Cover Him with Darkness (12 page)

Except that I woke up again and it was like trying to lift my head from under a bag of wet sand. I was lying in a corridor and there were three men going in through the door opposite me. And one of them turned and looked down at me in passing and it was the priest with the silver beard and the glasses, and he looked at me like I didn't matter at all, and then the wet sand covered me up again and I don't remember anything else.

When I woke, it was broad daylight. I was lying on my side across two chairs in the corridor outside my father's room. The door was closed. There was no one nearby.

I sat up slowly. I felt terrible—weak, and floaty, and everything felt faraway and overexposed. It was hard to keep my eyes open without squinting. My mouth felt as dry as the Sahara.

I went into Father's room. The bed was empty and made up, the sheets starch-stiff and so white I couldn't look at them. The curtains were wide open. Vera and Josif sat in chairs in the corner of the room, hands on knees, silent.

“
Adzo? Nana?
Where is he?” I asked, my voice barely able to rasp from my dry throat.

Vera lifted her head. She looked gray and slack, like all the muscle in her face had collapsed overnight and everything had slid downward. “He died last night. A heart attack. They took him down to surgery but he died on the table.”

I blinked. I wanted to ask why they hadn't woken me. But I felt too weak to speak.

“No tears?” Vera asked.

No tears. I was dry and empty, like a bone left for years on a hillside. There was nothing in me but a great hollow of exhaustion.

“In the old days,” she said, softly, softly, “we would have taken you out to a place of curses, and cut your throat and buried you facedown at a crossroads. And we would never have spoken your name again. That is how we would have cleansed our family honor.”

She was exhausted too, I saw—worn out by worry and work and
lack of sleep, trying to care for my father. Her eyes were sunken in dark hollows. She had been beautiful once, in the pictures she'd shown me of her wedding day: petite and vivacious. Now she looked like a hag.

“You killed your father,” said Josif. “Have you nothing to say now?”

I swallowed, trying in vain to moisten my throat. “I didn't kill him,” I said, in a voice like a dried-up wisp of grass blowing across the floor. “The priests came…I saw them…they were looking for him…”

“Shut up, you lying bitch,” spat Vera. “You don't even feel contrition, do you? Get out.”

“I want to see him.”

“You will
never
see him.”

I looked down, trying to marshal my broken thoughts. “He's my father—”

“He's not your father, as you were no daughter to him. This family disowns you and forgets your name. Get out of here, and go to Hell where your demon master lives. You can ask him to call you ‘daughter,' as you spread your legs for him again.”

My throat closed up, tight and dry. I knew there were no words left. I turned away. But as I reached for the door handle, I heard Josif's voice once more.

“Don't think you're getting away with it, girl. The evil thing you did will not be unavenged. Vera's uncle may have left no male kin to cleanse his family name, but there are other ways.”

I looked back over my shoulder. I wished I hadn't.

“We will tell them.” Vera rose to her feet. “We will go to the Church and tell them the secret that was kept so long. Josif has relatives among the bishops. They will listen. They will know what to do to wipe this stain of evil from the face of God's green Earth—and to take you with it. You will pay.”

I walked out of the room.

I walked out of the hospital.

I walked three blocks before I reached a junction. There was a Communist-era statue there commemorating some ancient political victory—the winning of our freedom from the Austrians, perhaps, or the Turks, or the Fascists. It showed a huge bronze eagle hovering over a stone crag, a broken chain dangling from one foot.

That stopped me in my tracks. I thought of the eagle tearing at Prometheus's liver, day after day. I thought of the fallen angel rising after centuries from his place of torment. I thought of Azazel, somewhere, waiting to swoop and collect me for his prey. I thought of the Church—with all its ancient machinery of control and punishment—turning toward me like a creaking bronze titan woken from slumber.

I reached into my pocket and found my phone and a card with a number scrawled upon it.

“Egan,” I rasped as the connection clicked through. “It's Milja. Please. I need you to help me. Right now. Please.”

chapter six

SANCTUARY

E
gan drove round to pick me up in a taxicab. He found me standing by the roadside, and I suppose I must have looked utterly forlorn because he jumped out as the cab parked up and he hurried over.

“Milja—what's happened?”

“My father's dead,” I said in a flat voice.

He put his hands on my shoulders. “I'm so sorry.”

“They say it's my fault.”

“
What?
” His hands tightened.

I liked that grip of his—it felt like I was going to blow away among the litter without something to anchor me. “I need to get away from here,” I told him.

“All right so. Okay. Get in.”

He opened the curbside back door for me and then went round to the other side. The taxi driver looked at us both in the rearview mirror, and I hoped Egan wouldn't ask me what had happened. Not in front of a stranger.

“Where do you want to go?” Egan asked me. “Have you got a hotel?”

I shook my head. I'd spent the last two nights sleeping on chairs in the hospital. No wonder I ached all over.

“Friends?”

“No.” I shook my empty, useless head, feeling my shoulders drop as I added, knowing it sounded childish but unable to stop myself, “I want to go home to Boston.”

“Okay.” Egan sounded dubious. “I'll take you to the airport if that's what you want. Have you got your passport on you? An air ticket?”

I shut my eyes, wanting to sink into the darkness. “My cousin Vera has my passport,” I said. She'd put it in her hotel safe with her own, because she thought it wasn't secure with me walking around with it in my shoulder bag.

“Ah now, that's a problem.” Egan's voice was gentle. “Milja, you don't look at all well. Let's get you somewhere quiet.”

