To the Lake

23 MEDVEZHIEGORSK

It took much longer than we expected to get to Medvezhiegorsk – the road on the other side of the crossing looked as if it hadn’t been driven on for several weeks, and but for the trees, thickly growing on either side of it, it would be impossible to guess where the road was. Any kind of surprise could have stopped us right there, even though we were no great distance from our desired destination; the snow reached the middle of the wheels in some places and in others looked like frozen crust, which made a terrible, non-stop crushing noise as our cars drove through it. But even if we hadn’t been afraid of the potholes and invisible objects, we couldn’t have moved any faster: as soon as we increased our speed, the engines would start revving like mad and the wheels would spin threateningly. After the first hour of this impassable, resisting road, it seemed that it wasn’t the fuel burning in the tanks that made the wheels spin and pushed forward the mysterious and soulless iron structure, but the constant and fierce act of will exercised by each one of us who were inside.

None of us could sleep – the wining, choking roar of the engines, the jerky movements followed by sliding, and the sound of Dad’s swearing coming from the radio didn’t give anyone a chance to drop off. Sitting next to Sergey, who, teeth clenched, was holding on to the juddering steering wheel, I was afraid to take my eyes off the road, or to close them even for a second, as if the safety of our journey depended on whether I was looking at the road or not. I kept catching myself clenching my fists until it hurt and nail marks were left on the palms of my hands. Sometimes we had to stop because the overloaded trailer would skid off the tracks made by the car driving in front of it, or because a pile of crumbly snow was too big for the wide Land Cruiser and it couldn’t move any more – and then everyone, even Mishka, even the limping doctor, would jump out of the cars and, sinking in the snow, would start scraping it away – with spades or simply with their hands. We were all in a hurry, in a desperate hurry, and didn’t let ourselves slow down for a minute – no stops, no cigarette breaks; there was this alarming, pressing urgency which none of us – I was sure – could explain to ourselves but we all felt it really strongly.

We were so busy that we didn’t even notice the dawn, which surely hadn’t been instantaneous – the long winter night, which at one point had had seemed endless, ended rather abruptly for us; I simply looked up at the sky during one of our forced stops and saw that it wasn’t depthless and black any more but hung over our heads like a low, muddy-grey ceiling.

“It’s morning,” I said to Sergey when we walked back to the car.

“Damn it,” he said, looking up worryingly. “We’re late. I was hoping that we’d manage to skip by Medvezhiegorsk in the dark.”

Darkness didn’t help us much in Poudozh, I thought, settling on the passenger seat, and I doubt, I very much doubt it’ll help us in a city which we’ll have to go through, and can’t go round. There’s no point relying on darkness – it’s not our ally anymore. In order to break through the city, we’ll have to have something more reliable than darkness. It’s been three weeks, I remembered, almost three weeks since Petrozavodsk had died, the largest city in this region, releasing hundreds, maybe thousands, of scared and angry infected people just before it perished – they wouldn’t have been able to go too far, but they most certainly would have made it to this place. They did us a huge and terrible favour before they died – they weren’t aware of it of course – by removing most of the obstacles on our journey, every one of which, even the most insignificant, could easily have killed us. Three weeks, I told myself, three weeks in a city located on the cross of two main northern roads. Nobody could have survived there, it’ll be empty – abandoned cars, plundered shops, deserted streets with the wind blowing prickly snow-crumbs. We’ve nothing to fear. We’ll drive through it without a problem.

It turned out that very soon, within a quarter of an hour, too soon, I was right to be wishing twenty-seven thousand people dead, people I had never met, people who were no way guilty of this catastrophe. I didn’t even have time to say anything, because I couldn’t choose the right words – with Mishka in the car, who was too young to understand, with the doctor there – especially with the doctor. How could I admit that after these eleven terrible days spent on the road one becomes indifferent to their suffering, even to their death – and that the most important thing was that they shouldn’t be in one’s way? I was glad that it took me a long time to find the right words because in the end I didn’t need to say anything – first Andrey said ‘we’re very close, careful now’, and straight away after these words the road, which had been so hostile during the last hundred kilometres, almost as if it had been trying to push us backwards, became completely different spreading its smooth, even surface in front of us, proving that a lot of cars had driven on it recently and not just one or two. It was similar to being in the dry weather after a torrential downpour of rain: you’re being pressed to the ground by a solid, endless wall of water pouring from the sky, and then it disappears – suddenly, without any transition – making your windscreen wipers, moving as fast as they can, squeak on the dry glass.

