To the Lake

15 HATCHES

When we drove into Kirillov, which we reached in early twilight, we had no idea what lay in store for us – whether there’d be checkpoints and barricades, built by the citizens in the hope to protect themselves from their infected neighbours, or looters, or the doers of the atrocious cleansing which took place some sixty kilometres from here, or the helpless indifference and death which we saw in Ustyuzhna. We were prepared for anything but there was one thing we utterly failed to predict – that the small town, with its wooden houses and whitewashed churches, schools and bus stops would be abandoned, empty, as if all its inhabitants, to the last one, scared by the fate the neighbouring villages had suffered, had packed up and left for somewhere further up north.

It was clear at first sight that there was no one left in town – maybe because the road we were driving on was covered in snow with a firm, frosty crust, or perhaps because the town which stretched in front of us was almost completely dark: the ridges of the simple two-sloped roofs hung above us in the growing dusk, and we could barely see the shadowy, snow-covered beams of narrow streets, with dense trees on both sides – but there wasn’t a single lit-up window. The fact that the street lamps weren’t working could be explained by the lack of electricity, but if there was at least one person behind a road-facing window, we would have noticed the flickering of a candle flame or oil lamp, or seen slight movements, at least a hint of movement – but there was none of this, none at all, only silent, low houses abandoned by their owners and dim pavements untrodden for a long time.

“Look to your left, children,” Dad’s voice came out of the speaker, and we shuddered, not expecting, so inappropriate it was in this ringing silence. “There, can you see it? Behind this long stone wall there’s a huge ancient monastery, Ivan the Terrible stopped there once. You can’t see much from here, but I’m telling you, you’ve never seen anything like it – there’s a whole city there behind these walls, towers, churches, palaces, it’s a real fortress.”

“How do you know all this, Dad?” Andrey responded.

“I came here as a student.”

“So can we stop by and take a look round? When will we have another chance…”

“No, we can’t,” Dad said strictly. “And it looks as if we couldn’t get in there anyway. They must have locked the gate when they were leaving. It is a fortress after all.”

From the road we could just about see the long stone wall, looming over the icebound lake and mirroring the soft curves of its coastline, as well as the fat peaked-roofed towers with gun-slots, like enormous rooks from chess, rising on the corners of the walls. Far away, behind the wall, I could rather imagine more than really see the onion domes of the churches. This really was a proper medieval fortress, majestic and grand, and I suddenly felt full of bitter regret that we couldn’t stop the car and walk along this wall, sinking into the snow in order to be able to touch these old stones, come up to hidden gates in one of the towers and to peer inside – the smallest thing we could do without disturbing this sleeping giant, just in case if we – a handful of scared people trying to save their lives – were the last to see it. One day we’ll disappear – we’ve already started disappearing – and this unmoved colossus will remain standing on the bank of the lake, calm and imperturbable and will last for many more centuries even if there’s nobody left to admire it.

We were driving very slowly, everyone was silent; only when the wall was almost completely out of our sight, giving way to small wooden houses, which seemed so miserable and fragile against this stone grandeur, I turned round to look at it for the last time and said:

“What if they never left? Maybe they’re inside, it’s a fortress, it’s a lot more durable than the old wooden houses, look, it’s huge, it could accommodate the whole town; they probably have everything they need – water, a roof above their heads – and this wall would protect them from the infection, wouldn’t it?

“I don’t know Anya,” Sergey said quietly and looked back as well. “I honestly don’t. But it would be great.”

Two blocks down the road we saw a car in one of the side streets, sunk in the snow up to its wheel arches. Sergey said into the radio:

“Wait, we need to check if it’s got any petrol,” and stopped the car.

This time nobody got out of the car – even Dad stayed inside with his rifle, so desolate and deserted this place looked. Holding a torch in one hand, Sergey bent down, brushed off the crusty snow, which had sealed the hatch of the fuel tank, and was niggling with it for some time, trying to open it. Finally, he pushed the hose in, but then stood up and walked back, shaking his head.

“It’s empty,” was all he said, getting back into the car, and we carried on.

We saw a few more cars on the way, also abandoned and snowbound, but none of them were any use to us – perhaps that’s why they had been left there, on the streets, instead of being loaded with possessions and driven away. It occurred to me that if all we had managed to find in the city were several cars, one of which was pulled to pieces – windows broken, wheels taken off and tank empty just like every other one we had found before, our chances of finding fuel further up north, which hadn’t been found by the people who lived around there, were quite small. It looked as if the people who had lived here clearly took all their fuel with them, without leaving us so much as a drop.

