by Kathy Parks
“You need meat,” Viktor says to Dan, flexing his bicep. “Meat keeps you strong.”
“Elephants are strong,” Dan replies, “and they don’t eat meat.” I can tell by his tone that he means it in a jokey way, but as usual his rhythm is off and they start talking among themselves. I want to apologize for him and tell them that I once had a father who would have fit right in with this crew but that he was taken out and this new man was dropped into his place. But since they’ve worked with him before, they know his joke-telling skills are nonexistent.
The canned beef doesn’t taste too bad. It has enough salt, that’s for sure. The Osinov family would love this food.
It’s now dark, and the stars across the sky burn down on us. I thought I knew stars in the mountains of Colorado, but they seem a world away from these stars, this clear sky. It’s so dazzling that I have to close my eyes every once in a while. When I do, the patterns of the stars stay there, and I stare at a more immediate sky, right beneath my lids.
“What are you doing?” Sergei asks. He’s managed to maneuver closer to me as Dan stares into Viktor’s camera, watching a playback of some of his commentary on the Osinovs from earlier in the day.
“I’m looking at the sky,” I say. “I want to take a photo, but it won’t matter. A photo will never do this sky justice.”
“I grew up with this sky. I don’t notice it much.”
“Well,” I say, “maybe you’d notice it if you were taken away from it.”
“I have no reason to leave.”
I’m looking at his face, studying it.
“What are you looking at?” he asks.
“I’m picturing you with an unfortunate face tattoo,” I say. “Like a jellyfish or a Nike logo.”
“‘Just do it,’” he says.
I’m shocked that advertising has come all the way out here. I picture the Osinovs wearing cross-trainers.
Dan watches playbacks. He twirls his finger and nods in a gesture that means, “Let’s see some more.” The Russian crew murmurs to each other, deep in conversation. The river rumbles in the dark.
The bottle they were passing around earlier is empty now. Sergei offers me his flask. I shake my head.
“Why not?” he asks.
“I don’t want to.”
He gives me a look and turns up the corners of his mouth. By firelight I can just see the razor stubble on his cheeks.
“Why?” he asks. “Because drinking makes you want to kiss me?”
“I told you, I have a boyfriend.”
“If he loves you so much, why is he not here with you?”
“Only essential personnel were allowed on this trip.”
“And you consider yourself essential? Or did your stepfather just let you come to shut you up?”
I can’t tell if he’s making fun of me or not. I glare at him.
“I’m joking,” he says. “I’m happy you are here. If not, it would just be one woman—and she’s more like a man.” He grabs another piece of wood and throws it on the fire. I wonder how much we have in common, like basic things. Whether he owns a dog or ever threw a chain on his bike or carved a pumpkin or split a wishbone with someone, or fished out a strand of spaghetti from a boiling pot and threw it against a wall.
“What do you want?” he says.
“Want?”
“Yes, want. From life.”
“I want to tell stories. True stories. There are enough made-up stories in the world.”
“There are stories in America, in your town. Why come all the way to Siberia?”
“Because this is a big story.”
“You mean, this family?”
I only shrug in response. I’m not sure I know Sergei enough to trust him with the truth: that my story will be the lack of this family. It will be the lack of my own, after my father was killed. It will be about living with a man too busy chasing legends around to be a second father to me. It will be about the price of an insane and fruitless quest. And I’ll throw in some jokes. Readers like jokes.
Sergei takes a drink from his flask. “You’ve never told me whether you believe in them.”
“I don’t not believe in them,” I lie. “My mind is open. But I do wonder how a family can survive thirty winters in a place like this, at thirty below zero.”
“Then why are you here if you’re not certain they even exist?” he asks.
“I want my version of this story to be heard.”
He sets down his bowl and swigs from his flask. “That’s the thing about Americans. I have taken them down this river before, into the woods, hunting, exploring. They always want a story. They want to see something dangerous, uncivilized. They want a little change, a little danger. Then they want to run back to civilization, part changed but mostly the same. The trouble is, you can’t control Siberia. It might give you a little danger, or none, or a lot.”
