Chapter 24
Zina
Somehow, I had been right: It was exactly three days before I felt strong enough to leave the flat, though Katya was not happy about it. She had gone out for groceries, her mother to work. I was reaching for the door, to go see my grandmother, when I heard a rap on the other side.
I pulled it open to behold Baba Valya herself, in her colorful Russian-style handkerchief. She certainly didn’t look like a murderer, especially given how small she seemed, the deep lines and grooves kneading her face.
“Baba Valya!” burst from me, and I rushed to embrace her. She felt bird thin in my arms. “I was about to come to you.”
“And why would you do a silly thing like that? Didn’t Katya tell you not to return to Samovar?
” Baba Valya gave the hallway a cursory glance before pulling me inside, as if she were the one who had opened the Sherbatskys’ door.
She peered at me. “You don’t look at all well, Zina.
I hope Katya has been taking good care of you.
Have you been eating? Sleeping? Not smoking?
Have you been taking care of yourself? Hmm? Speak.”
“Katya has been doing a brilliant job, Baba Valya. But it is time for me to return. You know why.”
She rasped out a long breath. “Yes.” She looked out the tiny window, around the shabby kitchen where we had seated ourselves at the table, which at night crawled with cockroaches. Anywhere but at me. “Do not return. Because of them, they can find you there, and because of him.”
The spirit. “All right. But it is time you tell me everything, Baba Valya.”
“Yes, it is time.”
Still. Childishly, I needed to hear her say it. “So you admit you need my help.”
This time, she blew out her breath forcefully; it made a shushing noise. “I had hoped I wouldn’t. But my last remedy failed. Fine, Zinaida. I need your help.”
“And you admit I am not just a fortune teller but a medium. And that I have an affinity for the dead.”
“If you do not quit your incessant boasting—”
Again I propelled myself toward my grandmother, wrapping my arms around her tightly, fondly. She smelled of lilac and coffee and our tearoom. Of rue Daru and home. I pulled away, suddenly worried. “I don’t really know how to help you, Babushka. I…”
“You lack control over the spirits, don’t you?”
“Yes. But I can summon the dead and speak to them, and not just the Grand Duke. And, well, I have been able to do it without Olga and Alec.” I snuck a glance at her, afraid she would reprimand me. But she didn’t.
“Yes, it does appear you have an affinity for séances,” Baba Valya said grudgingly.
“Why now, do you think? So many years after—?”
She lifted one bony shoulder in a shrug; it was like a broken wing. “The nechistaya sila is fickle. It might have shut you out, mentally and physically, after you tried calling on your mother that first time.”
“But why did it work with…?”
“Them?” Baba Valya obstinately refused to say Olga’s and Alec’s names.
“As I told you, they are rotten. Dark to their core. Perhaps that reawakened your own darkness. And once the affinity is reawakened, I imagine it is possible for you to summon spirits on your own.” Baba Valya went quiet; I heard the hyperactive twitter of birds outside, the muffled talk of the apartment’s other inhabitants through the thin walls.
“Either way, you need to learn control. And once you do, we will have no choice but to perform a spiritual expulsion—together. Or try.”
Spring sunlight flooded in, but I felt cold. “A what?”
“It is a ritual that expels a dark spirit, a nechistaya sila. But I…” She paused heavily. “I told you the truth before. I don’t know how to do it, as I am not a medium. But I know a place that might be able to help you.”
I recalled the émigrés’ talk of that occult bookshop, Mama and Baba Valya supposedly gathering there with others like them, the women from my vision in the crimson drawing room.
I recalled the bookshop’s owner had the same name as the hero from my favorite novel, The Count of Monte Cristo. “Edmond Bailly’s bookshop?”
“How do you know it?” Baba Valya shook her head, didn’t ask further, and I was glad; I liked the reestablished peace between us.
“It was called the Librairie de l’Art indépendant and was located at 11 rue de la Chaussée d’Antin in the ninth arrondissement.
Who knows if it still exists. If it does, ask for Sergei Bolshoi.
He, well, helped me in the past. Also ask for Henriette.
She will know what to do, especially if Sergei is no longer in Paris, or dead. ”
“All right. Will you join me, Baba Valya?”
She gave a decisive shake of her head. “I do not wish to see those people again. They are the reason your mother is dead.”
“They killed her?”
“No, silly girl. They were a poor influence. They inflamed her emotions, encouraged her recklessness.”
“What did happen to Mama?” I whispered, and my grandmother froze, her eyes becoming veiled, the pupils cloud white. Like she had dipped into the past for a second.
“I believe the Grand Duke killed her. She was a wild thing. He did not like that she slipped through his fingers.”
My father killed my mother…? “But isn’t he—?”
Baba Valya tutted. “I told you, Zinaida, no, he isn’t your father.”
“Then who is?”
“Was. He is dead,” my grandmother said shortly.
Dead. So then looking for him was pointless. “What about the Grand Duke? What happened to him?”
“Didn’t I already tell you? I do not know.” But her eyes shifted away.
“Fine.” I crossed my arms, once more preparing to wage battle; she knew more, I knew she did. “Then whose body is buried in the garden?”
My grandmother couldn’t look any more frozen. “How do you know about that?”
“I found it.”
Baba Valya shriveled into herself, paled to a deathly white. I was about to add something about my finding that dagger, when she said, “It is your mother.”
“My mother?” I gasped. “But she is buried in…” I thought of that cemetery, all those times I had gone there believing I was visiting Mama.
“She was, before I transferred her closer to me, to us. I am afraid of the nechistaya sila, yes, but I couldn’t bear to be parted from Svetlana forever, to permanently close the door on the possibility that somebody would be able to summon her safely, without the risk of her becoming dark like…
like the Grand Duke. There is always that risk, Zinaida.
Anyway, it is much easier to do when the departed person shares the soil with the living, their body accessible.
Being far away from the old country and our ancestors, we must keep what is left of our family close—in life, yes, but also in death.
She needs to be with us, body and soul, so we can someday see her again.
If not through a séance, then when we die ourselves, to join her, to be in the afterlife with her, together. ”
I shook my head sadly. “She hasn’t answered my calls. What if she—?”
“—is somewhere you cannot reach.” My grandmother read my mind, her voice paper-thin.
“Yes. What if she is in trouble? The visions she’s shown me, they—”
“—are of the past,” Baba Valya said firmly. “You first need to learn how to hold séances safely. And how to expel the Grand Duke’s spirit. You won’t help her without that.” Baba Valya’s gaze turned flinty. “It was poison, wasn’t it? They tried to poison you?”
“Yes, they want their treasure. Do we have it?”
“Not in the tearoom.” Was it somewhere else, or did it not exist?
I let it rest. Maybe Baba Valya believed she was protecting me, like with my affinity.
I would find out either way. “I am not a child anymore,” I only said to her softly, gently, though sometimes I could still act like one.
“Sooner or later, you will need to trust me and tell me everything, and I mean everything.”
In the meantime, I would find Mama’s friends, and I would learn all I could from them. Now that I knew where Mama’s real grave was, I also promised myself to visit her as soon as I returned to Samovar.