Women with their hair draped in colorful patterned scarves went from cart to cart. In the small gardens of the houses before which the market was set up, older men sat across chessboards with steaming cups of tea. Children shrieked as they ran, hopping over the short fences and rubbish bins and anything else in their way.
“I feel as if they’ve just picked up their Russian neighborhood and set it down in England,” she said to Alexander after watching a boy no older than six insist on carrying an enormous bag of produce for his mother, or that was Saffron’s guess, since their conversation had not been in English.
Alexander surveyed the street thoughtfully. “There’s a lot of talk in the papers about the émigré population and their plans for the future. Some think this is temporary, that when things settle down and order is restored to Russia, they’ll just go home. I’ve known a few people in similar situations who feel there’s no point in learning to be English. Or they just don’t want to.”
“Your family?” Saffron asked.
“Some of them. A few have gone back to Greece, but most have stayed and plan not to leave again. Greece has had troubles of its own.”
One thing that struck her, as Alexander was beckoned from her side by an old fruit vendor, was that the whitewash of the buildings was gray, the linens hanging from the line were gray. Alexander’s shirt collar was brilliant by comparison. Yet the place was not drab; it was vivid with color and movement andlife. It might not look particularly familiar—particularly English—but it was life all the same. It was full of pockets of jolly conversation and good-natured arguments between neighbors, the scents of cooking food, cigarette and pipe smoke, and spices.
Alexander returned to her side with a pair of oranges. He began peeling one and offered her a piece. She took it, rather surprised to be eating on the street, but it was delicious.
They took their time, matching the pace of other shoppers, taking in the shapes and colors of the produce, sacks of dried herbs and ground spices, the stacks of secondhand books in Russian and other eastern European languages.
The line of carts stopped abruptly in the middle of the street, and it became quieter, though life still puttered on. Children played and neighbors chatted over stout garden walls. Saffron and Alexander garnered some curious looks, but no one approached them.
They reached the house marked with Petrov’s address. Saffron walked right up and knocked, hoping that her prepared story would work.
An old woman opened the door. She looked between Saffron and Alexander, wispy white eyebrows raising as she said, “Da?”
It hadn’t occurred to her that they might need to be able to communicate with a person who didn’t speak English. That was a foolish oversight. Saffron put on a sad smile and offered the woman the photograph of Petrov from Elizabeth’s file. She said, “I come from Mr. Petrov’s work. I wish to see his rooms to collect some of his equipment.”
Alexander gave her a sidelong look as if uncertain about the bluntness of her plan.
The woman took the photograph and frowned down at it. She sighed heavily and returned the photograph to Saffron. She turned and began hobbling deeper into the house.
She had not shut the door in their faces, and that was a victory in Saffron’s book. They followed her inside.
Demian Petrov’s rooms consisted of a parlor and a bedroom. The kitchen and bathroom were shared by a handful of others, not uncommon for a boardinghouse. Streaks of dust marked the paths of hands over mismatched bookshelves stacked high with academic texts in English, Russian, Polish, and French. A teacup stained with brackish liquid sat on the single small table. Saffron leaned over it and caught a sickly sweet scent.
“I’ll check the bedroom,” Saffron said, and Alexander volunteered to look around the parlor.
The first thing she noticed in the bedroom was the only movement in the place: a rubbish bin with flies buzzing around it.
Dreading what she would find inside, Saffron peered into the bin, but it turned out to be only fruit peels and cores. That explained the vaguely fruity scent which accompanied the nameless scent a place took on after a person had lived there for a long time.
The rest of the simple bedroom consisted of an iron bed frame, the bed made rather messily with worn quilts, a bedside table, and a wardrobe.
The table at the bedside was a rickety thing with a drawer, in which sat a Bible, recognizable though the characters were Cyrillic. She thumbed through the pages until she came across a trio of photographs. One was an old-fashioned portrait of a somber woman, dated May 5th, 1884. Saffron guessed that if Elizabeth checked Petrov’s file more carefully, she’d find Petrov was married on or near that date, for the woman held flowers.
The other two photographs were not photographs, she saw on closer inspection. One was a postcard from Russia depicting a city on the water. The other was a postcard of Brighton, the word typed neatly in the corner of a photograph of the famous pier. Neither had been posted or written on.
Saffron puzzled at the postcards, wondering what was so important about these two specific places.
“Saffron,” Alexander called, “you’ll want to see this.”
She replaced the photographs and the Bible in the drawer and returned to the parlor.
Alexander had turned on the single lamp standing between two shelves. He stood next to the largest bookshelf, a solid piece with a cabinet at the bottom. It was open, and Alexander crouched to point out what was within.
She crouched next to him and peered inside. “A spirit lamp!”
Carefully, she reached inside the cabinet to lift out the small glass bottle. The tip of the wick was blackened, and it still carried a burnt smell. She loosened the cork surrounding the wick to get a whiff of what was inside and caught the heady scent of strong alcohol. She coughed lightly.
“Was he doing experiments here?” Alexander asked, looking deeper into the cabinet.
“Let’s find out,” Saffron replied. The interior of the cabinet was too dark to make much out. She offered him the spirit lamp. “Light this?”
