To the Lake

13 ENTER DOG

It was no more than fifty steps from our house – in the light of Sergey’s torch we could see the Pajero and the Vitara by the fence, but as soon as I came out of the gate, I felt dizzy; I missed the path and sank in the snow up to my knee. Before climbing out of the snow bank I breathed in the burning, frosty air – and started coughing. Sergey stopped, looked back and came back for me; putting his arm around me he walked me to the house, almost dragging me, quickly overtaking the others, and muttered into my ear:

“We’ve been stupid Anya, spent so long outside, what if you have a temperature again at night, let’s get into the warmth quickly, come on!”

When we had just about overtaken Ira with the little boy, who was walking slowly sinking into the deep snow, she said:

“Sergey, please pick Anton up, it’s difficult for him to walk.”

Sergey stopped and for a few seconds watched Anton clumsily plod through the deep snow – seeing that, the boy turned around and lifted both of his arms in knitted blue mittens. Throwing the rifle onto his back, Sergey, crouched down, picked up his son and said: “Hold me by the neck, Anton,” and put his other arm around my shoulders. We walked a few more steps – the torch which Sergey held in the hand that was embracing me, was casting a jumping circle of light somewhere near us, in a gutter with the stalks of last year’s plants sticking up, blackened by the frost. You poor, poor man, I thought to myself, trying to walk in step with him, you won’t have any peace now – every time you want to take my hand or see how you can help me along, she’ll ask you to pick up the boy, and I’ll be clinging to your other hand. We still walked very fast, almost ran, hurriedly, trying to catch our breath; I’m not going to play these games, I thought, I won’t, I don’t want to do this to you; I carefully freed myself of his arm and said “It’s ok, I can walk”, and started walking slower.

The dog waited near the house. He sat on the snow by the wooden steps, as if he wasn’t at all cold, when we opened the door he turned his head and looked at us indifferently.

“A dog”, the boy said quietly. He was standing on the ground – Sergey put him down when he opened the gate – and stretched out his arm.

“Don’t come close to the dog, Anton,” Ira said quickly, “it’s a dirty dog, it might bite you.”

“He doesn’t bite,” I said in a firm voice and thought – how do I know if he bites or not, if he likes children or not, if he likes anyone at all; I don’t know anything about him, apart from the fact that he found me in the snow four days ago and has been coming to visit me every day since then.

I came up to him. He didn’t move, just watched me, and I crouched next to him. He sat still.

“Anton!” repeated Ira, when I heard careful footsteps crunching on the snow.

“What’s his name?” asked the boy, and then I put my hand on the dog’s head, between the long shaggy ears. The yellow eyes flashed for a second and went down again; he blinked.

“His name is Dog”, I said. “And while we’re asleep, he’ll guard us.”

We entered the house and while the others were making lots of noise, unpacking their things, moving beds, cooking dinner, I flopped on the bed in the furthest room and, in spite of their voices, fell into deep sleep. I didn’t wake until morning and when I did I was as hungry as a wolf.

When I came out into the central room (catching myself thinking that I call it ‘a lounge’ to myself), it looked like they had finished breakfast, and Ira was doing the washing up in a large enamel bowl; there was an amazingly strong smell of coffee in the kitchen. Mishka wasn’t there, he was probably keeping watch outside. Sergey and Dad were getting ready to go for another walk around the village – apparently it had been decided that Mishka would stay with us which he wasn’t very happy about – “our young looter’s a bit upset” said Dad jokingly.

“There are sandwiches on the table,” Sergey said. “Have them, Anya, this is the last of our bread. It’s quite dry though.”

I grabbed the sandwich with thinly cut, almost transparent slices of smoked salami on top and took a bite with enormous pleasure.

“I hope there’s more salami”, I said and smiled at Sergey, and he smiled back at me:

“Well, I’m afraid we haven’t much left, nor is there much coffee – these are all the leftovers we brought from home, we’ll have to switch to potatoes and pasta soon.”

The morning was too good to get upset over such a trifle as salami, so I made myself a large mug of coffee and started putting my coat on.

“Where are you going with a mug?” asked Sergey.

“If this is my last cup of coffee ever,” I said, and noticing that he frowned at those words, corrected myself: “Ok, ok, even if it’s my last cup this winter, I’m not going to waste it on the thoughtless consumption of a sandwich,” and putting my jacket on, I fished out a half-empty pack of cigarettes from its pocket.

