To the Lake

by Yana Vagner

  We went silent. The silence was only broken by Ira clinking a fork on her plate, and then Boris started moving, rocking on his chair and trying to put his hand into his pocket, but it helplessly slid down his worn-out hunting jacket, missing the pocket. After several attempts he stopped, with his arm helplessly dangling alongside his body. His head was hanging low.

  ‘Perhaps we could put him to bed?’ I said quietly. Ira gave a loud, clear giggle.

  ‘Sure,’ she said putting her elbows on the table. ‘And it would be good to lock him up too. If I remember correctly, the next part of the show is just about to begin.’

  ‘What do you mean, the next part?’ I asked, feeling really stupid.

  ‘Oh, you don’t know?’ she said cheerfully. ‘Didn’t you tell her, Sergey? He likes a bit of a show when he’s drunk, our dad.’

  ‘That’s enough now, Ira,’ Sergey said, standing. ‘We’ll put him to bed in a back room. Will you help, Andrey? Mishka, hold the door, please.’

  Boris didn’t seem to notice that he was being picked up and carried to another room; if it wasn’t for his open eyes, staring into the distance, it would have been easy to assume he was fast asleep. They disappeared behind the door which Mishka held open and came back a minute later, trying to squeeze a heavy metal bed through the door frame. Then they put it against the closed door so Boris couldn’t open it. ‘I’m sorry, Mishka,’ Sergey said regretfully. ‘You’ll have to sleep here today, in the doorway.’

  Mishka shrugged and sat on the edge of the bed but almost immediately leaped up because both the flimsy wooden door and the bed, pushed right up against it, shook with a sharp blow from the other side, and we heard a voice, barely identifiable as Boris’s:

  ‘Open up, you bastards!’ he shouted. ‘Sergey and whoever else is there… Open the door!’

  ‘There it is,’ Ira said quietly, ‘the good old show we know so well.’ And Sergey winced, as if in pain.

  I went to Mishka and held him for a few minutes. We stood by the door holding each other while Boris repeatedly crashed against it with his shoulder, pulled the handle and swore desperately and angrily, and I thought, that’s probably why he didn’t come to our wedding, that’s why I’ve only seen him a few times and Sergey never wanted to invite him to stay for the weekend and met with him in the city instead. The little girl burst into tears and Natasha picked her up, whispering comfortingly into her ear, and then Sergey kicked the door, which creaked, and shouted, ‘Just shut up, damn you!’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Ira said, approaching him. ‘You know it’s no use. The sooner you stop paying attention, the sooner he’ll calm down.’ She reached over and lightly squeezed Sergey’s shoulder; he nodded and sat on the bed, looking down sullenly. He’d never mentioned this to me. The only thing I knew was that there had been some kind of disagreement between them, and I wondered what else I didn’t know yet, how many of these important and unimportant things that had happened with him before me he had shared with Ira and not with me. Trying not to dwell on it, I joked:

  ‘I suppose it’s not a good idea then to suggest a little spirit after dinner, eh?’ and regretted saying it straight away. Andrey chuckled, but he was the only one who reacted. Natasha was busy with the little girl, Sergey didn’t even turn his head, and Ira lifted her eyebrows and rolled her eyes.

  After about ten minutes Boris finally calmed down. Nobody was in the mood to talk any more, as everyone understood what was going on; the best we could all do after this long day was to go to bed. One of the rooms was occupied by Boris, and even if Marina and Lenny stayed in the sauna – the men took the mattress and several duvets there – there were still too many of us, five adults and two children, for the two remaining rooms.

  ‘Andrey, you and Natasha should take the small bedroom. And take some wood with you, there’s a stove there,’ Sergey offered. Wait, I wanted to say, you can’t do this, I can’t sleep in the same room with her, I don’t want to, this is wrong, but Sergey caught my eye, winked at me, and continued: ‘Ira, we’ll give you the space next to the stove – is the bed big enough for you and two kids?’ She nodded. ‘I’ll bring you the sleeping bag. Come on, Mishka, let’s fetch it from the car.’

