by Yana Vagner
‘What happened?’ Steps started crunching in the snow; the others had started coming up to us.
‘Come on, get up,’ Boris ordered glumly. ‘We don’t have time for this stroppy girl nonsense, we need to go.’
‘No!’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘I’m not going! I’m not!’
‘What do you mean, you’re not?’ Boris crouched down next to her and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘You mean you’re going to stay here? Come on, enough now, get up, let’s go back to the car. We still have three hundred kilometres to get through, and the more we can do while it’s dark—’
Marina shook his hand off her shoulder. ‘We’re not going to make it,’ she said, stressing every word, and then stood up, wrapped her arms around herself and took a step back as if ready to dash off into the depths of the black forest if anyone tried to touch her. ‘We’re not going to make it there, haven’t you got that yet? This horrible road will never end, but we keep going, and these people, sick, angry, there are more and more of them, I’m not going!’ And she stamped her foot, which was silly, stubborn and pointless, and I thought that this looked like a child’s tantrum in a toyshop, and part of me prepared for the next phase – where she’d throw herself on the ground and start kicking the crumbly snow while we adults stood around and watched, feeling an awkward and helpless anger – but there was another, small part of me which was desperately jealous, because when they’d said there would be another village in ten kilometres my heart had sunk, and more than anything else I’d wanted, like Marina, to jump out of the car and shout, I don’t want to, I won’t go, realising that I would have to go, that there was no other way. I wanted to purge this fear, spit it out into the starless black sky, into the silent, frozen trees by the road, to disperse it, to give some of it away to the others to stop it eating me from inside, because when we don’t talk to each other about it, while we pretend the fear isn’t there, it eats away at each one of us, and it becomes truly unbearable.
‘Fusspot,’ Ira said with quiet contempt, and the venom in her voice reminded me why I couldn’t allow myself to act like Marina. Marina, turning sharply towards Ira, bared her teeth and shouted angrily:
‘Oh, and you’re the brave one, are you? You’re not afraid! You’re not? We’re not going to make it, can’t you all see?’
‘We need some ammonium chloride,’ the doctor said. ‘Does anyone have any in their first aid kit?’
‘We don’t need any ammonium chloride,’ Lenny said, interrupting him. He had finally managed to climb out of the car and came over to us, huffing and puffing. ‘Just move away, will you.’
I was almost sure that he would slap her, that he’d swing his arm back and deal her a short and precise blow so her head would snap backwards, her teeth would clunk together and then she’d calm down and stop shouting. Instead he bent down and scooped up a handful of fluffy pristine snow, as if he was going to make a snowball, and with his other hand pulled his wife towards him, almost dragged her, and at full swing shoved the handful of snow into her face. There was silence. They stood like that for a while, then he took his hand away. She spat out the snow. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were white.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
We went back to the cars, leaving them both behind. Settling into my seat, I looked back and saw her standing with her arms helplessly hanging down and her head lifted towards him while he carefully wiped the snow off her face with his fingers.
And then we were back on the road, driving slowly, cautiously, almost getting stuck in snowdrifts; after one frightened, hushed – or maybe even dead – village showed up in front of us and disappeared, the doctor finally decided to break the silence and asked hesitantly, ‘Tell me, where exactly are you going?’
‘Up the road, to Medvezhiegorsk,’ Sergey answered reluctantly, without looking back, ‘and after that, left, to the border. To the lake.’
‘To the lake?’ the doctor repeated. ‘Please forgive my curiosity, but do you need a particular lake? I’m sure you’ve noticed we’ve got a lot of lakes here.’ He smiled.
‘Trust me, we know exactly which lake we need,’ Sergey replied, irritated. ‘And I doubt you’ve got a better plan to suggest to us.’
You’re not cross with the doctor, I thought, it’s just that we’re close already, we’re nearly there, and you’re also worried, like Marina, like me, like all of us, that when we get there – if we get there – it might turn out that our plan wasn’t so good after all, because there might be no house left, or it might be occupied by other people, and you’re afraid we’ll have to start again, and we have neither energy nor opportunity to do it.
