To the Lake

8 ENCOUNTERS ON THE ROAD

I wished we could drive like this all the way – I thought I could manage five hundred, even a thousand kilometres in this darkness, at crawling speed, holding tight to the steering wheel on this slippery road – only never to have to stop again, not to look for fuel, not to be scared of meeting anyone on the way. I wanted to carry on like this until we reached our safe place and not speak to anyone again except Sergey, not listen to Boris’s dark humour, which gave me the willies, or Ira’s rant on how we’d all catch this disease which none of us had known much about so we hadn’t become terrified of it yet. On this dark, empty, snow-sprinkled road it was so easy to imagine that we weren’t running away from anything, weren’t hurrying anywhere: we were just moving from A to B, as if we were trying to solve a mathematical problem. It’s amazing how reluctant we were to let go of the belief that the situation wasn’t really dire. If the oncoming traffic, the checkpoints and armed guards would disappear, our fears and anxieties would fade, too, as if they had never existed, as if the whole journey was no more than a little adventure, or maybe just somebody’s experiment, an endurance test. In the end we’d reach the invisible finish line, where there’d be television crews, the bright lights would come on, and the person who started this experiment would come out from behind the camera and tell us: “It was all staged, there was no epidemic, you did what you were expected to do. You can go home now.”

It might have been possible to hold on to this illusion had my eyes not involuntarily glanced at the fuel level every now and then – the thin red needle, which kept dropping lower every time I looked at it – three hundred, two hundred-and-fifty, two hundred kilometres – and then we’d have to stop, open the boot, take out the petrol cans and top up – watching our backs all the time, listening carefully and checking to see if the road was clear. I was always bad at maths – both at school and afterwards, in my adult life – I always needed a piece of paper or a calculator to work it out, but I had had enough time by then to estimate that the petrol we had, splashing about heavily somewhere in the depths of our car, wasn’t going to be enough, and somewhere ahead – among the unfriendly, icy northern lakes, and maybe even sooner – in the middle of a road, several kilometres away from some god-forsaken village – the engine would choke and die, and this illusion of safety we had in the car – with its lockable doors, rubber mats, heated seats and our favourite CDs in the glove box – would die, too.

But that moment hadn’t come yet, there was still time; the needle was dropping slowly, the road was empty and I could tell myself: “Anya, stop getting ahead of yourself, you’re not alone, your job is to stay awake, hold on to the wheel, and watch the red rear lights of the Land Cruiser, and by early morning, when we reach Novgorod, you’ll swap places with Boris, close your eyes, and the rest of the journey will be somebody else’s responsibility. While you’re asleep the others will manage to top up the fuel safely and reach our destination, where nothing’ll threaten you.”

Within an hour or two the heavy snowfall suddenly died down, the dark air around us became clear, and the lit up areas of the villages alongside the road became visible again. Their names were unfamiliar and they looked different from the tidy settlements we had gone past outside Moscow: small, two-window houses grown into the ground, sloping fences. Maybe because it was so late, or perhaps for some other reason, the windows facing the road were dark, like closed eyes, and many were hidden behind closed shutters. The road here was so narrow and unattractive, I might have thought we were lost, if Sergey wasn’t confidently continuing to go forward. Perhaps because it was easier to drive now, or maybe because the stillness accompanying the heavy snowfall had gone, we started moving faster – and even Marina managed to increase her speed to almost a hundred kilometres.