There was nothing friendly about this new road, and it didn’t look promising at all. It set off all sorts of alarm bells and before we had time to get used to this road, something else happened: as soon as the woods finished, revealing the plain, gloomy buildings, we heard a long, undistinguishable crackling in the radio. It lasted for a minute or two, and then stopped, but started again a second later, and while it was on – inanimate, sinister – I had a burning desire to turn the radio off, as if this small black box, fixed to the arm rest in between the seats, that had helped us out so many times on our journey, now had the potential to harm us.

“…to the back gate,” the radio suddenly said clearly in an alien, unfamiliar voice and started crackling again.

I shuddered.

“The signal’s bad,” Sergey said, keeping his gaze on the road, “They’re about twenty-five – thirty kilometres away. This could be anywhere, Anya.”

You know too well that they could only be in one place – on our way, I wanted to say, but didn’t, there was no point in arguing, because the crackling increased, was becoming more intense, becoming closer, sounded more and more like human speech, and we needed to hear it, to decipher it, in order to be ready for whatever awaited us ahead.

“…we won’t take it, we won’t!” the radio suddenly shouted, and this cracked shouting choked on a long and hard fit of a hacking cough, and then the crackling started again, as if there was only one person out of all our invisible interlocutors who could talk in a human voice, the one who spoke about a back gate, and as for the others – however many there were of them – they were only capable of expressing themselves with the help of a mechanical, inert crackling.

The Land Cruiser suddenly beeped loud and long, then, flashing the hazard lights, jerked to the left and almost stopped in the middle of the road. The road at this point was wide and completely empty, but we had to brake so as not to crash into the suddenly slowing hatchback. The driver’s window lowered and Dad, sticking out almost down to his middle, showed both his hands in a shape of a cross, holding them high above his head, and then shook them in the air; he kept holding them up until Andrey, who also opened his window, lifted his arm and showed him an open palm; Sergey had to do the same thing – rolling his eyes he also stuck his palm out and waved impatiently:

“We would have never guessed that this is not the time for chatting,” he said grumpily when we drove off.

It was clear that we were coming closer to it – there were more sounds on air; finally, another voice added to the first one, and then, a couple of kilometres later, there were several more – swearing and shouting over each other, these people were sorting out some issue, and the way they sounded – shouting at the top of their voices, almost hysterical at times – left us in no doubt that the ‘issue’ was something dangerous. We could drive fast, and while the gloomy villages in the outskirts of Medvezhiegorsk kept flicking past – deserted villages, luckily they were still deserted – we had nothing else to do, there was nothing else to distract us apart from this angry incoherent ramble, punctuated with outbursts of coughing and swearing. Worrying though it was, we kept listening to it, fascinated, as if it was some kind of awful radio programme which interfered with the comfortable, cosy little world which our cars had been to us before this happened.

“I might be wrong,” the doctor said finally, with concern in his voice, “But at least one of them is infected…”

“…from the other side, from the other side!” the radio angrily shouted, and at the same time we heard a gunshot – a single gunshot, with a deafening echo, and straight after it – another one, and then short volleys, close together – ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta – as if it was a gigantic sewing machine; Sergey pressed the button to lower the window – we were just passing a stone slab with a funny drawing of a bear and a gaudy sign ‘Welcome to Medvezhiegorsk’ – and the same abominable metal squawk that we heard from the radio burst into the car through the open window, together with the cold air. We don’t need the radio any more to hear this, I thought, it’s somewhere very close, it could be anywhere, it could be behind that two-storey house with a peeling roof, dotted with satellite dishes, or at the next turning, we’re driving too fast, this is a small town, another minute or two – and we’ll drive straight into the middle of whatever’s going on there. I turned to Sergey and grabbed him by the shoulder and tried to shout “Stop!”, but my throat seized and didn’t make a sound, and Sergey moved his shoulder impatiently, shook my hand off and hit the brakes – so suddenly that I lurched forward – and at the same time pressed on the wide plastic crossbar on the steering wheel several times with the palm of his hand; the Pajero cried croakily three times and fell silent, and I, with my elbow against the dashboard, lifted my head and saw the heavy trailer of the braking hatchback skid to the right towards the side of the road nearly turning over, and then several seconds later I saw the Land Cruiser pass us by about twenty metres and come to a stop.

