To the Lake

27 ENDS AND BEGINNINGS

None of us, of course, could wake up at six in the morning. I was frightened that it was too late, and started shaking Sergey – ‘wake up, wake up, we’ve overslept, do you hear, we’ve overslept’. It was light, and normal, morning noises were coming out of the lounge – the clinking of dishes, doors slamming, hushed conversations. It was clear that it would be impossible to talk again about what we need to do without these strangers noticing, so we’d have to make a decision quickly, – to stay with these strange people or leave – on the go, right in front of them. Sergey probably thought the same, because he didn’t rush to wake up – he way lying on his back staring into the ceiling – gloomy and focused. “Get up,” I said, “Come on.” And then he reluctantly threw back the sleeping bag and sat up.

“Shall I wake up Anton?” Ira asked, and turning back, I saw that she was propped up on one elbow, looking at Sergey – her face was sleepy, her blonde hair messed up.

“Yes,” Sergey nodded, “we need to have breakfast and then go.”

“Do you think they’ll come with us?” she said, and nodded towards the other room.

“We’ll find out in a minute,” Sergey shrugged his shoulders and stood up.

He opened the door and came out into the lounge; I heard him say ‘good morning’, and tried to count the voices that answered back, but couldn’t. For some reason I thought that they all – all thirty-four people who he talked about yesterday – might be gathered outside our room waiting until we woke up, and this thought made me get up and run outside – just so that he wasn’t there alone.

Contrary to my expectations there was hardly anyone in the lounge – judging by the mess on the table the breakfast had finished, but a rather unpleasant food odour was still in the air. The small Kalina sat very still in the corner on the bench, grumpily scrutinising the contents of the bowl in front of him – it had a picture of boisterous red cockerels on the side; his corpulent wife was getting through the clutter of plates she was washing up in a large enamel basin. This was propped on top of a wobbly stool which stood by the stove, and the corpulent wife was passing the plates one by one to another woman, who stood nearby with a musty towel. A third woman, very young with short blonde hair, was wrapped in a woollen shawl which criss-crossed across her body. Heavily pregnant, she was absent-mindedly tidying the plates away from the table – when I entered the room, she neatly swept a pile of breadcrumbs from the table and, with the same empty expression on her face, expertly threw them into her mouth.

My entrance caused an effect I hadn’t counted on: the corpulent wife left her washing up and straightening up, stared at the bridge of my nose, but both of her assistants became very agile – the pregnant blonde lady even stopped her unhurried activity and ran to the stove, as if trying to stay closer to the other two women, and from there started staring at me with a blatant, hostile curiosity. I choked on the greetings I was going to say – come on then, say good morning, what are you afraid of, even if they know that you’re not going to stay here, with them, you don’t owe them anything, and it’s not their decision. The most important thing is that the man with a sleepy face agrees to let you go, and these ones can stare and frown as much as they like, nothing depends on them whatsoever.

“Good morning,” I forced myself to say.

None of them replied; the youngest of all women, without taking off me her round eyes, framed by albescent eye-lashes, took the hand off her stomach, and, covering her mouth, started whispering something hotly to the woman with the towel.

“Good morning”, I repeated with the merest hint of attitude.

“Had enough sleep?” the woman said defiantly. It didn’t sound like a question but rather an affirmation, an acceptance of an unpleasant fact, and before I had time to say something like ‘listen, what do you care if we stay or go, you should be glad that we’re going, why do you need us here” – her face suddenly warmed and looking somewhere over my shoulder, she said in a completely different tone: “You’re up, love? Just warmed some goat’s milk for yer.” Turning back, I saw Ira and the boy at the door, and because the women started fussing around them and forgot all about me, I pushed into the other room with my shoulder against the door and walked in.

They were all there – except the doctor – the only evidence he had been there was a shabby jacket left on the floor. Walking in I heard the end of Lenny’s sentence:

“…will you tell ‘im? want me to come with?”

“I’ll be fine,” Sergey said, “I’ll manage.” And it was clear to me that it was different this time, that there had been no arguments, and if there had been any, they’d been settled last night; something must have changed between the members of our curious group, something important, and I simply hadn’t noticed when exactly it had happened. This morning the decision had been made, and it was made unanimously – we’re leaving. There was nothing else to discuss – Sergey went to the other house to start negotiations, and we went back to the lounge. Ira and the boy sat at the table – they had the bowl with the cockerels in front of them, and the boy was sipping from it, holding it tightly with his little hands. Looking around the room, I realised that Kalina had vanished, but two women, who had probably come in from outside – they were dressed warmly – were sitting at his place; I wonder where all your men are, I thought, alarmed, what can they be busy with – I wish Lenny had gone with Sergey.

