Riding Icarus (7 page)

Masha’s heart sank. Uncle Igor lived on an estate of brand new houses for rich people which everyone nicknamed Tsarskoe Selo, or Tsar’s Village, after the place where the Russian royal family had lived before they were all killed in the revolution. Masha had been invited round several times after her mother had left, to play with Igor’s daughter Anastasia.

“Do I have to go?” she asked.

“Of course you do. He is supposed to be looking after you, after all. Now, how about putting on that nice frock he gave you for your birthday.”

“I don’t want to wear it.” Masha looked at the frilly dress with loathing. She hated wearing dresses, but to appease Ira she changed into an old one that her mother had made for her. It was very short and tight, but it was better than wearing Anastasia’s cast-offs.

“Be a good girl and behave yourself,” Ira said at the door. “The driver will bring you back this afternoon.”

“You’ll get to ride in that car again,” added Gena. “That’s so cool. Have a good time.”

Masha didn’t expect to have a good time at all. She sat gloomily in the back of the Mercedes, staring at the dashboard crowded with little gilt-framed religious icons. A furry hare’s paw hung from the mirror, along with a jumble of crosses and prayer beads and a bunch of white heather. All these were for good luck. Masha knew from experience that Igor was ludicrously superstitious. Once she had been at his house when another visitor had arrived and handed him a bunch of flowers over the threshold. Uncle Igor had been angry and nervous the whole day after that because it was bad luck. Another time, his wife, Anya, had gone out and then returned five minutes later because she had forgotten something. Masha had heard Uncle Igor shouting at her for bringing bad luck on the house.

This had given Masha a wicked idea. Now when she was at Uncle Igor’s she always tried to do something that was supposed to be bad luck for the head of the household. Igor had never caught her but she hoped it made him miserable, just as he had made her miserable by sending her mother away. He had promised that Mama would come back from Turkey after six months but, two years later, she still had not returned. He had promised to build them a house but, although he was the richest person Masha had ever met, he had left her and Granny to live in the trolleybus. Her mother had said that while she was gone Uncle Igor would look after Masha, but he had never done anything. Masha was sure that the occasional presents and visits were only because his wife remembered.

His wife, Aunt Anya, was as nice as Uncle Igor was horrible. She always wore expensive-looking clothes, and had a different hairstyle every time Masha saw her. Masha thought she was very beautiful, but she also thought that, despite all her lovely clothes and make-up and her huge, fabulous house, Anya never looked happy.

Aunt Anya was waiting as the car swept through the gates and halted smoothly in the driveway. The gates swung to at once, shutting the house and garden in a thick, expensive silence.

“Hello, darling.” Anya greeted her with a swift, perfumed kiss.

“Hello.” There was something a little too eager about Anya’s kisses and cuddles. They made Masha feel cosy and at the same time uncomfortable.

Aunt Anya’s hair was a shining honey colour today, and her lips and nails were painted pale pink. She took Masha to the immaculate kitchen, where sweets and crisps, a shop-bought cake and a loaf of bread were laid out. As Aunt Anya looked into the fridge, Masha surreptitiously turned the loaf upside down. That was supposed to be bad luck.

“I haven’t had a chance to say happy birthday to you yet,” said Aunt Anya. “Did you get lots of nice presents?”

“Yes, I did,” Masha lied. Aunt Anya’s soft voice and pretty, sad smile made her very easy to talk to, and for a moment Masha wanted to tell her how disappointed she’d been that her mother hadn’t sent anything for her birthday. But after all, she’d got a present from Anya instead. “Thank you very much for the book of animals,” she said.

“Did you like it?”

“A lot. I brought it with me, to show you which are my favourites.”

Masha took out the book, and they looked at it together on the kitchen table. Aunt Anya liked the penguins. “Let’s go to the zoo sometime and see if they have any there,” she suggested.

“All right,” Masha agreed. “But I like the Siberian tigers best. I bet there aren’t any of those in the zoo. They only live in the Far East, and Kamchatka. They’re
huge
.”

She turned to the page, and there was the tiger, burning orange and black against the brilliant forest green.

“I’m not sure there really are tigers in Kamchatka,” Anya said. But she added hastily, “They are fantastic! Scary.”

