To the Lake

5 FACE TO FACE

I woke up in the middle of the night. It was dark and a dog was barking somewhere far away. It was a comforting noise, the noise of a peaceful life. Somehow I knew there was nobody in bed with me – I didn’t even need to turn over to check; however, I turned and even stretched my arm over to the other side. The pillow was untouched, and it was clear Sergey hadn’t gone to bed. I didn’t feel sleepy at all, I lay on my back in the quiet, dark bedroom and felt angry, cold tears streaming down my cheeks, trickling into my ears. I was fed up waking up in an empty bed, not knowing anything, having to wait until things were decided for me, feeling like an inert and useless body.

I jumped to my feet, wiped my eyes and came downstairs. I’d send Sergey to bed to get some sleep, I thought, I’d take the gun and keep watch – I’m a good shot. Sergey always praises me for my accuracy, I know how to hold the gun and keep my aim steady.

Without turning on the light on the stairs I came down to the ground floor. It was completely dark downstairs, and the balcony door was slightly ajar. I could feel cold air on my feet and regretted not getting dressed. I tiptoed across the empty lounge, peeped outside and called:

“Sergey!”

I wanted him to turn around at my voice, step inside, tell me off for walking outside undressed – ‘why did you pop out like this, you’ll get cold, silly’ – and then take his jacket off, which I would refuse to put on. I realised how much I missed him, for how long we hadn’t been alone together. We would put the jacket onto the floor, near the window, smoke a cigarette together and then, perhaps, make love right here, on the floor. We hadn’t made love for ages. I opened the door wider and stepped forward.

The person standing on the balcony flicked away his cigarette end, which scattered red sparkles in the air. He turned around and said:

“Anya, damn it, why aren’t you asleep? Go back indoors, you’ll be cold.” It wasn’t Sergey’s voice.

“Where’s Sergey?” A glance at the sofa in the lounge showed that it was empty.

“Let’s go back in,” Boris said and held his arms out towards me. I pushed him off, ran to the edge of the balcony and peered round the corner at the parking spaces in front of the house.

Sergey’s car wasn’t there.

“Sit down, Anya, don’t make any fuss, you’ll wake the whole house up,” said Boris in the lounge, after he had turned the light on and pushed me indoors.

“Tomorrow at the latest we’ll leave. He must at least try and pick them up, if they’re … if they’re fine. I’m sure you’ll understand.”

I did understand. I sat on the sofa and automatically pulled the blanket which was hung over the arm rest, towards me. Last night, it was Mishka who slept under it, when Sergey and I sat on the floor watching the sparks in the fireplace as they landed and faded on the back wall. The prickly wool of the blanket scratched me through the thin fabric of my nightdress, but I put the blanket over my shoulders and thought how silly of me it was not to get dressed before coming downstairs – even at this moment of upset I was aware that Boris was looking at my lacy nightdress and bare knees and I felt awkward – I really shouldn’t be walking around in a nightie with so many men in the house. I was remembering how Sergey and I went to the barrier, to try and collect my mum. He certainly knew then that we wouldn’t get through, because as soon as they announced the quarantine he had tried to break through the checkpoints and get into the city – alone, without me. I remember him going out and coming back, angrily throwing the keys onto the coffee table and saying ‘damn it, it’s all closed off’, but not once, not even once, did he tell me why he tried to get into the city. And on that day when we were arguing, and I begged and cried, he came with me just to prove to me that it was impossible, because he knew that I had to try to do it myself, and even then, in the car, when the empty, dark road was winding under the wheels, he didn’t tell me. And on the way back, although surely he had already offered them money to let him through many times before, ‘guys, I’ve got a son there, he’s little’, and held his hand about a meter above the ground; ‘it’s only about five hundred meters from the inner ring road, it’s a stone’s throw away, we won’t spend any time packing, I’ll just pick him up, put him in the car and come back, give me fifteen minutes’, and then would turn the car around and drive to another barrier, and try again, and again, and fail, and come back home.

I never asked Sergey how his son was, it hadn’t even occurred to me – although there’s his photo on the desk in the study – fair hair, wide-set eyes. Once a week without fail – sometimes more often – Sergey went to see him. ‘You’ve got a day off today, Anya’ – we somehow made a rule not to talk about it – and when he came back I always dutifully asked ‘how’s the little one?’ and he always answered ‘he’s ok,’ or ‘growing fast’, and never gave any more details. I never knew which word he said first and when he said it, which fairy-tales he liked and if he was afraid of the dark. Once Sergey asked ‘have you ever had chicken pox?’ and I understood that the boy was poorly, but didn’t ask if he had a high temperature, if he was itchy, if he was sleeping ok, but just replied ‘yes, both Mishka and I have had it, don’t worry, we can’t catch it.’

