To the Lake

9 A STABBING AND A SHOOTING

This time I woke up suddenly – in a way that sometimes happens, especially when you know that the day doesn’t look promising, and you can’t protect your ears from the noise and your eyes from the light, but you cling as hard as you can to the safe place where you can be unconscious – as if saying to yourself, if I can’t hear it or see it, then I’m not here. I would resist even longer if the noises didn’t intrude straight into my dream, ripping it apart. Right now there was too much noise as if someone had shouted right in my ear. I opened my eyes and sat up.

We were driving though a town – somehow it was obvious that it was a town and not a village, despite the two-storey wooden houses, low, with four or five windows, framed by neat, lacy architraves, with chimneys on top. I probably thought it was a town because of the church domes overlooking the roofs from several sides, and a village wouldn’t have so many churches. Then I saw the first stone house – also two-storey, but very town-like, although all windows on the ground floor were boarded up. The sun had nearly set and the air held a pinkish-blue haze but I kept looking around and couldn’t work out why I felt so alarmed among these quiet houses in the shadow of the golden domes, which seemed to be hanging in the translucent air, but there was clearly something wrong with the town. The first thing that struck me was the snowdrifts. They were enormous, too tall for the streets with their low houses – almost reaching the windowsills. The car was moving with some difficulty – I peered over the front of the car and saw that the road was covered in snow – it was quite compressed, as if several large vehicles had driven here and left a twisty track behind – and we were driving along this track, slowly, swaying from side to side. And then I saw a woman. She had a headscarf on, a grey, woollen one, tied under her chin. She was walking along the side of the road, slowly, struggling through piles of snow, pulling a sledge behind her, an ordinary sledge with scratched metal runners, without the back. And on the sledge, clumsily hanging over the edges, there was an oblong, black plastic bundle.

I was all eyes – her silhouette, a tense, hunched back, the slowness of her walking, the sledge – all this reminded me of something disturbing, hostile, and I couldn’t quite remember what exactly. We overtook her and I looked back, trying to get a better look, but then our car turned off, freeing itself from the gripping snow, moved faster and reached a wide, deserted crossroads.

“Left here,” the radio crackled, and I jumped, as if not expecting to hear a human voice, as if I was alone in the car. When I turned my head I saw Boris – he was looking in front of him holding the steering wheel with both hands, and didn’t even notice that I’d woken up. He looked focused and grim.

The street we turned into was probably the town’s main street – it was wider and with a more compressed surface, but the snowbanks on both sides were still enormous, concealing the pavements, and the people – there were a lot more people on this street – were walking on the road, slowly and silently; they were all going the same way keeping their distance – as if trying to stay away from each other – and most of them were pulling sledges with identical oblong plastic bundles on them. One woman stopped to try to push her bundle back up on to the sledge. I could see that it was heavy, and she was circling around it, trying to lift the ends of the bundle in turn. Another man went past her, leaving a lot of space between them, his face wrapped by a scarf.

That was when I heard an intermittent horn behind us. I couldn’t see from my seat what was happening but Boris grabbed the microphone and almost shouted into it:

“Ira, stop panicking, they’re not dangerous, stop speeding, you’ll crash into something and then we’ll be stuck here!” But there was no answer, and a second later, swaying from side to side and beeping, Sergey’s car overtook us, almost getting bogged down in the deep snow. “Bloody idiot,” said Boris and accelerated, trying to catch up with the disappearing Pajero. I thought we were making a lot of noise in this quiet street, but the people around us walking along the road didn’t seem to notice us – only the woman struggling with her heavy load straightened up and looked our way for a moment. The lower part of her face was covered by a headscarf, but I was still able to see that she was really young. By the time we caught up with her, she had lost interest in us and carried on wrestling with her bundle.

Sergey’s car was quite far ahead. Whirling up clouds of snowy dust and dangerously keeling over, it kept moving further away from us, but Boris stopped trying to catch up with it – our car started rocking in the shallow snow track – and we slowed down again. I heard a strange sound, muffled because of the tall snowdrifts and the houses crowded along the road. The sound was barely audible but also reminded me of something terribly familiar, so I pressed the button and wound the window halfway to hear where it was coming from.

