Rosa and the Veil of Gold (3 page)

“How did you find out differently?”

“I had a child of my own,” she said guardedly.

“I didn’t know you had a child,” Daniel replied.

“Yes you did. Those gossips back in Novgorod must surely have mentioned it.”

“Well, okay, they did. But I didn’t know whether to believe them.”

“I can imagine what else they told you. Yes, Daniel, I have a twelve-year-old son named Rubin. No, I don’t live with him. He has a perfectly nice stepmom whom he adores, and his father is a professor of classics at Boston University.”

“You must miss him.”

She chose her answer carefully. “As long as he’s well and safe, I’m comfortable.”

Daniel didn’t press the point. The rain came down heavier and he forced his hands to relax so they wouldn’t ball up and reveal to
Em how nervous he was about the speed she was using around corners.

“What did they say?” she asked. “Did they say I abandoned him?”

“I don’t think anyone used that word.”

“Some men don’t live with their children, and nobody raises an eyebrow,” she huffed. “For a woman, it’s considered unnatural.”

Daniel didn’t know what to say, so said nothing.

“Maybe it
is
unnatural,” she muttered, but he almost couldn’t hear her over the windscreen wipers and, besides, he had no idea how to respond.

The trees flew past outside. Daniel sighed and tried to relax into his seat, turning his eyes to the road in front. The car rounded a sharp bend and, just a few hundred feet ahead of them in the grey mist, a truck had stalled in the middle of making a turn.

“Shit! Em!”

But she had already seen it, jamming on the brakes. The car began to slide. Daniel shouted and threw his hands over his eyes. The car spun. There was a dull thud, but no clash of metal on metal. His body jolted in the seat, but a moment later they were still. Daniel peered out from behind his hands to see they had come to rest in a ditch on the side of the road.

“Jesus!” he gasped.

“Always turn into a slide,” Em said casually, putting the car into reverse. “Now, how are we going to get out of here?”

The truck driver had pulled his rig off the road and was running over to help them. Em wound down the window. The truck driver started speaking urgently in Russian, and Daniel found he couldn’t focus through the pounding of his pulse to make sense of his words. Em, however, was managing fine. She discussed the situation with the truck driver confidently, if not grammatically precisely. Daniel gathered a few moments later, after some attempts to reverse the car out of the ditch, that their back wheels had become mired in the mud.

“I have some wood in the back of the truck,” the driver said in Russian, and went off to fetch it.

Em turned to him. “Are you okay? You look pale.”

Daniel assessed himself. His heart still thundered and his hands shook. The adrenalin was only now retreating through his veins, dragging its hot feet reluctantly.

Em peered closer. “Daniel?”

“I thought we were going to die,” he managed.

She smiled, the puzzled expression returning. “But we didn’t.”

“We could have.”

She clasped his fingers in her cool hands. He could feel her pulse in her wrists. Regular and calm.

“But, Daniel,” she said, “we didn’t. We’re okay. We’re just stuck in a ditch.”

The truck driver was back. Em got out of the car in the rain and helped him to slant the planks of wood under the back tyres. It took Daniel two minutes to realise that this was probably a man’s job. He got out of the car to offer help.

“I’ll do that, Em,” he said, realising he didn’t sound convincingly masculine.

She looked up, her hair dripping. “I’m already wet, Daniel. You stay in the car. No use in both of us being uncomfortable.”

But he couldn’t arrive in St Petersburg with Em soaked through and himself dry and warm, so he hovered nearby and offered help and translated difficult phrases for Em. She jumped in and out of the car, reversing in stages out of the mud. Fifteen minutes later they were on their way, both muddy and wet.

“Are you feeling better now?” Em asked as they pulled back onto the road. She switched the heater to high, and a blast of hot air fried his eyeballs.

“I guess so. I got a shock, that’s all.”

“Yes, you’re right to feel shocked. I suppose we could have died.”

“But we didn’t,” he said, echoing her words from earlier as a reassurance to himself.

“No, we didn’t. There’s nothing to be afraid of right now, so you don’t have to look so pale.” Em turned up the radio, and was lost in her thoughts all the way to St Petersburg.

