by Yana Vagner
My entrance caused an effect I hadn’t expected: the corpulent wife left her washing-up and, standing up straight, began staring at the bridge of my nose, but both of her assistants suddenly became very agile – the pregnant blonde lady even stopped her unhurried activity and ran to the stove, as if trying to stay closer to the other two women, and from there started staring at me with blatant, hostile curiosity. I choked on the greetings I was going to say. Come on then, I thought, say good morning, what are you afraid of? Even if they know you’re not going to stay here with them, you don’t owe them anything, and it’s not their decision. The most important thing is for the sleepy-faced man to agree to let you go, and these ones can stare and frown as much as they like. Nothing depends on them whatsoever.
‘Good morning,’ I forced myself to say.
None of them replied. The youngest of the women, without taking her round eyes off me, which I noticed were framed by albescent eyelashes, took one hand off her stomach, and, covering her mouth, started whispering something hotly to the woman with the towel.
‘Good morning,’ I repeated, with the merest hint of attitude.
‘Had enough sleep?’ Kalina-wife said defiantly. It didn’t sound like a question but an affirmation, an acceptance of an unpleasant fact, and before I had time to say something like Listen, what do you care if we stay or go, or You should be glad that we’re going, why do you need us here? her face suddenly warmed and, looking somewhere over my shoulder, she said in a completely different tone, ‘You’re up, love? Just warmed some goat’s milk for yer.’ Turning back, I saw Ira and the boy at the door. While the women started fussing around them and forgot all about me, I pushed my shoulder against the door to the other room and went inside.
They were all there, except the doctor – the only evidence he had been there was a shabby jacket left on the floor. Walking in, I heard the end of Lenny’s sentence:
‘…will you tell him? Want me to come with you?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Sergey said. ‘I’ll manage.’ And it was clear to me that it was different this time, that there had been no arguments, and if there had been any, they had been settled last night; something must have changed between the members of our curious group, something important, and I hadn’t noticed exactly when it had happened. This morning the decision had been made, and it had been made unanimously: we were leaving. There was nothing else to discuss.
Sergey went to the other house to start negotiations, and we went back to the lounge. Ira and the boy sat at the table; they had the bowl with the cockerels in front of them and the boy was sipping from it, holding it tightly with his little hands. Looking around the room, I realised that Kalina had vanished, but two women, who were dressed warmly and had presumably come in from outside, were sitting in his place. I wonder where all your men are? I thought, alarmed. What can they be busy with? I wished Lenny had gone with Sergey.
If it had been possible to leave straight away without asking anyone’s permission, without losing time for breakfast, we would have probably done it with pleasure, but the children were hungry, and until Sergey came back we didn’t have anything to do anyway. So while Natasha and I were studying in horror the wood burner we’d have to cook food on, Andrey ran outside to the cars and fetched two packets of buckwheat, some tinned meat and a large aluminium pot. Five women were watching us with mute criticism; it was their house, their territory, and it would be pointless to pretend they weren’t in the room. This will last for an hour or two, I told myself. We’ll cook this damned porridge, and then Sergey will come back and we’ll leave immediately, without any delay. And then one of the two women who had come in last bent down to our host and said in a loud whisper, ‘That one, with the chopped hair?’
I turned around.
‘Shhhh,’ said the pregnant woman with the shawl around her stomach, and giggled, covering her mouth again. The host, defiantly holding my gaze, slowly nodded.
Rip the packet, pour the buckwheat into the pot – these alien, unpleasant women are looking at me and talking about me, without even trying to lower their voices, and for some bizarre reason it’s me they don’t like? – pour some water, where can I get water?
‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘where can I get water?’
‘You need water,’ said our host after a long, almost theatrical pause.
‘Yes, water,’ I repeated. I was beginning to get irritated. ‘I’m making porridge.’
She waited for a little longer and then in her slow, stolid way got up, brushed off her knees for some reason and then said, ‘The bucket’s behind the stove,’ and while I was busy with the bucket, she stood above me, her arms folded, and I felt her hard, unfriendly glare on the back of my head. Come back to the stove, put the pot on, I told myself. Salt, I’ve forgotten salt.