“You’re lucky Ira can’t see you,” Boris said. “In Borovichi, Lenny tried to get out of the car. Ira made such a scene, it took us a while to calm her down.”

“What’s going on here?” I asked. After Boris broke the silence, it was easier for me to talk, as if he’d given me permission by speaking himself.

“It’s the second town like this we’ve driven through. I didn’t understand at first – there’s no quarantine – but look around you,” he replied, and all the signs I was struggling to put together suddenly made sense – as if I only needed Boris’s hint: the streets that hadn’t been cleared for ages, boarded up windows, people with sledges, the oblong, heavy bundles, covered-up faces and the silence, the unnatural, dead silence, broken by a monotonous ringing sound at regular intervals, coming from behind the low, wide houses.

We soon reached the place where the sound was coming from – to the right of the road, I saw a gap between the houses which revealed a small square – a clearing, surrounded by low stone houses; a glimpse of the obligatory Lenin statue – a grey figure on a plinth, with white snowy epaulettes, but further int o the square there was a church – we couldn’t see the whole of it, but only five green and blue snow-sprinkled cupolas and next to it – a peaked belfry. This was where the caravan of people with sledges was making for; I only had time to notice a small pile of dark bundles on the snow, and a man’s figure in black, standing nearby, near a make-shift platform, with an iron rod attached to it with a rope. The man in black, holding a long, heavy bar, was striking it rhythmically with a practised swing. We went past the square but the resounding of the metal blows was heard for some time afterwards. When we drove past side streets, I noticed that some of them were laden with a thick layer of snow without any footprints. From then on we didn’t see a single print in the snow-covered side streets that we passed. “How’s this possible,” I said, “it looks like they were left without any support? No medical help, no ambulances – nothing!?”

“Don’t look, Anya,” said Boris. “It’ll be over soon, we’re almost out of this place.” Our car turned once more, and I suddenly saw a panorama of the snow-covered city to our right, with its low houses in the pinkish blue haze, the churches, and deserted streets – all of which soon vanished into the distance; we didn’t want to turn our heads back to see it any more. Soon after the crossed out Ustyuzhna sign we saw Sergey’s car parked on the side of the road – frosty back window, a small streak of fume from the exhaust. When we caught up with it, its engine rattled, and the car moved out back onto the road, bringing up the rear behind the Land Cruiser and the silver hatchback.

People who lived here obviously didn’t mind the snow as they had other more important things to worry about: there wasn’t much of it, about twenty centimetres, but it was uneven, lumpy rather than smooth, as if it had melted and then frozen again; our car, now leading the caravan again, was crawling slowly, clumsily jumping over the bumpy road. We drove for a hundred metres or so when Boris, swearing, reached over to pick up the radio again:

“Hey you, in the hatchback, why don’t you come in front of us, you’re a bit heavier.”

“Sure,” Andrey responded immediately – he sounded cheerful – and the hatchback, its trailer clattering, easily overtook us and headed the column, leaving behind a strip of firm, flat snow, which was much easier to drive on. I looked at Boris, surprised, while he carried on:

“What’s your navigator saying, Andrey, is the turning going to be soon?”

“In about fifteen kilometres,” Andrey replied, “then it’s about one hundred kilometres of fairly good road, all villages are quite far in land, and we can take a detour around Cherepovets but afterwards it’ll be a bit harder. I’d like to get more fuel if that’s possible so that we don’t have to stop again later, what do you think?”

“Good idea,” said Boris approvingly.“Let’s do it before Cherepovets, who knows what we might come up against in the outskirts, it’s a big city.”

They had certainly grown closer while both Sergey and I were asleep; staying in touch by radio, these two men had somehow managed to fix their relationship, and there was clearly no more tension. Catching my eye, Boris smiled briefly:

“He’s a good lad, glad we met him. And quite smart, too – he’s got a rubber boat, fishing gear, a net – he’s better prepared than me.” Then he looked at me and added: “How’re you then? Have you had a good rest? If you need to make a stop, just let me know, we’ll find a place.”

