To the Lake

by Yana Vagner

  The dog was waiting near the house. He sat on the snow by the wooden steps, as if he wasn’t at all cold. When we opened the door he turned his head and looked at us impassively.

  ‘A dog,’ the boy said quietly. Sergey had put Anton down, and now he stretched out his arm.

  ‘Don’t get close to the dog, Anton,’ Ira said quickly. ‘It’s a dirty dog, it might bite you.’

  ‘He doesn’t bite,’ I said in a firm voice, and I thought: how do I know if he bites or not, if he likes children or not, if he likes anyone at all; I don’t know anything about him, apart from the fact that he found me in the snow four days ago and has been coming to visit me every day since then.

  I went up to the dog. He didn’t move, just watched me, and I crouched next to him. He sat still.

  ‘Anton!’ repeated Ira. I heard careful footsteps crunching in the snow.

  ‘What’s his name?’ asked the boy, and then I put my hand on the dog’s head, between the long shaggy ears. The yellow eyes flashed for a second; he blinked.

  ‘His name is Dog,’ I said. ‘And while we’re asleep, he’ll guard us.’

  We entered the house and while the others were making lots of noise unpacking their things, moving beds, cooking dinner, I flopped onto the bed in the furthest room and, in spite of their voices, fell into a deep sleep. I didn’t wake until morning, and when I did I was as hungry as a wolf.

  When I came back out into the central room, which I caught myself thinking of as the lounge, Ira was doing the washing-up in a large enamel bowl. There was an amazingly strong smell of coffee in the kitchen, and it looked like they had finished breakfast. Mishka wasn’t there; he was presumably keeping watch outside. Sergey and Boris were getting ready to go for another walk around the village – apparently it had been decided that Mishka would stay with us, which he wasn’t happy about. ‘Our young looter’s a bit upset,’ said Boris jokingly.

  ‘There are sandwiches on the table,’ Sergey said. ‘Have them, Anya, this is the last of our bread. It’s quite dry though.’

  I grabbed the sandwich, which had thinly cut, almost transparent slices of smoked salami on top, and took a bite with enormous pleasure. ‘I hope there’s more salami,’ I said, smiling at Sergey, and he smiled back at me.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid we haven’t much left,’ he said. ‘Nor is there much coffee. These are all the leftovers we brought from home – we’ll have to switch to potatoes and pasta soon.’

  The morning was too good to get upset over such a trifle as salami, so I made myself a large mug of coffee and started putting on my coat.

  ‘Where are you going with that mug?’ asked Sergey.

  ‘If this is my last cup of coffee ever,’ I said, and noticing him frowning at those words, corrected myself: ‘OK, OK, even if it’s my last cup this winter, I’m not going to waste it on the thoughtless consumption of a sandwich.’ Then, putting on my jacket, I fished a half-empty pack of cigarettes out of its pocket.

  ‘Anya!’ he said straight away. ‘What the hell! You could hardly breathe yesterday!’

  ‘My last cup of coffee!’ I said pleadingly. ‘Please. Just one, I promise.’

  On the veranda, where I stood by the frozen window, holding the hot mug in one hand and a cigarette in the other, he came up to me from behind, kissed my ear and said:

  ‘I’ll find you coffee, I promise. I can’t promise you salami, but I’ll definitely find you coffee.’

  We stood holding each other for a while; the coffee turned out to be a bit thin, and the first draw on the cigarette scraped my throat, but that wasn’t worth getting upset about either.

  ‘Shall we go today?’ I suggested. ‘I’ve completely recovered and can drive now.’

  ‘It’s too early,’ he said. ‘Let’s wait a day or two. Dad and I can take another couple of tours around the village. They found so many useful things last time, it’s a shame not to look for more. We won’t have an opportunity like this again.’

  I heard footsteps on the porch, and the door opened to reveal Mishka. Without coming, in he told Sergey:

  ‘That guy from yesterday has come back. He’s brought somebody.’