If it had been possible to leave this place straight away, without asking anyone’s permissions, without losing time for breakfast, we would have probably done it with pleasure, but the children were hungry, and until Sergey came back we didn’t have anything to do anyway, so while Natasha and I were studying – in horror – the wood stove which we’d have to cook this food on, Andrey ran outside to the cars, and fetched two packets of buckwheat, tinned meat and a large aluminium pot. Five women were watching us with mute criticism; it was their house, their territory, and to pretend that they weren’t in the room would be pointless. It would last for an hour or two, I told myself, we’d just cook this damned porridge and then Sergey would come back and we would leave immediately, without any delay; and then one of the two women who were the last to come in bent down to our host, and said in a loud whisper:

“That one? with chopped hair?”

I turned around.

“Shhhh,” said the pregnant woman with the shawl around her stomach, and giggled, covering her mouth again, and the host, defiantly holding my gaze, slowly nodded.

Rip the packet, pour out the buckwheat into the pot – these alien, unpleasant women are looking at me and talking about me, without even trying to lower their voice, and for some bizarre reason it’s me who they don’t like? – pour some water, where can I get water?

“Excuse me,” I said, “where can I get water?”

“You need water,” said our host after a long, almost theatrical pause.

“Yes, water,” I repeated – I was beginning to get irritated, “I’m making porridge.”

She waited for a little longer and then in her slow, stolid way she got up, brushed off her knees for some reason, and then said:

“The bucket’s behind the stove,” and while I was busy with the bucket, she stood above me, her arms folded, and I felt her hard, unfriendly glare on the back of my head. Come back to the stove, put the pot on, I told myself. Salt, I’ve forgotten salt.

“Shut up,” the same whisper, “I thought the younger one, the redhead.”

“The redhead’s got ‘er own bloke,” our host answered. “But this one wanted somebody else’s.”

Which ‘somebody else’s’, whose ‘somebody else’s’, what are they talking about; to hell with the salt, I need to cover the pot, where did I put the lid, not to turn around, the main thing – not to turn around to them, not to look at these alien, unfriendly faces. “Anya, you forgot salt,” Natasha said, and at the same time somebody behind me said in a loud voice: “She ‘ad no shame, he was still married, for Chrissake!” and only then did I realise. I made myself cover the pot – calmly, making no noise – and only then turned around and walked outside.

I habitually put my hand in my pocket when I came out onto the veranda, took out the same empty pack, crumpled it and threw it under my feet. All our three cars were on the trodden clearing in between the houses, looking so helpless in daylight, – several local people walked up and down and randomly tried to see through the tinted windows what was inside the boots. It would have been really funny had this silly conversation happened in another place, another time – I would have just laughed, I would have said ‘it’s none of your business, who are you anyway, silly cows, I’ve lived with him for three years – every day, every night, I know every dot on his face when he’s asleep, when he’s cross, I can make him smile, I know what he thinks, and I also know that every day – every single day – he’s happy, and that’s why I’m his real wife, and a fertilized egg – or three, or ten – has nothing to do with this.’ At least I know I’m definitely not tempted to stay here – please, God, let us leave this place, there’re thirty-four of them, and only nine of us but if they say another word to me – I’ll hit one of these horrible cows, I simply won’t be able to restrain myself.

The front door opened and Lenny’s smiling face appeared in the gap.

“C’mon, Anya” he said, laughing. “You’re not upset, are you? There’s no tellies here, just imagine, no soap operas, no celebrities to gawk at, nothing to do. Let’s go back, you’ll get cold.”

“I’m not going, Lenny,” I said unenthusiastically, “eat without me, I’ll wait for Sergey.” But he dragged me back inside, ignoring what I was saying, into the room permeated with the smell of buckwheat porridge and declared in a public voice:

“C’mon, ladies, quit gossiping! What are you on about – wife, no wife – we in Moscow have as many as we want – I’m the only idiot with just one. Have you got any spares here, by the way, that I can borrow?”

He noisily sat down at the table, and issued orders: ‘what about the plates? is there no plates? don’t sweat, we’ll give ‘em back’! and ‘how about some hot water, eh? we’ve some very special tea – bet you never had anything like it, it’s called ‘Emerald spirals of the spring’, we’ve half a pack left, bring it here, Marina’. The tension disappeared straight away – the ‘ladies’, giggling, started busying around the kitchen taking out the plates, somebody ran to get some boiling water and a few minutes later the table was laid, the pot with buckwheat and tinned meat was carefully wrapped in the same musty towel, and even the grumpy host, displaying something like a coquettish smile on her large face, fished out a round loaf of grey, porous bread from somewhere, clearly homemade. I’ll never learn how to do it, I thought, sitting above my portion of porridge with two glistening pieces of meat in it, I’ll never master this simplicity, this thick, impenetrable skin, I just can’t live so close, so shoulder to shoulder with others, because the best way to protect myself has always been to create a space between me and the others. And now, in this upside down world, I won’t be able to find any peace.