I looked through the window – the snow-capped fir wood, flooded by sunset light, started thinning and gradually disappeared out of sight, and was replaced by a wide, white and blue expanse of snow – empty and thick, like a down-filled duvet, with a few bushes sticking, looking like snow balloons. It wasn’t the best place for a stopover – the mismatching roofs of the nearby village were glistening through the trees, and the smoke was coming up from their chimneys – it was a peaceful, ordinary sight. The road was splitting at this point, and its narrower fork, flanked with trees, turned to the right, towards the village with roofs and chimneys. Across the road, completely blocking the way and taking all the space between the trees, in the middle of a wide, black, snowless spot, we saw two burnt car wreckages, which looked completely alien in the middle of this white stillness.

These cars had burnt out some time earlier, at least several days; there was no sign of smoke. It was impossible to tell at this stage what their original colour was – two identical, grey and black carcasses, covered in what could be either ash or frost, without windows, the only difference was that one of them had the bonnet open, revealing the charred insides, and the other, for some reason, had both front headlights intact. If it was only one car, it would be easy to believe there’d been an accident; but the fact that they were placed facing each other, didn’t leave any doubt – somebody from this village must have brought them here on purpose, poured petrol over them and burnt them. I could vividly imagine people standing around, the light from the fire reflecting in their faces, stepping backwards from the blaze and shuddering, when the windows burst; perhaps some time ago both of these cars were parked in front of somebody’s house, carefully cleared of the snow, with little icons and soft toys dangling from mirrors. But somebody decided their fate and they were burnt. A burnt offering, a last chance for their owners to save themselves from the coming danger.

“That’s a barricade and a half,” said Boris, when we went past. “It won’t help, of course, but can delay you for a while. If you’re desperate we can stop in one of the fields.” “You know,” I said, “I’ll probably hang on a bit longer. I don’t want to stop in a place like this.”

Andrey was right – the next hundred kilometres were easy to drive: silent fields, snuggled under the snow covers, punctuated by thickets of hushed and motionless fir trees. There were hardly any villages – we saw one or two in distance, but they were all far enough from the road. We didn’t meet anyone – not a soul, not a car, there was an even, untouched coat of snow on the road, and in spite of this we all knew that this wasn’t a sign of peacefulness: it was a calm before the storm, as if the land itself was laying low, waiting in suspense for something to happen. There was simply no place where we’d want to stop – we kept putting it off until we absolutely had to – we were approaching Cherepovets, it was beginning to get dark, we needed to top up fuel, have a snack and stretch our legs: it was becoming unbearable to sit without moving.

“If the satnav’s right, the road is going to be livelier soon – there’ll be more villages and traffic,” Andrey said. “Let’s stop here, there won’t be a better place.”

The road was framed by the woods, but there was also a barely visible lay-by, where people left their cars when they went mushroom picking so as not to leave them on the road. If we were near Moscow there would be an old billboard with flaking paint saying ‘Look after your forest’ or something of this kind, but there was nothing in its place here.

“It’ll be good to get off the road,” Boris said; he came out of the car and winced, stretching his aching back. “We’ll be here a while, and in half an hour it’ll be dark. We should get at least a metre further into the woods. I don’t want us to be on display here near the side of the road.”

“Oh come on,” said Lenny, slamming the Land Cruiser’s door. “Look how deep it is, what if we get stuck, who’ll pull us out? We can’t run to the nearby village for a tractor,” he guffawed and was about to walk towards the woods, when Boris stopped him:

“Wait! Somebody must stay near the cars. Hey you, age before beauty, you can wait. I’ll come and swap with you soon. And get the rifle, ok?”

As soon as I came off the road and stepped into the white, frozen on top and seemingly firm snow, I fell through to my knees and was glad we didn’t risk driving further in. I was desperate to be with Sergey, to talk to him, but our long drive forced us to scatter across the woods. Never mind, I thought, we’ll top up the fuel, and then have a snack and I’ll have at least half an hour with him, while he eats, and then we’ll get into a car, because it’s our turn, and when everyone falls asleep we’ll be able to talk again.

