The Boat House

INTERLUDE

He didn't look much like a doctor to Alina. He crouched in the corner by the big tiled kitchen range, his sleeves rolled up and his shirt and trousers covered in white ash. He'd been cleaning out the fireplace and clearing the flue, neither of which appeared to have been used in years. He was a big, dark, heavy man something in the manner of a friendly black bear going a little thin on top.

He smiled at her, and started to get to his feet.

Alina said, "Am I still in prison?"

"Technically," he said, "you never were. But no, this isn't a prison."

"It doesn't look like a hospital."

"No."

What it looked like was a long deserted log farmhouse, with stale rush matting on the floor and at the windows coarse-woven net curtains that had faded almost to nothing. Alina was holding onto the door, because the six steps that she'd taken to reach it had almost been enough to exhaust her; Belov dusted off his hands and came over to her now, and he took her by the shoulders and turned her around and steered her back toward the bed that she'd just left.

His touch was like a doctor's, firm and impersonal. And, of course, she'd seen him before; he'd been the third man on the commission that had interviewed her, the one who'd sat next to the Cheka's doctor and who'd listened to her slurred responses without ever saying anything. Now he was straightening the covers over her as she lay, utterly spent, and he was promising her answers to her unspoken questions in the morning. She could barely turn her head to watch him as he backed out of the room and closed the door; a moment later, the sounds of the fire irons against stone resumed. It was this strange subterranean thumping that had wakened and drawn her in the first place.

She was still wearing the thin cotton dress that she'd worn in the prison hospital, but now there was a shawl around her shoulders as well. She didn't know how she'd come by it, and she'd only the vaguest memories of her journey to this place. Why she was here, she couldn't imagine; but her head was clearer than it had been in a long time, which meant that she must have gone for some hours without any kind of an injection.

There was no denying the fact that there were gaps in her memory because of the drugs. There was no way of being certain how long she'd spent on the ward; it might have been six weeks or six years, but she was guessing at six months because this had been the first commission review that she'd received.

Unless there had been others, and she hadn't remembered.

They'd taken her from the police cells after two days. She'd been half expecting a trial and then a labour camp but instead, there was an ambulance. Seeing this, she'd known what lay ahead. They took her out, across the wide Neva river to the north east of the city, to a long street of factories and high concrete walls where tourists and visitors had little reason to go. The prison hospital fitted into its surroundings perfectly, a four storey warehouse of human cargo. It had small, dark windows in a main building set back from the road behind a staff block and a perimeter wall of newer red brick. Grim and forbidding were the two well-used words that came to mind as she looked up at the building for the first time; but there were no words that could easily describe the helpless terror that she felt as the side gate opened before them and the ambulance had driven through.

She'd thought that at least she'd be put with her own kind — border crossers and minor political dissidents — but it didn't happen. Her 'own kind' were in a minority. Instead she was confined for twenty hours a day on a ward for the criminally insane, most of them doped and many of them bruised from the warders' heavy handling. She'd sit in her dressing gown by the window and try to listen for the electric trams on the distant street, anything to give some kind of shape or structure to her day, but the noise made even this impossible.

And then her programme of treatment started, and the idea seemed to lose its importance to her.

This was better, she thought as she lay on her cot in the farmhouse. Anything was better than the ward. At least now she was beginning to get her focus back, even if her strength hadn't yet come with it.

Belov brought her some broth about an hour later, and he helped her up to the bowl. Apparently his efforts with the kitchen range had finally paid off. For a while Alina was afraid that she was going to throw it all up again, but she didn't.

Tomorrow, he promised her whenever she tried to ask him anything. Tomorrow, when she'd be stronger. And then he left her alone, climbing the wooden stairs to what she would later learn were his own makeshift quarters on the floor above. If he locked her in, she didn't hear it.

The next morning, she got to go outside.

It was only a few steps, but now she was leaning on his arm for steadiness rather than support. She felt almost weightless, as if she was made out of eggshells. The daylight brought tears, and not only because of its brightness.

