David Francis - Stray Dog Winter

Then Darcy saw a shape coming towards them through the trees and he found himself running blindly to the road as if he knew it by feel, leaning into the blackness, the mud crisp beneath him. Breathless, his cheeks damp with sweat, he turned back just once to see a flash of light behind him, then another, someone taking different photos—the insides of the Borgward, the son-inlaw’s blood congealing on the seat. A straggled formation of fighter planes formed high shadows overhead.

On the main road, Darcy put his thumb out into the beams of an approaching semitrailer but the driver didn’t see him. Darcy watched the red tail-lights recede until there was nothing but silence and dark. The corrupt individual travels alone , the words recalled from somewhere, but the dog was back by his side. Darcy kneeled and held its face, the whippet shaking, the smell of the son-in-law’s blood on its breath. The lights of another truck like distant pinpoints, dividing the night as they got closer, then flooding the frozen asphalt to reveal Aurelio’s small grey Lada on the roadside not a hundred metres up. Darcy stayed crouched with the dog in the shadows to keep out of sight as the lorry passed with the lengths of the shadows and spaces, then there was only the sound of Darcy’s breath, the noiseless road, the dog. For a moment Darcy imagined driving the son-in-law and the Borgward back to the city and smashing through the embassy gates. He picked up the dog and its body folded up as he buttoned it inside his coat and waded out through the soundless night, stumbling up the road to the Lada. The dog’s heartbeat against him.

The car was unlocked but no sign of Aurelio, no keys in the ignition. The dog let out a whimpering bark and Darcy let it down and it slid inside the car. Darcy reached into the snow at the road’s edge, rubbed his hands then pressed his icy fingers to his eyes. Stains on his cheeks from where the dog had been licking, the son-in-law’s blood on his hands for a passport. Aurelio out there taking photos.

He got in and the whippet curled up at his feet. Darcy hugged himself, stunned in the thick-shadowed night. Fear like throbs of bile. Aurelio climbing through the roadside fence now, scraping his boots on the wire. Another semitrailer shunting past, bathing them in light. Aurelio seemed unlike himself, dishevelled, nightvision glasses around his neck, his hair all tangled when he took off his hat.

He is dead, he said.

Darcy nodded.

Aurelio nodded too, but for a long time, then turned the key in the ignition. Did you touch the gun? he asked.

Darcy shook his head and leaned forward awkwardly, the hem of his coat about the dog, turned on the heater. He was a nice man, he said. The way he spoke so matter-of-factly made him realise he was in shock. His hands against the vent in the hope of heat, staring.

Aurelio suddenly slammed the car into gear then reached down and ripped the oval transmitter from beneath the dash, tossed it out into the dark like a stone. I will say you did that, he said.

The dog shifted in the blackness at Darcy’s feet, but Aurelio didn’t notice. Darcy said nothing, his fingers thawing, Aurelio drove. They monitoring me, he said. They threaten me. Article 121. Criminal acts. They know about us. He steered out onto the bitumen and drove too fast for the ice on the road.

Who is they ? asked Darcy.

My father, he said. They is my father. The general. He looked over at Darcy but Darcy had nothing to say, one hand on the dog’s head, but he heard the words like a rock in his gut. The dacha, the room, the retarded girl was his sister. The wedding. It all made sense and yet it seemed so unlikely. Can we just go away somewhere? he asked. You must know a safe place.

We are not in Sweden, said Aurelio. We are not in that kind of country. He drove back towards the city. You do not know my father, he said. The last place we went we are followed.

They both watched the white lines disappearing beneath them, swallowed under the car like endless cigarettes. Where are your gloves? asked Aurelio.

Darcy was confused, he didn’t know about the gloves, left with his socks and the can-opener, his money. I took them off to drive, he said, but it made no sense. He’d taken them off to masturbate.

You were driving?

He wanted me to, said Darcy. He took me to another place first, out among farms, but a lorry went by us. Aurelio passed a dilapidated bus that seemed lodged in the snow.

Where’s the recorder? he asked.

Darcy fished out the tiny tape machine from his damp denim jacket, handed it over. As Aurelio steered he tried to turn it on. Darcy’s muffled voice: You have so many maps , then something inaudible, then nothing. Aurelio regarded him, bewildered, thumped the steering wheel, then seemed to hold himself in, shaking his head at everything gone sideways.

He was a teacher, said Darcy, at the university.

Aurelio looked over as if knowing Darcy wasn’t suited for this. Darcy felt the dog nuzzling his feet, the memory of the son-in-law blowing warmth on his toes. He was just lonely, said Darcy, that’s all. He shouldn’t have lived in this country.

Aurelio rubbed his eyes then looked at Darcy, his brown eyes despondent. Do you think he had a choice? asked Aurelio.

Darcy stared out into the Soviet night. Not now, he said.

None of us has choices now. Aurelio lit a papirosa and sucked on it tightly as they drove back towards the city in silence. The lit windows of villages then the relentless concrete apartment blocks, lapping the outskirts like towering tombstones, the dog a curled-up creature, still unannounced at Darcy’s feet. Images of the slumped body, the pistol on the biscuit tin. Darcy felt bloodless himself, his breaths came to him irregular and shallow, the consequences passed like the car lights. What about my fingerprints in the car? he asked. He didn’t admit to the socks, his money.

At first Aurelio didn’t reply, walled in by the night and a canopy of sullenness. He lit a second cigarette. Suicide, he said, a scrape in his voice. They can process as suicide.

Who is they this time? asked Darcy. Aren’t you the militia?

We are independent, said Aurelio.

Are we ?

Aurelio pulled up outside Fin’s apartment on Kazakov, his face half-lit from a nearby street lamp, his aspect so tired he’d barely be noticed in a room. I have to go, he said.

Darcy felt another movement at his feet and, as if by invitation, the dog’s slender head appeared, timid and anxious, at the gearstick. Aurelio shouted a Spanish oath as the dog moved up onto Darcy’s lap, Aurelio reeling with fright. What are you doing with this?

Darcy pulled his coat back around the whippet’s tapered body, holding it like a captive bird against him. The dog that had chased Aurelio into the dark and torn back to the Borgward whimpering. He belongs to Chernenko’s daughter, said Darcy, as if something had to be salvaged.

The dog eyed Aurelio carefully and Aurelio looked at it in disbelief. You must keep this hidden, he said. Stay in that apartment and wait.

What about my passport? asked Darcy.

I have only a photo of you in Chuprakov’s car. And photo of him dead. Same car, but later. His English was deteriorating. You are my friend, but we have no choices. You must do what I say. Trust me, he said. Fin’s words when she’d phoned St Kilda the first time, to make her invitation.

Aurelio held out a hand to touch Darcy’s cheek but the dog emitted a long low growl. I did trust you. A pleading shrouded Darcy’s voice. He held the whippet to him as if it were a weapon of his own.

It is my job, said Aurelio. They punish me too.

But Darcy had slid beyond any sense of jobs and consequences, he felt faint now, his mind askew as he closed the car door behind him, looked back through the misted window. Aurelio’s big haunted eyes, searching to be understood, and tears came to Darcy’s that turned to frost on his lashes. He let the whippet down in the snow and it stood there, silvery, like a stolen ornament, suddenly unafraid.