Babayaga

For almost sixty years, Andrei had watched his little brown brother scratch and sniff across the continent in a strange otherworldly state. Part of him had been waiting for the spell to end so that they could be reunited, while another part had hoped Max would vanish completely into the ether, taking all this unwanted mystery with him. Andrei had never thought Max would die before he did, he believed his brother was protected, his mortality locked up within the whorls of magic. Hearing the news, Andrei’s first thought was not grief but worry that this spell had been sustaining them both, as though participating in the strangeness of Max’s adventure had been what kept him going, either magically or because he refused to end his days unsure of how the grim fairy tale ended. How many wars had been waged, how many cities conquered, how many maps redrawn, while his brother was tucked inside wool coat pockets or stashed in steamer trunks or scurrying to and fro across gutters and granaries as the circumstances demanded? Throughout it all Andrei had never lost the connection to his brother. But now it was done. Max was gone. A door unlatched in his heart and Andrei felt something slip out; he wondered if he needed it. Sitting quietly at the table with Zoya, a new emptiness inside him, all Andrei knew was that he was honestly not sad at the loss of Max, he was only aware that his own shadow of time had just grown a full length longer, crossing some unseen line.

He looked up and saw the anxious expression of the woman across from him. She was waiting for his answer. “I must thank you for coming and telling me this yourself. It is surprisingly thoughtful of you. But I guess in a way we were all family. Do not feel bad, though. My brother truly died many years ago, Zoya,” he said. “He was drowned in his own black sea even before you met him.” Zoya still looked worried, so he told her what she needed to hear, a fact he suspected she knew already. “In his heart, my brother was always a rat.” Now she did look relieved. Andrei gave her a half smile and patted her hand, thinking to himself, Well, here we are, a lost witch seeking absolution from a broken priest. These must be modern times.

“Where are you heading to?”

Zoya shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m here with some people, we are leaving Paris,” she said. “But I’m not sure where we’re going.”

The priest thought about how many times he had asked that same question and heard some version of that same answer from Zoya. He realized a woman as beautiful and self-possessed as Zoya never needed to know where she was heading, she only needed to know what to do once she got there. “Who are your friends?”

“Two Americans. They’re waiting in the car. I told them you could help us. We need to find a place to hide, very serious people are after us.”

“You can stay here,” said Andrei. “The policeman told me they had Elga in jail for stealing a car. I doubt they will keep her for long, but she won’t be here for at least a few days.”

Zoya thought this over, then nodded. “We will stay one day, then we will be on our way. We’ll take the train.”

“Didn’t you come in a car?”

“One of the Americans is taking it back. The other is coming with me. You can drive us to the station after we’ve rested.”

Andrei grinned. He knew Zoya was kinder than Elga, but years with the old woman had made her almost as presumptuous and demanding. “I’d be happy to. Perhaps they would like to come in for some tea?”

“They are American, I think they prefer coffee.”

“Well, I have tea.”

She went to fetch her friends. Andrei rubbed his forehead; he felt guilty for calling his brother a rat. He had only wanted to relieve Zoya’s guilt, but he knew it was a truly terrible priest who only says what a confessor wants to hear. Max deserved a better eulogy.

As Andrei put his clothes on he realized it had been three-fourths of a lifetime since he had last laid eyes on his brother’s true flesh, but he could still vividly recall Maximilian that last night, his sparkling eyes and devilishly wicked smile bobbing above that sea of unwashed and unruly miners all shouting in a drunken mad din as the roulette wheel rattled round. His brother’s expression had been so bright, so flush with joy. Perhaps Max had been lucky after all. If all men could vanish there, thought Andrei, in that moment of pure satisfaction, aglow with good fortune, fiercely confident in their futures, then the benevolence of God’s grace would be much easier to acknowledge. Instead, time had rolled on, washing through that barroom door, taking not only his brother away, but all of them, the miners, the gamblers, the witches, and the priest, all torn out into the driving river of war and waste, so many now lying enmeshed in unmarked mass graves or freed to the skies in the steady smoke that wafted through the camps’ barbed wire. We assume so much, thought Andrei, and forget how little we are promised.