The Last Girl (16 page)

‘If he offers some money, I'll find where she's put it,' he said, drying his face on a cloth.

Jonas nodded. ‘Right,' he said. His eyes continued to search the room, but there was no sign of it.

Not five minutes after Jonas had left, as Ivan was pulling on his coat, there was a rap at the door. Ivan ignored it. Finding Svetlana's jacket he searched through the pockets, looking for some cash. There was another bang on the door. It shook beneath the blow.

‘Svetlana?' a voice called.

‘What do you want?' Ivan called angrily.

‘I'm looking for Svetlana,' the man called back through the door.

Ivan threw the jacket onto the bed. He swore. He needed a drink. He stepped over to the door and opened it. Pressed in against the wall, trying to avoid the flurries of rain, was an elderly man. His silver hair had been blown by the wind, but he was dressed smartly, as if he had been out for dinner. Though obviously in his seventies, he looked fit and his eyes were lively and bright. Ivan could see the man was appraising him critically. ‘She's not here,' he said sourly, leaning against the door­jamb.

‘Oh,' said the man and then paused. ‘She'll be back soon, will she?'

Ivan pulled the coat around him. A raw wind sprayed the rain into the doorway. He coughed. ‘How would I know?' Ivan said, irritated at the man's persistence. Beneath his arm he carried a small parcel.

‘She didn't say? I've got work for her,' the man said, indicating the bag he was carrying.

‘What about the money?' Ivan said, not reaching out his hand to take the package.

‘I pay her when they're done,' he said.

Ivan stared at him. For a few moments they stood eyeing each other, then the elderly man held out the bag and pulled a few Litas from his pocket.

‘Here,' he said. ‘Tell Svetlana that Steponas Daumantas left it. If she brings it to my apartment I'll pay her a little extra.' Ivan nodded, his fingers closing around the money. He stuffed it into his pocket. The name seemed familiar to Ivan and for a moment he paused.

‘A man called Jonas didn't just call here, did he?' Daumantas asked.

Ivan looked at him for an instant without answering. The name clicked. For a moment he considered whether he should say something about the papers. He could perhaps get some more money, he considered. But he needed a drink. He needed one badly.

‘Yes,' he said then. ‘Yes he did, if it's got anything to do with you.'

Daumantas turned away into the squall. He turned before he had taken a few paces and said something more, but Ivan had already closed the door.

When Svetlana returned in the late afternoon, Ivan was gone. On the bed lay the package of clothes Daumantas had left. She examined it. His name was written neatly in a left-hand corner. She sat on the bed and held it on her lap. He had been and she had missed him. She examined the rug. It did not seem to have been moved. Laying the package aside, she got to her knees and rolled it back. The floorboard was in place. Taking a knife she lifted it carefully and slipped her hand into the dark space. It was there. She pulled it out. She laid the blue bag on the bed beside the package of shirts. The shirts were barely dirty. One seemed deliberately crumpled.

She drew a bucket of water from the radiator. She would wash them immediately, she thought, and return them with the bag of papers that evening. Pouring the steaming water into the tub she dropped in Daumantas' shirts. She held one close to her face, inhaling the sharp scent of his skin, and caressed the soft cloth against her cheek.

Svetlana was hanging Daumantas' shirts on the string, strung out across the courtyard, when Misha appeared. Seeing her he ducked away, head drawn down in to the collar of his jacket as he dodged in through the doorway. Svetlana secured the last shirt with the wooden peg and followed him inside. Misha was sitting on the bed, his jacket still on, head in hands.

‘Misha ?'

He did not answer. Svetlana crouched beside him, taking his arms in her hands. He strained against her, not allowing her to pull his hands away from his face.

‘What is it, Misha?'

‘Nothing,' he said, his voice furious, belligerent, as it had been as a child. Then he sighed. ‘Nothing,' he repeated, his voice drained now.

He sat back. Svetlana started. Around his eye the flesh was swollen and discoloured. A deep cut split open the skin on his cheek. Small beads of coagulated blood clung to his lower lip. Instinctively her hand reached out to him, but he jerked back, away from her.

‘Don't,' he said.

‘What happened?'

