To the Lake

24 TWO HUNDRED KILOMETRES TO GO

So this is it, I thought, when the last small house, almost buried under the snow, its skewed fence squeezed on both sides by tall snowbanks, disappeared from sight; the scary city finally let us go, spitting out its last volley of gunfire, the channel became clear and quiet. This is it, I thought as we passed the wide ribbon of traffic-bound federal road, connecting dead Petrozavodsk and distant Murmansk, this is it. There will be none of this again – no stone houses, bridges, streets full of scattered abandoned cars, broken shop windows, deserted buildings. No miserable anticipation of death. No fear.

“Two hundred kilometres,” Sergey said, as if hearing my thoughts. “Just hang on in there a bit longer, baby. If we’re lucky, we’ll get there by the end of the day.”

We’ve been travelling for eleven days, I thought, each one of which, without exception, had started with me thinking ‘if we’re lucky’, and boy, wasn’t I tired of relying on luck. We really had been lucky – unbelievably lucky – starting from the day when Sergey went to collect Ira and the boy and came back alive and safe, and then later, when the many-headed, all-consuming wave was hanging over us, ready to swallow us, we escaped, slipped away at the last minute, giving up everything that we had held dear – our plans for the future, our dreams, our houses that we so loved living in, and even our loved ones whose lives we hadn’t had enough time to save. We were lucky even when Lenny was stabbed, because he could have died, but didn’t. Not one of these long, worrying eleven days was easy for us – every single one had a price and we had to pay it; and now that we only have a tiny bit of the journey left to drive, the last two hundred kilometres, we have nothing left to pay for our luck, because we haven’t got anything left – only ourselves.

“What the hell,” Sergey said suddenly.

That’s it, I thought – of course, how could I assume that everything would be fine from now on; I looked up, ready to see anything – a fallen tree, a frozen truck full of logs blocking the road, a concrete fence with rings of barbed wire on top or simply a sheer drop, a sudden deep, gaping, unsurpassable gulley, out of nowhere – but there was nothing like that, nothing at all, just a smooth, empty white canvas of snow and silent woods. I opened my mouth to ask – what, what’s the matter, and then noticed the Land Cruiser moving in a funny way, erratically, clumsily zigzagging from side to side as if it had puncture, and Sergey reached over for the microphone, but didn’t have time to use it because the bulky black vehicle, swerving for the last time, slowly slid off the road and bumped into the bare branches of the bushes, poking out on the side.

All this could of course still only mean a puncture – of course, it could, so Sergey calmly pulled over, stepped out onto the road and carefully closed the door in order not to let the cold air into the car; and only then did he start to run, maybe because he heard the cracking of the frozen branches and saw the massive wheels still spinning and the Land Cruiser still moving forward in a vain attempt to crush the cold stockade of the young, thin birch trees. This stout car, with its solid tinted windows, looked more like an enormous beast that had lost its mind, and then I also jumped out, not thinking about closing the door – and not because of the spinning wheels and the cracking of the branches, but because I saw Sergey run.

In order to get to the stalling Land Cruiser, I needed several seconds and approaching it I saw Sergey rip open the driver’s door and disappear halfway inside and a second later reappear, holding the limp body of his father in his open, shapeless jacket and drag him, unresisting, outside, his feet catching in the pedals as he went; then Marina fell out of the car on the other side with a high-pitched shriek and had to crawl round to the driver’s door to help untangle his feet. I saw Dad listless head lolling terrifyingly from side to side.

He lay on his back on the snow, with Sergey’s jacket folded up under his head, which Sergey had rushed to take off so fast that I think he had ripped some of the buttons off. His eyes were open, staring into the sky past our faces, into the low hanging cold sky; I noticed that his lips were completely blue and a thin thread of saliva glistened in the ginger-grey beard. Marina knelt by his side in her stark white ski suit and for some reason was stroking his hair with her hand shaking and red from the cold; Sergey stood helplessly nearby, without kneeling down, not even trying to shake him by the shoulder, and only kept saying: ‘Dad?… Dad?…’ He’s going to die now, I thought, looking into his staring, unseeing eyes with blunt curiosity, maybe he’s dead already, let her take her hand away, I can’t see, I’ve never seen a person die, only on screen, somehow I didn’t feel any fear or sympathy, I was only curious and I knew I would definitely be ashamed of it later. Sergey’s voice kept going on as a background ‘Dad… Dad!’, but then somebody grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me sharply so I nearly lost balance, and the doctor’s red, angry face suddenly appeared in front of me. He was shouting: “First aid kit! Now!” and probably because I kept looking at him – in a stupor – he painfully squeezed my arms and almost threw me towards the Pajero. Only then did he push Marina aside and landed, pounced, like a ridiculous fat bird, onto the motionless, tilted body, and bent down straight to his face, squeezing his fingers under the stretched collar of his jumper, and because I still hadn’t moved, roared at me without turning his head: “Are you still here? I said ‘first aid kit!!’ and raising his arm high above, hit Dad in the middle of the chest with all his might.

There’s no point, I thought, while ambling towards the car – ten steps, fifteen – and taking the rectangular first aid kit from Mishka’s hands, and then walking back to the doctor who was still kneeling by Dad, the wide soles of his shoes with unevenly worn out backs turned to the road, there’s no point in all this; there’s no point in this urgency, this shouting. You can do anything you like – tilt his motionless head, force air into his paralysed lungs – once, twice – then push crossed hands onto his chest fast and often, breathe into his mouth again – it just won’t help, he’ll die anyway, he’s already dead, because one of us probably had to pay the price – to pay the price demanded of us if we’re to make it through these last two hundred kilometres trouble free; otherwise we simply wouldn’t make it, why can’t anyone understand this, except me.

