The House of Frozen Dreams

by Seré Prince Halverson

  “You are Agafia?”

  “I am.” The woman wore a headscarf and wrinkles. She had kind eyes.

  “You … I think …” How could she know for sure? It had been over fifty years and she’d only spent a few hours with that young girl one day when she was fifteen.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t think you’re the Agafia I know.”

  “You maybe looking for Agafia Ruskoff. She is in Ural, the other village. You have come much too far out of your way.” Agafia began to close the door but Snag wedged her foot in the threshold.

  “Wait. I …” Snag held out the envelope, and Agafia took and read it, then placed her hand on her heart.

  “You come to talk about my granddaughter?” she said. She touched her aqua blue scarf where it was knotted behind her neck. She invited Snag in, offered water and insisted she sit at her kitchen table. Snag took the glass and thanked her.

  “I don’t suppose you have vodka,” Snag said, mostly as an attempted joke.

  One of Agafia’s eyebrows went up. “Yes, I do. But this information, do not share with anyone, inside the village or out. Except maybe Nadia. Nadia is okay.”

  “Of course.”

  “This, excellent way to start our mysterious conversation.” Agafia went to open the freezer and returned with two teacups and a frosty clear bottle, which she poured from until the cups were full, then hid the bottle again in the back of the freezer.

  “Oh my word,” Snag said, and lifted the full teacup to toast the woman sitting across from her. To sip like tea or take as a shot? She decided to sip.

  “Let me tell you before you begin. No use going to her parents. They are people of strongest conviction and are mourning again for forty days, as if she dies all over again! I am woman of deep faith. These are my people. Good people. Big hearts, hardworking people. But I do not agree with everything they believe. It is heritage of my blood not my brain, eh? Still, I am old, my husband dead, my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, they all live here.” She sat back, folded her arms across her chest. “So you see, I am here to stay. But. My heart, it breaks for Nadi.”

  “Will you just try to talk to her parents? Her father is your son, correct? She says he listens to you.”

  Agafia shook her head. “No. This would cause big problem.”

  “Agafia, do I seem familiar to you at all?”

  Startled, Agafia jerked her chin upward. “Do I know you?”

  She leaned in, peered into Snag’s eyes, kept peering, until Snag said, “It has been a very, very long time. Fifty-two years. There was one day. On the beach.”

  Agafia went back to the refrigerator to retrieve the vodka. As she opened it, one eyebrow raised. “Are you speaking of when Nadia left us?”

  “Sorry,” Snag said. “It must have been the other Agafia.”

  “You make habit out of being social with Old Believers?”

  While Agafia seemed to be appraising Snag, she topped her own cup off. (Snag had placed her hand over hers; she did have to make her way back before dark.) Snag told her of Nadia’s desire to go to art school and how she needed the transcripts and birth certificate.

  “Yes, I read this in letter. Ah, much easier than you thought. Me, I keep copies of all my children’s and my grandchildren’s documents in a fire-safe box. After my youngest son’s house burns down, we do this. So I will send them with you today, no problem. Except then we have no record of Nadia, as if she never existed here. This is not good.”

  “Maybe you’ll visit her where she lives now.”

  “Perhaps, but not likely. Not so easy for me to get around these days. Not like when I was young.”

  Snag wanted to ask her if she went on extremely long walks when she was young.

  Agafia tilted her head. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But you are able to walk all this way here to help my Nadia? What is your name?”

  “Eleanor.”

  “Eleanor. This is nice, beautiful name for you.”

  Snag felt the heat rush from her face down her chest. Blushing at age sixty-five. The vodka was getting to her. She wanted to stay and talk with Agafia all day and into the night, but the light was already fading and she loved Gilly. She stood.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to go. If I don’t, I’ll be stuck in the woods when it gets dark and I’m liable to end up fending off a pack of wolves. Not to mention the tide. Can you give me the papers?”

  “But these are the only records.”

  “What if I promise to mail them to you?

  “Ach. Mail is no good. What if they are lost?”

