Snegurochka by Judith Heneghan (best ebook reader for laptop .TXT) 📕

has turned his head. She can see a mole above his left temple. His mother must have stared at that when he was a baby, she thinks, when she held him to her breast.

‘Apartment?’ he asks as he picks up the baby carrier and holds it while she slides Ivan’s legs inside. He lifts it carefully onto her shoulders and opens the street door.

The bitter chill almost steals her voice. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers as he offers her the survey, now in an opaque plastic folder. She tries to take it, but he doesn’t quite let go.

‘I understand your caution,’ he says. ‘You are a mother. It is difficult.’

Rachel knows she’ll start to cry if she stands there any longer. Let him be a good man, she thinks. Why can’t he be a good man?

He releases the folder. It is enough.

‘Apartment thirty-four,’ she says. ‘But the lift is sometimes broken.’

* * *

Later that afternoon, behind the thick walls of the monastery, a man removes his lozenge-shaped hat and stoops beneath a doorway. The space inside is dim, the air heavy with the grease and smoke from burning tapers and the smell of bodies sweating beneath thick layers of clothing. The man knows that with a flick of his hand he could have the little Church of the Nativity of the Holy Mother of God to himself. Two monks stand ready to shoo away other worshippers, but the crowd, he believes, is his penance, so he moves to an alcove to cross himself, then kneels down on the cold tiles and mutters his prayers. Two young monks in their black robes wait behind him. Only when he raises his palm do they step forward, bearing a wooden icon between them. It is a triptych, though it is small enough to be carried in one hand.

The icon itself is dull and faded – its colours worn almost away. There are hints of red, brown, some blue and a suggestion of gold in the halo around the Holy Mother’s head and along the edge of the veil that she holds out as she shields the man-baby who sits upright in her lap. The saints and martyrs are ranged like tiny dolls on either side of her, their faces upturned.

The man bows low over the icon. His lips touch the edge of the wood, then he shuffles backwards on his knees and prostrates himself before it, lying face down on the floor while the grey forms of his fellow-worshippers murmur and step over his legs.

Twenty minutes later, when the man has reemerged into the twilight and replaced his hat a skinny boy with close-cropped hair wearing jeans and a nylon anorak sidles up to meet him.

The man in the hat does not like to see a boy with his fingers tucked inside his trouser pockets in this holy place. The boy, however, whispers quickly, and the man is placated, pulling out his wallet and rewarding him with two ten-dollar bills. Satisfied, the boy slides away, pushing his feet across the snowy cobbles as if he is wearing ice skates or cross-country skis. He doesn’t look back until he reaches the corner, at which point he spins full circle on his toes and makes a sign of the cross, touching his forehead, breast and each shoulder with his first two fingers, then pointing them at the man as if to say I see you, Mykola Sirko.

The man in the hat turns away. Perhaps, he shrugs, we see each other.

Chapter 11

The day after Rachel’s trip to the white goods shop someone hammers loudly on the front door of the flat. Rachel has convinced herself that the washing machine was a ruse and she wishes she hadn’t divulged her address. You fool, she thinks, grimly, as she puts her eye to the spyhole. She’ll have to pretend she’s gone out.

Instead she recognises the boy from upstairs. He is with the old woman again, and this time he shouts.

‘Dezhornaya is here!’ he announces. ‘Open door. It is condition of lease!’

Rachel hesitates, then pushes down on the handle. ‘Yes?’ she asks, hoping she sounds annoyed.

The caretaker is standing on the doormat with two bulky string bags in her hands. The boy is behind her, clutching a bucketful of old newspapers. He is wearing the nylon anorak that is too small for him, and a pair of plastic trainers.

‘Dezhornaya,’ he repeats. ‘Elena Vasilyevna. She come to do windows.’

Elena. This is the name of the midwife in Jurassic Park, the one who leaves the nursery window open on page twenty-seven. Her mistake allows the baby raptors to climb in. Rachel frowns as she tries to re-focus. There’d been that note on the doormat. It said ‘Close windows!’ in blue writing.

‘Doesn’t she speak any English?’ she asks.

‘No.’

‘Will it take long? I am very busy . . .’

The boy shrugs. ‘Now I go.’

‘Wait!’ says Rachel, panicking. She’s not sure which is worse, being alone with the caretaker or inviting the boy to stay too. ‘What if I can’t understand her?’

The boy stares for a moment, then steps into the flat, brushing past Rachel. Elena Vasilyevna follows. He opens the living room door and marches straight across to the window that looks out onto the balcony, pushing away the sofa that Rachel still heaves in front of it whenever Lucas goes to work.

‘She will do here and here,’ he says, pointing. ‘All rooms. Leave for spring.’ He looks around at the bookshelves and the furniture, sees a pack of Lucas’s chewing gum on the side table and picks it up. ‘I take?’

‘Yes, thank you, please go,’ says Rachel, quite clear now that she does not want this boy in her flat.

‘Ciao!’ he says, as he saunters out.

Rachel’s palms are sweating. When she shuts the front door behind him, the caretaker Elena is already shuffling down the hallway towards the kitchen. By the time Rachel has secured the lock and caught up with her the newspapers are on the table and Elena is emptying a kilogram bag