“Everything’s bigger in Kamchatka,” Masha said. “My papa grew up there, and he told me about it. I want to go there one day.” She suddenly started feeling peculiar and sad, the old ache. Her papa had never come back from his last expedition to Kamchatka. She sometimes imagined him there, watching the tigers as he sailed on dandelion seeds as big as parachutes. At the same time, she thought he was probably dead. Only that was much harder to imagine than dandelion seeds as big as parachutes.

Aunt Anya kissed her quickly. “What an adventurous girl you are. How are you going to get to Kamchatka? Perhaps you could ride across Siberia on an elk. Are there any elks in this book?”

“What are you two looking at?” said a voice behind them.

Without them hearing, Uncle Igor had come into the room. He looked over their shoulders at the tiger.

“Ugh! What a disgusting animal,” he said with a violent shudder. “I hope to God I never meet one of those. Put that picture away,” he went on irritably. “Even if such revolting creatures have to exist, I don’t see why I should have to look at them in my own kitchen.”

Masha closed the book and put it back in her bag. Into her mind, unbidden, popped a sudden, incredible picture of a Siberian tiger in Uncle Igor’s kitchen. Its enormous fat tail sweeping the cups and plates onto the floor, its vast mouth opening in a roar.

“Well, Masha, how are you?” asked Uncle Igor.

“Fine, thank you,” she answered awkwardly.

“And how’s the grandmother? Comfortable in the hospital, I’m sure. You know she’s better off there; she’s far too old to be living alone with a little girl. Perhaps you should come here and live with us, hey?” He bestowed on her his wolfish smile. “How would you like that, while we wait for your mama to come home?”

Masha found herself looking at Aunt Anya’s face, sad and yearning under the careful make-up. It made her feel confused. “I like living with Granny,” she said quickly. “She’s coming out of hospital soon.”

“We’ll see,” said Uncle Igor ominously. He tapped his fingers on his waistcoat, a big, dark, shiny man, like his Mercedes, and then sat down at the table and pulled a packet of cigars from his pocket. He took one out and held it under his nose, sniffing it ostentatiously.

“Mmm, delicious. What a smell.” He held it out to Masha. “How about a smoke? Here, take it. Put hairs on your chest. Go on.”

Masha felt angry and silly, all at once. What was she supposed to do with a cigar? She reached out hesitantly and Uncle Igor roared with laughter.

“You bad girl,” he said, slapping her fingers so they stung. “Smoking already. You see, that old woman isn’t bringing you up properly. I really think you ought to come here and live with us.”

Masha felt herself turning pink. “I don’t smoke,” she said, her voice trembling. “And Mama will be back soon, so I’ll live with her.”

Uncle Igor leant forward. “Now, that’s what I’d like to talk to you about. Have you heard from your mother lately?”

Masha felt scared by his intent stare. “Well, she sent me a postcard,” she said, although she didn’t want to tell Uncle Igor this at all.

“When?”

“Igor!” Aunt Anya said.

Uncle Igor ignored her. “When, and what did it say?”

“I can’t remember.” Tears were coming into Masha’s eyes. “It was a long time ago. It had a picture of a big church on it.”

“Oh, that one.” Uncle Igor sat back and took out a gold lighter. He lit the cigar and drew on it with a series of puffs, blowing out a big cloud of smoke. “And since then, nothing? No letters? Maybe you’ve seen her.”

“No. I haven’t.”

“Are you sure? You know, I worry about your mother and about you, little girl. I hope your granny hasn’t been teaching you to tell lies.”

“Igor!” said Aunt Anya again.

“No, she hasn’t.” Masha swallowed hard. “She’s been bringing me up very well.”

“All right then,” said Uncle Igor. “Run along and play with Anastasia. You must tell me, though, if you do see or hear from your mother. I don’t know what will happen to both of you if you don’t.”

“What might happen?” asked Masha bravely.

“I really don’t know,” he replied, tapping out the cigar ash. “Playtime. Off you go. Nastya’s in the garden.”

Masha ran out of the door. She felt so stupid and so angry that if she opened her mouth she thought a roar would come out, a huge, furious tiger’s roar. Her face was burning hot and dried up her tears. She would have liked to have thrown all the cups and plates in there, the bread and the sweets and everything, onto the floor, crashing and smashing with each sweep of her tail, each blow of her paws.

But instead she had to go and play with Anastasia. There she was, outside her Wendy house, waving and shouting. Masha went down the path as slowly as she possibly could.