  “I’ll take good care of them,” Snag said and knew she would. “I’ll make copies and send them to you,” she said, and knew she would do this as well. “Give me a pencil and paper and we’ll both write our PO boxes so you can reach me if you don’t receive them.”

  With this, Agafia nodded. “Okay. Wait.” She returned with a manila envelope with Nadia Oleska Tolov, May 31, 1977 printed in English and again in Russian. Her scarf was gone, and her gray hair fell down her back. Snag thought she might indeed be the girl who once asked her for a kiss and she might just as well not be. The only thing that mattered was that she was Nadia’s grandmother and she was handing over the papers Nadia needed.

  “Now go, before darkness comes.” She took Snag’s arm and led her to the door. “Please tell Nadia her Baba loves her.” Her voice became high and tight. “Loves her so very, very much.” She handed her the envelope with Nadia’s name on it. “This is all I have of her. Hide it from the others under your jacket. Do not lose. Do you need directions to the other Agafia’s house?”

  Snag said no, it wasn’t necessary. She had everything she needed.

  Snag turned up the radio and hummed along. Mission most definitely accomplished. She couldn’t wait to get home and tell Gilly. “Woman,” Snag said aloud, practicing. “I’m finally, truly free. And I’m all yours. Plan on sticking around for a long time, Ms. Gilly Sawyer.”

  At the gas station on the outskirts of town, all lighted up and welcoming, Snag filled the truck. She had to pee, so she left the gas pumping and went to the women’s room. When she came out, several cars and a motorcycle had pulled in. A man stood with his hand on the same nozzle Snag had used, ready to remove it from her truck.

  “Excuse me? Can I help you?” she called, irritated. Why not use another pump?

  The man lifted his head and said with an accent, “Oh, your gas, it is done pumping. I was going to remove for you.” He stepped back to pull the nozzle out.

  As she moved closer, she recognized him. Oh Handsome One. She had definitely named him correctly. “Hey, I know you,” she said, and smiled. “Remember me? At the Spit Tune with my friend? Actually you didn’t see me then. But on the trail? We thought you were a bear and you thought we might shoot?”

  He pinched his eyebrows together then raised them with a nod. “Ah, yes! Yes! I do remember now. Please forgive me. The cold is dulling my brain, I am afraid. But you recognize me. You have good memory.”

  “I guess it was your eyes,” she said while she thought, Obviously. Those lupine eyes with black curly eyelashes. But his jaw line, that was striking too. “That’s a weird coincidence. I was just speaking to another Russian.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Old Believer. Out at the village. Altai.”

  “I am not Old Believer. Only Russian. There are big differences.”

  “Of course. You can shave when you want.”

  He chuckled. “For starters, yes. I am not one for living with big group. So what is this business you have with the people of Altai?”

  “Oh, long story.”

  He smiled his movie star smile. He said, “I have got quite a lot of time.”

  “I wish I did, but I have to get going. But nice talking to you.”

  “Likewise. Perhaps our paths continue to cross.”

  “You take care now.” Man, Snag thought as she climbed into the
truck, watching him fill up his motorcycle. A motorcycle on a night like this? He must be made of rugged stock. And there he was, flirting with her—she thought it might be flirting—even when Gilly wasn’t around. Maybe she hadn’t needed to feel jealous about him. Maybe, possibly, it was Snag he was interested in. Ha! Lose a little weight, and they start coming out of the woodwork, all walks of life, all genders. She had to admit, if every man in the world looked like that, she might have been tempted to play for the other team a time or two.

  As she pulled away, she realized that she’d left the manila envelope on the passenger seat while she went to the ladies’ room. There it was, with Nadia’s name and birth date printed in English and Russian. She’d promised Agafia she wouldn’t let it out of her sight and she’d already done exactly that. She felt inside for the papers. Still there. Of course they were. Who else would want them? Nevertheless, she pulled a U-turn. She was tired and couldn’t wait to get to Gilly’s to share her news, but Snag would go back. She would take them to Nadia right away. With Snag’s luck, if she took the papers home, the cat would shred them before morning. She noticed the single lamp of the motorcycle in the distance behind her until she turned off to head toward the homestead, and she wondered where in tarnation O Handsome One lived.

