She stopped at a bank of grey public pay-phones glistening like giant slugs in the autumn sun. There would be more privacy here than at her student hostel. She chose a phone for inter-city calls and heaved out her purse, fat with brown plastic phone tokens. It was followed by her notebook, where she had hurriedly scribbled down the number and address of the flat – the same night she’d read his file. The same night she’d taken his key. She grinned again at her own cleverness and punched in the digits. The pips pipped, and she pushed in the play-money.

  ‘Is that Babkin? Yes, it’s Polina. I … yes, don’t worry about it … the carpet tiles come up, I’ll replace it. It’s fine.’ Babkin’s voice slurred through his leathery gums. She really didn’t want the detail. She decided to talk over him. ‘Listen, I have good news: the problem at this end is totally resolved, and I can extend the lease indefinitely …’ She paused until the grateful babble at the other end subsided. ‘But I’m sure you’ll understand, as the circumstances have changed for the better, I now need three months’ rent, in advance … cash, dollars.’

  Babkin didn’t like it. He squeaked fiercely. She was unmoved. ‘I’ll explain again. When it was a short let, you could have it week on week, but now, well, it will be a long let, and I must ask the market rate. I can’t thieve from myself, can I? And the market rate in Rostov is a three-month deposit.’

  She waited for silence, and let a pause inch by.

  ‘Then you leave me no choice. If you won’t pay, you must go. Two weeks; it’s in the contract …’ Babkin turned ruder, but she knew he would go. He didn’t have residency papers, he wouldn’t dare go to the police. He didn’t have a leg to stand on, really. She reminded him of the fact, and replaced the receiver. Twin plumes of steam fired from her nostrils.

  Babkin could go. If the old man was now long-term at the Vim, she could accommodate a more solid tenant, someone semi-permanent, who could pay upfront. Someone with teeth and a job. A working family, maybe. Her cheeks swelled in a grin. Perhaps she could advise the good doctor Vlad on the old man’s treatment? Use a little psychology … And perhaps she would ensure that he never made it back to his flat in Rostov, at all.

  She puffed on a Pall Mall as she walked. She would have a proper clear-out once Babkin was gone: she’d only had time to shove a few boxes into cupboards so far. The tenant was camping amid collections of paintings and paper, mountains of books, a mangy sheepskin, an ugly mannequin, and who knew what else. The place had been a state: that’s why he’d had a good rate. She caught sight of herself in a shop window, and caught her breath: that smile was beautiful, audacious even. The smile of a winner.

  On she walked, heading for the bus stop but somehow unable to resist the call of the White Flamingo department store and its folk-craft collectibles. For most of her youth its shelves had lain half-empty and uninviting. How she’d detested it. But things were changing: enterprise had the upper hand, in retail as in all areas of life. The tubes in the neon sign had been replaced, and now the White Flamingo had found itself. Oases of interest now sparkled within its walls in place of endless dusty textbooks and single sets of Czech make-up that you could look at but not buy. Even the sexless mannequins that had stood guard over the fall of the Soviet Union had been re-born, now crookedly resplendent in garish Lithuanian polo shirts, Capri shorts fresh from Turkey, and lacy Chinese knickers.

  One section alone fascinated Polly, and it didn’t feature a single imported item. She pushed open the dented metal door and hurried past Counter No. 1, Stationery and School Products, which had always been a desert to her, and made for her treasure trove, her Shangri-la: Counter No. 2, Gifts and Souvenirs.

  In a glass cabinet with a scratched top that none were permitted to lean on, there sparkled a myriad of rainbow colours, shiny shapes and glistening figures. Crystal, porcelain, bark-work and lacquer: intricate, beautiful, tiny and valuable. Polly leant her hands on the impenetrable glass and stared down, mute black eyes digging into every curve and notch of each folk-work collectable. Her favourite was the Palekh work: dark lacquered trinket boxes, each with a scene from Russian folklore depicted on the lid in tiny, glowing brush strokes. Each with a value of over 150 dollars. Each a solid investment, the real black gold. She counted out the boxes, recognising the fairy-tale scenes depicted on each one: the firebird and the grey wolf; Ruslan and Ludmila; a troika of long-limbed horses with flowing manes like cresting waves; the plunging magic pike; Father Frost in his fur coat and boots, and her favourite – the brave and fearless Frog Princess. She gazed at the tiny pictures on each side of the box, losing herself in them, like a child. Here was Princess Vasilisa the Wise, holding her discarded frog skin; Vasilisa performing magic; her husband the Prince seeking her salvation from Baba Yaga, and the final defeat of her evil master, Kashei the Immortal. Polly stood, impervious to the jostles of the shoppers around her, her senses filled with the heaving black forest, the smell of the swamp, the hut on chicken legs, and the power of magic.