“My father’s dead.” I don’t know why I said it. It just came out.
Sergei raises his eyebrows, glances over at Dan.
“How many times do I have to say it?” My voice has an edge to it. “He’s my stepfather. He’s not my father.”
Dan looks my way, then back into the camera. He’s heard me. The tone in my voice could not have been kind.
“My father,” I say in a lower voice, “was running near our home and was killed by a drunk driver. So don’t talk to me about how dangerous Siberia is. Guess what? Colorado is dangerous. The corner of Harper Street and Green Street is dangerous. A fucking Ford Escape is dangerous. A twenty-two-year-old idiot coming back home from a sorority party when you’re taking a run around the neighborhood is dangerous.”
Sergei looks a bit taken aback. “I’m sorry about your father.”
“I think it was quick. I don’t think he even saw it coming.”
* * *
If true, the tale Yuri told me in his cramped and cluttered apartment is a spectacular one indeed. Kidnapped and bound by a menacing hermit with wild eyes and disheveled hair. The hut in the woods. The young sisters who spoke in not only Russian but also in their own language that sounded like the cooing of doves. The severe older woman and her dreamy, gentle husband, who only asked, with sadness in his voice, “Did the Devil send you?” And the boy, who stood very close and demanded if he had any books, then stole his pen and journal like a monkey stealing food.
Dr. Daniel Westin
New York Times article
* * *
* * *
Why did an esteemed professor fall for the tale of Yuri Androv? Why do any of us fall for tales, legends, rumors? Because part of us is still a child. Part of us wants to believe.
Sydney Declay
Washington Post article
* * *
Six
The firelight glows through the fabric of my tent. I’ve always liked tents, the way they separate you from everything, creating a world inside a world. Sometimes I imagine lying inside a series of tents like a Russian nesting doll, going on forever, so that it would take someone years to cut through to get to me.
The warmth of the fire still can’t push away the chill in the air. I have on insulated socks and long johns, and my sleeping bag is thick with goose down. But my face feels cold to my fingertips. If Siberian nights are this frigid in June, what are they like in December?
I stare at the ceiling of the tent, my breath making mist in the air as I listen to the voices outside grow louder. Dan has gone to bed, and the crew is probably partying. Breaking out more bottles. I sniff. The aroma of marijuana smoke drifts into the tent. I’m not sure if one of the crew managed to smuggle it into Moscow or if Sergei did the honors. I do know that my stepdad is not down with marijuana, or any other drug for that matter, and if he wakes up and notices it, there’s going to be hell to pay.
I drift off to sleep, and when I wake up, there’s a girl in my tent, sitting in the broad stripe of moonlight that comes though the plastic window.
I gasp.
She’s small and th
in and looks about twelve. Barefoot, a sackcloth dress. Unkempt brown hair and delicate features. Pale skin, almost purplish lips. Something warm and playful in her smile makes me more mystified than afraid.
I raise myself to look at her. She speaks to me in a sweet, soft language that sounds a bit like Russian and yet is something much stranger. In those words I understand nothing but moods and tones. It’s like listening to the rain in the woods; whatever meaning lives in the sounds is lost to me, but like the rain, the effect is calming. I can hear curiosity, though, and delight, and wonder. She seems to understand my confusion. She stops and slowly, deliberately says something that sounds much more like the Russian I’ve heard from my companions.
“Ya tebya vizhu.”
She disappears.
My heart is beating wildly. I wave my hand in the space where the girl disappeared. I’m wide awake, skin prickling on my arms. What in the hell was that? Slowly, I force my breathing to steady. I can’t get back to sleep. I stare at the top of the tent, at the steel bar that holds everything up, sounding out the words again and again, afraid I’ll forget them.
“YEAH tee BAH VISH U.
“YEAH tee BAH VISH U.
“YEAH tee BAH VISH U.”
