Nine Layers of Sky (15 page)

“My wife gets sick on the bus,” Ilya said before Elena could protest.

“I’ll phone my brother. I don’t know if he can do it, mind. But I’ll ask.”

“Ask him how much,” Elena called after her. They were left alone in the hallway with the ticking clock. It had an ominous sound to Ilya’s sensitive ears. He had never grown used to this method of marking off time, minute by minute, day by day. What was wrong with a glance at the sun, or the year’s rhythms? But it was progress, he supposed. Idly, he eavesdropped on the woman’s conversation.

“Yes, to Bishkek. Yes, today—no, I don’t know why; they didn’t say. Does it matter?”

A man’s voice, on the other end of the phone: “Can they pay up front? I’m not doing it otherwise. I told Sultanat I’d take her into town this morning.”

“It can wait, surely? Anyway, you’ll have to go through Almaty—why don’t you drop her off? She can find her own way back.”

“Her legs are bad.”

“Well, then she shouldn’t be walking round town. Has she seen the doctor yet?”

Ilya stifled his impatience as the conversation veered away into a morass of personal detail. At last, the woman returned.

“He’ll do it. He’s coming over. He wants ten dollars each way.”

Elena, despite the money resting in her handbag, managed to look suitably dubious. “It’s a lot,” she said. Ilya wondered how much she usually earned. He did not understand this foreign currency, this pegging of everything to the dollar. But then, he had never really gotten the hang of money in the first place. As long as you had what you needed, why worry? Perhaps, Ilya reflected, this was why he had found Communism relatively amenable. A pity it hadn’t worked.

“It’s that or nothing.” The woman was apologetic but firm. “He’s got the car to keep going; gas is expensive . . .”

“All right. We’ll pay.”

“He’ll be twenty minutes or so. He has to sort out the car. Come in, come in.”

She ushered them into a living room, almost buried beneath a horde of knickknacks. Elena vanished into the bathroom for what seemed like an eternity, and reappeared looking different. Ilya supposed that she had done something with her makeup, though he could not have said what.

They were given tea, bread, cakes, biscuits, sliced sausage, processed cheese: Kazakh hospitality, a holdover from the days when a visitor could have ridden days to reach you, when a guest was a gift from God. Ilya tried not to eat too ravenously as the woman interrogated Elena about their marriage, their children, their work. Elena lied with remarkable glibness, Ilya thought. He supplied hopefully corroborating details around mouthfuls of bread. It was strange to feel hungry again, to want food other than the sugar cravings of heroin. He heard footsteps in the garden; the woman went from the room.

“My cousin Nadia,” Elena said in response to his raised eyebrows. “Three kids, works as a secretary. I just pretended.”

“I wasn’t criticizing. It’s a useful skill.”

Elena lowered her voice. “Useful or not, I don’t like lying.”

“Of course you don’t.” Before he could stop himself, he touched her hand. “You’re a good person.” Elena looked startled, and Ilya stood up, to cover his embarrassment. “The driver is here.”

Three

KAZAKHSTAN, 21ST CENTURY

When Elena set eyes on the car, she wondered if it would even get them as far as Almaty, let alone the Kyrgyz border. It was an old Lada, rusty around the edges, and the seats had long since collapsed. The woman’s brother looked shifty to Elena; he had a long dour face. But perhaps it was better to have someone who was a little sly, who might not want to draw attention to himself.

“You want to go to Bishkek? My sister told you about the money?”

Ilya peeled off a ten dollar note from a thin handful and Elena saw the man’s eyes widen. She hoped Ilya had judged it correctly: too little, and he might think they couldn’t pay; too much, and the man might be tempted to robbery. Although there was something about Ilya, even ragged and shoeless as he was, that did not invite aggression.

“This is for the trip,” Ilya said. “I’ll give you the other ten when you drop us off.”

“
Konechna,
of course. Where in Bishkek?”

“Listen,” Ilya said, confidingly. He drew the man aside, beneath the bare branches of a cherry tree. “The thing is, it might not be a bad idea if you dropped us off before the border. You see, my friend doesn’t have proper papers. If they ask for documents, we might have a problem.”

“She doesn’t have papers,” the driver said, a flat, distrustful statement, inviting answers.

“No.” An awkward pause. “You see, I’m afraid we’ve been a little bit deceptive. This lady isn’t my wife. She’s someone else’s.”

Brilliant,
thought Elena, in spite of the slur on her character. If it got them out of reach of the authorities, she did not care. Light dawned across the driver’s long face.

