Minimalist Gossip Magazine Cover (49).pdf (23) - Flipbook - Page 78
'Nikolai’ Verinka says ‘You're drunk.’ Nikolai laughs,
‘Oh Verinka’ he mocks in a sing-song voice, riding unsteadily, ‘Your ears! Your ears are
magnificent!’
Verinka knows he's not talking about her ears so she tells him to go to hell and then the
blackness of the village road swallows him. The squeak of the rusty bike trails him, a sound
like an angry troll. Maybe, thinks Verinka, maybe he´ll get eaten by one in his sleep. What a
gnarly meal he would make.
Verinka walks until she reaches the tavern. The BMW is still parked outside, black and shiny
like a water snake in a dark pond. She considers it for a moment, the big, dangerous car. The
tavern porchlight illuminates its contours, a soft, almost unearthly glow, that speaks of wealth
and glass buildings and women in patent leather heels. She gives the back tyre a kick.
Verinka pushes through the beaded curtain into the bar with its sweetish stench of
incontinent alcoholics and poached stag bleeding out in the back room.
Ania's here, just as Verinka knew she would be. She's not the only one. There are three girls,
all listening intently to the man. Ania, Marta – who is Yuri's granddaughter – and Milena – who
doesn't have anyone, because this is the village of the very young and the very old, and
those who can, leave. And he has come to prey on us, thinks Verinka, the wolf.
They're all beautiful, all three of them, in different ways; that almost absurd beauty of
extreme youth. The iridescent bubble among the suds, the lacy frostwork on a winter window;
tender perfection that gives way at the slightest touch. Milena with her light green eyes, like
unripe hazelnuts; Marta’s willowy body and Ania with her hair, that thick wheat-coloured
braid wound around her head like a halo. Verinka has it too, still, sitting atop her wizened
face. That braid, that all the women in the family have. If it isn’t cut, it stays golden,
Verinka´s mother told her and she was right. Verinka´s hair is still blonde, her braid still as
thick as the ropes they tie ships up with.
The man has his sunglasses pushed up into his slicked back hair, black as wet tar. They´re
silver shades, the kind American policemen on TV wear. Even in this pungent bar, Verinka
can smell his perfume. A clear conscience needs no scent to mask it. Her own mother used to
say that.
‘Ania!’ she says and the man and the girls look at her.
‘Time to go home!’ she tells Ania ‘You are fifteen, you should be at home.’
Ania is a good girl, so when they get home, she shows her grandmother the leaflet.
‘It's in Austria’ she says hopefully ‘They pay the maids very well.’
Verinka turns it over in her hands. Glossy pictures of a large wooden chalet, gingham curtains
and red geraniums in window boxes. Fat eiderdown-filled bedding. Hotel Adler, it says.
Verinka can feel the warmth from the duvets, can feel the steaming hot water from a tap, the
blue, cool swimming pool, the white towels, fluffy as beaten egg whites. She puts the leaflet
down.
‘He's lying to you,’ she says and ladles cold soup into a bowl ‘Here,’ she says ‘eat’
Ania shakes her head ‘I'm not hungry’ she says.
‘Let me tell you something, Ania’ Verinka says, ‘Men like this have come to villages likes this
before and it never ends well. The girls they take: they don't come back.’
Ania gets up ‘Maybe they don't want to come back.’ she says ‘Maybe they don't want to live
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