It was already 7 pm when Darcy stood slender and pale in his boxers, reflected in the shadow-stained bathroom mirror. He stared at the black and white remnants of the photo from Prague floating in the toilet bowl, torn up by Fin and left here for him to pee on. But Fin wasn’t here now. Darcy flushed and some pieces were swallowed, but part of his face just swirled and remained: a tight-closed eye, and the top of the soldier’s burnt-sugar hair. His army cap indelibly placed on the rusted cistern, out of the way, as he’d lowered himself on that piss-stained cement. A second swirl of water and all was gone. Darcy’d been set up; he knew that now. The soldier was one of those agent provocateurs. He’d been set up in Prague and now by Aurelio, everyone part of something, Fin as well, except Fin and he had ignited a new secret of their own. All he did was kiss her on the back; why did she turn around?
Behind the bathroom towels, Fin had stowed her potato vodka from Poland, a gift, he assumed, from Jobik. Darcy sensed she’d kept it hidden because he’d sworn off it before she’d left Melbourne in September. He’d barely painted since. She told him he didn’t need to become any more like his mother, but now the voice in his head said: too many feelings to cope with on your own, come with me, my sweet potato?
The vodka seared a hollow in his delicate throat and it made his breath feel loud inside him, flooding his veins, liquid distilled from lava, a tasteless taste that usually brought tears as he walked with the bottle into the hot other room where the canvas sat sketched without colour on the easel. In the dog’s red wax eyes Darcy sought all kinds of forgiveness, for his mother and father, the Mormon, the soldier, and he searched in its eyes for himself, asked how he should paint this, the charcoal in his newly warmed fingers. He had the pavilions, the fountain, he had what they wanted, the obelisk mounted with the shape of the dog, the only colour so far in those red torch-lit eyes. He remembered Laika as famous, launched in that rocket, but did she ever come back?
Darcy picked up the waxen puddle of the cinnamon candle from last night. He’d paint it for penance, not just for himself, he’d paint it in wax with the stash of Fin’s candles. He pulled her collection from the drawer of the end table, red and cream and yellow, a royal blue, the paraffin scaly and rough in his fingers as he laid them out like paints on the ironing board. He covered the ironing board roughly with pages of Izvestia, newspaper photos of Andropov living and dead, and laid Fin’s cheap oils and Russian watercolours alongside the candles. Melted wax and paint, it would be naïve and primitive, all he needed was heat.
The travelling iron sat on the board like an invitation. Its plastic handle folded into its shell, and he lay it on its back like a silver beetle, a miniature hotplate. Another swig and a burn in his pharynx that rushed to his ears and it made him feel close to his mother, snapping candles, ripping at wicks and pushing their nubs into the iron’s heat. He grabbed a teardrop knife from Fin’s paintbox, Fin who he wished hadn’t turned around. He kneaded the molten wax with the blade, conjured the boy in the square and his juggling, but the vodka had eclipsed that, so he turned to the dog on the canvas.
He drank again and then knife-painted the wavering flag on the wedding-cake building, layering the ruffled red in melted wax. Already he knew it felt good. Blending in yellow he wax-painted the tourist bus a more brilliant red. He imagined all breeds of wax—beeswax, carnauba for polishing cars, floor wax, ear wax, tallow, shellac. The aeroplane bright yellow, even though the Aeroflot at the museum was white with a flag on the fin; he would make it a thing of his own. He carved its windows with the pick-point of the palette knife, wiped the knife clean across Andropov’s newspaper face. With the knife in his hand he felt a feverish accuracy, reaching for the oils, tubing silver on the palette to knife-paint the obelisk platinum. His version of the Monument to Space Flight. He marked the stones shiny with the knife edge, detailed them fine to the top where Laika stared out, curious and waiting. He would paint her last.
