Andrea Bennett - Two Cousins of Azov

‘Where’s my lovely Tolya gone, eh? Chased away by a messy wood spirit? I don’t believe it! He’s in here somewhere!’ Baba enveloped him in a bear hug that turned into a tickle, her fingers digging into his ribs.

‘No! Stop!’

He chuckled despite himself, unable to be cross with his grandmother as they wrestled at the foot of the stove, laughing and twisting and tumbling. Lev jumped around them barking and nipping their boots, trying to join in. She could always make him laugh, no matter how cruel the boys at school were, or how much he missed his mama and papa. Baba could always make it right. And now the stupid boy had gone, she was all his again.

‘Don’t tell anyone about Yuri,’ Baba warned before bed.

‘Why not?’

‘It’s hard to explain. Talk brings trouble. And we don’t need trouble. So let’s keep him to ourselves, eh? Our secret?’ She tweaked his cheek.

He wanted to brag to his cousin and the other boys about how he’d tamed the moth boy. He wanted to be important. He wanted to make them see that he could be one of them. But still, he nodded.

Yuri didn’t just come that night. He appeared every so often, melting out of the forest into the edge of the yard as dusk fell and the lamps were lit. He would stand, hands flapping gently at his sides, with a huge happy, otherworldly grin, laughing into the wind and the snow, tapping at the window, waiting for Baba to hail him in for a bite to eat. They’d sit at the table telling stories or playing games: card games at first, but Yuri couldn’t get them, and the cards would fly through the air to fall in autumn patterns across the floor as he gurgled with laughter. So they thought up better games, like guessing the first letter of the things they could see, or taking turns to hide an object for the others to find. Baba would conjure up a bit of bottled fruit to savour, or maybe a piece of black bread smeared with honey. As the weeks passed, Tolya forgot to distrust Yuri, forgot that he was strange. The clutch of fear in his stomach when he appeared at the window melted away. He almost looked forward to Yuri’s visits.

One night, around New Year, Tolya came home from school, frozen and famished as usual, to find the cottage brightly lit and the stove roaring. Baba and Yuri were waiting for him, standing in the doorway, their cheeks flushed, eyes shining.

‘Surprise!’ cried Baba, kissing Tolya on both cheeks. ‘Look what Yuri has made for you! Look!’

‘Ha ha!’ cried Yuri, ‘Look!’

They led Tolya to the table, where lay a wooden spoon, roughly cut and uneven. Along its spine, in blotchy poker work, he made out a moon and star, and the words

‘He did that all by himself!’ said Baba, beaming with pride.

‘Friends!’ said Yuri, and flapped his hands.

Tolya picked up the spoon and rubbed his thumbs over the words.

‘Friends,’ he nodded, smiling to himself.

Baba squeezed his cheeks. ‘My good boy. My treasure, Tolya.’

The old man broke off and raised a trembling hand to his wet forehead. His past was hanging on his shoulders like a sack of kindling. He could almost smell it. ‘I’m not sure—’

‘Anatoly Borisovich!’ Vlad reached out to take his hand, eyes pleading. ‘Don’t back away now. Take a moment to gather your thoughts, and go on, please!’

Green eyes rose to meet the hope and frustration radiating from every pore of Vlad’s handsome, upturned face. Anatoly Borisovich nodded.

He took a sip from the glass by his bedside and blotted his lips on the sleeve of his robe.

‘Everything has an end, even the happiest story, and sometimes without warning.’

‘Yes?’ Vlad leant towards him.

‘It was a few nights later. I was in bed, sleeping above the stove, on the tiled shelf up there – it was a bitter night, blue and hard, and it was the warmest place, warmer even than the big bed with Baba. I remember… well, I don’t remember. It is just a feeling; a smell like a bonfire, or shashlik smoking in the courtyard. A smell of danger.’

He stopped and passed a hand down the back of his neck, tugging on the straggly ends of grey mane hanging there. ‘I was in blackness, the depths of sleep. There was a smell and a noise, breaking into me. Crackling, fierce and sharp, prodding into my ears, and a stench blooming up my nose. I felt it all here.’ Anatoly Borisovich pressed two fingers to his forehead. ‘There was darkness in my brain like the end of the world. Something was wrong, but I could not move.

‘Mama was calling me. I heard her voice and it made me shiver. I knew she was dead, you see. She called in my ear, called me to come. I opened my eyes, and all around me was black and orange – leaping shapes, shivering, snapping. Fire! I sat up on the stove, and flame and fire was all I could see, eating up our cottage, bursting over the table, rushing like rats, dropping from the curtains to the floor, racing up the timbers to the roof. My lungs bucked in my chest. I cried out and scrabbled to get down the side of the stove, but my legs tangled in the sheets and blankets, and I fell like a sack to the floor.

‘My eyes were streaming holes in my face. When I forced them open, I saw only black and orange, black and orange leaping and crackling and tearing up the roof. My eyelashes fizzed and the hairs in my nose scorched. I stood, but the smoke and heat knocked me off my feet before I’d taken a step. So there I crouched, crying on the floor.

‘I didn’t know what to do. I was choking. I thought my lungs would bake. I coughed and retched as the smoke bit my throat and tried to call out to Baba, but my words came out a scream. I screeched like a pig being killed.

‘I cried. I didn’t want to die with the sound of my screeching in my ears. A roof timber came crashing down in the middle of the house, again I was knocked onto my back. Lying there, I opened my eyes to see my last, and there was the night sky above me, cool and distant like the forest. I wondered about Stalin and heaven and all the stars that must be the souls of good children. I prayed for Stalin’s help, the way we did it – crossed my fingers, shut my eyes, breathed to speak the words – and gulped in clean, fresh air. The smoke was flying through the roof. Maybe I could live!

‘Adrenalin flowed through me then, drowning the terror. I leapt up. The front door was blocked where the roof had caved in, but the stove – the brave stove stood like a rock in the back, propping up the roof, protecting me, giving me an escape route. There was a back way, you see – a little side door where Baba got the pigs in, before they were taken away. I scrambled for the stove, to save myself.

‘But then I thought of Baba. I looked back to her bed, and I saw arms in the shadows: arms, Vlad, reaching out to me, fingers moving, scratching the air. Fingers.’ The old man looked down at his hands, the fingers twitching with claw-like movements. ‘I couldn’t scuttle away. I went to save her. I did! I jumped through the flames and thrust myself forward. But it started raining fire. I looked up and—’

Anatoly Borisovich looked up, a mess of tears trickling from his luminous, childlike eyes. ‘I looked up and flames fell into my eyes. They stuck to my cheeks. I heard a scream, but it was just me, scrabbling in the muck and soot to get away. I was pain, not a human being. I had no control!

‘When I came to myself, I was rolling around on the frost in the yard, rubbing dirt into my face. People were coming, running from their houses up the track: I heard them, knew their shouting and swearing. Comrade Goloshov, he came first, then my cousin, and my uncle. I was on the yard floor as they knelt above me, their faces glowing with the fire. They were all crying, my cousin was screaming… I saw the horror in his face: the horror of looking at me. The whole roof collapsed, and the flames leapt to the clouds. No one could save my baba. I’m not sure they even tried. They just all stood around shouting and scratching their arses.