Riding Icarus Read online

  It was so quiet! The rain had stopped; the trolleybus had stopped; the thunder and lightning had ceased as though they had never been. Outside something went drip … drip … drip extremely slowly, as if there were all the time in the world for a drop of water to loiter down to the ground.

  Masha stayed crouched beneath the driver’s seat like a tiny little mouse. She still leant all her weight on the pedal that had stopped the madness. She did not want to let go. She did not want to move. She couldn’t stop seeing the hand stuck to the windscreen. Now that she had halted the trolleybus’s headlong rush she wanted to carry on, further and further away from whatever lurked outside.

  It was thinking of Granny that made her move. Granny tumbling into the hollyhocks, not knowing where Masha and her home had driven off to. Maybe she’d hurt herself when she fell. She was very old, after all; no one knew exactly how old. She wasn’t even Masha’s grandmother really but her great-grandmother. Maybe she was still lying there on the cold ground.

  Slowly, carefully, Masha let go of the pedal. It eased itself upwards with an indulgent sigh, but Icarus remained motionless. The lights on the dashboard were slowly fading. It was not quite dark outside, and the view through the rain-blurred windscreen was reassuringly ordinary: bushes, grass, a scrap of fence. Masha tried to feel brave. She didn’t quite succeed, but she did manage to open the cabin door and pass through to the main door, still jammed open. She pulled aside the curtain and jumped out quickly before she had time to get too scared.

  The light was gentle and dim. She was standing in a meadow bordered by tall willow trees, through which water glimmered. To one side there seemed to be allotment fences made of the usual leafy willow wands interwoven with all sorts of odds and ends. She didn’t know exactly where she was but it looked familiar, as if it was a corner she’d often walked through but never really noticed before. When she looked up, the sky was already clearing to a blue so muted it was almost colourless. She thought she could even pick out a couple of the first evening stars. And Icarus was there behind her, fat and cream and red striped and looking as innocent and comforting as if the terrifying ride had never happened.

  No rubbery hands or screaming white faces. Nothing scary. Only she really couldn’t work out where she was.

  As she tried to decide which way to go, a big lump of tears and fright jammed itself in her chest. It was like a jigsaw put together out of order; she recognized all the pieces but she couldn’t quite make sense of them. Trying to swallow the lump down to somewhere more comfortable, she sternly counted off in her mind: river, allotments, meadow, trees. If the river is there and the allotments are here, that means I should go … which way? If the trees are between me and the river, that means…

  She was distracted by a noise. A curious slapping sound, like someone beating a carpet perhaps, or jumping up and down doing aerobics. People often came to the riverbank to do their exercises. Young men practising kung fu kicks; fat ladies trying to touch their toes. She knew some of the more regular exercisers quite well. People brought their carpets here too, so they could wash and beat the dust from them. The noise she could hear wasn’t frightening; it was as eerily familiar as the woods and the water. She went to find out what it was.

  Like everything else that evening, she recognized it immediately. It was just in the wrong place. It was a Cossack, and he was dancing.

  Chapter 3

  Of course Masha knew who he was. Didn’t she have books full of pictures of Cossacks? Hadn’t her mother taken her to the theatre to see thunderous Cossack choirs? Couldn’t she Cossack dance herself?

  That was where Cossacks belonged. On stage, in picture books, in dancing classes. Somewhere way back in the past, when there were feasts and heroes and battles with Tatars and Turks.

  This Cossack stamped on the ground with heavy feet in worn boots. He had a moustache as fat as two droopy sausages stuck to his face, and the long topknot sprouting from the crown of his bald head spun round like the blades of a helicopter, so fast was he whirling and twirling, crouching and leaping. His wide scarlet trousers ballooned out with each rotation; his white shirt was a moony blur in the dimness.

  Such dancing! It was fast; it was furious; it was glorious. Masha could almost hear the squealing fiddles, the raging drums, the handclaps pattering faster and faster as round, round, round he went, filling the night with speed and heat and sparks. Still faster, still higher—

  And then it all fell apart. Somehow he missed a step, something went wrong, the fiddles broke their strings, the drum exploded, the Cossack stumbled and fell over as the end of his topknot swung round and hit him smack in the eye.

