The Domino Game (24 page)

The man was in his forties, Nikolai judged, short and overweight. A roll of flabby skin broiled bright pink by the heat of the shower lolled over the edge of the towel he held pinned across his stomach. Long unruly strands of ginger hair lay plastered here and there across his scalp, dribbling water down his chest. He saw Nikolai and froze, slack-jawed like a startled animal, uncertain of which way to turn or what to do next. As Nikolai watched he saw the man’s eyes flickering nervously between his face and his naked torso.

It took him a moment to understand. The tattoo. He had forgotten about it completely.

The fat man’s eyes darted again to Nikolai’s chest, then back up even more quickly, as though he were pretending he hadn’t noticed it, that it wasn’t there.

But it was, and this wasn’t prison any longer. After nine years of imprisonment Nikolai had stepped into another dimension. A world inside out. A place where survival now depended on blending in, not standing out, and already he had made his first mistake.

He held the man’s gaze, wondering whether he could read the cryptic language of the tattoos. Had he seen the death heads and did he understand their meaning? And, if he did, would he talk? Would he be likely to mention this encounter to someone else? His wife, perhaps? A friend? Or worse, the police? And if he did, what would be the consequence? Then, as Nikolai was considering all of this a strange thing happened. Astonishingly, the fat man bowed to him. Forward, from the waist, in a gesture of obeisance, his hand clutching the knot of the towel around his belly, the trails of water from his hair now dribbling onto the tiled floor at his feet.

For several seconds he remained like that while Nikolai regarded him with dismay, then he straightened upright and turned aside towards the lockers without another glance, as if Nikolai wasn’t there. Not ignoring him, but as if he had become invisible.

Beyond where the man had been standing a full-length mirror was fixed to the wall. Moisture had eaten its way between the glass and its silvered backing, leaving ragged, brackish scars of decay around its edges. What remained was weak and faded, its reflection blurred and indistinct, like oil smeared on water, but it was enough. Enough for Nikolai to see his entire body for the first time in almost a decade and realize that the figure confronting him might almost have been that of a total stranger.

It was lean and taut in a way it had never been before, his skin as pallid as a ghost, molded in tight contours around the muscle and bone beneath its surface, its whiteness contrasted sharply with the dark and ugly intricacy of the tattoo that sprawled across his chest. His waist had become narrower and his shoulders broader, a consequence of the relentless exercise he had forced on himself as part of his discipline of survival, but most confronting of all were the changes to his face. He had seen them before, of course, but they had been gradual and until now he had never really noticed their full extent. His face was narrower, the bones that formed its framework sharper and more pronounced and beneath his brow his dark eyes appeared much deeper set. Hollow but defiant and uncompromising. Watchful and suspicious it seemed, even of themselves.

Seeing himself as he now did, Nikolai could understand the stranger’s reaction. He had been afraid. It was as simple as that.

Each day of prison had taken something from him until the void had grown so deep that it had seemed as if his soul was being scooped out from within and that eventually he would collapse and crumble and disintegrate. Then, at some imperceptible point, the erosion had stopped and the process had reversed. The chasm had begun to fill again, not with what had been taken, but with something else. Something totally different that had settled like liquid granite, layer by layer at his core, reconstructing him, rebuilding him from the inside out until it reflected itself in every part of his being – his movements and expressions, the way he held himself, most of all the eyes. Something so foreign that even now he didn’t fully understand it.

Inside it had become the essence of his survival but out here it would have to be controlled since now he realized that even without trying it gave him the power to generate fear.

The
platzcart
ticket cost three hundred rubles. It was third class – sitting only – but at that moment for Nikolai freedom alone was luxury enough. He bought fresh
kulebyaka
and
pirozhki
from a food stand, found a seat alone in a corner of the waiting lounge and consumed them ravenously, then went back for more and coffee, as well, this time. After that he settled down to wait for the boarding call. It came a half hour later. A woman’s voice amplified over the speaker system.

West Siberian Express to Moscow. Departing from track number two in fifteen minutes. All
aboard.

He set his new watch by the station clock. Six thirty-three a.m. Waited until the straggles of Moscow-bound passengers gathered to a throng at the platform gate then joined it, merging with the crowd.

For most of the trip he slept, drifting awake occasionally as they pulled into stations along the way, once or twice wandering out to the platform for food and drink and then returning again to the bench seat he had claimed at the back of the carriage and where he was left undisturbed by his fellow passengers. It was just before five in the morning two days later when the locomotive finally pulled in to Yaroslavskiy Station on the north-eastern edge of Moscow. When he slipped down from the carriage onto the platform his legs slurred uncertainly beneath his weight. He wondered whether that was because of the forty-eight long hours he had spent on the train, or the uncertainty of what awaited him now that he had reached his destination.

At a stall on the concourse he bought another T-shirt, black this time, found the washrooms and showered and shaved then walked outside, stepping tentatively onto the Moscow pavement into the early morning bustle of Komolskaya Square. From where he stood the apartment was less than a kilometer away. That was where it had ended so that was where he would begin.

So much remained unchanged yet so much was different. The park opposite had become official now, even had a brass plaque dedicating it to the residents who had protected it through the last long years of the Soviet era. There were more trees and the gardens were more formal and carefully tended. He walked across the grass and stood at its center, studying the building where he and Natalia and Larisa had once lived.