  When we reached the gate – Sergey, Boris, Mishka and I – there were two men on the path: yesterday’s visitor, in his anorak, and another man, much older than him. They didn’t look related; they gave the impression of having just met each other. The older man had a pale, thin face, a tidy grey beard and wore gold-framed glasses, and was dressed in a black woollen coat with an astrakhan collar, which looked completely out of place; on his feet he had shiny, even stylish dress shoes.

  After all the greetings were said there was an awkward pause. Our guests shifted from one foot to the other without saying anything; it seemed they weren’t sure why they’d come. Finally, Boris broke the silence and asked:

  ‘Did you find yourself a house?’

  ‘Yes, just like you said – on the next street,’ Igor said brightly. ‘Can you see that house with a green roof? It’s not very big, but it has two stoves and a well. There’s no electricity, and we wanted to ask how you were managing. It must be dark in your house in the evenings.’

  I looked at him and thought that he didn’t seem as upbeat as yesterday. He wasn’t smiling and had a worried crease between his eyebrows. I wonder what you really want, I thought. Surely that’s not really why you’ve come here, to ask us how we light the house at night?

  ‘Try to find a kerosene lamp,’ Sergey said. ‘We found one on our first day here. And if not, you’ll definitely find candles in one of the houses.’

  ‘And when you go to check the neighbouring houses,’ Boris added, addressing the older of the two men, ‘get some more comfortable clothing. That coat of yours is about as unsuitable as you can possibly imagine.’

  The man in the coat looked down at himself and made a helpless gesture with his arms. ‘To be honest, we packed in a rush – until the last minute I wasn’t sure we’d manage to get away. Although I’m afraid that even if we’d had more time, I don’t possess any more suitable clothes. I’m totally a city person.’

  ‘Well, you’re unlikely to be able to find good winter boots here,’ Boris said. ‘But you’ll probably find felt boots and a sheepskin.’

  The man in the city coat was silent for some time, and then shook his head without looking at anyone.

  ‘Well,’ he said, talking mostly to himself, ‘for the first time in my life I might have to break into somebody’s house.’

  ‘Don’t be shy.’ Boris made a dismissive gesture. ‘Trust me, if the owners haven’t come back, they’re most likely dead by now. In times like these, doing the right thing doesn’t work.’

  ‘I thank you, young man,’ the man in the coat said, smiling. ‘Although, believe me, in times like these doing the right thing is more important than ever.’

  Boris grinned, surprised, and then the man in the coat looked at him for the first time and quietly laughed.

  ‘I’m sorry. It didn’t occur to me that one of you might be my age. However, I can see you’ve adapted to everything happening around here much better than me.’

  When they left, we stood by the gate for some time, watching them go. The first man was walking hurriedly, as if trying to disappear out of sight as soon as possible, or maybe he wanted to start his quest in other houses for things his family badly needed; the second was walking slowly and carefully, looking under his feet, and he soon ended up lagging behind. Reaching the corner, the first man stopped and waited for the other to catch up with him, and before the second man disappeared behind the corner, he looked our way and raised his arm in a gesture of acknowledgement.

  ‘What a strange couple,’ Sergey said, pensive. ‘I wonder what they wanted.’

  ‘They came to see what kind of people we are,’ Boris said. ‘To check if it’s safe to have us as neighbours.’

  After a pause he added:

  ‘And I also think they came to check if we’re OK with them going rummaging through
the houses in the village too. Although, come to think of it, it’s irrelevant what we think.’

  When Sergey and Boris left, and Mishka, wrapped in a sheepskin coat up to his eyes, settled himself on the veranda, it was me, Ira and the boy left in the house. Time started dragging painfully. The house was too small for us to pretend we weren’t aware of each other – at least that was what I thought – but Ira seemed determined not to utter a word, at least not to me. It was easier for her to play this game because she had the boy with her, her little ally and companion, and I was on my own. Even the dog wandered off after breakfast. This is what our life on the lake will be like, I thought, aimlessly ambling around the tiny rooms full of furniture, listening to the others pottering about and talking, keeping each other occupied. And, I told myself, you will have to keep silent all day, every day, waiting for your husband to come back, the whole time you’re alone with her in that house you’ll feel awkward, shy, like a new girl on the block who hasn’t been accepted into the group, and you’ll never learn not to notice that, you know yourself, you can pretend as long as you want that it doesn’t matter, but you can’t cope with the fact that you’re not liked, you were never good at that.

