Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (89 page)

“On days such as today,” Nikolai said, “I am reminded of what it is to be young. I remember how sweet it was and I feel it in my bones for a second, but then it is gone and it leaves only bitter residue behind.”

For Nikolai this was unusually garrulous and Jamie wondered what had brought it on. The old man had mellowed of late, partly because of the return of his music, Jamie suspected, but in larger part because of Kolya. He had been pleased when they named the baby after him and had taken to spending his evenings rocking Kolya, and singing old Russian ditties to him in a rough voice that was quite beautiful. The piano and the child together had brought a softness and a life out in him that had been well hidden before.

Nikolai’s eyes were closed as he basked in the sun. His skin was like whisper-thin vellum, with fissures running through it as deep as the bark in an oak tree. He looked terribly frail suddenly, as if every trial and tragedy and all the terrible years in the gulags had risen up from within him and showed themselves now on the map of his body and face. His cough had been worse with the chillier nights and mornings, and sat deep in his chest, an implacable old enemy that Nikolai claimed he would be lost without. Jamie feared it would be the companion that killed him.

“We all die some day, Yasha. It is not always a bad thing,” he said as if Jamie had spoken his thoughts aloud. He reached over with one gnarled hand and touched Jamie’s hair, softly, like a benediction from a father to a son. “Go and be with your wife. It is a lovely day. Do not waste it. They are rare enough.”

It was good advice. Violet was in a dappled patch of woods, tall silver birches surrounding her like a dryad in an old tale. She was utterly absorbed in her mushroom picking and so did not notice his approach until his shadow fell across her own.

She looked up at him, white camellia face haloed in copper hair, and smiled. It was an expression of such sweetness that he felt his heart miss a beat before resuming its normal tread. She flushed, and looked back down at a patch of delicate mushrooms as fragile and ephemeral as fairies at dusk. He pulled her to him and kissed her swiftly, feeling the softness of her body against his own. She laughed up at him, smears of dirt on her fair face, smelling pungently of pine and earth and water, and then pulled his face down in her mucky hands for a kiss of much deeper proportions. Her mouth tasted sweetly of the overripe cloudberries she had been eating and of the dense earth in which she had been digging. She swayed against him and he had to clamp down on a wild desire to take her down in this patch of bracken and make love to her.

She must have read his thoughts for she pushed him away and smiled, her eyes telegraphing that they could resume what they had begun later. They continued their mushroom search, with Violet providing him with botanical information on a variety of plants and their uses. She could set up shop as an herbalist and do well for herself, Jamie mused, for it was clear that she had an understanding of plants that was rare.

“Those are bad,” Violet pointed to a small cluster of brown mushrooms that looked rather innocent.

“Poison?” Jamie asked, watching a butterfly hover over a late blooming patch of cornflowers.

“Poison—yes,” Violet said, “but good in very small amounts for bad headaches and for great stiffness.” She nodded toward Nikolai, and Jamie understood that she meant these were medicinal for arthritis.

“You know how to make medicine from them?” Jamie asked, pausing as the butterfly landed on his forearm and balanced there for a moment, its delicate abdomen pulsating and its celadon wings impossibly fragile. Two more joined it within seconds and he sighed. He hated to brush them off, for to touch them was always to risk damaging them, but he knew how this usually went with him.

“My mother told me that butterflies were guardian angels and that when you saw one go by, you knew you were safe, for it was keeping a close eye on you.Your angels are plenty,” Violet said, looking at him in a way that made him slightly uncomfortable. He could not explain this to anyone, but he thought perhaps it was nothing very special, only rare in that animals and insects and people knew they could trust him and so could venture close without fear.

The sunny day and the promise of a feast of fungi seemed to have mellowed even the guards’ collective mood, for they allowed Shura and Violet to cook an entire feast of mushrooms—under two sets of watchful eyes and machine guns—but nevertheless, allowed it.