He stood up and paced across to the window. ‘Nothing,' he said.

Standing with his back to her, he stared out into the street, through the plastic sheeting and the small square of grimy window. Svetlana did not approach him. She sat on the edge of the bed. For some moments he said no more, then he turned his head slightly.

‘The job has finished.'

‘Finished?'

He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his trousers. Still he did not turn. The anger had disappeared from his voice and when he spoke it was with resignation.

‘I lost the job.' He paused again. ‘The builder was having trouble with money. It was understandable, it wasn't his fault. He lost money when the bank collapsed. Nobody was buying; everybody wanted paying immediately. Matulis came down himself to the site. He promised he would pay us, that he would keep the jobs. We just had to be patient.

‘He was here again this morning.' Misha paused. He gazed out of the window, rubbing dust from the glass with his fingers. ‘Then some of Kasimov's men came. Matulis had borrowed money from Kasimov to keep things going. They wanted him off the site. They said that Kasimov was calling in the loan. Matulis tried to reason with them, but they weren't going to listen.'

He fingered his cheek, absently. ‘A fight broke out.'

‘Kasimov?' Svetlana said.

Misha turned away from the window and faced her. He shrugged. Svetlana gazed at her son. He was eighteen. For four years he had been working on building sites. He looked ten years older than he was. His arms bulged, his face was dirty and lined and his eyes sullen. Her heart contracted with pain. She longed to take him in her arms and hug him as she had when he was a child.

‘There'll be other work,' he said, leaning back against the windowsill. He chuckled darkly. ‘There's plenty of work. Perhaps Kasimov will hire us.'

The daylight had begun to fade and the room was grimly shadowed.

‘We'll get the money, Misha,' she said. ‘We'll get enough.'

‘One thousand dollars? Some hope.' Misha scratched his scalp with one of his thick fingers. ‘Without a job? Where would we get that kind of money?'

‘We'll get it,' Svetlana said. Her fingers sought out the plastic bag that lay near her on the bed. She caressed it. ‘We'll find a way.'

‘I could try going to England myself,' Misha said, thoughtfully.

‘With no papers? They wouldn't let you in. They would send you straight back. You would just waste your money.'

‘There's nothing here.'

‘We'll get the money. We will.'

Outside, she felt the shirts that were dancing a slow polka in the breeze. They were still damp. She walked down Stepono to the shop on the corner and bought some bread and a small bag of milk with the last of the money Pumpetiene had given her. Returning she spotted Nikolai playing quietly in the rubble of the old Jewish school.

The building sagged. Its roof had fallen in, and each floor had given way. Thick joists hung like broken ribs. Windows gaped. The walls stood, still, stooped like old soldiers remembering the dead on the ninth of May.

Svetlana crossed the road and paused at the cavity, which had once been a doorway, before the war. She called out to her son. Hearing her voice, Nikolai crooked his head. He was squatted on the heap of fallen floors, sifting through the broken bricks and dust. He scuttled away, into the darkness of a room left standing. Svetlana, fearing for him, stepped through the doorway and clambered across the rubble.

The centre of the building opened out into a large room, sheltered now only by dark clouds. On the walls, the Hebrew script was clearly discernible. In all the years she had lived across the street she had never been inside the shell of the building. She had never associated it with its past. Seeing the writing on the wall, faded but clear, it struck her now. She thought of the metal box in her room. The pitiful treasures.

‘Nikolai,' she called.

In the darkness she heard scuttling, a small cascade of rubble, the rattle of an old tin can. Silence. She peered in. There was no sign of him. She edged towards the dark doorway, straining her eyes in the growing gloom.

‘Nikolai,' she whispered.

‘Svyeta!' a voice called from the street.

Svetlana jumped. She turned, stumbling on the loose building scree. In the gaping doorway, which gave out onto the street, stood Jonas. He grinned. The streetlight above him flickered on, casting a sickly light upon his deformed face. A cold flush of revulsion and fear surged over Svetlana. She stooped and took in her hand a half brick.

‘Stay away from me, Jonas,' she called, her voice low and threatening.