Rosa was on the phone when Daniel and Em walked into her office late that afternoon. Daniel’s clothes had partly dried, but clung to him uncomfortably. His pants, and Em’s shoes and skirt, were splattered in mud. He couldn’t have felt less unsightly in Rosa’s presence, especially as she was as beautiful as ever. Her long black hair was loose about her shoulders, her ocean-blue eyes and white skin luminous. She gestured to them to sit in the overstuffed armchairs near the door. He sat down, but Em pushed her short dark hair behind her ears and remained standing while Rosa spoke in rapid Russian down the phone. Although she had been raised in Canada, she had spoken Russian at home right up until the day her mother died. Daniel found Russian the most beautiful of all languages to speak, gliding as it did between the back of the throat and the front of the mouth. To hear Rosa speak it was divine.

Finally, she hung up.

“Oh my God, what happened to you?” she said, emerging from behind her desk. She wore a black lace dress, red-and-black striped tights, and a pair of lace-up stiletto boots: how Mary Poppins might dress were she in a porn flick.

Daniel rose and introduced Em. “Rosa, this is Em Hayward.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

“We got bogged in the mud on the side of the road,” Daniel explained.

“In the pouring rain,” Em added.

Rosa went to her desk and began scribbling on a piece of paper. “You both need a warm shower and clean clothes. Here.” She handed Daniel the piece of paper and a set of keys she found in a drawer. “This is the address for my Uncle Vasily’s place, where I’m staying at the moment. There’s no-one there. He’s away in Moscow. Let yourselves in, make yourselves comfortable, borrow any clothes that fit.”

“That’s very kind of you,” said Em.

“I’ll join you shortly. I have to pack up the bear and organise somebody to answer the phones for me.”

Then she was bustling them out the door, before he’d even had a chance to say, “You look wonderful. I’m so pleased to see you. Why did you leave me, anyway?”

Vasily’s apartment was huge and immaculately clean. The sharp lines of blinds and angular furniture contrasted with the muted coffee and mulberry colours. Daniel closed the door behind them and placed the keys on the marble bench which ran between the kitchen and the living area.

“Which way to the bathroom?” Em asked.

“Don’t know. I’ve never been here before,” Daniel replied, tentatively peering behind doors. “This looks like Rosa’s room.”

Em pushed the door open and, without hesitation, crossed to the wardrobe and began selecting clothes.

Daniel was still opening doors. “Here’s the bathroom.”

Em edged ahead of him with an armful of Rosa’s clothes. “Excuse me.”

She closed the bathroom door behind her and Daniel hesitated near the door to Rosa’s room. The wardrobe was still open, and he could see the sleeve of the red dress she had worn on their first date. He approached, gingerly pushing clothes on hangers aside to see if he could find the blue scarf he had bought her.

The door to the bathroom opened again, and Daniel jumped and backed away. Em stood in the doorway, still in her wet clothes. The hot water was running in the bathroom behind her, filling the room with steam.

“Have you found the towels?” she asked.

“No.” He moved past her and tried another door. Vasily’s room. The next one was the linen cupboard. He handed Em a towel and she disappeared. He grabbed one for himself then quickly showered in Vasily’s ensuite. Expensive shampoos and body-scrubs were lined up on the windowsill, but he was too timid to use any. He agonised for a full two minutes about underwear—his own boxers were wet and it didn’t feel right to borrow somebody else’s—then decided to go without beneath an oversize pair of track pants and a blue-buttoned shirt.

Rosa was knocking softly at the door to the apartment when he came out. He let her in.

“Hi,” she said. “You found everything.”

“You look wonderful,” he said, unable to hold his tongue.

“So do you,” she replied with an amused smile, “but I think you raided the fat end of Vasily’s wardrobe. He has a thin end which he uses when he’s off the vatrushki and vodka.”

“I didn’t want to go nosing around,” he muttered, hoping she would never discover that he was free-balling under her uncle’s clothes.

“Where’s your friend?”

“Em? She’s just a work colleague.” Then he realised he hadn’t answered the question and hooked a thumb in the direction of the bathroom. “She’s in the shower. I found some clothes for her in your room. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind. I asked you to come here and help yourselves, didn’t I?” She dropped her car keys on the coffee table and went to the kitchen, carefully setting an old shopping bag on the bench. “Coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

“Cigarette?”