Perhaps we were so tense talking about him because of the huge, stifling guilt that completely overcame me when Sergey left the mother of this two-year old boy for me. He was leaving gradually, not in one go, but still too fast both for her and for me, not giving us enough time to get used to the new situation in our lives. Men tend to do this when they make decisions with consequences which hurt everyone with their sharp edges, until women find ways to smooth them over and hide them through daily efforts which are usually tiny and, for the most part, go unnoticed. After this, life becomes normal again, and everything that happens can not only be explained but justified too. Or maybe it wasn’t that at all – maybe neither the woman he had left, nor I made a single effort to bring our worlds – which were spinning around Sergey – closer to each other, at least through our relationship with this little boy, who was so easy to love, only because he hadn’t had enough time to do anything to stop us.

I was prepared to love him, back then, in the beginning, and not only because I was ready to love everything that Sergey held dear, but also because Mishka was growing up and had started brushing my arms away when I’d try to hug him – not in a nasty way, but quite assertively – like horses do when they wave off flies. He didn’t want to sit on my lap or for me to lie down with him before he went to sleep anymore. Or maybe it was because a few years after Mishka was born one of my regular visits to the gynaecologist finished with his phrase ‘it’s lucky you already have a child’; or maybe because the smooth, comfortable, flawless world which I had created in the twinkling of an eye – so fast I didn’t quite have time to realise it myself – around Sergey, his habits and preferences, didn’t allow any other intrusion, even from people who were close to him. And so the little boy, with his need for love, care and entertainment, turning up occasionally during school holidays or weekends, did not encroach on this world to a degree that another child might have done – the one that Sergey and I didn’t have. I’m not sure I explained it to myself like this, but I was prepared to love him, and I would tell Sergey, “Please don’t go, let’s bring him here for the weekend, let’s go to the circus, to the park, I know how to make porridge and to tell stories, I’m a light sleeper and don’t mind getting up at night.” When we moved into our new house I set aside a room for him. I called it a ‘guest bedroom’, but I put a bed there which was too small for an adult and brought in Mishka’s old ‘treasures’, which he’d grown out of, – plastic dinosaurs, whose complex names I still remembered, as well as a set of Red Indians on horses – you could take the Indians off the horses, but their legs were still bent.

None of this was much use because the woman Sergey had left for me categorically rejected both my guilt and my generosity – two emotions which I couldn’t help experiencing and which she must have been aware of. The invisible barrier she built between our lives started long before the quarantine: first she said that she couldn’t let him come to our house until he learned to talk and was able to tell her if everything was all right; later, when the boy started talking, there were other reasons – either he had a cold or he was going through a ‘difficult phase’ and was afraid of people he didn’t know. Then he started going to nursery and it wasn’t appropriate for him to come because there would be extra stress. Once I found a present which I had bought for him, in the boot of Sergey’s car, weeks later – as if he was an ‘accomplice’ in this plot, and then I started noticing that my desire to make the little boy part of our life was fading and turning into a feeling of relief, and soon I was rather grateful to his mother for trying so hard not to remind me about that long period, with highs as well as lows, in Sergey’s life before me.

It was her decision, and although I wasn’t aware of the reasons why she made it, I accepted it, I let go – perhaps, too easily. I stopped asking questions, and the man who lived in the same house with me and who slept in the same bed as me, stopped talking about it, and this allowed me to forget about the situation, so much so that when this whole nightmare started, I didn’t even think of this woman and her child. That’s why he left last night without saying good-bye, without saying a word.

“Anya?” Boris suddenly said somewhere behind my back, and at the same moment the cigarette burned my fingers – I was miles away and hadn’t noticed myself lighting it. I crushed it in the ashtray, tightened the rug around me and said to him:

“Here’s what we’ll do: I’ll get dressed and wait for him… them, and you go and get some sleep, ok?”

“Mishka is next on the list to keep guard,” Boris said and looked up, over my shoulder. I turned round and saw Mishka coming downstairs. His face was sleepy and creased, but decisive – it was clear that he’d woken up to the alarm clock, which was unusual as I always had to wake him for school. Mishka looked at me and frowned.

“Mum,” he said, “why are you here?.. Go to bed, it’s my turn, Lenny will take over in two hours, we made a deal last night: the girls sleep and the boys keep watch.”

“What’s that got to do with girls and boys, don’t be silly! I’m awake anyway, and you need to get some sleep, it’s going to be a long day tomorrow,” I retorted, but Mishka looked annoyed, and Boris stretched his arm towards me, as if was going to usher me to the stairs, and said almost crossly:

“Go, Anya, we’ve got everything under control, you absolutely don’t have to sit here,” and I looked at him and said:

“Wait, you’re sending me away because you think I’m going to shoot her, aren’t you? You really think that about me?”

“Who’s – ‘her’? Mishka said, but I looked at Boris, who held out his hand, and started walking upstairs:

“You’re talking rubbish, Anya, just listen to yourself. As soon as they come back, Mishka will wake you up. Now go, come on, stop being a baby.”