“Oh, I
see.
Everything is clear. But I’ll get you to Bishkek, don’t worry. I have papers for the car. And you can pay, yes? If they ask questions?”

“No problem.”

What if they’re looking for us? What if we’re recognized?
Elena wondered. If she could get Ilya alone for a moment, she would ask. But it was already time to go. Ilya got in the front seat and she found herself oddly disappointed. Surprisingly, the car started at once. They pulled onto the road toward Almaty.

As they reached the outer suburbs, Elena tapped the driver on the shoulder.

“Would you mind if we made a couple of stops? I need to go to the market, very quickly. It’ll only take five minutes.”

The driver gave a bark of laughter. “Women! Running away from home and all they can think about is shopping.”

“I have to get some more shoes,” Elena snapped. “I broke a heel.”

“Well, in that case—what was the other stop?”

“It’s on Furmanova. I have to drop off a letter.” The post office would be closed on a Saturday. She would bundle the money up and drop it off at her aunt’s. There was the risk that someone was watching the place, but if she just went into the hallway and stuck it in the mailbox, it should be safe. The boxes were locked, after all.

Even at this time of the morning, the market was teeming. Elena leaped out of the car and bolted into the warren of stalls, deafened by Kazakh pop from the cassette decks and the hubbub of voices. She ran past the medical stalls selling bandages, medicines, and syringes. It made her think of the thing that had attacked her, and of Ilya. He had looked even more unwell this morning, and she felt a pang of warmth and pity.

She fled past electrical goods, and into the clothes section. She stopped at the first stall she came to, found a pair of boots in her size, and slapped down the money without even trying them on. She snatched a packet of underwear from a neighboring stall, paying with her handful of change. She was damned, she thought, if she’d go on the run with a strange man without taking spare underwear with her. Then she hurried back, fighting the sudden irrational fear that the car would not be there, and telling herself not to be so foolish.

The car was gone. Elena’s heart sank to her borrowed boots, until she realized that the driver had pulled along the block to avoid a bus, which was being cranked into action with a starting handle. Ilya’s wan face now stared at her from the backseat. It lit up when he caught sight of her.

“Do you want to sit in the front? It’s making me feel sick, watching the road,” he said, winding down the window.

“No, I don’t mind. I don’t like sitting in the front, either,” Elena said hastily, wanting his closeness. She slid in beside him.

“Furmanova?” the driver said over his shoulder.

“Please. Then Bishkek. The sooner we get out of Almaty, the happier I’ll be.”

“So, your husband. What does he do?”

“He’s a lawyer.” Everyone hated lawyers. The last thing she wanted to do was awake the driver’s masculine sympathies.

“No wonder you’re running away. You’d have no chance in a divorce settlement. My cousin, she was married to a lawyer, but he left her, went off with some tart from Akmenugorsk. Anyway,
then
—” The cousin’s woes lasted all the way down Zhibek Zholu, along Gogola, down Tolubaev, and into Furmanova. And Elena thought she’d had a hard life. The cousin’s problems would have graced a soap opera. The driver’s dour face and shifty manner were all a con, Elena decided. He was clearly a secret romantic.

She directed him to her aunt’s house, raced into the hallway, and stuffed the money into the mailbox. It took only a moment and then she was back in the car. No one seemed to be watching, but how to tell? They could be tailing her even now. She twisted in her seat, squinting through the back window of the car, but the only thing that appeared to be following was an ancient bus, hood propped open with a starting handle to prevent overheating. It was belching clouds of exhaust.

Elena sat back, thankful to be heading out of town. She finally admitted to herself that if the circumstances had not been so stressful, it might even have been exciting to be going into the unknown, leaving family tensions and her dull cleaning job behind. But she would rather have been heading for Canada, or Baikonur and her beloved work—but now there was Ilya.

She stole a glance at him. His head was resting against the window, his arms folded around himself as if to ward off the world. His eyes were closed and he looked gaunt, the lines beside his mouth carved into deep grooves. He needed a shave. What a difference from scrubbed, polished Yuri Golynski—but she longed to put her arms around Ilya, to take care of him.

She thought better of it. Best to leave him be. She turned her attention to the road ahead, taking them out toward the edges of town, past the concrete apartment blocks and the parks with their erratic fountains. High-rises appeared, the ornamental tiling on their sides starting to flake after the winter cold. The mountains reappeared, grew huge. Suburbs of smaller houses, like the ones of the driver’s own village, fell behind and they were at last out on the steppe, following the main road to Bishkek.

