Andrea Bennett - Two Cousins of Azov

A small sound escaped Gor’s throat.

The world turned grainy. The sharpness of the strip-lights jabbed at his eyes. He stumbled away through the door, back through the sitting room, back along the newly painted corridor, out into the echoing reception area, through the clanging double doors and down the rotten steps of the Vim & Vigour to the safety of his little brown car. His hands shook and he dropped the keys. He could barely manoeuvre himself behind the wheel as he tried to squeeze down, legs jarring and knees refusing to bend. Eventually his feet slid forward. He folded his elbows and leant on the steering wheel, forehead on his hands.

He did not cry. He wished he could: to cry and be done with it, to feel and express something. But he sat, brimming with regret, sorrow, relief and confusion: so many emotions boiling in his head that he felt physically sick.

In the darkness behind his eyelids, he saw his family, old and young, the people he loved and had loved for a long time. He could count them on the fingers of one hand. They were fading, fading and receding, sinking down the tunnel of time. How was it every family member seemed to slip away like this, unannounced, on a whim?

Tolya, the most difficult, needy and troublesome spirit. Tolya, whose resilience had kept him living when all was lost. After battling with life for sixty-odd years, now it seemed this Tolya had simply slipped away in the night, without so much as a tip of his hat or a wink from those green eyes.

Gor remembered: boys’ eyes cold and hard as split pebbles, chests heavy, lungs burning with the effort of sucking in icy air, heartbeats aching in their throats as they watched and waited at the window, silent in the darkness of the afternoon. Lost days when the howling wind rushed spirits out of the forest like bats from a cave, straight into the blood-red minds of the boys. The boys had been cruel. A shudder threaded his spine.

The teachers had done their best to beat sense into them. It hadn’t worked for Tolya. His imagination would not be crushed. He had been a kite in Gor’s hand, thoughts blown on the wind. Before the fire, he’d made sense of the world for Tolya. He’d looked after his cousin, guided him. And afterwards, somehow, although they’d lived together, he’d let him go. He’d spent sixty years letting him go.

His hands clutched the steering wheel, knuckles pale as china, as he tried not to think. Fat raindrops thudded on the windscreen, mingling with his heartbeats. Mouth dust-dry, he listened to the patter and wondered when it would stop. It became too much: he broke his hold on the steering wheel and jerked his hand towards the radio dial, pressing the switches in quick, trembling desperation. Sound filled his ears and familiar notes flooded his mind. The wind chased across the car park, rocking the little car. Still he sat.

He knew he should speak to Matron and learn the dull details of his cousin’s last moments. He should see the notes of how he breathed, how he struggled, how the blood in his veins surged, faded, and cooled. But he had no heart for it. He opened the car door and placed his feet on the shingle. Perhaps he should return to Sveta and Albina, the only people who might care, and explain what had happened, his treachery and his loss? He stood staring into the rain as it bounced off the hedges and the gravel, and did nothing.

Raindrops trickled down his forehead and neck, soaking his collar. As time stood still, through the hiss of the rain and the buffeting of the wind, he eventually became aware of uneven steps, crunching closer. Someone was trudging up the drive. He ran his hands through his wiry, wet hair and reached for his handkerchief.

It was a woman. She was hunched over, wire thin, her black coat billowing in the wind and a scarf pulled close around her face. As she got nearer, Gor saw her clothes were spattered with mud all the way up to her knees. She did not look up, but scurried on, talking to herself in a low monotone, boots clunking. She went to mount the entrance steps and Gor looked into her pale face.

‘Polly?’

She jumped sideways as her face twisted to him, fingers clinging to the scarf flapping at her neck. Dark eyes squinted at Gor from a rain-washed face.

‘Papasyan?’

Even her lips were white, barely moving as she spoke. They stared at each other for a moment.

‘Is everything all right? You’re soaked through!’ Gor’s arms came up as if to touch her, and she backed away, stumbling up the first step.

She stared, her broad, beautiful face otherworldly, almost like a painting. But the eyes were empty, and the lips gnawed on each other. She glanced down at her sodden clothes and nodded.

‘The bus broke down. And I must visit… I must visit—’

The wind whipped at her words and Gor leant forward to hear. He smelled stale vodka on her breath and something else, something sharply medicinal.

‘You don’t look at all well. Let me—’

‘Time is running out. I have to sort out his affairs.’ He felt vaguely queasy as her pupils dug into his for a second and then swam away.

‘I see.’ He nodded. ‘A relative? Can I help at all? Maybe a lift back to town when you’ve finished?’

‘No,’ she said on a sigh, a sad smile splitting her face. ‘No, no. I’ll be some time. But it has to be done.’ Again her eyes dug into his.

‘If you’re sure? Good luck to you, Polly. You’re doing the right thing, you know.’ She started up the steps. ‘I have just lost my cousin!’ he called after her in spite of himself. ‘Care for your loved ones while you can!’

She stopped and turned. ‘Your cousin?’ Her voice was a whisper.

‘Yes. He… he died on Saturday night.’

‘No!’

He stared at his boots, touched and shamed by her concern.

‘I’m afraid so. I left it too late to, to put things right with him. So you run along – go to your relative! Good girl!’ He looked up and smiled, eyes filming with tears.

She stared into his eyes, her face wild and bleak.

‘No,’ she mouthed.

He went to touch her arm but she turned away, the wind whipping long strands of brown-black hair around her face as she hobbled up the steps towards the glowering glass doors.

This was how good people cared. This girl had walked half-way from town to make a visit, while he had waited, nurturing his excuses of Albina and the petrol cost. He leant on the car, legs refusing to move. He could no more look Sveta in the eye than he could coax his cousin back from the dead. The grey sky beat against his head as the world shifted with the wind. He stared out to the flatness of the estuary, where sky and earth and sea met in one muddy brown line.

Sveta’s head snapped up. ‘What time is it, baby-kins?’

‘I don’t know, Mama.’ Albina was tracing patterns in the dust of the windowsill with her finger and spit.

Sveta put down her book and eased herself upright.

‘Gor has been gone a long time.’

‘Yes.’

‘It will be dark soon.’

‘Yes.’

‘Fire the ovens,’ cried Klara from beneath her crackling sheet. Tatiana Astafievna sniffed the air loudly, and licked her thin, grey lips. Sveta nodded.

‘Something is wrong.’

‘What do you mean?’ The heat in the room was making Albina drowsy. Not a single thought rotated in her head.

‘I don’t know. I have… a sense. Why would he be gone so long? Gagarin wing is only fifty metres that way. He could have orbited the moon by now.’

Klara nodded busily to herself, and the machine let out a prolonged ping. Sveta looked to the window and the green-grey light beyond.

‘Maybe he got lost,’ suggested Albina, rousing herself.

‘You’re not being helpful, malysh . Pass me the gown.’