We were stationary in the middle of a strange street and listened carefully – but there were no more gunshots; the voices from the radio stopped at the same time, and it was now peacefully hissing and crackled from time to time, as if both the deafening rattle, and the vehement cries were only part of our dream. Looking carefully, I suddenly realised that I couldn’t see the other side of this wide – probably, central – street, we could see neither houses nor trees as if somebody had erected a cloudy, whitish wall there.

“What is this – fog?” I asked.

“It’s smoke,” Sergey answered, “Can’t you smell it?” And I realised that he was right – despite the cold, the air wasn’t fresh anymore, it became bitter, and every time I breathed in I had an unpleasant aftertaste of burnt paper in my mouth, like you get if you light a cigarette from the wrong end.

“So, any suggestions?” Dad said pulling up next to us.

“Not really,” Sergey shook his head, looking thoughtfully into the smoke-shrouded street, “Can’t see a damn thing…”

“Let’s wait,” said Marina and turned her white face towards us, twisted with fear, her lips shaking, “Let’s hide somewhere and go later, at least till it gets dark, I’m begging you, please…”

“If you’re going to jump out of the car again,” Dad said, furious, “I’m going to dump you right here,” and she nodded frequently, frightened and settled back on the seat again, pressing her fists to her face.

“I suggest that we carry on driving,” Sergey said, “Slowly, but making progress. If you notice anything – don’t turn into side streets, we don’t know this town, we might get stuck. If anything – just turn around and drive back the same way we came here, ok?”

No matter how hard we tried to stay close to the side of the road, trying to leave as much space as we could for a potential turning around, no matter how slowly we crawled, trying not to break the sinister, suspicious silence that was pressing us down with the noise of our engines, I didn’t feel any safer than I would have if we had tried to race through this small city at full throttle, without knowing what’s ahead. For some reason this prolonged anticipation was much more difficult to endure than a reckless jump forward; I would have happily kept my eyes tight shut, buried my head in my knees and waited until it was all over, but I had to be vigilant and look around, scrutinising every broken window, every plundered shop, glance quickly at scattered rubbish on the snow, peer into side streets that led merely into darkness. A tiny visible part of a street, it seemed, was moving with us in a solid milky haze, as if somebody was pointing a spotlight at us; suddenly a huge, blackened building loomed at us from the whitish vacuum – it had a high, solitary square tower sticking up in the middle, and a driveway, blocked by two concrete bars. Sitting with his back against one of these slabs, in a calm, relaxed pose, his head dropped, was a dead man; his open palms were full of snow. And as soon as the building disappeared the fog revealed another body, lying face down on the road, and I noticed that if we had to turn around and charge back, we would have to drive over him. After another hundred metres, when we couldn’t see the body any more we stopped by the turning on to one of the side streets. The turning was blocked by an ambulance; the ambulance’s windscreen had a crack in the middle and the door was open. Inside, sitting nonchalantly with his boots unlaced, we saw a man. He was clearly alive.

It was obvious that the man sitting inside the ambulance wasn’t a doctor, and it wasn’t because he wasn’t wearing a white robe: there was something in his carefree pose, in the way he looked at us with a complete lack of interest which made us think that the place where we found him was completely random – he could be sitting on a park bench wrapped in old newspapers. In spite of the frost he didn’t have a hat on but was wearing a warm, tightly closed jacket. The jacket was covered in dark spots on the front from the chest down and it had a belt to go with it. Next to him, on the ribbed rubber floor was an open tin, and he was taking something out of it with very dirty fingers and with visible pleasure was putting it into his mouth; another tin – still unopened – was on the floor beside him, next to two bottles of champagne. One of them was almost empty; the other was sealed but the foil had already been ripped and was piled in little golden flakes on the snow, between the wheels.

“Hey there, in the ambulance,” Dad said loudly, and I was wondering why he said ‘in the ambulance’, because there was nobody else on this wide, milk-washed street, “Are you warm enough?”

The man carefully licked his dirty fingers, making sure nothing was wasted, and only after that did he turn his attention to us. He didn’t look old, but his face was swollen and red, the weather-beaten face of a drunkard; his breathing was erratic and noisy.

“I am,” he answered finally.

“Are you alone here?” Dad asked; the stranger laughed hoarsely and answered:

“Everyone’s alone now,” and his laughter changed into a fit of coughing, which made him double up, and while he was spitting and choking – I desperately wanted to close the window and to cover my face with my sleeve – the doctor pushed Mishka away from the window and moved forward.

