Chapter 40
Zina
A few nights later, I was about to commence my daily séance practice when the tearoom door slammed open—and the ladies of rue Daru burst inside in a powerful waft of humid street air tinged with sweet pea and rose.
I felt their energy like a restless spring breeze, filled with bold color and sharp anticipation.
The tearoom lightened, the haunting receding even further than with the wards.
“It is so hot!” Inessa chattered with a glance around; she hadn’t entered the tearoom when she had dropped off her baked goods.
“Well, Samovar certainly looks different. Look at all those herbs and flowers! Has Valya turned into a hedge witch in our absence? How is she? And how are you, kisa, kitty-cat?” She patted Zefir, who had run up to her too eagerly, the traitorous creature.
“My grandmother is sleeping,” I said through my dry mouth, convinced the women were here for Baba Valya. “I am afraid she is still not up for her work.”
“Did you not post a sign that you are open for business?” Karina asked, with all her wife-of-the-general imperiousness. “The after-hours kind.”
“You, not your babushka, darling Zina!” said the little old lady, Masha.
“If you are available,” the writer, Nina Berberova, added stiffly.
“For a séance, my dear girl!” exclaimed Inessa.
I was dumbfounded—a part of me had assumed our clients wouldn’t come for my services.
Maybe new clients who had never heard of us.
But not Baba Valya’s. After all, I had always lived and worked in my grandmother’s indomitable shadow as a psychic and fortune teller.
I had balked at it, preferring to be anywhere but in the tearoom, where I felt a mere accessory, useless and expendable.
But I now saw that, unlike Baba Valya, I could provide our clients with answers about their departed loved ones, something that tortured the émigrés.
I wanted to give them closure, even peace, as I had done for Katya.
I realized I would rather be here with these perfumed ladies from the old country than in any café in Paris.
(Though if I had my pick of anywhere in Paris, I would choose Gabriel’s garret, his bed.
But I cringed at that, pressing down any thought of the man, or where he slept.)
“We are open to both fortunes and séances!” Katya said brightly, coming up behind me. “Is the consulting room ready, Zina?”
“It is.” I smiled. It was real. They had come—for me. I wasn’t alone. I could do this, without my grandmother, if I had to. At least, I hoped. “Shall we?”
Zefir meowed lazily and ambled over to the consulting room, leading the way.
I hung back, making sure the wards were airtight, the tearoom safe for the ladies.
I had burned rue and mandrake earlier, and it smelled of apples and something bitter, not unpleasantly so, even with my increased sensitivities.
I had prepared the consulting table with tall tapers that glimmered copper orange, a small white vase with a lacy clover and daisy arrangement, and my humble offerings—a cup of freshly brewed tea in a Russian-style glass and a sweet bun stuffed with raisins that I myself had made (and burned).
Baking was a harder feat than séances. Lastly, I had draped the entire room in black cloth for greater security.
I twisted Mama’s ring, which I wore on my little finger, suddenly nervous. This was my first full-length séance since 40 rue de Paradis.
We sat at the consulting table, Zefir darting out of the shadows and to my feet. I was comforted by her warm presence and nudged her fondly. “Do you have the photographs and personal effects belonging to your loved ones?” I asked, recalling the instructions I had included at the bottom of my sign.
Each lady dutifully reached into her pocket or purse and pulled out the requested items, placing them carefully, reverently, onto the table.
Inessa had brought a book of poetry written by her husband, Dmitri; Karina, a few medals worn by her general husband, Pyotr; Masha, a comb used by her son, Leonid, a few pale blond hairs still clinging to the teeth; and Nina, a child’s blanket, clutched tightly in her trembling hands.
I collected the items before placing them, along with the photographs, against the vase of wildflowers.
The ladies were watching my every move, sharp-eyed, missing nothing, no doubt comparing my séance to the champagne-soaked affairs once held by my grandmother.
Did they know those séances had been a sham? If so, they didn’t let on.
Katya gave me an encouraging nod from across the table, and I scribbled the names of those to be summoned on scraps of paper.
I met their gazes in the photographs. Silently, I invited Dmitri, Pyotr, Leonid, and Sasha—a child Nina had lost—to commune with us.
We joined hands, and I whispered, “Let us close our eyes, ladies.”
I cleared my mind, visualized a protective shield.