  Crouching in front of the girl, who, now calm, had turned into a silent, absent-looking creature, like a stubby porcelain figurine with her little eyes and puffy cheeks, Ira was taking off her boots, not paying any attention to me, but I still didn’t want to stay in the same room with her. I put my jacket on, went out onto the cold veranda and lit a cigarette. I could see through the frosty window Sergey and Mishka walking over the snow-covered path, falling through the snow and lighting their way with a torch. They were the only people I still had left in my life, my most precious and irreplaceable, the two people who meant the world to me.

  As soon as I had finished my cigarette and ground it out on a wooden armrest (forgive me, house owners), they came back, carrying two sleeping bags. Mishka headed for the front door, but I stopped him and hugged him once more. I was surprised, again, that my skinny, funny boy was already a head taller than me. I’d probably never get used to it. His cheek was cold and prickly, just a little: he had soft, adolescent bristle. He stood still as usual, patiently letting me embrace him, while holding the bags with both hands. You saved our lives today, I thought, and nobody even thanked you properly, nobody patted you on the shoulder and told you that you’d been great, that you’re a real grown-up now, but you know how much I love you, even if I don’t say it often, you know, don’t you, you should know. In the end he, as usual, carefully released himself from my arms, murmuring something, pushed the door with his shoulder and disappeared inside the house, and there were just the two of us left on the veranda. I could only see Sergey’s dark silhouette against the frosty window, and as soon as the door closed behind Mishka, he stepped towards me and said quietly:

  ‘Come with me, baby. I’ve got a surprise for you.’

  The stairs were shaky and narrow, and every step creaked as we walked up. The room was something in between a garret and an attic: the ceiling was slightly taller at its highest point than the average human height but sloped downwards so sharply that you needed to crawl on all fours if you wanted to touch the wall. There was the usual clutter that people keep in their attics, and a small window, the only one that hadn’t been boarded up, right underneath the roof. I came closer and saw the sky – black and clear, with stars scattered all over, looking like pinpricks on navy blue velour – and below the window a low ottoman bed. Sergey threw a sleeping bag on top of it, and his jacket, and turned off the torch.

  ‘Come here, little one,’ he said quietly. ‘I miss you so much.’

  The mattress was hard, with old squeaky springs which I feared were going to rip the worn-out fabric of the bed – I could feel them even through the padded sleeping bag. It smelled of dust and mould, but it didn’t matter because I pressed my lips and nose against Sergey’s warm neck above the opening of his jumper and inhaled, held my breath and closed my eyes. This was my place, where I should be, the only place I felt calm. I could spend a week, a month or a year lying like this, and to hell with everything else. He drew me close to him and gave me a long, gentle kiss, his fingers feeling the whole of my body – my thighs, my neck, my shoulders – then the buckle of his belt clanked, the zip on my jeans slid undone… ‘Wait,’ I whispered. ‘These walls are really thin.’ We could hear Ira hushing the children to sleep. ‘They’ll hear us, I’m sure they will,’ I said. ‘I don’t care, baby,’ he replied, his hot breath burning my ear. ‘I don’t care. I want you.’ The springs moaned, he covered my mouth with the palm of his hand, and everything disappeared, like it always had done, from the first time, and the world around us shrank to a tiny dot somewhere at the back of my consciousness and disappeared, too, and there was only Sergey and me, and nobody except us.

  Then we were looking at the stars and sharing a cigarette, flicking the ash straight onto the floor.

  ‘Somebody should kee
p watch,’ I said sleepily.

  ‘Don’t worry, baby, go to sleep, Andrey will wake me up in three hours.’

  ‘Would you like me to sit with you? Why don’t you wake me up when it’s your turn?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, go to sleep, little one, it’ll be OK,’ he replied.

  And I fell into a deep sleep, without dreams, pressing my cheek against his warm shoulder, just slumped into the warm, noiseless, safe darkness, without any thoughts or fear.

