To the Lake

18 PAVEL AND NIKOLAI

We drove fast – as fast as was possible on the road sprinkled with snow, and I caught myself looking back to make sure that the road behind us was empty; somehow I was convinced that the man who had let us stay in his house and take his fuel wouldn’t chase us, but the others, who had come to visit him earlier, were more likely to do so – especially after we had given them a reason and been the first to break the rules. Everyone in the cars probably felt the same – that’s why we drove without stopping and without talking over the radio all the way to Nigizhma, in spite of the fact that we had to eat and feed the children and top up fuel into the tanks. The continuing snowfall kept egging us on – it was harmless but could easily gain strength and block our way, which would be fatal for us.

If it hadn’t been for the man’s warning that Nigizhma was alive, we would have never guessed it was true – driving through the dark, hushed village it was really easy to assume that it had died and its people had left it. I thought I saw a glimpse of a light in one of the windows, but it could easily have been the reflection of our headlights.

“Do you think there’s anyone left here?” I asked Sergey, and he answered:

“I don’t know, Anya. A week’s a long time these days, anything could happen in a week, and the old man wouldn’t have known.” And I thought – really, what’s a week?

Two weeks ago we were still at home – the city was closed by then, but my mum was still alive, and Dad hadn’t arrived and knocked on our balcony door in the middle of the night to tell us that we were careless fools; two weeks ago we still had several days before the moment when our habitual world collapsed in its entirety, leaving us without any hope that this horror would end on its own. There was no way it was going to finish by itself, no way we could simply hide and sit it out. It was impossible to believe that two weeks earlier Sergey, Mishka and I were probably having dinner in our cosy modern kitchen with the stained glass lamp shade and my biggest worry had been what to cook for dinner the next day. Although – no, of course not – two weeks ago Sergey and I tried to enter the city, and started being worried about those who had stayed inside, beyond the checkpoints – but we still had hope; we hadn’t lost anyone yet, the bad people hadn’t shot Lenny’s dog yet, the gingerbread house hadn’t burnt down in the neighbouring village and we hadn’t even considered leaving, convinced that we were safe within the walls of our beautiful, newly built house. It was impossible to imagine that all this had happened only two weeks ago.

This is why it was easy to believe that, although there had been no connection with Nigizhma, one week was enough for the illness to reach it and kill the few people that had lived there; or for those ‘bad people’, as the old man had called them, to find their way here; and this village seemed so deserted and dead because it really was deserted and dead, and there was no Ivan Alekseyevich in the third house down on the right, whom we could have asked for help if we had had the decency to do so at the time. I could have been wrong of course – maybe the villagers saw the four large cars approaching from a long way away and it made them lock up their houses and hide. Maybe they were watching us from the darkness of their windows, following us go past with their gaze; and maybe there was somebody watching us with fear and distrust, watching us, who knows, through the aim of their hunting rifle.

“I don’t like it here,” I said, huddling myself up, “let’s go faster.”

“Dad, let’s skip this one a bit quicker,” Sergey said into the microphone straight away, as if he had waited for me to say this, and Dad answered grumpily:

“I can’t go quicker, the road’s bad, the last thing we want is to get stuck in the middle of the village. Don’t panic, if they didn’t jump out on us straight away, they’ll let us pass.”

I wasn’t able to relax until three or four kilometres after Nigizhma disappeared behind the bend, as if it had never been there, and seemingly endless fields of snow on either side of the road were replaced by thick forest again. Andrey said:

“I don’t know about you, guys, but I’ve used up my fuel, the tank’s empty, we can’t go any further, let’s stop.”

“Let’s drive for another five kilometres,” Dad suggested, “it doesn’t seem a good idea to do it right under their nose…”

“I’ve made the last fifteen kilometres by the skin of my teeth.” Andrey spoke quietly, almost whispering, but we could hear how difficult it was for him to restrain himself from shouting: “If you don’t mind me saying, I’ve used up my fuel pulling out your Land Cruiser, so if I say that we’re not going to last any longer that means we’re not going to last any longer,” as soon as he said that, he pulled over, and we had no other choice but do the same.