‘Just saying hello,' he said, grinning still. He waved, then turned back into the street. She could hear him chuckle as he made his way towards Pylimo. She waited until his footsteps had faded before she stumbled out of the building.

Before gathering the clean shirts into her arms, she washed her hands carefully in a small bowl of water. She brought the shirts into the room. Misha had gone. Moving the television, she carefully laid a clean sheet across the table and ironed the shirts. Folding them precisely, she wrapped them in paper and tied the package with string.

It was only then that she glanced at the bed and realised it had gone. For a moment she could not believe it. Rooted to the spot she stared at the rumpled sheets. At their emptiness. The freezing dread rolled back over her, a vicious wave that nearly toppled her. She stooped and peered into the blackness beneath the bed. She turned on the small lamp and scanned the room. Every surface. She opened cupboards, upended piles of clothes. Stupidly, irrationally, she bent down and rolled back the threadbare rug. Taking a knife, she levered up the floorboard, prising out the rusted nails. She lay on her belly and thrust her hand into the gap beneath the boards. Further, her arm extending into the vacant opening. It was not there. It had gone. She had known the moment she glanced at the bed and saw its absence. She had known then where it was. Who had taken it.

She pressed her forehead onto the rough wooden floorboards and cried. That was how Nikolai found her, when he slid in from the darkness fifteen minutes later.

A medal, a ring, a handkerchief. Svetlana spread them out around her. Someone's memories. In her right hand she cradled the bottle of vodka. She lifted it to her lips. Nuzzled it. Drank. Nikolai, in the corner, gazed out into the darkness, vacantly. The bottle fell away from her lips. Empty. She dropped it over the side of the bed onto the floor. The sudden clatter startled Nikolai. He looked up. For a moment he gazed at the bottle spinning on the floorboards. Then his eyes shifted, back to the shadows.

He had been taken. When she woke the next morning her father was not there. She made believe it had been a dream. She could do that then. Under the sheets she lay listening to the silence of the apartment, imagining the hour was early yet. That her father was still sleeping. Elaborately she planned her day, and he was there, in his place. She did not allow the silence to undo her. The absence of his voice, the slop of his slippers, the rubber breaking loose of its stitching again, slapping on the parqueted floor in the corridor. She took only shallow breaths and so did not notice the absence of his morning cigarette, the aroma of his coffee.

When finally she slipped back the sheets, acknowledging the time the clock displayed, and washed and dressed in the unnatural silence and went to the kitchen, still she allowed herself to believe it had been a dream. Her mother sat at the table, eyes rimmed scarlet, lips white and her hair dishevelled. Svetlana said nothing. They avoided each other's eyes. Carefully she stepped around her mother, breakfasted. A sandwich like her father made her. She packed her books into her school bag and left the apartment, closing the door behind her quietly.

The class was subdued. Eyes flicked up from their books and studied her. She wrote carefully, forming each word with pedantic neatness. Sofia Petrova, the teacher, stood behind her. She felt the teacher's presence but did not look up. It was only when Sofia Petrova placed a hand upon her shoulder that she felt the bubble of tears rise to the surface and she woke from the dream. The pen shook in her hand and the neat word that she had just written disappeared under a thin blue pool of ink. Her eyes blurred and a pain stabbed at her heart so violently she bent forward. The sob caught in her throat and for a moment she could not breathe. It came out then, a howl, which sent a shiver down the spine of her teacher.

Sofia Petrova took her by the arm and led her from the classroom. In the small office, used by the teachers, she sat that morning, gazing out across the rooftops to the forest. The tips of the pines trembled in the breeze. Blond insubstantial clouds were pulled apart and dis­solved against the chilly blue celestial canvas. When Sofia Petrova returned at the lunch hour, she carried a small package. She sat down on one of the low stools beside Svetlana.

‘This is for you,' she said, and handed her the package, wrapped in brown paper.

Svetlana took it. She folded back the crisp, thick paper and pulled a picture from the package. It was an icon of Christ crucified.

‘You must not say anything to anybody,' Sofia Petrova said. Svetlana saw the anxious look in her eyes. She understood the trouble her teacher would be in if the Communist authorities discovered she was giving religious icons to her students.