  She felt comforted: at one with Mother Russia, if not with her own progenitor. Wasn’t she following in the footsteps of her distant forebears? Who needed family when you had ancestors?

  The folklore princess had grabbed her happiness: made her own fate. Vlad called her his princess. And she would be. But princesses needed money.

  She felt rest in her soul and a calm on her brow just looking at the boxes, safe in the knowledge that soon, very soon, another would be in her possession. Little boxes to tell her she wasn’t stupid. Little boxes to tell her everything would be fine. Little boxes that were her friends, and her security. You could never have too many Palekh boxes.

  ‘Girl, move out of the way, would you, I can’t see the porcelain!’ An underfed man with a sharp nose and the flat, grey eyes of a shark breathed lunchtime’s omelette into her face as he leant across to examine a ceramic representation of the folklore hero Sadko, who stood like a glazed and puffy ice-cream next to the darkly delicate Palekh boxes. She recoiled from the armpit of his leather coat: it was cold and slightly slimy.

  ‘That’s a lovely one,’ he observed in an undertone, licking his lips. ‘For an investment, maybe, you know, longer term. How much is it, can you see? I can’t count the noughts.’ His nose screwed up to refocus the dead eyes, and Polly looked around, confused.

  ‘Girl – tell me, how much is it?’ he said more forcefully, finally glancing her way, spittle-flecked lips drawn back from greedy teeth. ‘Can’t you read?’

  She didn’t look at the price, but stared him straight in the eye and hissed, ‘Don’t bother. You can’t afford it.’

  On her way out, she stopped by the cafeteria, as she always did, just to look, and remember. That cafeteria: her father used to take her and her brother there as a treat, years ago, when she was shy, half-grown, and he was her tiny, rosy-cheeked clown. They would get a hard pastry biscuit and a glass of kvas, and Father would tell them to wait while he went and tried to find light-bulbs, or knickers, or vodka, or whatever else he had not managed to barter or borrow. Petya would sing songs with no words, his chubby hand sticky in hers, his eyes round, trusting. He would sing and sing, happy to be in the warm, happy with his kvas and biscuit. He was always so content. After a while she’d tell him to be quiet. She’d shush him and threaten to take his biscuit. She was trying to be cool, and he was annoying. She should have let him sing. What she wouldn’t give to hear him sing again. What she wouldn’t give to hear him giggle. It had been so long since she’d heard his voice. How she hated kvas and biscuits.

  She turned and clattered out of the door, running for the 8A back to the student hostel. The smell of wet dog and the sharp stares of strangers didn’t pierce her bubble. Today, the thought of the hostel, the shared room, the rubbish piled in the kitchens and the crippled kittens trapped in the stairwells did not depress her. The bus, the hostel, university, her awful boss Maria Trushkina at the pharmacy; they were all temporary. She would dig her way out of this.

  Ten minutes later she was walking up the drive. Small black windows glowered at her over four storeys, flocks of plastic bags nestling at each windowsill: student ‘refrigerators’, flapping like tethered rooks. She smiled, and wondered if she should allow herself to buy a mini-fridge once she had her new tenant.

  As she entered the foyer a hunched, spidery form shot out from behind the concierge desk and clamoured at her, waving a piece of paper over its head.

  ‘Hey, hey!’ the form shrieked.

  ‘Elena Dmitrovna, do you have a message for me?’ Polly knew a performance was coming: it always was. She tried not to scowl.

  ‘Yes I do, and it sounds interesting,’ said a voice like splintered wood.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  The old lady held the piece of paper to her breast and looked along her nose at Polly. She harrumphed and blew out her cheeks, and then sucked them back in, wincing.