As soon as I opened the passenger door, the dog jumped out and tried to squeeze past the back of my seat and the side column; as soon as I let him out he ran to the woods, zigzagging between the trees, and disappeared, and I watched him in alarm, thinking that without realising it, instead of choosing one of our companions on this journey to add to a short list of those I cared about, I had chosen this big, unfriendly beast, and added him. This list – or rather circle – had never been large in my previous life, and over the last few years it had shrunk dramatically and included only those closest to me – my mum, Sergey, Mishka – but even Lena, my friend, had been rather more outside of it than inside recently; and it wasn’t about how well they were getting on with Sergey, but since he had appeared in my life, the rest of the world had somehow lost its colour and retreated into the background. It had become unimportant, as if somebody had separated me from the people I had known before – friends, acquaintances, colleagues – as if somebody had put me under a glass-shade which had subdued all sounds and smells of the outer world, and everyone who had stayed outside turned into the shadows on the walls, still recognisable but no longer important to me. And this big, gloomy dog, who came and went as he pleased, was making me search for him, and making me worry that he wouldn’t come back in time for us to go and that I wouldn’t manage to persuade the others to wait for him.

I got out of the car and, taking the crumpled pack out of my pocket, grabbed the last cigarette from it. The men behind me were concentrating on taking out the heavy twenty-litre petrol cans each one splashing reassuringly as they moved it. They were calling to each other – ‘hey Dad, give us some light, I can’t see the fuel door’, ‘that’s enough Mishka, it’s full now’, and I just walked along the frozen edge of the road with an unlit cigarette in my hand and couldn’t make myself stop. I suddenly had a burning desire to move away from the headlights, from the human voices for a short time, at least for a minute, to be alone for five minutes in this frosty, fresh darkness; I just needed a break after a night spent with strange women in a small, stuffy room. I had taken five steps, then ten, when Sergey called:

“Anya! Where’re you going?”

I didn’t stop; I couldn’t say anything, I just waved back and took another step, and then another, I won’t go far, I thought, just far enough not to see anyone, I am so tired from having people’s bodies so close to me, leave me for some time, please, give me just a little time. I knew very well that I wouldn’t go too far – I didn’t need solitude, I just needed its illusion, its safe substitute; as soon as I reached a place where the light became barely noticeable and the sounds blended into one undifferentiated noise, I stopped and stood quite still. They won’t look for me straight away, I thought, I have five minutes, maybe even ten, I’ll just stand here, in silence, and when they’re ready, they’ll call me, I’ll be able to hear them and come back.

The snow along the road was virgin white, and ignoring how I would look to anyone seeing me, I knelt down, and then lay on my back; only then, looking up, did I notice that it had stopped snowing – it stopped just as suddenly as it had started. It was cold and soft to lie on the snow, like on a feather bed in a cold bedroom; in the black, moonless sky I could clearly see large, bright stars, and I lay on my back, smoking, enjoying every minute of it, without rushing, it’s dark here, they’re not going to see me and won’t ask me why on earth I’m lying on the snow; it’s impossible to explain, I couldn’t possibly explain it to them – to any of them, even to Sergey, why I needed to do this. I could still hear their voices and shutting of the doors – but these sounds seemed very distant, almost illusionary; it seemed that with a slight effort I could block these sounds completely, and I almost managed to do so, but suddenly I realised that my quiet and peaceful reverie was being disturbed by a new noise, one totally out of place and for some time I kept on lying quite still just trying to understand what sort of noise that was, and even took a couple of pulls on my cigarette. Then, propping myself on one elbow, I started looking carefully into pitch darkness which was masking the twisting road to Nigizhma – and then I realised. I jumped up, threw off the unfinished cigarette and ran back to the cars, trying to reduce the distance separating me from the others as fast as I could.

