Nine Layers of Sky (3 page)

The place opposite the house was shut. Elena walked along the street, passing rows of faceless apartments, but it was good to get out into the fresh air after the stuffiness of the house. At last, she came to an entrance to the Tashkent subway. Down in the underpass, she knew, there would be all manner of makeshift stalls. She walked past a woman selling flowers, then a Tajik family with a pitiful array of objects: radio parts, a single shoe. They stared at her with hopeless faces. She slipped a muddle of notes into the wife’s hand. They bowed their heads, blessed her over and over again. She felt momentarily as hopeless as they.

Farther down the underpass, a youth in a leather jacket was off-loading packets of black-market cigarettes. Elena bought enough Polyot for the journey home, wishing she could afford a better brand. Everyone seemed to be smoking black-market Marlboros now. With U.S. troops still stationed throughout the region, there were plenty to go round. Still, black market or not, they cost too much.

As she was handing over the money, she glanced up and noticed the name of the metro station. With no small irony, she had chosen Kosmonavtov in which to buy her cigarettes. Tucking the packets into her pocket, Elena went into the station for a look. She had been here once before.

There they all were: row upon row of cosmonauts, their faces ceramically delineated along the gleaming, indigo length of the platform, beaming from the depths of their helmets. Elena made her way to the end of the platform and stood, staring up at the image of her heroine. Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to fly in space, gazed down the tunnel in the direction of disappearing trains. Her round face was smiling, as though she had glimpsed secrets, and the artist had painted a row of daisies around the lower edge of her helmet in a whimsically feminine touch.

Elena found herself smiling back at Tereshkova. She looked at the image for a long time, imagining that the immaculate marble confines of the metro were really part of some glowing future; that she would step outside to find Tashkent transformed, monorails sweeping across the streets, silver towers striking toward the heavens, and herself heading off for an assignment on the moon.

Yet that dream of a glorious future was already old-fashioned, she realized, more suited to the society of fifty years ago than that of today. Now, all Russians seemed to dream about was getting out, of getting rich. Without ever leaving home, she was no longer living in the same world. Reluctantly, she walked back along the platform and up into the snowy street. It had clouded over; an anvil mass threatened more snow. Elena hastened to the house.

Four hours later, with the Sherpa unloaded and two hundred dollars in their pockets, Elena, Gulnara, and Atyrom headed out of Tashkent. Elena was relieved, and not just because of the money. They were heading home. It was now four in the afternoon, nearly dark. Atyrom had taken a different route— north through Dzhambyl—and the heavy traffic had worn the snow away to a glaze over the uneven surface of the road. Mountains fell away on either side, snowcapped crags reaching up into a darkening sky. Elena watched a thin rind of sun sink down behind the line of the mountains, and then they began to descend toward the border and yet another traffic jam. This time, it was even longer. The traffic crawled forward.

“What’s going on this time?” Atyrom muttered to himself. He wound down the window and peered out. “Looks like they’re searching the vehicles.”

“Who are? The customs people?”

“I don’t think so,” Atyrom said with uncharacteristic uncertainty. “Men in coats.”

“What?” Elena craned past him, trying to see. The security forces almost invariably wore black, which was helpful if you wanted to know who was beating you up.

“Not KGB, then,” Atyrom added. “They’re not in uniform.”

“Maybe they’ve changed their clothes along with their name,” Elena murmured. “After all, they’re supposed to be the good guys now.” Which was true enough, she reflected, if you compared them with the
Mafiya
or Islamic fundamentalists.

Atyrom shifted uneasily in his seat. “Good thing this wasn’t on the way to Tashkent.”

Elena looked at him. “And why not?”

“Well . . . those spare parts I got hold of, the ones I sold along with the videos . . .”

“What about them?”

“I’m not sure where some of them came from, that’s all.”

“You told me they were all seconds from the factory.”

“Well, yes. Most of them were.”

Elena sighed. She couldn’t bring herself to feign surprise.

“Good thing this didn’t happen on the way to Tashkent, then,” she echoed. She wondered uneasily about the penalty for handling stolen goods, and also about other possibilities. She remembered the ambulance driver, robbing the pockets of the dead: It was by no means an unusual situation among the authorities. She slipped the envelope containing her share of the money out of her handbag and tucked it deep under the seat. After a moment’s thought, she slid the ball after it.

