Red Devil (Dangerous Spirits) (3 page)

When the smell of construction dust became too much, he sighed and turned the fan around, and then stood looking at Sol’s side of the room. On the wall above the wolf’s bed hung a framed picture, a reproduction of a painting of a nude fox just getting up from a park bench in autumn, the kind of autumn Alexei knew from Siberia, where the trees gave up their leaves in a defiant blaze of brief color, like a warning fire: winter is coming! The fox did not seem bothered by a chill in the air, his lovely fur unruffled by any breeze. This might be the artist’s license, or it might be because Niki, the fox in the picture, had been Siberian like Alexei (though Alexei had rarely gone out shirtless, even at home).

Niki had been the ghost Sol claimed had rescued him. After drinking absinthe with Meg, the wolf had dreamed he’d met the ghost of that fox, or lived his life, or something, and those dreams had resulted in Sol’s eyes turning the bright green of Niki’s, in the painting. Alexei had not previously begrudged Sol his dreams and the lasting bond with Niki, but now he could taste the sour tang of jealousy as he looked at the picture. Sol got help from a ghost, Sol had a date tomorrow night, Sol was a citizen and going to school in a month and a half, and where would Alexei be then? “
Why can
you
not help me with Kendall?
” he asked the painting in Siberian.

He expected no answer, and received none. So he dropped into the chair at the desk he shared with Sol and pulled open the top drawer on his side. His sister Caterina, the only person in Siberia he still loved, was very real, and yet she had been silent for nearly as long as Sol’s ghost had. Two pieces of paper covered with her neat, precise writing lay atop his school notebooks. He took out the letter, leaving the envelope in the drawer, and read over the words again.

Chapter 2

May 20

Dear Alexei,

I am sorry I have not called you in so long. Here is what happened: After the last time I called you on the phone, Mama looked into the history and saw your number. She got very angry and told me I could no longer use the phone as I could not be trusted with it, but she did make Papa let go of my arm. So I have no phone now and I must ask my friends to pass messages to me through Mama and Papa, which none of them want to do. Sometimes we make plans at school, but they do not tell me when they change. I went to the square last Friday night, but they had all decided to go to the club in Vdansk instead and I waited for an hour before I went home.

I pleaded with Mama, and with Papa, but they will not relent so far. Papa locks the new phone he had to buy in the case where Grandfather’s war medals used to be. I think he meant to teach me a lesson by doing that but it only looks pathetic. It works, however. I cannot open the case as you did because now Papa keeps the key in his pocket all the time.

So I will write you letters at school, like right now when Mister Oblonsky is talking some dull nonsense about maths, and I will practice my English so that someday when I join you I can speak as well as you do. I have already improved in the year since you left! I looked up ‘pathetic’ and ‘relent’ in my dictionary. Kisha has agreed to mail my letters for me, and you may send responses to her. It is the same address as where you sent my Christmas presents.

It is already lonely without being able to talk to you. But I have promised myself that I will work hard to study my English and that even if I cannot find the same path that you did, I will come to the States. I approached Miss Vladenka, but she said she thought that you had Papa’s approval when she helped process your paperwork and she did not want to help me. I know that she is lying, but what can I do if she will not help? Kisha says I should take the train to Moskva and work my way out from there, but we have heard many stories of the terrible things that can happen to young girls who go to Moskva, especially foxes, and I will not jump from one trap into another. Prababushka would not wish it and I think perhaps she might come back to haunt me.

Spring has finally come to us here. After a month of grey skies, we saw sun for three straight days this week! Birds sing outside my window again, and the tree outside your window has flowered, full of white blossoms that fall like snow when there is a wind. The walk to the river is full of color and song: Blue stars and cornflowers, the red somlatha flowers, white daisies with their yellow hearts. I picked a bunch and placed them in an old tin cup in our shed off the path. Half of the roof collapsed from the snow, but the three walls are still standing. I miss you most when I am in the shed, because that was a happy place. When I am home and sniff through the crack in the wall to your room, I also miss you, but I feel happy that you have escaped. Also there is a hive of bees that has come to live in the wall outside your room, and their buzz makes me feel as though you, or someone, are there. Mama tells Papa he must get rid of them, but he does nothing, and she is too afraid. I am glad. They do not hurt anyone, and I like their company.

