To the Lake

21 BREAKDOWN

The doctor was quiet for a long time. We had passed the hospital and the frightening crowd in front of it long ago, and the whole town – infected, scared and dangerous – had disappeared out of sight and the road had become deserted and peaceful again. But curled up uncomfortably on the back seat he remained silent. There wasn’t much space at the back – Mishka finally managed to calm the dog and politely moved away from the doctor as far as he could in order to give him more space, but he seemed to notice neither Mishka’s courtesy nor the empty space between them, and carried on sitting in the same tense position, not moving a muscle since that moment when, frightened and out of breath, he had burst into the car. Finally, he gave a big sigh and lifted his head:

“I have to say thank you,” he said quietly. “It looks like you’ve saved my life.”

Without saying a word, Sergey nodded.

“No, listen”, the doctor said, “I’m really very grateful. If it wasn’t for you…” he didn’t finish his sentence and it hung in the air, the same way as the previous one, and for some time he continued to stare at the back of Sergey’s head, looking worried. It was obvious that he needed to hear something in reply – anything, and I looked at him and desperately tried to find encouraging words: I wanted to say something like ‘don’t worry, it’s all over now’ or ‘the most important thing is that you’re alive’, but then I remembered Nikolai lying motionless on the snow, his open eyes and the absurd cigarette behind his ear, and said nothing.

“I don’t understand,” he said again and, frowning, rubbed his forehead with his hand, “I can’t understand how it could happen… we were their last resort, you see? they had to wait for three weeks, and they… in short, they thought that we would never come back. That nobody would come to their rescue. And when we finally came, they… Imagine,” he interrupted his speech, and because Sergey didn’t react again, he turned to Mishka and grabbed him by the shoulder, “imagine that you’re waiting for help. You wait a long time – several weeks. And people around you keep dying. And you keep waiting. And you might be infected, too, or one of your family is, your child, maybe. Or your mum. Can you imagine?”

Mishka nodded, his eyes full of fear, and the doctor stopped shaking his shoulder, moved his hand and shrunk into his place again, staring at the floor, his spirit weakened and depressed.

“It’s all my fault,” he said after a pause, “I tried to explain to them, but I didn’t want to take their hope away, and I said it was a medicine. I was hoping that they’d listen, I would explain that this wasn’t a vaccine, that it won’t help, at least it won’t help the infected… I should have said it differently,” he said with despair and hit himself on the knee with his fist, and then lifted his head again and looked at me this time. “I should have stayed,” he said, “Because now they’re definitely going to die. They would die anyway, but I could have helped to make it easier for them… and now there’s nobody to do it. It’s my fault.”

“They would have killed you,” said Sergey suddenly, and his voice sounded dull and hostile, “they killed Nikolai and would have killed you, and then they would have shot at each other for some time, too, and then they would have possibly read the instructions and understood that your medicine wouldn’t help them.”

“Yes, Nikolai,” the doctor said and forcibly rubbed his forehead again, his eyes shut tight, and sat quietly for some time, without taking his hand away from his face, and then suddenly sat up straight and lurched forward and started talking very fast, with a lot of energy: “Just don’t think ill of them, please. I know many of them… I knew them personally, they’re just ordinary people and would have never done anything like that, they’re just all really ill, you see?”

I have to stop him, I thought, to stop him talking, because none of us, especially not Sergey, needs his excuses, we don’t need to know any of this – who these people were, and what their names were, because if he tells us all this, we won’t be able to continue thinking that Sergey killed a brainless, dangerous beast, and not a human being. Not a human being. The same thought probably came to the doctor, too – a bit late, but still – because he suddenly muddled up his words and fell silent, staring into the window, at the white frosty trees, which were passing slowly, like milestones.

“And what about the chief doctor?” I asked, just to say something. “The one who had sent you to get the vaccine? Was he there?”

“He died,” the doctor said, without turning his head, “Very early, at the end of the first week. He got infected and died.”

Several minutes after negotiations over the radio, which we had missed as we had ours turned right down, the hatchback slowed and the Land Cruiser, which had been at the back of our convoy all the time, moved up to the front; as it came up level with us, the big black car stopped for a minute, the passenger window lowered, and we saw Marina’s pale profile and next to it – Dad, angry and glum. Reaching across Marina, who sat without moving, Dad stuck his head out of the window and gestured to Sergey to open the window.

“Turn your radio on,” he said, “Andrey says there’ll be another village after ten kilometres.”

“Dad,” Sergey started, but he interrupted him:

“Just turn your radio on. This is not the time, we’ll talk later.”

Sergey nodded, agreeing, and reached over to the radio, but suddenly a strange noise came from the Land Cruiser – it was unusual, like a dog howling inside the car; when we looked up we saw Marina pushing Dad with her shoulder and struggling with the door as she tried to open it.

“Marina… what’s wrong, Marina,” Dad said, surprised, but she had already opened the door. She jumped out on to the snow and ran across the road, to the trees, clumsily throwing her legs sideways, and stopped by the edge of the woods, as if unable to go on in; then she took several steps back to the car and finally stopped. Suddenly she sat down in a crouched position and clutched her hair in both hands.