Here the land was grey and fawn, overlaid by a faint drift of green. Another few days, some more rain and sunlight, and the steppe would be transformed into a sea of flowers.
Thank God,
Elena thought,
it’s
spring, at last.
Rain was sweeping across the mountain-sides, turning them to indigo before they vanished into the streamers of cloud, and she could enjoy the sight now that she was no longer out in it. Beside her, Ilya murmured something, and sank lower in his seat. The driver, moved perhaps by some delicacy of feeling, attached a pair of earphones and sang along beneath his breath. A herd of horses drifted across the road, dark against the grass. There was no other traffic. The city had fallen far behind. Ilya’s head slid down the back of the seat until it was resting on Elena’s shoulder. Not allowing herself to think, she nudged him awake. He came to with a start.

“Lie down. You’ll be more comfortable.” She patted her lap.

He looked surprised for a moment, but did not argue. He curled on the seat with his head on her knees, face buried in the rain-tangled fur of her once-best rabbit coat. Unable to stop herself, she stroked his hair from his forehead, finding that it was softer than it looked, a wolf’s thick pelt. He muttered something.

“What?”

“I said, you’re an angel.”

She felt warmth spreading through her. The last time she had felt like this had been at the cosmodrome, standing under that ocean of stars and realizing that Yuri had come outside in the cold to look for her.

“Ilya?” she whispered, but he was already asleep.

Four

KYRGYZSTAN, 21ST CENTURY

Ilya woke, briefly, to find that they were still traveling. He could see a pale square of sky through the window of the car. His head was resting in Elena’s lap. Her eyes were closed; perhaps she, too, slept. He supposed that he should sit up and find out where they were, but he did not want to wake her. He could smell the steppe, filtered through the gaps and cracks in the frame of the car: sweet grass, wet earth, the sage fragrance of saxaul scrub. He shut his eyes again and sank back into warm darkness.

He was next woken by Elena’s hand on his shoulder.

“Ilya?” Her face was taut and scared.

He struggled up, limbs cramped and stiff, longing for a cigarette.

“Elena? What is it?”

“We’ve reached a roadblock.”

The police officer stood by the side of the road, flagging down the car with a baton.

“Sorry,” the driver said. “I’ll have to stop. He probably just wants money—they pretend you’ve been speeding, the bastards. Don’t say anything. Just have the money ready. Leave it to me. If he asks, say you’re my cousin and her husband.”

But when they pulled over, bouncing across the potholes, the policeman put his head through the window of the car. Ilya saw an impassive face: a series of heavy slabs of flesh, a small, pursed mouth.

“I wasn’t doing more than seventy,” the driver said. “I’ve got papers.”

“I’m not interested in your papers,” the policeman said. “I need a lift.”

“Sorry?”

“A lift to the border. My colleague took the car. We’ve only got one, and it keeps breaking down. And then they phone me up, tell me to come down to the customs post, but how do they expect me to get there—walk? You’ve got room in the front, I can see.”

“
Ladna.
Get in, then.”

The policeman climbed into the front seat, removed his hat, and began to chat about the weather. Elena’s hand was clamped around Ilya’s own; she had a surprisingly strong grip for a woman.

At first, he suspected that the policeman’s behavior—the request for a lift, the chatty demeanor—was nothing more than a ruse designed to lull two dangerous suspects into security and, ultimately, betrayal. But gradually he saw that the policeman had told nothing more than the truth. He had seen so many people like this over the years: petty officials and bureaucrats, relegated to some sleepy backwater, bored half to death. Or perhaps the policeman was content to be stationed in such a remote place, away from the
Mafiya
and the violence of the big cities. Perhaps the man just wanted a quiet life. It was hard to say, and harder still to judge. But he did wonder why the policeman had been summoned to the border in the first place. A simple matter of routine, or some other reason?

Sleep was out of the question. But Ilya felt better than he had in days, perhaps even years. The craving for the drug had dissipated to a dull ache, just under the level of discomfort. He lit a cigarette. The car slowed down.

“We’re almost at the border,” the driver said over his shoulder. The policeman gave a grunt, whether of satisfaction or annoyance, Ilya could not tell.

They were surrounded by cars and trucks queuing for the customs post. The car inched forward. Soon they could see customs through the dust kicked up by the traffic: no more than a row of sheds and money-exchange kiosks. Ilya realized that he had no idea what the currency in Kyrgyzstan might be these days. It had been much easier with just the ruble, but now every little country wanted its own money. Men squatted on their heels in the dust, waiting for unknown transactions.

“Our turn next,” the driver said. They could see a man in uniform moving slowly down the line. At last, he reached them. Elena’s fingers tightened around Ilya’s.