‘No, not at all,’ the doctor replied quickly, talking to the back of Sergey’s head. He pressed his palm to his chest. ‘I didn’t mean that at all… I’m sure you know what you’re doing,’ he added, and started nodding because Sergey could see him in the rear-view mirror. Catching my eye, he stopped nodding and said in a panicked voice, ‘Hang on, you probably thought… well, of course you did… that I landed on you out of nowhere, and you’re probably thinking what on earth you’re going to do with me. Please don’t worry, I’m not going to burden you! There’s a hospital on this road, just on the border of this region, there’s another hospital… well, it’s not exactly a hospital, it’s a clinic. It’s in Pialma, on the way to Medvezhiegorsk, you won’t have to take a detour, I’ll just get off there.’
‘What in the world makes you think anyone has survived in that town of yours?’ asked Sergey. ‘Or that they’d be happy to see you?’
The doctor opened his mouth to say something, but then blinked and didn’t say another word.
22
Unlevel Crossing
I dozed off, probably because of the oppressive, almost hostile silence in the air. It was a light sleep, one where you can still feel every bump on the road and your right temple gets cold from the chill of the window. If somebody had said something, I would have definitely woken up, but Sergey concentrated on driving, the doctor sat at the back quietly, and even the radio was silent – there was nothing to talk about in the middle of the night on an empty road. But as soon as we stopped, I opened my eyes and looked around.
‘What happened? Why did we stop?’
‘We’ll find out in a second,’ Sergey answered and picked up the radio. ‘What happened, Dad?’
‘There’s a level crossing,’ Boris answered immediately.
‘Level crossing? So what?’ Sergey was surprised. ‘You don’t think a train’s going to run here, do you?’
‘I don’t know about a train,’ said Boris gloomily, ‘but the crossing is closed.’
‘Oh, come on.’ Sergey pressed on the accelerator and the Pajero overtook the hatchback, rolled forward and stopped by the Land Cruiser, in the oncoming lane. The beams from our headlights revealed a lowered red and white level crossing gate, which was shaking in the wind.
This looked like a secondary railway track. It was hard to imagine, looking at these narrow, snowbound rails that, even if they went on for a thousand kilometres, they would lead to a big, brightly lit, noisy train station; I would rather imagine these thin strips of metal, zigzagging, going nowhere, abruptly ending somewhere in the middle of the woods, their rusty stumps sticking out of the snow. The darkened signal light, the tiny boarded-up cabin: everything suggested that this was an abandoned crossing. However, straight after the striped gate, there were two massive iron slabs rising menacingly from the ground: a built-in system preventing any vehicle from crossing the rails, as unfriendly and secure as any fence would be.
‘Don’t even think about leaving the car,’ Boris said tensely. ‘I don’t like the look of this.’
This must look funny from outside, I thought; three stationary cars with their engines running, waiting by a closed gate in deserted frozen woods in the middle of nowhere, while we stare ahead into the darkness until our eyes hurt, not daring to step outside. A few weeks ago I had no idea this place existed, and it lo
oks as if the last time people were here was decades ago.
‘I can’t see a damn thing,’ Sergey said into the microphone. ‘We’ll have to get out. Mishka, give me the gun.’
‘Wait,’ Boris said. ‘I’ll come with you.’
Mishka sleepily struggled to find the gun, and as soon as he fished it out from under the seat and opened the door ready to pass it to Sergey I sensed the sharp, bitter smell of the fired gunpowder. As soon as I breathed it in, it hit me that the situation was not funny at all.
Before he got out of the car, Sergey turned to me and said seriously, ‘Anya, I want you to sit in the driver’s seat.’
‘Why?’ I asked, frightened.
‘In case something goes wrong,’ he said. ‘Do you know what I mean?’ And then he looked at me carefully and said: ‘Imagine we’re going to rob a bank. Somebody must be in the driver’s seat, that’s all.’ He smiled and, opening the door, stepped out onto the road.
