A Constellation of Vital Phenomena - By Anthony Marra Page 0,133

she saw the black fake fur hat of the Buckingham Palace Guard nutcracker. Without pausing to consider the thousands of kilometers the souvenir had already traveled, or that she might need this totem to draw strength in the uncertain days, she pulled the toy from the suitcase and presented it to the girl in appeasement.

“Here,” she said. “A souvenir.”

The nutcracker was as wide as the girl’s hand and twice as long. As she studied it, her curiosity consumed her anger. “Who is this?” she asked.

What was the name they had given this little wooden man that never laughed? She lay back, more afraid of losing the name than the nutcracker itself, but there it was, years since she last spoke it and it was right there.

“Alu,” she said.

Five nights and the refugees Dokka promised still hadn’t come; on the morning of the sixth day, she announced she was leaving. After breakfast Dokka asked her to join him in the bedroom. Six ribbons looped around the six dresser drawer knobs, and Dokka fit his wrist into the first, opening a drawer that contained jewelry, foreign coins, wristwatches, and billfolds, a more extravagant version of his daughter’s collection. “Right there,” he said. “You see the red bandanna? Take it.”

The bandanna wrapped around an L-shaped object. Its weight substantiated her fear the moment she lifted it.

“It’s a Makarov semiautomatic pistol,” he said. “You simply unlatch the safety, point at the target, and shoot.”

But for the beige handgrip, the gun was silver; a passing cloud dulled its luster. She had seen guns on television and at the bazaar, in the hands of rebels, soldiers, and gangsters, pointed at her in City Park and the Breaking Grounds, but she had never stood on this side of the barrel before.

“I’m just as likely to shoot off my own head as anyone I aim at,” Natasha said. She didn’t want the gun and told him as much, but he insisted, saying Comrade Makarov would keep her safe on those dangerous roads. “Do you arm all your guests?” she asked with a smile.

“You’re our first.”

“Why?”

“After I lost my fingers, I thought Havaa should learn to shoot. But when I think about her shooting at the Feds, and what would come after that … She knows to run. It’s better if we don’t have the gun.”

“But why give it to me?”

“Because I want to protect the person who gave me Havaa.” She could think of no refutation. He insisted she keep it on her person, and it pressed against her left breast as she hugged Havaa good-bye. The girl clung to Natasha’s fingers, and Natasha shook them both away, with gratitude, and hurried into the cool daylight before their affirmations of goodwill crippled her. Her boot heels bit into her ankles but she wouldn’t stop to slip on extra socks before she had traveled far enough from Dokka’s house to preclude the possibility of returning. The wood, brick, and cinderblock dwellings grew smaller as she reached the village’s southern end. A stubble of dead grass filled the ungrazed fields. The forest closed around the road. Hanging from a tree was a final portrait, a woman with long, dark hair and an aquiline nose, whom Natasha recognized but couldn’t identify. Of all the village portraits, this was the most detailed and closely observed. In the center of the otherwise serene portrait, the woman’s lips opened, just a centimeter, revealing no more than a sliver of her tongue, the forty-second portrait, if Natasha were to count, the only one whose subject opened her mouth in speech or sigh, a word spoken and heard for eternity, or an expression of longing, though whether it belonged to the woman or the artist, Natasha couldn’t say. She stared at the portrait for several minutes before understanding, belatedly, why the woman looked so familiar. Perhaps those chestnut-sized eyes recognized her. Natasha was, after all, wearing the woman’s maternity dress.

She made it twenty kilometers by the time the sun set. She had hoped to come to a village where she might enjoy a morsel of Dokka’s hospitality, but the scavenged remains of logging encampments were the only signs of prior habitation. All else was woodland. She went deep enough into the trees that not even the glimmer of a campfire could be seen from the road. Recalling the lessons of the City Park Prophet, she built a fire from dried branches and dead leaves. Dokka had given her a G-4 humanitarian aid ration: three cans of