‘I was appalled when I heard what they had done. But they’re too frightened to act. The pogroms have begun again, worse than ever. Did you know that? The Vlast is clearing the ghettos. People are being lined up and shot. Lezarye is being rounded up and put on trains to who knows where. Whole neighbourhoods are being emptied.’
‘I didn’t know. I’ve seen the rhetoric in the papers, but I didn’t… What are you – I mean the Committee…?’
‘The Committee is too frightened to move. There is talk of arming ourselves and fighting back. Getting money and mounting a coup. Young men on the rooftops throwing down bombs on the militia. Others, of course, hope that if we keep quiet the troubles will fade away again, like they have done before. But already people are dying. ‘
‘And you? The Collection?’
‘My duty is to protect it. It has survived such times in the past. I’ve begun to pack it away, but… it is so much work for one man. The Committee offers no help. They will not consider departure.’
‘Where would you go?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps the woods, if I can find a way to transport the collection there. Or one of the exclaves. Koromants. Or maybe I will get it on a ship and go across the sea to the Archipelago. But with the winter coming…’
Vishnik held out the Child’s Book of Wonders.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Take it.’
‘But you know I can’t… it may not be safe…’
‘Take it, Teslom. Find a way. And if you think I can help you, my friend, ask me. Ask me.’
50
Maroussia must have fallen. She was lying hunched on the floor of her room. Aching, exhausted, she pulled herself carefully, with steady deliberation, up onto the chair. The feel of the trees, the buried sleeping god, swam in her head. The paluba was watching her.
‘That’s real,’ she said. ‘It’s there. Isn’t it? I didn’t know.’
The paluba said nothing.
Maroussia saw it and the companion now for what they really were: a weaving of light and will and contained, living air. The moulded breath of forest trees. Trees rooted in the body of the buried god.
But her mother was still dead. The militia would come. They were already coming. That was real too.
‘How long was I…? I mean, when did you come? How long have I been lying here?’
The paluba shrugged jerkily. The question meant little to her.
‘I’ve done what I can for your wounds. They will heal quickly now.’
Maroussia pulled up her skirt and looked at her leg. The raw gash had crusted over. The pain was dulled.
‘Who was he?’ she asked. ‘The man I saw?’
‘Your father?’
‘Yes. My father. He must have a name.’
‘Oh, he’s Hasha.’
‘Hasha?’
‘Hasha. He can’t come to you here. He can’t leave the forest.’
‘Will I… Could I go there, to him?’
‘Eventually. Perhaps. It is possible. But… I’m sorry, there’s something more.’
Maroussia stared into the paluba’s wild, fathomless eyes.
‘Show me.’
51
Rain was tumbling out of the sky. A heavy black downpour. Lakoba Petrov the painter had walked a long way, out to the northern edge of the city, no longer Mirgorod proper but the Moyka Strel, in the wider Lezarye Quarter, out beyond the Raion Lezaryet itself, an ageing halfway place where the houses were made of wood. Although they had been there for centuries, they were skewed, temporary-looking buildings of weathered planking, with shuttered windows and shingled roofs. Their eaves and porches and windows were mounted with strips of intricately carved wood, pierced with repeating patterns and interlaced knotwork. It was like embroidered edging. Like pastry. Like repeating texts printed in a strange alphabet. The woodwork was salt-bleached, and broken in places, but even so the houses looked more like musical cabinets or confectionery than dwellings. They were made from trees that had grown on the delta islands long before the Founder came.
Petrov had been born in this place, but he hardly knew that now. New thoughts filled him so full of wild energy that he could not keep body or mind still, he couldn’t even walk straight. Uncontainable and superabundant, he tacked back and forth across the road, advancing only slowly and zig by zag in stuttering steps, muttering as he went, hissing random syllables under his breath in a new language of his own.
Lost in his fizzing new world, he walked smack into the line of soldiers that blocked his path.
In the face of one a mouth was moving, but Petrov heard no words, only the soft swaying of the sea