Notes From My Captivity

by Kathy Parks

“I eto vse?” she asks.

  That is all?

  “Prosti, mama.”

  Sorry.

  She frowns, looks at me.

  “Prosti,” I say.

  Vanya suddenly bursts into rapid Russian. His finger twirls in the air like a helicopter blade. Clara and Gospozha look fearful. He must be telling them about what happened earlier this afternoon, how we were almost discovered.

  Gospozha shakes her head and says something I don’t understand.

  They go back and forth. I wait for Vanya to tell on me, let them know I was trying to escape again, express what a traitor I am, but evidently he says nothing, because they don’t even glance at me. I can’t really blame Vanya for tackling me. He was just protecting his family, trying to keep them a secret from the people who had come looking for me.

  Finally Vanya and his mother finish their conversation and she goes back to her sewing. I’m not really sure what just happened. Why didn’t he tell on me? Could it be that he might forgive me a little?

  “Vanya,” I say softly, trying to get his attention. I want to apologize, start over. I don’t want to blow all the progress I’ve been making, earning his trust.

  He doesn’t look at me. He leaves the flint on the table and takes off out the door, closing it hard.

  Gospozha and Clara exchange glances. There is nothing I can do except pretend that all is well. I make a gesture to help them with the sewing. Gospozha shakes her head.

  “Nyet, pochisti kartoshku.”

  No, peel the potatoes.

  She hands me a knife and points to a bucket of potatoes next to the stove.

  After dinner, by faded light, I slip off into the woods. I know Marat may be lurking nearby and I’m not supposed to wander off alone, but I’ll take my chances. I still have an hour before sundown, and I make my way down the main path past the outhouse and keep going, following smaller paths until finally nothing is left but the floor of the forest. I remember a landmark of a rotted tree stump, find it, and continue on a few hundred paces. Yes, I remember that enormous pea shrub. Yes, that cluster of stones. And then there it is: Vanya’s tree. The one that contains his secret writings. A shiver runs up my spine. I feel like some kind of deep-woods detective.

  I look behind me and listen hard. No footsteps. I’m alone. And I realize how few times I’ve really been alone in the past month. Maybe I shouldn’t have come here. But I want to see those journals again. Maybe there is some clue to Vanya that I can discover there. I don’t even know what I’m looking for. Something that might explain how to get close to him again.

  I turn and shove my hand into the hollow of Vanya’s tree and feel around. My hand touches his notebook. I take it out and reach back in. I touch two more books, withdraw them. Stare at the covers.

  An American in Russia: A Complete Field Guide to Familiar Words, Phrases, and Idioms.

  Fifty Shades of Grey.

  I don’t have time to ponder the irony of a Russian hermit learning English from a field guide and a sex novel. I realize that Vanya was there for the murders at the camp—maybe not as a participant, but he didn’t stop his brother. He was too busy grabbing plunder. I reach my hand into the tree a final time and touch something completely foreign in these woods. My breath catches in my throat as I draw out the object and stare at it.

  It’s my recorder. Saved from the fire, intact. I turn it on. The light glows faintly. I hear my own voice.

  It’s the third day on the river. Viktor’s got his shirt off. He’s really pale. Lyubov tells him to put it back on. Dan adds to the freewheeling sense of fun by staring grimly at a map.

  The recorder slows and stops. The light goes off. I have lost myself. Lost who I used to be. I’m just a primitive, dusty, tangled-haired girl holding a gadget from a distant world. I stare at it. It’s a hunk of metal now. Enough heat and pounding and maybe you could make a spearhead out of it.

  “Adrienne.” I jump at the sound of my name. Vanya is standing there. I don’t know when he slithered up through the woods. He’s caught me with all his possessions. The ones he stole from other people. I’m suddenly afraid of him. And yet, I’m angry, too. So angry that he’s not what he seemed to be. I hold out the recorder. “Why, Mr. Technophobe, would you hold on to this?”

  He must understand at least the first word, why, because he lowers his eyes. “You,” he says. “You speak.”