“Anya!” he said straight away. “What the hell! You could hardly breathe yesterday!”

‘My last cup of coffee!” I said pleadingly. “Please. Just one – I promise.”

On the veranda, when I stood by the frozen window, holding the hot mug in one hand and a cigarette in the other, he came up to me from behind, kissed my ear and said:

“I’ll find you coffee, I promise. I can’t promise you salami, but I’ll definitely find you coffee.”

We stood holding each other for a while; the coffee turned out to be a bit thin, and the first draw at the cigarette scraped my throat, but that wasn’t worth getting upset about either.

“Shall we go today?” I suggested. “I’ve completely recovered and can drive now.”

“It’s too early,” he said. “Let’s wait a day or two. Dad and I can take another couple of tours around the village, they found so many useful things last time, it’s a shame not to look for more. We won’t have an opportunity like this again.”

I heard footsteps on the porch – the door opened and Mishka turned up; without coming in he told Sergey:

“That guy from yesterday has come back. He’s brought somebody.”

When we came up to the gate – Sergey, Dad, Mishka and I – there were two men on the path – our yesterday’s visitor in anorak jacket and another man, much older than him. They didn’t look related, the impression was that they’d just met each other; the older man had a pale, thin face, and wore glasses in a golden frame, a tidy grey beard, and was dressed in a black woollen coat which looked completely out of place with astrakhan turn-down collar, and on his feet he had shiny, I would say even stylish shoes, which one would wear with a suit. After all the greetings were said there was an awkward pause – our guests were shifting from one foot to the other without saying anything – it seemed they weren’t sure why they’d come. Finally, Dad broke the silence and asked:

“Did you find yourself a house?”

“Yes, just like you said – on the next street,” Igor said brightly. “Can you see that house with a green roof? It’s not very big but it has two stoves and a well. There’s no electricity, and we actually wanted to ask how you sorted this out, must be quite dark in your house in the evenings?”

I looked at him and thought that he didn’t seem as upbeat as he was yesterday – he didn’t smile, he had a worried crease in between his eyebrows. I wonder what you really want, I thought, that’s not really why you’ve come here – to ask us how we light the house at nights?

“Try to find a kerosene lamp,” Sergey said. “We found one on our first day here. And if not you’ll definitely find some candles in one of the houses.”

“And when you go to check the neighbouring houses,” Dad added, addressing the older of the two men. “Get some more comfortable clothing. That coat of yours is about as unsuitable as you can possibly imagine.”

The man in a coat looked down himself and made a helpless gesture with his arms:

“To be honest we packed in a rush – until the last moment I wasn’t sure we’d manage to get away. Although, I’m afraid to say that even if we did have more time, I don’t possess more suitable clothes – I’m totally a city person.”

“Well you’re unlikely to be able to find good winter boots here,” Dad said. “But you’ll probably find felt boots and a sheepskin.”

The man in the city coat was silent for some time, and then without looking at anyone, shook his head.

“Well,” he said, talking mostly to himself than to anyone of us. “For the first time in my life I might have to break into somebody’s house.”

“Don’t be shy,” Dad made a dismissive gesture. “Trust me, if the owners haven’t come back, they’re most likely dead by now. In times like these doing the right thing doesn’t work.”

“I thank you, young man,” the man in a coat said, smiling. “Although, believe me, in times like these doing the right thing is more important than ever.”

Dad smirked, surprised, and then the man in a coat looked at him for the first time and quietly laughed:

“I’m sorry. It didn’t occur to me that one of you could be my age. However, I can see you’ve adapted to everything happening around here much better than me.”

When they left, we stood by the gate for some time, watching them go – the first one was walking hurriedly as if trying to disappear out of sight as soon as possible, or maybe he just wanted to start his quest in other houses for useful things which his family so badly needed; the second one was walking slowly and carefully, looking under his feet and he lagged behind quite quickly. Reaching the corner, the first one stopped and waited for the other one to catch up with him, and before he disappeared behind the corner, looked our way and raised his arm in a greeting gesture.

“What a strange couple,” Sergey said, pensive. “I wonder what they really wanted.”

“They came to see what kind of people we are,” Dad said. “To check if it’s safe to have us as neighbours.”

After a pause he added:

“And also I think they came to check if it’s ok with us if they go rummaging through the houses in the village too. Although, come to think of it, it’s the same thing.”

