At that moment, I would have given anything to have been trekking across Mongolia with Zara, or to have taken the exit I’d just passed. I glanced back. I could still see it there, the sign outlined against a leaden sky. It wasn’t too far.
I jammed the transmission into reverse. The pick-up bobbled along on the uneven pavement of the break-down lane, accelerating as it went. I didn’t look back, didn’t glance to the side, just kept the tail end pointed at the back of the sign. Once there, I had to swing out into the lane to get the truck headed in the right direction. An oncoming car swerved around me, blaring its horn. Then I was off, speeding down the ramp, taking the turn at the end—away from Irkutsk—headed god knew where, with no intention of slowing down.
Slow down, I whispered to myself, slow down. My foot eased off the accelerator. There was no one in the rearview mirror, hadn’t been for a while. Gradually, my heartbeat slowed. I passed through a tidy suburb: the homes had pretty carved gingerbread shutters and window boxes stuffed with sprays of evergreen and holly. There was some traffic, a police station with a cruiser parked outside. I kept my eyes facing forward like a model citizen, until the village disappeared behind me, and rolling pastureland opened up. Low hills rose under the steady grip of the tires, and gently fell away.
Travelling east on back roads, I eventually came out somewhere past Irkutsk, and zigzagged my way to P-258, which ran along the southern shore of Lake Baikal. The lake was huge, oceanic, a bewitching dark blue color, with steep snowy slopes and towering fissured crags. Its vast surface unbroken by boats, its coast with no trace of human activity, it maintained a primordial majesty. I drove white-knuckled through the afternoon, while the sun melted ever closer to the horizon, growing wider, redder, and duller all the time. Eventually, I came to a decent-sized town with a gas station. I filled the tank, purchased three plastic gas containers, filled them, and stashed them in the back of the pick-up. The clerk eyed me with interest but didn’t ask questions; I handed him bills and accepted my change without uttering a word.
Back in the cab, I had to count my remaining cash several times. My brain was foggy, overstressed, and the sky-high numbers on the dirty rubles in my hand made no sense to me anymore. With effort, I came to understand that I was in command of the following assets: one full tank of gas, three containers that may or may not equal a tank, money enough for one more tank and, possibly, a meal. Blankets, sundry food items. An enormous, empty landmass to traverse, and an unknown amount of time until the first blizzard made the roads impassable.
The police blockade outside Irkutsk had spooked me, and now Vladivostok no longer seemed safe. A national manhunt was probably underway; how could I have imagined otherwise? And what fond insanity had made me think that the American Consulate would provide sanctuary anyway? I was an escaped convict, accessory to a murder, in addition to being an accused spy. No doubt international law required that I remain in Russia to stand trial. Why would the consulate endanger its relations with its host country by flouting that rule? And if the CIA had washed its hands of me once, why wouldn’t it do so again?
I checked the Samaritan’s map. Misha’s directions to Cherkeh came back to me—four or five hours southeast of Yakutsk, east of the Lena River. At this point, Yakutsk was 1,200 kilometers up the Lena Highway, but I wouldn’t have to go that far. There was a place I could stop along the way, a town called Aldan, about six hours south of Yakutsk. It was possible that someone there could direct me to the unmapped village on the Tatta River where my grandmother lived, where my aunt was in hiding, and where I might find refuge for a while.
I continued east. The headlights switched on automatically in response to the creeping dusk. At a tiny town called Never, the road intersected the Lena Highway. I turned north, drove through miles and miles of vacant, snow-dusted fields, low mountains hulking in the distance. Then the taiga took over, butting right up to the gravel shoulder, as if unwilling to cede even a few extra yards to the asphalt cut across its face.
The radio signal jittered and periodically failed. I switched off the static, and in the deep silence that ensued, felt my terror churning like a monster just under the level of consciousness. I mustn’t give in to it, mustn’t let it out of its cage. I turned the radio back on, and played with the dial until a few bars of a Michael Jackson tune were recognizable. Thriller. In spite of everything, I smiled. I started to sing along. I sang as loud as I could, doing my best to carry the familiar melody through the periods of hopeless static. It seemed important to do this.
Eventually, the radio was completely useless, and a pitch black night set in. There was nothing but the steady strum of the revolving tires and the pavement disappearing hypnotically under the headlights. The next thing I knew, I was jolted awake by the sensation of tires jouncing across loose gravel. I jammed on the brakes right before the Toyota slammed into a tree.
Shaken, I climbed down from the cab and stood trembling on firm ground in the frigid air. As if to fool myself into thinking that I hadn’t really fallen asleep at the wheel, but had been meaning to stop all along, I moved into the forest beyond the glow of the headlights and peed. Survival seemed to have become a matter of playing these little tricks on myself. I then emptied two of the plastic containers into the tank, holding the third in reserve. During this short time, the cold invaded my clothing efficiently: its dainty fingers crawled up my sleeves and curled softly, insistently, down my neck. I was shivering mightily as I steered the pick-up off the shoulder and onto the ribbon of dark highway that was guiding me ever deeper into the wilderness.
