the top-floor apartment.
A voice called out from the dark passageway:
– They’ll be touched when I tell them how you hesitated, sparing them a thought, before running away.
Fraera stepped out from the shadows. Quick-witted, Zoya lied:
– We’re coming to the party.
– So what’s in the bundle?
Fraera shook her head. Malysh stepped forward:
– You don’t need us anymore.
Zoya added:
– You talk about freedom. Then allow us to go.
Fraera nodded:
– Freedoms are fought for. I will give you that chance. Draw blood and I’ll let you both go-a single graze, a cut, a knick, nothing more. Spill a drop of blood.
Malysh hesitated, unsure. Fraera began walking toward them:
– You can’t cut me without a knife.
Malysh drew his knife, ushering Zoya back. Unarmed, Fraera continued walking toward them. Malysh crouched low, ready to strike.
– Malysh, I thought you understood. Relationships are a weakness. Look at how nervous you are. Why? Because there’s too much at stake, her life and your life-your dream of being together, it makes you fearful. It makes you vulnerable.
Malysh attacked. Fraera sidestepped his blade, grabbing his wrist and punching him in the face. He fell to the ground, the knife now in her hand. She stood over him:
– You’re such a disappointment to me.
Leo turned to the door. Malysh entered first, Zoya followed, a knife pressed against her neck. Fraera lowered the blade, pushing Zoya inside:
– I wouldn’t get too excited. I caught them trying to run off together, happy to leave you behind without so much as a good-bye.
Raisa stepped forward:
– Nothing you say makes any difference to the way we feel about Zoya.
Fraera retorted with mock sincerity:
– That does seem to be true. No matter what Zoya does, whether she holds a knife over your bed, whether she runs away, pretends to be dead, you still believe there’s a chance she’ll love you. It’s a kind of sentimental fanaticism. You’re right: there’s nothing I can say. However, there might be something I can say which will change the way you feel about Malysh.
She paused:
– Raisa, he is your son.
SAME DAY
Leo waited for Raisa to dismiss the notion. When Raisa finally spoke her voice was subdued:
– My son is dead.
Fraera turned to Leo, smug with secrets, gesturing with her knife:
– Raisa gave birth to a son. Conceived during the war, the result of soldiers rewarded for risking their lives and being allowed to take whomever they pleased. They took her, over and over, producing a bastard child of the Soviet army.
Raisa’s words were washed out, drained, but they were steady and calm:
– I didn’t care who the father was. The child was mine, not his. I swore I would love him even though he’d been conceived in the most hateful circumstances.
– Except that you then abandoned the boy in an orphanage.
– I was sick and homeless. I had nothing. I couldn’t feed myself.
Raisa had not yet made eye contact with Malysh. Fraera shook her head in disgust:
– I would never have given up my child, no matter how dire my circumstances. They had to take my son from me while I was sleeping.
Raisa seemed exhausted, unable to defend herself:
– I vowed to go back. Once I was well, once the war was over, once I had a home.
– When you returned to the orphanage they told you that your son had died. And like a fool, you believed them. Typhus, they told you?
– Yes.
– Having had some experience of the lies told by orphanages, I double-checked their story. A typhus epidemic killed a large number of children. However, many survived by running away. Those escapees had been covered up as fatalities. Children who run away from orphanages often become pickpockets in train stations.
His past rewritten with every word, Malysh reacted for the first time:
– When I stole money from you, in the station that time?
Fraera nodded:
– I’d been looking for you. I wanted you to believe our meeting was accidental. I had planned to use you in my revenge, against the woman who’d fallen in love with the man I hated. However, I grew fond of you. I quickly came to see you as a son. I adapted my plans. I would keep you as my own. In the same way, I grew fond of Zoya and decided to keep her by my side. Today both of you threw that love away. With only the thinnest of provocations, you drew a knife on me. The truth is that had you refused to draw that knife, I would’ve allowed both of you to go free.
Fraera moved to the door, pausing, turning back to face Leo:
– You always wanted a family, Leo. Now you have one. You’re welcome to it. They are a crueler revenge than anything I could have imagined.
SAME DAY
Raisa turned and faced the room. Malysh was standing before her, his chest and arms covered in tattoos. His expression was cautious, defensive, guarded against denial or disinterest. Zoya spoke first:
– It doesn’t matter if he’s your son. Because he’s not, not really, not anymore, you gave him up, which means you’re not his mother. And I’m not your daughter. There’s nothing to talk about. We’re not a family.
Malysh touched her arm. Zoya understood it as a reproach:
– But she’s not your mother.
Zoya was close to tears:
– We can still escape.
Malysh nodded:
– Nothing has changed.
– You promise?
– I promise.
Malysh stepped toward Raisa, keeping his eyes on the ground:
– I don’t care either way. I just want to know.
His question was offhand, childlike in its attempt to conceal the vulnerability. He didn’t wait for Raisa to answer, adding:
– At the orphanage I was called Feliks. But the orphanage gave me that name. They renamed everyone, names they could remember. I don’t know my real name.
Malysh counted on his fingers:
