my baba. It wasn’t my fault, you know, what happened to her.’
Gor drove home through the autumn mist, back across the bridge, past the newspaper stand, past the busy, bustling square, past the kiosks and the lights, hurrying for a little peace. On arrival, he bolted the door behind him, put on the safety catch, and cleaned his teeth, twice. The second time, he used rock salt and oil of menthol, slicing through the film of moth that clung to his canines. He flossed with a piece of white cotton, and examined his mouth in the bathroom mirror, grinning back at himself with a mirthless growl.
A visit to a psychic: he couldn’t believe he had agreed to it. But Sveta had been keen to help, and what was more, her concern had seemed genuine. He hadn’t expected it. When they first met, two weeks before, he had not found her a promising prospect. She had been hesitant and largely displeased, full of sighs and fussy questions: not the best properties of a magical assistant. Their second rehearsal had been little better. But today she had smiled, laughed even, and turned into a real person. A real person who served up giant, hairy moths in her sandwiches. Gor shuddered. Was he losing his mind? Had the moth even been real? No one else had seen it. He ran his tongue around his teeth as he sat in his armchair, the cats twisting around his ankles, mewing.
But the rabbit – there were witnesses to that. It had been very real, and very disturbing. A rabbit and a moth: there must be some logic to this. He leant down to tickle Pericles’ chin and thought back to his first encounter with Sveta, searching his mind for clues, trying to remember everything, exactly as it had happened. It had been warm and sunny in the morning, with a fine rain setting in at lunchtime. The headlines on the radio were of the rouble plummeting against the dollar, savings disappearing, huge rallies in oil stocks, the threat of war in Chechnya. And in his own apartment, he had been invaded by a woman who had answered his advert – fluttering on a lamp post in the leaf-strewn street – the day it had been put up. She had come in, fully unprepared, and fussed.
‘Mister Papasyan—’
‘Call me Gor.’
‘As you wish. Mister—’
‘Gor, please,’ he repeated politely but firmly. He was hunched away from her, grunting slightly with the effort of doing up the box clasps. She chewed on her red bottom lip, and then remembered her lipstick.
‘All right. Gor …’ Her voice trailed off.
She had forgotten what she was going to say. She strained her neck to observe the outline of his shoulder-blades through the old, thin cotton of his shirt, listening to him grunt, and wondered if he suffered from asthma. Her own chest felt tight with a sudden edge of panic. She breathed out noisily and tried to relax.
‘It would make what we have to do this afternoon much easier if you could just call me Gor. And breathe in.’
‘I see.’ She breathed in again, trying to make herself smaller, but resenting the implication of his words. She was not a large woman, although equally, not birch-like. Who needed twig women? What good were they? And who was he to tell her to breathe in? He had her at a disadvantage, and she wondered for the tenth time if this afternoon had been a mistake. All she could do was close her eyes, patient and saint-like, as he huffed and puffed.
‘And I will call you Sveta, if that is permissible to you?’
‘Oh yes, very good.’ Her voice fluttered and she did not open her eyes.
‘There, that all seems correct.’ He made a vague ‘rum-pum-pum’ sound in his cheeks and stood up tall, towering over her. ‘Where were we?’ He scratched his head, the silver hair ruffling as his fingers played a trill against his skull. He appeared more fuddled than she had expected.
She pursed her lips, unknowingly pushing her red lipstick further along the crevices that radiated from her mouth, out into the soft, doughy pallor of her face. Suddenly, she brightened.
‘You ask me to wiggle my toes?’ she asked hopefully, arching one heavy brown eyebrow.
‘No, not yet. It’s far too soon for that. We have a little way to go. Just …’ He positioned her hand higher, pulling on her fingers, and paused to observe the effect. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Um, fairly … normal. Not magical, at the moment, I have to say.’
He turned away tutting to himself, hands on hips, shaking his head.
‘Is something wrong?’
He did not reply, but turned slowly this way and that, scanning the room.
‘Gor?’
‘The saw …’ his voice came from between tight lips.
He turned back towards her and his eyes, large as the moon and dark as night, rolled slowly from one side of their sockets to the other, and back again. She felt a sweat break out on the palms of her hands and a fluttering in her stomach: he really was a fright to look at. ‘The saw, Mister … er, Gor?’
Gor spun away. He was annoyed with himself and what he considered the rather slow-witted woman before him. He took in the windowpanes, the rain behind them threatening to dissolve the sky and the land and bring everything to a smudgy, dripping halt. He took in his living room, bathed in the brown, honest glow of the books and sheet music that lined its walls, exuding a scent of permanence. He took in his baby-grand piano, dark and shiny as polished jet, perfectly tuned to be played at any moment. He took in the fluffy white cat reclining over its lid, one claw-prickled paw raised as if to strike at the polished perfection of the wood. And there, in the middle of it all, he took in the corpulent middle-aged woman, in a box.
He sighed, and removed his eyes from her: she upset him. The lipstick was too sticky, the hair too blonde, her understanding of magic zero and … and the rasping sighs that plumed and flowed from her like lava would have singed his tired nerves at the best of times. This afternoon was definitely not the best of times, despite the comforting rain. And now he couldn’t find the bloody saw!
‘It’s on the table, by the door,’ said Sveta quietly. He started at the words, coughed and refocused his eyes. They came to rest on the small table by the door. He shook his head.
‘Ah, I see, madam, I see. My eyes are … tired.’ He crossed to collect it, hips and ankles clicking as he went. He examined the blade in the puny light of the lamp.
‘Yes. The saw: good! We’d better move on, before I forget something else. Do you feel … stable?’
She considered briefly, and nodded carefully. Gor did not respond. He was stroking his chin and staring through her. She swallowed.
It wasn’t that his face was old: no, any face can make you wonder how it once belonged to a baby. But this – it was a face that was so mournful, so haggard and frayed, with such huge eyes, it could make a priest cry. Sveta shuddered, and the box rattled softly. On top of the piano, the white cat lay in abandonment, upside-down, and eyed her with mild interest.
‘Svetlana Mikhailovna, hold fast. All will be well. I have to pause to think … I am an old man – you may have noticed. We take our time, in all things.’ As he spoke, he waved a large, thin hand in the air, and then let it flap down again, the gesture both artistic and defeated. He did not smile. In fact, he looked exceedingly morose. ‘Strange, you may think, as time is against us, but there it is.’
Again Sveta pursed her lips, and tried not to look at Gor or the cat, which now seemed to be winking at her with its sapphire eyes.
‘I am holding fast. You may have noticed – I have no choice.’ She eyed the window and the rain swirling against the murky sky. The light was fading, and it made her anxious: she had a hair appointment at six. ‘Do please hurry.’
The old man stood beside her, the top of his head not far from the ceiling above.
‘You may