It was dark when Svetlana alighted from the bus in front of the train station. Taxi drivers milled around in small groups and a few girls paced the street, hugging their shoulders to keep warm. She stopped briefly in the small café inside the station. She paid fifty cents to the old woman seated at the door of the toilets, and a further fifty for some coarse grey tissue. In front of the polished surface of the tin mirror she wiped her face with the dampened tissue. She straightened her hair with her fingers and tried to smooth some of the lines from her face, massaging it gently with the tips of her fingers. Carefully she applied her lipstick.
The tin mirror was misshapen and the figure reflected back was indistinct and distorted. She was wearing the dress Pumpetiene had given her. She stroked smooth the glittering sequins across her chest. Her arms, she noticed, were bruised. She pulled the sleeves down to hide the yellowbrown marks.
Throwing the damp ball of tissue into the wastebasket she examined herself once more, delaying the moment rather than nervous of her appearance. And then she left. Down the hill towards Kauno Street, to the cafe where she knew she would find him, ignoring the stares of the taxi drivers, the cool appraisal of the young girl she passed on the corner. And then there was Ruta, in a doorway, sheltering from the wind. Svetlana hesitated. The thirteen-year-old stared out from the darkness. A hundred paces down the road was the red glow of the bar. Her gaze moved from the bar to the girl huddled in the shadows. Ruta raised a finger in a coarsely aggressive gesture. ‘Fuck off.’
Svetlana had been thirteen when she danced that last bitter, silent waltz with her mother. She ran away. She was caught and taken home. And ran away. Thirteen. In an apartment where she had taken refuge with a girl she met, men approached. They laughed. Silver teeth and vodka on their breath. The window was open. She hunched up on the sofa, wrapping her arms around her thin legs. Knowing nothing of sex, except that they wanted it. Outside it was dark. She did not know how far it was to the floor. When the man unbuckled his belt, when she heard the tone of their laughter and saw the look in their eyes, she ran for the window. She landed on her side. The pain shuddered through her, paralysed her. She looked up and saw their faces at the window. They laughed down at her as she cried into the grass.
‘Fuck off,’ Ruta said again.
Svetlana turned away. She walked slowly down towards the bar. She heard the steady thump of the music. Faintly, the sound of laughter. The door opened and the noise spilled out into the street.
Mindaugas was at the bar. She slid onto the stool beside him. He half turned. She did not greet him. He bought her a drink. A glass of Alytus champagne, Saldus – sweet.
‘I need some money,’ she said.
He nodded.
‘It’s not like the old days,’ he said, with a small grin. ‘No more of the Americans and Germans at Hotel Lietuva, at the Gintaras.’
Svetlana nodded. ‘I know.’
She tasted the champagne. It made her feel neither good nor nauseous. She drank it quickly. No dark wave enveloped her. In the mirror, behind the bar, behind the bottles of vodka and cranberry spirits and English gin and Grant’s whisky, she could see herself. She looked better than she had in the station toilet. She attempted a smile, a small one, and was half pleased with the result. When she replaced the glass on the bar her hand shook and it nearly overbalanced.