‘Shut up,’ the same woman whispered. ‘I thought it was the younger one, the redhead.’
‘The redhead’s got ’er own bloke,’ our host answered. ‘But this one wanted somebody else’s.’
Which ‘somebody else’s’, whose ‘somebody else’s’, what are they talking about? I thought. To hell with the salt, I need to cover the pot, where did I put the lid, the main thing is not to turn around, not to turn around to them, not to look at these alien, unfriendly faces.
‘Anya, you forgot the salt,’ Natasha said, and at the same time somebody behind me said in a loud voice: ‘She ’ad no shame, he was still married, for Chrissake!’ and only then did I realise. I made myself cover the pot – calmly, making no noise – and only then turned around and walked outside.
I habitually put my hand in my pocket when I got out onto the veranda, took out the same empty pack, crumpled it and threw it under my feet. All our three cars were in the trodden clearing between the houses, looking helpless in the daylight, and several locals were walking up and down, randomly trying to see through the tinted windows what was inside the boots.
It would have been funny had this silly conversation happened in another place, another time. I would have laughed, would have said, It’s none of your business, who are you anyway, silly cows, I’ve lived with him for three years – every day, every night, I know every dot on his face when he’s asleep, when he’s cross, I can make him smile, I know what he thinks, and I also know that every day, every single day, he’s happy, and that’s why I’m his real wife. And a fertilised egg, or three, or ten, has nothing to do with this. At least I know I’m definitely not tempted to stay here, I thought. Please, God, let us leave this place – there are thirty-four of them, and only nine of us, but if they say another word to me, I’ll hit one of those horrible cows, I simply won’t be able to restrain myself.
The front door opened, and Lenny’s smiling face appeared in the gap.
‘Come on, Anya,’ he said, laughing. ‘You’re not upset, are you? There’s no tellies here, just imagine, no soap operas, no celebrities to gawk at, nothing to do. Let’s go back inside, you’ll get cold.’
‘I’m not going, Lenny,’ I said unenthusiastically. ‘Eat without me, I’ll wait for Sergey.’ But he dragged me into the house, ignoring what I was saying, into the room permeated with the smell of buckwheat porridge, and declared in a loud voice:
‘Come on, ladies, stop gossiping! What are you on about, wife, no wife? We in Moscow have as many as we want – I’m the only idiot with just one. By the way, have you got any spares here that I can borrow?’ He noisily sat down at the table, and issued orders: ‘What about the plates? Are there no plates? Don’t sweat, we’ll give them back’ and ‘How about some hot water, eh? We’ve got some very special tea, bet you’ve never had anything like it, it’s called “Emerald Spirals of the Spring”, we’ve half a pack left, bring it here, Marina.’
The tension disappeared straight away. The ‘ladies’, giggling, started busying around the kitchen, taking out the plates; somebody ran to get some boiling water and a few minutes later the table was laid, the pot of buckwheat and tinned meat was carefully wrapped in the same grubby towel
, and even the grumpy host, displaying something like a coquettish smile on her large face, fished out a round loaf of grey, porous bread from somewhere, clearly home-made.
I’ll never learn how to do it, I thought, sitting by a portion of porridge containing two glistening pieces of meat. I’ll never master this simplicity, grow this thick, impenetrable skin, I can’t live so close, shoulder to shoulder with others, because the best way to protect myself has always been to create a space between me and the others. And now, in this upside-down world, I won’t be able to find any peace.
Sergey came back towards the end of breakfast. He looked concerned, but there was no crease between his eyebrows. ‘We can get ready after we’ve eaten’ was the only thing he said, and while he was eating without lifting his eyes from the plate, I sat next to him, my shoulder pressing against his, and sipped Lenny’s burning hot, tasteless emerald spirals, thinking, there you go, of course, that’s the way it should be. It’s going to be OK now.
