It was gone. Lom whipped round, braced for an attack from behind that he was unlikely to survive, but the moonlit room was empty.
The door from the bedroom opened.
‘Vissarion? What the fuck are you doing?’
Vishnik lit the lamp. The study was in chaos. Heaps of books scattered everywhere. A picture fallen from the wall, its glass shattered.
‘What happened? What have you done?’ He saw the rips in Lom’s shirt, the smears of blood from deep scratches on his face and neck, the delicate nastiness of the small cosh in his fist.
‘It was a vyrdalak,’ said Lom. ‘A strange one.’ He sat down heavily on the couch. Now that it was over, his legs were trembling and he felt emptily sick. He knew what the bite of such a creature could do. ‘I guess the Commander wants her files back.’
34
Lakoba Petrov didn’t go home after leaving the Marmot’s. He no longer needed a place of his own. He hadn’t eaten for so long, he no longer felt hungry. He threw away what remained of his money and walked through the night, drinking sweet water copiously wherever he could find it. The clear coldness of it made his soul also clear and cold. His Mirgorod burned. It was awash with cool, glorious rain and the rain washed him clean.
Again and again the night city detonated for him, bursting into roses of truth. He was walking through paintings, truer and better than any he had painted. He could have painted them if had chosen to do it. But why should he? There was no need. He had a better idea. As he walked the streets in a pyrotechnical excitement of fizzing synapses, he developed in words his new principle of art. An art that would leave painting behind altogether and become something new and pure and clean. The art of the coming destruction.
He did carry one tube of paint with him, though, in his pocket. A beautiful lilac–turquoise. In the lamplight, looking at his reflection in the mirror in a barber’s shop window, he squeezed the paint onto his finger and wrote on his forehead. ‘I, Petrov.’ It wasn’t easy, mirror writing. He had to concentrate.
When he grew tired he lay down to sleep, and in the dawn when he woke his clothes crackled with the snapping of ice.
35
Maroussia Shaumian got out of bed in the chill grey of dawn. She lived in a one-room apartment with her mother out near the Oyster Bridge. There wasn’t much: a bed to share, some yellow furniture, a thin and faded rug on bare boards. Her mother was sitting upright on a chair in the centre of the carpet, wearing only her dressing gown. Her thin hair, unbrushed, stood up round her head in a scrappy, pathetic halo. It was icy cold in the room, though the windows were closed tight. Her small breaths and Maroussia’s own were tiny visible ghosts in the chill air.
‘Come on,’ said Maroussia, holding out her hand. ‘I’ll get the stove lit. Come and get dressed.’
Her mother flapped at her to be silent. Her hands were as soft and pale and strengthless as the empty eggshells of a small bird.
‘What is it?’ said Maroussia. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Come away from the window. They’ll see you. They’re watching.’
‘There’s nobody there. Just people in the street.’
‘They’re there, only you can’t see them.’
‘Where then? Show me.’
Her mother shook her head. Stubbornness was the only strong thing left in her. ‘I’m not coming over there.’
‘Get dressed at least.’ Maroussia went towards the wardrobe.
Her mother whimpered quietly. ‘Don’t open it,’ she breathed. ‘Maroussia. Please. Don’t.’
Maroussia began to set out food on the table for their breakfast. There’d been a time when she would have dragged her mother across to the window or even out into the street, to show her that what she feared wasn’t there. Hoping to shake her out of it. Sometimes she had literally grabbed her and shaken her by the shoulders, hard, until it must have hurt, and shouted into her face. It’s all right. It’s all right. There’s nothing there. Please, just be normal. But it made no difference. Nothing did. The nights were the worst. Maroussia would wake to find her mother piling up their few bits of furniture against the door. ‘They’re coming back,’ she would be muttering. ‘The trees are coming back.’
She still called her ‘mother’, though the word had long ago stopped being even the empty shell of an exhausted, bitter joke. ‘Mother’ was the faded inscription on