David Francis - Stray Dog Winter

Get out of this car, said the general, pushing the hat down over Darcy’s beanie. The sound of the dog, like a distant calf bawling, stayed in Darcy’s head as he fought being pitched like a leaf out into the night among men who stamped their feet, their breath fogging in front of them. Darcy felt strangely unbalanced, the snow wet against his face, indistinguishable from his tears. The Turk, hugging himself in the cold nearby, black eyes gleaming. The Opinel knife felt blunt as a stone as Darcy looked back at Aurelio, splayed against the car door.

The general patted the waterproof evidence bag stowed up under Darcy’s coat. They will see what you have, said the general. You give it back your friends if you want. It can burn with them. The general’s shrug was in his eyes. Just let them know we have it. And that we have you.

Darcy’s mind closed in on itself for protection, from the cold that already seeped into his veins, from these grim men warming themselves. He would be their mascot, but of sacrifice, and he felt the strangeness of life as death approaches. Aurelio’s gutted mouth plastered like membrane to Darcy’s blinking eyes, the stitches; the distant dog had gone silent, just Aurelio’s tune in Darcy’s head, a Cuban song maybe. The general poked his pistol in Darcy’s ear. Be a good boy blue, he said, shoving him forward in the wake of the powder-eyed driver.

What about Aurelio? asked Darcy, and the general ran a rough, wet-gloved finger from the corner of Darcy’s mouth up the side of Darcy’s cheek. It is a punishing, he said, we call it smiling . And a cry sank voiceless down inside Darcy. For being like you, he said, buffeting Darcy into the shapeless night.

Darcy picked his way through the black-haired pines as if walking through a bitter cold river, his coat turning to stone and death inviting as a face before him: come, it will be easier, come, like the face in the waves on Bushrangers Bay, the winter wants you to itself. He looked back but the Turk was right there behind him, nudging him on to follow the driver and his winking torchlight, KGB men swarming shadowy in their coats through the slender trunks. He looked back again just to see Aurelio, but caught instead the Turk’s beady eyes from under the brim of an astrakhan hat.

Give me the document, he whispered but Darcy hugged the plastic-covered evidence against himself, as if that was all he had, evidence of Trebizond, Thousands forced onto ships and dumped into the Black Sea, islands of innocent people . Darcy didn’t weep for them now, he was drowning himself. Give it to me, the Turk’s voice through the snow, I can help you. The driver glanced back, whispered fiercely in Russian, gesturing to a following guard to keep Darcy coming, Darcy uncertain who was in charge, the Turk was summarily motioned aside. The joint operation felt like a death march, Darcy sandwiched in the dark, on through crunching undergrowth. He didn’t believe there was help out here, no Armenian snipers swept down from these trees, no withered hand of God. The icy damp had already curled up in Darcy’s skin as he cradled the grim inevitability, his feet brittle as frozen coral. If lust was the cause of all sorrow, what had love done, what had it done for any of them? Herded out here to die, Aurelio an opuscheny . Fin weaving her way to some hut in these same woods, unsuspecting. Her departure up through that restaurant roof with not even a word of goodbye, just a telephone number in Darcy’s wet jacket pocket, her snowmobile lights switched out on the dark ice river. They’re the KGB… it’s not hide-and-seek .

Darcy pushed a wet coat sleeve over his face, his footing unsteady as they crossed the end of a white stone culvert, he almost collapsed, a new pistol held to his neck in the dark like a branding iron. Then, in a knot of black furs, the torch ahead turned into darkness and the driver crouched beside someone waiting in the shadows with binoculars. A clearing. A small wooden dacha not a hundred feet further, a figure through the branches in the lamplit shelter of the doorway, the new gun barrel pressed deep in Darcy’s ribs to silence him. With his bare eyes Darcy knew it was Jobik, alone in the cone of lamplight, wrapped in a blanket, his thick black hair pushed back from his beaky face, waiting. The Turk looked over at Darcy, his dark face wet and weathered, his glasses fogged. He removed them angrily, cleared the lenses with his fingers, his narrow eyes, antsy, and the general with them now, from out of nowhere, short-winded. The fear in Darcy that he’d be sent out into that no-man’s-land to pleasure the general’s imagination. Into that painterly stillness.

Jobik was drinking from a mug, the steam from it wafting in the funnel of light, just him beneath a hanging basket made from rope and the wet sound of the snow on the leaves, the soft hail hammering like winter storms climbing in off the Tasman Sea. Darcy’s mouth struck dry as a figure appeared up a path from the river. Fin, like a vision, delivered. The general’s bestial smile. We follow good, no? he whispered like a friend.

The sight of Fin had an instinct well deep in Darcy, their secret call from school, elly elly etdoo , the warning from outside her window, but now he could barely walk, the sight of her returning, wet through as a child coming in from a rainstorm. Jobik, as he opened the door like a husband might, relieved she’d made it home. If Fin had found love, Darcy felt forgotten, like some forfiture, out here among these dripping trees and guns. His loyalty washing from him like rain as the lamp was snuffed and he looked into the spattering snow from a forest full of crouching men, waiting for their signal.

Go to the door, the general beside him now, whispering. You congratulate them on Tbilisi, he said. Showing them what you holding. Make it a ceremony.

Darcy looked up at the barbarous smile, then into the speckled dark. A door to be kicked in, planks hanging from hinges. The Turk’s bared teeth, the gold in them almost visible—he seemed to know it as lunacy too. His reluctant nod still held its invitation. Darcy stared again at the general’s massive face. Aurelio, as he’d known him, was gone.

You are primitive, said Darcy, and the general looked out into the night as if he knew.

Darcy turned and walked from them, no sound but himself, no barking dog now, just the rhythmic contraction of his heart as he scraped his way through dripping tree trunks, his feet on pine spindles in dark quilted snow, waiting for a shot in his back or a battle cry, in a godless zone among histories and atrocities he barely understood. He didn’t hurry, he couldn’t; the porch lamp wasn’t there for him like it had been for Fin and if he were noisy Jobik would hear, the dogfight would begin. All of them killers, warming themselves on the blood of others. He tried to remember Aurelio’s face as it had been, a last memory to hold, piecing his way through sodden branches, snow like gauze.

He wasn’t sure why, but he drifted, drawn to a pine-encased window, he stood there, divided. Waiting. A gap in the blind, a simple, dimly lit kitchen, old cream cupboards and faded wooden floors, a washboard and enamel sink, the black worn through to a flea-bitten grey. A last window. He made no sound as Fin came in and pushed life into the fire with a poker, watched the embers ignite. A kettle on the rusted iron of an ancient Aga, a yellowpainted mantelpiece. She warmed herself by the flames for a moment, before she closed the stove door. Just her and Darcy, and muffled voices from the other room, the innocent chitchat of terrorists. The kettle began its whistle and she poured herself tea, black with a dash, how she liked it. She opened an iron drawer below the ash-catch at the bottom of the stove and took out a shallow tin, then sat at the end of the table, warming her hands on her cup. Darcy knew he’d not see her apartment again, but in a way he’d been happy there. Above her a cross with a carved wooden Jesus hung on the wall, shadowed behind from the light. It had given the Saviour a dark side. Fin put her tea bag on the table and watched it form a small brown puddle on the wood. And Darcy felt the restlessness behind him, preparing.