To the Lake

7 SINGING ON A DARK ROAD

Tver was behind us, along with a couple of small villages which had zoomed by on our way – one on the left and the other on the right of the road. We had left the snowy fields behind too, and thick forest appeared on both sides again, but all of us still remained silent. Resting my forehead on the cold window, I looked at the dark trees rushing past and tried to work out whether those who had stayed behind in Tver had really succeeded in delaying the catastrophe, and what would be the final trigger for chaos; what’ll happen first – will they run out of fuel, bled dry by those travelling through, or will those who hid in the city run out of food stocks? How long will the solid, impenetrable checkpoints hold out for? How soon will the soldiers start wondering if it’s worth guarding what’s doomed anyway, leave their posts and point their guns at those they have been protecting? Or maybe none of this will happen because the stream of people and cars will start thinning out and eventually stop; and the wave, which we could imagine so vividly coming after us, would become so shallow, that it wouldn’t be able to break through the cordon which was built to stop it, and then this small town would survive. It would be an island, a centre which would allow the people who were hiding there to sit out the worst, and then, gradually, resume normal life.

“Are you awake, Anya? You need to get some sleep,” Boris suddenly said, interrupting my thoughts. “We haven’t slept for two days, neither of us, and if we carry on staring into the darkness, we’ll have to stop for the night somewhere, which is foolish when you have two drivers.”

He was right, but I didn’t want to sleep at all – maybe because I’d had so much sleep during these last few blurred and aimless weeks we spent waiting for something, and I was sick of sleeping and being out of it all, of being a spare – or maybe it was due to the short break I had had before Tver. I looked at him. He didn’t look very well. He’s sixty-five, I thought, he hasn’t slept a wink for forty-eight hours, and before that he’d spent half the night in the car, driving to us from Ryazan; how long is he going to last at this rate before his heart gives out, or before he simply falls asleep behind the wheel?

“Let’s do it like this,” I said, trying not to sound worried, “you get some sleep now and I’ll drive. How far are we from Novgorod – about four hundred kilometres? The road’s quiet during the night, it’s easy. But when we get closer to St Petersburg, it’ll be harder for me, and that’s when we’ll swap again.”

To my relief, he didn’t argue – he was probably not sure himself that he’d be able to drive till dawn without a rest; he glanced at me quickly, picked up the microphone with his right hand and told Sergey:

“We need a break. Pull over, Sergey, but find a good place first.”

We didn’t have to wait long – there were hardly any cars on the road, maybe most of them were still stuck in the long queue for petrol. Sergey soon saw a place – there was a forest that started here, just a few steps from the road, and the snow didn’t seem deep. Everyone was glad to be able to get out and stretch their numb arms and legs. As soon as all the cars stopped, we got out on to the side of the road and immediately sank into the slushy snow.

“Girls go left, boys go right”, Lenny ordered cheerfully and disappeared among the trees; Mishka followed him, lifting his legs up high, so as not to sink in the snow.

When Marina’s white snow suit disappeared in the dark (‘Can you watch Dasha – she’s asleep, I don’t want to wake her up’), Sergey, Boris and I were left waiting by the side of the road. Boris politely walked away, turned to the road and started smoking, and I opened the flaps of Sergey’s jacket and wrapped my arms tightly around him to feel his warmth, and stood still, without saying a word, just wanting to be close to him and breathe in his smell for as long as possible.

“How’re you, baby?” he asked, pressing his lips to my temple.

“I’m fine”, I replied quickly, and although what I really wanted to tell him was how awful it had been to see the burnt down fairy-tale house, how difficult it was to lie to the man at the petrol station, who called us ‘girls’, how frightened I was every time a car came from the opposite direction, or a village we had to go past, how badly I needed to be with him, to see his face reflecting the light of occasional traffic, and instead I’d been watching the rear lights of his car for the last four hours, and that’s when they weren’t obstructed by the Land Cruiser… Instead I said something completely different: “I’ve persuaded Boris to take a rest – I don’t like the way he looks. You need to get some sleep – ask Ira, maybe she’ll swap with you for a couple of hours.”

He shook his head:

“That isn’t a great idea – it should be either Boris or me driving the leading car. I’ll go as far as Novgorod, and then we’ll wake Dad up. Ira will drive and you and I’ll be able to get some sleep.” He put his hand on the back of my head, running his fingers through my hair, and I thought, he’s right, and realised that we wouldn’t change places now, or after Novgorod, because we couldn’t stay for long, we must keep going forward, without losing time, because we needed every hour, every minute to increase the distance between us and the wave we were escaping from.

Sergey’s door opened, and Ira carefully stepped down and said quietly: “Anton’s asleep.”