One of the men was beckoning them forward. Atyrom started up the Sherpa and they rolled along the road. When they were level with the little crew, a man leaned in through the window and said, “Open the back, please.” It was a clipped, official voice, the kind that didn’t even expect
nyet
for an answer, and she could not place the accent.

“What are you looking for?” Elena asked, smiling as charmingly as she could.

“Just open the back of the van, please.”

Atyrom shrugged. “It’s empty,” he told the man, but he got out of the Sherpa and complied. Elena squinted into the driving mirror, trying to see what they were doing. The search took some time, and seemed exhaustive. They had some kind of device. She heard one of the men say, “Are you sure the scanner’s working properly? We’re on the other side of the border. . . .”

His companion answered, “I told you. The thing will be difficult to detect if it hasn’t been activated. But we have to try.”

Elena frowned. The man came back.

“Get out of the van.”

“Why? It’s freezing out there.”

The man jerked his head. “Just get out of the van.”

Sighing, Elena got down and found herself spreadeagled against the side of the Sherpa, beside Atyrom and Gulnara. She braced herself. Her pockets were swiftly rifled. The men were looking in the front of the van; she saw one of them run a hand beneath the seats and held her breath. A voice in her ear said, “All right. You can go.”

Atyrom was already impatiently holding open the door of the van. “Come on. Hurry up.”

“What in the world was that all about?” Gulnara asked as they climbed into the cabin.

“I’ve no idea. Who cares?
Militzia.
They had some sort of scanner. They’re probably looking for drugs.”

“I don’t think they’re the police,” Elena said doubtfully. She put her hand under the seat, but to her relief, the money and the object were still there.

Atyrom shrugged and pulled away. They came level with the customs post. Elena groped in her bag for her passport, waved it at the official, and they were once more back in Kazakhstan.

“We’ll press on, yes?” Atyrom said. “We can make Almaty by midnight. I’ll stop in Dzhambyl and pick up some food.”

“Fine with me,” Elena said. She leaned back against the headrest. She felt tired and hot, though the cabin was only just beginning to warm up again. She could see her breath steaming against the glass, forming patterns as it faded. It was an effort to keep her eyes open and eventually she gave up the struggle. She began to doze, waking fitfully as Atyrom flicked through the radio stations. A white mushroom dome appeared out of the sleety darkness. Other yurts lay beyond it. Atyrom pulled off the road.

“Shashlik?”

“Please.”

She watched as Atyrom stumped through the snow toward the yurts and conducted a transaction beneath the hazy lights. Soon he was back, and handed round kebabs with chili sauce. The portions were generous, but the mutton was as tough as leather. She only managed a few mouthfuls, then gave up.

“What’s the matter?” Atyrom asked, frowning. “It’s not good?”

“It’s like eating an old boot.”

“You’ve been eating like a bird,” Atyrom scolded. “Soon you’ll forget how, and then where will you be? You’re already as thin as a crack. You ought to get married, have a husband to cook for. Doesn’t your mama feed you and that little sister of yours?”

Her mother and Anna.
Suddenly, Elena was very glad to be almost home, even though she’d only been away for three days. She smiled and said, “Yes. Yes, she does. She’s a great cook.”

They reached the outskirts of Almaty shortly after midnight, passing the quiet little dachas and the railway station, then the maze of dark streets. Despite promises that were now over two decades old, the Soviet luxury of street lighting had never been restored. Atyrom dropped Elena off at the corner of Ablai Khan and Mamedova Street, and with a wave was gone. Elena turned and walked slowly down Mamedova, past the huge vent of the metro that had still never been built, past the cafe at its foot and the silent Korean nightclub, and into the courtyard of the apartment block that had been her home for over two years now. Snow covered the scrubby trees and the rusty children’s swings; a single light shone out across the courtyard. Elena looked up. It was coming from her mother’s flat, where the box was waiting beneath the bed.

She walked up the silent stairwell and unlocked the familiar steel door.
Moscow, then Canada. Anywhere
but here.

Four

ST. PETERSBURG, 21ST CENTURY

When Ilya reached his tiny apartment, he sank down onto the iron-springed bed and reached beneath it for the sword. He sat with it resting across his knees and looked at it for a long moment: at the curve of the hilt, the gleam of the blade, waiting for memory to creep over him. He remembered the nights on the Siberian taiga, filled with small sounds: pine resin snapping in the summer sun, the rustle of dragonflies’ wings as they swarmed up from the lake, the precise march of ants in the grass, and, beyond all these, the endless, ageless silence of the world.