At first light I’m out at the campsite, where the crew moves slowly, Dan studies the route, and Sergei boils water for coffee.
“YEAH tee BAH VISH U,” I tell Sergei.
He raises his eyebrows and smiles.
“I see you, too.”
The day is brutal. It’s raining. We have to keep stopping to chainsaw trees that are blocking our path, and the river has grown swifter, more dangerous. The boat lurches from side to side. Sometimes it’s so shallow that rocks scrape the bottom, and all of us except Sergei have to get out and walk along the river to take the weight off the boat so it can pass through the shallows. My face is sweating and I can barely breathe.
“You okay?” Dan asks me.
“I’m fine,” I say huffily. I don’t want to be the weak link, that’s for sure.
I’ve decided to say nothing of what I saw—or thought I saw—in my tent the night before, although this theme of a little girl appearing—first in the road on the way to the airport, then in Sergei’s father’s dream, then in mine—is starting to spook me. Could my mind just be playing tricks on me? At any rate, I keep it to myself. Sydney Declay once said: A great reporter knows how to pull things out of others—idle gossip, rumors, facts—but one of her best weapons is her own careful silence.
The river is starting to scare me, too. I know my way around the rapids of Colorado, but these are different. As though they’re waiting for me, luring me in, and then pouncing. My nerves rattle every time the boat lurches and the sides scrape the rocks. We have to keep on guard, duck under the fallen trees where there’s space so we won’t be knocked out of the boat.
Okay, seriously, how could the Osinovs have made it up this crazy river in a dugout canoe? Now that I’m here, living it, feeling it, that notion seems impossible. I glance at Dan. Is that what true belief is, a rejection of all evidence and experience that contradicts what you are already sure exists?
We haven’t seen a single soul on the river since we passed the last settlement, and it’s a strange feeling to see some part of the world that hasn’t been put to use. I think of the people crowding the farmers’ market in Boulder, the traffic jams in Denver, the photos I’ve seen of the swimming pools in China thick with people end to end. The earth is a fat, patient horse being ridden by a hoard of tourists, and yet this river has managed to say, “Leave me alone,” and get away with it.
We eat lunch on the boat, passing roasted sunflower seeds and jerky around. Dan eats some kind of plant protein mixture. I speak very softly into my recorder so no one will hear.
I can’t stop thinking about the girl. She was so real. Like I could have put my hand out and touched her. And the tone of her voice. It was like she knew a secret about me. Something she was just about to reveal before she faded away. Could this be one of the girls that Yuri described? He mentioned the light brown hair—
“What are you mumbling about?” Sergei asks.
“Just a dream I had.”
“Was it about me?”
“Not so much.”
Later in the afternoon, the channel gets narrow and canyons close in steep and craggy, denying us sunlight and sky, and the trees withdraw, leaving exposed black granite. The rain slows, then stops.
We round a corner and I suck in a hard whistle of air.
I am the first to see the enormous beast, and my gasp directs the others’ attention to the shore ahead, where a bear stands on the bank next to the rushing river. We come right for it, a hard current carrying us toward it as Sergei shoves the tiller hard to the side, trying to guide the boat away.
“Oh my God,” Lyubov breathes.
Sergei reaches for his rifle as the bear rears up on its hind legs. A cry escapes Dan’s throat, and the sound of it—so tiny, so helpless—freezes me to my place. Time slows down to a crawl so that each moment seems like a frame in a terrible dream about a bear. The motor strains against the rushing current. The bear stares right at me. Its head is enormous.
The urge to scream rises up in me, but my throat closes. No sound comes out.
Sergei is struggling with his rifle and the tiller. Viktor, the closest man to him, tries to rise in slow motion.
I think I hear my name again. I don’t even know who’s saying it. Maybe I’m saying it to myself.
