that tiny girl is here with me, and I worry about her.”
“You don’t need to worry about me, Uncle Vasily.”
“When you find a nice young man to settle down with, I’ll stop worrying.”
“I found one, I let him go,” she said. “I haven’t much hope of finding another.”
Vasily snorted. “All those boys you see. You have a new one every week! So many to choose from.”
She dropped her head, not comfortable. “It’s not serious, Uncle Vasily. They’re just for fun.”
“Fun?” Vasily’s voice grew dark. “Not too much fun, I hope.”
“I don’t do anything you’d be ashamed of,” she lied, “but they’re not people to stay in my life, Uncle Vasily. They’re not people to fall in love with.”
He reached across and touched her hair. “You’ll find somebody wonderful, Rosa,” he said. “A girl as special as you need not worry.”
At that moment, one of the draftsmen gingerly knocked at the door. Vasily turned with a snarl on his lips. “Is it important?”
“Vasily, we need you to approve these plans.”
Vasily rose and took the plans from him, running a practised eye over them. “Pah! These are not the right ones. Must I do everything myself?” Then he was gone in a thundercloud.
Rosa tapped her fingernails on the table in a rhythm. She sang a song under her breath and drove out thoughts of her mother. The bear smiled at her.
“You are a strange thing,” she said, reaching for it and opening her second sight again. “Tell me something about you.”
A chill prickle on her fingertips warned her to pull away, but she didn’t.
“Go on,” she said, “I’m not afraid of you.”
Ice shot up her arm. The smell of blood and gunsmoke and visions of red splattered in dark places overwhelmed her. A series of agonising jolts beat against her chest. Then, just as quickly, the feelings subsided. Yet something was left behind: a dark stain on her memory.
“Perhaps I am afraid of you after all,” she murmured, and took the bear to hide it in her desk.
Rain sheeted across the road and the taillights of the car in front reflected off the slick asphalt. Em sighed for the fourteenth time and Daniel felt himself growing tense.
“Em?” he said.
A pale hand shot out in exasperation. “Look at this traffic! It would be quicker to walk.”
Half an hour out of Novgorod and they’d come to a standstill.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She turned to him, a puzzled smile on her lips. “Daniel, it’s not your fault.”
Of course it wasn’t, so why did he feel guilty? Because he was making her drive? Because he’d caused them to leave twenty minutes late by printing out pictures of nineteenth-century Russian artwork off the internet to take with him? Or was it just because a dark-eyed woman with a cool smile was bound to make him uncomfortable? He determined to be rational and said, “I wonder what’s causing this traffic jam?”
“It’s probably an accident. Something must be blocking all the lanes. Here, pass me that map in the glove box.”
Daniel did as she asked and gazed out the window. A car raced up beside them on the gravel shoulder and disappeared down a dirt side road.
“I think there’s another way around,” Em said. “I think that’s where he’s going.”
“I’m sure the traffic will clear eventually.”
She peered at him over the top of the map and raised an eyebrow. “Trust me, okay?”
She threw the map into his lap and, with a quick check behind her, wrenched the car onto the shoulder and down the dirt road. “This way we’ll come out near Ljuban. It’s further, but I’m sure it will be quicker.”
Within a few minutes, they were travelling on a poorly maintained road dotted with potholes and crumbling at the edges. Stands of birch and larch whizzed past as the rain continued to fall, and the wipers on the big blue Ford kept a steady rhythm.
“See,” she said, “the open road.”
He laughed softly. “Sorry. I guess I’m a nervous driver.”
“Nervous drivers are dangerous drivers,” she replied, “and they always arrive late.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
“So, why are you going to St Petersburg? What have you got planned?”
“I’m meeting with an old friend.”
“Russian?”
“She is, yes. But she lived most of her life in Canada.”
“And what does she do in St Petersburg?”
“She works for her uncle, a developer. They found an old object while knocking down a wall, and she wants me to look at it for her. See if it’s worth anything.”
Em flicked the radio on and was silent for a long time. Daniel stared out the window and wished Em was chatty like Megan or Lesley, the other girls on the shoot.
They listened through two ’80s rock ballads and then Em said, “She’s an old flame, isn’t she?”
