‘That’s not true—’

  ‘I’ll find a way. I’m clever! I don’t need you!’ She staggered up from the seat, bags seething around her, and ran for the door.

  ‘Polly! Wait!’

  The door slammed. Heads turned.

  The blonde leant on the counter and waited for him to turn.

  ‘Everything OK?’

  He puffed out his cheeks and shook his head. ‘I don’t know. She’s … there’s something wrong with her, I think.’ He made a screwy motion with his finger at his temple. ‘But I …’

  ‘Ah. And she’s your girlfriend?’

  His cheeks burnt. ‘Well, uh, yes. At least, I thought so. I’m not sure.’ He scratched his head. ‘We had an argument. We study together. I’m a doctor.’

  ‘Ah? Do you want to talk about it?’ The girl fluttered her eyelids. ‘I could give you another tea – on the house?’

  ‘Well, uh, thanks.’ He picked up the watch from the table and sauntered over to the counter.

  ‘Are you looking to sell that?’ she whispered, her teeth biting into the softness of her lip as she glanced over her shoulder.

  He looked into the glum face of the watch, and nodded.

  Moonlight

  Sveta lay in her bed on Tereshkova wing, the white sheets crinkled underneath her like starched waves. She lowered her book – a Soviet-realist tale of concrete production – to peek over its top. She needed to see, but the book gave her privacy: the space between her nose and its pristine, unread pages was her own.

  There was something out of place at the Vim & Vigour. Her instinct for institution, finely tuned through many years’ service, told her so. It wasn’t her room-mates: they were both perfectly charming, in their own way. Tatiana Astafievna, the tiny, shrew-like one on the left, had once been a lawyer. She ran a sharp eye over every word that bounced around her, tasting phrases on her tongue, feeling the weight of snatches of conversation in her frail hands, but uttering not one syllable herself. The other one, long, bony and referred to by all the staff only as Klara, had once run a municipal bakery, producing over 5,000 loaves per day. Picture that! The daily responsibility of 5,000 loaves, come rain or shine, rye or spelt. Sveta admired the woman who baked 5,000 loaves each day. Klara coughed, and muttered into her hands, occasionally dropping them to issue commands to an unseen workforce.

  Both ladies were regularly propped up to take tit-bits of food, but most of the time they lay curled and ragged, thin as old lace, disappearing against the white oceans of their beds. Each was connected by a tube and two wires to a machine stationed between them which, in turn, appeared to lead directly to the other old lady. It occasionally made a pinging noise, to which nobody paid attention. Sveta comforted herself: at least she was not also attached.

  ‘So, how are your hands today?’

  She held out white-bandaged hands, and concentrated on looking like they did not hurt. She moved her fingers, wriggling them as if playing the piano, and suppressed a grimace. It was lucky her burns were only minor, they said. How sad it must be to have only stumps.

  And it wasn’t Spatchkin, the doctor, who made her feel strange. She’d got over his appearance very quickly, hardly noticing the way his face hung from an out-sized head perched above a childlike, bent body. She could hear him coming: he wheezed as he walked. He sat on the edge of her bed, eyes intent on her face, and asked in gentle tones:

  ‘How are your bowel movements?’

  Sveta sought to express total satisfaction without going into detail.

  ‘And the dressings have been changed? There is no sign of infection?’

  ‘No doctor. I think I am ready to go home.’ She said it each time they met.

  ‘Ah, but it’s not up to you, is it?’ He smiled sadly.

  She felt like a school girl and shook her head.

  ‘Are you quite rested?’

  ‘Yes, I feel … marvellous! The best I’ve ever felt.’ Her pale lips stretched into a smile.

  ‘The best ever? Well, perhaps we should have you stay a few more days, we might turn you into Superwoman?’

  He patted her leg with his tiny, fine-fingered hand.

  ‘A ha-ha-ha!’

  ‘I shouldn’t joke,’ he said, coughing softly. ‘Health is a serious business. How are your bowels, did you say?’ He leant forward.

  ‘Excellent.’

  His eyebrows twitched.

  ‘Can I go home now, please?’