The whole settlement came out to say goodbye to us. When I was sure that they had let us go, all the terrible emotions that hadn’t been letting me breathe – anxiety, anger, fear – left me, just disappeared. Looking now into the faces of these men and women who finally looked their true selves in daylight and who were shyly walking around our cars, peering inside, I thought how I was happy there were two big houses on the bank of the lake. And although I was happy at the thought of nobody being able to reach our island undetected by these people, at least until winter had ended and the ice had melted, I was mainly happy at the thought that we might be able to see the light in their windows at night from our island. And even if our island was too far away and we couldn’t see their light, we would know that they were here, that we were not alone.
The actual packing didn’t take us long – we only needed to throw our sleeping bags into the cars – but we didn’t manage to leave straight away; there were obligatory conversations and goodbyes to be said. Somewhere behind my back, the large Kalina woman, holding Ira by the shoulder, was telling her persistently, ‘If you have any problem, just come here, do you hear? Do you hear?’ Turning around, I saw her shoving a large plastic bottle of milk into Ira’s hands along with the rest of the bread wrapped in cellophane, and Ira, embarrassed, nodding in reply, saying, ‘Thank you, thank you, I understand, thank you.’
Ivan Semenovich walked over to us, pushing the crowd aside. His face was as crumpled and unshaven as the day before, and his expression was the same, strict and businesslike. But he turned out to be unexpectedly small, much smaller than Sergey.
‘There you go,’ he said to Sergey, giving him the gun. ‘You can have it back. Are you a hunter, or did you take it for protection?’
‘A hunter,’ Sergey said, nodding.
‘Well, who knows, you might be lucky,’ smiled the crumple-faced man. ‘Although our guys only got one hare in two weeks. But they didn’t go too far – there were other things to do… But the fish, there’s lots of fish, dogfish, pike. Do you know how to catch fish under the ice?’
‘We’ll learn,’ Sergey said.
‘You should learn quick,’ Ivan said, and he stopped smiling. ‘Otherwise you won’t live through the winter. I saw that house. It’ll be a bit cramped, but that’s OK, you’ll be fine. The stove smokes a bit, the chimney needs extending – will you manage?’
Sergey nodded, this time with some impatience, or so it seemed to me.
‘Hey, lads,’ one of the men said. He was wearing a thick sheepskin and, unlike the majority of them, he clearly wasn’t from the army. ‘Which house are you talkin’ about, the one on the other side?’
‘Yes,’ Sergey answered. ‘We’re going to the island.’
‘You’ll ’ave to walk,’ the man in the sheepskin said authoritatively. ‘You can’t drive on the ice yet, you’ll fall through.’
‘But it’s December,’ Boris protested. ‘It’s freezing cold!’
‘You can’t,’ said the man stubbornly. ‘Ask anyone.’ He raised his voice and all conversations in the crowd stopped. ‘You’ll drown your cars and yourselves. You’ll ’ave to walk.’
‘Rubbish.’ Boris wasn’t giving up. ‘We’ve driven around here in December on ice, and it was fine, look how thick it is!’ And before we could stop him, he crashed through the nearby bushes and, running several metres out from the shore, started furiously stamping on the ice with his foot, shod in a felted boot, sending small clouds of snow dust whirling into the air. When we came closer he angrily whispered to Sergey, ‘You want to leave our cars to them? Are you insane?’
‘What choice do we have?’ answered Sergey in an equally cross, irritated whisper, and I was surprised to discover how similar these two grown-up men were.
The short run to the lake had cost Boris a lot of effort, because he suddenly went very pale and started panting.
‘They don’t need our cars, Dad,’ Sergey said, calming down. ‘They would have taken them by now, and not only the cars.’ Because Boris didn’t look in the slightest convinced, Sergey carried on with a tired smile: ‘We’ll take the batteries out, I promise.’