  “Uh-huh.” My tone is completely lacking in warmth and civility. “And my friends speak. Who are dead. And my stepfather. Who is dead. I guess saving the solar charger was too much trouble for you.” I let the recorder fall to the ground and pick up the books. “And these. These explain why you learned English so fast. And you’re probably learning how to treat a lady too. What are you going to do, make me a pair of handcuffs out of vines?”

  Vanya looks bewildered. I’m talking too fast for him to understand, I’m sure, but my tone is unmistakable.

  I throw down the books. “You were there, Vanya. And maybe you could have saved them. But you didn’t even try, did you?”

  He is shaking his head. I can almost see the stream of language flood his ears and get tangled up inside him like panty hose in the dryer, knotted, useless. I speak slower.

  “What happened . . . to . . . my . . . friends?”

  His eyes widen as the words register. Then suddenly he lunges forward and grabs my hand, pulling me off balance and into the woods.

  * * *

  The Osinovs invite belief, not idealism. One day when I finally meet them face-to-face, I may find out they are not the family I want them to be, that they are the family they are.

  Dr. Daniel Westin

  New York Times article

  * * *

  Nineteen

  The cold water had preserved Dan. Sergei and the crew were not so lucky, as though luck of that sort would matter when you’re dead. I smell them before I see them. The odor is terrible. The reek of death, that bracing rot, hits me before I even see the bank.

  I stop. “I don’t think I want to see them,” I tell Vanya in a shaky voice.

  “Come,” he says sternly. He tugs at my hand. Reluctantly I allow him to lead me down through the brush at the edge of the woods to the bank where the bodies lie. I put my T-shirt over my face and don’t care that this exposes quite a bit of my stomach. I thought they’d be naked, in the positions that they died in. Instead, they lie partially covered with branches whose leaves have paled into a sickly yellow. Animals have gotten to them, scattering rotten parts around the bank. I see bones. I see a scalp, a black hand with bones sticking out of the fingers.

  I turn away and vomit. When I turn back, I see Vanya approaching the pile. His shirt is also pulled over his face. He reaches his hand beneath the branches, feeling around.

  “What?” I shout at him. “Forget something? Fifty Shades Darker? Well, it’s not there. Why don’t you just leave them alone? Haven’t you done enough?”

  I can’t look at what they’ve become. Instead, I rush back into the woods and lean against a tree, waiting. If I close my eyes, I know they’ll be alive again. Lyubov reading her trashy novel; Viktor laughing. Dan gnawing on his pistachio nuts, letting their shells trail down the current. And Sergei. The smile he wore when he was flirting. Even his scowl of drunken intention, frightening as it was at the time, meant he was still warm and breathing. Still making mistakes and living to regret them.

  Vanya’s footsteps move up behind me. I’m not afraid of him anymore. Why should I be afraid? What is there to worry about now that everyone is gone? Why should I be the one left anyway? I turn around.

  “What did Marat do?” I ask. “Smother them? Strangle them?” He squints at me, like my question is the eye of a needle that’s too small to see. “Did you just watch him kill my friends?”

  Finally he shakes his head. “No.”

  “YES!” We glare at each other. His face is red. There is no friendship in his eyes. We are enemies.

  His breathing slows. A bit of the flush lea
ves his face. Never taking his eyes from mine, he offers up his closed fist for my inspection.

  I look down at it. “Chto eto?”

  What is this?

  He opens his hand. At first I can’t identify the dried-up and blackened objects. Then I see the tiny caps, the pieces of stem.

  Mushrooms.

  “Bad,” he says softly. He thinks hard, struggles with the word. “Pizone,” he says.

  “Poison,” I correct him in a whisper. I shut my eyes tight and see so clearly the four of us in a bar in Moscow, taste of dark beer on my tongue, Dan’s unamused stare, and Lyubov and Viktor laughing merrily. Someone told me there are magic mushrooms in that forest. Imagine the colors to see!

  I sink to my knees. My eyes flood with tears. A rush of pure guilt washes over me. I’ve misjudged him and Marat and the rest of the family. None of them are murderers. And they are only holding me out of self-preservation. They can’t trust me to keep their secret. The people I have found, and who have found me, are not monsters. They are just a family who wants to be alone.

