Notes From My Captivity

by Kathy Parks

  I’m happy.

  She looks at me, eyes wide. Smiles. Answers me in a sweet burst of dove talk, and we walk back to the hut together.

  As the sun goes down, my good mood fades. The potatoes are small. Some animal got into the stored nuts. And the fishing net was pulled in full of fish, whose weight broke the twine, and they all escaped. It’s time for me to leave. And I’m beginning to realize something.

  I might be falling for Vanya.

  Maybe I never realized it fully before, but now that it’s time to go, it hits me. It’s not like in America where we can text and FaceTime until one of us takes a plane to the other. This is a different world I’m going to. And it’s quite possible when I leave that I will never see him again. I know now that my father is with me always. But Vanya is here, in the wilderness, in the legend of the Osinovs. And I can’t stand the thought of leaving him.

  His family isn’t stupid. They know about us just as certainly as they know a wolf is nearby, or a squirrel is on the roof, or it’s about to rain. How could they not? Today at breakfast Vanya and I held hands openly in front of the family. Marat looked on with clear disapproval but said nothing. He and I have an unspoken agreement to leave each other alone, and that is fine with me. In another world, Marat would be living in another state with his family and we’d talk perhaps twice a year and exchange terse Christmas cards.

  According to my original plan, now is the time to go to Vanya and ask him to secretly take me back down the river in his new canoe.

  But I am done with secrets. Maybe because of all my work trying to gain the family’s trust—the help in the garden, the searching for flint, fighting alongside them to defeat the fire—I have a place at the table now. I have a voice, and I’m going to speak for myself.

  That night, after dinner, whatever dinner it was, there and then gone in a few moments, I speak.

  “Ya khochu chto-to skazat.”

  I want to say something.

  My voice is calm, but my heart thumps. The family looks at me, surprised. It’s still strange that I’m sitting with them and not off in a chair. And now I want to actually speak. What next, my own room?

  I go on, in broken Russian, hoping the words are in the right place, in the right tense. Knowing they probably are not, but hoping the family will understand.

  I used to be afraid of you. I didn’t understand you. But now you’ve become my family, and I love you.

  The family is motionless around the table. No one says a word. Vanya’s eyes blink when I say, I love you. I look at him when I say it. Hold my gaze on his face.

  Then I go on.

  I have another family that I love. A mother. A brother. They are looking for me. And I must go to them. Winter will be here soon. There is not enough food for all of us. I might die. You might die.

  Vanya and Marat exchange glances.

  I need to leave here. I need Vanya to take me back down the river.

  “No!” Vanya cries suddenly, but his mother holds up a hand to him. A tear suddenly darts down Clara’s cheek.

  You are my family. You are my secret. I will never tell the secret. I will protect you. I am a reporter, but I will lie for you. I promise you. I swear to you. They will never find you if you let me go.

  No one says anything for a long moment. Finally Vanya reaches across the table and takes my hand. Clara cries silently. Gospozha nods. I look at Marat, expecting an outburst of anger and disapproval.

  He looks at me and shrugs.

  It’s the closest thing to a smile that he will ever give me.

  I’m leaving. Not under the cover of the night, not breathing hard and looking over my shoulder. I’m leaving because my new family wants the best for me, and for them. So why am I devastated?

  I look around the faces at the table and burst into tears. I get up and rush from the cabin, run through the field of dying sunflowers, find the creek, shiver under moonlight, hugging myself, still crying.

  Vanya comes up behind me.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  It’s time for the truth. He deserves it. I turn and face him.

  “Vanya, I love you.”

  He looks absolutely stunned.

  I reach out and touch his face. “Love is a very easy thing in America. Because you already have enough food and enough clothing, and you’re not about to burn up in a forest fire or be eaten by a bear. So I guess I didn’t recognize I loved you at first. I was too busy surviving. And you know what, my grip on reality is definitely slipping. Or maybe reality itself isn’t all that real. But yes, I love you and that’s the truth.”

  I’m not sure how much he’s followed, but he leans forward. Our kiss increases my shivering.