It happened straight after Vyshny Volochek – a sleepy, deserted, unprotected town, with lonely flashing traffic lights in the centre – we went through it without stopping, as we did with the other two similar looking deserted villages with blind windows and sporadic lamp-posts along the road. Soon after I had seen the pale light of the lamp-posts on the road ahead, right in front of a sign with writing I didn’t manage to read, there appeared a white and blue traffic patrol car, parked at the right angle to the road, with its lights off, and near it, a bit further ahead, a man, in a fluorescent safety jacket with reflecting stripes. We were about three hundred metres from the car when the man noticed us, lifted his wand and pointed to the opposite side of the road. The Land Cruiser slowed down, indicated right and started pulling over to where the man had pointed. What’s she doing, idiot, I thought in despair, does she think they’re a real traffic patrol? I shouted ‘Marina!’, as if she could hear me, and Boris immediately woke up, lifted his head, and in a flash, leaning on me, blew the horn. Its harsh, loud noise made me jump. I switched to full beams, which exposed the patrol car with a cold, bright blue stream of light, and we saw that one of its windows was smashed and the white and blue side facing us was dented. There was something wrong in the way the man standing next to it looked – his hi-vis jacket was worn over a dirty track suit, covered in mud splashes, which seemed odd for a traffic patrol, and to the left of the car, in the bushes, we saw more people, wearing plain clothes. I’m going to overtake her and leave her here, I thought, helpless, and she’ll have to sort it out on her own, I don’t believe Sergey will pull over, I don’t even have enough time to warn him on the radio, he must have seen this isn’t a real traffic patrol. I hit the accelerator and swerved into the oncoming traffic lane, continuing to press on the horn. I needed to see what Sergey was doing, but at the same moment, the Land Cruiser also made a sharp turn back onto the road, deciding not to stop after all, and speeding up, our caravan zoomed passed the smashed patrol car and the other people in the ambush. I could see in the rear view mirror that the man in a hi-vis jacket had lowered his wand and was standing in the middle of the road, watching us drive away, and those behind him had come out too, with no reason to hide anymore.

“I wish I could have shot them,” said Boris through clenched teeth and took his hand off the horn, “frigging vultures!”, and turning as far back as the seat belt would allow him, looked back again. I was looking at the Land Cruiser’s back, which was swaying from side to side, and thinking I was going to dump her, overtake her and clear off without looking back. I didn’t have enough time to stop and think, I didn’t have a plan, I just saw a threat and hit the accelerator, and now we both know it and will never forget it. If anything else happens – something as dangerous as this – I won’t take a risk, I won’t stop and won’t try to help. I also thought – I couldn’t help asking myself this question – what if there was no Land Cruiser, what if it was just Sergey’s car in front of me, what would I do then?

Boris finally stopped looking back and took the microphone:

“We need to stop, Sergey,” he said. “Look at her, swinging from side to side. She needs to swap with Lenny.”

“Got you,” Sergey’s voice said. “But we need to find a place a bit further away from here.”

We all knew that it would make sense to drive for another twenty or thirty kilometres before we stopped, but one look at the Land Cruiser’s wobbles was enough to convince us to stop there and then – as Marina might either clout one of us or simply skid off the road. As soon as the dim light of the street lights behind us was out of sight Sergey slowed down and said:

“Let’s have a quick break, I can’t remember how far the nearest village is, but there are plenty of them around here, if we don’t stop now we might not find a suitable place between here and Valday. Let’s get out, only don’t forget to turn your lights off,” and he pulled over by the side of the road.

We stopped; Boris fished around looking for his gun, trying to heave it out from behind the seat. Catching my eye, he said: “I’ll take it with me, just in case we meet some more good people who might want to talk to us. Come out, Anya, let’s swap, looks like I’m done sleeping.”

I didn’t want to get out of the car – I would have been happy to stay where I was and wait until Marina swapped seats with Lenny, so as not to catch her eye, but I had no choice, so I unbuckled my seatbelt and stepped out onto the road. The driver’s door of the Land Cruiser also opened and Marina jumped out. Even with the lights off her snow suit seemed to be glowing in the dark; she started running towards me, sniffling. I sank my neck into my shoulders; I didn’t have time to think, I wanted to say, I was scared, I have Mishka in the car with me, I couldn’t stop. But she ran up to me and took my hands in hers. “I’m so sorry,” she said, and I saw that she was crying. “I’m such an idiot, I’m just tired, the road was awful, I didn’t have time to think, I saw this stupid police uniform and nearly stopped, and then you beeped and turned the main beams on, and Lenny woke up, – if it wasn’t for you, Anya, if it wasn’t for you…” She hugged me, whispering something quickly into my ear, and I stood there – but I couldn’t make myself touch her. I kept thinking I was going to leave you, and you didn’t even notice, but I would have left you, I know.

Lenny came up and led her away, back to the car; then he came back and said:

“I’ve only got a third of a tank left. We’ll be in Valday soon, and it’s about two hundred kilometres till Chudov, I’d rather top up here, before we’re on the Murmansk road, we might not get another chance.”