  ‘Akh, my sciatica!’

  ‘Ah, I promised you those tablets, didn’t I? I hadn’t forgotten. It’s so busy at the pharmacy at the moment … I have no time to myself. I’ll get them for you. This week. For definite.’ Polly smiled, eyes slithering shut.

  Elena Dmitrovna tapped her fingers on the piece of paper clenched between her hands.

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘Very well.’ The old woman handed over the paper and remained standing where she was, blocking Polly’s path to the stairs.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  Polly read the message in silence.

  ‘You see! A séance! Interesting! I told you!’ The old lady danced on the spot, the ring of keys at her waist jangling.

  Polly rolled her eyes.

  ‘It was your friend Alla who phoned.’

  ‘I can see that.’ She took a step to the left. The concierge mirrored her, blocking her path.

  ‘She sounded like she wants to see you.’

  ‘Yes.’ She took a step to the right. Again the old lady blocked her.

  ‘She said she hasn’t seen you for a while.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘And she’s been poorly.’

  ‘Ah?’ Polly nodded and darted around the woman, jumping for the stairs.

  ‘And your Vladimir telephoned.’

  She stopped with her left foot on the second step, her hands curled into fists at her sides. She did not turn around.

  ‘And?’

  ‘He thinks you should go to the séance. Said it would be, now what was it … worth your while: yes, that was his exact phrase.’ Elena Dmitrovna retreated to the dimness of her desk and the shabby armchair behind it. ‘Asked you to telephone him as soon as possible.’

  Polly kicked the step in front of her and marched back down the stairs for the double doors.

  ‘We had a bit of a talk. He’s a lovely young man, isn’t he? A doctor! You can phone from here if you like? I promise I won’t listen!’

  The old lady’s laugh whistled through her rotten teeth like the wind through the trees as Polly slammed back out of the hostel to find a working pay-phone. How she detested the old.

  Colours and Crayons

  The grumpy orderly launched dust and noise through the air as the metal strips of the blind hit the top of the frame. Anatoly Borisovich’s eyes, ravaged by time, fluttered open. Morning light pooled on his bedside table, illuminating crayons and sugar paper, almost as if they were real. He squinted and pushed himself upright, his hand drifting towards the paper; a cry of joy escaped him when it bent to his touch.

  ‘Well, this is quite marvellous!’ he said at last, shaking with anticipation as he stroked the smooth cylinders of the crayons. He could feel the colours without looking: he knew this was blue, this was red, this was yellow. They gave off energy, a frequency that tingled on his fingertips, pulsated up his arm to tickle his heart. He giggled and patted at the bedsheets with excitement.

  ‘Now these might save my life! Oh, yes!’

  ‘Are you going to draw us something, then, eh?’ asked the orderly, her back to him as she ladled the buckwheat porridge into a dented aluminium bowl.

  ‘No, I’m going to eat them!’ replied Anatoly Borisovich with a laugh that erupted from his belly and danced around the room. The orderly sniffed. He apologised and agreed, of course he was going to draw something.

  She placed the bowl and a spoon on his bedside table, and snorted.

  ‘And what are you going to draw, if it’s no secret?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, we’ll have to wait and see. When I take up the colours, they will tell me what to draw. It’s impossible to plan … you have to go where they take you.’

  ‘You could draw that tree.’ The orderly stared out of the window with her hands on her hips. ‘It’s the last one. The rest went rotten.’

  ‘If all else fails, I could draw that tree,’ Anatoly Borisovich replied as he caressed the yellow crayon, and then the red. ‘Did Vlad get me these? I told him I wanted to draw. It was Vlad, wasn’t it? He understands me …’

  ‘Vladimir? The student? You must be joking. He’s too busy with that fancy girl of his. Do you know, I caught them at it in the office the other week. He’s obsessed—’ she broke off and straightened her tabard as Anatoly Borisovich stared, open-mouthed. ‘Anyway, Dr Spatchkin got you the crayons: he over-ruled Matron. He thought drawing might help with your confusion. And the nightmares.’

  ‘Nightmares?’

  ‘We hear you crying out at night, you know. You make a lot of noise. We have to report it.’ She folded her arms and sighed. ‘I’d say you’ve taken a turn for the worse. You’re off your food again.’ She nodded at the bowl.