The shed on the river path had been a second home of sorts to Alexei and Cat, a place where they could sit and not be disturbed. It was the site of his earliest memory of Cat, when he was six years old and she barely five, and she’d sobbed against him for an hour after their father had thrown a bottle at her and struck her on the shoulder. Alexei remembered the smell of her fur as he held her, the light smell of blood where the bottle had broken the skin, her slight frame shaking and her cries echoing across the sluggish water. Most of all, he remembered his surprise that the bottle had not been thrown at him.

Up until then, Alexei remembered feeling that he was a bad fox, that his beatings were all deserved, and that Caterina was the good girl who did not get beaten. She must have been hit before then; he dimly recalled sitting in the waiting room of the hospital once with his parents. But it wasn’t until that day that his view of himself changed, and the reason was the sobbing cub he held in his arms. Cat had done nothing wrong, and this, he began to understand, meant that perhaps neither had he.

That Cat was spending time at the shed meant that their parents had been in a bad temper. Probably they had hit her, but she was trying to spare him the details. He felt again the surge of anger he’d felt when he’d first read the letter, and went on.

Yesterday the purple blooms of onion made the air smell sharp on the path up the hill. Kisha and I ran away from school to sit on the hill above the river, because the sun was out and we wanted to spread out our tails and sit back. We watched ravens and jays wheel and scream while little bushy-tailed grounders chased each other around and around. The green was bursting to life all through the hills and songbirds were singing. I did not see how anyone could be unhappy. Kisha, of course, pointed at the garbage strewn on the hill, the holes in the roof of the schoolhouse, the ruins of the dam, and the small cluster of ugly four-story office buildings. She lifted her nose and smelled the rotten fish and stink of vodka, and said she could understand why I was so desperate to get away.

I am not sure she does. I want very much to know what the birds in Midland sound like, and how the trees smell there, and to taste the real pizza you have told me about. I would like to have a computer of my own, yes, and learn the wonderful things and go to the wonderful places, but I mostly want to go to be with you. Escape for its own sake is not an answer. You must always run toward something, not away, because how do you know that you are not running from the monster to the witch? What monster is that horrible that nothing you run to could be worse?

Now I am in history class with Mister Lanin. It is so close to the Last Bell and I feel no sense of joy. It will be a celebration that promises freedom and yet most of us will remain in Samorodka, no more free than we are now. We will simply arrive at a job rather than a school, we will have less homework but longer hours, and there will be a different Last Bell to look forward to, many years off. The school is determined to have a joyful celebration, but I would just as soon remain home and study my English.

Mister Lanin sympathizes, at least. He teaches us history, how the great male and female Siberian leaders believed that freedom lay in structure, that with our lives held in the claws of the state, we would be liberated from concerns of livelihood and welfare, and such is our tradition. When teaching us of the Revolution, he waves his paws and his long, striped tail about, and becomes very excited at the idea that the peasants of Siberia chose to determine their own fate. Then he teaches us of the dictators that followed and his tail loses its life. I suppose when he thinks of all the tigers killed under those dictators, he must be as sad as Prababushka when she thinks of her family lost in the War. But Mister Lanin does not dwell on loss. He tells us that we are part of a new Siberia, that we are in an age where we may decide our own fate, free of the mistakes of our parents.

I hope he is right. I have already decided that if I go to Last Bell, I will read him a short poem. Kisha will laugh at me, but she used to laugh at me when I picked up garbage on our way down the hill, or when I stopped to smell the flowers or laugh at the grounders. She will marry Vaclav sometime next year and they will live in his parents’ house and have a family, and that, she says, is enough for her. For me, there must be more beyond this town, and I am eternally grateful to you for showing me the way.

With love,

Caterina

Last Bell, the graduation ceremony, should be a joyful party. Alexei had gone last year—owing to differences in the educational systems, he had been advised to take one more year of high school in the States, and therefore had graduated twice. The ceremony in Midland had been muted by comparison to the party in Samorodka: the class assembled in caps and gowns, heard speeches, and then…it was over. No partings of the students and teachers, except small personal ones after the ceremony. No town-wide party, although he had heard that Sol’s friend Xavy and some of the athletes had gone down to a local dance club to celebrate.