Back in the camp, the dinner was hearty compared to what they were used to, the earthy smell of the mushrooms mixing lushly with the warmth of the garlic and the rich oil of butter. From somewhere Gregor had produced a bottle of
okhotnichaya
—hunter’s vodka, a brown brew flavored with ginger, cloves, lemon peel and anise, topped off with wine and sugar. It tasted ambrosial to Jamie’s tongue, and along with the food gave him a feeling of sated well-being he had not known in a very long time.

After dinner, Gregor sang a couple of songs, his voice deep and growly but well-suited to the
sturm und drang
of Russian folk music. Then Shura stood up on the table, his hand over his heart, dark eyes glowing soporifically with the drink and food. He sang an old Georgian song, beginning low and whispery which befit the song’s melancholy yearning. There was a bit of muttering at first, for
Suliko
had the misfortune to have been a favorite of Stalin’s, proving as always that the old monster had an odd sentimental streak.

“I was looking for my sweetheart’s grave,
And longing was tearing my heart.
Without love my heart felt heavy -
Where are you, my Suliko?

Among fragrant roses, in the shadow,
Brightly a nightingale sang his song.
There I asked the nightingale
Where he had hidden Suliko.

Suddenly the nightingale fell silent
And softly touched the rose with the beak:
“You have found what you are looking for,” he said,
In an eternal sleep Suliko is resting here.”

Later, Jamie could not have said just when the tenor of the evening shifted, for all had been mellow goodwill for a time, with laughter and conversation that was as good as any he had known in the many circles he had traveled within in his lifetime. Perhaps it was after the song, for it had cast a strange mood over them all and turned the atmosphere of the evening ever so slightly, bringing the darkness down earlier than intended.

He was turned from Violet, listening to a story Gregor was telling about a hunting trip in Siberia, when he felt her hand convulse in his own.

“Yasha.” Only two syllables, but a harbinger of disaster. Jamie looked around to see what had put that tone in Violet’s voice. A rush of icy adrenaline washed his cells as he saw what had Violet’s small face white with tension. Gregor had stopped speaking and silence spread down the table like dominoes toppling slowly toward disaster.

Volodya, the small shy man who had once filled a snowy walkway with flowers for a woman who could not love him, was standing up. His entire frame shook with suppressed emotion. A lifetime of it, to be exact. In his hand he clutched that day’s ration of bread.

“Listen people—let us talk about bread, let us talk about this miserable scrap of life we call bread and how it has ruled all our lives for so long now.”

Faces around the table turned to stare, uncomprehending and frightened, the relaxation, the camaraderie melting away like snow touched to a fire. Volodya stepped up onto the table, carrying with him the burdens of humiliation and survival in a country where survival came at a very high cost.

“Every day it is the same thing—bread rules our existence from morning to night—the questions, the hope—will I get more today? If I toady to the foreman will he share his ration, if I do a favor for a guard, will he look the other way when I take that extra bowl of soup because for once the bastard cook miscounted heads? Bread,” he crushed the heel in his hand, “goddamn bread—is this the measure of a man’s life? Is this the soul that is left of Mother Russia, a lousy few grams of goddamnable bread?” He flung the bread across the room, raising his fists to heaven in a boundless anger. “Is this all there is for Russia—a fucking moldy heel of bread?!”

“He must stop,” Violet said tightly and Jamie squeezed her hand under the table, knowing that there was no way to stop Volodya now because he was set upon his course. He gave her hand another squeeze and then stood. Even when the odds were entirely against a man, he must try to avert complete disaster.

Volodya took no notice of Jamie’s movement. One of the guards was barking commands now, a mixture of fear and fury in his words. Jamie spared him a sideways glance and then looked back up to Volodya.

“What is a man’s worth? Is it measured in grams, in bread that a dog would turn its nose from were it not starving? Is it measured by unfulfilled dreams? Is it measured by all the days lived without freedom? How was it measured for all those ghosts in the bell tower? They ring the bells sometimes at night—ring them until there is no sleep. I hear them so often now. Do you?” He looked down at Jamie, his eyes fever-bright.