When Sergey and Dad left, and Mishka, wrapped in a sheepskin coat up to his eyes settled himself on the veranda, it was me, Ira and the boy who were left in the house. The time started dragging painfully. The house was too small for us to pretend we didn’t notice each other – at least that was what I thought – but Ira seemed determined not to utter a word, at least not to me. It was easier for her to play this game because she had the boy with her, her little ally and companion, and I was on my own. Even the dog wandered off after breakfast. This is what our life on the lake will be like, I was thinking, aimlessly ambling around the tiny rooms, full of furniture, listening to the others pottering about and talking, keeping each other occupied and you will have to keep silent all day, every day, I was telling myself, waiting for your husband to come back, the whole time while you’re alone with her in that house, you’ll feel awkward, shy, feel a new girl on the block who hasn’t been accepted into the group, and you’ll never learn not to notice that, you know yourself, you can pretend for as long as you wish that it doesn’t matter, but you can’t cope with the fact that you’re not liked – you were never good at that.

In the end I found a book – Aleksey Tolstoy’s Ordeal – without the cover and the first twenty-two pages, the first volume; it’s amazing that in every summer cottage, no matter who it belongs to, you can always find either the first volume of Ordeal, or The Young Guard, or some other old book in a worn out fabric binding with engraved name of the publisher and the year, even if it’s a new cottage, built a only few years ago – as if these books make their way into every house by themselves, as soon as you board up your windows for the winter and go back to the city – they just appear in the dustiest, most hidden-away corner ready to fall into our hands at that very moment when boredom sets in and we’re looking for something to read. I was glad to find the first volume, and thought that if I’m lucky I might be able to find the second one, although not necessarily; we didn’t take a single book with us, there was no room: it’ll be funny if civilisation collapses and it’s just the six of us left, in the shabby two room house in the middle of the forest, and the only book that we’d have with us, the one we’d use to teach our children to read, would be the first volume of Ordeal, without the cover and missing the first twenty-two pages.

Even while I was reading, sitting on the bed in the furthest room with a tear-off calendar on the wall where the time stopped; in the same room where I thought for two days I was going to die, even separated from her by a wall and a closed door I felt her presence, defiant and hostile, and I felt half of my body which was closer to the wall, get numb and cold. The day dragged. You need to be patient, I told myself, it’ll be dark soon and they’ll come back, it gets dark early in November, in three more hours, two, one hour, we’ll be sitting at the table, they’ll be telling us what they have found, Sergey will put his hand on my knee, all these men, all three of them are my family, they’re mine first, whatever she may think. When it started to get dark, I put the book away, made two cups of tea with honey for Mishka and myself, put my jacket on and went out onto the veranda. I couldn’t hang around inside any more.

We were sipping tea and watching the gate through the frosty patterns on the window; while the street was plunging deeper into darkness, it seemed to us that our waiting was becoming more focussed, more intense minute by minute, and we were so occupied by it that we couldn’t even talk. Suddenly Mishka stirred himself, put his mug down noisily on the window sill, and jumped up – his eyesight had always been brilliant. In order to see better myself I cupped my hands and pressed them against the window and looked through them, like through a telescope – there really was somebody by the gate, who wasn’t rushing to open it though but just stood outside; I couldn’t tell at this distance who that was – Sergey or Dad – but one thing was clear: he was alone.

We waited for a minute. The man outside the gate didn’t move; he stood patiently and calmly, and I began getting worried.

“Why is he not coming in,” I said. “Mishka, take a look, who is it – Sergey or Dad?”

Narrowing his eyes, Mishka looked through the window for a few seconds. Finally, he turned his concerned face to me and said:

“I think this is somebody else. I don’t know who it is.”

Mishka and I could just keep our heads down of course. There was no light on the veranda and the person at the gate wouldn’t guess that we had noticed him; Sergey and Dad were going to be back any minute, and they both – I knew for a fact – had guns with them, and it was clear that it’d be easier for them to sort out another uninvited guest, rather than for Mishka and me to do it. The best thing you could do, I thought, standing on the dark, cold veranda, is to stay still and wait: they’ll be back soon, it’s completely dark, they’ll turn up at the gate and it’ll all become clear, you don’t need to do anything, just wait. The lone figure at the gate didn’t move. Damn it, I thought, you never had the patience to wait. I whispered to Mishka “get the gun ready”, opened the door – it gave a loud squeak – poked my head out and shouted: “Who are you? What do you want?”