  ‌12

  Sickening

  …

  If I opened my eyes for a second, I’d see that it’s still dark outside and that there’s a small black window with a square of black sky above me, embellished with bright sparkles of stars; it’s still quiet and cold, very cold, I have to pull the duvet up to my chin, but my hands fail me; the square of the sky suddenly shifts, the stars move, leaving long traces, the window zooms in on me, growing bigger and bigger, and the dusty frozen attic room finally vanishes. It’s not scary at all to lie on your back like this and look up into the winter darkness, without any thoughts, worries or fears – we’re good at that as children – to make a step away and make the world disappear by turning away from it, to turn all sounds off, fall into a snow bank with arms spread wide, to throw your head back and freeze, feeling only peace, silence and cold; the cold isn’t dangerous, it lulls you to sleep, and you feel the planet – huge as a whale – slowly move underneath you; the planet doesn’t notice you, doesn’t know about your existence, you’re only a tiny mark, a dotted line, nothing depends on you, you can only lie on your back and be carried, pulled forward, as if on a sledge.

  My mum turns around and says, ‘Anya, are you cold? Hang on in there, we’ll be home soon.’ I can’t see her face, I can only see the moving sky above me – it moves with me, only slower than me; even if I open my eyes it keeps moving, and the darkness and cold are still there; the cold that doesn’t leave me.

  I resurface – Sergey isn’t there. I’m still on the dusty, damp ottoman bed, the silent clutter surrounding it; the hard springs stick into my back, but I have no energy to move. It’s cold, I’m thirsty. The zip from the sleeping bag scratches my cheek and I struggle to keep my eyes open – every time, making an effort to open my eyes, I see that the walls are an inch closer and the ceiling is lower, and even though the sky and the stars are back within the window square, if I look closer I can see the window shaking, the sky pushing on the glass from outside, which swells under its weight, and it feels like the sky’s going to break through it and swallow me. Perhaps that’s how a house tries to get rid of an intruder – by sending nightmares and dark anxiety dreams, intertwined with the angry groans of the wind in the chimneys, every unfamiliar smell or sound given off by this disturbed house which belongs to somebody else. All the old things, the walls and squeaky stairs stay faithful to their owners, even if they’ve left the house and will never come back; you can pretend not to notice this hostility, this protest against your intrusion, pretend not to feel the attempts to purge you out of the house, but as soon as you fall asleep, you become vulnerable and cannot hide from those weird dreams.

  When I opened my eyes again, everything had disappeared – the black sky in the window square, the creaks and the groans. The things stopped moving and the walls stopped approaching me. Through the small window near the ceiling I saw a dim, bleak winter sunrise illuminating the dusty, cluttered attic which had scared me last night but which looked so ordinary in daylight. It was all back to normal again, but the cold and thirst were still there. Sitting up on the bed, I sat still for a moment, gathering strength to stand up. I needed to leave this place, to go downstairs into the warmth, to eat something hot, and I’d feel better straight away. I laced up my boots, my fingers disobeying me, the laces repeatedly slipping out of them. I draped my jacket over my shoulders and went downstairs.

  Andrey was dozing on the veranda, wrapped in his warm coat and hiding the lower part of his face in the collar; Sergey’s gun was standing against the wall. The windows were so frozen up you couldn’t see through them; while we were asleep some giant hand had uprooted the house from the ground and drowned it in milk.

  When he heard me coming, Andrey stirred, lifted his head and nodded at me. ‘It was cold as hell last night,’ he said, and yawned. Next to him, on the windowsill, was a steaming cup of tea, which was slowly melting the frosty crust on the window. ‘Go inside, get warm. We’re lucky it’s overcast today – nobody’ll notice the smoke from the road, so we can build the fire to our hearts’ content.’

  The stark whiteness which surrounded the veranda dazzled me, but the house itself was still in semi-darkness. Even though we had removed some of the boards covering the windows there was still not enough light coming through the narrow cracks, so I had to stop at the entrance for my eyes to get used to the darkness. There was a beguiling smell of fresh coffee.

  ‘Close the door.’ I heard Ira’s voice from somewhere. ‘The kids will get cold.’

  ‘How are you?’ Sergey came over to me. ‘I didn’t want to wake you, seemed you didn’t sleep well last night, you were so restless. Come and eat something.’

  I immediately felt nauseous at the thought of food.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ I said. ‘The bed’s awful, my whole body’s aching. I got so cold up there. I’ll sit near the stove for a bit and eat later, OK?’

