Andrea Bennett - Two Cousins of Azov

Polly pressed her forehead to the cool glass and shut her eyes, trying to shut out the fat girl and the voice and concentrate instead on why she was here, what it was all for: her future; a life worth living; to show them that she could. This flat should be hers. She’d worked hard to secure it. But with the typical selfishness of the old, crinkle-cheeks had gone and died before she could persuade him to sign it over. All she was left with was his scrag-end souvenirs and old clothes dank with must. Anger flamed in her cheeks.

‘This isn’t a party. Where are they? Why haven’t they come?’ Albina flipped herself over to lie face-down and pretended to cry for a while, her shoulders shivering as she inhaled fluff and crumbs from cracks between the cushions. ‘I don’t like you! I want my mama!’

‘Shut up! Oh do shut up! How can I think when you’re howling like this?’ Polly twisted around and threw the first thing that came to hand: a heavy metal ashtray missed Albina’s head and hit the door frame with a thud.

Albina broke off crying, surprised, and looked over her shoulder. ‘I hate you!’ She began hammering her fists and feet on the couch. ‘I hate you!’

Polly’s lip curled. ‘And I you!’ She limped around the sofa and into the tiny kitchen, pulling shut its ancient sliding door.

‘I hate you!’ cried Albina even louder.

Polly slammed shut the little serving hatch, cutting her off.

Exhausted and ignored, Albina sat up and looked about her properly for the first time. The flat was small and dark, and stuffed full of strange objects: a bedraggled sheepskin here, a silky tapestry of a bear family there. Poker work and bead work, books and balalaikas, glasses and bottles all crowded the shelves. In the corner stood a desk covered with drawings and maps, and behind it a tailor’s dummy dressed in a peasant shirt, mangy fur stole, headscarf and a funny-looking hat. She stood to better examine the treasures, starting with the hat.

‘What’s this?’ she shouted over her shoulder, so that the doors on the serving hatch rattled in their frames. The hat was not a hat: it was a gnarled leather headdress, in faded red and brown. It crinkled as she ran her fingers across its folds. The head piece was tall, with fragile leather strips protruding from the top. Across the front was sewn a long fringe of multi-coloured beads that would fall into the wearer’s eyes. Along the bottom there was another fringe, this time strips of leather knotted with tiny bells and wooden carvings. It felt like the most ancient thing in the world; older than life itself. She leant forward to sniff it, and the scent raised the hairs on her neck: it was forgotten-familiar and vaguely threatening, like a recurring dream, or nightmare.

The serving hatch flew open with a bang and the other girl’s head poked out.

‘Don’t touch!’ her voice lashed the air.

‘But I’m bored, Olga!’

‘Don’t call me Olga!’ The hatch doors slammed shut again.

‘But why shouldn’t I, Olga? When is the party starting, Olga? Where is my mama?’

‘Shut up!’ the voice came back, barely muffled by the closed doors.

Albina flung herself back on the sofa.

‘Valentina Yegorovna, I have done a bad thing.’ Vlad stood in the hall of the flat above Grocery Shop No. 6, eyes earnest, impervious to the scent of vanilla sponge wafting towards him.

Valya waggled her head. ‘Look, we’ve discussed what happened at the pharmacy, and I told you: you are forgiven. She led you astray, and now it’s over. We won’t talk of it again.’ She went to turn away to the kitchen, intent on making the young man sit down long enough to have a slice or two.

‘No, you don’t understand. Things have got worse.’

‘Worse?’ She stopped, intrigued, and shone her piggy-bright eyes at him from beneath navy-blue lashes.

‘Yes.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It appears… it appears Polly has kidnapped Sveta’s daughter.’

‘A kidnap!’ Valya clapped her hands and jiggled up and down on the spot, earrings swinging. ‘That’s terrible!’

‘Yes. But I think I know where they are. Sveta and Papasyan have gone already… I want to help. It’s sort of… my fault. And she might be dangerous. I need you to drive me… to Rostov.’

‘Eh?’ The jumping stopped and she pushed her orange head towards him, squinting. ‘You want me to drive? To Rostov? I only drive in the summer, and then only when it’s light. And I’ve baked a cake.’

‘Please Valya?’

She looked from his handsome face to her driving gloves on the sideboard, and back again. He took her hand, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.

‘We can take the cake with us?’

She screwed up her mouth. ‘Very well. Hand me my scarf, yes, and the driving gloves. Give me the keys to the garage, there on the shelf. Do we need anything else?’

Vlad thought for a moment. ‘Courage?’ He smiled.

‘Courage. And Alla.’

‘Alla?’

‘She’s the girl’s guardian – and a very poor job she’s done of it too! She ought to come. Perhaps she can talk some sense into her? We’ll grab her on the way.’

‘I don’t think you are Olga, are you?’ Albina said loudly into the silence. ‘I don’t know who you are, but you’re going to be in big trouble.’

Polly clambered from her stool in the kitchen and heaved on the sliding door: it produced a horrible metal-on-metal squeal, but did not budge. She pulled again: again the squeal, but no hint of movement. She tugged and tugged, hair sticking to the spittle flying from her mouth as she grunted and swore. The door was stuck fast, caught at the top: derailed. She had slammed it too hard. She punched open the serving hatch and out shot her head. Albina giggled.

‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo!’

Polly’s eyes burnt in her face and her mouth grimaced, but no sound came out. Fury had stolen her words.

‘Cuckoo! Ha! You look funny!’

‘Shut up!’ she eventually spluttered, and pulled the hatches shut.

‘I think I’ll dress up.’

‘You won’t!’ Again the hatches flew open and her head popped out.

‘Cuckoo! I’m bored, Olga!’ Albina returned to the ancient leather headdress hanging on the mannequin in the corner. ‘I’m going to wear this hat—’

‘No! That’s old! It’s worth money—’

‘Ah! There we go!’ Albina carefully untangled the headdress from its resting place and knocked dust from its grainy surface. She looked up into it and carefully placed it on her head.

‘Idiot!’

‘Well,’ sighed Albina, ‘what do you think?’

The girl pushed her head and shoulders further through the serving hatch, her voice the scrape of nails on a blackboard. ‘Put it back. If you break it, I will break you!’

‘Is it yours?’ Albina’s eyes were sly.

‘It’s all mine!’

‘Oh really?’

Somewhere outside, beyond the window, amongst the restless wind and the shivering trees, there was a faint scratching, like claws on bark.

‘Take it off! It’s not yours!’

‘Cuckoo! I will in a minute. I have to make a phone call first.’ Albina smiled, feeling less frightened. In fact, she felt quite comfortable; almost as if she were in control.

‘No calls! Who said you could call?’

Polly slammed the hatch and stumbled back to the door, pulling with all her might. The bottom moved a centimetre or so as the top clung with sharp steel fingers to its mooring. Hopping back to the hatch she went to thump it open, but her hand collided painfully with solid wood: it too was now stuck.

Albina trotted to the telephone and gulped down the lump in her throat.

The girl in the kitchen howled. Albina dialled Gor’s number and waited as the line clicked through invisible connections. The girl in the kitchen roared. Eventually the call connected. It rang, long and low, over and over. She willed him to pick up. The ringing carried on, calling into the cosmos, calling to nowhere, until the connection terminated and pips told her the line was dead. She tried her mama: the hum, the hum, a thousand whispers across the mud flats, the river, the fields and pastures, the trees and crows. No one picked up.