“Boys, can’t you go a bit further away?” I heard Natasha’s irritated voice somewhere near, but even in this clear, leafless woods I couldn’t see her easily. The branches were rustling somewhere nearby, and Ira was saying to Anton ‘wait, I’ll undo your coat, turn around’; looking back, I saw the road, four big vehicles with their lights off, Lenny’s lone figure – he was rummaging in the Land Cruiser’s open boot. I walked a bit further into the woods and all the sounds disappeared at once, everything went quiet – Natasha’s grumbling, Ira’s gentle persuasions, the men’s voices – there was just me and the trees, motionless, touching heads somewhere way up high, soft snow on the ground and dead silence. I suddenly felt I wanted to stay there a bit longer, I needed some time on my own. It was very cold; I pressed my cheek against the rough, frosty trunk of a tree and stood like this for a few minutes – without any thoughts, just watching my breath melting the ice on the hard bark of the tree.

It was time to go back – I panicked for a second as I wasn’t sure which way to go, but looking down, I saw my own footprints and followed them back to the cars. First I saw Natasha’s red jacket, flashing in between the trees – she had also come out of the woods and was standing near Lenny, about ten steps away from the Land Cruiser – the boot was still open, and I saw two full plastic canisters which Lenny had unloaded and put onto the firm snow. But they weren’t alone there: blocking their way to the car, right near the open boot, there were three men – one in a dirty-grey quilted jacket, and the other two in oversized sheepskins; all three were wearing winter felt boots. I didn’t see a car anywhere nearby that might be theirs – they had probably come on foot or walked out of the woods by the same lay-by that had made us decide to stop here. I stepped on a branch, it cracked and they all turned to me – I had just thought that if I stepped back into the woods, they wouldn’t be able to see me in the twilight, but suddenly I heard a voice, somewhere on my right, which said amicably: “Greetings.” I turned my head and saw the fourth man in a huge, fox-fur hat, with long, fluffy ear-flaps tied up at the top, and a light-brown wide-open sheepskin with yellowish collar. He was probably standing near the trailer when I came out of the woods, that’s why I hadn’t noticed him straight away. The newcomer came a bit closer and lifted his hat in a playful gesture. He smiled.

“Greetings,” he said again. “We were, like, walking past, and saw your friend over there.” He started approaching me, pushing me back from the woods. I glanced at the Land Cruiser – Lenny must have the rifle, I need to get to him so as not to be left alone with the fox-fur hat when the shootout starts; where are all the others? Why aren’t they coming out? – walking past our car I suddenly saw Mishka in the back seat. He had probably come back earlier and, crouching behind the pile of bags, was anxiously watching the scene through the window. Our eyes met for a split second and I shook my head, as discreetly as I could: don’t come out. It was vital that the man in a fox-fur hat didn’t notice him, so I turned to him and smiled, too.

“Do you live here?” I asked; I could barely move my lips because of the cold; it was a good excuse because otherwise he would notice that they were shaking.

“Eh? Yeah, we’re, like, from over there,” he answered and waved somewhere behind his back. There was something unusual in the way he spoke, but I couldn’t work out what exactly. We nearly came up to the Land Cruiser; I almost ran for the last few metres, sinking into the deep snow. He’s probably just waiting for me to be by his side, I thought, and then he’d force the uninvited guests to go. I looked Lenny in the eye, he feebly smiled at me, and it was bad news – he didn’t have a rifle in his hands.

The rifle was still in the boot, on top of the bags – you couldn’t see it if you didn’t know it was there. I recognised the scuffed leather strap and the faint silhouette of the dark wooden club. There was just about two metres to the boot left, but it was impossible to approach it – we would have to push aside the other ‘visitors’, milling about between us and the car. Unlike the man in the fur hat, they weren’t smiling: they shifted from foot to foot, grim, silent. Sergey and Andrey will come out of the woods any time, I thought, and then there’ll be an equal amount of men on both sides. I need to say something, I thought, I need to buy time – Lenny looked lost and concerned at the same time. I smiled at him – as widely as I could – come on, you idiot, talk to them, shake their hands before they decide to do something stupid and we won’t be able to carry on pretending that this is just an accidental encounter, they don’t know how many of us are here and that’s why they’re waiting, too – come on, say something!… And as if hearing my thoughts, Lenny turned to the fox fur-hat man – maybe because he was the only one talking and asked cheerfully:

“So you’ve walked here, guys? Is your village far?”

