The Twilight Watch (14 page)

I nodded.

'Do you blame me?' Gesar asked curiously 'Anton?'

'Who am I to blame you?' I asked. 'I have a daughter who's a
Light Other. And I wouldn't want to let the Dark have her.'

'Thank you, Anton.' Gesar nodded and relaxed visibly. 'I'm glad
you understand that.'

'I just wonder how far you would have gone for your son and
Olga,' I said. 'You know Svetlana had a premonition? Some kind
of danger for me.'

Gesar shrugged.

'Premonitions are pretty unreliable.'

'What if I'd decided to tell the Inquisition the truth?' I went
on. 'Decided to leave the Watch and join the Inquisition . . .What
then?'

'You didn't leave,' Gesar said. 'Despite all Witiezslav's hints. What
else, Anton? I can tell you've got another question you want to
ask.'

'How did your son turn out to be an Other?' I asked. 'It's a
lottery. It's rare for a family of Others to have a child who's an
Other.'

'Anton, either go to Witiezslav and present him with your conclusions,'
Gesar said in a low voice, 'or get out and go to Svetlana,
as you were planning to do. Spare me this interrogation.'

'Aren't you afraid the Inquisition will think it all through and
figure out what happened?' I carried on.

'No, I'm not. In three hours Witiezslav will sign a document
closing the investigation. They won't open the case again. They're
already up to their ears in shit.'

'Good luck with remoralising Timur,' I said.

And I headed for the door.

'You still have another week's leave. Spend some time with your
family,' Gesar called after me.

At first I was going to reply proudly that I didn't need any
handouts.

But I stopped myself in time.

What the heck!

'Two weeks,' I said. 'At this stage I've got at least a month of
compensatory leave coming.'

Gesar didn't say a word.

I
DECIDED TO
return the BMW after I got back from leave. After
all . . .

The road surface was brand new – the highway here used to
be all potholes, with a few connecting stretches of good road; now
it was stretches of good road, only occasionally interrupted by
potholes – so the car coasted comfortably at high speed.

It's good to be an Other.

I knew I wouldn't get caught in traffic. I knew a dump-truck
with a drunk driver wouldn't suddenly swerve in front of me. If
I ran out of petrol, I could pour water into the tank and turn it
into fuel.

Who wouldn't want a life like that for his own child?

What right did I have to blame Gesar and Olga for anything?

The stereo in the car was brand-new, with a minidisc slot. At
first I was going to stick
Combat Implants
into it, then I decided
I was in the mood for something more lyrical.

I put on The White Guard.

I don't know what you have decided.
I don't know how things are there with you,
An angel has sewed the sky shut with thread,
Dark blue and light blue . . .
I don't remember the taste of loss,
I have no strength to resist evil,
Every time I walk out the door,
I walk towards your warmth . . .

My mobile phone rang. And the intelligent stereo immediately
turned down its own volume.

'Sveta?' I asked.

'You're hard to reach, Anton.'

Svetlana's voice was calm. That meant everything was all right.

And that was the most important thing.

'I couldn't get through to you either,' I admitted.

'Must be fluctuations in the ether,' Svetlana laughed. 'What
happened half an hour ago?'

'Nothing special. I had a talk with Gesar.'

'Is everything okay?'

'Yes.'

'I had a premonition. That you were walking close to the edge.'

I nodded, watching the road. I have a clever wife, Gesar. Her
premonitions are reliable.

'And everything's all right now?' I asked, just to make sure.

'Now everything's all right.'

'Sveta . . .' I asked, holding the wheel with one hand. 'What
should you do when you're not sure if you've done the right
thing? If you're tormented over whether you're right or not.'

'Join the Dark Ones,' Svetlana replied without any hesitation.
'They're never tormented.'

'And that's the whole answer?'

'It's the only answer there is. And all the difference there is
between Light Ones and Dark Ones. You can call it conscience,
you can call it a moral sense. It comes down to the same thing.'

'I have this feeling,' I complained, 'as if the time of order is
coming to an end. Do you understand? And I don't know what's
coming next. Not a dark time, not a light time . . . not even the
time of the Inquisitors . . .'

'It's nobody's time, Anton,' said Svetlana. 'That's all it is, nobody's
time. You're right, something's coming. Something's going to happen
in the world. But not right this minute.'

'Talk to me, Sveta,' I asked her. 'I've still got half an hour to
drive. Talk to me for that half-hour, okay?'