  “Damn and blast you! May your eyeballs drop out and be eaten by cockroaches, you stinking pile of horse manure!” roared the Cossack in a voice as huge as half an orchestra.

  Masha trembled. Was he shouting at her? But the Cossack did not look in her direction. He sat with his elbows on his knees, wiping the sweat from his face with a hand like a beef steak.

  “Cursed ground,” he grumbled. “Can’t you let an honest Cossack dance in peace?” He shook his fist in the air, and that was when he caught sight of Masha.

  “What monstrous object are you?” he rumbled in his enormous voice, heaving himself to his feet and advancing upon her threateningly.

  “I’m not a monstrous object; I’m a person,” she quavered. His clenched fists looked as large as her head. “I liked your dancing. Why did you stop?” she added in a desperate attempt to make him more friendly.

  “I didn’t stop – this enchanted place stopped me. The devil, may his tail wrap round his neck and choke him, stopped me,” boomed the Cossack. He did, however, unclench his fists. “How did you get here?”

  At the thought of explaining about Icarus, Masha’s nerve failed her. “I don’t know,” she said in a small voice, thinking what a stupid answer that was.

  But the Cossack’s blue eyes grew friendlier by the minute. “That makes two of us,” he said, “because I can’t say how I came here either. One minute I’m drinking and dancing with my friends by my melon patch; the next, that sneaking cowardly devil has whisked me off here and I can’t finish the hopak, may his toenails rot off.”

  “The devil?”

  “Who else but that miserable lump of sheep’s offal? Wait till I get my hands on him – I’ll tie his ears round his ankles and kick him into the middle of next week.”

  “The middle of next week,” somebody distinctly said behind them.

  They both turned round. Beneath the starry sky and the soft shade of the willow trees, nobody was there. Masha realized she’d taken hold of one of the Cossack’s big warm hands in fright. She was a bit embarrassed, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  “What a sly one,” he said. “Will the wretch come out into the open? Of course not. A pair of honest Ukrainians like us is enough to scare the tiny wits out of his turnip of a skull.”

  Silence all round. Maybe the Cossack was right.

  “Where in the world, or out of it, are we?” he mused, tugging at the fat moustache which drooped down to his chin. “Where has that interfering slyboots brought us?”

  “I sort of know,” said Masha. “I mean, I think I recognize it – only I don’t quite know where it is.”

  “That’s not very helpful,” the Cossack commented.

  Masha looked around again, hoping to spot a familiar landmark. She pulled at his hand in excitement.

  “Look! Something’s over there.”

  Beneath the trees was a glow of eerie, greenish light. They approached cautiously. It came from a candle standing on a long, raised hump of ground overgrown with ferns. The green-tinged flame stretched itself up tall, then squashed down small and guttering in a non-existent breeze. Then it went out.

  It was dark and cold under the trees. The hump of ground looked sinisterly like a grave.

  “Do you think someone’s buried there?” Masha whispered, clinging to the Cossack’s comforting hand.

  “Not s
omeone, something,” cried her companion. “Buried treasure, that’s what – I’ll bet my boots and my best bonnet.”

  “Treasure?”

  “Of course. What else would you expect to find in an enchanted place? Let’s get digging.” He detached his hand from hers and hitched up his trousers – and slapped his forehead with a cry of frustration. “No spade,” he groaned. “Have you got a spade?”

  “No, but there’s one inside Icarus.”

  “Icarus?”

  “The trolleybus,” she explained. “It’s where I live. He’s just over here.” She turned round to where she could still dimly see the striped trolleybus sides, black and grey now in the darkness.

  There was a click and a hum. The trolleybus headlights came on, illuminating two thick paths of light through the trees.