Jamie had drawn even with Volodya, taking care to keep the guards within his view. He thanked God that it wasn’t Boris and Vlad who had been assigned to supervise the small feast, for he had no doubt either would be happy to put a bullet in his spine.

He held out a hand to Volodya. “Come down man,” he said softly, trying to provide him a way out of the fraught situation that wouldn’t end in tragedy or humiliation. They had only a few minutes grace before the guards would change their mind about dealing with the situation themselves.

Volodya looked him directly in the eyes, his deep blue ones alight with a despair so pure that Jamie felt his heart plummet. And then he spoke, words low and quiet so that only Jamie might hear him.

“I have doused the light and left open the door
For you, so simple and so wondrous.”

He recognized the quote, and understood its import all too well. He kept his hand up to the man, praying that he understood it was his only hope for salvation. Long minutes passed, the tension crawling up the very walls of the dining hall, building thick and black until it seemed impossible that anyone could breathe in such an atmosphere. Jamie could feel beads of sweat begin to run down his backbone but he kept his hand steady and held out to the man. Volodya stared at Jamie’s hand as if he could not quite understand why it was there. But finally he stretched his own hand out, and Jamie could feel the guards coil like springs ready to explode behind him.

Volodya slid his hand into Jamie’s, grasping it tightly. Jamie grabbed back hard and put his other hand on the man’s upper arm, pulling him down to the ground as fast as he could, dropping his own body amid the shouts of the guards and a small cry of dismay from Violet.

He held him down to the ground, his body shielding the man from the guards, hoping to God that they didn’t decide to shoot him in lieu of Volodya.

“Stop it, for the love of God,” Jamie hissed. “They are losing patience with you.” For Volodya was still talking, voice high and hagridden with pain. Volodya ceased at Jamie’s admonition, as quiet suddenly as if he were dead though tears ran in an unceasing stream down his face.

“It is too late,” he said, and smiled through his tears, but the smile was hollow.

The man’s words sent a trickle of ice through Jamie’s innards. Volodya seemed resigned but vindictive at the same time, as though something beyond the visible events had taken place and would, like the night-blooming mushroom, only reveal itself in time. Later he would think he should have known, should have understood what the man was saying, but even then, it was too late, just as Volodya had said.

In the hut, Violet sat by the light of the fire, rocking Kolya
. The baby had fallen asleep some time ago, but Jamie understood the need for the reassurance after the scare they had all experienced in the dining hut. He was profoundly grateful for Valentin’s latitude in allowing them this space as a married couple. He needed to be with his small family tonight, to banish the darkness that had swum up around Volodya’s actions. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that he had missed something, overlooked something the man had said or some gesture he had made.

She looked up, a question in her eyes.

“Shura dosed him with a sedative and he’s being held in the isolation hut for now.”

“Will they punish him further do you think?” she asked, and their eyes met over the baby’s head. They both knew the answer, though Volodya had harmed none but himself.

He took Kolya from her arms, holding him fast for a moment, breathing in the sweet milky scent of him, feeling the warm heat of his tiny slumbering form. Jamie’s own body relaxed in response and he put his head to the curve of Kolya’s, wishing he could always shelter him so but knowing well that he could not. Kolya would soon be a year old, and he was very aware that time was running out swiftly for the child.

He put Kolya in his cot, built with his own hands, with raised sides to keep him safe through the night, and joined his wife in the bed. In the darkness, she stretched out beside him, the scents of the day coming with her. Jamie sighed and turned toward her so that they met along their lengths. Her skin radiated heat and she smelled still of the earth and garlic and butter, and of female desire. She was impatient, seeking reassurance and oblivion from the dark feeling that had fallen like a thick curtain around them all in the dining hut.