  He patted her leg with one hand as he jotted a note with the other. ‘We’ll see what Matron says. In principle, I think maybe, yes.’

  ‘Hurrah!’ The cry escaped her and she giggled.

  ‘But the human organism is complex …’

  Klara muttered something about rye, and Tatiana weighed the word, rubbing it between her fingers like dough. Spatchkin remained on Sveta’s bed, silently regarding the two elderly patients from the slits of his eyes. The machine let out a ping.

  ‘Good!’ he exclaimed loudly. ‘Carry on!’ He stood, nodded to each of the women in turn, and shuffled away.

  Vlad had not paid a visit. Maybe he only worked in the men’s section. Maybe he had a guilty conscience about the séance. Or maybe he didn’t care how she was: after all, there was no reason why he should. But he had said he would pop in. Those were his exact words. And they still needed to ask him about Madame’s table. Fire had been the warning, and fire there had been.

  It wasn’t the orderlies, who were all the same but different, their tabards made of the same material as the bedsheets, their hair back-combed into red and yellow beehives and stuffed into tall white cotton hats. Neither the hats nor the hair moved. They served meals in the day room, cleared up spillages, propelled patients back to bed and stood in the corridor, eyes shifting, waiting for instructions. They were all normal people, as ready to laugh, cry or argue as the next person: nothing untoward there.

  When the daylight faded, however, and the lights were lowered, the buzz of the hive died away. The last round of checks and discussions was had and the steps in the corridor faded. Then they were left alone, the door propped open with a chair, the only sounds the vague throbbing of the boiler system, and their own breathing. The older women struggled for air. Sveta could hear them: the delicate branches of their lungs weighed down with traces of yeast, books and dust: the relics of a lifetime of toil. A fear began to work its way through her veins, bringing a cold sweat to her skin. Not a fear of ageing, so much, as a fear of ill-health: the slow decline, the gradual indisposition, the loss of vigour. Had it started already?

  The first night she woke before dawn, eyes focusing on the glow of the doorway. She had heard a step in the corridor, on the edge of her sleep. There it was again: slow, soft, coming towards her room. There was no reason for it to be menacing, but … She turned over carefully, bunching the sheets under her chin as she tried to snuggle down. As her eyes closed she heard it again, closer this time. She yawned into her pillow, but her eyes would not stay shut.

  She felt it in the room a second later, and tried to turn her head to get a clear view. It was at this point she realised she was paralysed. A figure slid towards her, on the periphery of her vision. She willed her arms to thrash out and her legs to throw her body to the floor. Breath filled her throat with a scream. But only her eyes moved. Panic gripped her: perhaps she couldn’t breathe. She was wheezing like the other ladies, bronchioles filling with fear, submerging her as if she were drowning in the bed. Her spirit leapt in the useless body.

  As the oxygen ran out she woke with a muffled ‘nugh!’, sweat slicking her body, the sheet in her mouth. All was peace. But a feeling remained, a sense of something un-seen: waiting in the corridors after dark; under the bed in the dead of night; at the bottom of the cup at the end of the drink.

  In the morning, when the breakfast bell sounded, Sveta turned tired eyes to the pillow. No amount of buckwheat porridge would dispel this feeling of disquiet. The Vim & Vigour was haunted, and if she’d had anybody to talk to, she’d have told them so right then.

  The second night proved different. She had no nightmares, because she had no sleep. She tossed and turned, tangling her feet, and gave up at around three a.m. to creep along the stuffy corridor in search of air and a drink.

  The light of the moon pierced a window at the far end. Sveta stared into the cosmos. She was wide awake, the feeling of confinement itching across her skin. Instead of heading back to her room, she went left up the corridor towards yellowing way-markers that pointed to invisible delights: the massage cabinet, the office of dietary advice, the mini-cinema, ping pong tables. It was strange to see it all at night, quilted in eerie silence and shadow. She wondered when anyone had last played ping pong.