  “What is the matter?” Vanya says.

  I just shake my head.

  On the way back to the hut, I ask Vanya about the story Yuri Androv told my father, how they kidnapped him, how he feared for his life, how he heard Marat telling Vanya he was going to cut his throat.

  Vanya smiles. “Pravda,” he says.

  True.

  “Pravda?” I repeat.

  Vanya stops, touches my arm, smiles again.

  “Marat khochet vsekh ubit.”

  I still don’t understand. So he tells me in English.

  “Marat wants to kill everyone.”

  I’m starting to think that even Marat is all bark and no bite. I ask Vanya more about Yuri’s story. Yes, they did capture him. He was drunk. No, he didn’t escape. They got tired of him, decided no one would believe his story, took him by canoe halfway down the river, then let him go on a bank.

  I want to tell Vanya that I’ll get drunk too, if his family will just let me go. But I like my other plan better. The one where I up my game by walking close to him and repeatedly touching his arm.

  We’re halfway back to the hut. Darkness fell as we walked, and now Vanya has apparently decided that we’re going to camp here for tonight, on this riverbank. I wonder how many hermit-family rules we are violating right now, how many pages of the household Bible are curling with indignity.

  Thou shalt not go off to clear yourself of murder and not return by nightfall.

  Now that I’ve realized that the Osinovs are not going to harm me, I’m much less afraid of them, although I still have a healthy respect for their wrath, especially Marat’s. Vanya sits me down on a large stone, rolls up another one for him, and goes off to scout for firewood as I wait and watch the evening sky. I’ve finally gotten used to my homemade cast, its bulk and unbending boards, although it itches a little. I find a stick to scratch under the boards and then contribute my homemade tool to the pile of kindling as I think of Vanya, immediate as the river, Vanya digging my stepfather’s grave, Vanya innocent of any terrible act that would make him terrifying. Vanya who now returns with wood from the forest, places it down, and begins to arrange it.

  I watch him work, the graceful way he moves, as though born to the woods and the harsh tasks within it. And yet, there is nothing primitive about him beyond his beard and clothes and his scraggly hair. I imagine him now holding the strange device to his ear and hearing my voice. That astonished expression at the tiny box with the girl’s voice. Had he heard my voice first there, or had he been nearby in the woods, watching me, listening?

  Something tells me that he has grown up in these dark woods and can easily lead me back to the hut without a flashlight or torch, by the light of the stars and half-moon, or simply by instinct. Maybe he has seized upon this occasion to be alone with me. I’m thinking tomorrow morning we’ll be in trouble, though exactly what trouble means in this instance is unknown and probably unprecedented.

  I try to tell him in Russian that I want to learn how to make a fire, give up and say it in English.

  Vanya pauses, then nods, looking pleased. “Okay,” he says. The night is cool but tolerable. An owl cries out. The leaves flutter in the wind and the river runs past us, calmer in this stretch.

  “Vanya,” I say.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry because why?”

  “Because . . .” I wave my hand toward the miles of woods now between us and the bodies. “I was wrong about you. Wrong about your family. They are not monsters. They’re a family, just like my family back in America. I should have thought maybe the crew ate something poisonous. I guess I was too busy looking for someone to blame rather than think maybe it was their own fault, that they died because they weren’t careful. Maybe it comes from being an American, thinking when something bad happens, there’s got to be a bad guy somewhere responsible for it.”

  His face doesn’t change. It’s hard to say whether I’m forgiven or that Vanya’s concentrating solely on the task at hand. He arranges a few big sticks so they fan out from one another, then places the smaller sticks in the same pattern on top of them, until they form a structure about a foot high. He sprinkles the center of the contraption with a measure of twigs. His movements are easy, effortless. Vanya wears a sack around his waist that seems to function as a mini tool kit. He removes from the sack a tinderbox containing a piece of steel and a shard of flint. He finds a flat, dry leaf and sprinkles some dry moss on top of it, then gently lays it between us.