He and Sol and Meg had taken barbecue fixings to an evening picnic in the park and cooked for their own party; Sol’s parents and Alexei’s host family had understood that it was something just for them. Some of the others from their class joined them, arranged through phone texts and quick calls, which brought Alexei’s attention back to his sister’s letter.

Again, she had not included a photograph. Alexei’s only picture of her had disappeared during his exit from Siberia, probably during the search of his luggage by the Siberian customs officials to make sure he was not smuggling anything out of the country. He hadn’t missed it until arriving in Midland. Then he had remembered her well enough that it hadn’t seemed important to ask for a picture, and over the last few months, when he’d asked, she had promised to try, but still he had no image of her. Her face was harder for him to remember, but when he read these words, he could picture her smile as clearly as the crescent of the moon in the sky outside his window.

Since getting this letter, he had written to tell her that she should go to Last Bell, even though he’d gotten the letter on May 25
^th
, the day of the ceremony. Then he had written again to give her his new address in Vidalia, and to ask her the question he hadn’t formed until re-reading the letter.

Cat had been seeing a wolf named Miroslav—Slava for short. The last time she’d called, she’d told him that although Slava wasn’t as good at English as she was, he was quite clever with his paws and knew enough about electronics that she thought he could find a job easily. He was even willing to explore moving to the States with her. But the letter of May 20 had no mention of Slava, not even when she talked of her friend Kisha’s fiancé. And Cat had not answered either of his letters since then.

He dropped the letter into the drawer and went to sit on his bed, feeling his mood darken. He wondered if Mike had gone out with Kendall after the beers, if he had kissed the pine marten yet.

Alexei set the letter aside and rested his forearms on the desk, then turned his head to Sol’s side of the room to look at the painting again. Sol got strength from the portrait, and soon enough would be in here to search for guidance from Niki before his date the next day. All Alexei could see in the picture was his own reflection in the glass, the confused, uncertain fox over the confident, assured Niki, his eyes grey and cloudy against the fox’s bright green.

He thought he might write to his sister about Mike, and he took out a piece of paper to do so. He got as far as, “
Dear Cat, My life in Vidalia has been good. There is someone,
” before he lifted his pen from the paper and tried to think of how to describe Mike. Each time he thought he had come up with an adequate phrase, the words fell away from him and seemed to lose their meaning. “A sheep I like”—but it was more than just “liking” with this sheep. “A good-looking friend”—but Mike was not just about looks. “You would like his smile and his eyes”—no, none of that was right, none of that spoke of Mike’s easy grace and assurance, both on the field and in meetings, the moments he’d taken to speak just to Alexei, that “click” Sol was talking about. Alexei was sure Mike would feel it as strongly as he did, if only that pine marten were not forever interfering.

“Writing your sister?” Sol asked, coming in. Alexei, who had heard the creak of the wood under the carpet, hadn’t bothered to hide his letter. After all, he’d barely written anything.

“I am trying. She has still not responded to my earlier letters.”

“I’m sure she’s okay. The mail is probably just slow.” Sol sat on his bed and opened his laptop computer, but stared up at Niki’s portrait as he did.

“Yes. Or perhaps her letter has been lost.” He scratched out “
There is someone
” and wrote, “
I still have not received a letter from you. If Kisha sent it, then it has been lost.
”

“When she graduates, will she be able to move out of your parents’ house and get her phone back?”

“I suppose so.” Alexei stared down at his writing. “She wants to move here.”

“Here? To Vidalia?” Sol looked around the bedroom. “Like, here?”

Alexei shook his head. “This country. Perhaps here with me, but she will go anywhere she can learn.” He wrote, “
I would love to believe that you are on your way here right now.”

“Oh, okay.” Sol relaxed, his tail tip hanging over the side of the bed. “I’m sure she’s okay.”

Alexei nodded. He forced himself to write a little about the soccer game, remembering to call it “football” for his sister’s benefit, and he told her about his little VLGA family and how he was looking forward to introducing her to them. He wrote about his job moving boxes in the shipping warehouse, how his pay came in a small envelope every week, how it felt to be earning money. After a little while, he had a page of writing that told much about what he was doing and very little about his life.