And for some reason I listened to him, stopped resisting and went upstairs, just taking a moment at the top of the stairs to turn back and look at them again – it looked as if they had both forgotten about me already. Boris was explaining something to Mishka – probably showing him the best viewpoint in the lounge for watching the road. I could see that Mishka was impatient – he couldn’t wait to be left alone, watching the road with the gun by the window.

I went upstairs, throwing Sergey’s jumper over my shoulders – it had been on the floor among other warm clothes we’d prepared the night before – and moved the wicker armchair closer to the window. It was too low, and I had to put my elbows on the window sill and rest my chin on them in order to see the street. A few minutes later the square of light on the snow from the illuminated window in the lounge disappeared, which meant that Boris had gone to sleep on the sofa and Mishka had started his two-hour shift. Everything went quiet, the dogs stopped barking, and I could even hear the ticking of Sergey’s watch on the bedside table – my present to him for our anniversary. I sat looking into the darkness in front of me, uneasy because of the hard armchair, the cold from the window, and thought: ‘he didn’t even take his watch with him.’

When the study door slammed shut downstairs, showing that Lenny had got up to replace Mishka, I put my jeans on and went down. It was still a while before the dawn, and the ground floor was dark. The balcony door was open and the three of them – Mishka, Lenny and Boris – stood outside, talking quietly. I poked my head out and said: “Mishka, go to bed, your shift is over, I’ll wake you up in about three hours.”

The conversation stopped and they turned to me, looking embarrassed. Mishka caught my gaze and, without saying a word, pushed his way past me into the house. The men on the balcony watched me in silence.

“Can’t sleep?” I asked Boris.

“As far as I can see you haven’t been to bed either,” he said. His eyes were red and I suddenly realised that he’d only had a few hours’ sleep in the last two days, and felt bad for him.

“Let me make some coffee,” I said, closing the balcony door, and walked through the dark lounge into the kitchen and switched on the lamp on the table. Boris followed me from the balcony and stopped in the doorway, as if hesitating whether to come in or not:

“How about tea instead, Anya? My old innards can’t take too much coffee any more.”

Without answering I poured a kettle full of water and pressed the button – the light went on and the kettle started whooshing, but I turned away to get the cups, and a box with the tea – I didn’t want to look at him, just to keep busy. And then he said: “Anya, I couldn’t stop him.” I didn’t reply. I was looking for sugar, and couldn’t remember where the wretched sugar bowl was. None of us took sugar in our tea so we only got it out for guests. “He’ll be back, Anya, sixty kilometres one way, plus some time for packing, some kids’ stuff – where would you buy it now? It’s been only four hours, let’s wait, it’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

I finally found the sugar bowl, grabbed it and stood holding it for a moment, then turned to Boris and said:

“Of course it will. We’ll have tea together and then let Lenny go and do his packing – he could take your list and bring what he can while the girls are asleep. And you and I will watch the road, ok?”

“Sure,” he agreed, and relieved, he started walking back to tell Lenny about my plan – and I watched him go and thought, ‘I wonder if he sleeps in his felt boots.’

Lenny declined my offer of tea, and excited by our decision, ran across the road to his house. I didn’t want to go outside with him so I gave him a spare set of keys to our gate and watched him wrestle with the lock. As soon as he left, Boris and I took our positions near the window in the lounge – the loaded rifle nearby, by the wall – and we spent the next hour in silence, watching the dark, empty road. The sky started brightening up. We didn’t feel like talking. Sometimes one of us would change our position to stretch a numb limb or back and would startle the other, who would immediately look into distance, where the road showed in between the trees, framing it on both sides like black, dense fencing. God, I thought to myself, I used to love the view from our lounge window, but from now on I’ll never be able to look at it without remembering the thoughts that pop into my head now; my feet are cold and my back’s asleep, I need the loo, and I mustn’t move my eyes from the window in case, if I stop looking, I prevent the return of the black car I’m looking out for.

After the first hour of our watch (it was five hours since he’d left, something must have gone wrong), I got up and said to Boris, who had jumped and looked up at me:

“It’s time I did something useful. We need to go soon, and we haven’t finished packing yet. Lenny has gone, and we’re just sitting here wasting time. How about you watch the road, and I’ll check what we’re still missing?” and before he could say anything, I turned and left the lounge.

As soon as I stopped watching the wretched road, I felt a bit better. I went to the bathroom, opened the bedding cabinet and started taking out bath towels. First, three large chocolate ones (something’s happened, he’s not coming back), then another three big ones, only blue; I took out new ‘guest’ toothbrushes from under the sink, several tubes of toothpaste, soap, a pack of tampons – I’ll have to ask Sergey (he won’t come back) if they remembered to buy some more for me, I never keep more than one pack at home, or I can ask Marina, people living in the country are normally good at stocking up. We’ll probably need washing powder or soap flakes, I think it was on the list, only where can I find soap flakes? Although, they’ve probably bought some. I opened the medicine chest – iodine, Nurofen, nasal drops – Mishka can’t sleep if he has a blocked nose. What a feeble medicine chest we have – it’s only good for holidays, for a week by the sea, and definitely not for half a year in the woods. We don’t even have any bandages, just a few strips of plaster for a rubbed toe after wearing a new pair of shoes. We’ll probably need antibiotics, what if somebody has pneumonia or something worse? I need to check what they bought yesterday at the chemist’s.