“No, it’s not”, answered the ‘smiley’, hoisting his hat back onto his head again – he had a handsome, perfectly shaped face, and brick-coloured tanned skin, which people who drink a lot of alcohol and spend most of the time outdoors normally have, and cheerful, blue eyes. “Why would we go by car? We walked on our own feet, it’s good.” That’s how he said it – on ‘our own feet’, and then I realised what I found unusual in the way he spoke – it was his accent – he was exaggerating, almost singing his vowels, as if he was an actor playing a fairy-tale character.

Branches cracked behind my back, and I heard footsteps; I turned around and saw Sergey, hurrying from behind the trees. He looked worried, but when he came closer, I saw him smiling:

“Hi guys,” he said happily, as if he’d just met old friends. “How’re tricks?”

“Well,” the ‘fox hat’ said, – he was still the only one talking. “I mean, we were, like, looking at your little cars. They’re nice cars, good ones, like. I mean, this one, like.” He came up to the defenceless Land Cruiser, doors wide open, and stood near it, eyeing it, his hands in his pockets. The other three stepped aside, letting him pass. “It’s bi-ii-g, you can load a lot of stuff inside. Must be a thirsty one, eh?” Seizing the moment, Lenny made a few quick steps towards his car.

“It is,” he said, his voice sounding tense. “Quite a drinker, this one. Thank God it’s diesel.” He stood very close to the open boot, he only needed to reach for the rifle, he turned his head and made a slight, barely noticeable move forward, and the smiley followed his gaze and saw the rifle – both the butt, and the dangling belt. He took his hands out of his pockets, grabbed Lenny by the shoulder with one hand, lightly turned him towards himself and quickly hit him hard in the side with the other hand – Lenny groaned, his knees giving way, and, grabbing the metal arm propping up the boot, landed heavily on the snow. Natasha screamed. The ‘smiley’ moved two steps back, a knife glistening in his right hand – turning back I saw the two of his silent companions get a strong grip on Sergey, twisting his arms behind his back. The third one froze near Natasha, holding his hand over her mouth, and about twenty steps behind them, in the lay-by, which was hardly visible in the growing dusk, somebody was running towards us – it was either Boris or Andrey, I couldn’t tell.

“Wait!”, I called loudly, just because it was crucial to say something to delay them, distract them, to stop them looking towards the woods, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say – not a single word – so I simply repeated: “Wait!” and looked at them, trying to catch the eye of each of these four poorly dressed men, trying to see at least a glimpse of doubt on their faces, a weakness that would help me find the right words and somehow stop what was going to happen next. The ‘smiley’ stepped towards Sergey; they won’t make it, I thought frantically, and even if they did, he’d still hit Sergey with the knife, God, please, help us. “Just wait,” I repeated desperately, and suddenly the door of our car, which stood behind the Land Cruiser, opened silently, a shadow flashed behind the attackers and I saw Mishka, very pale, standing about ten steps away so everyone could see him. He said loudly:

“Mum!”

I wanted to shout, Mishka, run, but my voice failed me – he couldn’t hear me, he’s going to come up here – I probably moved, because ‘smiley’ reached over and stopped me with an open palm of his hand.

“Hey you, in the hat, let her go!” Mishka’s voice sounded scared, almost childish; he made one step towards us, and we all saw the hunting rifle in his hands, which Boris had nestled behind the back seat. He ineptly racked the slide on it, and then, trying hard to press it against his left shoulder, pointed the heavy barrel, swaying it from side to side, at the ‘smiley’ and said: “Leave her alone, now!”