  Anatoly Borisovich put down the crayons and regarded his porridge with a complete lack of interest. ‘There is nothing wrong with my appetite that reasonable food will not fix.’ The sudden spurt of energy was trickling away. He lay back against the pillows, too tired to move, almost too tired to breathe. She was right about the nightmares.

  But still, like a voice far away, he heard the green crayon calling to him.

  ‘I’m sorry for the disturbance. Sometimes I feel I have remembered too much, and it all comes rushing … it scares me, confuses me.’ He raised a hand to tickle the green crayon and then caress the sugar paper. ‘Drawing is my love. It has always helped me straighten my mind along life’s higgledy-piggledy road. I remembered a lot with Vlad the other day. Maybe too much? He hasn’t come back, and since then I—’

  ‘Forget that Vladimir! Who does he think he is, telling me to wash my hands between patients? Such a know-all. You shouldn’t eat cheese at bedtime,’ said the orderly, and puffed into her chest, chin down, to push the porridge trolley towards the door.

  ‘This is also true,’ said Anatoly Borisovich after a moment, with a kindly smile. ‘Not that cheese is a staple here. But I wish he would come back.’

  She shrugged and turned back to the trolley, the wheels clacking as she heaved. ‘He’s around. He’s probably finished with you for the moment. Enjoy your drawing.’

  He listened as the wheels trundled under their weight of porridge to the next room: the peremptory knock, the vague sound of voices as the door opened and she went in. He had never met his neighbour. He still couldn’t remember how he had come here. He couldn’t remember the journey, or what the outside of the building might look like. He couldn’t remember the summer even. Sixty years ago, yes, that was clear enough, but six months ago? Three months ago? He had yet to fit those pieces into place. He scanned the grey horizon, the mud flats, the tree, and shoved the ugly porridge aside. In its place he laid four sheets of paper and all the crayons. He started with circles, squares, geometric patterns, thinking hard and not at all, his hand shaking with the effort.

  He began with the easy: remembering where he lived. It wasn’t out here by the sea though. It was in the town: in Rostov! Of course, how had he forgotten that? Rostov was his home town now! His fingers curled around the blue crayon. He gradually recalled his apartment, his home for many years, and the lovely things he’d filled it with. A jumble of furniture and long-forgotten artefacts dropped into his mind like rain into a bucket, getting steadily stronger, the surface of the water dancing. He could see them: the sheepskin on the wall, the mannequin in its shaman’s cap, the books across the shelf, his easel, the maps and papers sprawling on his desk, and best of all, his shoe box, home of special treasures, hidden beneath his chair. He remembered the view of the trees in the courtyard: a proper copse, right by his window. He remembered its stillness. Cats and crows, chessmen and playing cards; he remembered them all, piece by piece, putting together the puzzle. His hand moved on: more patterns, bigger, bolder. He could smell the wallpaper now, and feel the fuzz of the carpet under his toes. He sensed the creaking of the shoe rack in the hall, and the lazy buzz of flies in the kitchen. He caressed the cracked plastic receiver of the phone that never rang, and heard the hum of the lift out in the hall.

  It was all there. The tick of the heating system, the crackle of the radio. The tin of lemon sweets on the side by his hiking sticks. But something was wrong. He tried to think and etched big circles, circles over circles, ripples in a pond. He recalled the maps had become prisons, the chessmen his enemies. They’d laughed at him, tortured him: the wiggled lines and hard faces had eaten into his mind. There was medicine: it came to him, the sour taste of the syrup, the bottle smashed on the floor. He’d had a fever! That was it! He’d lain in his apartment, glued to the sofa, unable to walk, sweating and shaking. He’d stared at the calendar, the harsh, stand-offish numerals, and he’d known … something. He had the expectation, he’d waited and waited. Someone was coming. But …

  Eventually, a neighbour had thought it odd: he had not called for promised vegetables, had failed to collect his post. There were raps at the door, tap-tap-tapping, but he couldn’t answer. All he could do was rave. He was afraid. Alone and forgotten, feeling abandoned, he’d waited for death as the sun rose and set, and the trees tapped on the window.