David Francis - Stray Dog Winter

You must get to the embassy, she said. I will be here. The gates will open for you. She paused for a moment.

General Sarfin is killing people.

We cannot come there, she said. You must get yourself here. She hung up and Darcy couldn’t breathe enough to cry but he peed and didn’t know what else to do so he knocked on the door for the maid and prayed that the old man might help him but it was the general who answered. You talking with someone?

Darcy stood petrified, unsteady. No, he said. Myself.

The general undid his holster belt and placed it on the vanity, the pistol clipped inside it. You think we don’t hear you, he said, you think we don’t know where you are? He grabbed Darcy, vice-like, by the upper arm, ripped a brass-covered button from Aurelio’s coat and thrust it up at Darcy’s eye like some gold signet. This is device, the general said through the steam, blood vessels bulging at the black rims of his glasses.

Darcy arched up with the pain, the general’s thumb dug deep in his bicep, but Darcy didn’t struggle, he felt the knife in his pocket with his free hand, the general shaking him savagely. We track you like this every day. Aurelio did give you this coat. You think he did not know? You think he love you so much? He turned Darcy around, wrenching him from the coat but the knife had already unfolded, the rumble again in Darcy’s head. I clean you up, the general hissed, I clean you, jerking the coat sleeves off Darcy from behind but Darcy bent his arms up, struggled now, the knife cold in his palm. He let the sleeves fly free, his arms unthreading and turned, the general losing his balance, his glasses falling through the thick white air and Darcy reached through it, quick as a diving bird he swung across the general’s face, for his eyes as the general slipped on the tiles, lurching back with a stifled wail, big hands all over his bloodied face, he kicked and slid as his great head made a hollow sound against the lip of the iron bath, hitting, and Darcy’s head went deaf as the general’s hands flopped down like slabs and Darcy lunged and stabbed through the vapour, went for the eyes through the blood on the flesh of the general’s bloated face, plunging the blade deep, until he retched vodka at the sight of what gushed from the eyes to the salivating lips, the surge of dark red onto the wide bristled chin, onto the white ruffles of the shirt. He could neither speak nor hear nor think, his mind glazed; blood on the knife, the knife still in his hand, he knew he had to rinse it, fold it back into itself, blood on his hands as he grabbed the holster from the counter, the jug knocked over, smashed on the floor, a river of vodka clear through the curtain of steam towards blood that coursed from the spigots of the general’s hacked-up eyes, the body still not moving. Darcy felt his chest constricting, everything upside down, reaching, as if into the pelt of an injured, stunned animal, its heart still pumping, he searched the pockets of the general’s tuxedo. Repulsed by the blood-infested face, the mouth laid open, accusing, he had to turn away, the tremor in his own body, in his hand as he felt for the Lada’s keys, the pistol in his free hand, the keys in his fingers as the general’s arm twitched.

Darcy jumped up as if swept outside his consciousness, the fact of what lay there, half-alive or dying, the fact of a gun in his own hand, and, bathed in steam and the drum of the pouring water, Aurelio’s coat behind him, a black lake on the floor, the brass button that had been listening all along, floating like a tiny crucible. Darcy found himself out in the dark abandoned corridor. The gun in a hand that didn’t feel like his hand, his blood-smudged fingers turning the key in the door, locking the general in. Darcy stood there in a hallway silent but for the whippet skulking in the shadows as if sent down to check, the dull thrum of the shower. As Darcy pocketed the key he began to shake, a trembling rippling through him, and he knew only violent people should be violent. Darcy knew he had to keep moving, that if he’d stabbed a man in the eye, he could use a gun. The echo in his head of the general’s hollow contact with the bath, skull on iron, the stolen car keys and knife now stuffed in the pocket of his denim jacket, his vision seemed altered as he searched for a servant’s entrance out into the cold black coatless nothing, but the corridor ended so he moved towards the entry hall, rubbing the blood on his pants, the dog by his side licking up playfully as he walked.

In the entry hall stood the widow by the Laika picture, not hiding but standing, pale and stricken, the old man by her side. They were expecting the general. Darcy held the gun in the air like a quivering grenade but the old man had no weapon, and Darcy saw his face in the light for the first time. Nikolai Chuprakov, older, the same mournful dark eyes, Nikolai Chuprakov’s father. I’m so sorry, said Darcy, he slipped the general’s dress coat from the hallstand, soft as mink, and he was crying as the old man opened the door for him as if he somehow understood.

Darcy stumbled down through the narrow poplars, shouted no at the following dog and heard the widow call its name. He pushed its felt snout from the car door, set the gun on the passenger seat. He slammed the door and closed his eyes for an elevated second as he turned the cold ignition and it started, the rattle of the engine, the crunch of tyres reversing. He glanced back and saw the maid standing under the eaves like a shadow and prayed she’d not called for help, that somehow they believed he was Nikolai Chuprakov’s lover, and forgave him.

The snow fell in a sudden sheet as he drove through the columned entrance, from a place with a climate of its own, and the last thing he saw in the rear-view mirror was the whippet, perched like a statue in the lantern light behind him, the old man and widow gone. Now he felt engulfed in darkness, the taste in his mouth almost sulfuric; perhaps they’d have helped him, hidden him, but why? He couldn’t trust a look in an old man’s eyes.

He’d sneaked cars down driveways since he was nine, but then he’d felt an exhilaration, now he gripped the wheel to stop his own shaking, jumped through a gear and switched on the lights to blind the sentry who raised his hand. Through the snow and the thrash of the wipers, Darcy was the general with the general’s gun, leaving for the night, but then he saw the guard in the mirror, outside his box in the blanketed street, pointing, and Darcy accelerated.

Darcy started ripping buttons from the general’s coat, throwing them out into the snow with no horrid exaltation, just disgust; and Darcy couldn’t know if he’d ever forgive himself but the shaking wasn’t stopping and he didn’t turn back to search for Aurelio, or for evidence of Fin. He drove on towards the city.

A siren, but it was a train, the gates of a level crossing lowered quickly before him. He looked back at a van behind him, prayed it wasn’t police, imprisoning him, he gazed ahead into the hoot and rattle, the blur of endless hammers and sickles emblazoned on carriages, symbols of cutting and bludgeoning, in rhythm. He touched the burn on his neck, scabbed now, and he tore at it, the pain like a tranquiliser, ripping the crusted edge as a whoosh of windswept snow blasted the car from the last carriage passing and he stared at oncoming cars at the crossing—two green sedans in tandem, militiamen, and as he jolted the Lada over the tracks, Svetlana turned from the second car and caught him there, and as they passed they watched each other but Svetlana’s eyes said nothing to him but go . And he wished he could tell her to look for Aurelio but the city was somewhere ahead, the river to his left, and he wove through the night, his vision blurred with fear and vodka.