Andrea Bennett: Two Cousins of Azov

‘Oh Gor!’ Sveta’s chin wobbled. A shadow passed over her blue eyes, and he thought for a moment she was going to cry. Instead, her face broke into a tender, puzzled smile.

‘No, Gor. I mean, oh no!’

He dropped her hand.

‘I am your friend; your very good friend. Your best friend, even!’ She giggled. ‘But that is all. I am sorry if…’

She swallowed and dropped her eyes, shaking fingers wiping away imaginary lipstick lines from the corners of her mouth. Stillness enveloped the dressing room.

There came a choking sound from Gor’s throat, followed by a creaking, tumbling, thundering, like flood water on dry rocks. Sveta looked up, alarmed. It was a sound she had never heard.

It was the sound of Gor guffawing.

He threw his head back and roared, eyes staring wide-open into the grimy ceiling and then squeezed tightly shut as he bent double, clutching his sides. The veins in his temples stood out as his shoulders jerked. Tears squeezed from his eyes and his ribs ached as his laughter rang out. It was infectious. Albina left off talking to Rollick the King Singing Billy Goat, giggles bubbling. Tolya toddled through the door, and started to chuckle, wide-eyed. Sveta herself could not resist, a chortle rising in her ample, elastic throat. Gor gasped for breath. Even Rollick stopped chewing, regarding Gor with his chilly, rectangular irises. Soon the entire dressing room fell about in a circle, laughing with Gor.

‘What’s so funny?’ Albina asked eventually, gasping for breath as a frown-smile creased her face.

‘I am just so… so relieved!’ he croaked, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief and patting the goat.

‘Relieved?’ said Sveta, the smile stilling on her lips.

‘Akh, that is to say, happy! I am so happy – with everything! With life! Everything is resolved: life is simple again! We must celebrate! A weight has gone from my shoulders. Or several weights! We should go to the bar! Let’s have a toast! Come, we’ll go up to the bar.’ Gor rubbed his hands and grinned.

‘The bar? But Gor, I’m all in sequins!’ said Sveta, delighted at the thought.

‘Sveta, you look divine! Come Tolya, come Albina: we must celebrate my new chance at life. Lead the way, and I will treat us all to a little Soviet champagne!’ Gor bowed low, allowing Sveta to pass him. She led them up the polished concrete steps to the circle bar, her skirt swaying to the swish of satin and beads.

Gor’s eyes swept the glowing metal and concrete of the foyer below. ‘It’s been such an evening! I feel a lightness in my bones, Albina, as if I could just direct my thoughts, and fly!’

Albina kept her eyes on the stairs and shrugged. ‘Where would you fly to?’

‘To Armenia, maybe? Or perhaps north, to Moscow? Or maybe… I could travel the whole world!’ He bared his long, yellow teeth as they threaded their way into the brown velour dimness of the bar.

‘But you’d come back, wouldn’t you?’

‘Oh yes, yes!’ he looked down tenderly. ‘Of course.’

The champagne arrived and, with a flourish, Gor popped the plastic cork into the ceiling, releasing a shower of dust and paint flakes, met by Sveta’s squeals.

‘I must propose a toast: here’s to you, dearest Sveta! You are a true friend; a forgiving friend. No one could ask for more. I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I wish you good health, happiness, love and fortune in the coming year, and all your years!’

Albina raised her orange compote, her lips sealed as the grown-ups talked and laughed and planned. Her mama looked so content. They all seemed so happy. Maybe she should say nothing at all.

‘All is well, malysh ?’ Sveta leant over to smooth her fringe and pat into place the huge frilly pom-poms that stood at each corner of her head.

‘Yes, Mama. I was just thinking.’ She could not meet her mother’s gaze.

‘What about?’

‘About a moth.’

‘Ah, baby-kins, I know it’s difficult, but that’s all over now. We have a new beginning – all of us! So we’re going to forget about the past and go forward, yes?’

‘Yes, Mama,’ the girl nodded and took a sip of her orange. Life was all about the future, all about happiness. She twirled the straw in her drink. They carried on talking. But she couldn’t be happy with this feeling like mud in her guts.

‘No, Mama, I have to… Gor: listen to me.’ The chat died away and his eyes met hers. ‘You have done bad things in your life, as you say. You have also done good. And you have taught me… to face up to the bad. And now, I have to tell you: I did a bad thing.’

‘Oh? Well, don’t worry—’

‘It was me: you weren’t going mad.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘The moth, Albina? In the sandwich?’

She nodded, face glum.

‘I don’t know why I did it. Just to test you. But I felt so bad, when you said… said about all the scary things that were happening, and then Mama made you go to a séance and it was… a joke. I didn’t mean to harm you. Can you forgive me?’

‘I forgave you the minute you did it.’ His mouth twitched into a smile. ‘But I am so glad you’ve been able to tell me.’

‘So am I.’

Gor looked into the bubbles in his glass, and then across at his cousin, who sat oblivious, eyes sparkling, filled with the simple joy of company.

The kittens were gone, the apartment was quiet. A snow-bound, downy stillness ruled the air. For the first time since he could remember, Gor dragged the little tinsel tree from the back of his store cupboard, and wiped it with a damp cloth. He placed it in the corner, where it shone with an ancient, plastic mystery. Dasha and Pericles sized up its glinting baubles. It had last come out… December 1974? His whiskers twitched. He wished he had a photo of that last New Year. He could not even remember it. Had he been there?

The letter to Olga had been written on thin blue paper, a lettergram folded over and over, covered in his precise scrawl. The cover bore a colourful representation of the hydroelectric dam at Krasnoyarsk. He had practised the words on old napkins three times beforehand, to get them right. Still, it lay sealed on the sideboard. He had reached for it several times, got as far as putting it in his old string bag ready to post. But then he had hesitated, and taken it out again. It probably wouldn’t reach her anyway. Whoever opened it would laugh at him: writing after twenty years? What a fool. Or if she did receive it, perhaps she would simply tear it up in disgust. He couldn’t blame her. Did he, really, deserve her to read it?

He sat in the hall to don his boots. Ponchik had departed for Sveta’s the day before. He missed the skittering, the chorus of mews, the attention when he did up his laces. He smiled to himself as he tidied the shoes on the rack, putting away the fluffy orange slippers, Albina’s pumps, his old galoshes that the kittens loved. His hand brushed something cold, the fleeting feeling of something round and smooth. He stopped and pushed his fingers inside the perished rubber galosh. There was no mistaking… his hand closed around a perfect white hen’s egg. The one he’d lost that day, back in early October. He must have put it down, and it had ended up in a galosh, a toy for kittens. A low laugh escaped his throat. Wait until Sveta heard about this. She would find it most amusing. How she would chuckle. Carefully, he removed the egg and placed it in the kitchen bin.

He arrived at seven p.m. precisely. ‘Cousin, cousin, come in, let me take your coat. How was your journey?’ Tolya fussed about, taking Gor’s things in the half-light of the hall. A single lamp burnt in the sitting room. His breathing was laboured, and Gor noted how he moved with stiffness, like a clockwork soldier.