Sitting in the driver’s seat, ready to press the accelerator at any moment, I watched Boris and Sergey slowly walk up to the gate, looking back at us all the time. They ducked under it, and then Sergey tried to push down one of the heavy barriers blocking our way, which didn’t give, didn’t even budge a centimetre. After that I saw Boris push the door of the cabin with his shoulder, to no avail, then they both pushed and the door gave way, opening into the cabin. While Boris waited outside, looking around and holding the gun, Sergey disappeared into the cabin and came out several minutes later, and then I watched them hurrying back to the cars. When they were several steps away, I lowered the window.
‘So?’
‘No good,’ Sergey answered helplessly. ‘Even if I knew anything about these automatic contraptions, there’s no electricity anyway. We can’t lower them.’
There was polite coughing in the back.
‘I might be wrong, but I think this is Pialma,’ the doctor said. ‘Did anyone notice the sign? To be honest, I dropped off for a moment.’
‘And what are we going to do?’ I asked Sergey.
‘I don’t know yet,’ he answered. ‘Let me think for a minute.’
‘What if we ram it at high speed?’ I asked, but he shook his head.
‘We’ll smash the car – and then it’s curtains for us. These concrete slabs are meant to stop trucks, not small cars like ours.’
‘I’m sure this is Pialma!’ the doctor exclaimed from the back seat.
‘Oh, just wait with that Pialma of yours!’ Boris growled. ‘Pialma-shmialma, what difference does it make? There could be an ambush anywhere here! They’ll shoot us like rabbits!’
‘Guys, shall I come out?’ Andrey’s voice said over the radio, and without waiting for an answer, his tall figure appeared on the road and started striding towards us. ‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said when he got to the Pajero. ‘We’ll need the spares from our cars, and several boards.’
Sergey simply cut up the wooden barriers with an axe – they were impossible to lift, just as it was impossible to manoeuvre the heavy concrete platforms. First he tackled the barrier on our side and then the other one, which was vibrating in the wind opposite. We only had two spare tyres; returning from the Land Cruiser, Boris told us angrily: ‘This idiot doesn’t have a spare! The cover at the back’s empty! Andrey, do you think two will be enough?’
‘We’ll put them straight under the wheels,’ Andrey suggested. ‘And the boards will go on top. Should be enough.’
‘I told you we should have taken the tyres from the Vitara,’ said Boris, upset.
Sergey ignored him. ‘Get out, Mishka. Take my gun. If anyone appears, anyone at all, shoot without any warning, you understand?’
Mishka nodded excitedly and came outside, the dog following him, and the doctor and I stayed in the car, watching the men unscrew the spare tyres and put them under the corners of the slabs. We watched Boris hurriedly cutting the wooden door of the cabin, splitting it into long, uneven parts with ragged edges, and all this time Mishka stood with the gun by the side of the road, looking tense and important. None of us risked turning off our engines, and feeling the gearstick vibrating under my hand, I thought, Christ, what a dreadful, cheap horror B-movie, how did we get ourselves into this? If this really is an ambush and the people who raised these barriers haven’t attacked us yet because they’re waiting for us to get distracted and stop looking around, will Mishka’s thin figure be enough to scare them off? What if somebody invisible, hiding in the dark, has him in his sights, waiting for the right time to pull the trigger? And even if they have no cartridges, what if they appear on the road out of nowhere, jump out from behind the trees, will he be able to shoot? And if he does shoot, how many shots does he have? One? Two?
‘…our clinic, we’ve just missed the fork.’ The doctor had obviously been talking for some time; his voice was calm, not alarmed in the slightest. On the contrary, there was a clear excited impatience in it, and I kept looking through the window, not even daring to blink, afraid to take my eyes off Mishka yet glancing from Boris to Sergey. Where will they come from? I thought. Maybe they’ll appear from behind Mishka’s back, so he doesn’t notice them in time. Or perhaps they’ll come from behind the hatchback. It was so dark that I couldn’t see the road in the rear-view mirror, and perhaps somebody was quietly approaching us at this very moment. The damn gearstick kept vibrating under my hand and the doctor kept rabbiting on.