  In the end I found a book – Aleksey Tolstoy’s Ordeal, the first volume – without the cover and the first twenty-two pages; it’s amazing that in every summer cottage, no matter who it belongs to, you can always find either the first volume of Ordeal, or The Young Guard, or some other old book in a worn-out fabric binding with the publisher’s name and year engraved, even if it’s a new cottage, built only a few years ago. It’s as if these books make their way into every house by themselves; as soon as you board up your windows for the winter and go back to the city, they appear in the dustiest, most hidden-away corner, ready to fall into our hands right when boredom sets in and we’re looking for something to read. I was glad to find the first volume, and thought that if I was lucky I might be able to find the second one. We hadn’t taken a single book with us, there had been no room; I thought that it would be funny if civilisation collapsed and it was just us few left, in the shabby two-room house in the middle of the forest, and the only book we’d have with us, the one we’d use to teach our children to read, would be the first volume of Ordeal, without the cover and missing the first twenty-two pages.

  Even while I was reading, sitting on the bed in the farthest room, where time had stopped on the tear-off calendar on the wall, the room in which I’d thought for two days that I was going to die, even separated from Ira by a wall and a closed door I felt her presence, defiant and hostile, and I felt the half of my body closest to the wall grow numb and cold. The day dragged. You need to be patient, I told myself, it’ll be dark soon and they’ll come back, it gets dark early in November; in three more hours, two hours, one hour, we’ll be sitting at the table, they’ll be telling us what they have found, Sergey will put his hand on my knee, all these men, all three of them are my family, they’re mine first, whatever she may think. When it started to get dark, I put the book away, made two cups of tea with honey for Mishka and myself, put on my jacket and went out onto the veranda. I couldn’t hang around inside any more.

  We sipped the tea and watched the gate through the frosty patterns on the window. As the street plunged deeper into darkness, it seemed to us that our waiting was becoming more focused, more intense minute by minute, and we became so occupied by it that we couldn’t even talk. Suddenly Mishka stirred, put his mug down noisily on the windowsill and jumped up – his eyesight had always been brilliant. To see better I cupped my hands, pressed them against the window and looked through them, like through a telescope. There was somebody by the gate, who wasn’t rushing to open it and just stood there. I couldn’t tell at this distance who it was – Sergey or Boris – but one thing was clear: he was alone.

  We waited for a minute. The man outside the gate didn’t move; he stood patiently and calmly, and I began getting worried.

  ‘Why is he not coming in?’ I said. ‘Mishka, take a look, who is it – Sergey or Boris?’

  Narrowing his eyes, Mishka looked through the window for a few seconds. Finally, he turned his concerned face to me and said:

  ‘I think this is somebody else. I don’t know who it is.’

  Of course Mishka and I could just keep our heads down. There was no light on the veranda and the person at the gate wouldn’t guess we had noticed him; Sergey and Boris were going to be back any minute, they both – I knew for a fact – had guns with them, and it would be easier for them to sort out another uninvited guest rather than for Mishka and me to do it. The best thing you can do, I thought, standing on the dark, cold veranda, is stay still and wait: they’ll be back soon, it’s completely dark, they’ll turn up at the gate and it’ll all become clear, you don’t need to do anything, just wait.

  The lone figure at the gate didn’t move. Damn it, I thought, you’ve never had the patience to wait. ‘Get the gun ready,’ I whispered to Mishka, opened the door, which gave a loud squeak, poked my head out and shouted, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

  ‘Good evening!’ a familiar-sounding voice said. ‘It’s really dark here. Unfortunately I can’t see your face, but I think we saw each other this morning!’