I’ll get on with the packing and if I don’t go to the window once he’ll come back. Woollen socks, warm hats, ski gloves, underwear, yes, underwear, there are no windows in the dressing room, maybe I should go downstairs, to the storage room. We need pulses and tins, they’ve probably bought all this, but it’d be silly to leave it here. Sugar, this is laughable – two bags, a kilo each, we need a big sack of sugar, a sack of rice, a sack of everything, there’s seven of us, how many potatoes do seven people need for the winter? how many tins of meat? it’s just surrounded by woods, a cold, empty, wooden house, no mushrooms or berries – everything under the snow, what are we going to eat? how are we going to sleep? seven of us, in two rooms. We need to take sleeping bags, we only have two, we need seven, no, nine, because he’s bringing two more. I’ll smile at her, I’ll become her best fucking friend, only please let him come home, let him be safe. I think I heard a door shut upstairs – I’m not listening, it’s just Mishka waking up, or Lenny coming back, I’m not trying to listen if it’s Sergey’s voice, if I try not to listen, if I pretend that I’m not waiting for him, then he’ll come back, it’s a shame there’s no radio in the storage room, I could turn the music on and it’d drown any outside noise, I’m not listening, not listening…

It suddenly became brighter in the storage room, I turned around – the door was open and Mishka stood in the doorway; he was saying something and looked surprised. I took my hands away from my ears and heard:

“Mum, we’ve been calling you for ages, didn’t you hear? Why did you cover your ears? They’ve come back, everything’s OK.”

And then I could breathe out – as if I’d only been breathing with half my lungs. Of course he’d come. I pushed Mishka aside and ran into the corridor. Sergey was taking his jacket off and next to him, sideways to me, stood a tall woman in a dark quilted coat with the hood up. She was holding a boy by the hand, he had a dark blue snowsuit on, zipped up all the way to his chin. They were standing still, not making the slightest effort to take their coats off. Sergey looked at me and smiled, but I could see he was terribly tired:

“We got held up, couldn’t come back by the same road, had to make a detour via the ring road, hope you haven’t been worried, baby.”

I wanted to run up to him, to touch him, but I would have to push aside the tall woman and the little boy standing near her, so I stopped a few steps away and just said: “You forgot your watch.”

At the sound of my voice, the woman turned, took off her hood and shook her head to release long blonde hair, trapped by her collar.

“This is Ira, baby,” Sergey said. “And this is Anton.”

“Nice to meet you,‘baby’” said the woman slowly, and looked me calmly in the eye. Our eyes met, and although she didn’t say anything else, this gaze was enough for me to understand that I probably had little chance of keeping my promise to become her best friend.

“Ira,” Boris said, “thank goodness, you’re all fine.”

Smiling, he came up closer but didn’t hug her or the boy. I stepped out of the way, letting him through, and thought that it looked as if this family wasn’t used to giving each other hugs at all before I joined it. She lifted the corners of her lips slightly, outlining a faint smile in reply, and said:

“Anton and I’ve spent two weeks in the flat. I’m not entirely sure, but I think, apart from us, there’s no one left on our staircase.”

Mishka came up, then Marina popped her head out of the study, and Ira finally took her coat off and gave it to Sergey, and then, bending down to the boy and undoing his snowsuit, started talking. Without raising her head, in a plain, ordinary voice, she described to us how the city was dying; how the panic began straight after they announced the quarantine, and people started fighting in groceries and chemist’s shops; how the troops came in and masked soldiers were giving out food and medicines off the military trucks; how a neighbour who used to babysit Anton had fingers on both of her hands broken when somebody tried to snatch her bag, and after that they only went out in groups of eight or ten. How buses and trams had stopped running and only ambulances circled the streets, soon replaced by military trucks with red crosses – first they were red stripes clumsily stuck to their canvas tops, and then – which looked more permanent – they painted them on. They stopped picking up infected people from their homes, and the families had to walk them to the trucks, which would come twice a day to start with, and then several times a day. How those ‘field ambulances’ stopped coming altogether and notices were put up on the front doors saying ‘The nearest emergency medical aid station is located at ______’, and people had to take their infected family members by themselves. Sometimes they had to take their dead bodies. She said that when her sister’s son got ill – ‘Do you remember Lisa, Sergey?’ – Lisa took him to the ‘field ambulance’ and afterwards had to search for him around various hospitals and couldn’t find him – phones still worked then. And then Lisa came to her late at night, on foot, and rang the doorbell, and Ira could see through the peephole that she was unwell – her face was covered in beads of sweat and she had a hacking cough. ‘I didn’t open the door, we would have caught it straight away, and then Lisa sat by our door and didn’t go away for a long time, and I think she was sick on the stairs, and when I went to the door again, she had gone’. After that, she realised they must not leave the flat. The TV continued saying that the situation was under control, the number of deaths was down as the peak of the epidemic was about to be passed, and she still had some food at home. She hoped they could sit it out. But after one week it became obvious that what they had was not enough, and she started eating very little, but the food ran out anyway, and in the last two days she and Anton were eating old jam from a jar they found on the balcony – four spoons in the morning, four in the afternoon and four in the evening, – and were drinking cool boiled water.