Straight from the candle sizzling on the travelling hotplate he waxed the sky above her with off-white and powder blue. The candle he used like a lumbering pen, then he smudged on some more direct from the iron. Gold ochre for Laika, you innocent thing; he worked on her with a fine-tipped brush, sculpting her shape from the whippet’s, mounting her hopeful on a rocket through space, reaching for something. In green, he painted a pair of butterflies there, wings in the light from Laika’s chasing eyes. Green, he’d heard, was the colour of the heart.
To frame it, he shaped the curves of the lavatory cistern ingrained in his mind from the photo from Prague, the rusty cast-iron shape. On top he outlined the soldier’s cap, its peak faced forward, emblematic, with a CCCP insignia and star. They would have their nationalism. Darcy stood back to see what he had and it was quite something, the shapes in the wax. It wouldn’t be what they expected, it might even be better than that. Along the cone of the obelisk he signed: forgive me.
Darcy turned at the door being opened, Fin standing in the entry hall. His drawing hand tightened, anticipating her thoughts: good that he’s painting; he’s fucked up my travelling iron; why did I bring him here, why did I turn when he kissed me? She silently removed her coat, and he felt her assessing the shining dry wax and the shapes of the buildings, the eyes of the dog and the half-empty bottle of vodka, the mess, but she was looking at Darcy in his boxers. He wanted to cover himself.
I painted the dog for you, he said, and the butterflies.
Fin leaned on the velvet arm of the couch where the buggers and de-buggers had delved among cushions. Self-consciously, Darcy dabbed red wax in the star on the military cap that sat on the cistern up among the clouds, he carved its details with the pick. The cap was a military grey with a stretch of canvas blank above it. The colour ended mid-stroke near the edge. He put the brush down. He waited.
It’s wonderful, said Fin. What about the corner?
Darcy stood back again and saw the canvas whole; the strip left uncoloured made it seem more modern, less exact. I like it that way, he said. The mix of wax and paint seemed vaguely kitsch but at least it was unusual. Fin approached him, lifted her hand and peeled a scab of red wax from near his nipple. He wasn’t sure what it meant. It’s really good, she said, the painting. She blew the wax from her finger. It’s not what they’re expecting but the curator’s cool, he’ll like it. She picked up the vodka bottle. No glass? she asked.
No glass, he said, a smile of apology. He’d rarely painted sober, she knew that, but he felt suddenly sober now. Are you okay? he asked.
She reached for her Polaroid camera on the bench and took a random shot—Darcy with the canvas in the background, the ironing board alongside like a flat-backed horse. I wouldn’t say that, she said.
She peeled the picture and gave it to Darcy to dry, and they both watched his shape materialising from the cloudy turquoise liquid. Her blouse brushed his bare elbow as the picture coalesced in the streaks like one of the Rorschach images. His features arranged themselves in the tinted emulsion and red flags brightened from the painting, the silver of the obelisk and the anxious face of the dog.
I’m sorry about last night, he said. That was all wrong.
I can’t deal with that now, she said. We have to deal with the other business.
I know you warned me, said Darcy. He looked at himself in the image, formed now, his eyes and mouth seemed somehow less generous.
We need to get practical, she said.
They both watched the painting. It was drying also; the wax gave it a depth and dimension. I went to the embassy, he said, but I couldn’t get in. Maybe we should go to the Americans?
Quietly Fin screwed the lid back onto her vodka bottle; they were sparing contact with each other’s eyes. No one will touch you, she said, especially the Americans. Not now—and, anyway, there’s too much going on. Everyone’s afraid Chernenko will be the new General Secretary and that’ll be like going back to Brezhnev. There may be changes in Poland, she said, but it’s too soon for here.
Darcy looked at the words he’d written on the obelisk. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed them. What about us? he asked.
I think Aurelio will be your best bet, she said. I don’t want to be around you when you’re drinking. As she left the room she turned momentarily. The painting’s really amazing, she said. Thank you.
Don’t give up on me, said Darcy, but she was already closing her bedroom door.