Now his ears were filled with new sounds: the hiss and crackle of static, the grinding roar of traffic. If he listened hard enough, he could still differentiate, hearing the rumble of an army truck in Vladivostok, thousands of kilometers away, or a sudden, startling snatch of song in Murmansk, laden with cold and bell-clear through the frosty air. Ilya put his hands over his ears and sank deeper into remembering.

He was standing among the Siberian pines of his childhood, on the edges of the lake. It was long before the Soviet Union, long before the rule of the tsars. To the east stretched the long spine of the mountains, rosy with the last of the winter sun. As he watched, the light faded and the forest was folded into the dusk. Ilya crouched by the spring that fed into the lake, broke the cat-ice that had settled along its rim, and cupped his hands to drink.

The song began just beneath the edge of his hearing. At first he thought it was the voice of the forest itself, or perhaps the sound made by the stars as they flickered above the mountains. He waited, listening. The song rose and fell: high and wordless, singing of the black depths of the lake, and the starlight, and the winter air. As Ilya listened, it changed, sliding into warmth, speaking of afternoons golden with pollen and the scent of May.

He shook his head, trying to clear it, and then another sound joined the song: footsteps hastening through the long frosty grass. One of the girls from the forest villages was coming toward the lake. Her eyes were half-closed and she was smiling. She walked with sure-footed confidence. And then Ilya saw the
rusalki.

There were three of them, perched in the branches of a pine that overhung the lake. Their long white hair was intertwined, moving as though they were still beneath the water, and their eyes were blank as ice. They looked through Ilya with indifference. Their gaze was focused on the girl. The song congealed in the twilight air, curling toward her. Ilya’s sword came out of its sheath and whirled down, cutting the filaments of song in a blaze of sparks. The girl’s eyes flew open and her face filled with dismay.

Ilya Muromyets stepped between the girl and the
rusalki
. Two of the beings shrank back against the tree, but the third swarmed down it headfirst, her hair floating out into the grass. She sidled out of reach of Ilya’s sword and hissed. He saw pointed teeth, and between them, the grey tip of her tongue. Over his shoulder, Ilya shouted, “Run!”

After a frozen moment, the girl did so. He could hear her panicked flight as she stumbled back through the forest. Her escape seemed to bring the
rusalki
to life. The sisters in the tree dived, gliding slowly through the air and ice, to be swallowed by the lake. The third
rusalka
smiled.

“Put up your sword, Ilya Muromyets,” she murmured. Ilya flinched at the mention of his name, and the
rusalka
’s smile widened. “Oh,” she whispered. “Who hasn’t heard of you? One of the
bogatyri,
the Sons of the Sun, the heroes of all Russia . . .”

Ilya’s ears were filled with a noise like the humming of bees, as though he had put his cheek to a hive. Slowly, he let the tip of the sword fall. He could have sworn that the
rusalka
did not move, but suddenly she was standing in front of him, her hands slipping around his neck. Her wet hair brushed his face.

“Do you know what it’s like to drown, Ilya Muromyets? It’s the greatest pleasure of all—the warmth of water in your mouth. But we have other plans for you than drowning. Listen to what I have to tell you. . . .”

He did not wait to hear it. The ice snapped under his boots as he flung himself away from her. His sword came up to sever the
rusalka
’s throat and then her spine, which broke like rotten wood. The head flew in a great curve across the lake, scattering drops of mercurial blood, and the
rusalka
’s body shattered into slimy ice. Ilya fell to his knees, letting the heat from the sword warm him. He waited for a moment longer, but the lake was still.

Slowly, he made his way back through the forest, stopping at the village to warn the priest of the
rusalki
’s presence, and receiving the grateful thanks of the girl’s family. And that, Ilya Muromyets had thought in the manner of heroes, was that.

Ilya looked down at the sword for a long time, remembering. So long ago that it seemed like the dream of a different man: a man who believed in God and the Zorya, a man who slew demons in the forests of old Russia. He glanced up at his reflection in the shaving mirror, at the bloodstained shirt beneath the long leather coat. In the snowlight, he looked as insubstantial as a ghost.

He placed the sword back into its sheath, lit a cigarette, and, still in his coat, went to the stove. He stood there for a moment, warming his hands. He cut a piece of bread from the loaf on the table and ate it, staring out of the window at the lights along the Neva before reaching for the vodka.