The distance to the island was not so great, no more than two kilometres on ice, but we had too much stuff; even when we removed the trailer’s canvas cover and, a quarter of an hour later, with the help of joyful, contradicting advice from the men crowding around us, managed to make something resembling a sledge, it was clear that we would be able to transport only a quarter of our load, if not less. Much to my surprise, Sergey turned down the offer of help from the others (‘Thank you, guys, but you’ve helped us a lot already, we’ll manage, we’re not in a hurry’) and, seeing how I was looking at him (What do you mean, we’re not in a hurry, it’ll be dark again in a few hours, we’ll never cope without help), he took me to one side and said quietly, ‘Dad’s right, they’d take five boxes but deliver four, and we’d never find out what they’d stolen. Don’t worry, Anya, I know what I’m doing.’
It was weird to walk over the lake; its snowbound surface looked more like a barren field with little bumps of frozen weeds poking out, but I could clearly feel the thick, rough layer of ice. The heavy sledge, which Sergey and Andrey had harnessed themselves into, left a wide, uneven track, and, walking slowly on it with a rucksack on my back and three folded sleeping bags in my hands, I couldn’t shake the thought that we were separated from thirty metres of black, ice-cold water by several miserable centimetres of fragile, unreliable ice. I was prepared to believe every step of the way that it would crack and break under our feet, and kept looking down, worried about every little split in the ice, every unevenness.
The island loomed ahead, like a black, wooded hill, overgrown to the waterline by thick fir trees; for the first time during our journey I tried to remember the house where our endless travelling would finally finish – and I couldn’t, although I’d definitely seen it in photos. My memory of it was resisting, refusing to come to the surface, obstructed by all sorts of other images, and even making an effort to remember it didn’t help. I kept envisaging either the flimsy cottage near Cherepovets and the room with the yellowed calendar on the wall, or the huge timber fortress of the bearded Mikhalych, where we had spent a night several days later, and I couldn’t find the one I needed among the multitude of unconnected images which had mixed together in my head. Never mind, I told myself, slowly moving my feet – one step, two, three, the ice hasn’t cracked, we’re halfway through. Sergey’s tense back was in front of me; Mishka was nearby, burdened with guns and a huge canvas bag, the strap cutting into his thin shoulders; and somewhere far ahead was the skinny, yellow four-legged shadow of the dog, leaving triumphant traces in the shape of figures of eight. We’ve made it, we’ve finally made it, I thought, and it doesn’t matter that I can’t remember how it looks, this tiny house, the main thing is that it’s here, that it’s empty; it’s expecting us, and we’ll be able to stay in it and not have to go back on the run.
The house appeared from behind the trees unexpectedl
y – grey, plank-built, lopsided, perched on the shore with its frozen, wobbly wooden footbridge; without thinking, we increased our pace, worried that if we delayed it would disappear, hide itself away, and we wouldn’t be able to find it again – and we were on the shore within a few minutes. Untangling himself from the uncomfortable straps, Sergey straightened his shoulders with relief and effortlessly ran up the footbridge, which was attached to a narrow wooden platform. This platform nestled under the protruding slated roof and skirted round the corner of the house. I could hear his heavy boots pounding on the thin boards as he made his way to the door, presumably somewhere near the back wall of the house.
‘Come on then,’ he shouted to us. ‘Come, I’ve opened it!’ But nobody moved, as if we needed some more time to process the fact that the journey really was over. I also caught myself thinking that I wasn’t yet ready to go inside and would rather stand outside for a while, looking at the dried, porous walls and window frames with their flaking paint. ‘Hey, are you coming?’ Sergey called again, and then I put down the sleeping bags and took off the rucksack.
In order to get into the house I had to bend down – the door was low and uncomfortably narrow, and as soon as I took a step forward it closed with a resounding, frozen bang. Sergey was busy doing something inside; I heard the metallic clang of the stove door. There were several small windows which produced very little light, and that’s why I stood in the doorway, waiting until my eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness after being blinded by the stark whiteness of the lake, and only then did I see everything: several wrought-iron beds with sagging mesh and without mattresses; the three-legged table covered with old, yellow, shrunken newspapers and covered in small black mouse droppings; the grey cracked stove supporting the sooty, painted, sagging plywood ceiling; the washing line with a dozen colourful dusty pegs, hung right across the middle of the room; the black wooden floorboards with fish scales stuck to them.