While they were topping up – Boris kept watch with the gun, while Lenny and Sergey were sorting out the cans – I stepped aside and lit a cigarette. The constant stress of focusing on the road and the danger of our journey which had held me in a paralysing grip since we left home and which had made me hold the steering wheel tight throughout the whole journey, were suddenly gone, as if they had never been there. I was relieved that I didn’t even need to watch the road for newcomers, because from that moment planning the route, the fuel supply, our safety – everything – wasn’t my responsibility anymore; soon I would climb into my seat, push the seat back, close my eyes, and all of this would cease to exist, and when I’d open them again, there would be a dense taiga around, lakes and occasional villages with exotic northern names, and this crazy, aggressive rabbit-warren would be left behind.

They finished filling up with fuel and it was time to go. I came up to Sergey and touched his sleeve:

“I’m off to sleep,” I said. “Boris’ll drive. Let’s move the Vitara to the front, Ira can drive, you need to get some sleep.”

“Not now,” he said straight away, with a little irritation in his voice, as if he was waiting for me to say that and knew I was going to insist.“You see, Anya, there’s a fairly difficult bit of the journey coming up – Valday, Novgorod. After St Petersburg we can swap, it’ll become easier after Kirishi. I can’t let her drive now.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Why doesn’t she have some more rest, poor love, she’s so tired – what with all the lying down on the back seat since yesterday,” and regretted saying this immediately, before I had even finished my sentence, because he was right and we both knew it. I said it to get back at him, because he had left me then, a few days back, in the middle of the night, and had gone to Moscow to pick them up without saying anything; because if it wasn’t for her, it would be him and not Boris asleep on the seat next to me for the last four hours, and I wouldn’t need to worry about him. Because she called me ‘baby’. Because I don’t like her. Because I’ll never be able to get rid of her. And despite the fact that I was ashamed of these thoughts, I would never be able to think of her differently.

I didn’t want him to see my face but I couldn’t let the conversation finish like this; I turned away – I needed a few moments to regroup, to put on a carefree expression, a smile, say something light-hearted, but however hard I tried I could manage neither smile or joke, and then he put his hand on my shoulder, brought his face to my ear and whispered:

“I know how you feel, but if you knew how bad a driver she is, you wouldn’t let her behind the wheel in the dark either,” and smiled at me with his beaming smile, which I hadn’t seen for ages.

“I’m off to sleep,” I said with relief.“Since I don’t need to worry about my driver.”

We hadn’t set off again – Boris was readjusting the mirrors, I was strapping my seat belt, trying not to disturb sleeping Mishka, – when the radio spoke in Sergey’s voice:

“Attention all listening to this channel, there are gunmen on the motorway near Vypolzov, be careful, I repeat…” I froze holding my seatbelt buckle.

“Why’s he doing this? Who will hear this except those bandits? It’s not as if the road is crammed with cars?” Boris, frowning, shook his head disapprovingly and started saying something to me, when the radio suddenly came to life again and we heard an excited voice, barely audible because of the interference.

“Sergey? Is that you?!” And, without waiting for an answer, the voice went on hurriedly, as if worried that the signal would disappear: “Sergey! Wait, which way are you going? St Petersburg or Moscow? Where are you?”

Sergey was silent – perhaps he didn’t recognise the voice, which was almost impossible to distinguish, because of the crackling on the radio. There could be other people called Sergey, I thought, or maybe somebody had been listening to us earlier and was trying to make us talk, because if we were on air, that could only mean one thing – that we had petrol, food and a car, and somebody probably wanted to take it all away from us.

“What’s the coverage for this radio?” I asked Boris, and he said:

“About fifteen-twenty kilometres of good reception. So he’s somewhere near.”

“Give me the radio,” I said, and reached over. “I won’t tell them anything, give it to me before he answers back!” And when he passed it to me, I pressed the button and very slowly and clearly said: “Don’t say a word. Can you hear me? We don’t know who this is.” And the unfamiliar voice shouted with even greater excitement – I could hear it much better now:

“Anya! I know it’s you! You suspicious buggers, it’s so great to hear you, are you going to St Petersburg? We’re coming towards you, wait, I’ll turn my roof lights on, you’ll spot me easily, don’t go too fast.” I still couldn’t understand who it was, he kept talking, and so nobody could get a word in edgeways, and when he finally stopped for a second, Sergey said:

“I thought you’d never take your finger off the radio button, Andrey,” and laughed. At the same time, we saw a yellow spot, slowly growing in the predawn haze, and a few minutes later a solitary car, approaching fast, was rushing towards us, with three bright orange lights on its roof.

“Who’s Andrey?” asked Boris, straining to see in the darkness ahead of him.

