‘It was only the story,’ she says. ‘Papa used to tell me all kinds of stories when I was a girl. Stories of the woodland and the wild, the kind of stories he’d heard from his papa, and his papa before him. Then, one day, when your mama wasn’t so very much older than you, he stopped telling those stories. He wouldn’t take us to the forest anymore. He wouldn’t talk about the wolves and the stags, and I never knew why. I used to love hearing about my papa’s time in the wilds, but from that day on he barely left the city. It was … nice to hear him that way again. That’s all.’
The boy isn’t certain he understands, but to say as much would be to betray mama, so he only nods. ‘Papa has lots of stories of the forests, doesn’t he?’
‘They’re all there, waiting, still inside him.’
‘Do you think he’ll tell me them, mama?’
‘I hope so. But your papa, he’s a … very old man, little thing. There are some stories he doesn’t want to tell. Some he shouldn’t …’
Mama means to go on, but there come footsteps from beyond the door. They hover, and they turn, and they click – as if Grandfather has put his old jackboots back on and is meandering up and down the hall. Mama waits for him to drift away once more.
‘Listen,’ she says, shuffling so that they can face each other on the bed, the boy nestled in the diamond of her legs. ‘I need you to hear this.’
The boy stiffens. When somebody says I need, it means that the thing they will tell you is a terror, and must not really be heard at all.
‘I won’t be here for very much longer,’ she says, with a finger brushing at his fringe so that he cannot hide. ‘Your papa is a great man, a kind man, in his heart. But his heart can be buried. He lived in terrible times. You can see it in his eyes sometimes, those terrible things. It’s why we haven’t seen him so very much, not since your baba died. But I want you to know – you’re of him, just as you’re of me and I’m of you.’
Half of the boy wants to squirm, but the other half pins him down.
‘He’ll care for you and love you and, even when I’m not here, I’ll be loving you too. I’ll be in your head. I’ll be in your dreams. You can talk to me, and even if I can’t talk back, you’ll know I’m listening. I’ll watch over you.’
They sit in silence: only the thudding of two hearts, out of beat, in syncopated time.
‘It’s okay to be scared,’ whispers mama.
‘I’m not scared.’
‘It’s okay … to want it.’
The boy’s eyes dart up.
‘It won’t be long,’ she promises, with her lips so close to his face he can feel their warmth, smell the greasy medicine still in her mouth. ‘It will be over soon. And then … then … I want you to make me a promise.’
The boy says, ‘Anything, mama.’
‘Promise me you’ll look to your papa. No matter what happens, no matter what stories he tells, no matter what you see or hear or … No matter what you think, little one. Promise me you’ll love him, and you’ll care for him, forever and always.’
The boy doesn’t need to think. He nods, and lifts his arms to cling from mama’s neck, like a papoose made of skin and bone.
‘Whatever happens, little thing. Whatever stories he tells. Whatever you see in his eyes. Whatever happens in your life or his, he’s yours and you’re his.’
The boy nods again, head lifting only a whisper from mama’s shoulders and held there by strands of tears thick as phlegm.
He is in school and making paper foxes with Yuri when Mr Navitski tells him, ‘Today, Yuri’s mother is going to take you back home.’
He has been to Yuri’s house before, for a birthday party at which he was the only guest. Yuri has a stepfather who works on the railway that goes east, into all of the Russias, but more often than not he is away and it is only Yuri and his mother in the little flat above the workers’ canteen. When he emerges from school at the end of day, white clouds are hunkering over the schoolhouse, and Yuri’s mother is talking to Mr Navitski at the distant gates.
Across the yard, and Mr Navitski ushers him on his way. ‘Take care,’ he says. ‘We’ll see you … soon.’
‘Tomorrow,’ the boy says, with a hint of defiance.
Mr Navitski nods as if he does not really believe it, and then strides back to the schoolhouse.
Yuri’s mother has eyes that nest in wrinkles and black hair scraped back in a bun. She has rings on each of her fingers and a coat with fur in its collar, but her boots are scratched and thin, at odds with the rest of her appearance, and it is these that the boy looks at as he approaches.
‘Yuri,’ she says, growing impatient at the boy still dragging himself across the schoolyard. ‘Don’t keep your friend waiting. We’re taking the bus.’
The promise of the bus fires Yuri, and he is much more spirited as they puff their way to the stop. The boy follows. Yuri has a strange waddling gait, like a duck being plumped up for the oven. The boy thinks: he’s like the boy in Grandfather’s story, ready to be eaten up by Baba Yaga.
It is a bus he has not taken before, down past boarded-up shop-fronts. As they go, the clouds break, and fat flakes of white seal the bus in a sugary case. By the time they climb out, it lies thick on the roadsides. The city has changed shape, its corners grown less defined. Yuri’s mother leads them on, past the railway canteen, and up a flight of frigid metal stairs. There, she takes a key from her purse and admits them to Yuri’s world.
Yesterday’s kalduny and draniki, heavy with fat, and a box of sugary juice for afters. While his mother is clearing up, Yuri takes him to his bedroom, which has bunks just like in Grandfather’s tenement.
The boy sits on the carpet with his bowl between his legs. Yuri considers him silently, reaches out a hand with a wrist quite as big as its palm, and pats him quickly on the head. Then he turns to open a box. From it, he pulls two silver trains and a piece of toy track.
The carpet of Yuri’s room is covered with a map, something Yuri has drawn himself, on the backs of envelopes and cereal packets. On the map are scrawled the most wonderful mountains and forests, rivers and roads. Yuri sets the trains down on a plain where a torn magazine front makes a ragged shore, and pushes one to the boy.
‘Mother says you’re not living at home.’
The boy rolls his train along the shore, bound for a head-on collision with Yuri. ‘We have a new home.’
‘A new home?’
‘With my papa.’
Yuri swerves his train out of the way. ‘What’s your papa like?’
The boy remembers mama’s words – your papa, he’s a great man, but he lived in terrible times – and they must certainly be true. But there’s another truth too: Grandfather has blue eyes just like mama, and a hundred different tales for the telling. He makes hot milk in a pan and, once, when the boy woke from a nightmare and cried, it was Grandfather who stirred and came into the bedroom and straightened his sheets and told him: hush now, it’s only a dream. It didn’t even matter that the dream was of mama, shrunk and desiccated in bed because they forgot that she was alive, because Grandfather’s vivid blue eyes made it better.
‘He’s like my mama, but old,’ the boy says.
‘I