To the Lake

by Yana Vagner

  ‘Don’t give up! We’ll leave soon, today or tomorrow, it’s a very large village, and there’s plenty of them around here, and lots of houses probably have basements, you’ll find sugar, tins, jam…’

  ‘Yes, jam,’ he said in a dull voice, without looking back, and nodded several times, making the flaps of the silly hat jump up and down. Then he was gone.

  Mishka and I stood in the deep snow near the gate and looked at the circle of light cast by the torch, which illuminated the empty street with the wide tracks left by our cars.

  ‘You can find lots of stuff here. We did, didn’t we?’ Mishka said, not sounding very sure, and I answered:

  ‘Oh, Mishka. Thank God I didn’t have to look him in the eye.’

  I didn’t sleep well that night. I had a bad cough and kept tossing and turning in my bed, trying to find the most suitable position to stop my throat tickling; in my mind I was endlessly arguing with the man who had come the night before, and came up with at least a hundred wonderful, irrefutable reasons that proved I was right. The most terrible thing was that the man who had begged me for help and I both knew that I was right, and that I had grounds to say no to him, and that’s why one word had been enough to make him silent, why he hadn’t insisted and had left straight away. But the fact that we both knew it didn’t get rid of my feeling of disgust with myself, and no logic was capable of changing that.

  In the morning, after breakfast but before Sergey and Boris set out on their usual expedition, we had visitors again. First we heard Andrey talking as he stamped around the veranda, shaking the snow off his boots, then Natasha’s displeased chattering, and then the door swung open and they all came in. They even brought Lenny, who didn’t look as pale as before but who asked Ira’s permission to sit on her bed straight away and slumped down on it heavily with a sigh of relief.

  ‘We’ve come to use your sauna,’ Natasha said. ‘It’s dreadful – we haven’t washed for a week. You don’t mind, do you?’ And she looked at all of us.

  ‘Sure,’ Sergey said. ‘Use the sauna, no worries. There’s one bucket there, take another one from the stove, heat some water. I wanted to come and pick you up,’ he continued, addressing Andrey, ‘to wander round here. Why don’t you come with us, and you’ll have some steam later?’

  ‘Thank you.’ Andrey made a dismissive gesture. ‘I’ll have plenty of time for wandering later. When are you leaving? Tomorrow?’

  Sergey nodded, his face sad.

  ‘Well, I’ll have a wander after you’ve gone then,’ Andrey said indifferently.

  ‘Let me cut some wood for you at least,’ Sergey said, and, picking up the bucket, went out. After he left it became quiet in the room, awkward and uncomfortable. It surprised me that none of us who were left in that tiny room, feeling the same tension, said a word.

  Finally, Natasha started rustling the bag she was holding in her hands and said:

  ‘What an idiot I am. Andrey, I left my shampoo behind, as well as the soap and the comb. I’ve only packed the towels. Can you go and get them? They’re on my bed, in a little grey zipped bag.’

  ‘I’ve got shampoo and soap,’ said Marina timidly. ‘There’s no reason to go back, you can take mine.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Natasha said and smiled her usual smile, as widely as she could. ‘I need my shampoo.’ What lovely company you are, I thought, so stunningly nice to each other. And then it dawned on me: it’s the same with me and Ira. I didn’t even ask her if she needed soap; maybe she hasn’t got anything to wash her hair with. She doesn’t talk to me and pretends I don’t exist, but it’s time I talked to her simply because I do have shampoo and soap, and lots of spare clothes, and she only brought one bag with her – there it is, under her bed, and I’m sure that it’s mostly children’s clothes in there and she doesn’t have much for herself. She’ll never ask me first, ever.

  I waited for Andrey to go. Somehow I knew that this conversation needed as few witnesses as possible, but the others were still here and didn’t look like they were planning to leave. I’ll offer her soap and shampoo, I thought, and won’t talk about clothes, we can wait for that until it’s just the two of us. After all, I can ask Sergey, maybe he can offer her some of my clothes. I looked up at her – she was sitting with her back to me, as usual, watching her son – and said: ‘Ira.’ She looked back at me straight away, and then I said her name again, even though she was already looking at me. ‘Shall I bring some soap and shampoo for you and Anton? Will you want to go to the sauna too?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said slowly. ‘But I do have soap and shampoo.’ She continued looking at me; I felt myself blushing and getting hot, all the way to the roots of my hair; come on then, I thought, tell me We don’t need anything from you while we’re both sitting here looking at each other. I made myself hold her gaze, although it was uncomfortable, and then she said:

  ‘But if you have a clean T-shirt and a jumper, that’d be cool.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, and jumped up. ‘Of course. I’ll bring them now.’ I ran to the other room and started looking through the bag on the floor by the bed, getting angry with myself at the same time for my silly, obliging haste, yet strangely glad at the same time and not exactly sure why.