  SIXTY-ONE

  The next morning, Kache tramped through the fresh snowfall to feed the goats and found one of them, the pure white one Nadia had named Buttercup, dead. From a distance, he thought fireweed had somehow bloomed in winter. As he got closer, his stomach tightened. Not sweet Buttercup. He might have missed seeing her if her blood hadn’t seeped pink through the fresh layer of snow. The poor thing had probably been the prey of some hungry animal—a bear or a wolf, but since they were still in the middle of winter, the bear was unlikely. It looked like the beach hawks and eagles had been finishing her off. Kache looked around for evidence. The wind-brushed new snow covered any tracks left behind.

  Both Nadia and Kache took it hard. Especially Nadia. She’d grown attached to all the goats, and Buttercup had been her favorite. But Nadia had lost her share of animals over the years, and though she shed tears, there was a practicality in her sadness that Kache admired.

  A few days later, he helped her set up the tin cans on various sized pillars of snow. The long winter twilight cast its palest violet veil over the trees, the land, Nadia, everything. Kache stamped his feet to try to get the blood moving faster.

  “I think Buttercup would be very proud of you,” Nadia said, stepping back to appraise their work.

  He shrugged, checked his voice to make sure it sounded casual and wasn’t laden with this shift he’d been feeling. He’d always hated guns. But they lived out in the middle of the wilderness and lately he’d begun realizing the responsibility his father bore. He’d been able to keep them all safe, no small feat in Alaska—at least until the plane crash. A gun couldn’t protect you from everything, but if you ran into a sow and her cubs, a pack of wolves, an angry mother moose, a gun might be necessary, if to do nothing else but scare them away. It would soon be spring, and the bears would be waking up, cranky and hungry. “I just got to thinking. You’re probably right. If I’m going to stay here I should know how to shoot a gun. I shouldn’t leave everything up to you. We’re a team now, right?”

  She nodded. “But your father, he did teach you the basics, yes?”

  “He tried. I wasn’t a very willing or attentive student.”

  “But you got straight As.”

  He shook his head. “Is there nothing you don’t know about me? Yeah, okay. But it wasn’t my dad teaching Trig or World History. This was different.”

  “I see. I understand. Now,” she stepped back, “shoot.”

  As Kache held the .22 up to his shoulder, closed his eye, and lined up the bead on the first can, he knew he’d need to learn how to shoot the bigger shotgun if he actually needed to kill a bear or an angry moose. But this was a start. His numb finger pulled the cold trigger and to both his and Nadia’s amazement, he hit the can.

  “You are lying. You know how to shoot gun.”

  “Some of what he taught me must have sunk in there and stayed, after all.”

  He took another shot, missed, and then another and hit the next can. Nadia exchanged the .22 for the handgun. “Here, try this. We’ll save the shotgun for another day.”

  He blew on his hands, then missed a few times. It was harder to steady the handgun. She wrapped her arms around him from behind and helped him secure his right arm with his left. The next shot nailed it.

  “Kachemak Winkel. I think you are turning me on,” she said. She stepped back. He took another perfect shot. “Very—how do you say it? Macho? Yes.”

  “I thought you liked the sensitive songwriter types.”

  “I do. Especially when they can shoot like that.”

  They celebrated the successful target practice session with a different type of session on a stack of blankets in front of the woodstove. The spruce tree they’d chopped down stood in the corner, the branches heavy with lights and all of his mom’s decorations. Almost all of them, anyway. They’d had to throw out one box that shrews had taken over, but the rest of the ornaments were still in the paper his mom had carefully wrapped around them her last Christmas. She had let the boys pick out their own ornament every year and marked them, so along with the pretty glass balls, the handmade cloth Santas and painted wood gingerbread houses, there were Star Wars characters and baseball bats and a tiny guitar. Kache wondered what he and Nadia would do once they had kids; they’d have to get a bigger tree.