Sunrise was tentative and teasing, a gradual offering of lavender and pink before the spill of yellow. The highway was ghosting a frozen estuary. It was a lovely landscape—snow patches dotting the black ice, answering the morning rays with friendly sparkles. On a hill overlooking the river, tall red letters spelling out the word pectopah—restaurant—stretched across the roof of a low building. Trucks and vans were parked in the lot, and well-built wooden outhouses were available in the back.
Inside, there was warmth, bright light, and pleasant human noise, as well as the gorgeous aromas of meat pies and baking. I piled dishes covered in plastic wrap onto my tray one after the other. This was the kind of glorious feast I used to dream about in prison, food the likes of which I hadn’t seen in months. I had to put most of the plates back when I remembered the skimpy roll of rubles in my pocket. Still, I reached the register with fruit cup, shepherd’s pie, and hot coffee on my tray. The hands that paid for the meal were dirty and trembling. They didn’t look at all like mine.
I joined a young woman, elderly gentleman, and little girl at one of the long tables. The little girl had a pink barrette fastened in her silky hair. She was sucking tapioca pensively off a spoon, her narrow eyes trained unflinchingly on the mystery of a lone white woman in an oversized flannel shirt.
“Anna,” her mother whispered, reproaching her daughter for the impolite stare.
“I don’t mind,” I said, taking comfort in the sight of a child, and in the safe world her presence connoted.
The woman bashfully averted her eyes; Anna kept staring.
“I’m new to this area,” I said unnecessarily. “I was just wondering…maybe you could help me. I’m looking for a village that ought to be…well, somewhere around here. It’s called Cherkeh. Have you heard of it?”
The woman looked doubtful, turned to the leathery old man. They conferred briefly in Sakha. The old man shook his head.
“We’ve never heard of it,” the woman said.
“Are you sure?” I pleaded, as if urgency could make her remember.
The woman spoke to her father again, and this time the conversation went on for quite some time. Finally, she turned back to me. “Yes, I’m sure.”
I thanked her and returned to my meal. Tendrils of panic fanned out from my gut to every part of my body. What if I couldn’t find Cherkeh? What then?
Well, in that case, a sensible voice in my head piped up, you’l
l simply think of something else—a Plan B, or C, or whatever the fuck letter of the alphabet you’re on. If you’ve come this far, you can go the distance. So stop belly-aching and eat your shepherd’s pie.
But my heart didn’t believe it. The moment when my luck was due to run out felt long overdue.
I finished the meal, bussed my dishes to the tray station, and went outside. The sky was bright blue like a child’s painting. People were ice-fishing on the estuary, the children tumbling about in colorful hats and mittens, chased by lively dogs. It was ten degrees below zero, and no one seemed to care.
Towards evening, I reached Aldan, a gold-mining town, population about twenty thousand, according to a friendly cashier who instantly pegged me as a visitor and took the last of my money for half a tank of gas. She presided over a treasure trove of things I could no longer afford: candy, gum, soda, cigarettes. I was surprised to see an indoor restroom, and asked to use it.
In prison, I hadn’t dared look in the handheld mirrors that some of the inmates had, and the washrooms weren’t outfitted with such decadent items. So when I noticed a mirror over the sink, a flicker of fear rose in me. I sidled into my own view by degrees. A wild woman glared back at me warily from the glass—her gaunt face was limed with dirt; her hair hung in greasy, matted clumps; her lips were pale and cracked. I searched for signs of myself, Dr. Natalie March, in my reflection’s eyes. But the being looking back was more like an animal.
I washed my face, rinsed my mouth, removed the Samaritan’s clothes, and splashed my emaciated limbs with water. A layer of dirt trickled away. My legs were bruised, and stubborn dirt was caked between my toes. My body, like my face, was largely unrecognizable. I’d lost twenty pounds at least.
I did what I could with my hair, pulling it back and knotting it at the nape of my neck. But I had nothing to pin it with, so it fell out as soon as I took my hands away.
It was hopeless. I felt that I’d never again be clean, presentable.
Once more, I pulled on the dead man’s clothes, which were still infused with his masculine smell. I’m so sorry, I whispered to him and the woman in the mirror, as if they were one and the same.
When I came out of the restroom, the attendant asked nervously, “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I said, straining to find a smile. I went to the counter and spread out my map. “I’m looking for a village called Cherkeh. It’s supposed to be around here.” I swept two fingers across an admittedly large, perfectly blank region to the east of Aldan and slightly north.
“What’s it called again?” she asked.
I repeated the name, and in my broken, weary mind I saw her mouth curling into a sneer and heard her saying acidly: What, are you crazy? There’s no village by that name; there never was. That was just a story they told you to make you do what they wanted, and like a fool you believed it, because you wanted an end to your pain and guilt, to all that had gone wrong, and your stupid faith in their lie took you straight to hell, and now you’re just another empty soul stumbling about in the wilderness.
But she didn’t say that. She gave me directions. Told me to hurry, as snow was in the forecast.
I folded the map quickly, pressed it to my chest. “Have a nice day!” I said, because she seemed like a nice person, and I wanted her to think of me as a nice person, too.
