Authors: Georgia Le Carre

Beauty and the Dark (23 page)

Chapter 2

I
t was midday
and I was outside with my brother, sitting on a pile of wood logs watching him clean my father’s boots when I heard a car pull up outside our house. For a moment neither of us moved. A car was an unheard of thing. Then I skidded off the logs in record time and we ran out front to look. Standing at the side of the house we saw the black Volga. I was instantly afraid. In my mother’s stories black Volgas were always driven by bad men. Why was there a black Volga outside our house?

I thought of my sister crying in the kitchen.

Then like a miracle the clouds parted and golden rays of sun hit the metal of the car and gilded it with light. It had the effect of creating a halo. As if the car was a heavenly chariot. The front door of the chariot opened—a man’s shoe emerged, and touched the dusty ground. I had never seen such a shiny shoe in all my life. Made of fine leather it had silver eyeholes and black laces. I can remember that shoe now. The shape of it, the stitching that held it together.

Another shoe appeared and a man I had never seen before unfolded himself out of the shining car. A short, hefty man with dark hair. He was wearing a black shirt, blue jeans and a leather coat. A thick gold chain hung around his neck. As I watched, another man got out of the passenger seat. He was dressed almost identically, down to the thick gold chain. Neither looked like he had descended from heaven. Both had swarthy, closed faces. They did not say anything or call out. They just stood next to the car with an air of expectancy.

Then our front door opened and my father stood framed in it. He moved aside and Anastasia appeared beside him dressed in her best clothes.

He turned to her and said, ‘Come along then.’

She turned to face him. Her lips visibly trembled.

‘Neither fur, nor feather,’ my father said. It was the Russian way of saying good luck.

‘Go to the devil,’ my sister whispered tearfully. That was the acceptable Russian way of securing good luck.

‘Anastasia,’ I called, and my father turned his head and glared at me.

I froze where I stood, no further sounds passing my lips. Anastasia did not look at me; her lips were pressed firmly together. I knew that look. She was trying not to cry. She picked up a small bag—I found out later my mother had packed it for her while we were all asleep—and walked with my father toward the men. One of the men opened the back door and in the blink of an eye my sister slipped through. I remembered thinking how small and defenseless she looked once inside the car.

My father and the men exchanged a few words. Then an envelope exchanged hands. The men climbed into their shiny car and drove off with my sister in it. I felt confused and frightened. My brother slipped his hand into mine. His hand was rough with mud from cleaning my father’s boots. My father, my brother and I stood and watched the car as it drove on the empty dirt road in a cloud of dust. While my father was still outside I ran into the kitchen through the back door where my mother was peeling potatoes.

‘Where are they taking Anastasia, Mama?’ I cried.

My mother put the knife and the potato down on the table and gestured for me to come nearer. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears and her cheeks were white, waxy and transparent. Bewildered and anxious I went to her. Immediately, she grabbed me and hugged me so tightly her thin bones jagged into my flesh, and the breath was squeezed out of me. Her hands were freezing cold and the top of my shoulder where her chin was pressed in was becoming wet with her tears.

Abruptly, as if she had just remembered herself, she sniffed and put me away from her. ‘Go and play with your dolls,’ she said, wiping her eyes and cheeks on her sleeves.

‘But where have they taken Anastasia?’ I insisted. I could not understand where my sister had gone with the men.

‘Your sister has a new life now,’ she said, her voice hollow with despair, and picking up the knife and the half-peeled potato, resumed her task of making dinner.

‘But where has she gone?’ I persisted. I would never have dared insist with my father, but I knew I could with Mama.

My mother squeezed her eyes shut, the pupils twitching under their purple veined lids. ‘I don’t know,’ she sobbed suddenly.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

My mother took a deep breath, her nostrils flaring out. With her eyes tightly shut and gripping the knife and potato so hard that her knuckles showed white she said, ‘Anastasia has been sold. She will never be coming back. Best you go play with your dolls now.’

Her voice was unusually harsh, but that did not deter me. ‘Sold?’ I frowned. My child brain could not comprehend why my sister had to be sold. ‘Why did we sell her, Mama?’

The knife clattered to the ground, the potato fell with a dull thud and rolled under the table. My mother began to rock. Violently. Like a person who has lost her mind. Her body tipping so far back on the stool I was afraid she would topple backwards. Harsh racking sobs came from her. No one would have believed that a woman that small and shriveled up could have inside her such a river of pain and anguish. It flowed out of her relentlessly, quickly and with shocking intensity.

‘My daughter, my daughter,’ she wailed. ‘Oh, Lena, my Lena.’

I was so shocked to see the state my mother was in I didn’t know what to do. I was used to seeing her cry, and I had come to accept her suffering as the way things were, but I had never seen her in this way, with her eyes unfocused and ugly sounds tearing out of her gaping mouth.

Sofia came running into the kitchen. Pushing me out of the way she grabbed my mother’s hysterically swaying body and held it close to her body until the sobs were purged and she became as limp as a rag. Trembling, my mother separated from my sister.

