David Francis - Stray Dog Winter

He veiled his nose with the blanket to reduce the stench, kept walking in a kind of stupor. The welt of the general’s hand buzzed on his face and rang hollow in his ear, electricity came in surges, the bulb bright then struggling, the peephole still a grey flap of iron. He imagined Fin in a plane on a runway, some passport in her lap. At Monash, she’d always pretended everything was wry and amusing, how they’d taken the piss out of anyone studious, regu-lar , as they called the diligent dags from the private schools, the Asians kids haunting the library, buried among the metal reference shelves. Children who’d been raised to heed warnings, who hadn’t been quite so free-range, or adulterated.

Darcy slumped on the bed and closed his eyes tight to fake a prayer but he wasn’t sure what to ask, or how, his arms just hung like fallen branches in his lap. At a shift of the locks, the door lurched open and Aurelio stood in a drab felt suit, grey and unfashionable, a ladder-backed chair in his hand. Unshaven, his caramel hair slicked back, greasy. Darcy just stared, a sense of himself peering out bruised from the blanket like a junkie or a mendicant, a pulse in his palms, as if his heart had moved there for shelter. Aurelio moved into the room, his hazel eyes bloodshot and his cheeks slightly sunken. What happened to you? asked Darcy.

Aurelio sat in the chair and glanced back at the door, then reached to touch the welt on Darcy’s face. My father is cruel, he said, tears glittering in his eyes, but Darcy was dry-eyed, the sight of Aurelio like this, his brow damp with sweat and the yeasty smell of beer on his breath, clasping Darcy’s hands with clammy palms, not smooth and dry like they had been. Aurelio touched the cut on Darcy’s lip, almost childlike; he leaned forward wanting to kiss.

Not in here, said Darcy.

Aurelio sat back in the chair and clutched his elbows. Aurelio, who’d always seemed to make his own arrangements, the golden boy of Moscow, his eyebrows now made him look sad. He’d lost the look of privilege, swanning around the park, the costumes in the dress shop, his complexion sallow.

Aurelio, said Darcy, I need you to get me out of here.

My father knows about us, Aurelio said. And now Chuprakov is dead.

I know, said Darcy, but I need your help.

Aurelio arched his brows and delivered a loose sympathetic smile. Darcy felt an old allergy to drunkenness, watching his mother on the couch, knowing there wouldn’t be dinner. He pressed his hand to the welt on his cheek.

My mother met Castro, said Aurelio, but he is not my father. He reached into his jacket and produced a shiny black wallet, a photo. This is her, he said. A small colour shot of himself as a child, beside a woman. Darcy rested his eyes on it in the palm of Aurelio’s broad hand, his mother young and dark, lean, in a tropical dress, a magenta ribbon in her hair. She stood on wooden stairs. Aurelio beside her, a boy in a khaki suit and sandals, the same large eyes and luxuriant brows. I want you to have it, said Aurelio.

Darcy had a flash of Fin in her African print dress, unwanted in the driveway, under the flowering gum. I need your help, not your photos, he said.

I want you to remember me, said Aurelio.

Darcy rubbed his hands through his own matted hair—this was all Aurelio had for him. He took the photo and held it in a hand so pale it looked dead. His feet so cold, his boots as if lined with shards of frozen glass. Thank you, Aurelio, he said, but I need to get home. He stood up and walked again as if warmth lay in movement, afraid if his toes went numb he might never feel them again.

I am wanting to help, said Aurelio, but you must understand me. He swigged from a miniature vodka bottle, swallowing all that was left. I am in druzhinniki , he said. I working for my father, proving him I am not a homosex.

I—am—in—prison, said Darcy.

I see this, said Aurelio. But the maid at the dacha, she is my friend but my father pays her for confirm. And now he knows what we do. And then Comrade Chuprakov. That was my project.

Darcy sagged back on the cot, covered his face with his hands. All he remembered was the wild gaga girl with the spoon, Aurelio’s warm body in that upstairs shower; he’d seen no maid. He thought of the son-in-law splayed in the dark, his chest like a sump.

The general left Cuba when I was three, said Aurelio.

Darcy turned to him. Why are you telling me this?

Aurelio held the small bottle half under his coat as if it were a secret. So you will remember me, he said. I was young in the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. He announced it as fact, devoid of ego, extended a long left arm, allowed his fingers to hang in the air, the movement both weary and graceful. I was an artist too, he said, like you, but of dance.

Darcy felt as though bricks were being piled on his chest. He knew it was a special thing, for Aurelio to say it, but Darcy smelled the stench from the corner, felt the raw ache in his feet. He thought of the girl in the Hotel Ukraine and how he’d wanted to trust her, her disconsolate eyes when he asked for the dog. What this place did to people.

Aurelio gazed at the floor as if it held some marvellous pattern. I come into Moscow at fifteen, he said. To Bolshoi. We rehearse Spartacus . Composer was Khatachurian, and director Preben Montell.

Darcy shook his head, names he’d never heard of. He picked up the photo from the folds of the blanket, imagined Aurelio as a dark-haired boy at the ballet barre in Havana. Your father said the Turkish Consul-General wants to talk to me.

My father is saying what he wants.

But what do you know? asked Darcy. Tell me what you know.

Aurelio searched up at the ceiling now. They are wanting your sister, he said, and her friend Jobik. They allegate he is murderer of Turkish Consul-General in a city you coming from. Aurelio took out another tiny bottle and upended it, let drops fall onto his extended tongue. They say your Fin was the driver.

A new seam of fear travelled up Darcy’s spine. He cast his eyes low, to his Blundstone prints in the urine-stained floor. He never saw Jobik in Melbourne during that time, but he could just imagine Fin on Queens Road in St Kilda, behind the wheel of the rusted Corvair, Darcy’s car, his mother’s. He clutched his hands as if to hold himself still. The hollow sound in his ear, like a train coming in to a station.

She’s a dangerous girl, said Aurelio.

She’s my sister, said Darcy. He shut his eyes, wishing he didn’t believe what he’d heard but he could picture it too clearly. Fin waiting out by the tramline, the borrowed Corvair in the shade of the elms while Jobik slipped up some steps to one of those Georgian houses, the Consul-General bidding goodnight to his driver, or greeting his wife at the door. Darcy remembered the photos, slain Turks on the front page of the Age .

Aurelio shook the bottle as if to prove it was empty. Jobik, he is having a history of blowing things up, he said. Turkish things. He is working for organisations. He spoke vaguely, as if this was irrelevant now. Armenian organisations. He stood to leave but Darcy reached for his arm.

Listen to me, he said. I am a foreigner. I cannot be held here without my country knowing. You must tell the Australian Embassy.

Aurelio reached down tenderly, touched Darcy’s swollen cheek. This isn’t England, he said. One time there was Jamie Brodkin, coming to start a homosex movement. Posters in the streets. He wanted to make a parade. Aurelio turned to the slot in the door. They told his family, but when his family come to take him home, his body had disappeared.

Darcy shut his eyes and all he saw was his mother, her first morning drink in hand, staring at her bedside table, strange foreign names scratched on torn paper, wondering if she’d written them down in a dream.