At some point the next day, I pulled off the road and tried to sleep for a few hours bundled in blankets. But it was too cold. I had to turn the engine on to warm the cabin every fifteen minutes or so. Eventually, I gave up, steered the car back on to the pavement, and drove through another pitch black night. Flurries of snow swirled occasionally in the headlights, and were swept away by a bitter wind. At about two a.m., the highway turned to dirt, and the ride got bumpy. I didn’t mind, because the jolting kept me awake. I worried about hitting a deer, but, on the cusp of dawn, it was a wolf that obstructed my way. A magnificent pale gold, silvery creature with glimmering dark eyes pricked by red. Its ears twitched with what might have been a question, or nerves—it had, after all, been caught dead-on by two rapidly approaching beams of light. But it didn’t give way, didn’t yield to the invader. I had to stop the truck and wait patiently until it had made its dominance clear, until it moved out of the spotlight willingly, lanky haunches rolling with slick grace.
In mid-morning, a hand-painted sign announced the village of Cherkeh. I couldn’t quite believe I’d arrived, and soon started to wonder whether the entire place consisted of a sign and nothing more, because for a few miles all I could see out the window was a flat, snow-covered plain melting by degrees under a harshly burning white sun. Finally, some dilapidated wood-frame houses came into view. Smoke curled from chimney pipes; silver satellite dishes refracted the sun’s brilliant rays. A little bandy-legged man trundled along the side of the road.
I pulled over and rolled down the window. “I’m looking for Katarina Melnikova. Do you know her?”
He seemed embarrassed, shook his head.
“Lena Tarasova?”
He pointed. “Brown house. Not far.” His skin was like grainy brown leather, and he was missing his front teeth.
Further on, a billboard warned about the dangers of alcohol; the next presented a huge color-intensified photograph of a smoker’s diseased lung. Unambiguous messages from the Department of Public Health.
The town hub consisted of three buildings: a meeting hall, general store, and Sibneft station. A couple of beat-up cars and an old tractor were parked outside the store. No one was in sight. A little further along, I came to a brown house with a green painted door, bigger and in better shape than most of the others I’d passed. Beside it, set well back from the road, there was a large barn, unpainted but in fairly good condition, with a snow-spattered, fenced-in yard of frozen mud.
I was seized with nerves as I parked on the snow-packed street. What if it was the wrong house? What if it was the right one, and Lena didn’t want to take me in?
I sat in the car, nearly paralyzed with dread, trying to make out if anyone was home. There was no car in the deeply rutted driveway, but a tendril of smoke was curling above the roofline from a chimney at the rear of the house. The house itself was one-story, with small windows flanking the front door, each framed by the fanciful carved shutters endemic to the region, and underlined by window boxes filled with snow-dusted sprays of pine and spruce. In the front yard, there was a sloping earthen mound the height of a short man, a wooden door set into its face. It probably went to an underground vault cut into the permafrost where food could be kept frozen all year round. The entire lot was enclosed by low, unpainted, nearly rotted post fence.
A movement in one of the front windows caught my eye. Someone had let a lace curtain fall back across the glass. It was time for me to go and introduce myself.
The wooden gate wobbled, didn’t open all the way, so I sidled through it and made my way up the shoveled path, feeling horribly conspicuous. At the front door, I hesitated, letting the frigid air sting my cheeks, until I found the courage to knock.
THE DOOR WAS opened almost immediately by Lena Tarasova. I easily recognized her short, blunt haircut and heavy, black-rimmed eyeglasses. In tasteful, well-made clothing, with an erect posture that made her seem taller than she really was, she had the polish of an executive secretary. Pleasant yet cool; friendly yet distant. She kept half her body hidden behind the door, as if prepared to shut it at a moment’s notice.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“Hello, Lena. I’m…” choking on the intimate words your niece, I settled on, “…from America.”
Her eyes flicked behind me to take in the Toyota parked on the street.
“Come in, Natalie,” she said calmly.
She ushered me in to a quaint living room, indicating pegs where I could hang my coat and a space beside the door where I could leave my boots.
“Misha said you might come. But that was months ago.” She took the Samaritan’s monstrous parka from my hand as I kicked of
f his obviously oversized boots. There was a watery pink stain at the toe of one of his baggy socks that was either his blood or mine from a blister. Lena glanced at the boots and socks doubtfully.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
I was speechless. Lena’s house was so warm and cozy, and she herself seemed so reliably normal, that for a moment I wondered whether my experiences were real and true, or just a long nightmare I was finally waking from.
She seemed to sense my distress and bustled off, leaving me to follow. “Come to the kitchen, and I’ll make some tea. Have you had a long trip?”
“Yes, very long,” I was able to say. A million agonies long. Longer than I’d ever dreamed.
The kitchen was at the back of the house. A row of square windows overlooked the side of the barn and a flat snow field running toward a hazy white horizon. Radiating heat from a corner of the room was a wood-burning stove of dun-colored clay, the irregularity of its conical shape attesting to the fact that it had been made by human hands. A blend of residual aromas hung in the air—fried eggs, maybe, and cream.
“We were worried about you,” Lena said with a hint of admonishment as she filled the kettle.
FINDING KATARINA M. Page 29