  “I love you, too,” he says when we pull away from each other. “Adrienne, don’t go.”

  “Well, if you love me, you have to understand that I need to go home. I have a mother. I have a brother. I have a life. Winter’s almost here, Vanya. And you know what I said at the table is true. There’s not enough food.”

  He is silent. I think I hear a faint growl moving in his throat as though what I just said is an animal he can scare off.

  “Vanya, do you understand?”

  “I can keep you alive,” he answers stubbornly. “I see moose tracks. I see deer tracks. . . .”

  “I don’t care!” It’s our first fight as a couple, on the subject of my very survival. “Vanya, touch my arm.”

  I offer it to Vanya. “You feel the bone, don’t you? When I came here, there was no bone. Now I’m skinny. More bones will show.”

  “Okay,” he says at last. “I will help you go back.”

  “Thank you.” I put my hands on the sides of his face, draw him forward, and kiss him tenderly. That particular combination of soft lip and scratchy beard seems suddenly impossible to replicate, even among the hipster baristas of downtown Boulder.

  “Adrienne,” he whispers. “I want to go with you.”

  Twenty-Five

  We speak about it far into the night. It makes no sense. And yet we can’t let it go. Of course, we tell no one about this new twist in the plans. His family would never agree for him to go with me. And I can’t really blame them. What sense would it make to send their brother and son out into the world that had been so cruel to them?

  We’re leaving tomorrow.

  Clara and I work the garden alone. Since Gospozha is out of earshot, we sing a forbidden song. A little number by Adele. Vanya and Marat are off hunting, trying to make up for in meat what we lack in starch. I unearth a large potato and let out a shriek of joy. Clara smiles, claps her hands, and goes back to digging and singing. Her interpretation of “Someone Like You” is truly an original. The words, of course, are incomprehensible, but she’s got the tone down. She knows heartache. She knows loss.

  I have spent the past few hours picturing Vanya riding on a plane, experiencing television, navigating a subway, fondling a perfect orange at the supermarket, catching a foul ball in a catcher’s mitt he has just tried to eat. It’s all entertaining and ridiculous and heartbreaking and I don’t care. And what will I say? Oh, everyone’s dead, and meet this Russian boy I stumbled upon in the woods? It’s impossible to think too far ahead and not realize our plan’s a bit irrational. And yet, I’ve embraced stupidity, and hope, and things I can’t see. And if a reporter is just about the facts, I make a pretty bad reporter. Sydney Declay would be ashamed of me, but to be honest, her name sounds as foreign and strange now as that perfect orange.

  I’m going to miss this world. I’m going to miss this family. The rye grass waving. The new fall flowers blooming. Sunlight and birds and the simple tools: hoes, rakes, axes, even a crude hammer. This family is so resourceful. And I’ve led a really, really easy life.

  I want an easier life for all of them. When I see Gospozha patiently sharpening a needle against a whetstone, I think, Never mind that. I can get you a hundred bright, shiny needles. Or hell, a Nordstrom gift card. The candles they patiently make from deer hide a
nd animal tallow when they could have light with a flick of a switch. They could sleep on Sleep Number beds. They could go to movies. They could get their teeth fixed. They could have heat in the winter. They could meet people. They could love people. They could slide across the floor in their socks. They could sleep late and marry and rest and play Uno and have access to medicine and stand in front of the freezer door and eat ice cream out of a carton. They could have neighbors to look down on.

  And yet, I understand why they stay. The magic of their solitude. The comfort of their rituals. The strength of their loyalty and love. For better or worse, this is their home now. It will always be their home.

  And what if they did return to society? Would they run into a bunch of people who judged them, misunderstood them, were afraid of them as I once was? Why would I think the rest of the world would treat them any better than I once had?

  Clara stops singing. Her voice trails off and she looks at me, worried. I close my eyes to hear her speaking to me. I don’t understand a word—I probably never will—but the message is clear. She is worried that I don’t look happy. I take her hand and smile at her, then let go, and we go back to our song.