The front door that haunted his nightmares – the one in which he remembered studying his own reflection – was gone. Nikolai smiled bitterly to himself. Changed completely, just as he had been. The new door was more substantial and refined than the one that had stood there previously. A statement of the new residents’ perception of themselves, he presumed.

Above the ground floor the brick facade had been painted, the wooden window surrounds replaced with new metal frames that gave the place an anonymous, almost sterile appearance. He looked around. The other buildings had changed as well and the cars that lined the street were newer and cleaner and more expensive than those he remembered. He turned his gaze back to the entry and let his mind wander. Imagined the old door. Natalia holding it wide for Larisa to come outside and play, smiling and flicking the strand of hair back from her eyes as their daughter skipped past her across the threshold. He stared at the empty doorway for a long moment then snapped his head aside, closing the shutter on the past. Spun around and focused instead on the carousel, the place where he had imagined the sniper must have been lying in wait the night they had taken him.

How often, since Florinskiy had woken the hope within him, had he imagined himself returning here and finding them? Finding everything just as he had left it? Had he really expected that, or had he expected what he had found, and what there really was?

Nothing. There was nothing for him here.

He turned and started to go but stopped again just as suddenly.

To the edge of the park an elderly woman was raking the grass, hunting down stray leaves and scraps of rubbish, collecting them and depositing them carefully in a large bin. She seemed familiar and he looked at her again. Remembered how a decade ago he had watched her doing the exact same thing.

She stopped then. Stopped what she was doing and looked at him as he made his way towards her, but her expression was one of curiosity rather than recognition. Then as he came closer she took a step back.

Did he really appear that frightening, he wondered? Without even intending to?

He dipped his head towards her and tried a smile. Noticed a discarded soft drink bottle lying on the ground between them and bent to pick it up. Lobbed the plastic bottle into the waste bin and she smiled at him in return.

“I was wondering…” He tested his voice. Removed the cheap sunglasses and threw a glance back towards the building. “Would you happen to recall some people who lived there once?” The woman rested on her rake and studied him through narrowed eyes. He tried the smile again. “Quite a few years back now… nine or ten, I expect. A man and a woman. They were on the third floor. They had a little girl. She was…”

She cut him off. “I remember them.” She took a step closer and peered up into his face. “They’re not here now. They left a long time ago.”

“I see.” Nikolai pursed his lips. “I don’t suppose…”

She tossed her head. “I’ve no idea where they went.” Her eyes travelled between his. “They left suddenly. The man first.” Her voice drifted off and she hesitated. ‘The woman and the little one a week or two later. They were practically the last to go. Once the place was empty the owners started fixing it up.” She glanced across his shoulder. “Spent a lot of money. More than it was worth. They’re all new people now. Some even own their places, can you believe that?” She shook her head. “All the old tenants are long gone. The old times are long gone.”

“I see.” Nikolai stubbed the toe of his sneaker into the grass.

“You’re not the first,” the woman added unexpectedly. Nikolai looked up. “Not the first to ask about them. There have been others.”

He tipped his head to the side in question. She studied him cautiously for a long moment, weighing up, he presumed, whether she should go any further. In the end she shrugged to herself, as though apparently concluding there could be no harm.

“A woman first.” Her eyes looked past him. “A nice woman, but very nervous.” Zalisko’s wife, Nikolai wondered? “Then later – a year perhaps – a man. He came in big car, expensive, with a driver. I spoke to them both.” She smiled around her. “I’m always here, you see? Always here.”

Nikolai took a step closer. ‘The man. Do you happen to remember him? What he looked like?”

She dropped her eyes aside. Thought about it and after a moment shook her head.

Nikolai nodded. “I see… Thank you, anyway.”

“Not what he looked like.” She hadn’t finished. “But I remember his voice.”

“His voice?” Nikolai made her words into a question.

There was a touch of exasperation in the old woman’s response. “What he sounded like.”

Nikolai paused. “And what did he sound like?”

She shrugged as if it should have been evident. “American. He sounded like an American.”

Nikolai blinked. She was studying him again, searching his face, section by section. He began to nod slowly then something caught his attention and he turned aside. A blue and white police Lada trawling slowly along the street. She said something more but he missed it. He turned back to her and shook his head. “I’m sorry?”

“What I said was: “
You used to play with her.”

He stared at the old woman and shook his head again. “I don’t understand. Play with whom?”

‘The little girl, of course. You used to play with her. Here, in the park.” Her gaze strayed beyond him, following the path of the police car as it cruised towards them. Then her eyes returned to his and narrowed in recognition. “I remember you. You’re her father.”

Something she saw in his face must have scared her then because she took a step away and he saw her eyes flicker past him again, towards the street. What did she know? What could she know? Nikolai felt himself tense with the grip of fear. Fought to control it. The old woman’s eyes flickered back to his and he caught and held them, moved in closer to her and spoke in a quiet measured tone.

“You’re mistaken.” He tried to smile but the muscles of his face pulled tight in resistance. “The family were acquaintances, that’s all.”

She watched him. Began nodding slowly and lowered her gaze. “Of course.” Her voice faded to a murmur. “Acquaintances. How foolish I am.” She turned aside and set about her work again. As if he wasn’t there.

He left her then. Strode away quickly, taking the short cut between the buildings that bordered the park, back to Mira, playing the conversation over in his head and wondering. She had seemed so certain and there was nothing wrong with her memory; she had recognized Nikolai after all this time.

An American. A year later, maybe two. Who was it and what did it mean?