David Francis - Stray Dog Winter

They didn’t follow the tracks the police van stamped in the slush but drove off in another direction. Darcy wondered who would be listening, in a room in a faceless building, a group of white-haired men. He looked at Aurelio as the Lada rattled through the perpetual sulk of the suburbs. You will help make change here, said Aurelio.

They proceeded in silence, overtook a heavy snowplough, and turned down a narrower road, further from the river, in a part of the city Darcy had not seen. The night sky lay low as a trough, wanting to snow. Mostly factories, an industrial area, abandoned buildings, some with broken windows, but no people visible. He could hurl himself from the car but he wouldn’t get far in the dark.

Where are you taking me? he asked.

I want to familiar your eyes, he said. So you can prepare. Aurelio pulled over opposite a narrow, dimly lit park, beside an unused railway line, reversed into a place where they were hidden among conifers. He turned the ignition off and pointed at three women waiting under a streetlight in the distance; they leaned on a low wooden fence under the cover of a tin bus shelter.

Travesties, said Aurelio.

Transvestites, Darcy corrected him.

A car went by, driven by a man alone, slowing down.

The same men are passing, explained Aurelio, but rarely do they make a stop.

The three figures smoked cigarettes in a snowy drizzle, one drank from a hipflask; they didn’t acknowledge the Lada, just moved about to stay warm, hugging themselves in their coats. They work for us, said Aurelio. He raised his eyebrows as if to say that’s how it is—the government uses them as lures and you will now work for the government too .

A black Chaika with embassy plates but no flag on the hood pulled over. It had tinted windows. The three hookers came down and leaned against it, then the tallest one was getting in. Finnish, said Aurelio. He could tell by the licence plate. They have a diplomat immunity, he said.

As the Chaika drove off, the two remaining girls stood in what had now become a slushy rain. But they are not right for everyone, Aurelio said. He turned and blew a plume of smoke at Darcy. The woman you see in the kitchen opposing your apartment will meet you the day after Andropov’s funeral, under the elm on your Fin’s street. It will be this car.

We call her Svetlana, said Darcy.

Aurelio smiled at the nickname, started the car. She will look after you, he said. Don’t be worry.

They drove down past the two remaining transvestites, who were stamping their feet in the cold, one in a grey coat and matching scarf that looked like chinchilla, the other in black leather and fur. Outside too long, their cheeks were grooved and they were too tired to look pretty. Aurelio didn’t greet them. He pointed to the snowy verge, around a corner. Darcy made out the remains of an old apple orchard behind a high-tensile wire fence.

Svetlana, as you are calling her, will tell you to wait here, he said. We think he will stop for you.

Darcy wondered how they could be so confident, those who were listening. I need to think about this, he said.

Aurelio pointed at the transmitter, his dark eyes narrowed, warning. If you think about it, you will be coming the first Australian opuscheny . He pushed his cigarillo into the pile of butts in the ashtray. And you see what happens to them.

I trusted you, said Darcy.

Aurelio put his hand to Darcy’s mouth. And you should trust me still, he said, but his fingertips felt sweaty and cold. Darcy didn’t kiss them. He turned away to the night outside and imagined the icy lips of the transvestites.

Darcy watched his mother from the door of the emergency ward. She looked like a tall palsied bird, propped up on pillows, her left arm against the wall behind her. The neurologist said she was suffering from neglect and it struck Darcy as ironic. As her left arm started to move it did unexpected things; flung itself over her head or unwittingly followed the movement of her leg. The nervous parting of her lips, the fierce narrow expression. He watched as she put on her cardigan backwards. Don’t ask me what day it is, she said. She knew he was there without seeing him. They’ve asked me fifteen times.

What day is it? he asked. There wasn’t a chair and he was glad because he didn’t want to sit.

December twenty-two, she said, Sunday, her speech slightly slurred. I only remember because the nurse just asked me. She said it with a hint of shrewdness in her smile.

I brought your things, he said. He took her nightie from the pale blue overnight bag and placed it on the bed. It looked like a child’s summer dress. I’m only in overnight, she said. For observation.

Next he placed her leather-covered radio on the table, but she didn’t look at it. So you can listen to the cricket, he said. She’d never been musical, except for ‘Moon River’—she preferred sporting commentaries, racing at Moonee Valley, cricket at the MCG. She was sliding down from the pillows behind her, so slow it was hardly noticeable. It made the hospital gown droop low on one side, her breast pale beneath her tan line. Have you been mean to the nurses? he asked.

They’ve taken away my buzzer, she said. The skin on her neck sagged dark like a wattle. She clutched her Medibank Private card in her right hand as though it was her passport. I guess Christmas is up in the air, she said. She turned to look at Darcy now and all he heard was Fin’s voice on the phone from Moscow, urgent, Please come . And tonight he was driving to Sydney, to the College of Fine Arts, tomorrow his last chance to defer. He’d stay up there for New Year’s Eve. Now he thought of the things his mother would have planned for their Christmas, stealing the top of some small roadside pine and stuffing it through the sitting-room window, her getting sloshed on gin and Pimm’s, pretending it was fun.

They won’t let me walk even though I can, she said.

Where’s the doctor? asked Darcy.

They only have nurses, she said, her small eyes on Darcy as if she knew something he didn’t. He thought of how the tickets had arrived in the money belt, and how he would stop off in Prague on the way, Wenceslas Square and the river whose name he could never remember, just that it wasn’t the Danube. He’d never seen cities in snow. Across the hall an Indian family clustered around a shape on a gurney behind a half-drawn curtain.

People die in here, his mother said. Can you get me some Molly Bushell barley sugar from the chemist?

Darcy took a last look at her, her hand freckled and dark around the blue insurance card. Sure, he said, I’ll bring it in tomorrow.

The apartment felt hostile. Fin on the couch in her sage green overalls, one side fastened over a T-shirt. Darcy wasn’t sure if she wanted him here or not, uncertain of everything now. As he shut out icy air behind him, he noticed the sheet off the window hinges, heaped on the floor. The easel was bare, the Laika painting removed.

Fin watched for Darcy’s response. The only good thing he’d accomplished since he’d arrived, gone. The curator was here, she said. She stood; her lipstick was smudged. He liked the painting a lot, she said. Thank God. She spoke as if their near lovemaking had happened in a parallel universe but Darcy knew it was right there between them, a branch that scratches at the window if the wind blows, or a wolf that might follow them more closely now, cunning and patient.

A rivulet of water crept around the sash of the window, steamed as it met the heating pipe, and Darcy noticed the walls were naked too, the canvas of the mastectomy scar he’d tried to convert, the polaroid of the babushka in the park just a square where less dust had gathered.