Andrea Bennett - Two Cousins of Azov

Gor sighed. Sveta turned to look at him.

‘He became obsessed. Scared to be at home on his own, too scared to come to school sometimes. He believed moth boy was visiting him, tapping at the windows. And… he started blaming moth boy, for bad things that he’d done. His baba didn’t know what to do. He had nightmares… wouldn’t sleep without a lamp burning. That was the… the cause of the tragedy. He always had to have a lamp burning. And that’s not safe, if you live in a timber hut, with a thatched roof.’

‘No.’

‘No. There was a terrible fire. Tolya’s house – it just went up, one night.’ Gor paused and coughed into his handkerchief. ‘We all went to help. The sky was orange. I remember running, running down the main street, shouting, hearing the roar, knowing whose house it was. There were some brave souls that night. They battled to get into the house. But the heat was so strong… it singed the hairs in our noses as we stood. Only Tolya escaped the flames.’

‘Oh, my! That’s terrible. His baba?’

Gor shook his head. ‘It was a tragedy for the village.’

‘How awful.’

‘Tolya was in a fever for days. They thought he might die. He didn’t recognise me: looked straight through me. In his fever, he… he said moth boy had done it – had been in the house, had taken up the lamp and dropped it. Blamed moth boy!’

‘But this moth boy was just a story…?’

‘Exactly! We had to assume that Tolya had taken up the lamp, to look in the windows for moth boy, and had dropped it, starting the fire. But when he awoke from the fever, much, much later, he remembered nothing. He asked for his baba, as if she were alive.’

‘That’s so sad!’

‘So it was decided never to speak of it again. He came to live with us, but it was not a happy time. He was changed. He was afraid of everything, howled all night with nightmares – I remember the sound. It makes my skin prickle. My father decided it would be better if he went away, so he was enrolled in the military academy in Krasnoyarsk. It seems ridiculous now, but they hoped to toughen him up. My parents were simple people: they could not cope with him. They did what they thought was best.’

‘And you?’

He turned to look her in the eye. ‘I was pleased, truth be told: I did not like him in my home, sharing my room, plaguing me with his terrors. I was glad when he went.’

‘That’s understandable. You were a child too. So – how did he end up here, in Rostov?’

‘My mother felt badly for him. She insisted we look after him, and I promised to do my best. When we moved back to Rostov, we invited him to join us, and he eventually followed. We didn’t think he would come. We had only a two-room apartment, and he stayed with us for over a year. In the end, he gained an apartment of his own. I married, began my own family… and he had his books, his art, and a view of the trees.’

‘You weren’t close?’

‘No. Separate lives. And… I had loved his baba. I wanted good memories. I didn’t want to think about the fire, the lamp. He had scars on his face, they always reminded me… But he never talked of her after he was told, you know?’

‘He must have been traumatised?’

‘That is true. But… it was all too complex for me. Too many emotions. You know me: it was easier not to feel.’

‘That’s not really you.’ Sveta shook her head.

‘I used to see him every September, on his birthday,’ Gor’s eyes dipped from the road and he sniffed.

Sveta chewed her bottom lip.

The road became wider, smoother, with blocks of flats, workshops and garages appearing at its sides, set back behind tangled hedges and breeze-block walls.

‘It’s not far now.’

‘I’m ready,’ said Sveta.

The nerves pulled tight across Gor’s neck and shoulders as the tower blocks rolled by. It was too late for Tolya, too late for regrets. But maybe… maybe he could begin to put things right, if he could save Albina?

The door creaked, light from the corridor seeping in around its edges. Then it thrust open. Albina glimpsed a shoulder, a dark coat. It was not Mama. It was not Gor. There was no time to think. She pounced, going in low, shoving up and back as hard as she could.

‘Oof!’

The shock of her head hitting solid flesh snapped down her neck into her shoulder. The body under the coat was round and solid. She pushed. It staggered, wobbled on its feet, but did not go down. Cold hands shoved at her shoulders, unpeeling her grasp and she reeled backwards, knocking her head on the wall behind. She cried out as the door was slammed shut.

‘Oh dear!’

She scrabbled the hair and fringes out of her eyes.

‘What a surprise! I didn’t expect… no, whatever, else… I didn’t expect this .’ It was a man. He flicked on the light. She saw a puffy rabbit-skin hat, dishevelled clothes. ‘You’re playing the giddy goat! You’re… hmmm, I don’t know…’ He squinted down at her, a shaggy black silhouette. ‘A shaman?’

‘I’m not a she-man,’ huffed Albina as she scrambled to stand. The figure held out a hand to pull her up. She wondered if she should bite it.

‘Don’t be afraid, little shaman.’

He was dressed in a khaki coat, patterned all over with dead leaves, the ghostly remains of wet cobwebs and dry mud. It was thrown over pyjamas. Albina sniffed an odour of trees and mulch, rainy nights and dark days. The liquid silver trail of a snail glistened on his lapel. The perpetrator itself sat upon his right shoulder, munching on a rotten leaf.

‘I’m a girl,’ she said firmly.

‘But what a surprise! So tell me, do you wish pryaniki for tea? I do! I am quite giddy, I tell you, to be home!’ He squirmed out of his coat and hung it with some difficulty on a black hook by the door.

Albina did not know what she wished for, apart from to go home. She stood in the doorway to the living room, feet square, and twisted her hands together.

‘I think you should. Who doesn’t love pryaniki? And after all, we are celebrating! I am home!’

He went to go past, but she did not stand aside. Instead, she stretched out her arms, stubby fingers touching the brown-papered walls on either side of her.

‘Who are you?’

He made a fish-face of surprise.

‘I am the man of this house!’ he said, nodding. ‘Stand aside, please.’

‘Tell me who you are!’

‘Asks a man who he is! What a cheek!’

He pulled the hat from his head and held out broad arms as if to enfold her in a bear hug. Albina backed away. Under the wild grey hair she made out green eyes glinting amid broad cheeks laced with lines.

‘Oh no! You’re… you’re the man from the Vim! The cousin! But you’re… you’re DEAD!’ Her voice rose in a squeal.

‘Who, child? Me, child? I’m not dead. Well, you can see… here, touch me!’ He reached out to touch Albina’s arm with his blueish fingers, laughing. She shrieked and drew back.

‘I’m not dead! Not dead at all! I’ve had a long journey, I must admit – a ride in a truck, a ride on a bus, a sleep in a shed and a long, long walk… but it wasn’t fatal.’ The bench in the hallway creaked as he lowered himself onto it to remove his boots.

‘No, you don’t understand—’

He peeled off socks that hit the floor with a slap. The feet beneath were pale and swollen. A strong smell of cheese and mushrooms, churches and the dead seeped into the air.

‘Gor Papasyan thinks you’re dead!’

His head snapped back. ‘Cousin Gor? He’s alive?’

‘Of course he’s alive! He went to see you, at the Vim – but they said you were dead!’

‘How I missed him on my birthday! He never came, you know. I waited and waited… it broke my heart! It was the end of family. The end of everything, I thought… But you? Wait! You must be…’ he peered up at her, wrinkling his cheeks as he squinted ‘… his Olga, yes?’