The bear opens its mouth and lets out a roar. It’s not so much a sound as an intent to kill. To destroy, annihilate. The anger is so primitive and ferocious. Lips curled back and teeth enormous. The boat is drawing closer, and Sergei can’t hold the rifle straight, and Viktor can’t reach him in time, won’t reach him in time. I know all these things—I’m not like my father on the night he died, minding his own business—I see death coming. I hear and smell and feel it, it’s crazy and stupid and right on top of me, I close my eyes, my heart isn’t beating, I’m not breathing, I’m almost dead right now, and all it will take is a swipe of the great paw to scalp me clean, and the roar continues, it forces itself through my body, and there’s nothing that can be done anymore. . . .
Daddy, I think, and then something changes. Time is speeding up again. Senses rushing back to me. Suddenly shades of excited and breathless voices rise around me, and I open my eyes to my survival . . . the boat a few yards upriver, the bear behind us, the roar fading but the beast remaining on its hind legs as we chug onward between the sharp bluffs.
“Adrienne!”
I blink, shake my head. It’s Dan’s voice.
“Answer me!”
“I’m okay,” I gasp. I’m still trying to catch my breath, taking great heaves of the warm, clean air.
“Jesus,” Sergei whispers.
“Holy shit!” Lyubov declares.
Dan asks Viktor, “Did you get any film?”
“Film? Are you fucking with me?” Viktor answers. “I was busy shooting piss out of my pants!”
There is no fire when we camp that night on the riverbank. No one even bothers with dinner. Sergei seems too exhausted to flirt with me, which is fine, because I lack the energy to flirt back. Dan is not happy with our progress. We’re behind schedule by several hours.
“Fuck the schedule,” Viktor says.
“No,” Dan answers. “We have only so much time to find the Osinovs before we run out of supplies and money. The schedule means everything.”
“Tell that to the river,” Viktor answers.
Sleep comes to me quickly, despite the sounds of crickets and an owl that calls from nearby. I’m thinking about crickets and owls, how they sound the same in Boulder and Siberia, no change in tone and tempo, that universal cricket-owl symphony that travels the globe. I’m thinking about the bear again, how it stood up by the river and stared at us, just before the roar, that expression on its face that said, Ya tebya vizhu, but far less playfully than the gir
l from the dream. This is danger. This is what I thought I wanted.
I think my story has enough danger now.
The third day on the river is the worst. The rapids are even stronger here. The cliffs so steep that sometimes just a tiny sliver of narrow sky shows above us, the rocks too big and smooth for anything but sunlight and moss to live there. We use poles to help Sergei keep us off the rocks. The motion of the boat makes me want to throw up.
By midafternoon the water has calmed just a little bit, and maybe that’s what takes us off guard. The river turns sharply, and we all see the fallen tree in front of us and all duck, except Viktor, who is loading his camera. There is a sickening crack of his head hitting the tree, and he falls forward into the bottom of the boat. His video camera falls the other way, making a loud clanking sound.
“Viktor!” Lyubov screams. She and Dan lean over him as Sergei looks for a place to stop the boat. But there is no bank in this stretch, just jagged rocks.
“Get the medic bag!” Dan barks at me, and I start pawing through his backpack. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lyubov, who has been stroking Viktor’s head, pull her hand away. It’s sticky with blood.
Finally I find the bag and toss it to Dan. He pulls out some compresses and puts them against the side of Viktor’s head. Viktor’s lids are half-closed. His body is limp. That face, always animated and full of good humor, is still now. A terrible feeling grows in the pit of my stomach.
The boat hits a current and the tip of it bucks. Dan and Lyubov have to hold on to the side with one hand and tend to Viktor with the other. Sergei mumbles something in Russian that sounds too pleading to be a series of curse words. I feel helpless. I would wish and hope and pray, but in my heart I don’t believe it would do any good. Instead I stare at Viktor. The shaking and pitching of the boat have no effect on him. He looks as peaceful as a man gently swaying in a hammock, and that’s what worries me the most. Once I saw a man who wore that same perfectly serene expression. He wasn’t on a hammock. He was in an ICU bed, and he wasn’t okay at all.