  “Mind, please, the door is about to close,” said the precise, tinny voice of a recorded announcement, like that on the public trolleybuses that drove around the town. Icarus’s door scraped shut. “Next stop, Bare Mountain,” Masha thought she heard the voice, muffled now, announce. The hum rose to a whine and the trolleybus trundled away, squeaking as it bounced over the uneven ground.

  They stared after it open-mouthed.

  “Now how am I going to get home?” wailed Masha. “How will I ever find Granny?”

  The Cossack was tugging at his moustache again. “Me a grandfather, and I’ve never seen anything like that before,” he muttered. “The devil’s really up to his tricks tonight. And how are we going to mark this spot, hey? I’m damned if I’m going to lose sight of my treasure.”

  He cast about on the ground until he caught sight of an old log lying under one of the trees.

  “X marks the spot,” he said cheerfully, dragging the branch over to lie beside the candle.

  Masha wrapped her arms around herself to try and stop shivering. “But we don’t know where we are,” she observed disconsolately, “so how can we find it again?”

  “I thought you said you recognized it?”

  “Yes, but it’s all wrong. Everything’s in the wrong place,” Masha tried to explain as the tears trickled down her nose. “I know there’s the river, and the allotments…”

  As she looked about her again, she saw a plump round onion shape outlined against the sky behind the allotments.

  “Isn’t that the church dome?” she said doubtfully.

  “Of course it is!” exclaimed the Cossack. “Who says we’re lost? And over there on the other side, above the trees, that’s the pole of the deacon’s dovecote.”

  Sure enough, it was, although who the deacon was Masha couldn’t imagine; the dovecote had been empty and abandoned as long as she had known it. The sight of the two familiar landmarks was such a relief, she almost forgot about Icarus’s mysterious departure.

  “Now I know how to get home,” she said, sniffing furiously. “It’s this way.”

  “So is my melon patch,” said the Cossack. “I wonder how many have been stolen while I’ve been gone.”

  “And I wonder how Granny is. I must get back as quick as I can. Oh, please, will you come with me? I don’t know if she’s all right.”

  She asked this because now it was quite dark, and the woods were silent and alarming, and the candle on the grave under the trees belonged to some other world than the one she was used to by day. The Cossack, even though she had met him under such strange circumstances, was big and friendly and didn’t seem to be frightened of anything. She didn’t think she could walk all the way back on her own, and find there – what?

  “A young Cossack like you, afraid of the dark?” he said, rather unkindly. “Still, I don’t see why we can’t step out together, seeing as I’m heading in the same direction. We victims of the devil’s little jokes, may he be afflicted with corns, wind and nose pimples, ought to stick together.” He scratched his stomach and yawned hugely. “Come on then, young fellow. What’s this about your grandmother?”

  Chapter 4

  Gena, making his way down the sandy bank that led to the allotments and the river, came upon a scene of devastation. In the clear hot sunlight he had almost forgotten the storm of last night, which had left no mark on the high concrete tower block where he lived. But here the world was more impressionable. Fences were torn down, bushes flattened, leaves drowned in shining blue puddles and sand rucked up into drifts and ridges. A few allotment owners in shorts and bikinis picked their way among the debris, lamenting.

  Gena began to worry how Masha and her grandmother had survived the storm. He hurried on, his feet sinking and sliding in the sand, to where their old trolleybus was beached beneath the silver-green willow trees.

  There was a gleaming black Mercedes parked in the sunlight, its engine purring and all its dark tinted windows reflecting the sun dazzlingly. What a beautiful car! The shadows cast on its sides were satiny red and purple, and heat bounced off it in visible shimmers.

  Gena cupped his hands to peek through a window. Catching sight of his round face peering in, the driver inside waved irritably and mouthed through the glass, “Go away.”

  Gena backed off reluctantly. The car belonged to Masha’s rich Uncle Igor, and Gena had long held a sneaking hope that one day he’d get to sit inside on its sleek upholstery.

  There was no sign of Igor today. The car sat in alien splendour on the yellow sand, immaculate amid the chaos. One of the willow trees had been uprooted and lay smashed against the bank. The tall hollyhocks were stretched out in a spatter of pink and red petals, like slaughtered soldiers, and the shattered raspberry canes were half buried in leaves and squashed fruit. One of the goats was busily licking up raspberry purée.