  She headed right along the next corridor, comforted by walls dotted with dusty needlework and faded watercolours, and then, through another set of doors, found herself in the entrance hall. This time there was no typing, no droopy administrator, no smoke. She shuffled around the gloomy perimeter, eyeing the mosaic and displays of old photos: groups of jolly factory workers and serious party officials, festival days with bunting, huge mounds of healthy vegetables. In a cabinet along one wall lay a collection of cups and medals won by the staff for their endeavours in building Communism. A wistful chuckle escaped her throat.

  As she examined the treasure in the half-light, she became aware of movement behind her, reflected in the cabinet glass. A door was opening, a dark shape gliding through. She turned, ready to scream, and shoved her fist into her mouth. A small elderly gent with wild grey hair was sliding slowly across the floor on silent moccasins, heading for the entrance doors.

  ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed on spying her.

  ‘Ah!’ squeaked Sveta in reply.

  He pointed the moccasins towards her, but stayed where he was. ‘Good evening!’ he called across the hall.

  ‘Good evening!’ Sveta’s voice trembled despite herself.

  ‘Are you … are you a resident?’

  ‘I’m a guest,’ she said, staring hard at the old man. ‘Temporarily. And you?’

  ‘No. Well, yes. Sort of.’ He looked about him and waved his hands at the walls. ‘Terrible artwork.’

  Sveta nodded, deciding he was probably harmless. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she ventured.

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the moon?’

  ‘Not just the moon. This is a terrible place, for sleep. There’s something …’

  ‘Creepy?’

  ‘Yes, creepy.’ He nodded energetically. ‘I’ve had terrible dreams.’

  ‘Yes! So have I!’

  ‘And noises in the night. I thought there was someone hiding in my cupboard.’ He chuckled in his throat, but his eyes, startling green, were like a child’s.

  ‘Ah! I’m sure there wasn’t.’ Sveta shook her head.

  ‘Maybe not. But there’s something in the corridors. And there certainly was a fire!’

  ‘Oh, I know! I helped put it out!’ Sveta took a step forward and held up her bandaged hands.

  ‘Well done!’ He took a step towards her. ‘I tried to do that too, a long time ago.’ He stopped and scratched his head. ‘But I was frightened. You know, it shouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘They said it was a workman who started it. A decorator.’

  ‘That’s not right.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘It was probably Yuri.’

  ‘Yuri? Ah. Maybe that was his name.’ Sveta smiled the smile she usually saved for upset Year 3s.

  The old man sighed. ‘Do you want to go home?’

  ‘Yes. I am ready for home.’

  ‘I am too. These people … they don’t understand me.’

  ‘No? Well, maybe home is best then, if you’ve had your little rest?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can go if you want to?’ Sveta gazed into his eyes, and they glowed in response. ‘If you’re ready?’

  ‘I’m ready to go. Home to Baba.’

  She nodded. ‘Well, I think I’m ready for bed now. I was just getting a little air, looking at the display.’

  ‘Yes? Oh, yes. Lots of cups there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh. Well, goodnight then!’ He did not move.

  ‘You are going back to bed?’ She raised an eyebrow. The old man hesitated.

  ‘I think I’ll take a look at the display too.’ He skated towards the cabinet. ‘I love to look at things.’

  ‘Goodnight then.’ She shuffled towards the door. They passed in the centre of the hall and nodded, smiling to each other.

  Sveta headed back down the corridor towards Tereshkova wing, still smiling. How very odd, and very similar, all people were.

  Muddy Goings On

  Albina’s pink woolly leggings were caked up to the knee. She waddled around in the rubber boots Gor had found for her, oblivious to the clinging cold and the mud that was now dropping inside, encasing her socks. Dirt covered both her hands. Even her cheeks were liberally smeared. She brought to mind a Neolithic hunter-gatherer Gor had once seen depicted in papier-mâché at the Rostov Historical Museum: squatting in the dirt, half savage, using primitive tools to scrape sustenance from the cold earth. She grinned as she worked. He smiled to himself and pulled open the door of the old wooden dacha, heading inside to fetch the samovar.