Daniel looked around in surprise. “I’m sorry?”
“The woman you’re seeing today. She’s an old flame.”
Daniel had to smile. “Yes, she is. How did you know?”
“I overheard some of the crew talking about you on the site this morning. Robert said you’d complained of girl troubles.”
“They were talking about me?”
She waved a dismissive hand. “They talk about everybody. Those guys are worse than teenage girls.”
“Rosa and I…knew each other, when she was living in London.”
“Rosa. That’s a pretty name. I always wanted a pretty name.”
“Em’s a pretty enough name,” he said boldly. “What’s it short for? Emily?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s just Em. No middle name, either. My mother used to tell me that they couldn’t afford more than two letters.”
Daniel laughed.
Em continued, “The worst part is, I was twenty-five before I found out that it wasn’t true. I spent most of my life thinking you had to pay for the number of letters you used in a child’s name.”
“How did you find out differently?”
“I had a child of my own,” she said guardedly.
“I didn’t know you had a child,” Daniel replied.
“Yes you did. Those gossips back in Novgorod must surely have mentioned it.”
“Well, okay, they did. But I didn’t know whether to believe them.”
“I can imagine what else they told you. Yes, Daniel, I have a twelve-year-old son named Rubin. No, I don’t live with him. He has a perfectly nice stepmom whom he adores, and his father is a professor of classics at Boston University.”
“You must miss him.”
She chose her answer carefully. “As long as he’s well and safe, I’m comfortable.”
Daniel didn’t press the point. The rain came down heavier and he forced his hands to relax so they wouldn’t ball up and reveal to Em how nervous he was about the speed she was using around corners.
“What did they say?” she asked. “Did they say I abandoned him?”
“I don’t think anyone used that word.”
“Some men don’t live with their children, and nobody raises an eyebrow,” she huffed. “For a woman, it’s considered unnatural.”
Daniel didn’t know what to say, so said nothing.
“Maybe it is unnatural,” she muttered, but he almost couldn’t hear her over the windscreen wipers and, besides, he had no idea how to respond.
The trees flew past outside. Daniel sighed and tried to relax into his seat, turning his eyes to the road in front. The car rounded a sharp bend and, just a few hundred feet ahead of them in the grey mist, a truck had stalled in the middle of making a turn.
“Shit! Em!”
But she had already seen it, jamming on the brakes. The car began to slide. Daniel shouted and threw his hands over his eyes. The car spun. There was a dull thud, but no clash of metal on metal. His body jolted in the seat, but a moment later they were still. Daniel peered out from behind his hands to see they had come to rest in a ditch on the side of the road.
“Jesus!” he gasped.
“Always turn into a slide,” Em said casually, putting the car into reverse. “Now, how are we going to get out of here?”
The truck driver had pulled his rig off the road and was running over to help them. Em wound down the window. The truck driver started speaking urgently in Russian, and Daniel found he couldn’t focus through the pounding of his pulse to make sense of his words. Em, however, was managing fine. She discussed the situation with the truck driver confidently, if not grammatically precisely. Daniel gathered a few moments later, after some attempts to reverse the car out of the ditch, that their back wheels had become mired in the mud.
“I have some wood in the back of the truck,” the driver said in Russian, and went off to fetch it.
Em turned to him. “Are you okay? You look pale.”
Daniel assessed himself. His heart still thundered and his hands shook. The adrenalin was only now retreating through his veins, dragging its hot feet reluctantly.
Em peered closer. “Daniel?”
“I thought we were going to die,” he managed.
She smiled, the puzzled expression returning. “But we didn’t.”
“We could have.”
She clasped his fingers in her cool hands. He could feel her pulse in her wrists. Regular and calm.
“But, Daniel,” she said, “we didn’t. We’re okay. We’re just stuck in a ditch.”
The truck driver was back. Em got out of the car in the rain and helped him to slant the planks of wood under the back tyres. It took Daniel two minutes to realise that this was probably a man’s job. He got out of the car to offer help.
“I’ll do that, Em,” he said, realising he didn’t sound convincingly masculine.
She looked up, her hair dripping. “I’m already wet, Daniel. You stay in the car. No use in both of us being uncomfortable.”