“A family friend,” I said, watching Sergey jump out of the car and run towards a silver hatchback, with a tightly covered, snow-sprinkled trailer behind; Ira followed, hastily putting on her coat on the way, and two people came out of the hatchback – a man and a woman, and the four of them, forgetting about all health precautions, were standing on the road, talking animatedly.

“Which family friend?” asked Boris.

“Well, how can I put it,” I said with a sigh, unbuckling my belt and opening the door. “Not mine, I’m afraid.”

How is it possible, I was thinking, walking slowly towards the group of people standing in the middle of the road, that there wasn’t a single person among this strange party – apart from Mishka – who I’d really want to take with me on this journey, who I could rescue because I needed to rescue them? My mum was no longer there, and Lena, my darling friend, had probably perished in the city, too, on a dirty mattress in some make-shift medical emergency station. And everyone else I held dear, who I loved, who I could talk to openly, even just exchange knowing glances with – they had all disappeared, vanished, maybe even died. I had banned myself from thinking about them – at least for a while, until we stopped running, until we reached the lake where I could lose myself in the forest, sit on the ground, hug a tree and shut my eyes. But could someone explain to me what the likelihood was of meeting someone you know, on a deserted road, seven-hundred odd kilometres long, at night – and why on earth it had to be these people, and not the ones I so badly needed?

I came closer and took Sergey lightly by the hand. He turned to me and said:

“You just won’t believe it, Anya! Can you imagine? We could have so easily gone past each other in silence…”

“You were the one who kept on about CB radios to me years ago, so there wasn’t much chance of us going past in silence!” Andrey interrupted, putting his arm around Sergey’s shoulders and smiling a wide beaming smile – it was strange to see him so open, so naturally happy. I remembered him as an arrogant, gloomy type, who Sergey had known since school or university – I couldn’t remember for sure – and as often happens in long-term friendships, each of them had chosen a persona they were going to play in this friendship a long time ago, and so it didn’t matter anymore what kind of person each of them really was because they still had those childhood masks on; the masks welded to their skins while they were getting to know each other. For my part, I had never managed to get used to Sergey’s role in his relationship with Andrey.

“Anya,” the woman standing next to him said loudly and excitedly and turned to her husband. “I told you it was Anya’s voice, and not Ira’s!”

“Good to see you too, Natasha”, I answered. I didn’t have to be polite to hide my sarcasm, she wouldn’t have noticed anyway, she had never been sensitive to this kind of thing, and Natasha, smiling, slowly looked round at all of us, and her smile was growing bigger and bigger, even though it seemed that it couldn’t carry on growing forever.

“So, is this how you’re traveling, in your little ménage à trois?” she asked with enthusiasm, and I immediately remembered why I never liked her.

There was no time for an awkward pause as everyone turned their attention to Lenny, who’d just come up, and Boris, who had climbed out of the car and was walking towards us holding his rifle ready – defiant in spite of everything; for some time, the men were shaking each other’s hands and exchanging obligatory pleasantries, and when they finished, Sergey finally asked the question which was on the tip of everyone’s tongue since the moment we saw the silver hatchback in front of us.

“Guys,” he asked, smiling.“Why the hell are you going in the opposite direction?”

Neither of them answered but their faces darkened, as if somebody had turned off a light, and they were silent for a few seconds. Then Natasha looked up at her husband and lightly pushed him with her elbow and only then he said – now in all seriousness:

“We’re going the opposite way, Sergey, because the road from Moscow to St Petersburg ends before Novgorod.”

“What do you mean – ends?” I asked, not believing my ears.

“I mean,” he said and looked me in the eye. “That near the bridge across the Msta – I think the place is called Belaya Gora – they’ve blocked the road with trucks. When we were driving towards it, it was still possible to get on to the bridge, but there was no way across it. We were lucky to notice in time,” he hesitated, “Well, it was impossible not to notice. There were about twenty or thirty of them, they were armed, we couldn’t quite see if they were troops or not.”

“We weren’t the first to fall into that trap,” Natasha said quietly – she wasn’t smiling anymore. “If you could only see what they’ve done there.”

We were silent. Everyone needed time to think over the bad news. Then Andrey said:

“In short, wherever you’re going, you need to go back. The federal road’s gone.”

“Well, this is some kind of nonsense,” Ira’s voice sounded demanding and almost cross, and it occurred to me that I was beginning to get used to her intonations. “There must be a way round. We can’t go back, we’ve nowhere to go back to, let’s go by a different road. Isn’t that possible – surely there’s more than one way to get to St Petersburg from Moscow?”

