one of the trunks. Watching for uniforms. Watching for watchers. Her whole body was trembling violently. She had almost not made it. The militia man’s first bullet had gouged a furrow of flesh in the calf of her left leg. It was a pulpy mess of blood, but it held her weight. Her knee, which had crashed against the wall in her first wild jump, stabbed bright needles of pain with every step, and the hair at the back of her head was sticky with blood – hers, and his. She could feel pits and flaps of skin where his teeth had cut her scalp. There was a ragged stinging tear in her cheek, wet with blood. Her neck was stiff. It hurt when she tried to turn her head. The pistol lay black and heavy in her lap.
She knew it was stupid to return home. The policeman. Lom. He had warned her not to. But then that was reason enough to do the opposite. Distrust of the Vlast and all its agents went deep. And yet… this one had helped her. He had let her get away. Without him she would already have been taken.
She could not think about that now. She needed to go home. Where else could she go? She needed to be clean of all this blood. She needed fresh clothes. She needed the little money that was there. She needed to rest. And she needed to think through her plan. She waited until the street was quiet, stood up stiffly and limped up the road to the entrance to her building.
There was a small bathroom up a flight of stairs at the end of the corridor. It had a basin and a bathtub and cold running water. A tarnished mirror. The walls were painted a pale lemon-yellow. Maroussia locked herself in, took her clothes off and washed herself, all over, slowly and without thinking. She let trickles of icy water take the blood and dirt from her skin. Out of her hair. She caught some water in cupped hands and drank from it: it tasted faintly of blood, but it was cold and sweet. She left her dirtied, bloodied clothes in a heap on the floor, wrapped herself in a thin rough towel and went barefoot back to her room as quickly as her stiffening injuries would let her, not wanting to encounter Avrilova on the stair. She found the door broken down, and assumed the militia had done it.
She dressed carefully, taking her time, not only because of her vicious and stiffening wounds, but also because she felt there was something ceremonious about it. Here begins the new life. She found clean underwear. A cotton slip. A plain grey dress. A black scarf for her hair. Shoes were a problem: her left shoe was sticky with the blood that had run down her leg. Her mother had saved a pair of boots from better times. They would do. And there was a clumsy woollen coat, also grey, which her mother had left behind that morning. She must have frozen.
When she’d dressed, she wandered around the room stuffing things into a bag. A few spare clothes. Soap. Their bit of money, about thirty roubles. That wouldn’t last long. After some thought she put in the book of Anna Yourdania’s poems. Someone at the Marmot's had given it to her. The Selo Elegies. She loved the quiet, allusive, suffering voice.
The sun is dropping out of the sky, the orchard
breathes the taste of pears and cherries,
and in a moment the transparent night
will bear new constellations –
like salt berries – glittering – harsh.
Why are our years always worse?
Yourdania’s son, who was nineteen, had died in the camp at Vig. Her husband was shot on the basement steps of the Lodka.
As she dressed and packed her few things, Maroussia went over her plan. Like so many people in Mirgorod, she had lived for years with the thought that one day such a time would come. The militia would come for her, and it would be necessary to run. She had decided long ago that when this day came she would make for Koromants, the Fransa Free Exclave on the Cetic shore, three hundred miles to the south of Mirgorod.
The whole world to the west of the forest was divided between Vlast and Archipelago, locked in their endless war. But wherever there was war, there must be bankers, financiers, traders in weapons – wars were fought on credit – and