The golden light flowed through my veins, bright and warm as sunlight, yellow as freshly cut lemons.
It dissolved through my body until I felt it crystallize around me.
Unlike other times I had practiced, when I let go of the image, it stayed like a web of invisible armor over my skin.
I tried not to whoop in excitement at the breakthrough—I was that much closer to the expulsion, to Mama.
I asked my sitters to think about their loved ones and said the rest of the words, but they were less important than the intuitive practice Sergei was teaching me.
“Are the spirits we call on here? Will you speak to us?” I turned my focus not on the dead, as before, but on myself.
On the spot of dark warmth in my chest, flaring with heat, flowing through me like opium, fusing as one with the golden armor.
And something else: Similar to the 40 rue de Paradis group, I felt the focused energy of Katya and the ladies of rue Daru. Not as experienced, but still strong.
The energy pushed me to dive deeper—into the other side, the beyond.
It was cold there, and dark, and very misty.
It smelled earthy, ashy. I heard snatches of words and sounds.
Pale shadows floated like shreds of stormy clouds all around me, brushing against my skin.
I searched for the four spirits, keeping their images in my mind’s eye, their names on my tongue. Dmitri, Pyotr, Leonid, Sasha.
The telltale chill crawled up my arms, and my insides iced over.
My mouth dried up completely, as if I had just taken in a gulp of seawater.
But I wasn’t frightened. My affinity leaped to life in response.
And despite the cold, the lick of heat simmered, scalding me.
Someone was there. Someone wished to commune, maybe to speak.
A phantom voice wound toward me along with a waft of rot. Who are you? it asked.
I dimly heard Zefir’s yelp, felt the scratch of her claws on my bare legs. But I wouldn’t be distracted. I opened my eyes and squinted into the shadows, trying to make out a figure, a shape, anything. But there was only the voice.
“Show yourself,” I said, pressing down my nausea, trying to stay in control.
A tiny giggle. The candles gave a smoky flicker; the room went black for one pulsing second.
Zefir’s scratching turned vicious. She practically climbed into my lap.
I kept my focus on the spirit. “Are you Sasha?”
I do not know. A minute passed, then: Help me.
“Is that your mother?” I pointed to Nina, who had turned chalk white, lips and all.
“Is it him?” she asked tremulously.
“Please, don’t move or open your eyes.” I struggled to maintain focus.
Unlike in my other séances, the sitters tonight seemed to have greater awareness of me and the spirit.
Maybe it had to do with my own awareness and growth as a medium.
If I had greater control over the spirits and my presence in the beyond, I could be more physically present in the real world as well.
This way, my sitters could hear me, if not the spirits themselves.
I cannot find my body, came the voice. Or my name. But she is familiar. Help me.
I shivered, the cold shooting through my veins. “I will help you. You are Sasha, son of the woman there, Nina Berberova. You are thought of, remembered, loved.”
I am?
“You are.”
“He is!” wrenched from Nina, slashing through my focus.
The little spirit vanished. I wanted to call him back, this child who had lived no more than a few years, lost to the darkness without his name or body, when two shadows materialized.
They were two men in uniform—a youth of no more than seventeen years, with pale hair and freckles on pockmarked, yellowed skin; and an older man, handsome still, with the suggestion of seasoned, salt-and-pepper gray at his temples and lustrous, not malevolent eyes that twinkled like twin stars.
The younger man stood behind Masha, the older one behind Karina.
I gasped, Masha and Karina clenching their jaws, fighting to keep their eyes closed. “Are you Leonid and Pyotr?” I asked the spirits. The men were dead, then.
They nodded their broken, bare acknowledgments.
I see a never-ending trench, said the younger man, Leonid.
I hear the gunshot, said the older man, Pyotr.
It is cold, so cold. Leonid.
It echoes in my ears even now, in the darkness. Pyotr.
I am still there. Leonid, in a whisper.
I saw the hated redbrick wall before— Pyotr.
I turned to the younger man first; he was the most transparent. “Did you die in the Great War, Leonid?”
A sob tore through the air. Masha clapped a hand over her mouth. Tears streamed down her face, which had paled, shriveled, become corpse-like, like Baba Valya’s.
The spirit behind Masha was unfazed. In the trench, it is dark. So dark. And cold.
The gunshot, it exploded. And then blackness. Ice. Blackness. Ice. Pyotr.