Babayaga

would the old woman be hiding? Finally, she wiped the sweat off her brow and rose to light the kettle. She needed a cup of tea. Her mind drifted back to Will, not because of anything she had seen, but simply because that was where her mind wanted to dance. For amid all the gnarled knots of mystical weaving, he was the uncomplicated one, simply a strong and healthy rabbit, bolting about the field without any sure knowledge, only a bit of naïve wisdom and wholesome innocence guiding his way. It relaxed her to think about him. If only it could last.

Book Two

The whole fight is for the conservation of the individual soul. The enemy is the suppression of history; against us is the bewildering propaganda and brainwash, luxury and violence.
— EZRA POUND , The Paris Review

I

    It was almost one in the morning as a still quite sleepy and bewildered Superintendent Maroc sat in his office, listening to his subordinate explain what had happened. Two officers, one an investigator and the other a patrolman, had vanished from the streets of Paris, along with their patrol car. Worse, there had been yet another strange murder, over on rue d’Astorg. Responding to calls, policemen had found the owner of an antiques shop with a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. Further investigation revealed that the man’s tongue had been cut out of his mouth, and despite their searches through the shop’s bureau drawers, ancient urns, hat boxes, humidors, and jewelry cases, the investigators had been unable to find it.
    “So we are missing a pair of policemen, a police car, and a tongue,” concluded the officer, summing up his report.
    Superintendent Maroc said nothing. One of the missing policemen, the smug and judgmental Vidot, had always been a constant pain, and in any other circumstance Maroc would have been happy to see him gone. The other, Bemm, was unknown to the superintendent. Maroc had only recently been appointed to the station, did not intend on staying long in the position, and had very little interest in getting to know any of the men. The only reason he had taken any note of Vidot was because the man was so perfectly insufferable.
    “Should we inform the families?” asked the officer.
    Maroc shook his head. “No, not yet. Call tomorrow and tell them that Vidot and Bemm are off on an important undercover assignment. Maybe they’ll turn up. I don’t want any trouble or newspaper coverage on this.”
    Over a year ago, Maroc’s benefactor, Papon, had been promoted to prefect of police and had promised to find a prominent position for Maroc in the customs section, where opportunities for furtive profit abounded. No suitable position had been available at the time, so Maroc had been temporarily assigned this job, while Papon arranged for personnel to be reshuffled. Maroc knew he had to be reasonably patient, all he had wanted was peace and quiet in the interim, and for the first few months he had gotten his wish: the normal parade of pickpockets, petty burglars, counterfeit rings, and abusive spouses (sometimes fatally so—wives were occasionally beaten and strangled, just as husbands occasionally ran into cooking knives) had done little to disturb the station’s smooth operation.
    But now, suddenly, a series of bizarre and inexplicable events had begun erupting all over Paris. On the same night that a machine gun had been fired out of a car at Senator Mitterrand, a few blocks away a man was found hanging dead on the spikes above rue Rataud. The first story had, fortunately, overshadowed the second, and while the Mitterrand case proceeded to quickly unravel into a farce (the politician seemingly set up his own assassination attempt in a foolish ploy to gain popular sympathy), the second case had only grown more complex. The loss of a patrol car along with two of the policemen who had been investigating the Leon Vallet murder was not a story that could be easily kept under wraps, and when it did come to light it would certainly not reflect well on the superintendent.
    Through the open doorway, Maroc stared down the empty hall, thinking that while he had never enjoyed the sight of the self-righteous Vidot, with his sarcastic, all-knowing little grin, he sincerely hoped for nothing more than to see the man come sailing into his office now, smug smile and all. But looking at his watch and realizing he would not be getting home to bed until at least three, he suspected the chance of such a simple solution was small.