“Screw St Petersburg,” Lenny interrupted gloomily. “Why do you want to go there, do you think there’s really anyone left alive?”

“Well, that’s where we were going, actually,” Natasha said and when we all looked at her, surprised, she carried on, impatiently, as if defending herself. “And there’s no reason to look at me like that. OK, not quite to St Petersburg – near Vsevolzhsk, my folks have a house there. Last week it was all fine there, I spoke to my dad every day while the phone was still working. It was much better there than here. There’s a lake there, we’ve got a boat with us.” She couldn’t stop talking – fast, almost choking on her own words – she said that the house was really big, that they’d have died had they stayed in Moscow, that the phone lines were dead but she knew for a fact that her parents were fine, and it became clear to me that she had said this so many times, that she and her husband had so many arguments, and then they both made the decision to leave, and one of them wasn’t sure if it was the right decision while the other had no other choice but pretend he was sure it was right – just to make the other one leave too. Their story reminded me of our trip to the checkpoint, when I was afraid not so much of the disease waiting in ambush somewhere ahead, but that Sergey would change his mind and we’d have to go back, and I’d never see my mum again and wouldn’t even know what happened to her. It was unbearable to listen to Natasha – how she talked, spitting out her words, hurriedly, incoherently, her eyes glaring – and I realised that this woman, who had managed to upset me within two minutes of being here – was on the brink of a breakdown, and I wanted both to support her and make her shut up at the same time, but I didn’t have the right words; so I just came a bit closer and lightly squeezed her arm just above the elbow. She suddenly pulled her arm away from my hand and scowled at me, her face distorted:

“Don’t touch me! We just need to find another road, we were going to turn right and try the Pskov motorway, and then you turned up. Why are you looking at me like that? Andrey, tell them it’s possible!”

Andrey winced, fretful, I could see it was hard for him to listen to her. It had probably been the only subject of their conversations during the time they had spent in the car together; he didn’t touch her, he just pushed her lightly aside and said:

“Sorry, guys, we’re a bit overwhelmed, this damn bridge did us in, we’d been going for about a hundred kilometres at full throttle until we heard you on the radio.”

And then they told us their story. Interrupting, shouting over each other, they told us how they had driven for half a day and all night, only stopping once near Tver to top up with fuel; how, approaching the fateful bridge, Natasha was driving and Andrey was asleep, and she didn’t understand what had happened straight away – first they crossed a bridge across a small river, it was quiet and deserted, and she didn’t pay any attention to it – it was just a bridge, and the road after it was wonderful – there were several kilometres of beautiful, quiet woods, and they were glad to be able to relax after the very stressful hours of driving through villages and towns, and were – like we had been, too – happy to have a break. As soon as the woods finished they were going through fields on both sides of the road – there were no villages (yes, there were, Andrey interrupted, they were just a bit further away from the road – it doesn’t matter, she shouted, you were asleep, the road was deserted and it was dark, it was just a field, – ok, just a field, he agreed, – there was a kilometre to the bridge, it was well lit, you must have been able to see her – no, I couldn’t, the bridge was too far and the road was dark, and then I thought maybe she was infected, she was walking in the road, right in the middle, I nearly ran her over!) and in this darkness the headlights suddenly revealed somebody walking in the road. Natasha hit the brakes and the hatchback skidded because of the heavy trailer, but she managed to straighten the car up. She didn’t have enough time to take a proper look, but she thought it was a woman. Her face was covered in blood, and she was staggering, and a few meters further they saw a car in the ditch – it was one of those girlie little cars, it was lying on its side, like a small turtle, and a dark spot of oil was growing around it. Things were scattered along the road – bags, clothes – and it was difficult to drive around them, especially after Natasha briefly lost control of the car, and then Andrey finally woke up. He said they should stop – she was shaking – but she refused, it was unclear what had happened and she was afraid of stopping, they barely had time to talk about it when they saw the bridge – brightly lit, long, on huge concrete piles. They’d usually drive through the lit up gaps of the road as fast as they could – that’s why she hit the accelerator and would probably have run straight into the trap if another car hadn’t been reversing towards her – she wouldn’t have understood that it was reversing if it wasn’t for the white rear lights, which were glowing even through the dirty snow that stuck to them – so she had to swerve to one side to avoid crashing into it, and that’s why she slowed down. Then they both saw the truck blocking their way on the other end of the bridge, with a dirty grey flapping tarpaulin with blue letters, five or six cars with open doors and several bodies on the ground, – somehow they guessed that they were bodies, although there was lots of stuff around, too – the bridge was at least four lanes wide, perhaps even more, and was covered in various kinds of junk. Andrey shouted ‘reverse, Natasha, reverse!’ when they saw people running towards them – a lot of people – perhaps they were chasing the car which had been reversing and was now gone. The people were firing guns – they couldn’t hear the shots but could see the flashes of light, and it was scary, properly scary, and Natasha realised that she wouldn’t be able to reverse with the heavy trailer, so she swerved sharply to the right, bringing the car close to the iron fence and then steered all the way to the left, praying for there to be enough room to turn around – for a second she thought that there wasn’t enough room, and that the trailer, ramming into the fence and breaking through it, would drag them into the freezing black waters, but the trailer only lightly scraped the sturdy iron posts, and the hatchback, wobbling and speeding up, screeched away from the bridge. They drove so fast that missed the overturned car as well as the woman with the bloody face they had seen only minutes before.