“Good evening!” a voice said, which sounded familiar. “It’s really dark here, unfortunately I can’t see your face, but I think we saw each other this morning!”

“Give me the torch,” I said. “And wait here, have the gun ready.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Mishka firmly.

So we set out to the gate – me at the front with a torch, and behind me, two steps away, my son, who had sat all day in the cold, with a gun in his hands. As soon as we stopped, a yellow shadow flashed on our left, and, walking lightly on the deep snow, the Dog came out of nowhere. He wasn’t there a second earlier – and then suddenly he was so close to me that I could touch him. I couldn’t control him, of course, I had no idea how he’d behave if the man by the gate wanted to harm us, but somehow the fact that the dog was with us gave me more confidence than Mishka’s gun.

“You have a lovely dog”, said the man, and then I finally recognised him – not by his voice, I had always been terrible with voices or names – but I couldn’t mistake for anything else his style of constructing sentences, the way he was talking – as if we had bumped into each other on a busy city street. Instead of the woollen coat and those awkward smart shoes, he was wearing an oversized sheepskin jacket and a crumpled fur cap with ear-flaps poking out sideways, which was so low it almost covered his eyes. His face was still sad and very tired.

“I can see you’ve found different clothes,” I said, feeling that my heart rate was returning to something like normal and I was gradually calming down.

“Excuse me?” he raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Ah, yes… yes, of course. You gave me a wonderful piece of advice. Although dressed like this I probably scared you, judging by the way your young bodyguard is standing. Trust me, young man, I’m not dangerous. As you can see I didn’t even have the courage to knock on your door – I thought one of you would definitely come outside sooner or later, and then I could outline…”

“Why are you here?” asked Mishka harshly, cutting him off; I nearly pulled his sleeve to stop him, because the man looked so weak, so exhausted that it was obvious he didn’t need shouting at.

“The thing is,” he said, and stopped straight away as if looking for the right words. “To be honest I put together a little speech while I was walking here, and standing here by the gate I was practising it, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to remember a single word now because I’m so nervous. My son-in-law… you see, he’s an incorrigible optimist. Until recently I regarded that as a virtue, but now, in current circumstances, I’m afraid he’s a bit… he underestimates the seriousness of the situation. I can see you’re the same kind of people – and probably in your case this will be to your benefit – you’re energetic, and most importantly, healthy; plus there are many of you. We searched through the whole street that you kindly allowed us on and didn’t find anything at all useful from a practical point of view. Apart from wood, of which there’s plenty around here,” he gave out a cheerless laugh. “This gives us hope that we won’t die of cold. But hunger… Hunger is a serious problem. You see, they stopped food supplies where we came from several weeks ago, and everything we’ve got is… in short… I’m afraid we won’t make it till the end of the week. My son-in-law’s still confident that we will find provisions and therefore refused to come to ask you for help, but as I said he’s an optimist, and I’m… I’m a realist, and I know too well…”

He talked hurriedly and incoherently, without looking at me, and I thought, with horror, that at some point he’d run out of words and stop and lift his eyes at me, and I would have to look him in the eye, watering from the cold behind his glasses, which clashed so badly with the hat with ear-flaps, and tell him ‘no’. So I decided not to wait until he stopped talking and looked up at me and I spluttered out – unexpectedly to myself, so loudly, that he jumped: “I’m really sorry.” He fell silent but didn’t look up and kept looking at his feet. “I’m really and truly sorry but we won’t be able to help you. We’ve got a long winter ahead, we’ve got children, and we simply can’t afford…”

I was worried that he’d start persuading me, that he’d say ‘but what about us, we’ve got kids, too, help them at least’, but he gave up as soon as I said the first few words, and shrank, became even smaller in his huge sheepskin.

“Well,” he said slowly. “I’m not blaming you. Sorry to have taken your time. Good night.” He turned around and started walking away, his felt boots creaking on the snow, and I stood with my torch pointed at him – either to light up his way, or because I needed to see him for some time at least – the back of his sheepskin had became unstitched and two thick threads were sticking out of the long, rugged hole. When he had almost disappeared out of sight, I shouted:

“Don’t give up! We’ll leave soon, today or tomorrow, it’s a very large village, and there’s plenty of them around here, and lots of houses probably have basements, you’ll find sugar, tins, jam…

“Yes, jam,” he said in a dull voice, without looking back, and nodded several times – the flaps of the silly hat jumped up and down. Then he was gone.