'I haven't got much money left on my mobile,' Svetlana answered
doubtfully.

'I can call you back,' I suggested. 'I'm on an assignment, I've
got a company mobile. Gesar can pay the bill.'

'And won't your conscience torment you?' she laughed.

'I gave it a good drilling today.'

'All right, don't call back, I'll put a spell on my mobile,' said
Svetlana. Maybe she was joking, maybe she was serious. I can't
always tell.

'Then talk to me,' I said. 'Tell me what's going to happen when
I get there. What Nadiushka's going to say. What you're going to
say. What your mother's going to say. What's going to happen to
us.'

'Everything's going to be fine,' said Svetlana. 'I'll be happy, and
so will Nadya. And my mother will be happy . . .'

I drove the car, contravening the strict rules of the state highway
patrol by pressing the mobile phone to my ear with one hand.
Trucks came hurtling towards me and past me on the other side
of the road.

I listened to what Svetlana was saying.

And from the speakers the quiet female voice carried on
singing:

When you come back, everything will be different,
How shall we recognise each other . . .
When you come back,
But I am not your wife or even your friend.
When you come back to me,
Who loved you so madly in the past,
When you come back,
You will see the lots were cast long ago, and not by us . . .

H
OLIDAYS IN THE
countryside near Moscow have always been
the prerogative of the rich or the poor. It's only the middle classes
that prefer Turkish hotels on inclusive tariffs offering 'as much as
you can drink', a torrid Spanish siesta or the neat and tidy coast
of Croatia. The middle classes don't like to take their holidays in
Central Russia.

But then, the middle classes in Russia aren't very big.

In any case, the profession of biology teacher, even in a prestigious
Moscow grammar school, has nothing whatever to do with
the middle classes. And if the teacher is female, if her swine of a
husband left her three years ago for another woman, who has no
intention of encroaching on the mother's right to bring up her
two children, then Turkish hotels are no more than an idle fantasy.

It was a good thing the children had not yet reached the terrible
teenage years and were still genuinely delighted by the old dacha,
the little stream and the forest that started just beyond the fence.

What was not so good was the way the elder child, a daughter,
took her senior status so seriously. At the age of ten you can be
pretty good at keeping an eye on your little five-year-old brother
splashing about in the stream, but there's no way you ought to go
wandering deep into the forest with him, relying on the knowledge
you've gleaned from a school textbook on nature studies.

As yet, however, ten-year-old Ksyusha had no idea that they
were lost. She walked blithely on along the forest path that she
could barely even make out, holding her brother tightly by the
hand as she told him a story:

'And then they hammered more pine stakes through him. They
hammered one stake into his forehead, and another into his
stomach! But he got up out of his coffin and said: 'You can't kill
me anyway! I've been dead for ages already! My name is . . .'

Her brother started whingeing quietly.

'Okay, okay, I was joking,' Ksyusha said more seriously. 'He fell
down and died. They buried him and went off to celebrate.'

'I'm f-f-frightened,' Romka confessed. He wasn't stammering
because he was afraid, though – he always stammered. 'Don't
t-tell me any m-m-more, all right?'

'All right,' said Ksyusha, looking round. She could still see the
path behind them, but ahead it was completely lost under fallen
pine needles and rotting leaves. The forest had suddenly become
gloomy and menacing. Nothing at all like it was near the village
where their mother had rented their summer dacha – an old house
that no one lived in any more. They'd better turn back, before it
was too late. As a caring older sister, Ksyusha realised that.

'Let's go home, or mum will tell us off.'

'A doggy,' her brother said suddenly. 'Look, a doggy!'

Ksyusha turned round.

There really was a dog standing behind her. A large, grey dog
with big teeth. Looking at her with its mouth open, just as if it
was smiling.

'I want a doggy like that,' Romka said without stumbling over
the words at all, and looked at his sister proudly.

Ksyusha was a city girl and she'd only ever seen wolves in
pictures. And in the zoo as well, only those were an exotic species
from somewhere in Asia . . .

But now she felt suddenly afraid.

'Let's go, let's go,' she said quietly, tightening her grip on Romka's
hand. 'It's someone else's doggy, you can't play with it.'

Something in her voice must have frightened her brother, frightened
him so badly that instead of complaining, he clutched his
sister's hand even tighter and followed her without a murmur.

The grey creature stood still for a moment, and then set off
after the children at a slow, deliberate walk.

'It's f-following us,' said Romka, looking back. 'Ksyusha, is it a w-wolf?'

