‘Come over to the table,’ she said. ‘You must be hungry.’
There was bread, sausage, a potato. Her mother looked at it. ‘Where’s it from?’
‘Issy and Zena’s’
‘Oh no, I couldn’t touch anything from there.’
Maroussia couldn’t say that the falling of the shadow across her mother’s life had come as a surprise. Although she had never been sat down and told the story of their lives, she had pieced it together over the years.
Her mother had been Feiga-Ita Shaumian, and then Feiga-Ita Kantor, and then Feiga-Ita Shaumian again. The Shaumians had been one of the great families of Lezarye, and Feiga-Ita’s marriage to Josef Kantor was a grand occasion: he the firebrand orator and Hope of the Future, she his loving and industrious amanuensis. When Josef was sent into internal exile in the aftermath of the Birzel Rebellion, Feiga-Ita had gone with him, though she didn’t have to. But then, suddenly, she’d abandoned her husband, even though she was pregnant, and gone back to the city. She endured the long journey to Mirgorod alone and ill. It had been a difficult pregnancy. In Mirgorod she had reverted to her former name, borne the child, called her Maroussia, cut off all contact with her old life, her family, the dreamers of Lezarye, brought up the daughter in a succession of obscure and shabby attics.
At first there had been good times. Maroussia remembered the games and stories, the small adventures out into the city and beyond, to the sea and to the suburban parks that ringed the city, but Feiga-Ita had lapsed at last into this permanent darkness of the heart. Maroussia had got used to sharing their room with the dark predatory walking shadows of trees and the spies and accusers that followed her mother down the street and waited in the darkness of alleyways, stairwells and wardrobes.
She cut a slice of hard black bread and some sausage and ate it herself.
Her mother, feeling herself watched, looked across at her with wide, watery eyes.
‘Maroussia?’ she said.
‘Yes?’
You won’t tell them will you?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t ever tell them what I did.’
‘I have to go now,’ said Maroussia. ‘I have to go.’
36
Lom sat at the desk in Vishnik’s apartment, turning over the pages of the Kantor folder again. Wondering where to go from here. Chazia wanted her file back. She was a dangerous enemy: she had tried to kill him once, and she would try again. Kantor was Chazia’s agent. So much was obvious from the file. It was proof – enough to take to Krogh and let him deal with Chazia. But it was unsatisfactory. Would Krogh deal with Chazia? Could he? And Lom wanted more. He wanted Kantor.
He was about to close the folder when he noticed a paper he had overlooked before, because it was out of date order, torn loose and tucked inside the flap at the back of the file. It was just a routine official instruction, concerned with Kantor’s removal to Vig. The accompanying report said that his wife had already returned to Mirgorod. Wife’s name: Shaumian, Feiga-Ita. Chazia had added a note in pencil: ‘There is a daughter. Not his. KEEP IN VIEW.’ The last three words triple underlined. Pinned to the back of the instruction sheet was a typed half-sheet with an address:
Shaumian, Feiga-Ita & Shaumian, Maroussia
387 Velazhin, Apt. 23
Oyster Bridge
White Side
Chazia had written against each name a series of letters and numerals. Lom recognised them as file references for the Gaukh Engine.
Kantor had a wife, and Maroussia Shaumian was her daughter?
Circles of contact.
Shit.
37
The paluba and her companion of forest air stood in the doorway of an empty building, watching the entrance to the Shaumians’ apartment block across the street. They were waiting for the daughter to leave. They wanted to find the mother alone. It was the mother they knew. From many years before. She was their better hope.
When they saw the daughter go, they crossed the road and climbed the stairs. No one saw them. There were people there, in the street, but they were not seen.
The paluba paused outside the apartment door, on the tiny landing at a bend in the stairs. She could feel the Pollandore as a strong presence in the room and seeping out of it. She could feel its thrilling touch. New things were possible here. She scratched and tapped at the door with her fingers of birch twig and squirrel’s tendon.
‘Feiga-Ita Shaumian, let me in.’ Her voice buzzed and rattled like gusts of air