Mishka and I stood in the deep snow near the gate and looked at the circle of light cast by the torch, lighting the empty street with the wide tracks left by our cars.

“You can find lots of stuff here, we did, didn’t we?” Mishka said, not sounding very sure, and I answered:

“Oh Mishka. Thank God I didn’t have to look him in the eye.”

I didn’t sleep well that night – I had a bad cough and kept tossing and turning in my bed, trying to find the most suitable position to stop my throat tickling; in my mind I was endlessly arguing with the man who had come the night before, and came up with at least a hundred wonderful, irrefutable reasons that proved I was right. The most terrible thing was that the man who begged me for help and I both knew that I was right, and that I had grounds to say no to him, and that’s why one word was enough to make him silent – he didn’t insist and left straight away. But the fact that we both knew it didn’t cancel the feeling of disgust with myself that I had, and no logic was capable of changing that.

In the morning, after breakfast, but before Sergey and Dad set out on their usual expedition, we had visitors again. First we heard Andrey talking as he stomped around the veranda, shaking off the snow from his boots, then Natasha’s displeased nattering, and suddenly the door swung open and they all came in – they even brought Lenny who didn’t look as pale as before but asked Ira’s permission to sit on her bed straight away, and sat on it heavily with a sigh of relief.

“We’ve come to use your sauna,” Natasha said. “It’s dreadful, we haven’t washed for a week. You don’t mind, do you?” and she looked at all of us.

“Sure,” Sergey said. “Use the sauna, no worries. There’s one bucket there, take another one from the stove, heat some water. I wanted to come and pick you up,” he continued addressing Andrey. “To wander round here. Why don’t you come with us, and you’ll have some steam later?”

“Thank you,” Andrey made a dismissive gesture. “I’ll have plenty of time for wandering later. When are you leaving? Tomorrow?”

Sergey nodded, his face sad.

“Well, I’ll have a wander after you’ve gone then,” Andrey said indifferently.

“Let me cut some wood for you at least,” Sergey said, and, picking up the bucket, he went out. After he left it became quiet in the room, awkward and uncomfortable. It surprised me that none of us who were left in that tiny room – feeling the same tension – said a word.

Finally, Natasha started rustling her bag she was holding in her hands and said:

“What an idiot I am. Andrey, I left my shampoo behind. As well as the soap and the comb, I’ve only packed the towels. Can you go and get them? They’re on my bed, in a little grey zipped bag.”

“I’ve got shampoo and soap,” said Marina timidly. “There’s no reason to go back, you can take mine.”

“Thank you,” Natasha said and smiled her usual smile, as widely as she could. “I need my shampoo,” and I thought, what a lovely company you are, so stunningly nice to each other, and then it dawned on me – it’s just the same with me and Ira. I didn’t even ask her if she needed soap, maybe she hasn’t got anything to wash her hair with. She doesn’t talk to me and pretends I don’t exist, but it’s time I talked to her simply because I do have shampoo and soap, and lots of spare clothes, and she only brought one bag with her – there it is, under her bed, and I’m sure that it’s mostly children’s clothes in there, and she doesn’t have much for herself. She’ll never ask me first, ever.

I waited for Andrey to go, somehow I knew that this conversation needed as few witnesses as possible, but the others were still here and didn’t look like they were planning to leave. I’ll just offer her soap and shampoo, I thought, and won’t talk about clothes, we can wait for that until it’s just the two of us on our own together – after all, I can ask Sergey, maybe he can offer her some of my clothes. I looked up at her – she was sitting with her back to me, as usual, watching her son – and said: “Ira.” She looked back at me straight away, and then I said again: “Ira,” even though she already was looking at me. “Shall I bring some soap and shampoo for you and Anton? Will you want to go to the sauna too?”

“Thank you,” she said slowly. “But I do have soap and shampoo,” and continued looking at me; I felt myself blushing and getting hot, all the way to the roots of my hair; come on then, tell me ‘we don’t need anything from you’ while we’re both sitting here looking at each other, I made myself hold her gaze, however hard it was, and then she said:

“But if you have a clean tea-shirt and a jumper – that’d be cool.”