'It's a doggy,' said Ksyusha. 'Only don't run, okay? Dogs bite
people who run!'

The animal made a coughing sound, as if it was laughing.

'Run!' shouted Ksyusha, and they set off at random, forcing
their way through the forest, through the prickly bushes that grasped
at them, past an incredibly big anthill as tall as a grown-up, past
a row of moss-covered tree-stumps where someone had once cut
down ten trees and dragged them away.

The creature kept disappearing and appearing again. Behind
them, on the right, on the left. And every now and then it made
a noise like a cough . . . or a laugh.

'It's laughing!' Romka shouted through his tears.

It disappeared. Ksyusha stopped beside an immense pine tree,
clutching Romka tight against her. Her little brother had given
up on sissy stuff like that a long time ago, but this time he didn't
struggle, just pressed his back against his sister, put his hands over
his eyes in fear and repeated quietly over and over again:

'I'm n-not afraid, I'm n-not afraid. There's no one there.'

'There's no one there,' Ksyusha confirmed. 'And you stop that
whining! The wol . . . the doggy had puppies here. She was just
driving us away from her puppies. All right? We're going home now.'

'Let's go!' Romka agreed and took his hands away from his
eyes. 'Oh, the puppies!'

His fear disappeared instantly the moment he saw the cubs
coming out of the bushes. There were three of them – grey with
big foreheads and soft eyes.

'P-puppies!' Romka exclaimed in delight.

Ksyusha jerked to one side in panic. The pine she was standing
against wouldn't let her go – her calico dress was stuck to the
resin on its bark. Ksyusha tugged harder and the cloth tore with
a crack and came unstuck.

Then she saw the wolf standing behind her, smiling.

'We have to climb up the tree . . .' Ksyusha whispered.

The wolf laughed.

'Does she want us to play with the puppies?' Romka asked
hopefully.

The wolf shook its head. As if it was answering: 'No, no. I want
the puppies to play with you . . .'

And then Ksyusha started shouting – so loudly and piercingly
that even the wolf took a step backwards and wrinkled up its muzzle.

'Go away, go away!' Ksyusha shouted, forgetting that she was
already a big, brave girl.

'Don't shout like that,' she heard a voice say behind her. 'You'll
wake up the entire forest . . .'

The children turned round with renewed hope. Standing beside
the cubs was a woman – beautiful, with black hair, barefoot and
wearing a long linen dress.

The wolf growled menacingly.

'Don't be silly,' said the woman. She leaned down and picked
up one of the cubs – it dangled limply in her hands, as if it had
fallen asleep. The other two froze on the spot. 'Now who do we
have here?'

Paying no more attention to the children, the wolf moved sullenly
towards the woman, who started chanting:

Dense wolf 's thickets dark with fear,
There's no way you can hide in here . . .

The wolf stopped.

The truth and lie I both can see,
Now, who do you look like to me?

. . . the woman concluded, looking at the wolf.

It bared its teeth.

'Ai-ai-ai . . .' said the woman. 'Now what are we going to do?'

'Go . . . a . . .way,' the wolf barked. 'Go . . . a . . .way . . .witch.'

The woman dropped the cub on the soft moss. As if they had
suddenly woken from a trance, the cubs dashed across to the wolf
in panic and jostled under its belly.

Three blades of grass, a birch-bark strip,
And one wolfberry from a branch,
A drop of blood, of tears a drip,
And skin of goat, of hair a lock:
I have mixed them in my crock,
Brewed my potion in advance . . .

The wolf began backing away, with the cubs following.

You have no strength, you have no chance,
My spell will pierce you like a lance

. . . the woman declared triumphantly.

Then four grey bolts of lightning – one large and three small
– seemed to flash from the clearing into the bushes. Tufts of grey
fur and shreds of skin were left swirling in the air. And there was
a sudden sharp smell, as if a whole pack of dogs was standing
there, drying off after the rain.

'Aunty, are y-you a w-witch?' Romka asked in a hushed voice.

The woman laughed. She walked up to them and took them
by the hand.

'Come along.'

The hut wasn't standing on chicken legs, like the one in the fairy
tale, and Romka was disappointed. It was a perfectly ordinary log
house with small windows and a tiny porch.

'Have you got a b-bathhouse here?' Romka asked, looking
around.

'Why do you want a bathhouse?' the woman replied. 'Do you
want to get washed?'