They were in a village of perhaps a dozen houses and a white log church, out on a plain somewhere under a big, big sky; each building stood well apart from its neighbours with just open common land between them, and the grass on that common land was deep and uncut. It rippled in the light breeze like a sea.

Alina said, "I don't see anyone."

"No," Belov agreed. "Nobody lives here now."

"No one at all?"

"The entire community was resettled a long time ago. The place hasn't been used since then."

"But why?"

"Well, you know the military. We're not so far from the border. Maybe there's a radar station over in the woods, or maybe they want everyone to think there is."

They were making a slow circuit of the farmhouse and its barn, a lean-to of roughly dressed timber made dark and smooth with age. The roof was of shingle with planks nailed over.

Alina said, "What if we're found?" But it wasn't something that seemed to worry Belov.

"I've got permission for us to be here," he said. "As long as you stay around the village and the paths I'll show you tomorrow, you shouldn't have any problems."

"You said it wasn't a prison."

"No more so than anywhere else."

So, another tomorrow.

Alina woke to this one feeling sharp and dangerous and — within limits — ready to go. She found that Belov had laid out her own clothes as she slept; she'd lost weight, she noticed as she dressed, and she hadn't really had much to lose.

After a plain breakfast they went out again, still taking it slowly but this time with more of a distance in mind. Belov told her the name of the village. It meant nothing to her.

"I don't suppose it would," Belov said. "It's the kind of place that no one ever hears of, where nothing ever happens. Something happened here, though."

"And that's why you've brought me?"

"Let me tell you the story. Questions later."

They took a winding dirt alley that led through the back of the village between houses and outhouses. By the sides of the outhouses were stacks of trimmed poles and branches and brushwood, all grown over with moss. Alina had assumed that Belov was taking her to another of the buildings, but it seemed now that he was going to lead her out of the settlement altogether.

He said, "The farmhouse we're staying in, a small girl lived there. She slept in the room where you're sleeping now. She was bright, and she did very well at school. Most families in a village like this expect their children to work on the farm when they get older, but in this case it was different. She was an only child, and her parents wanted more for her. As soon as she was old enough, they were going to send her to stay with relatives in the city so that she could get a better education. They were tied to the land, but their daughter wouldn't be. With me so far?"

"Yes," Alina said, although in truth she was wondering what point he might be trying to make. As far as she could tell, they were completely alone in the village. Back at the farmhouse they had food supplies in a cardboard box, and Belov himself had taken the role of housekeeper as well as doctor. Today he was tousled, and even more in need of a shave; under his suit jacket, he now wore an old pullover.

They were passing the last of the houses now. Ahead lay marshy fields, neatly divided by a raised path consisting of two parallel rails of wood pegged into the ground.

Belov said, "This girl was small, and very fair. They say she looked like an angel." He waved his hand. "Now, see this house. The Markevitch family lived here, very big family, lots of sons. Not enough brains to go around, though, according to the neighbours, and the youngest boy was out of luck. He was born a simpleton. When he was seventeen years old, he was still playing with wooden blocks. But happy. His name was Viktor."

They moved on, out toward the fields, and Belov continued with the story.

"He followed the girl around all the time. He was like a puppy, completely devoted. She was only nine years old and she wasn't much of a size for that, but everybody knew that Viktor was harmless. A lot of the time she just seemed to forget that he was there, and he'd shamble along behind her just happy to stay close."

"How long ago was this?"

"Quite a few years. The girl's still alive, but Viktor was drowned. I'm going to show you where."

They came to a simple fence which was crossed by a stile, and here Alina rested for a couple of minutes before going on. The place that Belov had in mind was just a couple of hundred meters further, he told her. It was reedy marshland here, the grasses awash in several inches of diamond-clear water. The path zigzagged between dry rises in the land. On one of these, Belov stepped down from the wooden rails.