Perhaps the Pajero was the closest to where she was sitting, and that’s why I came up to her before the others; the doors started slamming behind my back and I was already close, and suddenly that strange noise – the long, low howling – came again and I realised, in horror, that it was coming from Marina. She was making it without opening her mouth. Her whole body was shaking at the same time. I was standing above her not knowing what to do next, not daring to speak to her or touch her by the shoulder, for fear that, if she felt my touch, she might do anything – push me off, hit me, or maybe even bite. Suddenly she let go off her hair and looked me straight in the eyes.

“I can’t bear this any longer,” she said through clenched teeth, like somebody who was freezing cold and whose jaws had stopped moving, “I can’t.”

“What happened?” there were steps crunching on the snow – the others started coming up to us.

“Come on, get up,” Dad ordered glumly, “We don’t have time for this stroppy girl nonsense, we need to go.”

“No!” She shook her head vehemently. “I’m not going! I’m not!”

“What do you mean – you’re not,” Dad crouched down next to her and put his hand on her shoulder, “You mean you’re going to stay here? Come on, enough now, get up, let’s go back to the car, we still have three hundred kilometres to pedal through, and the more we can do while it’s dark…” and then Marina shook his hand off her shoulder.

“We’re not going to make it,” she said stressing every word, and then stood up, hugged herself by the shoulders and made a step back as if ready to dash off and run away – far into the depths of the black forest if anyone ever tried to touch her. “We’re not going to make it there, haven’t you got that yet? This horrible road will never end, we keep going, and these people, sick, angry, there’re more and more of them, I’m not going!” And she stomped her foot, which was silly, stubborn, pointless, and I thought that this looks like a child’s tantrum in a toy shop, and part of me was prepared for the next phase – where she’d throw herself on the ground and start kicking the crumbly snow, while we, adults, would stand around and watch, feeling an awkward and helpless anger, but there was another, small part of me which was desperately jealous because after they said ‘there’s another village in ten kilometres’ my heart sank, and more than anything else I wanted, just like Marina, to run out of the car and shout ‘I don’t want to, I won’t go’, realising that I would have to go, there was no other way; I just wanted to purge this fear, spit it out into the starless black sky, into the silent, frozen trees by the road, to disperse it, to give away some of it to the others to stop it from eating me from inside anymore, because while we don’t tell each other about it, while we pretend that it’s not there, it eats away at each one of us, and this was becoming truly unbearable.

“Fusspot,” Ira said with quiet contempt, and I thought, this is the reason why I can’t allow myself to do anything like that; and Marina, turning sharply towards her suddenly bared her teeth and shouted angrily:

“Oh and you’re the brave one, are you? You’re not afraid! You’re not? We’re not going to make it, can’t you all see!?”

“We need some sal ammoniac,” the doctor said, “does anyone have any in their first aid kit…?”

“We don’t need no sal ammoniac,” Lenny interrupted him. He finally managed to climb out of the car and came up to us, huffing and puffing: “Just move away, will you.”

I was almost sure that he would slap her on the face – he’d swing his arm back and deal her a short and precise blow, so her head would throw backwards, teeth would clunk, and then she’d calm down and stop shouting, – but instead he bent down and scooped a handful of fluffy pristine snow, as if he was going to make a snowball, and with his other hand, pulled his wife towards him, almost dragged her, and at full swing shoved the hand full of snow into her face. There was silence. They stood like that for a few moments; then he took his hand away. She spat out the snow. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were white.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

We went back to the cars, leaving them both behind; settling into my seat I looked back and saw her standing with her arms helplessly hanging down and with her head lifted towards him while he carefully wiped the snow off her face with his fingers.

And then we were back on the road – driving slowly, cautiously, almost getting stuck in snow-drifts; after one frightened, hushed – or maybe even dead – village showed up in front of us and disappeared, the doctor finally decided to break the silence and asked hesitantly: “Tell me, where exactly are you going?”

“Up the road, to Medvezhiegorsk,” Sergey answered reluctantly, without looking back, “and after that, left, to the border. To the lake.”

“To the lake?” the doctor repeated. “Please forgive my curiosity, but do you need a particular lake? I’m sure you noticed we’ve got a lot of lakes here.” He smiled. “Trust me, we know exactly which lake we need,” Sergey replied, irritated. “And I doubt you’ve got a better plan to suggest to us.” And I thought, you’re not cross with the doctor, it’s just that we’re very close already, we’re very nearly there, and you’re also worried – like Marina, like me, like all of us – that when we get there – if we get there – it might turn out that our plan wasn’t so good after all, because there might be no house left, or it might be occupied by other people, and therefore you’re afraid we’d have to start again, and we have neither energy, nor opportunity to do it…

“No, not at all,” the doctor replied quickly, talking to Sergey’s back of the head and pressed his palm to his chest, “I didn’t mean that at all… I’m sure you know what you’re doing,” and started nodding as Sergey could see him, and then catching my eye, stopped nodding and said in a panicked voice: “Hang on, you probably thought… well, of course you did… that I landed on you out of nowhere, and you’re probably thinking what on earth are you going to do with me. Please don’t worry, I’m not going to burden you! There’s a hospital on this road, just on the border of this region, there’s another hospital… well, it’s not exactly a hospital, it’s a clinic. It’s in Pialma, on the way to Medvezhiegorzk, you won’t have to take a detour, I’ll just get off there.”

“What in the world makes you think that anyone has survived in that town of yours?” asked Sergey. “Or that they’d be happy to see you?”

The doctor opened his mouth to say something, but then blinked his eyes and didn’t say another word.