“They must have a bus depot here,” said Sergey confidently. “And a boat station, too; we need diesel, at least two hundred litres…’

“But where can we find this bus depot,” replied Dad. “It’s pitch dark, and we don’t have a map. What does your satnav say, Andrey?”

‘Nothing,” Andrey said gloomily. “The map’s incomplete, this place’s just a dot, no streets, nothing. We won’t find it.”

“Ok,” Sergey said, obstinate. “Let’s spend the night here and tomorrow, in daylight we’ll find the bus depot and the boat station – there must be something left!”

“We’ll lose a lot of time,” Dad said with doubt in his voice.“It’s not four o’clock yet, we’ve made no more than ninety kilometres in one day, if we stay the night and spend time looking for it tomorrow, we’ll lose the whole day. We’re going too slowly anyway; one heavy snowfall will be enough for us to get stuck for good.” And he fell silent, waiting for others to object, but Sergey didn’t argue with him for some reason; perhaps the thought of spending a night in an empty ghost-city didn’t appeal to him after all – after our long forced delay near Cherepovets we were scared to stop again, as if, had we stopped, we would attract more unknown dangers, and so the only way to avoid them was by continuing to move forward.

“Wait!” Andrey suddenly exclaimed. “The map says there’s a petrol station near the exit from the city. If there’s fuel left anywhere, that’s the place.”

We crossed the city at its narrowest part, which was hemmed in by a lake on either side, and so several minutes later we reached its end. It was completely dark and we would definitely have gone past the building with a red and white rectangular roof had we not been looking for it. The building was covered in snow which had plastered it all over, even the vertical sides, and this made it especially difficult to see in the dark. We came out into the cold; when Mishka opened the back door, the dog jumped out and dashed like a streak of yellow lightning towards the tree, beyond the bright spot of light from our headlights, and vanished in the dark.

“Why did you let him go,” I said helpless. “He won’t come back!”

“He will,” Sergey smiled. “Let’s go and see what they’ve got.”

“There’s no light,” Mishka said, unsure, jumping after the dog. “How would the nozzles work?”

“The reservoir must be somewhere near,” Dad said, coming up, “look for the hatch in the ground, they’re normally on the perimeter, closer to the road. They could have been snowed up, so look carefully.”

At first I thought that we wouldn’t be able to find any reservoirs under this snow, but then Mishka triumphantly shouted:

“I’ve found it!” and then, after a short pause, he said a bit quieter: “But they look a bit strange.”

There were three identical grey hatches where Mishka was standing – two were open, revealing wide rectangular inlets; when we peered inside I saw two metallic wells – a small one with a lot little tubes poking out, and the other one, a bit wider, which was barely closed by the round steel hatch.

“Move a bit,” said Dad to Mishka, coming up fast, and going down on his knees with difficulty; he opened the hatch and started peering into it with the light from his torch, and then said “I can’t see anything, it’s as dark as a monkey’s ass. We’ll have to go down.”

“What do you mean – go down?” I asked.“Down there?”

“There are steps,” Dad’s voice was bouncing off the metal walls, “it’s just a cistern, Anya, just buried in the ground, and we can get down there.”

“Let me!” Mishka said pleadingly. “I’ll be quick, I’ll manage to squeeze in there, just give me the torch.”

“No,” I said in horror. “Don’t even think about it, I won’t let you, do you hear?”

Ignoring my words, Dad stood up – something cracked loudly in his back – and, wincing from pain, passed the torch to Mishka:

“Ok then, you go, Mishka,” and while Mishka, taking off his jacket and holding the torch between his teeth, was climbing into the hatch, and I was standing near, thinking that nobody listens to me, even he, my little boy, doesn’t listen any more, Dad instructed him:

“Go slowly, look down carefully, if there’s any fuel left, you’ll be able to see it, do you see?” And when Mishka’s head disappeared somewhere in the depth of this cistern, he shouted down into the hatch:

“And don’t dare touch the wall with the torch, even lightly – one spark and everything’ll blow up!” I was scared stiff, but then, turning to me, he said soothingly:

“Don’t worry, Anya, he’s skinny and bendy, he’ll be fine. He doesn’t smoke, does he?” And he started laughing, but he probably saw something in my eyes that made him choke on his laughter; he started coughing – loudly and hoarsely. Shut up, I thought helplessly, shut up, I need to hear what’s happening down there, inside this cistern, I want to hear his every step on this upright shaky ladder.

“How’re things?” Sergey came up from behind, holding a petrol can in each hand.

“I doubt there’s anything left,” Dad said, after he stopped coughing; his face was completely serious. “Everything was open – looks like somebody’d been one jump ahead of us.”