  It’s dark in the hut. Around me the family breathes. It’s begun to feel like music. And after tonight, I’ll never hear that music again. They are just another variation of a family, like every family I know. They just have less food and more magic.

  I want to crawl over to Vanya, put my arms around him, hold him. Maybe I’m selfish. Maybe he’ll be miserable. But I can’t stand the thought of him living out the rest of his life here, craving language, craving company, scribbling out his thoughts on a notebook that is already almost full. Thoughts that no one will get to read. I think about the notebook, all those neatly written words on a page. Wondering what they say. The letters blur and I drift off to sleep.

  I wake up with a start. It’s Zoya. She’s not smiling. Her arms are crossed. She’s even more real to me now since the ritual. It’s less like a dream and more like a family member just walked through the door.

  But it’s a different Zoya. She doesn’t smile at me. And when she speaks, she doesn’t whisper the words. She screams them, so loud I think her family will wake up.

  GO NOW!

  Twenty-Six

  This is my last day, and I am going to spend it looking for the final gift. One of the few real gifts I can give them, with my beady eyes and 20/20 vision. I carry the old pickax in my hand. A sack is tied around my waist.

  I didn’t tell anyone. I just left.

  The brothers are out hunting, and Gospozha and Clara are working on a new dress with the dull needles I threaded for them. After I’m gone, who will thread their needles?

  The woods are crisp and cool. This is the season when the hardier flowers grow. One of them has a bloom so enormous I can barely cover it with my hand. The petals tickle my palm.

  I keep thinking of Zoya’s words last night. GO NOW! She must know I’m going to leave and possibly take her brother. She must be angry with me. I didn’t tell Vanya about seeing her last night. I’m afraid her words might mean something to him, tickle some superstition in him that would make him change his mind. And I can’t change my own mind. I have no choice, unless I want to stay here and wither and freeze and later, flowers on my grave, visit Vanya in his dreams.

  Up ahead I see a glimmer among the rocks. Flint. Looks like a good chunk of it. I walk over, kneel, start chipping at it with the pickax. It’s even harder than it looked when Vanya did it. He got chunks but I’m just getting chips. This is hard work. Even though the air is cool, sweat forms on my face. I swing the ax over my head.

  Go now.

  I freeze, look up. The little girl is nowhere in sight, but her voice is loud and clear. I’m getting scared. I claw at the fragments of flint, and I’m hurriedly stuffing them in the sack when she shouts it.

  GO NOW!

  I look around wildly, heart pounding. Then I hear the words again, but now it’s my father’s voice shouting, GO NOW! He bursts from the woods from the clearing, no longer the calm, peaceful father I saw the night of the ritual, but urgent, wild-eyed, screaming, GO NOW! GO NOW! GO NOW!

  A growl behind me. I whip my head around. Fifty yards away, the bear barrels toward me. I drop the pickax, scramble to my feet, and run straight for the woods, the bear gaining on me, roaring now, my arms and legs puffing, losing my breath, fleeing as fast as I can, my ears ringing from the cacophony of the roar and the two voices shouting, GO! GO! GO!

  I’m at the edge of the woods now. My shoe catches on something and falls off, and I plunge into the trees, vines raking my face, the woods growing dark and thicker. The bear is right behind me, his roar has heat, and I throw myself into a stand of slender trees, trying to find shelter.

  The bear bats at me through the trees. His claws rake the air inches from my chest. He’s furious and foamy and determined, and I scream as the creature pushes on the trees holding him, the trees begin to give, and a set of claws comes out in slow motion and catches me just below the thigh. I hear my skin open. I feel blood pour down my leg.

  I fall back as the bear takes my leg in its mouth, but it’s so violent, so swift, that it’s painless. I don’t even know earth from sky from tree anymore. It’s all part of a pattern.

  Then I hear another growl, just as furious and distinct.

  Marat’s.

  The bear releases me, and I struggle to stay conscious as I hear the bloody battle going on between man and beast. My blood soaks the ground around me. I don’t hear the bear’s roar, or Marat’s.

  Confusion.

  Vanya’s rushing footsteps; he’s got me now. Arms around me, saying my name, begging me in Russian to look at him. His face comes into focus, then fades out again as he strips off his shirt and ties it tight around my leg. I come back again, turn my head, and see that the bear is gone, blood covering stumps and ferns.

  I see Marat’s bloody spear.

  I see Marat.

  He seems to be sunk into the ground, but I blink and see that half his chest is gone. So much blood but barely any on his face. He’s looking at me with calm, still eyes. I’ve never noticed the color of his eyes. They are hazel.

  “Don’t look!” Vanya urges.

  But I can’t help it. I look at Marat until his brother lifts me in his arms and carries me away.

  Twenty-Seven

  I wake up in the bottom of the canoe, smelling familiar varnish and facing the night sky. I thought it was morning. Why is it night? The canoe suddenly hits something, half spins, and rights itself. It bucks and shakes. I’m not sure if I’m dead or alive or somewhere in between, because I’m not afraid. I feel calm, as though the wild river is part of me and I am part of the wild river.

  I heard Vanya’s voice, angry. He is shouting Russian curse words. Trying to navigate the rapids. I want to tell him it’s okay, but I’m too tired. Instead I stare up at the stars. They are calm although the water is rough, and I think of them switching places: rough, swirling currents of stars and the water beneath me still as glass.

  I don’t know how much time passes before the boat stops rocking and simply glides along. Vanya’s breathing is ragged.

  “Vanya?”

  His face appears above mine, upside down. “Adrienne.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To people,” he says simply.

  I look down at my leg. It’s wrapped tight in different-colored bandages. I recognize Sergei’s sleeve. The fabric of Lyubov’s sweatpants.

  “The bear,” I murmur.

  “Yes. The bear hurt you very bad.”

  My leg doesn’t hurt so much as throb, as though trying to expand past the bandages.

  “Marat?”

  Vanya doesn’t answer me. His oar dips into the water, dips again. I try to sit up so I can see, but Vanya makes me lie back down. His voice is gentle, sorrowful. “You are hurt bad,” he says.

  We don’t talk. We don’t need to. My mind has cleared a li
ttle, and I have done some very slow and basic math.

  Vanya’s the man of the family now. His mother and sister can’t survive without him. He has to stay in the forest with them. He has to stay a legend. He has to stay a ghost.

  We have no future tense.

  And so we share the canoe and share this understanding in the final hours during the long trip to Qualiq. He paddles all the next day, the next night. The water is swift and pushes us onward. I sleep off and on, and in my dreams my two families mix together. Marat plays computer games with Jason. Gospozha shops for produce with my mother. Dan takes Clara by the wrists and swings her around and around.

  It’s not yet dawn when the canoe scrapes land. Vanya has brought the nut-gathering backpack with the boat, my backpack. I have no idea what I could take with me that isn’t shattered, lost, or bloody, but I appreciate the gesture.

  Vanya takes me in his arms and carries me through the darkness. Dogs begin to bark. He must hurry or soon he will be discovered.

  He sets me down by a doorstep of an old cabin. Lifts my head tenderly and puts the backpack under my head.

  More dogs join in the barking.

  “You have to go,” I tell him. We don’t have time to say, Goodbye or I love you or I’ll find you someday.

  He pounds loudly on the door.

  “Go now,” I say.

  I’m at the hospital in Moscow. A series of machines from the twenty-first century got me here. A motorboat. An SUV. A private plane, handing me off like a bucket of water traveling to a fire. They have sheets here. And electric lights. And a team of doctors that saved my leg, although I won’t be able to walk for a month or so.

  I really want a pretzel.

  And I would not be sure that any part of this actually happened, except for the scars I’ll have for the rest of my life and for the knapsack I wouldn’t let anyone take away from me. Inside the knapsack are two items: Vanya’s notebook and a stone.

  I don’t know what the stone means. Maybe, Don’t forget me. Maybe, Things are actually very simple. Maybe, I want this back someday.