She said that she had spent all her time by the window, and towards the end there was hardly anyone left in the streets – day or night – and she was really afraid that she would miss an announcement about evacuation or a vaccine, and kept the TV on, even slept next to it, and then was afraid that they would turn off electricity and water, but everything was working. Only the windows in the building opposite did a strange thing – some of them were permanently dark, and others had the light on all the time, even during the day, and she would pick a window and watch it, trying to determine if there were any survivors there. She said that when Sergey came and rang the doorbell, she looked at him through the peephole for a long time and made him come closer and take his jacket off so that she could see that he was not sick, and when they were running to the car together, they saw a woman’s body in the snow, lying face down, and she even thought for a second that it was Lisa, although it couldn’t have been Lisa, of course, because Lisa had been there a week earlier.

Her voice was unemotional, her eyes dry. She was still holding the child’s snowsuit and his hat in her hands, and after she finished talking, she stuffed them into the sleeve of the snowsuit and, finally, looking up at us, asked:

“Where can I hang these?”

Sergey took the clothes and I said:

“Ira, come with me, I can offer you something to eat.”

“There’s no need to stand on ceremony,” she said. “Feed Anton, if that’s OK. I know it sounds strange, but I’m not hungry at all.”

“Come with me then,” I said to the boy, and offered him my hand. He looked at me but didn’t move, and then Ira lightly nudged him forward and said:

“Come on then, she’ll give you something to eat,” and then he made a move and stepped towards me. He didn’t take my hand but just followed me into the kitchen. I opened the fridge and looked inside:

“Would you like an omelette? Or shall I make some porridge? I’ve also got milk and some biscuits.” The boy didn’t answer. “How about I make you a big sandwich, and while you’re eating it, I’ll make you some porridge as well?”

I cut off a large piece of bread, put a slice of salami on it and turned around – he was still standing on the threshold and I came up to him, crouched in front of him and gave him the sandwich. The boy looked at me without a smile, his eyes wide-set like his mum’s, and asked:

“Is this my dad’s house?” I nodded, and he nodded, too – not to me, but rather to himself, and then said quietly: “That means it’s my house as well. And who are you?”

“My name is Anya,” I said and smiled at him. “And you must be Anton?”

“My mum doesn’t let me talk to strangers,” the boy said, then took the sandwich from my hand, and taking care to go round me, walked out of the kitchen. I stayed squatting for some time, feeling silly, as grownups often do when they think it’s easy to talk to kids, then got up, brushed the crumbs off my hands and followed him.

All the adults were standing near the window in the lounge; the boy went up to his mum, took her by the hand and only then bit into the sandwich. He didn’t look at me; none of them did – they were all looking intensely at something outside the window. I asked, ‘what are you looking at?’ but nobody answered, and then I came closer and also saw it. Behind the thin strip of trees, which looked very dark against the sky, there was a big, black cloud of smoke.

“It’s that luxury development,” I said to nobody in particular – well, after all, nobody had asked me. “It’s completely new, not very big, about ten or twelve houses. They’ve only recently finished it; I don’t even know if anybody lives there.”

“That’s a lot of smoke,” Sergey said without looking at me, “looks as if a house’s on fire.”

“Shall we go and see?” Mishka said. “It’s only about a kilometre and a half,” and before I had time to object, Sergey said:

“There’s nothing to see there, Mishka. We saw several of these fires on the way here and will see more of them, no doubt.” He looked at Boris. “Everything’s happening too fast, Dad, looks like we’re being left behind.”

“We’ve got almost everything,” I said. “We’ve no reason to wait, let’s just load our stuff in the car and go.”

“I’ve got an empty tank, Anya,” Sergey said,“we didn’t have time to top up, nor did we last night. You get the stuff ready and I’ll go and find petrol – maybe some stations are still open.”

“I’ll come with you,” Boris said, “it’s best not to go alone. Lenny should stay with the girls – I’ll go and tell him.”

And suddenly everyone disappeared. Boris was looking through coats in the corridor trying to find his hunting jacket under the others hanging on the wall. The boy suddenly cried out: ‘Mum, I need a pee!’, and Mishka took them away. Sergey and I were left alone in the lounge, and I could finally come up to him, put my arms around his neck, and press my cheek against his woollen jumper.

“I don’t want you to go,” I said to the jumper, without looking up.

“Baby—,” Sergey said, but I interrupted him.

