Chapter 3
Zina
“Baba Valya? Where are you? Why aren’t we opening?”
Inside, instead of the rich, slightly burnt aroma of brewing coffee, the iron stench of blood and raw meat hit my nostrils savagely; instead of the low thrum of invisible fortunes waiting to be told, I sensed a dark edge to the air, a tense restlessness.
Oh, mon Dieu. This was not good.
I walked briskly through Samovar’s tearoom, predictably all decked out in crimson red, from the tasseled drapery framing the ceiling to the damask tablecloths and dark walnut chairs.
Even the metal tea tins gleaming on the back shelves were scarlet.
My only touch was the little sketches and paintings of French and Russian landscapes and mythological scenes hanging on the walls, all by local émigré artists I had discovered myself.
At the door to the consulting room, I ground to a halt.
The consulting table was wedged against a corner settee along with the bunched Persian carpet.
A circle of candles blazed in the middle of the room.
Inside it, a ghastly sight: Baba Valya in her old black smock, crouching and chanting, her bony arms raised high in the air, her hair streaming wildly.
She held up a bloody, pulpy mess dripping fat globules of bright red onto the floorboards—entrails from a slaughtered hog carcass, to divine fate.
Baba Valya was theatrical not only when it came to her séances. In times of stress, she resorted to the unsavory methods of divination. I thanked God that Zefir wasn’t there to fly at the blood (she adored to play in it).
“Hog, tell us our fate,” Baba Valya whispered through her teeth, low and raspy and dramatic.
“Hog, tell us our fate—” She sniffed at the air with her hooked nose, and I tried not to breathe in the black smell of pig remains.
She dropped the entrails, which squished to the floor, and thoughtfully looked out at the window.
“Baba Valya?” Now I tried not to vomit, especially when I glimpsed bits of scraggly entrails caught in between my grandmother’s long, bloodied fingers.
But Baba Valya only whipped out her gold-handled blade—a remnant of her Belle époque life with Mama, when business had been exceptionally good—and cut into the hog entrails, peering into them. There was blood in her hair, on her sunken cheeks.
“Baba Valya, what is this?”
My grandmother looked up sharply. Dropping the blade, she darted to me, her uncanny speed belying her age. She was wiry, sneaky quick. “Where have you been?” she demanded, grabbing my shoulders.
I flinched, feeling the blood seeping into my coat, its smell that close utterly devastating. “At Katya’s flat.”
Her very pale blue eyes searched my face. “Nowhere else?”
“No.”
“And you did not see anyone?”
“I saw plenty of people, Baba Valya.”
“That is, no one…suspect?”
Princess Olga, beautiful and bejeweled, flashed into my mind.
Her energy warm and charming but for that moment of coolness.
Contradiction was rare in aura reading, a sign of a changeable character.
I trusted my affinity, not the princess, but I wanted to know more about her.
“Actually, Baba Valya, I met an old friend of yours—Princess Olga. Daughter of Grand Duke—”
“I know who she is.” My grandmother’s face was as gray as a storm cloud.
“All right, well, she asked me to do some fortune-telling for her.” If I mentioned holding a séance, Baba Valya would say, Focus on your fortune-telling, child, and dismiss me.
“That good-for-nothing Romanov,” she burst out. “I hope you sent her to hell where she belongs, Zinaida.”
I stole a glance at Baba Valya, shocked at how drawn she looked. There were purplish bags under her sunken eyes, and she moved rather slowly for her. “I haven’t decided,” I said, though the reasons to say yes were drowning out all else. “Your rules shouldn’t necessarily be mine, you know.”
A knock resounded through Samovar.
Baba Valya snapped her fingers at the puddling hog entrails, the melting, still-flickering candles.
“Clean that up,” she said with a wink and thrust a rag at me before stripping out of her smock to reveal a perfectly clean day dress.
She was no longer the tired old lady I thought I saw, but as shifty and changeable as ever.
“Here are our patrons, arrived bright and early!” Nothing made her so excited as business.
Just as I was dropping to my knees and reaching for the rags, I heard the entrance doors slam open and Baba Valya call out, “Darling! Do come in. A cup of tea, maybe with some chamomile to help with sleeplessness? Cakes or a dash of homemade preserves? Zinachka will fetch you whatever you like straightaway.”