She didn’t say it to anyone in particular, but I knew her words were addressed to me. We could easily do something to ensure that Sergey and I could be in the same car – move the sleeping boy into my Vitara – no, we could even leave him there and Sergey could drive the Vitara himself, and Boris could drive his car. But Boris needed rest and I could still take the wheel for some time, so there was no point in making all these complicated arrangements just because I was missing my husband after less than two hundred kilometres.

I didn’t answer – although she wasn’t really waiting for me to answer, she was just standing near the car, facing the road, her hand on the roof. Suddenly we heard the sound of snapping branches. It was Lenny, coming back; a moment later Mishka skipped past, slammed the door, and disappeared into his corner on the back seat. Boris threw away his cigarette end and was also coming back to the car, but I still couldn’t unclasp my arms and kept holding Sergey, as if I was recharging myself from him, like a battery which needed every extra second to top up energy, and I whispered – quietly, so that only Sergey could hear:

“I don’t give a damn if they’ve all come back; let’s stand like this for a bit longer, ok?”

“I don’t either;” he replied into my temple. “Let’s.”

I wasn’t watching the road and that’s why I probably didn’t see the approaching car until it blinded us with its lights. Lenny and Boris were already in their cars, but Marina hadn’t come back yet. Sergey didn’t move – he just let go of me and turned slightly towards the car, which pulled over very close to us, on the opposite side of the road. The driver’s door opened, and somebody poked their head out and shouted:

“Hey guys, do you know if the petrol stations are still working in Tver?”

Dazzled by the lights, we didn’t say a word, trying to figure out who the person was and annoyed with his wretched DIY xenon headlights. The door opened wider and he stepped out. We could only see his silhouette in the bright light, he made a step towards us and repeated his question:

“I say, are the petrol stations still working in Tver? Somebody said you can still buy petrol there but the queues are horrendous.”

The details of the scene I was looking at were emerging slowly, as if on a photograph immersed in developer, as my eyes got used to the bright light. Squinting from behind Sergey’s shoulder, at first I saw a very dirty car with a dented splashboard – the number plates weren’t Moscow ones – and then the person who was talking – a middle-aged man wearing glasses and a thick woollen jumper, without a jacket, which he’d probably left inside the car. He was smiling, hesitant, and was just going to make one more step forward, when he suddenly threw his arms up in the air, as if protecting his head, and froze, and I heard a voice behind me which I didn’t recognise straight away, it sounded so harsh and abrupt:

“Don’t come closer. I said, stop!”

“Hey, are you mad?” the man said quickly. “Wait, I only wanted to ask…”

“Stop!” Ira shouted again; I turned back – she was standing by the car, pressing Sergey’s gun to her right shoulder, holding it clumsily, and kept lifting the long, heavy barrel, waving it dangerously from side to side – as it was too heavy for her to hold up. It was clear that the hammer wasn’t pulled back but it was impossible to see that from where the man stood.

“Jesus, Ira!” Sergey shouted, but she only shook her head impatiently and addressed the man again:

“Turn round and go back to your car,” and when – blinking, frightened – he made a step forward instead, she shouted: “Back to your car! Get out of here!”

The man didn’t say another word – he carefully walked backwards, got into his car, slammed the door and, tyres screeching, peeled off and disappeared, along with the dazzling headlights. At the same time Sergey came up to Ira and took the gun from her; she let go of it, without resisting, and was now standing with her arms hanging wearily down, but her chin was boldly up.

“Why on earth did you take the gun?” he said crossly. “You can’t shoot anyway, what the hell were you thinking?”

Lenny poked his head cautiously out of his car.

“What a lovely family you are,” he said with a smirk. “If in doubt – just grab a gun.”

Ira looked round at us – one by one – and folded her arms across her chest.

“The incubation period,” she said stressing every word, “is from several hours to several days. It varies from person to person, but on average, it’s very short. It starts with shivers – like a common cold – you’ve got a headache, your body aches, but you can still walk, talk, drive, and you pass the virus on to the people you’re close to – not to all of them, but to many. When you start having fever, you can’t walk anymore…”

“That’s enough,” I said. Sergey looked back at me.

“…You lie in bed, sweating. Some people become delirious, some have convulsions, but some are particularly unlucky: they stay conscious the whole time, for the several days it lasts”, – she continued, not paying any attention to me, “and right at the end this bloody foam comes out of your mouth, which means…”

“Enough!” I shouted again, turned around and ran to the Vitara, shut the door, so nobody could see my face, and burst into tears there. Mummy, darling, I thought, several days, while we were hiding in our comfortable, cosy world, the several whole days. Several – days.

“Anya,” Sergey opened the door and put his hand on my shoulder. “Sweetheart.”

I raised my head, he saw my tear-streaked face and winced; he didn’t say another word – just stood there and kept his hand on my shoulder until I stopped crying.

“Are you OK, can you drive?” he asked finally, after I wiped my tears, and I turned to him and said:

“She should stay away from me, this… this Rambo of yours. Keep her at a distance,” and I immediately felt disgusted with myself for the way I scowled as I was saying it. Sergey nodded, squeezed my shoulder and slowly walked back to his car.