That was the end of their story; they both fell silent, and we were all standing in the middle of this awful, bumpy road – in a place which was hardly suitable even for a short break – a caravan of three cars, loaded to the brim, with sleeping children inside – with a new addition, a fourth car, standing on the wrong side of the road. We were trying to come to terms with the fact that we were too late. Running away from the danger that was coming from the city – the city that used to be our home, the city that no longer existed – we couldn’t imagine that we were driving towards the same kind of chaos we had been fleeing from – we had thought that it was enough to slip away from the wave which was about to swallow us, when it suddenly became clear that there were plenty of other ‘waves’ like that one, moving with a speed much faster than we were capable of, they were spreading like ripples in water around every city, around every crowded area, and if we wanted to save our lives we had to think of a new way of reaching the place we had chosen as our refuge, dodging those waves, and not knowing when they would block our way again.

Nobody said a word but I was sure we all had the same thoughts. I searched for Sergey’s hand in the dark and squeezed it, and he immediately woke up and said to Andrey:

“You know what, move your car off the road and turn off your lights, there’s one nasty little village not too far from here. I hope they’re not going to wonder what’s going on under their noses. I’ll go and get the map, we should think of a new route. Come on, Dad, don’t put your rifle away just yet.”

Maybe there was no pause between Sergey saying this and the moment Andrey turned and walked unhurriedly back to his car – maybe it only seemed to me that he thought for a moment, considering whether he should do what Sergey had told him or not. You just don’t like him, I thought to myself, or rather, you don’t like the kind of person Sergey becomes in his presence, but we have to take him with us, together with his permanently smiling wife, who took you by the elbow on the day she met you, led you away to one side and said so many words, none of which sounded sincere to you then nor even later on, when you were remembering this strange conversation with her and trying to come to terms with your new role.

I went to the car to get my cigarettes so nobody could see my face – Mishka was still fast asleep, I didn’t want to wake him – and when I came back the hatchback was already on the side of the road with the engine turned off, facing the opposite way, and everyone circling around a map laid out on the bumper. I came up and heard Sergey say:

“…here’s the lake, can you see, Andrey? We wanted to avoid St Petersburg and get onto the Murmansk road through Kirishi and continue up north.” He was holding a torch in one hand and was pointing at the map with the other. “This is the simplest and shortest way. We won’t be able to get there through Novgorod – we’ll have to take a detour. Let’s turn left at Valday and skirt round through Borovichi and Ustyuzhna, get up onto the A114 and come back on to the Murmansk road.”

“The detour you’re talking about is some five hundred kilometres,” Boris interrupted, gently pushing Lenny aside to be able to see Sergey.“Where will we find enough fuel? We’ll get stuck half way.”

“There must be something in Kirishi,” Sergey said firmly. “There’s a processing plant, we’ll find fuel, I’m sure. Anyway we don’t have any other choice, Dad, even if we drove straight there, there wouldn’t be enough fuel.”

They fell silent. After a pause Andrey said:

“Going via the Murmansk road isn’t a good idea. There are bridges everywhere – here and here, all the way to Petrozavodsk, and even if these bridges don’t all have traps like the one we nearly fell into, if you come across just one of them on your way, it’ll be the end of the journey. I hope you understand what I mean.”

