and wound up marrying into a family of some prominence. Actually”—Oliver smiled to himself—“I believe her husband Jack’s likely to become the next president of the United States.” He slowed the small, rattling car and turned it up a bumpy old farm road. “You should probably wake your girl up. I believe this is where she told us to stop.”
XII
The priest was awake in his small bed when the car pulled in. He had been lying there, blinking up into the darkness as he did almost every morning. Now somewhere deep into his eighth decade—even he wasn’t sure of his age—he savored the beginnings of the day, before early prayer. Most mornings he lay indulgently counting through his deep aches, sorrows, and regrets as the waking thrushes and starlings outside punctuated his silence with their optimistic counterpoint. With arthritic hips sore from his daily bicycle route, the priest had, over time, learned to sleep on his back, a pose that used to bother him, seeming too much like rehearsal for the coffin. His slow respiration mirrored the morning’s own breath as the day awoke in soft tones, bird flutters, and tentative stirrings. For some reason, today the world did not hang as heavily on him as it did most mornings, and as he lay there he nursed a fledgling, unsettling feeling that reminded him, eerily, of hope. It was an emotion he had long distrusted. He suspected the cause this time was the night jasmine that bloomed out on his arbor trellis. One of the windowpanes in his bedroom had cracked months before, he wasn’t sure how it had happened, and he had planned on replacing it before winter came, but then the arrival of the blossoms had made him delay. Some nights, the gap in the jagged open pane brought in the rain, but more often the pure fragrance came through it, wrapping its essence around his body and filling his lungs as he lay in his bed. He was amazed that it was still blooming so late in the season, and he breathed it in now, deeply inhaling the scent, feeling as if he was wrapped in the romantic arms of its embrace. He had never been with a woman, had actively suppressed that desire for his entire life, but he felt as though some part of the feeling, its profound and reassuring comfort, could be found within the soft aroma of that jasmine. It made the coming day feel ripe with beauty. Who could hunger for any sin, he thought, when so much satisfaction could be found in the wandering fragrance of a simple flower?
He heard the gravel kick as a car turned off the main road and started up the drive; then the engine cut off and a car door slammed. Perhaps it was the police again with more questions, or Elga returning with the girl, or maybe it was a Soviet stranger coming with an ax. (He was always nagged by the slight worry that a stranger from the old land would come after him, not because he was important, but simply because the state was so random in its violence. Even with Stalin dead, the bear still seemed intent on mauling the world.)
The knock came at the door, and he pulled his robe on as he crossed the dark room to answer. He was surprised to see Zoya standing there. She had dark circles under her eyes and gazed at him with a solemn look that was both nervous and penitent. “Come in,” he said.
He put the kettle on the stove. She found a chair and sat staring out the kitchen window. It was still mostly dark out.
Andrei tried to open things up with small chatter. “Things have been busy around here. The farmer next door died last month, a flu killed him. One cough and he dropped like a stone. There is trouble with the will so now his sons are fighting over the land, tearing his little empire to pieces.”
She was silent. Andrei kept talking. “Yesterday a policeman came out from the city asking about Elga. Have you seen her?” He poured the tea.
“Yes,” she said and continued to stare out the window. “I have seen her. Only days ago. Maybe it was yesterday? I can’t even remember. So much has happened.” She sighed. “I have news to tell you.”
Andrei sat down across from her. “What is it you have to tell me, Zoya?”
She looked up. “Max is dead. I am sorry.”
Andrei closed his eyes and instinctively prayed for grace.
“There was a fight,” she bluntly went on while he kept his eyes shut. “I was attacked by Elga; she was insane and she wanted me to die. She had a girl there with her. They had me trapped in their spells. I needed a distraction to break the girl’s concentration. So I killed Max and the girl screamed and I got the time I needed to escape. Again, I am sorry.” She stopped talking and he looked at her again, her fingers nervously tapping the handle of her teacup.
For almost sixty years, Andrei had watched his little brown brother scratch and sniff across the continent in a strange otherworldly state. Part of him had been waiting for the spell to end so that they could be reunited, while another part had hoped Max would vanish completely into the ether, taking all this unwanted mystery with him. Andrei had never thought Max would die before he did, he believed his brother was protected, his mortality locked up within the whorls of magic. Hearing the news, Andrei’s first thought was not grief but worry that this spell had been sustaining them both, as though participating in the strangeness of Max’s adventure had been what kept him going, either magically or because he refused to end his days unsure of how the grim fairy tale ended. How many wars had been waged, how many cities conquered, how many maps redrawn, while his brother was tucked inside wool coat pockets or stashed in steamer trunks or scurrying to and fro across gutters and granaries as the circumstances demanded? Throughout it all Andrei had never lost the connection to his brother. But now it was done. Max was gone. A door unlatched in his heart and Andrei felt something slip out; he wondered if he needed it. Sitting quietly at the table with Zoya, a new emptiness inside him, all Andrei knew was that he was honestly not sad at the loss of Max, he was only aware that his own shadow of time had just grown a full length longer, crossing some unseen line.
He looked up and saw the anxious expression of the woman across from him. She was waiting for his answer. “I must thank you for coming and telling me this yourself. It is surprisingly thoughtful of you. But I guess in a way we were all family. Do not feel bad, though. My brother truly died many years ago, Zoya,” he said. “He was drowned in his own black sea even before you met him.” Zoya still looked worried, so he told her what she needed to hear, a fact he suspected she knew already. “In his heart, my brother was always a rat.” Now she did look relieved. Andrei gave her a half smile and patted her hand, thinking to himself, Well, here we are, a lost witch seeking absolution from a broken priest. These must be modern times.
“Where are you heading to?”
Zoya shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m here with some people, we are leaving Paris,” she said. “But I’m not sure where we’re going.”
The priest thought about how many times he had asked that same question and heard some version of that same answer from Zoya. He realized a woman as beautiful and self-possessed as Zoya never needed to know where she was heading, she only needed to know what to do once she got there. “Who are your friends?”
“Two Americans. They’re waiting in the car. I told them you could help us. We need to find a place to hide, very serious people are after us.”
“You can stay here,” said Andrei. “The policeman told me they had Elga in jail for stealing a car. I doubt they will keep her for long, but she won’t be here for at least a few days.”
Zoya thought this over, then nodded. “We will stay one day, then we will be on our way. We’ll take the train.”
“Didn’t you come in a car?”
“One of the Americans is taking it back. The other is coming with me. You can drive us to the station after we’ve rested.”
Andrei grinned. He knew Zoya was kinder than Elga, but years with the old woman had made her almost as presumptuous and demanding. “I’d be happy to. Perhaps they would like to come in for some tea?”
“They are American, I think they prefer coffee.”
“Well, I have tea.”
She went to fetch her friends. Andrei rubbed his forehead; he felt guilty for calling his brother a rat. He had only wanted to relieve Zoya’s guilt, but he knew it was a truly terrible priest who only says what a confessor wants to hear. Max deserved a better eulogy.
As Andrei put his clothes on he realized it had been three-fourths of a lifetime since he had last laid eyes on his brother’s true flesh, but he could still vividly recall Maximilian that last night, his sparkling eyes and devilishly wicked smile bobbing above that sea of unwashed and unruly miners all shouting in a drunken mad din as the