“I know. I just don’t want you to go.”

We stood like this, without saying a word. Water was running somewhere, doors were slamming, I could hear people’s voices, and I stood there with my arms around him and thought that Boris would come back and bring Lenny to guard us, and before that – in a second or two – Ira and the boy would turn up and I’d have to unclasp my arms and let him go. The front door slammed shut – it was Boris and Lenny. Sergey moved, as if trying to break free, and for a second I tightened my grip on him, and then felt awkward. I let go and we walked to the hallway. Boris was standing on the threshold – alone, without Lenny, – and he looked at me and said:

“Anya, chin up, we’re not taking him away from you after all. Lenny is a right hoarder – he’s got a power generator in the basement, and we’ve just checked – there’s about a hundred litres of diesel. Come on, Sergey, let’s open the gate. Let him go, Anya, he won’t go further than the fence – it’s time to load the car, we must leave before dusk.”

Sergey grabbed the keys, and he and Boris left. I draped a jacket over my shoulders, came out onto the veranda and watched them, as if I wanted to make sure they were really telling the truth and that Sergey wasn’t going anywhere. The gate opened and Lenny’s enormous Land Cruiser drove in. In order for it to fit into the driveway they had to move Boris’s old Niva, which looked rather miserable next to this black shiny monster. I watched the Niva’s front wheels crushing the tiny cedar trees I had planted last year. When he got out of the car, Boris glanced up at me. Lenny shouted something from the gate, but Boris waved him off and walked towards me. With one hand on the veranda railing, he looked up at me and said quietly:

“Anya, pull yourself together,” he sounded strict, “I know a lot has happened, but now isn’t the time, do you understand? We’ll pack, load up the cars and leave, and everything will be fine, but in the next village – can you see the smoke? – there’s chaos, and we can’t waste time comforting you because of such a small matter as your crushed trees. We’ve still got to extract the petrol from my Niva – and I don’t want to do it on the road, attracting attention. Do you hear me, Anya? Look at me.” I looked up at him. “I hope you’re not going to cry. We’ve got a difficult couple of days ahead, the road is long, and anything can happen – we need you calm and collected; go and make sure we’ve packed everything we need, and when we reach our destination, we can sit down and have a good cry together about everything, OK?”

“OK,” I said and was surprised how high my voice sounded, like a child’s. He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a pack of his terrible Yava, and passed it to me:

“Have a fag, calm down and go back to the house. There are two women with kids who need organising; tell them to feed the kids, dress them warmly, and take a look around – men aren’t good at packing, we’ve almost certainly left something behind.” He turned and started walking towards the gates, shouting to Lenny: “Open the boot, Lenny, let’s see what you’ve got there.” I winced, swallowed the sharp, strong smell of the cigarette and watched the smooth gliding of the Land Cruiser’s hatch as it opened and the three men – all our lives depended on them – peering inside, examining its contents. When I finished the cigarette I threw the butt into the snow, and went back into the house.

There was nobody in the lounge. I walked into the kitchen and saw Ira standing by the cooker, and Marina at the table with the little girl on her lap, and next to them, on the chair – the boy, sitting quietly; there were plates in front of them and a jar of jam. As I’d been approaching the kitchen I could hear them talking, but as soon as I came in they fell silent. Marina looked up at me, and Ira, without turning round, said:

“I hope you don’t mind, I’m making porridge for them. They need to eat before the journey.”

“Of course,” I said,“there’s also cheese and salami. Do you want to make some sandwiches? We can also fry some eggs – we all need to eat, the frying pan’s on the cooker.”

She didn’t reply and didn’t move, just kept on stirring the porridge, and then I went to the fridge, opened it and started taking out eggs, sausage and cheese.

“I’ll tell them to come and eat in half an hour, I still need to pack some stuff,” I said.

Without looking at me she stepped out of my way, and I turned to Marina and said: “Lenny’s here, are you sure he brought everything we need? Do you think it’s worth checking?”

Marina stood up, put her little girl down on the chair she was sitting on, and said to Ira “Can you watch her?” and left the kitchen.

The girl stayed sitting still. I could only see the top of her face above the table. She hadn’t noticed her mother go and didn’t look bothered that she’d gone; reaching over, she carefully touched the empty plate with her short, plump fingers, and a moment later froze again. I looked at Ira, who was still stirring the porridge, and said to the back she was showing me stubbornly: “In half an hour.” And left the kitchen.

I went upstairs to the bedroom, found Sergey’s hunting rucksack and two holdalls and packed all the warm clothes that Boris and I had prepared the day before. I should probably have asked Ira if she needed any clothes, but I didn’t feel like going back downstairs and talking to her again. Instead, having checked through the wardrobe, I packed a few more jumpers into the bag and after a bit of thought, a couple of T-shirts and underwear, too. ‘I don’t know her sizes,’ I thought, ‘and anyway it’s not my problem; if she needs anything, I’ll give it to Sergey, why on earth is she standing there, in my kitchen, with her back to me? We’ve got a lot of clothes, so we’ll sort something out.’