  I scattered the contents of the bag over the floor and finally picked a grey-blue Fair Isle jumper and several T-shirts. Why are you fussing so much, I asked myself, calm down, this comes from your permanent desire to be liked by everyone, to be a good girl, to be generous, you always overdo it and then feel a complete idiot, she’ll never be your friend, not that you want her to be really, just give her these few things and don’t blow it out of proportion, she won’t rush to embrace you, she’ll only say thank you and you’ll stop existing for her again, as if you’re an empty space, as if you’re not there. Then I left the room, went over to her and gave her the pile of clothes; she took it and nodded silently, putting the clothes on her lap. She won’t even look at them while you’re here, I told myself, and now you’re angry but won’t tell her; anyway, you never say anything, just bottle it up, silent, and then you can’t sleep at night and lie there thinking of witty, appropriate things to say, but they’re not needed any more.

  The front door swung open and Sergey came in, smiling.

  ‘The sauna will be ready in a couple of hours, but I’m afraid we only have two buckets. Why don’t you bring some from your place?’

  This time the door opened again, pushing against Sergey, who was standing in front of it, and Andrey burst into the room. His jacket was undone, and in his hand, weighing it down, was a large silver pistol, so bright and shiny that it looked like a toy Mishka had had as a child. His eyes were wild.

  Boris jumped from his seat. ‘Andrey, what’s the matter?’

  ‘What happened?’ Natasha shouted.

  ‘He’s been through our stuff!’ Andrey said, addressing only Sergey for some reason. ‘Do you hear, Sergey, he’s been through the trailer. I was coming back to the house and saw him, he opened the cover – probably cut it or untied it, since the cars are all locked, but you can’t lock the trailer—’

  ‘Who’s been through our stuff?’ asked Sergey, and I immediately imagined the large sheepskin on the skinny shoulders, and thought, God, please tell me you didn’t kill him, you couldn’t, he’s so old, you could have just pushed him away, no, shouted out and he would have left, you can’t have killed him, you shouldn’t have.

  ‘Who’s been through our stuff?’ asked Sergey again and shook Andrey by the shoulder.

  ‘That Igor of yours, from Cherepovets!’ Andrey said angrily. ‘Nice people, a wife and two daughters! He got into the trailer and stole a box of tinned meat, bastard!’

  ‘What did you do?’ Sergey said, in a sunken voice. I’m sure he thought the same as me, only with a different victim; he presumably imagined the wide-faced, friendly guy in the jacket with the furry hood, who had waved at us yesterday from the other end of the street, lying on the snow with a bullet through his eye, and I th
ought that if there had been a shot, we would have heard it.

  Andrey twitched his shoulder, writhed himself free from under Sergey’s hand, went up to the table and slammed the pistol down, almost throwing it, as if it was too hot to hold. Then he sat at the chair and clasped his hands in front of him.

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said. ‘I let him take the damn box.’

  ‘What do you mean, you let him take it?’ Natasha asked, rising from her seat.

  ‘I did,’ he repeated gloomily, not looking at her. For some time we were all silent, and then Natasha moved her chair to sit opposite her husband, and said slowly and quietly:

  ‘There were thirty cans of tinned meat in that box. That’s thirty days of life, and you gave it away to a complete stranger. You had a pistol with you, why didn’t you shoot?’

  ‘Because that’s exactly what he said – shoot! You see?’ Andrey shouted, and finally lifted his head. ‘I was five steps away from him, he stood there holding that box, it ripped when he was taking it out and several tins fell out, and then he turned to me and said, “Shoot if you want, our children are hungry and we only found half a sack of sprouted potatoes.” He said, “Shoot, I don’t care, we’ll die here anyway.” I couldn’t. I gave him that shitty box. I’m not prepared to kill a man for thirty cans of tinned meat. I probably couldn’t kill a man, full stop.’