The person approaching us from the woods wasn’t running anymore; from the corner of my eye I saw him slow down, stepping quietly – he had about ten more steps to go, but I still couldn’t see who it was. The others stood half-turned to the woods and couldn’t see him either – their eyes were glued to Mishka. The ‘smiley’ took his hand away and turned his head:

“You’re not going to shoot at us, boy, are you?” he said quietly, almost lovingly. “It’s a bit dark, what if you shoot your mummy?” I dropped down, I didn’t even think, just collapsed onto the snow, badly hurting my tailbone, and shouted:

“Shoot, Mishka!” while ‘smiley’ kept advancing towards Mishka, stretching his arms out to him, and then Mishka shut his eyes, lifted the barrel and fired the gun somewhere above everyone’s heads – a short flash came out of the heavy barrel, and we felt the snow and twigs fall on our heads. The shot was deafening, my ears got blocked, and more than anything else I wanted to close my eyes and not to look, and bury my face in the snow, but instead I looked up – the ‘smiley’ wasn’t advancing any more, he stood with his hands up, obstructing my view.

“Take a step back, Mishka”, Boris said from somewhere on the right. “Don’t lower the barrel, it’s OK, don’t rack the slide, the gun’s self-loading!”

“Oh come on, lads,” the ‘smiley’ said. “That’s enough, we was just joking,” and started walking backwards, still facing Mishka – I crawled aside so as not to be stood on, he stopped only when he bumped into the Pajero, and then I finally saw Mishka – he was biting his lip, his eyes were round, and his hands were visibly shaking, but he was standing absolutely still, pointing the gun right at the person who froze next to me.

“Enough, you say? I couldn’t agree more,” said Boris, still invisible. “Just tell your friends to let everyone go and leave, as fast as they can. The lad’s only young and can get a bit twitchy, so mind he doesn’t pull the trigger by mistake and make a hole in you,” and he came out of the dark and stood next to Mishka – it looked as if he was going to put his arm around his shoulder. I was worried that he’d do that and startle Mishka, who’d jump and fire the gun. I think the ‘smiley’ thought the same, because I heard him noisily draw the air through his teeth and say in a choked voice:

“Ok, ok, we’re going, right?” He started backing away, sliding on the muddy bumper of the Pajero, and the other three followed him. Letting Sergey go and without saying a word, they took a few steps back, turned around and ran towards the wood, sinking into the snow.

Mishka was still standing on the same spot, holding the gun in the middle, and when I saw the look on his face, I hurried across to him on all fours, keeping my head low, and lifted it only when I saw that the threatening barrel, which he was holding in his arms, was pointing in a completely different direction.

“Well done, you,” Boris was telling him in the ear, still not daring to put his hand on his shoulder. “It’s ok, let go, I’ll take it.” But Mishka’s fingers were white and didn’t want to unclench, and then I said:

“Shh, it’s ok, baby,” and then he jerked his head, glanced at me, then at the rifle – and suddenly stuck it into the snow, propping it against the car. I thought he was going to burst into tears, but he didn’t; his whole body was shaking though all the time while I was holding him and Sergey was patting him on the back and ruffling his hair.

It turned out that everyone was here already – Natasha was crying and Andrey helped her to get up; Ira, Anton and Marina in a white ski suit, with a girl in her arms, were near us, too.

“Where’s that…?” Boris said through clenched teeth – the rifle was in his hands again. “I told him, the idiot, to take the rifle, Lenny, damn you, where are you?” He walked behind the Land Cruiser and fell silent, Sergey and I looked at each other and leaving Mishka, hurried after him. Lenny was still sitting with his back to the boot. When we ran up he tried to get up:

“I’m fine,” he said, “I’ve got a thick coat… jeez, that was just like in a frigging action movie…!” He tried to get up but couldn’t – his legs weren’t letting him. He looked surprised. Andrey and Marina with the little girl came up. As soon as she saw him, she screamed, and he stubbornly continued trying to get up, slipping around in the snow, crumbly and black under his hand.

“Lenny, you’re bleeding,” I said.

“Rubbish, it doesn’t hurt,” he said and only then looked down at his coat.