breasts were small inside the cardigan. Kantor was curious.
‘Since you refuse to leave,’ he said, ‘you’d better tell me who you are.’
‘I’m your daughter.’
Kantor looked at her blankly. He was, for once, surprised. Genuinely surprised.
‘I have no daughter,’ he said.
‘Yes, you do. It’s me. I am Maroussia Shaumian.’
It took Kantor a moment to adjust. He had not expected this, but he should have: of course he should. He had known there was a child, the Shaumian woman’s child, the child of the frightened woman he’d married all those years ago, before Vig, before everything. That affair had been a young man’s mistake: but, he realised now, it had been a far worse mistake to let them live. He studied the young woman more carefully.
‘So,’ he said at last. ‘You are that girl. How did you find me?’
‘Lakoba Petrov told me where you were.’
‘Petrov? The painter? You should choose better friends than Petrov.’
‘I haven’t come here to talk about my friends.’
‘No?’ said Kantor. ‘So what is this? A family talk? I am not interested in families.’
Maroussia put her hand in the pocket of her cardigan and brought out a small object cupped in her hand. She held it out to him. It was a thing like a nest, a rough ball made of twigs and leaves, fine bones and dried berries held together with blobs of yellowish wax and knotted grass. ‘I want you to tell me what this is,’ she said.
Kantor took it from her. As soon as he held it, everything in the room was the wrong size, too big and too small at the same time, the angles dizzy, the floor dropping away precipitously at his feet. The smell of resinous trees and damp earth was strong in the air. The forest presence. Kantor hadn’t felt it for more than twenty years. He had forgotten how much he hated it. He swallowed back the feeling of sickness that rose in his throat and moved to throw the disgusting thing onto the fire.
‘Don’t!’ Maroussia snatched it back from him. ‘Do you know what it is?’ she said. ‘Do you know what it means?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No. Where did you get it?’
‘Mother has them. I stole this one from her. I don’t know where she gets them from, but I think they come from the forest, or have something to do with it.’
‘Nothing useful ever came from that muddy rainy chaos world under the trees. That’s all just shit. So much shit.’
‘I think these things are important.’
‘Then ask your mother what they are.’
‘She can’t tell me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Do you really not know? Don’t you know anything about us at all? You could have found out, if you wanted to.’
It was true. He could have taken steps. He had considered it while he was at Vig, after the Shaumian woman had left him, and later. But it would have meant asking questions. He had told himself it was better to share with no one the knowledge of their existence. That had been stupid. He could see that, now. Now, it was obvious.
‘My mother isn’t well,’ the girl was saying. ‘She hasn’t been well for years. In her mind, I mean. She’s always frightened. She thinks bad things are happening and she is being watched. Followed. She never goes out, and she’s always muttering about the trees. For months now these things have been appearing in our room. I’ve seen three or four, but I think there have been more. She pulls them apart and throws them away. She won’t say anything about them, but she keeps talking about something that happened in Vig. Something that happened when she went into the trees.’
‘You should forget about all that,’ said Kantor. ‘Forget the past. Detach yourself. Forget this nostalgia for the old muddy places. Trolls and witches in the woods. These stories aren’t meant to be believed. Their time is finished.’
‘They’re not stories. They’re real. And they’re here. They’re in the city. The city was built on top of it, but the old world is still here.’ She held up the little ball of twigs and stuff. ‘These are real. These are important. They’re from the forest, and my mother is meant to understand something, but she doesn’t. Something happened to her in the forest long ago. And…‘ She hesitated. ‘She keeps talking about the Pollandore. I need you to tell me what happened then. I need you to tell me about the Pollandore.’
For the second time, Kantor was genuinely startled. Whatever he had