Sergey came back towards the end of breakfast – he looked concerned, but there was no crease in between his eyebrows; ‘we can get ready after we’ve eaten’ was the only thing he said, and while he was eating, without lifting his eyebrows from the plate, I sat next to him, pressed to his shoulder, and sipped Lenny’s burning hot, tasteless emerald spirals, thinking – there you go, of course, that’s the way it should be. It’s going to be ok now.

The whole settlement came out to say good-bye to us. When I was sure that they had let us go, all the terrible emotions that were not letting me breathe – anxiety, anger, fear – left me, they just disappeared. Looking now into the faces of these men and women, who finally looked their true selves in daylight, and who shyly walked around our cars, peering inside, I thought that I was actually happy that there were two big houses on the bank of the lake – and I was happy not because nobody would be able to reach our island undetected by these people until the end of the winter, until the ice had melted – although this was also very important – I was more happy at the thought that we might be able to see the light in their windows at night time from our island. And even if our island was too far away and we couldn’t see their light – we would know that they’re here, that we’re not alone.

The actual packing didn’t take us long – we only needed to throw our sleeping bags into the cars; but we didn’t manage to leave straight away – there were obligatory conversations and good-byes to do. Somewhere behind my back, the large Kalina woman, holding Ira by the shoulder, was telling her persistently: “If you have any problem, just come here, do you hear? do you hear?”; turning around, I saw her shoving a large plastic bottle with milk into Ira’s hands and the rest of the bread wrapped in cellophane, and Ira, embarrassed, nodding in reply, saying ‘thank you, thank you, I understand, thank you.’ Ivan Semenovich came up to us, pushing the crowd aside – his face was just as crumpled and unshaven as the day before, and his expression was the same, strict and business-like. But he turned out to be unexpectedly small, much smaller than Sergey.

“There you go,” he said to Sergey, giving him the gun, “you can have it back. Are you a hunter, or did you take it for protection?”

“A hunter,” Sergey nodded.

“Well, who knows, you might be lucky,” smiled the crumple-faced man, “Although our guys only got one hare in two weeks. But they didn’t go too far – there were other things to do… But the fish – there’s lots of fish, dog-fish, pike – do you know how to catch fish under the ice?”

“We’ll learn,” Sergey said.

“You should learn quick,” Ivan said and stopped smiling, “Otherwise you won’t live through the winter. I saw that house, it’ll be a bit cosy, but that’s ok, you’ll be fine. The stove smokes a bit, the chimney needs extending – will you manage?”

Sergey nodded – this time, as it seemed to me, with some impatience.

“Hey, lads,” one of the men in a thick sheepskin suddenly said – unlike the majority of them he clearly wasn’t from the army: “Which house are you talkin’ about – the one on the other side?”

“Yes,” Sergey answered, “we’re going to the island.”

“You’ll ‘ave to walk,” the man in a sheepskin said authoritatively. “You can’t drive on the ice yet, you’ll fall through.”

“But it’s December,” Dad protested, “it’s freezing cold!”

“You can’t”, said the man stubbornly, “ask anyone,” he raised his voice and all conversations in the crowd stopped. “You’ll drown your cars and yourselves. You’ll ‘ave to walk.”

“Rubbish,” Dad wasn’t giving up, “we’ve driven around here in December on ice, and it was fine, look how thick it is!” And before we could stop him, he crashed through the nearby bushes and, running off for several metres from the shore started furiously stomping on it with his foot, shod in a felted boot, whirling small clouds of snow dust. When we came closer he angrily whispered to Sergey:

“You want to leave our cars to them? Are you insane?”

“What choice do we have?” answered Sergey in equally cross, irritated whisper, and I was surprised to discover how similar these two grown-up men were. A short run to the lake took Dad a lot of effort, because he suddenly became very pale and started panting.

“They don’t need our cars, Dad,” Sergey said, calming down, “they would have taken them by now – and not only the cars.” And because Dad didn’t look in the slightest convinced, carried on with a tired smile: “We’ll take the batteries out, I promise.”