  “Come,” he says, holding his hand out. I move over next to him. Sit really close. Lean in. I feel the heat of his body. I smile very close to his face. Look him in the eyes until he lowers his own, embarrassed.

  He demonstrates how to strike the flint against the steel until it produces a spark, then shows me how to catch the spark on the moss, stoking it with his breath until a flame rises, tender and fragile like a prayer from an unbeliever. He breathes on it encouragingly until it becomes a busy little flame, then suddenly blows it out, leaving the masterpiece to live on in a puff of smoke. He gathers some more moss, places it on another dry leaf, and then hands the tinderbox to me.

  I like the perfection of the story he’s telling me, one about the birth of fire that I understand from beginning to end without the use of words. I never knew that in silence, intentions could be made so clearly and simply and eloquently, and it’s with this sense of wonder that I take the items from him and try to build a flame with what I’ve learned.

  Clumsily, I take the flint and try to strike it. Nothing happens. I might as well be clicking two marbles together. Vanya laughs, the corners of his mouth turned up flirtingly. Making a fire, like the pottery scene in Ghost, must be sexy the world over. He adjusts my fingers and the angle of the strike, nods at me to try again. This time I produce a series of sparks that die in the wind. Vanya mutters something encouraging in Russian and shields the operation from the wind with the shell of his hands. I try again. Finally one catches, and Vanya helps me breathe on it. Gently, the flame so small, spreading, smoking, our faces close, the crosswind of our breaths encouraging the blaze to grow. We feed it slowly and keep breathing. His eyes meet mine. Slowly he leans forward and so do I, feeling the warmth of the tiny fire on my chest and under my chin.

  Our lips are moving closer. In a moment they will touch.

  “I like to bite those lips,” he murmurs.

  I pull back, shocked.

  “What?”

  His eyes fly open wide. He looks confused. He touches his lips. “Bite . . . lips?”

  I let out the breath in my lungs. “No,” I say pointedly. “You don’t bite on the lips. You kiss on the lips.”

  “Yes!” he says, his eyes lighting up. “Kiss.”

  But suddenly I feel cold and annoyed. The moment is gone. Fifty Shades of Grey reached out its long, long paw and ruined it. When we get back to camp I’m going to burn that novel.

/>   I’ve never slept in the woods before, not this way, without a tent or even a blanket. After we eat our dinner (some berries that Vanya scavenged), I close my eyes and stretch, the universal signal for I’m done with this night. The fire is strong and warm on the front of my body, the woods cold and dark on the back. I gather some ferns and pile them together for a homemade pillow, then lay my head on it, drawing up my knees. Vanya watches me, says nothing. He’s seemed hesitant ever since our epic almost bite/kiss. A breeze comes up and I shiver. Vanya adds more kindling to the fire, but it’s no use. The back of me is cold.

  “Vanya . . .” I begin, but sigh. The concept of platonically spooning might take hours to describe, so I motion him over and make gestures and throw out words until he finally gets it. He lies down beside me and puts his arms around me. Immediately I feel the heat from his body.

  “Good?” he asks.

  “Yes, good.”

  I have to admit, lying in Vanya’s arms could not be used as a torture anywhere in the world. I hear his breathing.

  “Cold?” he whispers.

  “No, warm.” I wonder if he’s searching through his mind for some more Fifty Shades of Grey pillow talk. You’re here because I’m incapable of leaving you alone. Well, that’s true.

  All things considered, it feels good to be here, in the arms of an obscure Russian hermit, under the stars, crickets sounds, and wind through trees.

  I hear a rustle out in the dark. Immediately my muscles tense, and Vanya’s arms tighten around me.

  “Medved?” I ask.

  Bear?

  He giggles. “No,” he says. “No bear. Belka.”

  “Belka?” I ask. “What is a belka? Never mind, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

  Just before I fall asleep, I remember belka means squirrel.

  My eyes flutter open. I jerk in Vanya’s arms, my heart racing. The little girl kneels in the cold ashes of the fire. She smiles at me and says my name again.

  “On idyot.”

  He is coming.

  Twenty