XV
High in the barn loft, the afternoon light came through siding cracks in long, diagonal shafts that Zoya thought looked like golden swords leaning at rest. She was curled up naked, her arms wrapped around Will, as they both lay beneath the thick red wool blanket, protected from the autumn chill. She liked the way her naked breasts pressed against his chest, she liked the way her bare hip wrapped around his warm thigh, she liked stroking his leg and feeling its strength. She sniffed at his armpit, he had not bathed for two days and now the rank toxins from all his various adventures filled her nostrils and made her smile. This was literally a part of him, these tiny, stinky tumescent atoms that emanated from his pores and, inhaled and ingested through her sinuses, became a part of her. There was magic in that, a slight and playful communion bonding them together; she sniffed again, deeply this time. She loved how rotten he smelled. Then she fell asleep again.
She awoke to the sound of evening birds, the sun was beginning to fade. She gazed up at the crowded shelves above them, all stuffed with jars and books, sheaves of papers and piles of dried fungus and root. These were all Elga’s, though Zoya knew them by heart. For years the old woman had hauled her odd collection around, fashioning potions, cures, and curses as needed, hawking them, for money or for luck whenever they were running short on good fortune. When events were rushed and times uncertain, they traveled light and Elga would hide the lot of it away in dank sewers, attics, damp catacombs, or old root cellars, hexing and stashing them for years, even decades at a stretch, but always finding them again, digging up and hauling away the cache whenever the coast was clear. Zoya felt uneasy lying there now, she could almost sense the old woman’s presence and imagined the crone muttering to herself as she searched for ointments, balms, powders, or merely those green tins of crispy grasshoppers she liked to snack on. The priest had said Elga was locked up in a jail back in the city, and while Zoya knew they wouldn’t hold her long, she believed they would detain her at least long enough for Zoya and Will to rest some before they ran again.
Looking at Will, she whispered the tiniest of spells and touched his ear to keep him asleep a little longer. They had crawled into bed exhausted soon after Oliver had left that morning. He had departed with a promise to “sort things out proper” with the authorities. “Don’t worry, I’ll go to the embassy first. I have a bit of pull there.” Putting on his hat, he said he would send word when the coast was clear. “Head south,” he suggested, “to Antibes. There’s a little hotel down there that Scott and Zelda used to stay at. The Hotel Belle Rive. Lovely spot, right by the water’s edge. Shut yourselves in your suite, find some dance music on the radio, and order up room service till you hear from me. Shouldn’t be long.” Then he smiled a perfectly confident smile that reminded her of a lawyer leaving his client at the gallows, promising a pardon that never comes.
She was quite sure she would never see him again, not because he was a bad man, but because men like Oliver, though sincere in their dedications, also suffered from a squirrel’s tendency to be distracted by any random acorn that fell on their path. These were the men who committed their betrayals casually and effortlessly, letting people down with little malice and less concern. Promises were simply nice solid-sounding words to them, and so, as Oliver’s car drove off, she was relieved to see him go. After all, he had been useful, but he was used up. She did not mean to judge him, she merely observed. But what she saw was what she had seen all too often, a silly, vain creature who had been raised to believe the universe spun around him, when in fact he was the one spinning in the darkness, circling truths he could never hope to perceive.
Besides, she recalled, he was so lazy in bed.
Will stirred in his sleep; she let him rest. When they first climbed up to the loft she had arranged their pallet, laying the priest’s spare sheets and blankets over straw and filling buttoned shirts with clean stable rags for makeshift pillows. He sat on a stool, watching her work, telling her of Bendix, the drugs, and the vivid dream he had been chased through. While she was intrigued to hear about the hallucination’s landscape and the mystery man who had saved him, she was more interested to hear about this scientist who, she learned, had once hunted her and killed her friend and stolen their secrets. A rage swelled inside her but she bit her tongue: this was not something she could share with Will. “Oliver is right,” she said, lying down on the sheets, “we need to go south.”
“Where to?”
“Not to Antibes, not to anyplace where anyone knows we could be.” She paused to think. “If we cut across the Pyrenees, we could disappear into Spain. Maybe go down near Gibraltar, then we can always cross to Algeria or Morocco if we need to. We should be fine.” She gave him a reassuring smile and stretched her body out across their makeshift bed. “I know how to travel.” She reached across to her lover. Elga had once told her that no man could run like they could run, pride and weakness always slowed a man down. “We move like the water, they move like fat fish. It looks like it will work, but it doesn’t. Their big stupid balls always slow them down.” But Zoya was sure Elga was wrong. Will had tumbled into her life the same way he fell into her arms now, full of vitality and lustful energy. He had no strong ties to any history calling him back and no ambition of where to go. He could be hers, entirely, and she did not plan on letting go. Tightly embracing, they licked, bucked, and bit, rolling over and into each other through the morning until they both lay exhausted again, his chest bellowing hard, her skin chafed raw by his stubble. Soon he had slipped off to sleep. Now, hours later, she ached to wake him again. She wanted the feeling of his hands on her hips and his body hard inside her. She had felt a difference, an awakening, a new kind of appetite, deeper than the simpler one that so often gnawed at her; this was a fresh hunger that she liked, promising a union that filled her heart with warm blood and satisfaction. She wanted more.
Outside, the birds stopped chirping. She noticed the silence immediately. She was feeling cautious, though she knew birds quieted for many reasons. A dog or a fox could be passing nearby, or a hawk could be gliding overhead. Perhaps the priest had returned, though she guessed that he might have come and gone already, returning to his chapel again for his evening service. No, there was no reason to be worried, birds stopped singing for a myriad of reasons. She slipped out from under the blanket and picked up her clothes. Besides, she thought, if a car had pulled into the driveway she would have heard it, unless it was someone who knew how not to be heard. They could have parked up the road and crossed the flat wheat field on foot. She fastened her bra and slipped into her underwear. She looked down at sleeping Will. She had never pulled anyone in so close to the truth before, but then, she had never felt as vulnerable. She buttoned up her blouse. The silence was so complete, even the evening crickets were silent. Still, probably nothing to worry about. She pulled up her skirt and fastened it.
A bird chirped. She exhaled, surprised at how nervous her instinct had been. I am too jumpy, she thought, I must relax. When the bird chirped again she noticed it wasn’t the chirp of an evening songbird, a finch or a bunting, it was the cluck of a nearby chicken. Then a thought struck her with the dead weight of certainty, with the sureness of a nail hammered into soft wood: the old priest did not keep chickens, but Elga’s little friend did.
She touched Will and he stretched beside her and sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Hi,” he said and grinned. She kicked him hard, a sudden blow to the side of the head that knocked him flying, over the edge of the loft and down to the barn floor, safely out of the way, as the door burst open and the guns started firing.
XVI
As he began the benediction, Andrei was relieved to be wrapping up the evening service so efficiently. His two frail parishioners, both well into their nineties, had enormous patience for long ceremonies. The ancient benefactress was blind with glaucoma and wheelchair-bound. Her husband could still walk, but only with the aid of