"A lot of this would have been different then," he explained. "The shape of the marsh has changed over the years, but we're somewhere close to the spot. They came out along the track we just followed, the very same one. Only the girl came back, and she was soaked and muddy and she could hardly speak. Two of Viktor's brothers came out, and found him."

"How could he drown?" Alina said. She was looking down at the water, which was only inches deep.

"Nobody knows. It could have been that someone forced him down, and held his face under. But that wouldn't have been easy. He wasn't bright, but he was big and he was very strong. He'd have struggled hard." Belov looked thoughtfully at the ground around them, as if he might still read signs that had long ago disappeared. "They called the doctor in from the nearest town, and the local militia chief questioned the girl. I've seen both of their reports — the file on the case has never been closed, in all this time. They asked her what had happened, and she said that a Rusalka from the lake had hurt Viktor. You know what the Rusalki are?"

Alina peered toward the lake, which was hardly more than a sliver on the horizon. She said nothing.

"They're an old superstition, lake spirits in female form. Very beautiful, very dangerous. Men can't resist them. They're supposed to bring a strange kind of ecstatic death by drowning — although it isn't really described as a death at all, more a passage from one world to another. There's something like it in the folklore of just about every culture. And no matter how many times they asked the girl, no matter how many different ways they approached it, her story was always the same."

"So nobody believed her."

"She was a child. She looked even younger than she was. What were they going to do, beat it out of her? Maybe they even tried that. They didn't put it in the records, if they did. But the harder they pressed her, the more confused she would have become. Children's fantasies are as real to them as anything else; but not many get thrown up against them so hard."

"What happened?"

"Officially, it became an accident. What else could they say? There was nobody else in the area, and there were no other tracks through the reeds. The girl became so ill that she had to be taken away. She stayed in the city and never came back. And that's all anyone knows… except for the girl herself."

Alina looked at him, but his face gave nothing away. He seemed open, empty of guile. She said, "I think you're trying to tell me that I should remember something of this."

"And do you?"

"No."

"Then I'm saying nothing of the kind."

They went back. The subject wasn't raised again.

That evening, Belov set the fire as Alina opened some canned stew. She was feeling as if she'd made a long, exhausting hike instead of just the kilometre or so that she'd actually walked, but it wasn't a bad feeling. Most of the food was of a kind that she'd never seen in the shops; there was no wine or beer, but Belov had a hip flask of vodka.

There was no electricity, either, but as night fell they lit candles. Belov chatted easily, although his real talent lay in persuading her to talk without her realising that she'd been persuaded. All that she really learned about him was that yes, he was a psychiatrist — 'one of the dissertation writers', as he referred to himself — and that his wife had died after an illness about five years before. Through all of this there was a shadow falling across the conversation, and it was a while before Alina could bring herself to give it a name.

But it had to be faced, and so she finally said, "How long can I stay here?"

It seemed that Belov had only been waiting for her to ask. "What you're really asking, is whether you'll have to go back."

"Will I?"

"In theory, yes." But there was a faint glimmer in his eyes, like those of a favourite uncle hiding something unexpected behind his back. "I may be able to arrange something. It's mostly a matter of timing… but I'll do what I can. Please don't get your hopes up."

There was a long pause.

And then Alina said, "Who was the child?"

But now it was Belov's turn to say nothing.

Some time later, she lay in her bed without sleeping. She was wondering if it was true, if he could somehow arrange her release; doctors had ordered her internment, so surely it was possible for another doctor to end it. But did Belov have the power? Borrowing her for dissertation research was one thing — she was sure now that this was the reason behind her removal from the hospital — but a release seemed, frankly, unlikely.

She'd seen no trace of anyone else in the village, and no sign of anyone along the afternoon's walk. There were no locks on the farmhouse doors. Perhaps, when she'd grown stronger, she could slip away into the night and keep on walking… after all, what was the worst that could possibly happen to her? The answer to that was, nothing that hadn't happened already. If they caught her, they caught her. And if they shot her instead — well, perhaps that wouldn't be quite so bad. With this thought in her mind and the sound of Belov's restless pacing on the boards up above, she finally drifted away.