I came up to Sergey and shoved the first aid kit into his hands; he took it and looked at me, stunned – without opening it he stood holding it in front of him, and the doctor shouted ‘move, stop being in the way!’ We staggered back, and Marina crawled away and sat on the road. Then the doctor bent down again – to breathe into his mouth, to feel the pulse behind Dad’s yellowish ear, push his hands into his chest again – it’s endless, it’s pointless, how long is it going to take him to realise, too, that his efforts are in vain? that he, like us, is helpless in the face of this sinister, ruthless symmetry, in the face of the rules of life according to which in the current world there could be no credit, no advance payment. That even if we had anything more substantial than this miserable first aid kit, still splattered in Lenny’s blood, it wouldn’t change anything?

When several minutes later Dad’s cheeks became pink and his lungs produced the first, barely audible gurgling noise, when the doctor, unbending, wiped his wet, sweaty face with the sleeve of his jumper and said ‘well, give me the first aid kit now’, Sergey finally started opening it, spilling the open packages of bandages and drapes, asking ‘what do you need – menthol valerate?’ But the doctor impatiently waved his hand and reached over to the kit saying ‘to hell with the valerate, have you got any nitro-glycerine? give it here’, when everyone – even Lenny, who had climbed out of the car – circled around them and started talking all at once, fussing, picking up the packages, crouching down, trying to be helpful, I caught myself walking backwards to the side of the road, towards the merciful shadow of the Land Cruiser, where nobody could see my face. And standing behind the car, still stuck in the bushes, and pressing my cheek against the wet glass I was terrified to discover that I was holding a lit cigarette, without any recollection of taking it out, lighting it up; I probably did it right in front of everyone, in front of Sergey, pulled out a pack, clicked the lighter, this can’t be happening, I thought, and then I quickly threw away the treacherous cigarette, which was still burning. It didn’t reach the ground but got stuck in the bare branches instead, and I dashed across to rescue it; something sharp scratched my cheek but I reached down, picked up the cigarette and sunk it deeper into the snow in order not to leave any trace, and then scooped a handful of cold, burning snow and pressed it to my face, forcefully, with both hands.

“Mum,” Mishka said behind my back, “it’s ok, Mum. The doctor says it’s going to be ok,” and I nodded, without taking my hands off my face, thinking – no, no, there’s going to be something else.

In a few hours it became clear that these dragging, long two hundred kilometres would be harder for me than any of the previous journey. Maybe because Sergey wasn’t in the car with me – he stayed in the Land Cruiser and took the doctor with him, just in case Dad started to feel worse; before leaving us alone again – once again – he made me promise not to use the radio: ‘if there’s no emergency, don’t say anything, but keep it on, ok? look at me! The road’s quite easy – no turnings for a hundred and twenty kilometres, and then – right. After that there’ll be a little bit of zigzagging, but we’ll drive slowly, you won’t fall behind, don’t worry, don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid of anything.’ Marina had swapped places with the doctor and held the little girl on her lap right behind my back, trying to stay as far away from the dog as possible. Maybe it was because she talked non-stop – in a high, monotonous voice – ‘I was so scared, so scared, he just suddenly fell forward, onto the steering wheel, it was lucky we drove slowly, he would have died, Anya, he would have definitely died, it is so good we have a doctor with us, I said, didn’t I, I said if would be good’; I clenched my teeth and tried not to listen to her but she couldn’t stop and tried to catch my eyes in the rear view mirror and even smiled – unsurely, ingratiatingly, ‘it’s going to be all good now, Anya, you’ll see.’ Shut up, I thought, for goodness sake, you haven’t said that much in the two years we’d been neighbours, nothing will be good, it can’t be good, you’re not letting me think, you’re not letting me wait, we haven’t paid the price yet, haven’t paid it, it can’t be right.

Nothing in this life was given to me for free – not a single blessing, not a single victory; when Mishka was three months old, I remember being in the ambulance, and a grim doctor with alcohol-laden breath telling me ‘pray, mum, to get him there alive’ – and I prayed. I said, take anything you want, whatever you want, just let me keep him, and when six months later Mishka’s father was taken away from me –suddenly, completely, without a trace, as if he had never existed – I didn’t complain, I almost wasn’t shocked, because I had set this price myself, without any bargaining; and then my mum’s ruthless diagnosis, and I prayed again – please, don’t take her, take something else, and then realised that I shouldn’t offer ‘anything’, because I already knew the terms of this bloodthirsty exchange: just not Mishka, I said, anything, just not Mishka, and I got twelve long, empty years of loneliness, but my mum lived. I pay a high price for everything, every time, without failure, it can’t be otherwise, and when finally Sergey came into my life – unexpectedly, out of nowhere – I was prepared, I knew that I’d have to pay, and I did, and the price was high again. And that’s why, listening to Marina’s incoherent murmuring, I could only think of the fact that we’d paid for a pass that had let us escape: paid with the lives of my mum, who I hadn’t said good-bye to, Ira’s sister, Natasha’s parents. But these payments were clearly not going to be enough to buy us out, not enough to protect us – and if it’s not Lenny, not me, not Dad, who is it then? one of us?

For five long hours till the turning I held the steering wheel with both hands and looked at the back end of the trailer jumping and rocking in front of me. I looked around at the wall of indifferent trees floating past, and backwards, at the snaking, empty road, ploughed by our wheels. I couldn’t talk and didn’t hear anything because every one of these four hundred and eighty minutes was full of anticipation – something needed to happen, it had to – but what, and when, and would I have time to prepare for it – and very soon Marina finally caught my eye in the damn rear view mirror (even though I tried not to look at her) and swallowed everything she was going to say, stopping mid-sentence, breathed in noisily and didn’t say another word, hiding her face in the little girl’s furry hood.