It felt like packing for a holiday – I always did it the night before departure; I couldn’t sleep anyway, so I would put a DVD on and bring the clothes one by one, pausing for a cigarette on the balcony or coffee downstairs, or stopping to watch a favourite scene – and then carry on, sometimes remembering something I’d forgotten to pack. To be honest, I would just put the clothes on the bed, and Sergey would pack them, but he was busy with something else – I heard his voice through the open window. It had been a kind of a game we played: I pretended I couldn’t pack the suitcase properly so I’d ask him for help, although before we met I had always done it for myself. So I didn’t wait for him and when I finished packing, there was still room in both bags. I straightened the coverlet, sat on the bed and looked around the bedroom. The room was tidy and calm, with the packed bags by the door. I imagined that in a few hours we would leave here for good and everything I hadn’t packed would stay here. It would shrink, get covered in dust and disappear forever. What else would I need, apart from sturdy boots, food, medicines, warm clothes, and spare underwear for a woman who is most probably not going to wear it? As a child I liked looking at all my prized possessions before going to sleep and in the morning I would ask everyone, ‘what would you take with you if there was a fire? You can only take one thing, only one’. Everyone would turn it into a joke and my mum would say ‘of course I’d take you, silly,’ and I got cross and said ‘you need to choose a thing, you see, a thing!’ When Mishka was born, I understood why Mum had said that, but now I sat in the bedroom of a house we built two years ago and where I’d been really happy, and this house was full of things which were meaningful to us, and there was still room in the bags. Not a lot of room, so I needed to choose carefully.

I heard voices downstairs. The men had come back into the house. I got up, went into the dressing room and picked up a cardboard box, containing a jumble of photographs, all sorts of sizes and dates, black and white, colour. There was my parents’ wedding, my grandparents, little Mishka, me in my school uniform, but there wasn’t a single one of Sergey. I never found the time to sort them out because we stopped printing photos at some point and stored them on our computer. I emptied the box, put the photos into a plastic bag and packed it into one of the holdalls, then closed the door and went downstairs.

I bumped into Lenny and Marina near the stairs. They were quietly arguing about something. When I came up, she looked at me and said: “I can’t go back into our house. Lenny forgot a lot of stuff – Dasha’s clothes, bedding and lots of other little things. I wanted to go and get them, but I can’t – I’m scared, and there’s this smoke as well.” She turned to Lenny: “I’m not going, let’s not waste any time, look, I’ve made a list, Dasha’s red snowsuit is in the wardrobe on the right, you’ll need to bring my ski suit as well, the white one, it’s very warm – I’m not going away in this awful jacket – and thermal underwear; Lenny, you know where it is, you were the one to put it there.” Lenny rolled his eyes, took the list from her hands and went to the exit, and she shouted to him: “And don’t forget my jewellery box, it’s on the table near the mirror.”

“Marina,” Lenny said from the door, “we’re not going to Courchevel, why the hell do you need your jewellery,” and, without waiting for an answer, he left.

“My grandma,” Marina said quietly – she was calm and even smiling,“always said to me that the reason diamonds have such high value is because you can always swap them for a loaf of bread. They don’t take up much space in the luggage, and you’ll see, Anya, they’ll come in handy, so if I were you, I’d take everything you’ve got, too.”

We were carrying bags to the car for the next two hours, with a small break for lunch. Having fed the children (even Mishka ate the porridge without complaining), Ira fried the eggs after all, and everyone ate them on the go, without sitting down at the table. I didn’t even regret not sitting round our lovely big table for the last meal in the house. I felt the odd one out, a bit awkward and uncomfortable with this particular group. Ira made sandwiches of the remaining bread and cheese, which she wrapped and distributed between the cars. Each time we thought everything was ready, somebody would remember something very important – ‘I’ve forgotten tools!’ Sergey would say, and he and Boris would disappear into the basement, shouting to me on the way ‘Anya, can you pack a medical dictionary, if you have one?’ And Marina would answer ‘we’ve got one,’ and Lenny would dash across the road to his empty house with dark windows, and we’d have to make space for the new thing, moving the bags around, rearranging boxes and suitcases. The three cars parked in front of the house with open back doors looked like a bizarre group of sculptures. The stripped Niva was there, too. Boris disconnected its long antenna and removed the shortwave radio. Sergey had given it to him after he’d bought a new one for himself, and now he tried to install it inside my car. I always hated that radio – ‘you’ve got an antenna, as if you’re a taxi driver,’ I would tell him – but really I was angry at Sergey’s habit of eavesdropping on conversations between long-distance lorry drivers – ‘anyone selling fuel?’, ‘there’s a traffic patrol on the forty-fifth kilometre, keep your eyes peeled, guys’. It had become Sergey’s favourite toy, and when we sometimes drove in the same car he would turn it on trying to decipher other people’s chats with each other, while I was smoking out of the window, annoyed.