“Of course,” I said and jumped up. “Of course, I’ll bring them now,” and ran to the other room and started looking through the bag on the floor by the bed, getting angry with myself at the same time for my silly, obliging haste, yet strangely glad at the same time – and not exactly sure why.

I scattered the contents of the bag over the floor and finally picked a grey-blue fair isle pattern jumper and several t-shirts; why are you fussing so much, I was asking myself, calm down, this comes from your permanent desire to be liked by everyone, to be a good girl, to be generous, you always overdo it and then feel a complete idiot, she’ll never be your friend, not that you want her to be, really, just give her these few things and don’t blow it out of proportion, she won’t rush to embrace you, she’ll only say ‘thank you’, and you’ll stop existing for her again, as if you’re an empty space, as if you’re not there. Then I left the room, came up to her and gave her the pile of clothes; she took it and nodded silently, putting the clothes on her lap. She won’t even look at them while you’re here, I told myself, and now you’re angry, but won’t tell her anyway, you never say anything, just bottle it up, silent, and then you can’t sleep at night and lie there thinking of witty, appropriate things to say, but they’re not needed anymore.

The front door swung open and Sergey came in, smiling:

“The sauna will be ready in a couple of hours; but I’m afraid we only have two buckets. Why don’t you bring some from your place?”

This time the door opened again, pushing Sergey, who was standing in front of it, and Andrey piled into the room. His jacket was undone, and in his hand, weighing it down was a large silver pistol – so bright and shiny that it looked like a toy Mishka had as a child. His eyes were wild.

“Andrey, what’s the matter?” Dad jumped from his seat.

“What happened?” Natasha shouted.

“He’s been through our stuff!” Andrey said, addressing only Sergey for some reason, “do you hear, Sergey, he’s been through the trailer – I was coming back to the house and saw him, he opened the cover – probably cut it, or untied it, since the cars are all locked, but you can’t lock the trailer…”

“Who’s been through our stuff?” asked Sergey, and I immediately imagined the large sheepskin on the skinny shoulders, and thought, God, please tell me you didn’t kill him, you couldn’t, he’s so old, you could just push him away, no, just shout out and he would have left, you couldn’t kill him, you shouldn’t have.

“Who’s been through our stuff?” asked Sergey again and shook Andrey by the shoulder. “That Igor of yours, from Cherepovets!” Andrey said angrily. “Nice people, a wife and two daughters!” He got into the trailer and stole a box of tinned meat, bastard!”

“What did you do?” Sergey said, in a sunken voice. I’m sure he thought the same as me, only the victim was different, he probably imagined this wide-faced, friendly guy in a jacket with a furry hood, who waved at us yesterday from the other end of the street, lying on the snow with a bullet through his eye, and I thought that if there had been a shot, we would have heard it.

Andrey twitched his shoulder, writhed himself free from under Sergey’s hand, came up to the table and smashed the pistol down, almost throwing it, as if it was too hot to hold. Then he sat at the chair and clasped the hands in front of him.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “I let him take the damn box.”

“What do you mean – you let him take it?” Natasha asked, raising from her seat.

“I did,” he repeated gloomily, not looking at her. For some time, we were all silent, and then Natasha moved her chair to sit opposite her husband, and said slowly and quietly:

“There were thirty cans of tinned meat in that box. That’s thirty days of life, and you just gave it away to a complete stranger. You had a pistol with you, why didn’t you shoot?”

“Because that’s exactly what he said – shoot! You see?” Andrey shouted and finally lifted his head. “I was five steps away from him, he stood there holding that box, it ripped when he was taking it out and several tins fell out, and then he turned to me and said ‘shoot if you want, our children are hungry and we only found half a sack of sprouted potatoes.’ He said ‘shoot, I don’t care, we’ll die here anyway.’ I couldn’t. I gave him that shitty box. I’m probably not prepared to kill a man for thirty cans of tinned meat. I probably just couldn’t kill a man, full stop.”

“There’s no need to shoot,” Sergey said and put his hand on Andrey’s shoulder. “We’ll just go to their house together – they’ll have to give it back. I know where they were staying – the house with a green roof.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Andrey said. “Let them have those tins.”

“You know how many more people we’ll meet on the way, who have nothing to eat?” asked Dad. “He stole it, that box. We can’t let him do it. Let’s go, we need to sort this out. Mishka, you’re in charge here.”