“I’m trying to give up.”

“It’s for the best. Uncle Vasily doesn’t like it when I smoke inside, anyway.”

As she clattered about, Daniel leaned on the bench and admired her with sideways glances. He was amazed by the way she could arouse in him both devotion akin to worship, and desire akin to animalism: as though he wanted to build her a marble and gold altar and then fuck her senseless upon it.

She caught him looking at her and said, “What?”

“Are you happy here in St Petersburg, then?” he asked.

She shrugged. “It’s nice being with Uncle Vasily.”

“You said, when you were leaving, that you hoped to find an adventure here.”

“Did I?” she replied, laughing lightly. “That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it? I think I’d just spent too long in England.”

“One year is too long?”

She smiled. “In England it is.”

He took the joke with good humour. “So what kind of work are you doing with Vasily?”

“I’m a receptionist,” she said, spooning coffee into the filter. “Nothing special.”

“You’re not teaching English, then?”

She shook her head; pointedly didn’t meet his eyes. “No. Last time I taught, it ended badly.”

Daniel bit his lip. She had lost her job teaching Russian when another student complained about her relationship with Daniel. He fell silent and she put the milk back in the stainless steel fridge, then he decided not to be silent.

“Rosa, I still don’t really know why—”

Her hand shot out and her finger pressed against his lip. “No, Daniel. Let’s just keep it light.”

“I don’t
feel
light.”

Rosa opened her mouth to say something, but Em emerged from the bathroom wearing a loose blue dress, which was completely different from the well-fitted browns and greys she usually wore. Her feet were bare and she held her mud-stained shoes in her left hand.

“Sorry,” she said, “am I interrupting something?”

Rosa came around the counter and greeted Em. “That suits you. You should keep it. I don’t wear it any more.”

“That’s kind of you,” Em said, “but no.”

“Would you like coffee?”

“I’m in need of retail therapy,” Em said. “I won’t stay.”

“Your shoes…”

“It’s fine. None of yours fit me. I have very small feet. I’ll wear these and buy some new ones.” She moved to the tiled area near
the entrance and pulled her shoes on. “Thanks again. Is there a coat I can borrow for outside?”

“Take the one hanging there,” Rosa said, pointing to her red coat on the rack. “I’ll get your clothes washed and dried this afternoon.”

“I’d appreciate that. And of course I’ll pay you for your trouble.”

“There’s no need.”

“I insist,” Em said with a tight smile. “Daniel, I’ll meet you back here in two or three hours. Is that okay with you?”

“Fine,” said Daniel. “Enjoy your shopping.”

The door clunked shut behind her and Daniel turned his attention back to Rosa. She finished making the coffees and slid one across the counter to him.

“What’s wrong with Em?” she said.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her.”

“She’s odd.”

“Oh, you mean the silence. Like she’s not really listening to you.”

“No, there’s something else.” Rosa frowned as she sat on the stool opposite him. “Nothing sinister, don’t misunderstand me. Perhaps it’s unhappiness. Does she have a reason to be unhappy?”

Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know much about her. She’s not with her kid, but she gives the impression that it doesn’t bother her.”

“Ah, well, never mind,” said Rosa. “We’re here to talk about the bear anyway.” She reached for the plastic shopping bag. “I want you to give me your first impressions, okay? First impressions are important.”

Daniel nodded, wondering what she meant. “Okay.”

Rosa carefully unwrapped the bear and sat it on the bench in front of Daniel. It had the strangest expression on its face: a knowing smile which was almost unnerving, eyes closed as though it was thinking about a malicious pleasure.

“Well, it’s not nineteenth-century,” he said firmly. “Nothing about it, stylistically, suggests modern times. Or even medieval, given that Russian art has notoriously steered away from sculpture.”

She tilted her head to consider him. “Is there a chance it’s tourist junk?”

Daniel shook his head, reaching for the bear. “I don’t think so—” As he touched the bear, a sharp buzz jumped onto his finger. He jerked his hand back, then felt like a fool; a baby frightened by a camera flash. He continued as if nothing had happened. “It’s almost certainly gold. You see these scratches, this dent…” This time, no electricity. “Old gold is soft. And I can’t see any machine marks which would suggest recent manufacture.”