“So why did you send him down there?” I said and stepped towards the hatch and wanted to shout to Mishka “Come back now, do you hear?” but at the same time we heard his muffled voice: “There’s nothing here! The bottom of the cistern’s wet, that’s all!’ and a few seconds later we saw his dishevelled head above the hatch.

There was no fuel under the second hatch either, as we found out several minutes later; there was only the third one left, it had a padlock on which would be too risky to knock off. After some tinkering with it the men found a way of opening the padlock too: wrapping a cloth round a long fire hook which Andrey found at the petrol station, they managed to break the lock. But their efforts were in vain: the last cistern wasn’t open probably because it had been emptied before the electricity was turned off and before the pumps stopped working.

Disappointed, we stood around the hatches – Mishka, whose clothes had a strong smell of petrol, chanted in a sad voice:

“So it was all in vain?” Nobody replied to him, and even Sergey, who not long ago had been convinced that there was plenty of fuel around, didn’t find words to answer him; after a while, as if somebody gave us an order, we all turned around and shuffled off back to the cars. I desperately wanted to smoke.

The others were milling around in the spot of light cast by the cars’ headlights: Lenny was the only one who hadn’t come out – even sitting on the wide, comfortable seat of the Land Cruiser he still felt unwell. Looking up at us Ira asked:

“How’re things?” and Sergey shook his head.

Holding on to her knee with one hand the boy stood next to her, and with total concentration was feeding the dog with crisps from a bright packet which he awkwardly held in one mittened hand and held out the other hand, unsure, as if ready to retract it any moment, without a mitten. The dog would first sniff at the boy’s unmittened hand before opening his enormous jaws and carefully taking the bright yellow triangle with his front teeth. He did this every time.

“Here, these are for you,” Ira said and gave Sergey several crunchy packets. “We found them in the shop. There were several bars of chocolates, too, which I gave to the kids. I don’t think we should stop to prepare the food – we’ll be fine for the night with just this,” and then, turning to the boy, she said: “Stop it, Anton, I told you, you should eat the crisps yourself, and not feed the dog!” The boy lifted his head and looked at me.

“He’s eating” whispered. And smiled.

Before getting back into the car, Andrey said:

“There’s no point in spending the night here, Sergey. If they sucked the petrol station dry, I’m sure there’s nothing at either the bus depot or the boat station.”

Sergey nodded and climbed back into the car.

We came across another petrol station, about fifteen kilometres further on – where the road split, one fork was going back, towards the dead Vologda, and the other – left and upwards, up north; the sign said: Vytegra – 232, Medvezhiegorsk – 540. I’d never heard of these places before and asked Sergey – where’s our lake in relation to these places? further north than Medvezhiegorsk? And he nodded and smiled in a way that made me – for the first time since we’d left the house – want to check the map and see for myself whether the place we were going to really did exist. The hatches were open – this time all of them, without exception; we didn’t even bother going down because it was clear to us that they were hopelessly empty.

This was where Dad had switched over to the Land Cruiser, leaving Ira to drive my Vitara; to my surprise, Mishka decided to join her and the boy: without looking at me, he murmured something like “it’s not good they’re on their own, I’ll take one of the guns and go with them, Mum,” and slipped out of the car. I decided not to protest – I had no energy to do so. Instead I offered to give Sergey a little rest – let me drive for a while, I said, why don’t you have a nap, we’re not leading the convoy anyway, I’ll manage – but he didn’t agree: that’s ok, Anya, I’m not tired, he said, why don’t you have a nap instead, and we’ll swap when we absolutely have to. Despite the fact that this long day, which had started, as it seemed, about a week ago, had really exhausted me, I couldn’t go to sleep straight away – it was only about six o’clock, although you couldn’t really tell how late it was if you looked out of the window; everything outside the tiny circle of light shaking around our cars, crawling along the empty road, was densely black: both the deep northerly sky, and the massive trees on both side of the motorway, and even the snow where the light of our headlights couldn’t reach. Finally, when Mishka and the cloud of petrol he was emitting had gone, I could have a cigarette (the dog, curled up at the back seat, lifted his head and snorted in disapproval, but then immediately sighed and lay down again), and shaking off the ash into the open window, I saw the spray of orange sparks flying away with the wind backwards and downwards, under the wheels of the hatchback behind us. At least we have enough fuel to get to this mysterious Vytegra, I was thinking, sleepy, but we definitely don’t have enough to reach Medvezhiegorsk, it’s pointless to argue with them, the most important thing is not to miss this Vytegra and stop them before they decide to drive on with half empty tanks, I won’t miss it – two hundred whole kilometres – if we drive at this speed we won’t be there before the morning – even if I fall asleep, I’ll manage to stop them, I thought – and fell asleep.