Rosa and the Veil of Gold

by Kim Wilkins

  Rosa was knocking softly at the door to the apartment when he came out. He let her in.

  “Hi,” she said. “You found everything.”

  “You look wonderful,” he said, unable to hold his tongue.

  “So do you,” she replied with an amused smile, “but I think you raided the fat end of Vasily’s wardrobe. He has a thin end which he uses when he’s off the vatrushki and vodka.”

  “I didn’t want to go nosing around,” he muttered, hoping she would never discover that he was free-balling under her uncle’s clothes.

  “Where’s your friend?”

  “Em? She’s just a work colleague.” Then he realised he hadn’t answered the question and hooked a thumb in the direction of the bathroom. “She’s in the shower. I found some clothes for her in your room. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course I don’t mind. I asked you to come here and help yourselves, didn’t I?” She dropped her car keys on the coffee table and went to the kitchen, carefully setting an old shopping bag on the bench. “Coffee?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Cigarette?”

  “I’m trying to give up.”

  “It’s for the best. Uncle Vasily doesn’t like it when I smoke inside, anyway.”

  As she clattered about, Daniel leaned on the bench and admired her with sideways glances. He was amazed by the way she could arouse in him both devotion akin to worship, and desire akin to animalism: as though he wanted to build her a marble and gold altar and then fuck her senseless upon it.

  She caught him looking at her and said, “What?”

  “Are you happy here in St Petersburg, then?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “It’s nice being with Uncle Vasily.”

  “You said, when you were leaving, that you hoped to find an adventure here.”

  “Did I?” she replied, laughing lightly. “That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it? I think I’d just spent too long in England.”

  “One year is too long?”

  She smiled. “In England it is.”

  He took the joke with good humour. “So what kind of work are you doing with Vasily?”

  “I’m a receptionist,” she said, spooning coffee into the filter. “Nothing special.”

  “You’re not teaching English, then?”

  She shook her head; pointedly didn’t meet his eyes. “No. Last time I taught, it ended badly.”

  Daniel bit his lip. She had lost her job teaching Russian when another student complained about her relationship with Daniel. He fell silent and she put the milk back in the stainless steel fridge, then he decided not to be silent.

  “Rosa, I still don’t really know why—”

  Her hand shot out and her finger pressed against his lip. “No, Daniel. Let’s just keep it light.”

  “I don’t feel light.”

  Rosa opened her mouth to say something, but Em emerged from the bathroom wearing a loose blue dress, which was completely different from the well-fitted browns and greys she usually wore. Her feet were bare and she held her mud-stained shoes in her left hand.

  “Sorry,” she said, “am I interrupting something?”

  Rosa came around the counter and greeted Em. “That suits you. You should keep it. I don’t wear it any more.”

  “That’s kind of you,” Em said, “but no.”

  “Would you like coffee?”

  “I’m in need of retail therapy,” Em said. “I won’t stay.”

  “Your shoes…”

  “It’s fine. None of yours fit me. I have very small feet. I’ll wear these and buy some new ones.” She moved to the tiled area near the entrance and pulled her shoes on. “Thanks again. Is there a coat I can borrow for outside?”

  “Take the one hanging there,” Rosa said, pointing to her red coat on the rack. “I’ll get your clothes washed and dried this afternoon.”

  “I’d appreciate that. And of course I’ll pay you for your trouble.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “I insist,” Em said with a tight smile. “Daniel, I’ll meet you back here in two or three hours. Is that okay with you?”

  “Fine,” said Daniel. “Enjoy your shopping.”

  The door clunked shut behind her and Daniel turned his attention back to Rosa. She finished making the coffees and slid one across the counter to him.

  “What’s wrong with Em?” she said.

  “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her.”

  “She’s odd.”

  “Oh, you mean the silence. Like she’s not really listening to you.”

  “No, there’s something else.” Rosa frowned as she sat on the stool opposite him. “Nothing sinister, don’t misunderstand me. Perhaps it’s unhappiness. Does she have a reason to be unhappy?”

  Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know much about her. She’s not with her kid, but she gives the impression that it doesn’t bother her.”

  “Ah, well, never mind,” said Rosa. “We’re here to talk about the bear anyway.” She reached for the plastic shopping bag. “I want you to give me your first impressions, okay? First impressions are important.”

  Daniel nodded, wondering what she meant. “Okay.”

  Rosa carefully unwrapped the bear and sat it on the bench in front of Daniel. It had the strangest expression on its face: a knowing smile which was almost unnerving, eyes closed as though it was thinking about a malicious pleasure.

  “Well, it’s not nineteenth-century,” he said firmly. “Nothing about it, stylistically, suggests modern times. Or even medieval, given that Russian art has notoriously steered away from sculpture.”

  She tilted her head to consider him. “Is there a chance it’s tourist junk?”

  Daniel shook his head, reaching for the bear. “I don’t think so—” As he touched the bear, a sharp buzz jumped onto his finger. He jerked his hand back, then felt like a fool; a baby frightened by a camera flash. He continued as if nothing had happened. “It’s almost certainly gold. You see these scratches, this dent…” This time, no electricity. “Old gold is soft. And I can’t see any machine marks which would suggest recent manufacture.”

  “How old?”

  “It’s hard to say. Bears were very popular with the early Slavs, though not usually this large or in this material. You see this design of arabesques…it’s almost Byzantine, but the pattern within it…” he indicated with his finger, “that’s a stylised antler pattern which is definitely pagan. I don’t know if I can give you a decisive answer.”

  “Go on, pretend you can. If you had to say something about it…”

  “If I had to, I’d say this is southern, pre-Christian. Maybe something that came out of Kiev around the ninth or tenth century.” Daniel’s heart sped, afraid that he was overstating his certainty. “But I’m really not that sure. It’s odd, Rosa. It’s not typical of any time or place. So I could be out by hundreds of years.”

  She was quiet for a few moments as she sipped her coffee. “So how did it end up in a wall in a bathhouse?”

  “I’d guess somebody hid it there. Bathhouses are supposed to be places of magic, and there was a brisk trade in grave antiquities in the nineteenth century.”

  “And what do you think the electricity was?”

  He looked up. Her blue eyes met his steadily.

  “Electricity?” he said.

  “Daniel, I saw you pull your hand away. Did she give you a shock?”

  “Perhaps static electricity,” he said.

  She huffed. “Of course it wasn’t static electricity. I felt it too, the first time I touched her.”

  Daniel considered Rosa in the muted downlights of the apartment. He knew that Rosa believed in wild things, so he answered carefully. “What do you think it is?”

  Rosa broke the gaze and slid off her seat. “I need a cigarette. Leave the bear here. Join me on the balcony.”

  Em crossed the road and was heading past the cemetery towards Nevsky Prospekt when a sly-looking old woman detached
herself from the fence. A wide band of sunlight broke from the clouds and flushed through the new leaves on the birches behind the wrought iron. A spring breeze rattled branches. The woman approached Em purposefully, her pale eyes fixed on Rosa’s red coat.

  “I’ll tell your fortune,” she said in halting English.

  “Do I look like a tourist?” Em replied.

  “You look like the girl I met last night. She wore that coat,” the woman said, slipping back into Russian.

  “It’s not my coat.”

  “But they are your shoes.”

  Em raised an eyebrow. “Nicely observed.”

  “Let me tell your fortune.”

  “I don’t have time.” Em brushed her aside and kept walking.

  “What did you dream last night?” the woman called after her.

  Em felt herself compelled to stop. There had been a dream. A strange dream, and now she remembered it she felt vulnerable and superstitious. She turned back, reached into her purse for a rouble, and handed it over. “Last night I dreamed of black wool,” Em said. “Tangled, impossible to make straight.”

  “A dangerous and unpleasant journey awaits,” the old woman said. The breeze intensified, flapping the corner of the woman’s scarf. “You should beware of anything made of gold.”

  Em touched her gold watch unconsciously. “Thank you, now I must keep going.”

  The woman grasped Em’s hand to make her stay, then pulled away quickly. “Oh my,” the old woman said, her eyebrows shooting up and sending a thousand wrinkles charging towards her patchy hairline. “Oh, my. You’re empty inside.” She quickly spat three times and crossed herself.

  Em grew irritated. “That which we are, we are,” she said firmly, and strode off towards the expensive emporiums of the main street, relishing the thought of new shoes.

  “There are rules,” said Rosa, offering Daniel a cigarette. He took it tentatively and she turned to survey the view from Uncle Vasily’s small square balcony. The shadowy groves of the cemetery, the domed necropolis and the River Neva slithering silver behind it, Aleksandr Nevsky Bridge pale in the haze. The morning’s rain had ceased and a sticky humidity had set in. The kiss of spring took the chill edge off the air. Even here, eleven storeys up, Rosa could smell the exhaust fumes of the traffic below.

  “So what are the rules?” Daniel said after the silence had drawn out two minutes or more.

  She turned to him, putting her back to the view. “We don’t talk about us. We talk about you and we talk about me, and we talk about everything but us because us is six months ago. Okay?”

  Daniel feigned a nonchalance she knew he didn’t feel. “Okay.”

  “Good,” she said, exhaling a stream of smoke. She jammed her cigarette between her lips, put her hands behind her and heaved herself up on the balcony railing.

  “God, Rosa, don’t do that,” he said, jumping out of his seat.

  She sat very still, getting her balance, then took her hands off the railing and waved them about.

  “Come down,” he said.

  “You wouldn’t be worried if we were on the ground floor.” Giddiness flooded in as she imagined the drop behind her; a thrill of danger that was almost sexual slipped up her spine.

  Daniel sat down again, putting his hands over his eyes. “I’m not watching.”

  “I’m leaning back,” she teased.

  “I’m not watching.”

  Foiled, she jumped down. “Okay, you win.”

  Daniel peeked between his fingers then removed his hands. “I forgot about your stunts.”

  “I didn’t do many stunts in London.”

  “Climbing that tree in Hyde Park?”

  “I was perfectly safe.”

  “You shimmied out on that tiny branch. I thought it was going to break and you were up twelve or fifteen feet.”

  “Fifteen,” she said. “At least.”

  His voice softened. “You ruined what was meant to be a romantic evening.”

  Rosa butted her cigarette and dropped it over the balcony railing. He had contravened the talking about “us” rule, so she ignored him. The butt spun away towards earth. “Oh, yeah, it is a long way down. I wonder what it would feel like to fall that far.”

  “You’ve been skydiving. You know what it feels like.”

  “To fall that far without a parachute,” she said. “I wonder what it feels like to hit the ground.”

  He was quiet and she let the quiet draw out between them. Buses roared, car alarms squealed, trains thundered underground. The clouds moved back in and began to spit lightly. She sat next to Daniel under the awning and picked up her coffee. It was cold.

  “How’s work?” she asked.

  “It’s okay,” he said, nodding slowly. “It’s a job.”

  “What’s the program called?”

  “Great Medieval Cities.”

  “Interesting. What other cities are you doing?”

  “I’m only working on Novgorod. They’ve done Istanbul and Rome and…some other places, I’ve forgotten. They wind up in London in winter, I think. But I won’t be around then.”

  “What are you going to do instead?”

  He leaned back in his chair and wouldn’t meet her eye. “I’ve been offered a job researching for language videos. There’s travel involved, and it could be ongoing.”

  “That sounds good.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “It would take up a lot of time. I wouldn’t be able to finish my thesis. Or my other projects.”

  Rosa considered him as the rain grew heavier and bounced off the awning. His dark unruly curls, his serious eyebrows, his bitten fingernails pressed against his soft lips. She knew how warm those lips were and reminded herself to stay cool. He turned his gaze to her and she smiled. “Daniel, you aren’t finishing those things anyway.”

  “But I might.”

  “Might you?”

  “Well, not if I take the job.” Then he sighed and shook his head. “You’re right, you’re right. I haven’t worked on my thesis in a year and as for the novels and the screenplay…”

  She recognised the tone of self-irritation in his voice. “Be nice, Daniel.”

  “I’m so—”

  “Kind,” she offered quickly. “Patient, passionate.”

  “Indecisive,” he said. “Dithering, a non-starter.”

  Rosa shook her head.

  “It’s true,” he said.

  “Well, decide on something then,” she said. “Take the job.”

  “I don’t know…”

  She sighed theatrically and spread her hands out. “Then I can’t help you. But, you know, Uncle Vasily has a collection of gorgeous red wines. You want some? We could put on a load of laundry and drink out here in the rain until Em returns.”

  “That sounds great.”

  For the next hour they drank wine and filled each other in on the last six months: he carefully weighing his questions to probe her about her sex life, she carefully hiding all evidence of its vigour and frequency: tinkers, tailors, soldiers, builders, wait staff, pastry chefs, three ballet academy graduates on an end-of-term drinking binge, and a couple of adventurous American college girls in the park late one Sunday. Rosa gathered Daniel hadn’t seen anyone else since they split, which was a pity. The quicker he was over her, the easier she would find it to let him go. As matters stood, the temptation always existed that she could tell him everything, reveal all those hidden truths, and be vulnerable to his conviction that any obstacle could be overcome.

  When the day’s light had bled from the sky and all the streetlights below had flickered into life and the rain had set in heavily once again, they moved inside to put the clothes in the dryer, then returned their attention to the bear.

  “So what should I tell Vasily?” she asked, positioning the bear directly in the beam of a downlight over the kitchen bench. It took on a haze which looked almost holy.

  “I don’t know, Rosa. I’m not the ex
pert you want me to be. Tell him to take it to a museum.”

  “He won’t.” She slumped forward on the bench, her head resting on her arm as she considered the bear.

  “You can tell him it’s gold.”

  “Yeah, and he’ll want to melt it down and make cufflinks.”

  “Don’t let him do that.”

  She ran a finger over the curved belly of the bear. “I feel drawn to her,” she said softly. “I feel she’s important.”

  “Because she zapped you?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe because I feel sorry for her. Poor thing, shoved in a hole with her butt in the air for a hundred and fifty years. It isn’t very dignified.”

  A knock at the door. “That will be your ride home,” Rosa said in what she hoped was a light tone. “Can you let her in?”

  Daniel opened the door for Em, who clutched at least a dozen bags in her hands.

  “Wow,” said Rosa. “You’re serious about your shopping.”

  “And I’m wet again,” Em said, dropping her bags. “The rain got heavy just as I started back.”

  Rosa helped her with her coat. “You want another shower?”

  “No, just a towel this time. Your coat kept most of it out.” She shrugged out of the coat and Rosa hung it by the door.

  Em nodded at the bear on the bench. “Is that it? This mysterious artifact Daniel spoke of.”

  “That’s it,” Rosa said from the hallway where she was fetching a towel.

  “Ouch.”

  Rosa hurried back. Em was sucking her middle finger and Daniel was gazing at her astonished.

  “It zapped you,” Rosa said.

  “It certainly did.”

  Rosa paused to think. First herself, then Daniel, then Em. But not Vasily; not Larissa; not, to her knowledge, any of the men at the site. “Why you?” she said under her breath, but Em caught it.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s marked all three of us.”

  “Marked us?” Em was beginning to look sceptical and Daniel embarrassed, so Rosa shrugged it off.

  “I’m full of silly old wives’ tales. Ask Daniel,” she said, handing Em the towel.