'F-first of all you have to heat up the b-bathhouse really hot,
then f-feed us, before you can eat us,' Romka said seriously.

Ksyusha tugged on his hand. But the woman didn't take offence
– she laughed.

'I think you're confusing me with Baba-Yaga, aren't you? Do
you mind if I don't heat up the bathhouse? I haven't got one
anyway. And I'm not going to eat you.'

'No, I don't mind,' Romka said, relieved.

The inside of the house didn't look like a place any self-respecting
Baba-Yaga could live either. There was a clock with
dangling weights ticking on the whitewashed wall, a beautiful
chandelier with velvet tassels, and a small Philips television
standing on a shaky dresser. There was a Russian stove too, but
it was heaped up with all sorts of clutter, and it was obvious that
it was a very long time since any bold young heroes or little
children had been roasted in it. The only thing with a serious
and forbidding look to it was a large bookcase full of old books.
Ksyusha went over and looked at the spines of the books. Her
mother had always told her that the first thing a cultured person
should do in someone else's house was to look at her host's
books, and then at everything else.

But the books were worn and she could hardly make out the
titles, and she didn't understand even the ones she could read,
although they were all in Russian. Her mother had books like
that too: 'Helminthology', 'Ethnogenesis' . . . Ksyusha sighed and
walked away from the bookcase.

Romka was already sitting at the table and the witch was
pouring hot water from a white electric kettle into his cup.

'Would you like a cup of tea?' she asked in a kind voice. 'It's
good, made from forest herbs . . .'

'It is g-good,' Romka confirmed, although he was more
concerned with dipping hard little bread rings into honey than
drinking his tea. 'S-sit down, Ksyusha.'

Ksyusha sat down and accepted a cup politely.

The tea really was good. The witch drank some herself, smiling
and looking at the children.

'Are we going to turn into little goats when we've drunk our
tea?' Romka suddenly asked.

'Why?' the witch asked in surprise.

'Because you'll put a spell on us,' he explained. 'You'll turn us
into little goats and eat us up.'

Clearly he did not completely trust their mysterious rescuer
yet.

'Now, why would I want to turn you into smelly little goats
and then eat you?' the witch asked indignantly. 'If I wanted to eat
you, I'd eat you as you are, without turning you into anything
else.'

Romka pouted sulkily, and Ksyusha hissed:

'Drink your tea and be quiet! Some wizard or other . . .'

They didn't turn into goats, the tea tasted good, and the bread
rings and honey tasted even better. The witch asked Ksyusha all
about how she was doing in school. She agreed that fourth grade
was absolutely terrible, not like third grade at all. She scolded
Romka for slurping his tea. She asked Ksyusha how long her
brother had had a stammer. And then she told them she wasn't a
witch at all. She was a botanist, and collected all sorts of rare herbs
in the forest. And, of course, she knew which herbs the wolves
were afraid of.

'But why did the wolf talk?' Romka asked doubtfully.

'It didn't talk at all,' the botanist-witch retorted. 'It barked, and
you thought it was talking. Isn't that right?'

Ksyusha thought about it and decided that was the way it had
really been.

'I'll show you to the edge of the forest,' said the woman. 'You
can see the village from there. And don't come into the forest any
more, or the wolves will eat you!'

Romka thought for a moment and then offered to help her
gather herbs. Only she would have to give him a special herb to
keep the wolves away, so they wouldn't eat him. And one to keep
bears away, just in case. And she could give him one to keep lions
away too, because the forest here was just like in Africa.

'No herbs for you!' the woman said strictly. 'They're very rare
herbs, in the Red Book of threatened species. You can't just go
pulling them up.'

'I know about the Red Book,' Romka said, delighted. 'Tell me
more, please.'

The woman looked at the clock and shook her head. Well-mannered
Ksyusha immediately said it was time to go.

The woman gave each of the children a piece of honeycomb
to take with them and showed them to the edge of the forest –
it turned out to be very close.

'And don't you set foot in the forest again!' the woman repeated
sternly. 'If I'm not there, the wolf will eat you.'

As they headed down the hill towards the village, the children
looked back several times.

At first the woman was standing there, watching them walk
away. But then she disappeared.

'She is a witch really, isn't she, Ksyusha?' Romka asked.

'She's a botanist!' Ksyusha said, taking the woman's side. Then
she exclaimed in surprise: 'You're not stammering any more!'

'I am stam-stam-stammering!' said Romka, playing the fool. 'I
didn't really need to stammer before, I was just joking.'