After they left – Dad and Sergey holding guns, and Andrey with nothing in his hands, shrinking back from the gun which Sergey was trying to give him, as if it was a poisonous snake – Mishka ran out onto the veranda to get at least a glimpse of what would happen on the neighbouring street. It was just the four women, the wounded man and two children who stayed in the house, helpless and scared. We couldn’t even look at each other – we were afraid to talk, because we knew that something terrible was going to happen very close to us; and this new reality with its new merciless rules, which we had to learn on the run, – forgetting everything we had always believed in, everything we had been taught before, – meant that anything happening in that little house with a green roof was none of our business, and none of us could change anything about it.

I don’t know how long we spent being apprehensive, at some point the children became tired of sitting still, they started messing about on the floor, which didn’t help for some reason, it was worse than total silence. Suddenly Mishka knocked on the door: “They’re coming!” he said in a dull voice and several minutes later the door opened and they came in pushing each other out of the way, with snow on their boots, came in and stopped by the door. I was trying to catch Sergey’s eye but he wasn’t looking at me, and then Andrey said:

“They’ve children, they’re sick, I broke into their door, we thought that would be the right thing to do, rather than knock, because we came to put things right. There’s only one room. They were in bed, those two girls, very little, blood on the pillows, and this terrible stench, they weren’t even scared, we stood in the doorway like idiots, and they watched us from the bed. They didn’t even raise an eyebrow, as if they didn’t care anymore, and this damn box on the floor. They didn’t even open it, they’re probably too sick to eat now. We didn’t cross the threshold into the room. You’re right Sergey. We can’t stay here. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

During the next two hours we were packing – hurriedly, erratically, as if the people who were across the street from us were dangerous. Dad and Sergey moved the Land Cruiser and the hatchback to our gate and for the next hour they were carrying the things into the cars, freeing space for the trophies they had found in the village, until Sergey stopped in the doorway, holding another load of our possessions intended for the car, and said:

“Look. This isn’t right. We can’t leave right now. We need some sleep. We’ll keep watch in turns, as usual, it’ll be fine. Let’s have dinner. And the sauna is probably hot now.”

Nobody enjoyed the sauna or the food that evening. We ate in heavy silence and started getting ready for bed straight afterwards. The dog, who was watching us the whole time while we were packing, slipped through the door with me and went straight for the bedroom where Sergey and I slept; as soon as I went to bed he hovered at the door for a bit and then lay down with a big sigh.

I woke up in the middle of the night because the dog was scratching the door – they were short but persistent scratches; for some time I tried to ignore these sounds but then I realised that he wouldn’t stop and got up to let him out. It was dark in the middle room; Ira slept with the duvet drawn to her chin with both arms tightly around the boy. Clip-clopping on the floor with his nails the dog made for the door – I had to put the jacket on and come out with him, and as soon as we came out I realised that something was not quite right: instead of sitting on the chair wrapped in his sheepskin, Andrey stood by the window in a strange, tense position, nodding to somebody who stood outside; he didn’t even look back when he heard the door opening. I came closer, and breathed on the window – and saw a familiar figure in a silly ear-flapped hat and oversized sheepskin. He stood with his head awkwardly thrown back and spoke in a quiet, determined voice:

“…I just wanted to say to you that you’ve done the right thing. These are terrible, disgusting times and a lot of awful and unfair things have happened already and believe me there’ll be many more. It’s not worth scolding yourself for doing something good. Our girls are ill, you probably noticed; my son-in-law, Igor, didn’t believe it to the last minute, he kept telling us that they merely had colds, he was so convinced… I already said that he was an optimist – although, I didn’t say that to you. I think my wife’s ill, too, and if I understand anything about this hideous disease, it’ll be a miracle if we all last till the New Year. Your box with tins of meat, young man, will help us die in dignity, if one can talk about dignity at all in this situation. Please don’t think ill of us – we’ve tried to be as careful as we could, we tried to stay as far away from you as possible every time we spoke to you, even Igor, which probably means he’s not the optimist I took him to be. It’s funny how much you can find out about your loved ones when you’re in these kind of circumstances…”

Andrey kept nodding without saying a word, and I pressed my back against the door and listened to the quiet, apologetic voice, realising that I had no right to show my face because this doomed man in somebody else’s sheepskin didn’t come here to speak with me. I stood there until the dog’s cold nose poked me in the hand, and then I opened the door as quietly as I could and came back into the warm, sleepy house, leaving Andrey and the man behind.

We left the village in the morning.