“Don’t worry,” he said to me quietly, “you can’t catch it at this distance.” And continued a bit louder, talking to the stranger: “You’re unwell!” he said intently. “You need help.”

Without standing up, the man lifted his oil-covered hand with fingers wide apart, and waved it in the air.

“I need vodka,” he said, coughing. “Do you have any vodka?”

“Vodka?” the doctor asked, confused. “No, we don’t…”

“Never mind”, the man said in a happy and groggy voice and winked at the doctor, “I’ll manage today somehow. We’ve nothing to eat,” he said, “There’s been no food for the last two weeks. I haven’t eaten for two days – and this morning I popped round to my neighbour’s – my neighbour died, you know, so I popped round – I’ve nothing to be afraid of – and imagine, she had no food in her apartment; but I found a larder – so there you go, I’ve got tinned anchovies and champagne.” He dipped his fingers into the tin again and I saw him pick up a slippery oily little fish and add a few more greasy spots to his jacket. “She was probably stocking up for Christmas. She was a good woman,” he said with his mouth full.

At that moment another gunshot fired somewhere quite close, but the stranger, busy eating his anchovies, didn’t even bat an eyelid.

“Where are they shooting?” asked Sergey right by my ear.

“Shooting? Shooting’s in the port,” was the answer, “there’s a food storage unit there. Sounds like they’re storming it again – these guys aren’t local, they come here every other day and start firing guns. All ours are gone – some are dead, others were shot during the first few days.” Then he picked up the tin and inspected it, and then, satisfied there’s no fish left, smacked his lips and drank up the rest of the oil.

“Listen,” Sergey said, “If we turn right over there, towards the motorway, we won’t get ourselves caught up in some kind of trap, will we?”

“No,” the man said and smiled again – a streak of oil came out of the corner of his mouth onto his stubbled chin, “I think it’s quiet there. Just don’t go to the port,” he reached over and grabbed the bottle nearest to him, with the foil ripped off.

“I like it when it pops,” he said, and rocked the bottle gently, “I don’t like the taste – but I like how it pops. Do you want me to pop it?”

“Listen”, said the doctor again, “Please listen to me. You’ll feel worse soon. Find yourself a warm place, get some water, do you realise you won’t be able to walk soon?”

The dreamy expression disappeared from the stranger’s unshaven face – he stopped smiling and, frowning, gave the doctor a hostile look.

“‘Get some water,’” he teased, and his face screwed. “I’m not going to be here for that. When it becomes bad enough, I’ll get down to the port and – bang! Job done.” Another, more severe coughing fit made him bend over again; before he stood up again he spat out, and it spread on the snow in a small red puddle.

“You’ve got the fever,” the doctor said, “This disease develops very fast – you need to get warm.”

“You know what, get out of here, smart arse,” said the stranger angrily, “Otherwise I’m gonna come up and breathe on you, do you hear?”

While we were driving off, lining up on the plundered central street again, I turned back to see the white ambulance with the open door and the legs poking out in unlaced boots – the man seemed to have forgotten all about us: bending down, he tensely focused on undoing the wire which held the plastic cork in place – and just before his bended figure disappeared out of sight, there was a pop and a short, hoarse laughter.

“We should have given him some food,” the doctor said in a dull voice. “At least a little. We shouldn’t have left him like this… You probably have some?”

“He doesn’t need our food,” Sergey replied. We skipped under the rail bridge without any delay or difficulty; we could hear single gunshots far behind, but the stone buildings had already given way to different, plain wooden, small houses, which looked almost rural, and we went past them as fast as we could, accelerating. This scary city – the scariest of all we had seen so far – was about to come to an end. “He doesn’t need anything.”

“You just don’t understand!” the doctor shouted suddenly. “You don’t! You can’t do this. It’s… inhumane. I’m a doctor, can’t you understand, this is my duty – to help, to relieve suffering, and now every day, every hour I have to do exactly the opposite of what I believed all my life… I can’t… carry on like this.”

He was silent, burning Sergey’s back of the head with his eyes; a crossed out sign with ‘Medvezhiegorsk’ written on it flicked past us, and then another, blue sign ‘Leningrad – Yustozero – Murmansk.”

“You wouldn’t understand anyway,” he said bitterly, when we were on the motorway.

“Why not,” said Sergey, his voice strangely flat. “I killed a man yesterday.”