Pavel & I by Dan Vyleta Page A

pack of cigarettes, and exchanged it for a hastily scribbled address.
    â€˜Second or third floor, I think, overlooking the main road. Chances are she’s holed up there, crying crocodile tears.’
    â€˜You don’t think she cared for him?’
    â€˜Jesus Christ and Mary. He was her pimp, and a real sleazebag, too, when he put his mind to it.’
    She looked him up and down real funny, and Pavel realized he must have betrayed displeasure about her comments.
    â€˜Sorry, sugar, speakin’ ill of the dead.’ She made the sign of the cross, kissing her fingers lightly when she was finished. The gesture smelled of convent school.
    â€˜He wasn’t all bad, never slapped us around much, you know. You two were close?’
    He nodded yes.
    â€˜The army, right? Boyd wouldn’t shut up about it. Made it sound like he took France all by himself. Special unit and all.’ She eyed him shrewdly. ‘He save your life or something?’
    â€˜Nothing like that. We sat in foxholes. Swapped jokes, shared tins of corned beef. Fired bullets across muddy fields.’
    She cackled, her mouth ugly like a wound. ‘Sounds real romantic.’ He glared at her sullenly.
    â€˜Sore spot, is it? Brings back bad memories, I guess. Go on, spill yer guts. We girls are used to it.’
    â€˜The war’s over,’ he whispered, and she wrinkled her lips like she’d tasted something sour.
    â€˜Suit yourself, sugar,’ she said derisively, and got up to show him the door. ‘You got a third pack for me, like you promised?’
    Pavel held it out and clasped her hand for a moment as she took the pack. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her earnestly, looking to reach the woman inside the tramp.
    â€˜Whatever for?’ she asked him gruffly. ‘You got whatever you came for, and I, well, I got my smokes.’
    She closed the door in his face and he stood there for a moment longer, wishing the boy were there to tell him that the woman was talking sense. Then Pavel turned on his heel and made for the address she had given him. He never saw the one-eyed man who followedhim at a discreet distance, hands buried in his pockets and his scarf hitched high enough to reach all the way up to his patch.

    The boy refused to come in until she had looked into all of her apartment’s rooms and proven to him that the Colonel wasn’t hiding anywhere. Then he asked her to go down and look in on Pavel’s flat. The door was locked and nobody answered her knocking.
    â€˜You see,’ she told him, ‘we are quite safe.’
    The boy bit his lip and sat down uneasily on one of her sofas, his eyes on the door and his ears cocked for Fosko’s agile tread. Sonia ignored him and got the monkey some water and food. It had shat itself again, and there was no way of cleaning its fur. She let it off its leash and watched it climb the living-room cupboard, rattling the cut glass and china on the way up.
    She started to fix Anders and herself some bread and cold cuts, but the boy stopped her and demanded to see the coat. Wordlessly, she led him over to her wardrobe and pulled out a camel-coloured duffel coat.
    â€˜I think that will probably do best.’
    He tried it on. It gaped at the shoulders and the sleeves were much too long, but it wrapped him up warm all the way down to his ankles. She led him over to the mirror to see what he made of it, but he wouldn’t raise his eyes and look at himself.
    â€˜Thanks,’ he said sullenly. She couldn’t decide whether it was the voice of insolence, or of fear.
    â€˜Take it off,’ she ordered. ‘I will shorten the sleeves for you.’
    She had just cut several inches off the first of the coat-sleeves when the telephone rang. It ran through the boy like a current, and drew a scream from the monkey on top of its perch. Sonia picked up, the cloth scissors still in one hand, and listened to the Colonel’s voice.
    â€˜Sonia,