Rosa and the Veil of Gold Read Free Page B

thin and cold in the dark. A muddy Fiat drove past belching exhaust and techno bass. The figure across the road hadn’t moved. The scarf covered her face; her hand was extended like a collection plate. Behind her, a tall wrought-iron fence restrained a wild garden and an old cemetery. A dirty stone arch framed her. The sour smell of the street hung heavy.
    Rosa pulled out a cigarette and lit it, taking a quick, unsure drag. She stayed on her side of the street, watching traffic go past, watching the babooshka as though the old woman were a statue.
    Rosa finished her cigarette and threw the butt into the gutter. She crossed the road and the old woman looked up and smiled.
    “Hey, grandma,” Rosa said in Russian, “have you any advice for me?”
    The babooshka held out her hand. Rosa saw a collection of bent kopecks and a couple of rusted washers. “Silver,” she croaked. “I’ll tell you your fortune.”
    Rosa reached into the pocket of her coat and fished out ten roubles. “I only have paper—” But the woman had snatched the note and stuffed it in her apron before Rosa could finish.
    “You ought not smoke,” the babooshka said. “It could kill you.”
    “With a bit of luck,” Rosa sniffed, shrugging. “Is that my fortune?”
    “No,” she said. “Let me see your hand, beautiful girl.”
    Rosa offered her palm, and the old woman’s callused fingers moved over it carefully.
    “Oh, oh, I see a great love. I see many children.”
    Rosa snatched her hand away. “That’s nonsense. Tell me what you really see.”
    The babooshka turned her wizened face up. Rosa saw for the first time the deep crevices of age scarring the elderly woman’s cheeks. Rosa touched her own cheek and wanted to wail for the violent brevity of beauty.
    “What did you dream about last night, beautiful girl?”
    Rosa thought hard. Dreams tended to disappear the moment they had played out. Something about Vasily, and a thudding noise…
    “A horse,” she said at last. “A black horse.” The dream returned to her afresh. “I dreamed of a black horse beating at the door of his stable, but then I knew I was dreaming and I woke up into another dream where my uncle was sitting in the dark crying and wouldn’t tell me why.”
    The babooshka clicked her tongue, and Rosa felt a crushing sense of déjà vu. Echo upon echo. Her fingers itched to reach for another cigarette. “What does it mean, grandma?” she said.
    “A black horse is wild and bad and you cannot control it. To dream within a dream is the worst misfortune: chaos, confusion, darkness descending.” The old woman’s hand crept out again. “If you give me more money, I will tell you what to do.”
    Rosa found another note and pressed it into the woman’s hand.“Take this, but I don’t need you to tell me what to do. I know that nothing can be done.”
    “God bless you, beautiful girl,” the babooshka said, baring a mouthful of stained and rotted teeth.
    “Eat well, grandma,” Rosa said, leaving her behind and heading for the bright lights of Nevsky Prospekt.
    She began the long walk past the glittering shopfronts, the crumbling buildings, the endless ice-cream carts, the beggars, the bitter-scented metro stations, the Western tourists in bars, and the fast-food restaurants, their cheerful logos rendered alien by Cyrillic letters. She soaked up the atmosphere of the damp city, longing for something that she couldn’t put into words, some thrill or jolt which would remind her she was alive now.
    Daniel was coming tomorrow. She wished she could say that she hadn’t thought of him in the six months since their affair imploded. But she had thought of him a lot. She had thought about his hot, trembling caresses and his uncertainty-smudged dark eyes, and she had thought of another life that might have been. But then the thoughts made her sad; the angry-sad she had felt since the day her mother got sick.
    Rosa crossed the bridge over Fontanka Canal and took a right turn