Arkady checked the newspaper's date.» Until tomorrow.' He got up to look at the Change sitting in the corner, the doll's left arm lank on a cane, feet sprawled, half-formed features and glass eyes returning Arkady's gaze. The more Arkady studied the doll the more convinced he was that it was the one that had disappeared from Pribluda's flat on the Malecon. Same red bandanna, same Reebok shoes, same baleful glare.» He reminds me of Luna.'
'Of course,' Ofelia said.» Luna is a son of Change.'
'A son of Change?' Once again Arkady had the sense that any conversation with Ofelia had trapdoors that could open and drop a person into an alternative universe.» How do you know this?'
'It's obvious. Sexual, violent, passionate. Change all over.'
'Really?' He leaned to better see the yellow beads around her neck.» And...'
'Oshun,' she said stiffly.
'I've heard of that one.'
'You are a son of Oggun.'
Arkady felt he was about halfway through the trapdoor.
'Go ahead, who is Oggun?'
'Oggun is Change's greatest enemy. They often fight because Chango is so violent and Oggun guards against crime.'
'A policeman? Doesn't sound like fun to me.'
'He can be very sad. Once, he was so angry at the way of people, their crimes and lies, that he went into the deep woods, so deep no one could find him, and he was so silent no one could talk to him or could coax him out. Finally, Oshun went after him and walked through the woods and walked through the woods until she came to a clearing by a stream. She could feel Oggun carefully watching from behind the trees. She didn't make the mistake of calling out to him. Instead she began to dance slowly with her arms out like this. Oshun has her own dance, very sexual. When she felt that he was curious and moving closer she still didn't call his name. Instead she danced a little faster, a little slower, and when he came out of hiding she danced until he was close enough to her to dip her fingers into a gourd of honey hanging from her waist and she smeared the honey on his lips. He had never tasted anything so sweet in his life. She danced and filled her hand with honey and put more honey in his mouth and more honey while she tied him to her with a rope of yellow silk and led him back into the world.'
'That could work.'
Not honey but the sweet salt of her skin. No silken rope but her arms. No words but hands and lips, and Arkady was pulling her closer when Change's cane scraped across the linoleum. The doll sagged forward, head askew, tipped in the slow fashion of a drunk releasing himself from the obligations of respectability, slumped off the chair and landed with a thud on its face.
'Some spell,' Arkady said. It had been working on him. He swung out of bed, picked up the doll and set it in the chair again. Here was a figure that had followed him all over Havana, his shadow companion, and how he'd ever managed to get Chango to stay in the chair Arkady didn't know because the cane slid one way and the doll perversely slumped the other.» The head is just too heavy, it won't sit up.'
Ofelia motioned Arkady back.» Leave it. It's just papier-mache.'
'I don't think so.' The spell was broken. He lifted Chango and brought him to the bed, the better to see how the head was sewn to the shirt.» Are there scissors in your toiletry kit?'
Arkady pulled on pants and Ofelia slipped into his coat. Because the nail scissors were small, Arkady had to cut the threads one at a time to slide the head off a wooden stake that was the doll's backbone. He let the headless body roll onto the floor.
Ofelia asked, 'What are you doing?'
'Looking into Chango.'
He cut off the bandanna, leaving a red ring of cloth still glued. The head was papier-mache coated with a lacquer-hard paint like a lumpish skull daubed black. Ofelia found a serrated knife in a drawer of the kitchenette. Arkady sawed through the head from ear, over the crown, to ear, until he pulled the doll's face like a mask off a layer of cheesecloth that had been formed on someone's face to lend the effigy its rough features. Under the cloth were crumpled newspapers, and under the newspapers was a flat oval of slick silver tape. In tiny snips Arkady cut around the edges and peeled the tape off five thick brown waxy sticks that said in English 'Hi-Drive Dynamite.' The sticks had been warmed and molded to pack tightly together with a Plexiglas backing in the oval space of the head. On the middle stick was a printed circuit board of a radio receiver the size of a credit card with a built-in kopeck- sized battery and antenna. Arkady prodded the board up. Its wires were crimped around the leg wires of a blasting cap inserted deep into the dynamite itself. In spite of the air-conditioning he felt a bloom of sweat. He and Ofelia had been around the doll on and off for almost a week. Someone could have pressed a remote transmitter and brought his Havana trip to an end at any time.
He put the scissors and knife aside.» Something nonsparking?'
Ofelia cradled the doll's head in her lap and delicately dug the cap out with her fingernails.
You had to admire a woman like that, Arkady thought.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Enough daybreak sifted through the window shade for Arkady to see Change lying on the table, the front and back of the head resting separately on the doll's chest. Disconnected, the face seemed more animated and malevolent than ever.
Ofelia was under Arkady's coat, asleep. He dressed in his old clothes, strapped on the hip pack and stole his coat as quietly as he could. This was the point where they went their different ways. As she said, it would be difficult enough to explain how she had come into possession of the doll. Having a Russian along wouldn't help.
'Arkady?'
'Yes?' He had already opened the door.
Ofelia sat up against the headboard.» Where will I see you again?'
They'd gone over this the night before.» At least at the airport. The night's at midnight. It's a Russian plane and a Cuban airport, we should have lots of time.'
'You're going to see Walls and O'Brien? I don't want you to go. To their boat? I don't trust them.'
'I don't either.'
'I'll be watching. If that boat leaves the dock with you on it, I will send a police boat out after you.'
'Good idea.' They had decided all of this already, but he returned to burrow for a moment in her neck and kiss her mouth. Love's exaction for forward motion.
'What about Bias and the photograph?' she asked.» I'll be seeing him.'
'Leave the photograph to me.'
'And after?'
'After? We will shop on the Arbat, ski among the birches, go to the Bolshoi, whatever you want.'
'You'll be careful?'
'We will both be careful.'
Her eyes let go. Arkady slipped out into a morning with a dull pewterish light rimming the water, streetlights fading, on his way, appropriately enough, to see Sergei Pribluda's lover.
A block on, he encountered another socialismo o muerte billboard with a giant Comandante in fatigues, shambling again in mid-stride, keeping pace.
Ofelia took a little longer to dress, tape the doll's head back together and take it in her straw bag to her car. It was eight by the time she reached the Institute de Medicina Legal, found Bias in the autopsy theater and sent a message that she would be waiting for him at the anthropology room. No one was ever completely alone in that room, there were too many skulls and skeletons, preserved beetles and snakes huddled in the light. On the desk a newly scrubbed skull was positioned under a video camera. She turned on the monitor, and a picture of a robust Pribluda at a beach emerged on the screen.
'Not yet,' Bias said as he came in drying his hands with a paper towel.» No show until we have our other Russian. Detective, I understand you're dressed for a certain kind of duty, but I must congratulate you for how convincing you are.' She was in the white