  I didn’t even want to take off my jacket; it was as if the cold which had been torturing me all night had crept under my skin, into my bones, my spine, and I knew if I removed my jacket I would only let out the cold and it would fill the entire space, pushing every bit of warm air stored in this small room out through the cracks in the window frames, and then I’d never be able to get warm again. I pressed my shoulder to the brick wall of the stove, with no fear of scalding or burning myself. If I could, I would lie down on the floor, near the open furnace, like a dog, so as not to miss any heat it produced; I couldn’t understand why this wretched stove wasn’t getting any warmer.

  ‘What do you mean, you’re not hungry?’ Sergey asked. ‘You didn’t eat all day yesterday. C’mon, sit at the table. Mishka, make her a cup of tea. Anya, do you hear? Take your jacket off, it’s hot in here.’

  I won’t budge, I thought, kneeling down next to the stove, the rough brick lightly scratching my cheek. I need to get warm, let me stay here, I don’t need any tea, just leave me alone.

  ‘Anya!’ Sergey repeated, sounding cross. ‘What’s going on with you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, closing my eyes. ‘I’m just cold, I’m really cold. I’m not going to eat, I just want to get warm.’

  ‘Did you say your whole body ached?’ Ira asked harshly, and her unpleasant tone ripped me out of my sleepy oblivion, which had started enveloping me with its thick dull blanket as if I had forgotten something and was about to remember what it was. I forced my eyes open – the room was blurry and shaky – and saw Sergey, who rose from his seat, and Mishka with a mug of hot tea in his hand, walking towards me, and behind them Ira’s face, which looked like a white exclamation mark, twisted with fear. It was her face that made me jump to my feet, so fast that I felt dizzy, as if somebody had bellowed into my ear. I caught a chair with my elbow and it crashed to the floor, making a lot of noise.

  ‘Don’t come near me!’ I shouted at Mishka, and he stopped so abruptly that a large splash of the hot tea he was holding fell on the floor. He didn’t understand anything; nor did Sergey, who hadn’t taken a step forward yet and stood looking at me with a concerned, puzzled look. ‘Don’t come near me, any of you,’ I repeated. I covered my mouth with both hands and started walking backwards, walking until I bumped into the wall. And while I was walking, the only person I was looking at was Ira, holding a tea towel to her face with one hand and covering the face of the boy sitting next to her with the other.

  It was dusty and dark in the tiny box of a room. The light was barely seeping through the cracks in the boards covering the windows; there was no lamp, no
candle. In the corner, under the window, there was a narrow bed with Natasha’s crumpled sleeping bag, and on the floor was a sports bag with piles of clothes that I tripped over while retreating from the central room holding my hands to my mouth, holding my breath, as if even the air I was breathing out was poisonous and dangerous to the others. The only advantage of this small messy room was a sturdy metallic door latch, which was secured to the frame with four large screws. The wooden door was cracked, sagging and it was impossible to close it properly, let alone click the latch; I broke a nail and scraped some skin off my fingers before I managed to close both the door and the latch and only then felt that the last drops of energy were leaving me, escaping like air from a punctured tyre. I couldn’t take another step and collapsed on the floor. As soon as I did it the door handle moved.

  ‘Open the door, Anya,’ Sergey said from the other side. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  I didn’t answer. Not because I didn’t want to, but because in order to utter a word I had to lift my head, push the air out of my lungs. Thank God it’s warm here, I thought, the small stove has already gone out but it’s still warm, I must make an effort and reach the bed, it’s only about five steps away, no more, it can’t be so difficult, I’ll sit here a while longer and then try to get there, I don’t have to walk, I can crawl on all fours and then push myself up on my hands and finally lie down, the main thing is not to lie down here, by the door, because if I lie down here I won’t be able to get up.

  There was some fussing outside the room, but I heard the voices as if through cotton wool. At first they sounded like meaningless noise, and gradually, after a bit, I was able to make out some separate words:

  ‘Open the door. We need to air the house, quick! Anton, come here, put your coat on.’ That was Ira.

  ‘It’s impossible, we were together all the time.’ That was Sergey.