She nodded a few times as if to indicate that she was all right and all was well again. Then she dropped to the floor and, on her hands and knees, found the knife and the potato as we stood, numb and watching. Wordlessly, she resumed peeling her potatoes. Her thin white face was tight with the effort of controlling her emotions.

My mother spent the whole day preparing elaborate dishes for our dinner that night. My sisters had set the table as if it was Christmas or Easter and we took our places silently. My sister’s chair had been taken away and pushed up against the wall. I saw my mother glance at the chair and cover her mouth with her hand.

My father grabbed some schnapps glasses from the shelf and, filling them with vodka, took a glass to Mama She gazed sadly at the glass and dashed the contents down her throat. My father’s eyes found hers and she swallowed hard to get the liquid down. I could hear the sound of her swallowing as clearly as I could hear my heartbeat.

Without Anastasia we began our feast. Except for my father, who ate heartily, everybody else hardly touched their food. We kept our eyes on our plates. Years of being with my father had taught us that both his ‘up’ and ‘down’ moods were equally dangerous and explosive times, when anything could happen.

‘By Saint Nichols, eat,’ my father roared.

We all ate. Even Mama.

My father laughed and called for more vodka. The second course was beet and beef bone soup. My father drank his soup in high spirits.

The main course was roast cock with root vegetables, and the potatoes that Mama had peeled that afternoon. I looked at my father. He seemed oblivious to our frightened faces, our furtive glances at him, and the horror on my mother’s sunken face.

His ears red, and grinning as if he had won something wonderful, he sang, ‘Ne uyesjai golubchick moi’ (Don’t go away, my little pigeon). He seemed an idiot then, but of course, that was only an illusion. My father was a bear killer. A thief of animal souls.

My father helped himself to fruit with shouts of extravagant joy. ‘Slava Bogu!’ (Glory be to God). The drunker and the louder he got, the more silent the table became.

Without warning he slammed his fist on the table. ‘Why the fuck is everybody behaving as if this is a funeral?’ he demanded. ‘For sixteen years I fed that girl. Isn’t it about time she contributed something towards the well-being of this family? We can’t have any permanent drains on our family coffers.’ My father squinted at us all. ‘Is there anybody sitting at this table who disagrees with me?’

Nobody spoke.

His hand crashed down on the table again—plates jumped, a glass overturned. One of my sisters whimpered with fear. His blazing eyes swung around aggressively and landed on me. I realized then that everyone else had kept their heads lowered except me. I held his eyes. For a second something flashed in them but I was too young to understand what that might be.

Then he leaned forward, his entire attention on me. At that moment there was no one else in the room except him and me. I stared into his eyes and realized that nothing lurked there. His eyes were dead and soulless.

‘Am I wrong, Lena?’ he asked softly, with such menace that the atmosphere in the room changed. My father had found his target.

But for some strange reason I was not afraid. He was wrong to sell my sister. He should not even have sold the bear cubs after he shot their mother. I opened my mouth to tell him that, but under the table Nikolai took my hand and clenched it so hard, I cried out instead.

‘Yes, yes, you are right,’ my mother intervened suddenly. Her voice was high and shaky.

My father turned away from me and looked at her. She looked small and hunched, an unworthy opponent to the bear killer, but the horrible tension was broken. A grin crossed his face suddenly and he wagged a finger jovially at her. ‘You do know that your daughter is an unbroken horse, don’t you?’

‘She is only young. She will learn,’ my mother responded quickly. Her voice was firmer than I had ever heard it.

‘She’d better. Unbroken horses are worthless to their owners.’

My mother did a rare thing. She maintained eye contact with him while his mood was uncertain. Maybe because she had been weak and let Anastasia be sold, that night she found it necessary to stand her ground and protect me from my father’s wrath.

*****

We were all tucked up in bed that night when I awakened to the sound of someone at the front door. I hopped over my sisters’ sleeping bodies and looked out of the window, and saw a sight I will never forget as long as I live. In the light of the moon my mother was naked and running away from the house. Her long dark hair was loose and streaming behind her. I could only stare at her ghostly white body in amazement. Then my father ran after her and caught her. Sobbing loudly she curled into a ball in his arms.

Gently, with great tenderness, he picked her up and carried her back into the house. I never understood the scene I had witnessed. Even now the memory makes me feel guilty as if I had seen something I shouldn’t have. Something private that my mother would not have wanted me to see. I was always aware that she never wanted us to know that she loved my father to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. Even after everything he did. And even though she knew he planned to sell us all one by one.

After that strange feast, all talk of Anastasia was forbidden. The only person I could ever mention her name to was Nikolai and even then we spoke in whispers.

‘Where do you think she is now?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe she is working for someone.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Accounting,’ my brother said slowly. ‘Rich people always need accountants.’

‘But Anastasia is terrible at maths,’ I countered.

My brother frowned. ‘Maybe she is an English teacher like Mama was in Moscow before she met Papa.’

I nodded. That made sense. ‘Yes, Mama did always say that Anastasia’s English was the best. Do you think she is wearing fine clothes and living in a really grand house in Moscow?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Do you think she remembers us?’

‘Of course.’

‘Do you think she’ll come back and see us?’

My brother’s response was immediate and held a finality that I never forgot. ‘No.’