  ‘There’s no need to shoot,’ Sergey said, and put his hand on Andrey’s shoulder. ‘We’ll just go to their house together, and they’ll have to give it back. I know where they were staying – the house with a green roof.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Andrey said. ‘Let them have those tins.’

  ‘You know how many more people we’ll meet on the way who have nothing to eat?’ asked Boris. ‘He stole it, that box. We can’t let him do it. Let’s go, we need to sort this out. Mishka, you’re in charge here.’

  After they left – Boris and Sergey holding guns and Andrey with nothing in his hands, shrinking back from the gun which Sergey was trying to give him as if it was a poisonous snake – Mishka ran out onto the veranda to get at least a glimpse of what would happen on the neighbouring street. It was just the four women, the wounded man and two children who stayed in the house, helpless and scared. We couldn’t even look at each other; we were afraid to talk, because we knew that something terrible was going to happen close to us. This new reality, with its new merciless rules we had to learn on the run, forgetting everything we had always believed in, everything we had been taught before, meant that anything happening in that little house with the green roof was none of our business, and none of us could change anything about it.

  I don’t know how long we spent being apprehensive; at some point the children became tired of sitting still and started messing about on the floor, which didn’t help and was worse than total silence. Suddenly Mishka knocked. ‘They’re coming!’ he said in a dull voice, and several minutes later the door opened and they came in, pushing each other out of the way, with snow on their boots, and stopped by the door. I was trying to catch Sergey’s eye, but he wasn’t looking at me, and then Andrey said:

  ‘They’ve children, they’re sick, I broke down their door, we thought that would be the right thing to do rather than knock, because we’d come to put things right. There’s only one room. They were in bed, those two girls, little, blood on the pillows, and this terrible stench, they weren’t even scared, we stood in the doorway like idiots and they watched us from the bed. They didn’t even raise an eyebrow, as if they didn’t care any more, and this damn box on the floor. They didn’t even open it, they’re probably too sick to eat now. We didn’t cross the threshold into the room. You’re right, Sergey. We can’t stay here. Let’s get the hell out of here.’

  During the next two hours we packed – hurriedly, erratically, as if the people across the street were dangerous. Boris and Sergey moved the Land Cruiser and the hatchback to our gate and for the next hour they carried the things to the cars, freeing space for the trophies they had found in the village, until Sergey stopped in the doorway, holding another load of our possessions intended for the car, and said:

  ‘Look. This isn’t right. We can’t leave right now. We need some sleep. We’ll keep watch in turns as usual, it’ll be fine. Let’s have dinner. And the sauna is probably hot now.’

  Nobody enjoyed the sauna or the food that evening. We ate in heavy silence and started getting ready for bed straight afterwards. The dog, who was watching us the whole time we were packing, slipped through the door with me and went straight for the bedroom where Sergey and I slept; as soon as I went to bed he hovered at the door for a bit and then lay down with a big sigh.

  I woke up in the middle of the night because the dog was scratching at the door. They were short but persistent scratches; for some time I tried to ignore the sounds but then realised he wouldn’t stop and got up to let him out.

  It was dark in the middle room; Ira slept with the duvet drawn to her chin, both arms tightly around the boy. Clip-clopping on the floor with his nails, the dog made for the door. I had to put a jacket on and come outside with him, and as soon as we went out I realised that something was not quite right: instead of sitting on the chair wrapped in his sheepskin, Andrey stood by the window in a strange, tense position, nodding to somebody who stood outside; he didn’t even look back when he heard the door opening. I came closer and breathed on the window, and saw a familiar figure in a silly hat and oversized sheepskin. He stood with his head awkwardly thrown back and spoke in a quiet, determined voice.