Anastasia was eleven. She was very pretty, with long curly hair, and she always wore fancy dresses with frills of ribbon and lace. She never tired of telling Masha that she was named after a princess (despite Masha’s response after a Russian history lesson, which was “Yeah, a princess who got
shot
”), and her favourite game was fairy-tale dressing up. Guess who always played the princess. Masha got to be the servant or the wicked witch, or occasionally the prince, although that was the worst role of all. At least when she was the witch she got to do nasty things to Anastasia.

She had lots of gorgeous toys, like a sandpit and a paddling pool, the Wendy house, dolls and boxes of Lego and lovely drawing things, but she was really mean with all of them.

Masha sat down in the corner of the little house with the Lego box. Anastasia was dressing one of her dolls unseasonably in what looked like a real fur coat and hat, but she soon put it aside and demanded, “What are you making?”

“A pirates’ hideout.” Masha rummaged for palm leaves.

They built together for a while, until Masha started adding in pieces of spaceship.

“That’s wrong,” Anastasia objected. “You can’t use those bits.”

“Why not? They’re space pirates.”

“No, they’re not. Why’ve they got palm trees and parrots if they’re space pirates?”

“It’s a tropical planet in the Centauri galaxy,” Masha invented quickly. “And they flew the parrot out all the way from earth. You can buy them on this planet for two million blips, which is Centauri money.”

“That’s stupid.” Anastasia started taking out the spaceship pieces.

“I was building it first,” said Masha crossly.

“It’s my Lego,” Anastasia retorted. “And they’re in the Caribbean and they’ve never heard of your stupid Centauri galaxy.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“Yes, it is.” Anastasia crumbled up the whole construction and started throwing the bits back in the box. “I don’t want to play with Lego anyway.”

“Well, I don’t want to play with you,” said Masha. She got up and stormed out of the little house.

She hung around miserably on the smooth striped English lawn for a little while. It was always so quiet at Tsarskoe Selo, as if all the money somehow managed to exclude the cars and radios and barking dogs and shouting people all over the rest of Kiev. Finally she wandered back towards the real house. She was thirsty. Maybe Aunt Anya would give her a drink.

The kitchen door was ajar; as she came up to it she heard voices inside and paused. And then she caught her name spoken.

“Masha’s only ten; you’ve no right threatening a little girl,” she heard. That was Aunt Anya.

“For the last time, I wasn’t threatening her,” Uncle Igor replied.

“Oh, so what’s really going on? Where exactly
is
Masha’s mother?”

“Why are you asking?” Uncle Igor sounded angry. “You should know better than to ask. I don’t hear you complaining about the money I make to buy you new outfits—”

“I let you carry on with your own business. All right. But don’t drag a little girl into it. You bring her here to play with Anastasia, and all the time, you’ve got her mother mixed up in your dirty business. It’s shameful! And as for the money, you know it can’t buy us happiness—”

There was a sudden cracking noise, and Aunt Anya gave a squeak and fell silent. A chair scraped back.

“Why’s that damned bread upside down?” shouted Uncle Igor. “Don’t you know that’s bad luck?” His footsteps clicked across the kitchen and the door to the hall slammed.

There was silence.

Masha stood frozen outside, hardly daring to breathe. It had sounded like Uncle Igor had hit Aunt Anya. But grown-ups didn’t do things like that. And why – because the bread was upside down? Masha felt horribly guilty. What should she do? Go in and see if Aunt Anya was all right? Apologize? She couldn’t hear anything inside. Finally she stuck her head cautiously round the door.

Aunt Anya was sitting very quietly at the table. She looked all right, except that she was holding one hand up to the side of her face.

Masha sidled inside, and Aunt Anya gave her a little smile. “Are you hungry or thirsty? Have a look in the fridge; you know you can help yourself to anything you want.” She got up and went slowly out of the kitchen.

Masha automatically went to the fridge and opened it. It was full of brightly coloured little cartons and packets of nice food and drink, all the kinds of things she never usually got to eat. But she didn’t feel the slightest bit hungry.

At that moment, Anastasia came in from the garden. “Where’s Mama?”

Masha pointed towards the hall. “I think your father hit her,” she said, perhaps unnecessarily, perhaps nastily, because Anastasia went bright red and shot her a look of pure hatred before she ran out after her mother.