The distance to the island was really not so long – no more than two kilometres on ice, but we had too much stuff, and even when we removed the canvas cover off the trailer and, a quarter of an hour later, with the help of joyous, contradicting advice from the men who crowded around us, made something resembling a sled, it was clear that we would manage to transport only a quarter of our load, if not less. Much to my surprise, Sergey turned down the offer of help from the others – ‘thank you, guys, but you’ve helped us a lot already, we’ll manage, we’re not in a hurry’ – and catching my look – what do you mean we’re not in a hurry, it’ll be dark again in several hours, we’ll never cope without help – he took me to one side and said quietly: “Dad’s right, they’ll take five boxes but they’ll deliver four, and we’d never find out what they’d stolen. Don’t worry, Anya, I know what I’m doing.”

It was weird to walk over the ice – the snowbound surface of the lake looked more like a barren field with little bumps of frozen weeds poking out, but I could clearly feel the thick, rough layer of ice. The heavy sled, which Sergey and Andrey harnessed themselves into, left a wide, uneven trace, and walking slowly on it with a rucksack on my back and three folded sleeping bags in my hands I couldn’t get rid of the thought that we’re separated from thirty metres of black, ice-cold water by several miserable centimetres of fragile, unreliable ice. I was prepared to believe every step of the way that it’d crack and break under our feet, and kept looking down, worried about every little split in the ice, every unevenness. The island was looming ahead, like a black, wooded hill, overgrown down to the waterline by thick fir trees; and for the first time during our journey I tried to remember the house where our endless travelling would finally finish – and couldn’t, although I’d seen it on photos, definitely had. My memory of it was resisting, refusing to come to the surface, obstructed by all sorts of other images, and even making an effort trying to remember it didn’t help. I kept envisaging either the flimsy cottage near Cherepovets and the room with the dried up calendar on the wall, or the huge timber fortress of the bearded Mikhalych, where we had spent a night several days later, and among the multitude of these unconnected images, which had mixed together in my head, I couldn’t find the one I needed. Never mind, I was telling myself, slowly moving my feet – one step, two, three, the ice hasn’t cracked, we’re half way through, Sergey’s tense back is in front of me, Mishka’s nearby, burdened with guns, with a huge canvas bag, the strap’s cutting into his thin shoulders, and somewhere far ahead – a skinny, yellow four-legged shadow of a dog, making triumphant traces in figures of eight – we’ve made it, we’ve finally made it, and it doesn’t matter that you can’t remember how it looks, this tiny house, the main thing is that it is here, that it’s empty, it’s expecting us, and we’ll be able to stay in it and not have to go back on the run to somewhere else. The house turned up unexpectedly – appeared from behind the trees – grey, plank-built, lopsided, perched on the shore with its frozen, wobbly wooden footbridge; without thinking, we increased our pace as we were worried that if we’d delay, it’d disappear, hide itself away, and we wouldn’t be able to find it again – so we were on the shore within several minutes. Untangling himself from the uncomfortable straps, Sergey straightened his shoulders with relief and effortlessly ran up the footbridge which was attached to a narrow wooden platform. The platform nestled under the protruding slated roof and skirted round the corner of the house. I could hear his heavy boots pounding on the thin boards; as he made his way to the door – probably somewhere near the back wall of the house.

“Come on, then,” he shouted to us, “come, I’ve opened it!” But nobody moved, as if we needed some more time to realise that the journey really was over. I also caught myself thinking that I wasn’t ready to come in, but would rather stand outside for a while, looking at the dried, porous walls and window frames with worn-off paint. Sergey called again – “hey, are you coming?” – and then I put down the sleeping bags and took off the rucksack.

In order to come in I had to bend down – the door was low and uncomfortably narrow, and as soon as I made a step forward, it closed straight away with a resounding, frozen bang. Sergey was busy doing something inside – I heard the metallic clang of the stove door; several small windows produced very little light, and that’s why I stood in the doorway, waiting until my eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness, after being blinded by the stark whiteness of the lake, and only then did I see everything – the wrought iron beds without mattresses, with sagging mesh, a three-legged table, clad with old, yellow, shrunken newspapers and covered in small black balls of mice droppings. The grey cracked stove supporting the sooty, painted plywood ceiling which sagged. The washing line with a dozen colourful dusty pegs, hung right across the middle of the room. The black wooden floor boards with fish scales stuck to it.

“There we go,” Sergey said, rising to his feet, “we’ll see how it goes – if it smokes, we’ll extend the flue, I saw some bricks outside,” and he turned back to look at me.