“How old?”

“It’s hard to say. Bears were very popular with the early Slavs, though not usually this large or in this material. You see this design of arabesques…it’s almost Byzantine, but the pattern within it…” he indicated with his finger, “that’s a stylised antler pattern which is definitely pagan. I don’t know if I can give you a decisive answer.”

“Go on, pretend you can. If you
had
to say something about it…”

“If I
had
to, I’d say this is southern, pre-Christian. Maybe something that came out of Kiev around the ninth or tenth century.” Daniel’s heart sped, afraid that he was overstating his certainty. “But I’m really not that sure. It’s odd, Rosa. It’s not typical of any time or place. So I could be out by hundreds of years.”

She was quiet for a few moments as she sipped her coffee. “So how did it end up in a wall in a bathhouse?”

“I’d guess somebody hid it there. Bathhouses are supposed to be places of magic, and there was a brisk trade in grave antiquities in the nineteenth century.”

“And what do you think the electricity was?”

He looked up. Her blue eyes met his steadily.

“Electricity?” he said.

“Daniel, I saw you pull your hand away. Did she give you a shock?”

“Perhaps static electricity,” he said.

She huffed. “Of course it wasn’t static electricity. I felt it too, the first time I touched her.”

Daniel considered Rosa in the muted downlights of the apartment. He knew that Rosa believed in wild things, so he answered carefully. “What do you think it is?”

Rosa broke the gaze and slid off her seat. “I need a cigarette. Leave the bear here. Join me on the balcony.”

Em crossed the road and was heading past the cemetery towards Nevsky Prospekt when a sly-looking old woman detached herself from the fence. A wide band of sunlight broke from the clouds and flushed through the new leaves on the birches behind the wrought iron. A spring breeze rattled branches. The woman approached Em purposefully, her pale eyes fixed on Rosa’s red coat.

“I’ll tell your fortune,” she said in halting English.

“Do I look like a tourist?” Em replied.

“You look like the girl I met last night. She wore that coat,” the woman said, slipping back into Russian.

“It’s not my coat.”

“But they are your shoes.”

Em raised an eyebrow. “Nicely observed.”

“Let me tell your fortune.”

“I don’t have time.” Em brushed her aside and kept walking.

“What did you dream last night?” the woman called after her.

Em felt herself compelled to stop. There
had
been a dream. A strange dream, and now she remembered it she felt vulnerable and superstitious. She turned back, reached into her purse for a rouble, and handed it over. “Last night I dreamed of black wool,” Em said. “Tangled, impossible to make straight.”

“A dangerous and unpleasant journey awaits,” the old woman said. The breeze intensified, flapping the corner of the woman’s scarf. “You should beware of anything made of gold.”

Em touched her gold watch unconsciously. “Thank you, now I must keep going.”

The woman grasped Em’s hand to make her stay, then pulled away quickly. “Oh my,” the old woman said, her eyebrows shooting up and sending a thousand wrinkles charging towards her patchy hairline. “Oh, my. You’re empty inside.” She quickly spat three times and crossed herself.

Em grew irritated. “That which we are, we are,” she said firmly, and strode off towards the expensive emporiums of the main street, relishing the thought of new shoes.

“There are rules,” said Rosa, offering Daniel a cigarette. He took it tentatively and she turned to survey the view from Uncle Vasily’s small square balcony. The shadowy groves of the cemetery, the domed necropolis and the River Neva slithering silver behind it, Aleksandr Nevsky Bridge pale in the haze. The morning’s rain had ceased and a sticky humidity had set in. The kiss of spring took the chill edge off the air. Even here, eleven storeys up, Rosa could smell the exhaust fumes of the traffic below.

“So what are the rules?” Daniel said after the silence had drawn out two minutes or more.

She turned to him, putting her back to the view. “We don’t talk about
us.
We talk about you and we talk about me, and we talk about everything but
us
because
us
is six months ago. Okay?”

Daniel feigned a nonchalance she knew he didn’t feel. “Okay.”

“Good,” she said, exhaling a stream of smoke. She jammed her cigarette between her lips, put her hands behind her and heaved herself up on the balcony railing.