When she awoke late in the morning, Belov wasn't there.

She checked his room, but his bed was cold. His small suitcase had been packed, and looked as if it was ready to go. She went straight back downstairs, got her own clothes together, and made a bundle with some of the provisions. Then she let herself out of the farmhouse, and started to walk.

There was nothing to indicate that he was anywhere in the village, and she didn't want to waste time on being any more thorough than this. She struck out across-country, heading away from the marshes and the distant water with its old-time tales of death.

At any moment he expected to hear his voice behind her, calling her back. If it came, she wouldn't respond. There was a woodland of spruce and pine ahead, where the ground began to climb toward a low, sinuous ridge that was the only feature on this otherwise flat horizon; it rose like a shadow from the plain, dense with trees but delicately etched around the edges.

It took her an hour to reach it, and a patrol was waiting.

There were three of them. With the binoculars that they carried, they must have been able to see her from the moment that she set out. Two of them stood with their rifles levelled at her and the third raised his palm and made a short, brusque, fly swatting kind of gesture. Not a word was spoken, but the meaning was clear; go back, or else.

The 'or else' was a possibility that she'd already considered and decided to embrace, if it came.

But she turned around, and began the long, slow walk back to the village.

There was a red car waiting outside the farmhouse when she reached it; the car's wheels had cut deep tracks through the long grass, tracks that were only just beginning to fade as the plains wind breathed across them. Belov was loading up, getting ready to leave, and he seemed to be in a hurry. He showed no surprise at her obviously unsuccessful attempt to run, nor did he even comment on it.

Instead, he said, "In the car, quickly. We have to go back to the city." And then, when she only stared at the car without responding, he added, "I said it was a matter of timing. Trust me."

What else could she do? She trusted him, and climbed in. As they left the village and found the dirt road by which he'd arrived, she could see that he was nervous. The road was crossed by a locked-down barrier about two kilometres further on, but Belov had a key and the barrier hardly slowed them at all.

Somebody was out of town for two days, he explained, somebody who would block any proposal for her release as a matter of course. They'd have to move fast.

Alina said, "Are you taking a risk for me?"

But instead of answering, Belov said, "Is there anyone you can contact? A friend you can stay with? It's better that you shouldn't be too easy to find."

Alina didn't have to think for long. She said, "There's Pavel."

"What does he do?"

"He's just… well, he's someone I know. He offered me a place to stay, if ever I should need it."

Her nerve almost failed her when, more than three hours later, they came into the city along Karl Marx Prospekt and made the turn towards Arsenal Street, where number nine waited for her like the transit house to a hundred-year-old hell. Belov warned her that she'd have to go in, but he promised her that she'd be going no further than the administration block on the street. She followed him obediently, out of the daylight. Once inside he left her in a dim, dingy room where she sat with her bundle and the firm belief that the cruel joke would soon be over and she'd be taken back to her ward. It had all been a dream; perhaps she'd never even left it. She signed the forms that he brought her to sign, even though the name on them wasn't always her own, and then Belov slipped them into a file under a stack of others and took them away again.

Half an hour later, he was back. He led her to a door; the door opened out onto the street. "Hurry," he urged, checking behind him for witnesses, but she had one more question.

"Why?" she said.

But even his eyes gave her no answer.

She saw him once more, a couple of months later. Somehow he'd managed to trace the block where Pavel lived, and he stood in the stairwell and called her name. This was all that he could do, because the numbers on the apartment doors had all been defaced by the people who lived behind them.

He was turning to leave, when he heard a door opening somewhere above.

They found her file lying open on the desk in his office. They'd suspected him of rigging her escape, and now their suspicions were confirmed. They found no mention of Pavel in the file, nor any address for Alina.

Nor did they find one on Belov's body, when they pulled it out of the river the next morning.