But it was his gravity which had impressed her even more than his magic. ‘You must not decorate,’ he had told her, with uncharacteristic sharpness, when for the sake of entertainment or variety she had allowed herself to deviate just a little from the version she had written to the General. ‘Merely because you yourself feel more at ease, do not make the mistake of supposing that the danger is over.’
She had promised to improve herself.
‘The danger is absolute,’ he had told her as he left. ‘It is not yours to make greater or make less.’
People had talked to her about danger before, but when the magician talked about it, she believed him.
‘Danger to my daughter?’ she had asked. ‘Danger to Alexandra?’
‘Your daughter plays no part in this. You may be sure she knows nothing of what is going on.’
‘Then danger to whom?’
‘Danger to all of us who have knowledge of this matter,’ he had replied, as she happily conceded, in the doorway, to their one embrace. ‘Danger most of all to you.’
And now, for the last three days – or was it two? or was it ten? – Ostrakova swore she had seen the danger gather round her like an army of shadows at her own deathbed. The danger that was absolute; that was not hers to make greater or less. And she saw it again this Saturday morning as she clumped along in her polished winter boots, swinging the heavy shopping bag at her side : the same two men, pursuing her, the weekend notwithstanding. Hard men. Harder than the gingery man. Men who sit about at headquarters listening to the interrogations. And never speak a word. The one was walking five metres behind her, the other was keeping abreast of her across the street, at this moment passing the doorway of that vagabond Mercier the chandler, whose red-and-green awning hung so low it was a danger even to someone of Ostrakova’s humble height.
She had decided, when she had first allowed herself to notice them, that they were the General’s men. That was Monday, or was it Friday? General Vladimir has turned out his bodyguard for me, she thought with much amusement, and for a dangerous morning she plotted the friendly gestures she would make to them in order to express her gratitude : the smiles of complicity she would vouchsafe to them when there was nobody else looking; the soupe she would prepare and take to them, to help them while away their vigil in the doorways. Two hulking great bodyguards, she had thought, just for one old lady! Ostrakov had been righe that General was a man! On the second day she decided they were not there at all, and that her desire to appoint such men was merely an extension of her desire to be reunited with the magician : I am looking for links to him, she thought; just as I have not yet brought myself to wash up the glass from which he drank his vodka, or to puff up the cushions where he sat and lectured me on danger.
But on the third – or was it the fifth? – day she took a different and harsher view of her supposed protectors. She stopped playing the little girl. On whichever day it was, leaving her apartment early in order to check a particular consignment to the warehouse, she had stepped out of the sanctuary of her abstractions straight into the streets of Moscow, as she had too often known them in her years with Glikman. The ill-lit, cobbled street was empty but for one black car parked twenty metres from her doorway. Most likely it had arrived that minute. She had a notion, afterwards, of having seen it pull up, presumably in order to deliver the sentries to their beat. Pull up sharply, just as she came out. And douse its headlight. Resolutely she had begun walking down the pavement. ‘Danger to you,’ she kept remembering; ‘danger to all of us who know.’
The car was following her.
They think I am a whore, she thought vainly, one of those old ones who work the early-morning market.