When I ran up to them, they had almost finished topping up the fuel, although they hadn’t put away the petrol cans which were piled on the snow; Sergey turned to the sound of my footsteps and I shouted to him, out of breath:

“A car! There’s a car…!”, and by the way he desperately turned towards the thick wall of the woods, I realised that it was too late, that we wouldn’t make it. I started searching for Mishka and saw him near the cars; then I recognised Lenny’s massive figure on the backseat of the Land Cruiser and next to him – a white spot of Marina’s suit; Dad, Andrey, Natasha – everyone was here, only the Vitara was empty, with the door wide open – neither Ira nor the boy were in it.

“Ira!” I shouted as loudly as I could, and as soon as the echo of my voice stopped, the noise of the approaching car became very obvious and its lights pierced the seemingly impenetrable row of bare, frozen trunks a few hundred metres away from us, flashing on snowy branches.

“Anya, go to the woods,” Sergey breathed out, looking for the rifle among the clutter behind the Pajero’s seats. “Girls, all go to the woods!…” And because we were too shocked and frightened to move, he turned back, painfully grabbed me by the shoulder and barked at me straight in the face:

“Anya, can you hear me?! Go to the woods!” and pushed me so hard that I almost lost my balance, and continuing to look at me – intently, carefully – said again: “Find Ira and Anton, and stay there until I call you. Do you understand?!” And then I slowly started walking backwards, still looking at him, and he said again: “Do you understand?” I nodded, and he turned away and walked to the road, only I didn’t have a chance to take another step, because the car, which I had noticed too late, was very close already. It suddenly slowed down about thirty metres and, slowing down even more, as if reluctantly drove up closer – so close I could see it quite well, it was a muddy-green low minivan, UAZ, which they also call a ‘loaf’, with small round head lights wide apart. When it reached us, it suddenly swerved to the left into the oncoming traffic lane, and stopped. Nobody got out onto the road, all the doors remained shut, but its engine continued rumbling and puffs of smoke were emitted from the exhaust pipe.

“Get behind the car,” Sergey said quietly, but we were already instinctively retreating to hide behind our massive, overloaded vehicles; bending down, he carefully walked around the hatchback, rested his elbows on the bonnet and yanked up the gun.

A branch snapped behind me – I turned round and saw Ira with the boy, slowly coming out of the woods; I thought, it couldn’t be that she hadn’t heard the noise of the car, she’s always so careful, but she wasn’t even looking our way – she was looking under her feet, stepping over the thin fallen tree trunks, sticking out of the snow, and talking to the boy:

“…what do you mean you’re not hungry, you need to eat, you must, we’ll ask daddy to open a tin of lovely meat…”

“…shall we give the meat to the dog as well?” asked the boy in a high voice, but she didn’t reply, because she finally saw our tense, frozen figures, Sergey holding a gun and somebody’s car on the other side of the road, and then she suddenly pressed her hand against the boy’s mouth – he squealed in protest and tried to free himself – and with the other hand she pulled him towards her and fell onto the snow with him, just where she stood, and lay very still. At that moment I heard a noise from the road – I looked that way and saw that the passenger door of the car was open and a man – a short, stocky man, wearing a jumper of some ridiculous, rusty colour, started clumsily climbing out of it. Then he did something even more strange: instead of trying to take a proper look at us or addressing us, he finished climbing out of the car, promptly turned round and stuck his head into the open door and shouted inside the car – with laughter in his voice, rather than irritation:

“It doesn’t open, your window, I told you! Nothing frigging works in your car!”

Somebody invisible inside the car – probably the driver – answered him, in a persistent and alarmed voice, but I couldn’t hear the words, and the person standing on the road only waved him off with a comical, exaggerated gesture, meaning, perhaps, ‘there’s no point in talking to you’, and then turned around and started briskly walking towards us, shouting:

“Don’t worry! I’m a doctor! A doctor!” and lifted his hand, holding a plastic case, like the ones paramedics carry on the ambulances, in front of him; something rattled inside the case.

“Stop!” shouted Dad and came into the light so the man walking towards us could see the rifle he was holding. The man stopped but didn’t put down the case, on the contrary, he lifted it higher and said in the same loud voice:

“I told you, I’m a doctor! Are you all ok? Do you need help?”, and I looked at the car again and saw a bright white rectangle with red letters on it – ‘AMBULANCE’ – and lower a red cross inside a white circle.

