Snegurochka Judith Heneghan (most read book in the world .txt) 📖

from the fruit is heady – not sharp and cidery, but dense and honeyish. Insects crawl over her hands – ants, mainly, and the odd wasp, though she isn’t stung. When she shakes off the wasps they swoop drunkenly or lie on their backs and wave their antennae in the grass. She glances towards her son, who has grasped a fence post with one hand and is tugging at plantain heads with the other. No pear for him until they get back to the flat. The wasps will go straight for the sugar.

It is hot work, but Rachel gathers more than she needs. She ties the cardigan arms to make a bundle, then reemerges from the trees brushing a twig from her hair and looks up towards the house.

Still quiet.

No, not quiet.

A yelp to her right – a shriek of protest. Rachel turns to see a figure straightening up on the other side of the fence. A man in a suit is standing there; he is grasping Ivan beneath the armpits. Bare legs dangle in the sunshine. Mykola Sirko is taking her son.

‘What are you doing?’ she asks, bewildered. ‘Give him to me.’

Mykola regards her with his dark, sad eyes. ‘You should not be here. I will hold him. He knows me.’

A cry catches in Rachel’s throat. She has dreamt about this man, she has looked for his face on a crowded street, she has recoiled from his inferences and his stories about Elena, and now Elena is dead.

Ivan isn’t crying, though she sees how clumsily Mykola is clutching him. This Mykola seems different from the man she last saw on the road in the birch woods. His eyes flicker about. He is less steady on his feet.

‘Give him to me,’ she repeats. Ivan stops wriggling and stares at her, seeking clues. She steps towards the fence without taking her eyes off her son. Stay calm, she tells herself. Don’t frighten him.

Mykola moves backwards, keeping two arms’ lengths between them. He leans sideways and grasps the overturned pushchair with his spare hand, setting it upright.

‘Be careful. There are wasps.’ His voice is low, soft. He looks at Ivan as if wondering what to do with him.

Rachel’s ribs press against the pickets. ‘Ivan’s thirsty. And hungry. I need to take him home.’

Mykola inclines his head. ‘This is natural. But I cannot let you feed him anything the old whore has grown. You must leave the fruit.’

The old whore – he means his own mother. Rachel’s heart is pounding. Ivan is wearing the little socks with the hens – the ones Elena bought him. She wants to feel her child’s hot damp feet in her palms. She is breathless with the pull of him, the longing to draw him close. She remembers the cardigan she is gripping in her hand and drops it to the ground. Pears spill and tumble across the grass.

‘I won’t take them. I don’t want them.’

Mykola doesn’t react.

‘Elena was kind to me,’ she goes on, rushing her words. ‘Whatever she did before, I know she regretted it. She helped me. To give you up like that – she must have been desperate. She must have thought she was keeping you safe – giving you the best chance.’

Mykola raises his free hand and rubs at the skin between his eyebrows. ‘You are mistaken,’ he murmurs, his gaze switching to the house. ‘Your friends have told you some things. The past, you should know, holds many stories. I told you one myself. Nevertheless, a mother should never break her bond with her child.’

Ivan keeps twisting his head. A wasp buzzes near his shoulder.

‘You’re right,’ says Rachel, willing it to stay away from her son. ‘But when you have no choice, like Elena—’

‘No!’ Mykola’s voice rises at the end of the word as if he is instructing a child. ‘She had a choice. Always! Elena Vasilyevna’s lover, my father, worked for the Kiev Regional Committee. His barren wife wanted a baby, so Elena agreed to exchange me for this.’ He waves towards the house, then the fruit trees. ‘Problem – the wife did not like me. Other problem – the NKVD did not like my father. Some minor disagreement, someone else after his position . . . He was shot in the head on Lavrska Street, where you walk. Outside the monastery! Well the monks took me in, but they could not keep me. Elena Vasilyevna knew, yet she chose to compound her crime. She did not take me back. Instead she locked her gate and tended her garden. Potatoes, onions, pears!’ He is shaking his head, as if he still can’t believe it. ‘No one took her name off the papers, you see. So now it is mine and I will destroy it and burn all the trees.’

He starts walking towards the gate that leads to the house. He is pressing Ivan against his shoulder with one hand, while with the other he drags the pushchair behind him. Rachel follows, walking parallel with the fence: steady, steady, not shifting her gaze.

When they both reach the gate Ivan strains against Mykola’s grasp and starts shouting in short, staccato bursts: ‘Apa! Apa!’

Rachel can’t bear it any longer.

‘Please . . .’ She breathes the word out, willing it to touch this man; for him to show mercy.

Mykola parks the pushchair in the long grass and turns to observe her, his head tilting slightly.

‘You are afraid, Rachel.’

‘I want my baby.’

‘Like a good mother. The mother I know you to be.’ He rests his free hand on the latch and frowns. Then, with a soft, slow ‘tak’ of resignation, he opens the gate and gives up the child.

Rachel, her body shaking, pulls Ivan into her arms, greedy for his weight as he wriggles, pressing her lips against his neck. She brushes past Mykola and takes a few hurried steps towards the lane before she sees the wasp on her son’s thigh, but when she flicks it away it stings the back of her hand. The pain is instant and