  It felt good to glow and sweat together when outside the frozen dregs of winter surrounded them. Nadia was so willing to let him explore her. After everything she’d been through, she’d told Kache that making love with him felt something like grace. Now she slept on her side facing away from him, her body illuminated by the fire and the twinkling white lights of the tree, and he saw plainly not only the carved B, but the small dashes of scars where Vladimir had pressed his knife. Sometimes Vladimir pressed the knife into her skin, far enough to draw blood, and sometimes deeper. She’d said that he liked to see terror in her eyes, that he held the knife to her breast or her throat and watched her face twist into panic until he grew stiff. The night he carved his initial into her was the night she’d refused him, and soon after, she had fled.

  The dashes looked like some strange code, or tracks in a field of snow: a message, a remnant, a territorial marking. She’d said he had been a trapper—an extremely patient and efficient one.

  Kache was filled with wanting to protect her. He wanted her to know she would always be safe right there with him. He would be vigilant against any threat. Bad men. Hungry bears. Crashing planes.

  She stretched like a silky pale cat and said over her shoulder. “Are you staring at my ass again?”

  “It is lovely.”

  “Kache, we both know that is not quite true. The last time I got my hair cut, I was admiring Katy’s tattoos. I am thinking of getting one to be as camouflage.”

  “What would you get?”

  “I was thinking of butterfly. See?” And she stretched her arm back and showed him how the B might form the right side of the wings—“Here, and here”—tracing, retracing with her finger, and then with his, where the other colorful wings would go.

  With her video camera plugged into her Mac, her stylish elfin haircut and new clothing, Nadia looked as if she might already be at film school. While she worked she sang along with one of his mom’s many Joni Mitchell albums—or tried to sing, anyway. “Oh but California …” Kache would never wince openly, he would never say to Nadia, You sound like a cat in heat, who is dying, and at the same time, fighting—because even though it was the god-awful truth, he knew she felt self-conscious about her voice, and this singing in front of him was her way of trusting him. It was a little disappointing that they would never sing in harmony, but also a relief; the woman couldn’t do every single thing perfectly, after all. Well, that a
nd never charging her cellphone. Which reminded him to remind her:

  “Did you happen to charge your cellphone?”

  She tilted her head way over to her shoulder and gave him the eyes.

  “How can you be such a technology guru and not remember to plug in your phone?”

  She’d picked up on the computer so quickly that she was now telling Kache how easy it was to edit a video. He knew nothing about film editing and could offer no help. Instead, he busied himself with snow shoveling, songwriting, and target practice. That, and plugging in her phone.

  “I’m going to need one more scene,” she said, leaning back in her chair, then twisting from side to side to stretch her back.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yes. You at the Spit Tune place. Singing.”

  “Well, I don’t know. It’s been a long, long time.”

  “Snag says they ask about you all the time. And your friend Marion sings there, yes? With some of the guys from your old band? It will be a reunion. I want to film there at this place. Please?”

  He could swear she was actually batting her long eyelashes at him. Was this universal? Where did women learn these things?

  Finally, Rex was tending bar. He’d hit his sixties and had a lot less hair on his head with a lot more on his upper lip. When Kache said, “Hey Rex,” the man almost jumped over the bar to hug him.

  “Winkel, my man it’s good to see you. Snag and Marion said you were back in town. But it sure as hell took you long enough to come by.”

  “Hey, I’ve been by, but you’ve been down in the Lower 48 working on your tan. I can see business is as good as ever.”

  “We’re in Alaska and this is a bar. Of course business is good. And Marion and the boys still keep everyone coming back. Rumor has it you’re playing and singing with them tonight.”

  “I heard a rumor like that too.”

  “Marion and Danny Boy are already setting up. Go say hi. And don’t you dare leave here without having a beer with me. Who’s the pretty gal?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Nadia, meet Rex.”

  They shook hands and Rex said, “You always did have a way with the ladies, Winkel.” Nadia blushed.