‘…it’s not far, just a couple of kilometres, I should have told you earlier, I just dropped off, you see, we haven’t slept for two days—’
‘For heaven’s sake, just be quiet!’ I yelled. ‘Just be quiet, OK?’ And he stopped straight away, without finishing the sentence.
The whole operation took no more than ten minutes. Finally, returning the gun to Sergey, Boris got into the driver’s seat and the Land Cruiser carefully crawled up the makeshift bridge built out of two spare tyres and a wooden door cut into two parts. We heard an alarming cracking sound from the wood, but the seemingly flimsy construction survived; the second slab, sticking out on the opposite side of the crossing, came down by itself under the crushing weight of the car, whipping up a cloud of snowy dust. The next to go over was the hatchback with the trailer, dangerously swaying from side to side, and before it reached the end, I put my foot down on the accelerator and moved off despite Sergey’s unintelligible shouting. I risked missing the shaky boards and getting stuck, but I was desperate not to stay on my own this side of the rails. Stopping on the other side, I realised how wet my palms were. A streak of sweat ran down my spine.
‘I’ll just go and pick up the tyres, and we can go,’ Sergey said, and winked at me.
The doctor, who had been sulking in the back seat, suddenly perked up and started climbing out.
‘Wait,’ he called, but Sergey was already busy with the tyres and must have not heard him. The doctor went back to the rails. He walked clumsily and was visibly limping – the iron rod that the man had thrown at him by the hospital had hurt him quite badly. When he caught up with Sergey he started talking. It was impossible to hear what he was saying, but I saw Sergey stand up straight and listen to the doctor, who was looking up at him, excitedly waving his arms. Finally, Sergey shook his head and, holding a heavy tyre over each arm, walked back to us. The doctor started limping behind him.
‘…I can walk, it’s not too far,’ he said, smiling uncertainly. ‘As you see I haven’t got any luggage, so—’
‘Stop talking rubbish,’ Sergey interrupted him, standing by the car and putting the tyres on the snow. ‘What clinic are you talking about, you crazy man? There’s no clinic left. Get into the car and stop distracting me.’ He turned away and started fixing the tyre.
The doctor’s shoulders slumped, and he waited for a few seconds before sighing and climbing back into the car.
23
Medvezhiegorsk
It took much longer than we’d expected to get to Medvezhiegorsk. The road on the other side of the crossing looked as if it hadn’t
been driven on for several weeks, and but for the trees, growing thickly either side, it would have been impossible to guess where the road was. Anything might have stopped us right there, even though we were no great distance from our desired destination; the snow reached the middle of the wheels in some places and in others looked like frozen crust, which made a terrible, constant crushing noise as our cars drove through it. But even if we hadn’t been afraid of the potholes and invisible obstacles, we couldn’t have gone any faster: as soon as we increased our speed, the engines would start revving like mad and the wheels would spin ominously. After the first hour of this virtually impassable, resisting road, it seemed that it wasn’t the fuel burning in the tanks that made the wheels spin and pushed the cars forward, but the constant and fierce act of will exercised by every one of us inside.
None of us could sleep. The whining, choking roar of the engines, the jerky movements followed by the cars sliding on the ice, and the sound of Boris’s swearing coming from the radio didn’t give anyone a chance to drop off. Sitting next to Sergey, who, teeth clenched, was holding onto the juddering steering wheel, I was afraid to take my eyes off the road or to close them even for a second, as if the safety of our journey depended on whether I was watching where we were going. I kept catching myself clenching my fists until it hurt and nail marks were left on the palms of my hands. Sometimes we had to stop because the overloaded trailer would skid off the tracks made by the car driving in front of it, or because a pile of crumbly snow was too big for the wide Land Cruiser and it couldn’t move any more. When this happened, everyone, even Mishka, even the limping doctor, would jump out of the cars and, sinking into the snow, would start scraping it away with spades or simply with their hands. We were all in a hurry, in a desperate hurry, and didn’t let ourselves slow down for a minute – no stops, no cigarette breaks. There was this alarming, pressing urgency which I was sure none of us could explain to ourselves, but we all felt it strongly.