  ‘Give me the torch,’ I told Mishka. ‘And wait here. Have the gun ready.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Mishka said firmly.

  So we set out to the gate – me at the front with a torch, and behind me, two steps away, my son, who had sat all day in the cold, with a gun in his hands.

  As soon as we stopped, a yellow shadow flashed on our left, and, walking lightly in the deep snow, Dog came out of nowhere. He hadn’t been there a second earlier, and then he was so close to me that I could touch him. I couldn’t control him, of course, I had no idea how he’d behave if the man by the gate wanted to harm us, but somehow the fact that the dog was with us gave me more confidence than Mishka’s gun.

  ‘You have a lovely dog,’ said the man, and then I finally recognised him. Not by his voice – I had always been terrible with voices or names – but by his unmistakable style of constructing sentences, the way he was talking as if we had bumped into each other on a busy city street. Instead of the woollen coat and those awkward smart shoes, he was wearing an oversized sheepskin jacket and a crumpled fur cap with the ear flaps poking out sideways and the cap pulled down so low it almost covered his eyes. His face was still sad and very tired.

  ‘I see you’ve found different clothes,’ I said, gradually calming down and feeling my heart rate returning to something like normal.

  ‘Excuse me?’ He raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Ah, yes… yes, of course. You gave me a wonderful piece of advice. Although, dressed like this, I probably scared you, judging by the way your young bodyguard is standing. Trust me, young man, I’m not dangerous. As you can see, I didn’t even have the courage to knock on your door – I thought one of you would definitely come outside sooner or later, and then I could outline—’

  ‘Why are you here?’ asked Mishka harshly, cutting him off. I nearly pulled his sleeve to stop him because the man looked so weak, so exhausted that it was obvious he didn’t need shouting at.

  ‘The thing is—’ he said, and stopped straight away as if looking for the right words. ‘To be honest, I put together a little speech while I was walking here, and I was practising it while standing here by the gate, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to remember a single word now because I’m so nervous. My son-in-law… you see, he’s an incorrigible optimist. Until recently I regarded that as a virtue, but now, in current circumstances, I’m afraid he’s a bit… he underestimates the seriousness of the situation. I can see you’re the same kind of people, and probably in your case this will be to your benefit – you’re energetic and, most importantly, healthy, plus there are many of you. We searched through the whole street that you kindly allowed us on and didn’t find anything at all useful from a practical point of view. Apart from wood, of which there’s plenty
around here.’ He gave out a cheerless laugh. ‘This gives us hope that we won’t die of cold. But hunger… Hunger is a serious problem. You see, they stopped food supplies several weeks ago where we came from, and everything we’ve got is… in short… I’m afraid we won’t make it till the end of the week. My son-in-law’s still confident we will find provisions and therefore refused to come to ask you for help, but as I said he’s an optimist, and I’m… I’m a realist, and I know too well…’

  He talked hurriedly and incoherently, without looking at me, and I thought, with horror, that at some point he’d run out of words and stop and look directly at me, and I would have to look into his eyes, which were watering with cold behind the glasses that clashed so badly with the hat with ear flaps, and tell him no. So I decided not to wait until he stopped talking and looked up at me and I spluttered out – unexpectedly to myself, so loudly, that he jumped:

  ‘I’m really sorry.’

  He fell silent, but didn’t look up and kept looking at his feet.

  ‘I’m really and truly sorry, but we won’t be able to help you. We’ve got a long winter ahead, we’ve got children, and we simply can’t afford…’

  I was worried that he’d start persuading me, that he’d say But what about us, we’ve got kids, too, help them at least, but he gave up as soon as I said the first few words, and shrank, became even smaller in his huge sheepskin.

  ‘Well,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m not blaming you. Sorry to have taken your time. Good night.’ He turned around and started walking away, his felt boots creaking on the snow, and I stood with my torch pointed at him – either to light up his way, or because I needed to see him for some time. The back of his sheepskin was coming unstitched and two thick threads were sticking out of the long, ragged hole. When he had almost disappeared out of sight, I shouted: