Anna, Like Thunder

by Peggy Herring

  But where’s Kolya?

  The battle moves deeper into the forest, away from us, until we can no longer see anybody. Where’s Zhuchka? Has she been hit? Is she dead? I hear a bark and a yelp. Poor girl. She must dodge fire from both sides of the battle.

  The sound of gunfire echoes off the trees and riverbanks, as do the cries of men shouting to one another, and the men who’ve been struck. I cover my ears. I can’t stand to hear another sound—every scream sounds like it’s Nikolai Isaakovich. But we’re not allowed to leave. Instead, we’re made to sit together, back to back, these koliuzhi pressed up against us with their spears and arrows and daggers. Helpless to do anything to prevent it, we four are forced to listen to the long, low howl that marks the end of our world.

  WINTER 1808 – 1809

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Poets describe vividly the sensation of the falling heart, but I’ve never experienced it. I know it’s irrational—as if a heart could plummet from heaven, spinning end over end, toward the hard earth and an inevitable, tragic destiny. Only children and the superstitious would believe such fancy. But when the koliuzhi focus their attention on us on the riverbank, I wonder if the poets might be right.

  One of the men speaks to us, hard consonants thrown in our faces. Without Timofei Osipovich, we don’t know what he wants. The man’s voice becomes louder, and his lips twist and contort around his words. Does he think we can’t hear? Doesn’t he know that we don’t understand?

  Finally, the man growls. He nudges stout Kotelnikov with his knee, then again, and when the apprentice glares at him, the man pulls him roughly to his feet. Kotelnikov cries out, writhes, and tries to get away, but the man won’t let go. “wόpatichásalas siwáchal, ichaí axwó kadídoťsa!”7 he screams.

  Guessing, we rise and stumble into a line behind Kotelnikov—Yakov, Maria, then me. We are led down a rugged path that skirts the river. The paddler from the canoe taps his paddle on the backs of my legs, herding me like I’m a goat.

  From the battlefield, there’s neither movement nor sound. Where is everyone? I haven’t seen my husband since the wall of water struck his canoe in the river. Did he drown? Has he been shot and killed? I strain to hear the smallest sound, to see the slightest movement, but it’s as still as a painting across the river Nothing, not even a bird, dares to disturb the calm.

  As we advance along the riverbank, we’re also drawing near the sea. I begin to hear its murmur. Its voice grows louder and more insistent the closer we get. Then, beneath it, there’s something else. A faint sound rises, then disappears. Then it’s back. It goes away again. The wind plays games with it, with us, until at last the rhythmic sound swells so that nothing can blow it away. We round a bend in the river and the sound erupts like exploding cannon. What beats like a hundred drums? Roars like a thousand thunder claps? The noise rises through the soles of my feet. It fills my head until I can think of nothing else, then my heart until I believe it’ll burst.

  We reach the clearing with the five houses, the one we gazed upon from the opposite shore only a short while ago.

  Koliuzhi, perhaps a hundred or more, ring the houses. Everyone strikes the walls with staves, pounding as if intent on demolishing their own homes. Even atop the houses, people lash out with batons violently enough to break the very roofs they stand on. The houses quiver, as if constructed of nothing more than a scrap of cloth or hide stretched over a wooden frame.

  Is this their victory celebration?

  Across the river, we’d been safe together such a short time ago. Now, in the tall trees and shadows that stretch as far as I can see, there’s no sign of anybody. There’s nothing I wouldn’t expect to see in this overgrown forest—except for some of the sailcloth bundles, white as shells, scattered across the earth, many torn open—is one mine?—and a grey-brown mound collapsed at the foot of a tall tree. I can’t take my eyes away from it. I look for movement, any movement at all. But it’s lifeless.

  “That’s not him,” Maria says, leaning near my ear to be heard.

  “How do you know?”

  “He led the men away. I saw him.”

  “Quiet,” Kotelnikov snaps. “You’ll provoke the koliuzhi.”

  The drumming stops suddenly, and everyone rushes to the doorway of one of the five houses. They squeeze through the yawning opening, men, women, children, even babies in arms.

  We ought to escape. Run. But to where? All directions are the same when you’re doomed.

  Finally, Kotelnikov’s captor pulls him toward the same door. The koliuzhi man strains against the apprentice’s weight, but he’s muscular. With a look at the man who herded me up the path, I say, “Come,” to Maria and Yakov.

  Like the little house we stole the salmon from, this one is made from wide, wooden planks that run the entire length of the building. Unlike that little house, this one is enormous, as big as a Petersburg mansion, perhaps bigger. There are no windows. The broad door lets two or three people enter at once.

  Inside, darkness blinds me. All I see is the harsh glow of a fire, which verifies its presence with smoke scented like a Christmas feast. I sense movement all around. When my vision begins to adjust, I start to notice faces emerging from the gloom. They’re lit partly by the fire and partly by the outdoor light creeping in through the door, chinks in the walls, and a hole in the roof, the purpose of which must be to release smoke.

  Novo-Arkhangelsk and the hills that surround it were filled with koliuzhi. They lived there. They worked, traded, fished, and who knows what else? Others knew, no doubt, but not me. I didn’t speak with them. I didn’t enter their homes. I didn’t ask after their mothers and fathers, their brothers and sisters, their children. I didn’t seek their advice, nor did I offer my opinions. It’s not that I didn’t wonder about them. But I was uncertain how such overtures could have been made. I lived in a cloud of not knowing.

  What is to be made of our situation? Will I die today? Will we all? None of us moves. We stand for what seems like an eternity with no one speaking. I strain to read the faces of the koliuzhi. I expect anger, but they keep their distance and watch. I remember those two koliuzhi men surrounded by our crew on the brig on the day we traded for the halibut. How long we forced them to stand before us in silence! Now, the table has turned.

  “Híli Chabachíťa, ib ťisíkw όki Chalaťilo ťsiáti,”8 says a man from deep in the shadows of the house. It’s difficult at first to locate who’s speaking. When I do, I see a man opposite us, dressed in a cape unlike any I’ve seen on this voyage. This cape catches the firelight and glows soft gold. It’s not fur. It’s made of bark, just like mine was, though the gold is natural, not paint. Glossy black fur trims its edges. The cape is tied at his waist with a wide belt into which is tucked a dagger. He stands in a manner that reminds me of the towering trees firmly planted in the spongy soil of this forest.

  “Híli Chabachíťa, ib ťisíkw όki Chalaťilo ťsiáti,”8 says a man from deep in the shadows of the house. It’s difficult at first to locate who’s speaking. When I do, I see a man opposite us, dressed in a cape unlike any I’ve seen on this voyage. This cape catches the firelight and glows soft gold. It’s not fur. It’s made of bark, just like mine was, though the gold is natural, not paint. Glossy black fur trims its edges. The cape is tied at his waist with a wide belt into which is tucked a dagger. He stands in a manner that reminds me of the towering trees firmly planted in the spongy soil of this forest.

  He thrusts out a strange cylinder, then shakes it. It rattles like a cart running over a rutted road. What is it? It’s shorter than a telescope, and I think it’s made of wood. Huge eyes, ringed in red, and the pointed beak of a bird have been carved into it.

  “Hakόtalaxw sisáwa boyόkwa hόtskwať,”9 he continues. His voice rumbles and reverberates off the plank walls. I try to understand, to identify any familiar word, but there’s none. He continues to speak, directing his words at everyone in the house, not at us alone.

  Before long, a woman steps forward. I thin
k she’s about to speak, too, but instead she kneels and tends the fire. My eyes shift from her to the speaker and back again. It’s hard to know where to look. A second woman bends near the fire and lifts the lid of a wooden box, one of several scattered about like toy blocks, unnaturally large versions of the ones I played with so long ago when my father was teaching me about gravity and the physical properties of objects in relation to one another.

  When the lid is lifted, this wooden box releases a plume of steam and the aroma of stewing fish. The woman dips a big spoon—it’s a seashell lashed to a handle—into the box and stirs. She’s cooking. In a box? A box can hold water? Steaming water? A third, then a fourth woman soon join them, and together they fuss with the fire and the contents of the boxes with sticks and spoons and stones. With long wooden tongs, they move stones from the fire into the boxes. The stones sizzle when they hit the water and more steam billows to the rafters and spreads among the grasses, stalks, coils of cord, baskets, and skewered objects hanging up there.

  The speaker’s voice drones in the background while the women cook. One woman rises slowly from her fireside tasks, wipes her hands on her skirt, and walks behind us. The hair on the back of my neck prickles, but she just slips out the door. Immediately, the children become restless. They fidget, whisper, and giggle, drawing my attention away from the women. A boy makes faces while two girls pretend not to notice him and smother their laughter with their hands. One of those girls cradles a sleeping baby in her lap and curls a tendril of the baby’s hair around her finger.

  After a long time and a short time, the speaker finally stops. I’d like to sit down. I catch Maria’s eye—she must be tired, too. But she only shrugs, shifts, and looks away.

  It’s not over yet. Another man steps into the ring of firelight. He’s as wrinkled as Yakov, with eyes that glitter like stars in the night sky. His voice sounds much younger; its pitch and rhythm rise and fall, much like the river outside clambering over the rocks.

  “Wáalaxw chaáalosalas hiítxli xwa didídal ats1á,” he says. “Histilόsalas ish híat ishatash tial. wíxwa álita. Xwokwόdis.”10

  Yakov tilts his cap back and squints and frowns as he listens to the old man, but it’s clear from his face that he understands nothing. Kotelnikov is alternately sullen and defiant as he huffs, shakes his head, and puffs out his burly chest. No one interrupts the old man who continues as though he’s telling a long story. However, two or three men slide along the walls to the doorway and leave the house.

  I try to concentrate but my feet ache and soon my attention also drifts.

  There’s a heavy pillar in the corner, not far behind the head of the man who’s speaking. Just like the rattle, it’s carved, but with designs and images that look as though they’ve been plucked from a madman’s feverish dreams. They’re creatures. That much I can tell. Eyes, yes, hands, yes, mouths upturned or deeply frowning—but horns and claws and pointed teeth and tongues, too—and too many of everything, not attached where they should be, all encased in ovals. What these creatures represent is impossible to say. I look around me. Every pillar in the house—there are eight altogether—is similarly carved, but all the designs differ. In the firelight, though I know they’re only blocks of wood, I expect the eyes to shift, the lips to part, and the tongues to unfurl as they come to life.

  Maria nudges me, and I shift my attention back to the man and try again to concentrate. After a long time and a short time, the old man’s story or speech finishes. Surely, the talking is over.

  But no. Here’s another man coming forward. Younger than the first two, this man has enormous half-moon eyebrows. At first I think he’s painted them on, but then I realize they’re real. Tangled and dark, they hood his eyes and resemble the eyebrows of the carved figures on the posts. The rest of his body—his face, arms, and legs—are smooth. His legs are muscular, thick like tree trunks.

  As with the first speaker, he addresses us. He starts with Yakov, who nods at him but says nothing. Maria won’t meet his eye, and so he turns to Kotelnikov, who scowls and opens his mouth as if to say something but thinks better of it. Kotelnikov’s lost a brass button and his black-green jacket gapes open, his big belly straining against the fabric, the white of his linen shirt like a feather easing its way out of a pillow.

  Then, the man with the eyebrows turns to me. He says, “Xwa wípaťot i ćhía, chi titsíya, halakitkatasalaxw hikástoli.”11 Then he waits.

  I look away, but he continues to watch me. “Wacush,” I finally say. It’s Timofei Osipovich’s word and I don’t know exactly what it means—it didn’t work when I gave the ukha to Koliuzhi Klara—but the koliuzhi seem to respond to it.

  The man with the eyebrows startles. Smothered laughter ripples through the house. My hands tremble.

  Kotelnikov turns on me. “Madame Bulygina! You will provoke him!”

  This eyebrow man is most certainly not provoked. The corners of his mouth twitch. Is he, too, about to laugh?

  “Yakov? Help me, Yakov,” I say softly.

  Yakov looks down and shakes his head.

  The eyes of the eyebrow man flit like dragonflies from me to the others, and eventually come to rest on me. Then he begins to speak again. He’s not angry—of this I’m certain—but equally he’s not happy. He’s telling me something. When he finally pauses again, I have no choice.

  “Wacush. We can’t understand you. Do you understand me? We come from Russia. We’re stranded here. We didn’t mean to . . .” I think of the battle. What word is right for what happened? “. . . disturb you. We have no way to get back home, except if we can get to another Russian ship—it’s waiting about sixty miles away. If you’ll just let us go, please, in the name of God, we’ll go and leave you alone.

  “We’re very tired and hungry, and we left everything on the ship. Keep it all. We have no use for it now.” They don’t need to know we’ve jettisoned so much. “We carry only what we need for our journey—a few things to eat, our muskets—”

  “Madame Bulygina! Stop!” Kotelnikov snaps.

  “They don’t know what she’s saying,” Yakov chides softly. And he’s right—I can tell by their puzzled looks that while they may have understood “wacush,” that’s all.

  The gathering then, inexplicably, breaks up. Where’s everyone going? I can’t understand anything. All the signposts I possess have been torn from the ground and thrown in a river; they float away beyond reach.

  We don’t move, we four, until finally two little boys take Yakov by the arms and pull him to the other side of the fire. Old Yakov looks down at them with surprise and bemusement, and does not struggle. The boys giggle and offer the big, toothy smiles of children whose milk teeth have fallen out, but whose faces have not grown big enough to accommodate their new adult teeth.

  When they arrive at the side of the man with the golden cape and the rattle, who’s seated, the boys gesture to Yakov to sit down. The man with the golden cape looks up at Yakov and gives a short nod. Yakov sits and removes his cap. The young boys then come back for the rest of us. We sit on a cedar mat. The earthen floor is dry and slightly warm from the fire.

  Then, Koliuzhi Klara sets before us a long tray.

  She pushes it forward until it presses against my knees. “Wacush,” she says mischievously, looking pointedly at me. She smiles when I blush.

  The tray contains a mound of unidentifiable pink-brown mush. Maria cries, “Kizhuch!” I take a closer look—she’s right. It’s salmon again. Chunks of fish swim in a shiny broth. Steam rises from the tray. Why are they feeding us? Is this a trick? I look to Kotelinikov, Yakov, and Maria; they’ve already plunged their fingers into the food. Kotelnikov is gobbling like a half-starved pig at a trough.

  Is this entire tray meant for us? Or are we to help ourselves and then pass it to others? I’m starving, too, but I don’t know what to do.

  A woman sitting on the opposite side of the fire has noted my hesitation. She was cooking earlier; clamping tongs around the hot stones and sliding
them into the boxes of water. Does she think I don’t want her food? That I don’t find it good enough? I hear my mother’s voice chastising my manners—so I pinch a scrap of fish between my fingers.

  Once the food touches my tongue, I can’t stop. I cram handful after handful of fish into my mouth. The wiry bones slow me down a bit, but with my tongue, I push them from between my lips. Having nowhere to put them, I hold them in my other hand.

  The hunger I’ve been staving off for so long raises its head to ask: where have you been, Anna Petrovna Bulygina? I feed it, feed myself, eat and eat until there’s nothing left on our tray, every little drop of oil has been licked from my fingertips, and my hand is full of small bones.

  That night, I lie on a coarse cedar mat on the smooth earthen floor. Broad wooden benches rim the walls, but they’re occupied by others.

  Cedar mats, propped upright, divide some of the sleeping areas and provide a little privacy. But I can still see into most of them. People in these compartments sleep in clusters looking like bumps along a treacherous road. Men, women, and children are heaped alongside one another. Are they families? Are they random groupings?

  I’m quite far from the fire and I’m cold. Maria shares the cedar mat and a soft cedar cover that’s far too small for two people. I’m fatigued but too chilly to sleep. I listen to Maria’s breathing. I can tell she’s awake.

  “Maria?”

  “What is it?”

  The dark and the cold and my exhaustion feed one another. Questions form, and the answers are shadows in my mind. I try to suppress them but they’re hardy and insistent. Finally, I say, “What are they going to do to us?”