  Gena was at Icarus’s door before he realized there was no door. He stopped, puzzled. Everything looked different after the storm. He picked his way round the battered trolleybus to the entrance on the other side, and the wires overhead creaked a little.

  Masha was inside, surrounded by scattered books and forks and spoons. She was packing up clothes in a plastic bag.

  “Hi,” said Gena. “It’s me. Wow, what a storm! What happened to your raspberries?”

  Masha looked terrible. She had big dark rings under her eyes and her cheeks were all puffy as if she had been crying.

  “What’s up?” he asked uncertainly.

  “Oh, Gena,” she said in a trembling voice, “I’m so glad you’re here. Granny’s in hospital and everything’s a mess and I’ve got to take her some stuff. Please come with me. I don’t know if she’s all right, I don’t know what’s the matter with Icarus and I don’t know where I’m going to live and everything’s awful.”

  She did not manage to tell him all that had happened until much later. First they went to the hospital, chauffeured by Uncle Igor’s driver, who kept his mirrored sunglasses on and lit a cigarette so that smoke curled and billowed in the air-conditioned interior of the Mercedes. Gena found it quite disappointing. He couldn’t enjoy the bouncy seats and the purring smoothness of the ride with Masha hunched up next to him all tense and nervous, clutching the bag of her grandmother’s things and refusing to talk because he – she indicated the supercilious driver lurking behind his shades – would hear.

  At the hospital the nurse would not allow them in to see Babka Praskovia. They left the forlorn bag with a pair of slippers in it, and a toothbrush that Granny never used, and a nightdress she never wore.

  “The driver’s supposed to take me to Uncle Igor’s but I really don’t want to go. Please can I come back with you instead?” Masha whispered. “Will your mother mind?”

  “Why don’t you want to go to Igor’s?” If Gena had known someone with a brand new limited edition Mercedes, he’d have jumped at the chance to see where he lived. A few years ago, it was impossible for anyone in Ukraine to own such a car; even now there were very few people rich enough.

  Masha only glared at him miserably, so he added, “All right, I’m sure Mama won’t mind.”

  Masha leant forward. “Please take Gena home first,”
she said to the driver, adding the address in a small voice.

  The driver merely shrugged, but he took them as asked to the flat. Gena hoped that everyone would notice him getting out of the fabulous car, and was pleased to see that there were plenty of old ladies sitting on the benches by the entrance, enjoying the sunshine and watching with the appropriate level of interest.

  Masha scrambled out of the car too. “I’m staying here,” she said quickly, and slammed the door.

  The driver’s door opened and he looked as if he was going to step out after her. But then Gena got the distinct impression that his gaze, hidden behind the sunglasses, took in the old ladies on the benches watching what was going on with completely undisguised curiosity. Without a word the driver closed the door and the car slid away.

  Gena’s mother Ira was wonderfully comforting. She hugged Masha lots of times, and gave them both cups of sweet tea and raspberries with cream. She would call Igor and organize everything so that Masha could stay, she said, and she promised to phone the hospital to find out when they could visit Granny.

  All the stiffness and tension finally went out of Masha, and she collapsed onto the divan and told Gena the whole story. She told him about the storm and the ride, the candle on the grave, and how she had come back in the chill, whispering night to find Icarus the trolleybus parked where he had always been, the door open, and Granny lying still and silent on the muddy ground. Masha had run to the car park where the nightwatchman sat up in his cabin, and he had called an ambulance and dosed her with powerful coffee and condensed milk. She had waited the interminable time until the ambulance came, and white-coated strangers lifted Babka Praskovia inside, taking Masha along too to the hot, wailing, noisome hospital. Granny had been wheeled off to a ward and Masha, forgotten, had curled up to sleep in a corner. When they had finally remembered her and asked about relatives, the only person she could think of had been Uncle Igor.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” asked Gena.