Sergey nodded – too quickly, I thought – and moved the map closer to Andrey:

“Ok. What do you suggest?”

Andrey bent over the poorly-lit sheet of paper, upon which our salvation depended, frowned and fell silent for a long time, several minutes, and we stood around him and just waited for his ‘verdict’, as if none of us was capable of thinking of anything useful. I even had the impression that nobody was looking at the map anymore, – only at Andrey’s face. I don’t know how long we would have stood like this if Boris, who had stood a bit further away from us, holding his rifle and watching the road, hadn’t interrupted our thoughts:

“Give it here,” he said, unceremoniously pushing Andrey aside. He turned the map to himself and immediately poked at it much further to the right, with his nicotine-stained finger with a broken nail: “That’s where we’ll go. Instead of going up to the Murmansk road after Ustyuzhna, we’ll go further, through Vologda region, past Cherepovets – we won’t have to go into the city, the road doesn’t run through it and then we’ll go round past the Beloye lake and go up north, to Karelia.

“There are bridges there, too,” Andrey said.

“Well, if you were trying to find a route from here to Karelia to avoid all rivers, then you’d have to spend another couple of hours working it out. We’re not in Kazakhstan, there are rivers everywhere. But after Ustyuzhna all the way to the Vongozero there isn’t a single big town, which means there aren’t many people. We’ll have to take a risk. Take your fingers off the map.” Hinting that the discussion was over, Boris pulled the map from under Andrey’s hand and started folding it up in a business-like manner.

“It’s up to you,”Andrey muttered and stepped back from the car. Boris turned to him and held out the folded map:

“You have a better idea? Show me,” he smiled. “Only do it quick, we’ve been here for a whole hour, right in front of this lot,” – and he pointed towards the village.

“OK, OK, it’s not a bad route you’re suggesting.” Andrey didn’t take the map, and turned away with a grumpy face.

Sergey was watching them without interrupting, and Lenny was also silent, moving his glance from one speaker to the other. I caught Ira’s eye and was surprised to see that she was hiding a smile. So you don’t like him either, I thought, that’s interesting.

“So,” said Boris cheerfully. “Are we ready to go?”

“OK, then, Natasha, we should go,” Andrey said, “Good luck, guys.” He patted Sergey on the shoulder and Sergey instinctively turned to him to give him a hug in return but suddenly stopped:

“Hang on, are you seriously going to Vsevolzhsk?” he said, confused.

Falling asleep on the passenger seat – my car was leading the convoy now, because Sergey had finally given in and let Ira drive – I was thinking: whatever happens, whatever my worries, I’ll be asleep, even if we come across a bridge with a trap, even if somebody stops us and makes us get out of the car they’d simply have to carry me, because I’d be asleep and I wouldn’t give a shit. The burst of energy I felt after a short rest in Tver had long gone; I had never driven all night before, so I was really looking forward to closing my eyes and letting go, making all this disappear – the road, the danger waiting behind every corner, and these people I hardly knew. Just how many burdens does one have to put up with, how many missed heartbeats, how many shocks does one have to bear until one finally becomes numb and perceives everything that happens as just senseless and unreal background?

It was a good thing that I was so exhausted – my thoughts had become slow and lazy, and everything that had happened to us in the last few days had suddenly stopped worrying me. So we were a company of eleven people who would soon have to live together in a two room hunting lodge, no bathroom or toilet, people who would never have chosen to do this, who wouldn’t even go on holiday together. While Sergey was trying to convince them and they were fervently whispering to each other, it was clear to me that they would agree in the end and come with us, because all the time they were on the road from the bridge, and maybe even earlier, they had known there was no Vsevolzhsk left, it was gone, and so was the safe, comfortable parents’ house, and the parents, too. They knew it and were simply refusing to admit it because they didn’t have another plan. I wondered for how long he was going to pretend we would each go our own way. I was thinking – half asleep – if Sergey had not insisted on them coming with us straight away, would he really have taken his wife, climbed into his hatchback and set out on a quest to find a mythical safe way to a dead city? This seemed so strange to me – I could never do this – pretend that I don’t need any help, not lift a finger, calmly wait until others offered their help and support. And funnily enough there is always someone who would persuade people like Andrey that they need to be saved, and would be grateful to them for accepting their help. You can’t learn this kind of attitude to life, you’d have to be born with it. I could never do this, I thought, and finally fell asleep.