“We don’t need a doctor!” Dad shouted to the man with the case. “Drive away!”

“Are you sure?” asked the man, carefully looking ahead, as if trying to see better the face of his armed interlocutor. “So why are you here then? What happened?”

“We’re fine, you fucker!” roared Dad angrily, “We don’t need anyone!”

The person with the case stood there for sometime, as if waiting for Dad to say something else, then lowered his hand and said in what sounded to me like a disappointed voice:

“Well if you don’t, then you don’t”, and turned around to go back to his car, when suddenly a thin voice from somewhere on the right shouted:

“Wait!”, and he froze and lifted his head.

“Don’t go! We need a doctor!”

“Marina”, hissed Dad, turning to her, “go back to your place.” But she had already come out onto the road and was running to the man with the case – tall, with her straight, slim back – and didn’t look back at us once; and when she almost reached the man she suddenly slipped and nearly fell on the ice so he had to hold her with his free hand, and while he was helping her get up, she was telling him in a hurried and complaining tone: “Please don’t go, they won’t do anything, my husband’s there, he was hit with a knife, it’s not healing well, come with me, I’ll show you,” and dragged him towards the car, where Lenny sat, helplessly curled on the back seat; then we watched them come up to the Land Cruiser, Marina lifting her arm and finding the button to turn on the light inside the car and then hurriedly taking the little girl out of the car, and then the child’s car seat, dropping it by the car and with a lot of effort trying to push forward the front seats which didn’t move, and she struggled with them until the man with the case said:

“Hang on, let me try.”

The girl, who stood outside, on the snow, in the snowsuit half undone and her head uncovered, started whimpering – but Marina didn’t seem to hear her. The man with the case managed to push the seats forward and his top half disappeared inside the big black car. We could only see his legs on the step and Marina ran around the Land Cruiser from the other side and, opening the driver’s door, also stuck her head in the car continuing to talk in a worried voice. The girl cried louder and then Natasha, who crouched by the car, suddenly exclaimed:

“What’s going on, damn it, she didn’t put a hat on her,” and stood up: “Marina!” she shouted. “Where’s Dasha’s hat?” but there was no answer so she came up to the little girl and started pulling the hood over her head, grumbling: “As if they’ve only just hit him with a knife, goodness, what a drama queen, don’t cry, sweetheart, it’s ok, the doctor’s come to see Daddy, it’s ok, let’s zip up your snowsuit…”

The rest of us, still crouching behind the cars, were feeling really silly, nobody tried to call Marina or Natasha, and Andrey drawing himself up to his full height, came out from his hiding place and walked towards his wife, and then Mishka, who was hiding behind the Vitara, looked back at me, unsure and followed him – I was surprised to see he was holding one of Sergey’s guns in his hands. Dad spat, annoyed, and was the last to give in; as soon as he came up to the Land Cruiser, the man with the case poked his head out and, still standing on the step, shouted towards the car:

“Nikolai! Bring me my black bag, it should be somewhere behind the seat! Nikolai, can you hear me? Ah, I’ll go and get it,” and lightly jumping off the step walked quickly across the road, just as his untrusting partner was coming towards him. He’d left the engine running and the door open and now as he walked around the car he continued to talk to the man with the case in the same voice – displeased, alarmed:

“I don’t know where your bag is, you always dump it all over the place, go and look for it yourself!”, and while the man was rummaging about inside the car, almost disappearing inside it and revealing to us the worn out shoes he was wearing, disproportionately large for somebody so short, frowning Nikolai, who had a long, thin face with grey bristle, stood nearby looking at us grimly and without a trace of friendliness. He was gripping a heavy iron rod.