  ‘…I just wanted to say to you that you’ve done the right thing. These are terrible, disgusting times, and a lot of awful and unfair things have happened already, and believe me, there will be many more. It’s not worth scolding yourself for doing something good. Our girls are ill, you probably noticed. My son-in-law, Igor, didn’t believe it to the last minute, he kept telling us that they merely had colds, he was so convinced… I already said that he was an optimist, although I didn’t say that to you. I think my wife’s ill, too, and if I understand anything about this hideous disease, it’ll be a miracle if we all last till the new year. Your box of tinned meat, young man, will help us die in dignity, if one can talk about dignity at all in this situation. Please don’t think ill of us – we’ve tried to be as careful as we can, we tried to stay as far away from you as possible every time we spoke to you, even Igor, which presumably means he’s not the optimist I took him to be. It’s funny how much you find out about your loved ones when you’re in these kind of circumstances…’

  Andrey kept nodding without saying a word, and I pressed my back against the door and listened to the quiet, apologetic voice, realising that I had no right to show my face because this doomed man in somebody else’s sheepskin hadn’t come here to speak with me. I stood there until the dog’s cold nose poked me in the hand, and then I opened the door as quietly as I could and went back into the warm, sleepy house, leaving Andrey and the man behind.

  We left the village in the morning.

  ‌14

  Cleansed Villages

  The road was bad. Luckily it hadn’t snowed heavily yet, at least not since the day the thin line of traffic between Cherepovets and Belozersk – a tiny dot on the bank of a huge, cold northern lake, the first one we were to see during our journey – had grown smaller and gradually disappeared. There was nothing to be transported by this road connecting one dead city with the other, nor was there anybody left to do it. It had presumably happened only a few weeks earlier, because the layer of snow covering the road wasn’t deep and we could still see the tracks from the last cars that had driven here.

  Looking at Sergey’s focused profile while the Pajero was confidently making its way forward, rocking only slightly, making a crunching sound as it compressed the fragile, frozen tyre prints of other cars on the snow, I was thinking about the last person who had driven along here. I wanted to know who that person was and where they were going. Did they have a rescue pl
an similar to ours, or were they escaping, hurriedly loading their family, or whatever was left of it, into the car without a particular destination in mind, just wanting to run away from the death that was breathing down their neck; were they infected already? Did they know that everything they were escaping was awaiting them round every corner of their journey, in every little village they would pass? Would they manage to do what they had planned, their only goal, however they articulated it, to survive? Would we manage it?

  On the back seat, which was much larger than the Vitara’s, the dog sat, alert and looking out of the window as if trying not to see what was happening around him. It was probably his first ever car journey.

  When everything had been packed, I’d taken a last look at the street criss-crossed by the tracks of our tyres and narrowed by enormous snow banks, and had suddenly noticed the pair of yellow eyes. The dog was sitting a few paces away from me and his face didn’t have a particular expression; he was simply looking at me calmly, and when I had opened the back door of the car and told him, ‘Come on then, jump in,’ he’d stood still for a little while longer, as if not sure that we were worthy of his company; he’d then walked over to the car reluctantly and was inside in one graceful leap. Mishka had immediately reached over and tried to touch him but the dog had drawn back from his hand as if saying Don’t touch me, I don’t need you, I’m only with you as long as I want to be and not a minute longer. If anyone had asked me why I had brought him with us, I probably wouldn’t have been able to answer, because I knew we had neither space in the car nor food, and I was ready to hear this question – What do you need him for? – and would have answered simply, He’s coming with us, he’s coming, I owe him something, something very important, I feel calm when he’s near me.

  The question of who would be travelling in which car was resolved just as easily; Boris brought Ira’s bag and threw it onto the Vitara’s back seat, and then, picking up the boy under the arms, put him next to it, stating, ‘Anya, Sergey, you’ll go first, we’ll follow you. Andrey, you’ll be at the back.’ I expected there to be arguments and objections, I was almost sure the boy would demand a place for himself and his mother in Sergey’s car again like on the day we’d started our escape, and this would mean that once more I would face several painful days of not seeing Sergey’s face, of not being able to reach over and touch him. Because when he was near me, I knew that everything would be all right. Unlike the day I’d first met them – this tall alien woman and the boy who never smiled at me – this time I was prepared to fight. I wasn’t feeling guilty any more; it was as if I had paid all my debts to them in the summer cottage while they were waiting for me to die in the house next door. But neither Ira nor the boy said anything. Settling in the back, Anton immediately started breathing on the window and rubbing it with his hand to be able to see, and she, happy that he was comfortable, sat in the front and rested her hands on her knees, indifferent to us busily packing the car.