“Papers.” The official was young, barely out of his teens. Ilya suspected that he had been drafted; police rather than army. He looked singularly unenthusiastic about his chosen duties. The policeman in the front seat got out of the car.

“Thanks for the lift.” He added to the younger man, “Look, don’t worry about them. They’re all right.” He thumped the top of the car and wandered ponderously off toward the customs post. The young man waved them on. The car slid through the customs post and onto the highway to Bishkek.

“And we didn’t even have to pay,” the driver crowed.

“Thank you,” Elena breathed. A little farther down the road, she made the driver stop, and ran out to a money exchange. She came back with a handful of tattered notes.

“
Som,
not
tenge.
They won’t take Kazakh money here.”

“They’ll take dollars, surely?”

“Yes, but—” She made a face and said in an undertone, “If people know we’ve got dollars, it might cause problems. Kyrgyzstan is poorer than Kazakhstan. They think Almaty’s like Paris.”

“I’ve never been to Paris.”

“I don’t think there’s much similarity, to be honest.”

Ilya could see Bishkek in the distance, a line of haze backed by the mountains of the Kyrgyz Alatau. Something about the steep slopes, the fall of black hills to the steppe, tugged at Ilya’s memory. He had come here years ago, early in the nineteenth century, before there had even been a city, nothing more than a little clay fort on the Chuy River. Later—much later—he had skirted what had become a settlement: Pishpek, the town of the churn. There was something else he should remember, something hovering at the edges of his memory. He nudged Elena.

“Do you know Bishkek?”

“I’ve been here a few times. We came with my dad once, on the way to Issy Kul—the big lake, you probably know it. It was the year before he walked out on us.” Her face was sad, remembering, and he wished he could comfort her. “The last time I came was to a scientific conference at the university. It’s a quiet little place. It’s a bit like Almaty, only a lot smaller.”

“We’ll have to find somewhere to stay,” Ilya murmured, with a warning glance at the driver. He could see that Elena understood.

“It’s still early. We’ve got time.”

The city suburbs gradually appeared, very different to Ilya’s memories of the place. This was a modern town, built on the same carbon-copy lines as Almaty. The Soviets had such a mania for order, Ilya thought. Here, too, there would be a TSUM store and a Gorky Park, a Lenin Prospekt. But the names must have been changed to those of Kyrgyz heroes by now. And
that
was what had been circling his memory like a wolf on the prowl: Manas. The great son of Kyrgyzstan, hero of a thousand legends and sagas. What had happened to Manas since Ilya’s epic fight with the man? He must surely be dead like all the others. But now that he thought about it, Ilya had never heard anything of the nature of Manas’ death; he had simply vanished from history. And now it seemed that there might be a place beyond this world, where one might vanish to. . . . Manas’ words rang in his head:
We are born enemies.

He caught sight of a prancing bronze figure on a horse, and craned his neck to get a better look. That was Manas, surely, that flying, flamboyant figure. Elena touched his arm.

“Look,” she said. They were passing a very different icon, at the entrance to the park. “They’ve still got Lenin.” He could not tell from her tone whether this pleased her or not.

“Never mind Lenin,” the driver said over his shoulder. “They’ve still got a statue to Felix
Dzerzhinsky
in Oak Park.”

Ilya thought grimly of the Cheka—Dzerzhinsky’s secret police force—and a laboratory blazing in the winter snow. The Kyrgyz seemed to have foregone the current vogue for extinguishing the past. Perhaps it boded well. Or perhaps not.

The driver pulled alongside the curb and turned to face them.

“
Tak.
This is Bishkek. Do you want anywhere in particular?”

Ilya shook his head. “This will do.” He reached into his overcoat and took out the money. “Here.”

“Thanks.” It vanished into the driver’s pocket. “Good luck. Hope things work out. Hope your husband doesn’t catch up with you.”

Elena managed a pale smile. “So do I. Thank you.”

They watched in silence as he drove away. “What now?” Elena asked.

“We should find some food. Then somewhere to stay. Do you know anywhere?”

“We want to stay out of big hotels and anyway, there are only two. They’ll have FSB or the local equivalent at the desk. Maybe we can find a guesthouse.” She pulled her coat more tightly about her shoulders and stood upright in her new boots. “We still don’t know if anyone’s even after us.”

“Best not to take the chance.”

“If I can find a public phone, I’ll call my mother. My mobile battery is running low.”

“There might be a phone in the park. There’ll certainly be food.” He could smell shashlik, hot and smoky through the thin spring air. They began to walk toward the center of the park. Here, farther south, spring was more advanced. The oaks were hazed with green and the new grass was springing up through the mud. In the center of the park was a small cafe. Ilya and Elena sat beneath a tattered plastic umbrella, ordered shashlik and salad and chai.

“You’re drinking tea?” Elena asked. “You don’t want a beer?”

He smiled at her. “No. And the only thing I crave at the moment is decent food.”

“Do you think you’ve kicked it?” She spoke diffidently, as if reluctant to embarrass him.

“I don’t know. I think it should take longer than this, but it’s gone for the moment. It might come back.” He grimaced. “I hope not. It’s no life, Elena. It’s no life at all.”

The shashlik arrived, lamb interspersed with lumps of fat. Ilya tore into the meat. Elena looked uneasily about her.

“I keep thinking that we must be being watched.”

“Someone will be watching, I’m certain of it. The only question is who.” He listened for a stealthy footstep among the trees, but there was nothing, only the occasional raindrop. He was more worried about the
rusalki
and the
volkh
than the FSB. What if Kovalin held him responsible for the murders? But he did not think that it was too likely. It was evident even to a casual observer that the butchery had been done with teeth rather than a sword. Why had the
rusalki
killed Kovalin’s colleagues? And why had they not come after Elena, to retrieve their property? The little cafe suddenly seemed open and exposed.

“Have you finished?” he asked Elena. “I think we should find somewhere to hide.”

She swallowed the last of her tea and nodded. “At least we’ve got something inside us. Those cakes this morning weren’t really enough. When we came with my dad, I remember we stayed in a guesthouse on Shevchenko Street—an old couple ran it with their daughter. I was wondering if it’s still there. It was years ago.”

“It’s as good as any, I suppose. Do you know how to get there?”

“I think so.” Elena paid the waitress and rose to her feet.

“We should walk. I don’t want too many people making a note of us.”

“I don’t mind, after all that time in the car.” Elena looked away. A kind of careful constraint seemed to be growing between them. He wondered if she regretted letting him sleep in her lap. No doubt she only had done so out of pity and now wanted to head off the threat of further intimacies. He did not know how to approach the subject. Better, perhaps, to let it lie.

He got the impression that Saturday afternoons in Bishkek were habitually quiet. There was a brief hum of activity around a building that might have been an employment agency: men sitting on their heels, smoking, chatting. Some of them looked as though they had been there since morning; patience was ingrained in their faces like dirt. Occasionally a woman would come out of the office and call a name, then retreat.

Ilya and Elena left this limited bustle behind and turned down into a drowsing maze of back streets. Ilya heard children’s voices, but apart from this there was only the murmur of trivial conversation behind apartment doors. He paused, listening more intently.

“Ilya?”

A snatch of conversation, close by and plucked from the air.

“It is the same man, I tell you. I have seen him before.”

“And the woman with him?”

“We must be careful.”

Ilya imagined a finger, laid across invisible lips. The voices receded to a murmur, then silence.

“What is it?” Elena asked.

He shook his head, not wanting to worry her. “Nothing.”

They passed run-down civic buildings, weeds growing in the cracks of the paving stones. There was nothing to remind Ilya of the little fort by the rushing Chuy, or the emerging frontier town that he had known so many years ago. The sleepy, dilapidated appearance of the place suited his mood; it was a world away from the rush and violence of the western cities. Elena frowned up at a street sign.

“Trouble is, they’ve changed all the names. . . . It’s as bad as Almaty.
Abdymomunov.
That doesn’t ring any bells. I might have to ask someone.”

They crossed the street, to where an elderly lady was walking a small tired dog.

“Excuse me, can you tell me if Shevchenko Street is still Shevchenko, or have they changed the name?”

“No, it’s still the same. But anyone will know. No one pays any attention to these new names. The old ones were good enough for years. Go to the end of the road, then right.”

They found it easily enough after that, and to Ilya’s surprise, the guesthouse was still there, half-hidden behind the trees. Inside, there was a woman behind the desk, seemingly asleep.

“Excuse me. We’re looking for—” Ilya hesitated, but Elena said, “A room. With twin beds.” The woman stared at them doubtfully.

“You’re married? I’m afraid I can’t let you have a room if you’re not. It’s against the rules.” This was still an Islamic country, Ilya thought, despite the Soviet veneer.

“We’re not married. This is my brother.”

The woman might believe it, Ilya thought. They were both blue-eyed. The old poet Abai’s voice resounded in his head:
You Russians, you all look the same
to me. As like as one blade of grass from another.