Inside, she was even warmer and he groaned softly against her mouth for he knew neither of them was going to last long. He moved slowly, lingering, relishing the feel of her skin under his hands, the small cries she made and how she said his name over and over like a sweet prayer for release. This he gave her, pressing himself against her, feeling the life that beat all around them. It held an edge of desperate relief for the narrow miss they had all experienced in the preceding hours.

“I love you, Yasha,” she said afterwards, her forehead leaning damply into his shoulder.

“I love you too,” he replied, because it was true.

Jamie awoke in what seemed only moments later
to see Shura bending over him, holding a lantern in his hand, a look on his face of utter panic.

“What? What is it? What’s happened?” Beside him, Violet sat up, clutching the quilt to her body, eyes wide with sudden fear. Kolya was stirring in his crib, making the small noises that meant he would soon be in full roar.

“Two of the guards, the ones who ate with us—one is throwing up blood,” Shura said, and Jamie saw that indeed the man’s thick hands were covered in drying blood, black and crimson.

“And the other?” Jamie asked.

“Dead,” Shura said bluntly. He didn’t need to add anything more, but the words seemed to hang on the air as though he had indeed uttered them.
As are we, once the other guards realize what has happened.

“He picked plenty of the white ones,” Jamie said, remembering with a lurch the strange look Volodya’s face had worn when he saw Jamie watching him put the frail white mushrooms into his basket.

“The gauzy looking ones, coming up out of a veil like they are a bride or angel?” Violet asked, her voice sharp with fear.

“Yes,” Jamie said, his stomach dropping several inches.

“Those are pure poison,” Violet said, grey eyes wide and dark as the depths of a lake.

“Destroying Angel,” Shura whispered, his face impossibly white over the broad bones. “They will all die. There is no way to save them from such poison.”

Jamie got up and hastily threw on his clothes, shoved his feet into the camp regulation boots and followed Shura out into the night.

Outside the weather had done one of those swift and brutal turnarounds that were native to autumn. It was freezing, the wind howling down like Baba Yaga in a black bitch of a temper. Beyond the wind there lay a terrible silence. He looked about, rain lashing at his face, drawing visibility down to a flickering glimpse of a lit window, and the impression of two pale faces in the dark at the side of Volodya’s hut.

“Yasha…” Shura said at his back, a note of warning in his tone, but Jamie was already halfway across the mucky expanse of ground toward the pale faces that hovered in the air.

Suddenly he saw why Volodya was so still, and thought he might be sick there in the freezing cold mud. Volodya was still because Volodya was dead, a bone-handled knife stuck through his throat, pinning him to the rough lumber of the hut, his face horribly blank above the blade.

“What the hell have you done?” Jamie managed to gasp out. Gregor stood in the rain, rivulets gathering in his hair and forming small rivers down his body.

“It had to be done,” Gregor said roughly. “It would go much worse with him if they took him. Now it is over. He has had camp justice.”

Jamie saw that for Gregor it had not been an act of violence, but rather one of mercy. He was right. He had done what needed doing and he had been the only one with the foresight and courage to see that it was necessary.

“I will help you bury him,” Jamie said. Gregor gave him one of those long, unflinching looks that always made Jamie feel like his soul was being scoured, then nodded.

“We will have to do it soon or they will make us leave him to rot, to make a point.”

The other guards were nowhere to be seen, though the lights of the infirmary blazed, giving them a good idea of where they were occupied. The fences and fear would keep the inmates in place.

They dug near the edge of the camp, just beyond the ring of pines. The rain felt like needles of ice pouring down Jamie’s collar, soaking the earth and making it heavy and cumbersome to move. Winter was on its way, breathing down from the great Arctic plains. Winter in all its killing ferocity, locking them in for another brutal season. He could sense eyes on them but they were left to bury their dead in peace.

Gregor heaved the last spadeful of muck onto the grave and stood for a moment with his head bowed. Jamie bowed his accordingly while streams of freezing rain formed a stream down the hollow of his spine.