It started snowing. When we ran out of space in the cars, the last few boxes had to be fixed with duct tape on top of Sergey’s car. Last to be packed were the rifles, one of which Sergey gave to Lenny. “Can you shoot at all?” he asked, but Lenny only mumbled something grumpily and took the rifle to his car. Finally, the cars were all packed and Boris stood in the doorway and shouted into the house: “Come out, everyone, we could go on packing forever but it’s half past four, we can’t wait any longer.” And then Marina and Ira brought the children out. When everyone was outside, Sergey said to me: “Let’s go, Anya, let’s go and lock up.”

We turned off the lights everywhere and stood in the corridor for a few moments, near the front door. Through the big windows, the dim, soft, moon-like light of the street lamp was flooding the inside of the house, creating long, pale shadows on the floor, which was mottled with wet footprints. In the corner of the corridor was a crumpled piece of paper. Under our feet, a group of abandoned slippers sat in the small puddle of melted snow, looking sad and soaking wet. There were five of them, and I leaned down to pick them up and find the sixth one. I was determined to find it, it must be somewhere around here, I needed to put them together in pairs.

“Anya,” Sergey said behind me.

“Hang on,” I said, and sat down to look under the shoe rack. “I just need to find…”

“Don’t,” Sergey said, “leave it. We need to go.”

“Wait half a second,” I started, without looking back, “I’ll just…” and then he put his hand on my shoulder.

“Get up, Anya, it’s time,” and when I stood up and looked into his face, he smiled and said: “You’re like the captain who’s the last to leave the sinking ship.”

“How funny,” I said, and then he hugged me and said into my ear: “I know, baby. Let’s not delay, we need to go,” and he walked out of the door and stopped there, waiting for me, with the house keys in his hand.

Lenny and Marina were strapping their little girl inside their car, and Boris, Mishka and Ira with the boy were standing a bit further away, watching us lock the door.

“Ira, Anton and you will go in Anya’s Vitara,” Sergey said, “Dad, take Anya’s keys, Mishka, get into the car.”

“Let’s go, Anton,” Ira took the boy’s hand and he obediently followed her, but in front of the car he suddenly pulled his hand away and said loudly: “I want to go with Daddy.”

“We’ll go in Granddad’s car, Anton, and Daddy will follow us, we’ll talk to him on the radio.” Ira bent down to him and put her arms around him, but the boy pushed her away.

“No!” he shouted, “I’m going with Daddy!”

Mishka, who was already inside the car, popped his head out to see what was going on, while the boy stood looking up at our faces. All of us – four adults – were standing round him; it was awkward for him to look at us with the hood fastened under his chin, so he arched his back to be able to see us better. It was almost a threatening pose, with his fists clenched, but he didn’t cry. Eyes wide open, and lips tight, he looked round at us one by one, and shouted, again:

“I’m going with my dad! And with my mum!”

“He’s had a difficult couple of weeks,” said Ira quietly. Sergey crouched down next to his son and started talking to him. He was visibly cross and clueless about what to do, and the boy didn’t want to listen and vigorously shook his hooded head. Then I said: “Boris, give me my keys. Mishka, come out, we’ll go in the Vitara, and Ira and Anton will go with Sergey.”

The boy immediately turned, grabbed Ira by the hand and started dragging her towards the car. Sergey looked at me helplessly and said:

“Just until Tver, Anya, then we’ll swap.”

I nodded, without looking up, and reached my hand out for the keys. Boris came up to me.

“Anya, shall I drive? It’s dark,” he said, and I replied before he’d even finished his sentence.

“It’s my car, I’ve been driving it for five years, and I’ll drive it now, too, let’s not argue about that at least, OK?”

“She’s a good driver, Dad,” Sergey started, but I interrupted him:

“Let’s not waste any time. Please open the gate and let’s go,” and I sat behind the wheel. And even though I tried to close the door quietly, it slammed loudly.

“You rock, Mum,” Mishka said from the backseat. I caught his eyes in the mirror and tried to produce a smile: “Looks like it’s going to be some trip, Mishka.”

While Sergey was opening the gate, Boris came up to the Land Cruiser and shouted to Lenny through the open window:

“Lenny, we’ll drive in single file, but since you haven’t got a radio, make sure you keep us in view. We’ll get onto the New Riga road, and then take the motorway towards Tver. If we’re lucky, we’ll be there in one and a half to two hours. We’ll go through the villages without stopping, no pee breaks for the kids or anything – let yours pee in her pants, if she’s desperate. If you do get lost, we’ll meet you near the entrance to Tver. Oh – and we’re going to check all petrol stations. Anya’s car won’t take your diesel, so if any of them are open, we’ll buy all the fuel we can get on the way.” If Lenny said anything, I couldn’t hear it because of the noise from the running engines; Boris tapped on the roof of Lenny’s car, turned around, and climbed into the passenger seat next to me.

“Let’s go,” he said.

And we went.