As soon as we pulled away it started snowing – the snowflakes were big, dense and it felt like Christmas.

It soon became clear that Marina and Lenny had swapped seats because we were moving more slowly – as soon as Sergey’s Pajero’s speeded up and reached a hundred kilometres an hour, the Land Cruiser started lagging behind, and the distance between the two cars would increase so much that I could easily overtake it and push in between them. Unfortunately, the snowfall was becoming heavier as well. It was a proper blizzard. For some time, I was irritated at how slowly we were driving. I flashed my headlights at Marina to try to make her go faster, and even considered overtaking the Land Cruiser but it was obvious that the heavy car in Marina’s inexperienced hands would tail off and disappear in the impenetrable white foam closing in on us from all sides. Very soon the Vitara started slipping on the road and it became obvious that it was dangerous to drive fast for me, too.

An hour or so later – we were crawling really slowly and I had stopped looking sideways, trying to make out the villages we were going past. I knew they were there only because the faint, dispersed light from the street lamps was coming through the snow cloud we were in. They were surprisingly scarce – at least judging by the lit up parts of the road. I didn’t remember the map very well, but I had thought that this area was much more densely populated – perhaps being very tired I didn’t always notice the transition from dark to light and back, or maybe there was a power cut on some parts of the road and the lights simply weren’t working.

Mishka fell asleep as soon as we pulled away. I could see his messed up hair in the mirror. He rested his head on the wobbly pile of boxes and bags, towering on the back seat. So good we’re together, I thought, looking at his peaceful, sleeping face, I’ve managed to take you away from this horror – maybe at the last moment, but I managed, and I’ll take you to a place where nobody can harm you, where there are no people – only the nine of us, and everything will be fine. Boris was asleep next to me, on the passenger seat – it didn’t occur to me to tell him to recline the seat, so his body was resting uncomfortably on the seatbelt, cutting into his hunting jacket, his head lolling and almost touching the dashboard. For some reason only at this moment, when everyone was asleep, and the windows were plastered with sticky wet snow, and the screeching wipers were struggling to clear it off the windscreen, through which even the Land Cruiser’s tail lights were barely visible, I finally felt calm and became confident that we’d reach the lake, which promised us the long-awaited salvation. Our airy, light house with transparent walls seemed more and more like a distant memory now, like a childhood dream, and for some reason I didn’t regret losing it – the most important thing to me was the fact that we were alive, healthy, that Mishka was sound asleep on the back seat, and that Sergey, who was staring into an empty, snow-covered road, was in a car only a few metres ahead of me.

As soon as I thought this, the radio started crackling and Sergey, somewhere from underneath my right elbow, said:

“Are you awake?”

“I am,” I said, first just into the air, and then picked up the radio, pressed it against my lips so as not to wake anyone sleeping, and said again: “I am,” and laughed, because I was happy to hear his voice.

“So what are you up to?” he whispered, and I realised that everyone else in his car was fast asleep, too – somewhere far away, separated from him by headrests and bags, covered by darkness, as if they didn’t even exist, as if it was just Sergey and me on this snowbound, empty road.

“I’m driving,” I said. “And thinking about you.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Christmas soon…” he said quietly.

We drove in silence for a while – but this time the silence was completely different, and the snow outside was different too – it was soft, cosy, peaceful, but most important, I wasn’t alone any more – Sergey was with me, even if I didn’t see his face and couldn’t reach over and touch him.

“It’ll be a brilliant Christmas, you’ll see”, he said.

“I know,” I said and smiled, and although he didn’t see my smile, I knew that he knew I was smiling.

“Let’s sing a song”, he asked.

“We’ll wake everyone up”, I answered.

“We’ll sing quietly”, he said and without waiting for my reply, started singing:

“Pitch-black raven, do not hover, circling high above my head…” It was his favourite song, and he always sang it. Despite the wonky notes, which I couldn’t help noticing thanks to my piano lessons as a child, this was the only kind of performance I loved for this song, because he was so expressive, so passionate, as if he was living it, every word of it, which was more important than music, it was more powerful than any rules of singing, so the only thing his singing made me want to do was to join him and carry on:

“There’s no prey for you to discover. Pitch-black raven, I’m not dead……”

We sang it to the end, and it became quiet again – the windscreen wipers were swishing rhythmically, the rear lights of the Land Cruiser were glowing through their covering of snow. Nobody woke up, and then the radio crackled again and somebody’s voice spoke – so clearly in this hushed silence that it made me jump:

“That was great. How about this one: “My dark thoughts, my secret thoughts,” and carried on chanting in a husky voice – singing was clearly not his forte – until the road took him out of our radio’s range. For a while we could still hear an odd word, but soon the radio went dead again.