He gave an address to the driver. I didn't object. I didn't care anymore. I looked at the streets sliding past. Egan said nothing, though I could feel him watching me. I didn't cry: I had cried over Azazel and cried over my father, all in vain, and I had no tears left. But I slept, unexpectedly, falling into a doze without even realizing it. I only knew when the car stopped and Egan opened the door for me.

“Come on,” he said, offering me his hand as if I were a little kid.

I looked around vacantly as he helped me to my feet, seeing tall white-painted walls with bright fuchsia bougainvillea sprawling over the tops, and no other traffic. It looked like a back road in an affluent suburb.

“This is the house my employers are putting me up in,” he told me, leading me to an anonymous gate of black metal and pulling a key from his pocket.

“The bank?”

“Uh, yes.” He touched me lightly on the shoulder to usher me inside. “It won't be problem.”

There was a tiny courtyard beyond the gate, and inner doors, and walls of stone. An old building, I thought vaguely, behind the modern facade. Inside, the floors were tiled and the rooms austere, smelling of polish. I saw big, plain furniture that looked antique; a single rug in the center of the living room was the only concession to softness. There were no pictures on the walls and no ornaments, except for a small wooden crucifix as we entered and a wooden statue of Mary and the Holy Child on a far sideboard, cracked with age and still bearing traces of gilt and paint. There was no indication whether this was intended as a shrine or an art statement.

“Have a seat, Milja, and I'll get you a drink,” said Egan, as a door opened and out came a woman; an old woman wearing a headscarf. She looked at us with an expression of surprise.

“Ah, Milja—this is the housekeeper, Dejana.”

“
Dobro jutro
,” I said, automatically, though I had no idea if it was still morning or not.

“Dejana, this is Milja who will be our guest. She needs looking after. Can you find her some…orange juice?” He looked at me for confirmation.

“Yes,” I said, gratefully.

“Orange juice,” he repeated for Dejana's benefit, miming lifting a glass and drinking from it. She nodded, turned back and disappeared into the room she'd come from.

“Dejana doesn't talk, but she understands what you say.” Egan had that nervous look tourists get when they're worried they sound like patronizing foreigners. “Anything you need, just ask her.” He sat down in an armchair opposite me and looked into my eyes. “Are you in trouble, Milja?”

I nodded.

“Do you need the police, or a doctor?”

“No.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

I looked down at my hands. I wanted to. I meant to. But I opened my mouth and no words came out. Egan waited.

“It's all right,” he said at last. “Just rest. You're safe here. In fact, there are several guest bedrooms here and no one else but me staying right now. So how about you lie down for a couple of hours? You look like you need it.”

“Okay.” I'd been asleep in a drugged stupor all night and then some, but I still felt exhausted.

“Sure, well, I have to go out just for a little while. You took me out of work early, that's all. We'll talk when I get back, shall we? In the meantime, the bathroom's over there if you need it.” He pointed across the main room. “It's shared I'm afraid, but there's a bolt on the door. Come on—let's find you a bedroom.”

He led me down a short corridor and opened a door into a bedchamber that matched the living room for style: plain, heavyweight furniture and
a crucifix as the only adornment on the whitewashed walls. It made me horribly aware that I possessed nothing but the clothes I stood up in, my phone, my credit cards and a crushed cigarette packet of euros. Everything meaningful and comforting and familiar had been taken away.

“That'll do, won't it? My room's at the end of the corridor there. The others are all empty.”

“Great. Thank you.” I made myself meet his eyes and smile. I don't think it was convincing.

“Try and get some sleep.”

Alone, I inspected my room. A single window looked out onto an enclosed garden. The bed was only sized for a single occupant, but was made up with clean sheets. In fact there was a guest welcome pack in sealed plastic on the bedside table: toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, a three-pack of disposable razors. Nothing feminine. There was a large bottle of water too, which I opened eagerly. Only when I'd knocked back about a liter did I spot the pajamas: brand-new, still in their sealed packet, old-fashioned, striped-cotton male pajamas.

Weird
, I thought, in that vague emotionless way that I seemed to have acquired. They seemed to be anticipating only single men as guests here. I wondered if Egan wore matching attire at night, and though the thought didn't exactly make me smile it was a moment of lightness.

There was no bolt or lock on the bedroom door.
Weird
, I thought, again.

I went back out into the public room, and found Dejana setting a large glass of juice on the table in the dining niche, along with a plate of sweet
potika
pastries and some smoked ham. She nodded at me when I thanked her, but pursed her lips and dropped her eyes when I asked, “Have you been here long?” Conversation, even in mime, was clearly not encouraged.

I ate slowly, more because I felt my body needed it than from appetite. I thought about Father—not the shrunken, frail man of this last week but the big hale Papa of my childhood, always ready to fix things mechanical, always humming to himself as he worked, always prepared to stop whatever he was doing and talk to me and patiently explain this or that. But still the tears would not come.

I shut my eyes. In this warm, silent room it was easy to picture my father, easy to imagine him sitting opposite me. I could almost hear his
breathing. I could picture his broad face with his spectacles slipping down his nose, and his dark eyes watching me with gentle concern.

“Papa,” I said, sliding my hand across the table toward him.

A warm touch brushed the back of my hand. A feathery brush of fingers. I shivered and opened my eyes—but there was no one there. Just the warm afternoon light and an empty chair and a fugitive scent that might have been church incense.

I wanted to weep. It would have been such a relief. But I couldn't.

Afterward, I went to my room, shrugged out of my clothes, put on the top half of the pajamas—the shirt hung down to mid-thigh on me—and climbed into the bed. I thought I'd just curl up and nurse the hollow in my chest, but I passed into sleep almost at once.