Several painfully long minutes later, the black bag was discovered and moved to the Land Cruiser. Having spent some time hovering by the car, Nikolai finally turned the engine off, and began rooting around inside the car. He took out something shapeless and soft, and then, still hiding the rod under his arm – he was definitely not ready to part with it – gave us a prickly, contemptuous look as he went past the Land Cruiser and said grumpily to the large, rusty-brown coloured back:

“Put your coat on, Pavel Sergeyevich, you’ll get cold, it’s freezing outside,” and tried to shove the shapeless package inside the car. This turned out to be a thick winter jacket, but ‘Pavel Sergeyevich’ only brushed him off without looking back and then Nikolai pressed the jacket to his chest and remained standing like this close by, shaking his head, like a parent who had got tired from the antics of his naughty child, mumbling to himself:

“‘Don’t worry’, he says. I mean, they have him at gun point and he says ‘don’t worry’. And we only have an iron rod, and that’s the only weapon we’ve got. How many times did I tell him – don’t meddle, damn you, but no, he definitely needs to meddle!”, and he lifted his head and glared at us: “And look at you. You’re offered help, and what do you do? Point a gun at the the man who’s offered to help you!” He snorted grudgingly, and fell silent; a few moments later he said – in a completely different voice:

“Have you got a fag? We haven’t smoked for five days.”

Ten minutes later, after two cigarettes which Dad had reluctantly given him, Nikolai, hiding another cigarette behind his ear – for later – said ‘if anyone’s cold they should sit in the car’, because ‘if Pavel Sergeyevich gets to a patient, there’s no stopping him, he’ll treat them to death.’ Dad was still looking at Nikolai in the same unfriendly manner as he did at us, but Nikolai walked up and down along our parked cars, looking them over like an expert, kicked some of the wheels, and, stopping by the Land Cruiser, said ‘this one must be a really thirsty car, you’re probably spending all your time at the petrol station’, and lovingly glanced towards his van, parked on the other side. I thought he was desperate for us to ask him questions, but as soon as I asked him something, he turned sulky again, and grumbled something like ‘when Pavel’s free, you can talk to him, I dunno nothing, my job’s to drive.”

Finally, both the doctor and Marina came out, leaving Lenny to lie on the back seat of the car:

“Here,” he said, “take it,” and gave her a small white tube, “use it sparingly, because I don’t have any more. You need to treat the wound twice a day minimum – that’ll be enough for five or six days. And – did you hear me saying? – don’t rush to remove the stitches, you’ll understand when it’s safe to do it,” – and she stood clutching the precious tube in her hands – tall, almost by a head taller than this short, stocky man, and looked like a highbred thin-boned Arabian horse next to a hardworking and simple donkey, and nodded to every word he was saying, and somehow it seemed – I don’t how she did it – that she was looking up at him: her face was showing awe and admiration.

The doctor took a few steps towards us, looking obviously relieved to escape from Marina’s gratitude. Maybe he feared that the next thing she’d do would be to go down on her knees or start kissing his hands or something: certainly her outpouring of thanks was threatening to become unstoppable.

“Don’t worry, he’ll be fine. There’s a slight inflammation, but the local antibiotic will heal it, I would prescribe something orally, too, in normal circumstances, but my stocks are very low, and I might need them for more serious cases. Well done to the person who stitched him up – the seam’s good, really neat, I can see a steady man’s hand in it,” and he, pleasantly smiling, looked at Dad, who grumpily nodded at Ira who stood nearby, with the boy peeking out from behind her leg.

“She did it, actually.”

“Oh!” said the doctor and looked at her. “Oh,” he said again, when she looked at him, and didn’t say anything else for another two or three minutes.

“Listen,” Sergey suddenly said. “Your name is Pavel Sergeyevich, right?” The doctor finally took his gaze off Ira and started nodding vigorously. “What are you two doing here – in this place, at this hour? Where are you going? Where from?”

“That’s because somebody has ants in their pants,” Nikolai’s long face popped up from the darkness and hung above the doctor’s solid shoulder; the doctor laughed:

“Nikolai likes metaphors, but I’m afraid he’s absolutely right there,” and interrupting each other they started talking – or rather, it was the doctor who was speaking most, and the glum Nikolai, when he thought that the story lacked an important detail or two, would add a few words here and there.