  On days like these, out at the allotment with only the drizzle and the wind for company, he fully appreciated the piece of ingenuity that was the Russian samovar: a thing of brassy beauty, both ancient and modern, designed to boil water, keep tea hot for hours, and give a man a place to warm his hands no matter how hard the wind blew. He tugged it from the shelf and placed it on the table out on the veranda. Removing the lid, he checked inside for spiders. Next came sooty lumps of charcoal, which he piled carefully into the central chamber, interspersed with a few bone-dry pine cones. Then, with the steady hand of experience, he poured water into the kettle chamber surrounding the fuel. He lit a long match, and with a little spirit and considerable puffing, was finally rewarded as the pine cones fizzed into golden flame. Content that the fuel was lit, he carefully replaced the lid, topping it off with the teapot to warm. He took a seat on the wooden bench, worn smooth and shiny with the years of resting backsides, and looked forward to when the steam would start to hiss.

  ‘Albina, what say you, time for a glass of tea and a biscuit?’ She was across the vegetable patch, exploring the area where next year, all being well, potatoes would multiply in the rich earth. He hadn’t expected her to be keen: he had, in fact, brought along a book for her to read, thinking she would choose to sit in the dacha and eat pryaniki while he dug. But although she had been sullen with the very idea of visiting the allotment, and sulked during the short car journey out of town, she had been spellbound by the smell and silence of the countryside as soon as they made their way down the steep path from the car park. She ran the final few steps, dashing between the allotments, craning into water-butts, peering into empty dachas, shaking gnarled trees for any forgotten fruit. When they reached Gor’s plot, she leapt straight in, exclaiming over the skeletal remains of the summer’s last crop, and excited to find the occasional berry or mushroom.

  ‘Don’t eat that!’ Gor said sharply, automatically, as her hand reached out for a softly undulating growth, the frills on its underside bright orange.

  ‘Eat it?’ said Albina, ‘Are you mad?’ She giggled, and Gor smiled. Children these days were quite different … It had brought to mind, with a clarity that made him catch his breath, a memory of his own daughter, in the park in Rostov, one autumn morning in the late 1960s. She had been fascinated by the thin layers of ice lying on the puddles: had prodded them with sticks, flipped them over to examine the rotting leaves and twigs stuck to their rough undersides, got her tights all wet and muddy at the knees. She had been so inquisitive, and so happy just to be. He wondered if she ever remembered that visit to the park. If she ever thought of him at all.

  Albina strode with splaying steps between the empty potato rows and the bare plum trees, anorak soaked through with dew and the effort of digging. It was still only eleven a.m. Despite the dark mornings and the chill in the air, a visit to the dacha always meant an early start. It didn’t feel right if he arrived when the birds had already finished their morning chorus and disappeared into the blackthorn bushes.

  ‘Do they have dachas in Armenia, Mister Papasyan?’ Albina asked as she dropped down next to him on the bench, picking soft mud clumps from her sleeve as she did so.

  ‘Call me Gor, child; I think we’re past formalities now. And yes, I expect they have dachas.’

  ‘What do you mean, you expect so? Don’t you know? You are Armenian, aren’t you, Gor?’ she raised an eyebrow, tone accusatory, although she was smiling.

  ‘I don’t know that either.’ Gor hummed to himself as he brought out two chipped cups, a box of sugar cubes, a bag full of pryaniki, and an old, mottled spoon.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well … my father was from Armenia. But he met my mother in Rostov … way back, in the 1920s. They married, and together, they moved to Siberia, where I was born, in the 1930s. After the Great Patriotic War, I moved back to Rostov, and that is where I made my home. In total, I have visited Armenia only once, to meet distant relatives, show off my family and discover the mountains. So you tell me: what am I? Am I Armenian? Siberian? Rostovian?’

  Albina was eyeing the pryaniki, and shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Can I have …?’

  Gor passed the bag of biscuits to her.

  ‘You see, I used to be a Soviet citizen, and that suited me quite well. We were all Soviet citizens. But they no longer exist. Now it pays to be Russian.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ she said, chewing heartily and not listening. ‘So, you don’t know anything about Armenia?’

  ‘Well, I know things, I can tell you things, but it’s mostly from books and papers, or the TV news.’