David Francis - Stray Dog Winter

They confiscated what wasn’t authorised, said Fin, following his eyes almost maternally, as though she hadn’t meant to send him away. They own the insides of the walls, she added, that’s what it’s like being an artist here. Folding her arms about the bib of her overalls, she told Darcy they’d taken her peasant dresses too, the one she’d lettered with quotes from Tolstoy, the one with the dream about drowning inscribed on the front.

Outside, the snow had transformed into a pelting, perpendicular sleet, nails being hammered from the sky. At least your painting will be in the exhibition, she said. A tarnished silver lining. You can add it to your resume, she added, I won’t mind.

He thought of the other things he could add—brother, lover, hustler, spy—but a world where people had resumes seemed distant. His father once said it wasn’t what was served up but how you experienced it, but how was he supposed to experience this, this cold mean place, these circumstances? He’d arrived with desires but this wasn’t how he’d dreamed of Fin in the snow. It’s not what you want, it’s how it comes at you, he thought, how you catch it and fold it into your arms, if you can catch it at all. He remembered the juggler, spinning his wooden pins with a sensory joy, but self-contained. Darcy knew that his own joy lay in art and not sex, but he felt as if art was escaping him now. And he knew the Laika painting would never stay with him, not physically, but it had felt like a junction box.

It didn’t have a name, he said.

I told him it’s called Dogs in Space , said Fin.

But it had been more than just that—it had been a line back into himself.

Fin looked at him sympathetically from behind the safety of her folded arms. We’re guests of the Soviet government, she said, that’s the arrangement… it’s just lucky he liked it.

Did you see the words along the rocket?

Yes, she said, but I’m never sure what forgive me is supposed to mean. Accept me? She observed him with a sorrow in her face that was becoming familiar. If you ask me, she said, people want forgiveness so they can forgive themselves. All I asked was that you contain yourself here. I told you it was too dangerous. She moved the easel off to the side as if that part of the discussion was over. Of course, now they want another piece, she said.

Not from me, said Darcy. He poured himself a mug of kvass from a jug on the counter. The steam and fear had made him thirsty. Shouldn’t we talk about last night? he said.

No, she answered abruptly, a flare in her eyes. She shook her head, asked where he’d been all evening, and then she went silent as Jobik appeared like a spectre from her bedroom and Darcy understood. This was who she was hostage to, more than listening devices or any regime, and more than Darcy.

Jobik kept from view of the window, took off his black-rimmed glasses and wiped them, looked over at Darcy with his deep-set mahogany eyes.

Are you the curator too? asked Darcy.

I’m not an artist, he said in a strange part-American accent. I’m sorry for your troubles here. He pushed a hand through his unruly black hair and raised an eyebrow to Fin, and with a nod let her know it was time to go. All it had taken was a nod and she was leaving with him. Darcy watched them rug up for outside and had a flash of the hookers standing frozen in the snow.

Aurelio’s enlisted me, he said.

They turned simultaneously. Jobik’s pupils deadened but a shock of moisture glistened in Fin’s eyes.

He has my passport, said Darcy, I saw it—but to get it back I have to be with a man so they can take photos.

What man? asked Fin.

Darcy drank some more of the kvass. Chernenko’s son-in-law, he said. If I don’t he said they’ll prosecute. He showed me the opuscheny .

What do you mean? asked Fin.

It is what happens to the gays in the gulag, said Jobik. They get treated like dogs.

Can you help me? Darcy asked. Jobik? I brought the money belt.

But Jobik was shaking his head; he was leaving. Not now, he said. I can’t now.

Fin stayed for a moment and Darcy saw the distress in her eyes. Jobik has problems, she said, and as she closed the door Darcy knew they were her problems too.

For a moment Darcy was left in an aloneness he remembered from far off, a boy in a garden before Fin had even arrived, a feeling he’d since avoided, and then he remembered last night. The thought of a drink almost repulsed him but he still found himself scavenging in the fridge for vodka. All he found were soft-skinned apples and, in the freezer, a sketch. Hidden from the curator. A sketch of a peasant woman kneeling with a baby in her arms, the infant held forward, suckling on the teat of a donkey. It had nothing to do with the landscapes of Moscow. Darcy held the icy picture and examined it. The rounded shape of a baby swaddled in white, its face disappearing behind the donkey’s narrow thigh. The lines thoughtful, softer and more representational than Fin’s usually were. Perhaps she’d copied it, traced it from a print to prove herself. A faint second figure was drawn in the background, squatting on a milking stool with a second baby in her arms.

Darcy thawed it with Fin’s hairdryer, enough so paint would take. He didn’t know what else to do. With a palette of her watercolours and a fine brush, he coloured where the dress fell from the woman’s seated knees and looped along the stable floor. A light powder blue. The surface still wet so the colours bled nicely, there was no need to mix with water. He painted the donkey, its face, accepting the baby so placidly, one ear forward and one back. The nativity gone awry. He painted it softly like Munnings or Stubbs, forgetting about everything. It felt comforting to work in watercolours, to paint sober. Hints of pink in each mother’s face. It calmed his nerves.

He was still painting in details, cream touches of straw on the stable floor, when Fin finally returned. She entered quietly and stood, her face swallowed in the entry hall shadows. Darcy didn’t look at her. It’s based on a story, she said and came closer, not seeming angered by what he was doing. It’s a woman with syphillis who had twins, she said, but Darcy knew it had to do with the two of them, something she’d wanted to say but couldn’t. She pointed to the figure on a milking stool, her dress now hinted with colour. The sister was a healer, she said. Her manner was soft now Jobik wasn’t here; maybe that alone was her forgiveness.

Darcy applied a touch of pink to the second baby’s face while Fin stood at the uncovered window. In the story, she said, they used donkey’s milk because the mother’s was infected. Then she approached the painting conditionally, as if it wasn’t quite hers. Donkey’s milk is more like a mother’s, she said, from the teat it’s the purest. She touched the infant’s face.

How do you know all this? asked Darcy.

It was in a village near Archangelsk, she said.

A myth or a story? he asked. He dabbed at the dress with the remnants on the paintbrush. Again he’d left part of the picture bare.

What does it matter? she said. It was just that I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I drew it.

What happened to the babies? asked Darcy.

One died, she said.

He kneeled back to get a sense of it, the ghostly shape of the sister healer, crouched on the stool, unfinished.

I think it’s about our mothers, she said.

Darcy drew his head back. He doubted Aunt Merran had ever looked out for his mother. He smudged some colour onto the manger with a linseed cloth. Maybe it’s about us, he said.

Fin walked back to the window and looked out into the night and its new depth of snow. You shouldn’t have kissed me like that, she said as if it were his fault. She stared into the gloom. It doesn’t mean I don’t love Jobik.