He had a completely unexpected, triumphant, proud smile on his face; I watched his smile and suddenly remembered the day when he first opened the door of our future house in Zvenigorod, the first which I could truly call mine. While we were settling into it, Mishka stayed with my mum, and for several months it was just us – we had no furniture and we ate our dinner on the floor by the fireplace. Several plates, an ashtray and a bottle of whiskey on the warm tiled floor – somehow I got worried and refused to go there while it was being decorated, as if I was afraid to get attached to this place before it was ready – afraid to believe that this house would really become mine, almost expecting that he would change his mind and would refuse to live with me. I won’t go, I used to tell him, I’ll only be in your way, let’s wait until we can live there; and then that day finally came: just as I had done here, I stood by the entrance, scared and shivering, still unable to imagine that this was my house, that it would be mine forever, these walls and roof were mine, and nobody else had the right to come and make me go away; and Sergey swung open the door in front of me with a gesture that I will always remember, and turned around – he had this triumphant and proud expression. Just the same as this one. And that’s why I took a step forward and made myself smile.

Afterwards we were bringing our things into the house, putting the bags and boxes on the mesh beds, because the floor seemed too dirty. There were quite a few beds; the thin door kept banging loudly, letting us in and out, and as soon as we were all inside, the house seemed to have shrunk even more and was hanging above us, cold and small. The fire had started in the stove, but it was still cold – it even seemed colder inside than outside; and the damned stove really did smoke – ‘can you watch it, Dad,’ said Sergey, ‘we need to make another trip back before it gets dark… Lenny, come with me, I’ll show you where the wood-stack is’. The men went outside, and we, the four women and two children, stayed indoors. It became quiet and empty straight away, and I heard a high-pitched, whining sound – the wind was blowing through a small crack in one of the cloudy glass panes, and there was a sugar-white snow pile on the window sill. Marina sat on the bed, pressed her hands, which were red from the cold, to her face and started crying.

Cigarettes, I need cigarettes, at least one, somebody must have at least one wretched cigarette; I rushed outside and was relieved to see that the men hadn’t gone yet – they were folding the canvas from the trailer, turning it into a huge, untidy bundle. Coming up to them I heard the doctor’s voice:

“…help you carry the things,” he said, lifting his head and looking into Sergey’s face, “this is the least I can do for you, and trust me, you can always, at any moment, call me and I’ll be right there…”

“Of course,” Sergey said.

“The thing is…” the doctor continued, visibly nervous, “I had a word with Ivan this morning… they don’t have a doctor, and there’s a lot of people… there’s also a woman who’s going to give birth soon, you see? And here I’ll only be a burden to you.”

“Sure,” Sergey repeated.

“I’m confident that I’m needed there,” said the doctor desperately.

“And they’ve got more girls,” Lenny laughed and slapped the doctor on the back; he shuddered and turned to him.

“Be careful with your scar,” he said to Lenny, “And for goodness sake, don’t lift anything heavy. I’ll try and get to you one of these days – to check how it’s healing.”

“That’d be good,” Lenny said seriously and stretched out his hand to him. “Thank you. Really, thank you.”

And they left, and came back later, and left again – I looked through the window from time to time to see their dark figures against the white expanse of the lake – first going away, then coming back – and by the time the leaden-blue northern twilight finally came down, it turned out they had managed to move all of our stuff, all those seemingly endless boxes, bags and bundles, leaving nothing on the shore apart from the empty vehicles.

“We’ve only got to move the cars tomorrow, and that’ll be it,” Sergey breathed out heavily, landing on one of the boxes and reaching his hands towards the steaming cup with the rest of Lenny’s posh tea, “I wouldn’t mind having a glass of vodka right now and going straight to bed,” he said dreamily, sipping the tea and wincing. I watched him drink the tea, burning himself, the cup shaking in his hand, and thought, you’ll sleep for twenty-four hours, or even forty-eight – you’ve done everything you promised, and even more, and I won’t let anyone wake you up until you’ve had a proper rest.

I couldn’t sleep that night – I lay by Sergey’s side, tossing and turning on the creaky iron bed, and then carefully got up, draped the jacket over my shoulders and came outside. Coming to the very edge of the footbridge, I looked into the distance trying to see the other side of the lake – that thin, dark line along the horizon – but couldn’t see anything apart from the thick, cold, endless darkness. The door creaked behind me and the dog came out, treading carefully between the gaps in the floorboards. He came up and poked my hand with his stumpy head, then sat, hugging his legs with his shaggy tail. We stood still for a few moments. Then, as if somebody up in the sky had turned a massive switch, thick, heavy snow started falling on us, separating us both from the lake, and from the indiscernible shore – indeed from the rest of the world with what was beginning to feel like an impenetrable, solid wall. We waited for a little longer, the dog and I, then turned around and went back into the warm house.