But he couldn’t arrive in St Petersburg with Em soaked through and himself dry and warm, so he hovered nearby and offered help and translated difficult phrases for Em. She jumped in and out of the car, reversing in stages out of the mud. Fifteen minutes later they were on their way, both muddy and wet.
“Are you feeling better now?” Em asked as they pulled back onto the road. She switched the heater to high, and a blast of hot air fried his eyeballs.
“I guess so. I got a shock, that’s all.”
“Yes, you’re right to feel shocked. I suppose we could have died.”
“But we didn’t,” he said, echoing her words from earlier as a reassurance to himself.
“No, we didn’t. There’s nothing to be afraid of right now, so you don’t have to look so pale.” Em turned up the radio, and was lost in her thoughts all the way to St Petersburg.
THREE
Rosa was on the phone when Daniel and Em walked into her office late that afternoon. Daniel’s clothes had partly dried, but clung to him uncomfortably. His pants, and Em’s shoes and skirt, were splattered in mud. He couldn’t have felt less unsightly in Rosa’s presence, especially as she was as beautiful as ever. Her long black hair was loose about her shoulders, her ocean-blue eyes and white skin luminous. She gestured to them to sit in the overstuffed armchairs near the door. He sat down, but Em pushed her short dark hair behind her ears and remained standing while Rosa spoke in rapid Russian down the phone. Although she had been raised in Canada, she had spoken Russian at home right up until the day her mother died. Daniel found Russian the most beautiful of all languages to speak, gliding as it did between the back of the throat and the front of the mouth. To hear Rosa speak it was divine.
Finally, she hung up.
“Oh my God, what happened to you?” she said, emerging from behind her desk. She wore a black lace dress, red-and-black striped tights, and a pair of lace-up stiletto boots: how Mary Poppins might dress were she in a porn flick.
Daniel rose and introduced Em. “Rosa, this is Em Hayward.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
“We got bogged in the mud on the side of the road,” Daniel explained.
“In the pouring rain,” Em added.
Rosa went to her desk and began scribbling on a piece of paper. “You both need a warm shower and clean clothes. Here.” She
handed Daniel the piece of paper and a set of keys she found in a drawer. “This is the address for my Uncle Vasily’s place, where I’m staying at the moment. There’s no-one there. He’s away in Moscow. Let yourselves in, make yourselves comfortable, borrow any clothes that fit.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Em.
“I’ll join you shortly. I have to pack up the bear and organise somebody to answer the phones for me.”
Then she was bustling them out the door, before he’d even had a chance to say, “You look wonderful. I’m so pleased to see you. Why did you leave me, anyway?”
Vasily’s apartment was huge and immaculately clean. The sharp lines of blinds and angular furniture contrasted with the muted coffee and mulberry colours. Daniel closed the door behind them and placed the keys on the marble bench which ran between the kitchen and the living area.
“Which way to the bathroom?” Em asked.
“Don’t know. I’ve never been here before,” Daniel replied, tentatively peering behind doors. “This looks like Rosa’s room.”
Em pushed the door open and, without hesitation, crossed to the wardrobe and began selecting clothes.
Daniel was still opening doors. “Here’s the bathroom.”
Em edged ahead of him with an armful of Rosa’s clothes. “Excuse me.”
She closed the bathroom door behind her and Daniel hesitated near the door to Rosa’s room. The wardrobe was still open, and he could see the sleeve of the red dress she had worn on their first date. He approached, gingerly pushing clothes on hangers aside to see if he could find the blue scarf he had bought her.
The door to the bathroom opened again, and Daniel jumped and backed away. Em stood in the doorway, still in her wet clothes. The hot water was running in the bathroom behind her, filling the room with steam.
“Have you found the towels?” she asked.
“No.” He moved past her and tried another door. Vasily’s room. The next one was the linen cupboard. He handed Em a towel and she disappeared. He grabbed one for himself then quickly showered in Vasily’s ensuite. Expensive shampoos and body-scrubs were lined up on the windowsill, but he was too timid to use any. He agonised for a full two minutes about underwear—his own boxers were wet and it didn’t feel right to borrow somebody else’s—then decided to go without beneath an oversize pair of track pants and a blue-buttoned shirt.
