It was hunger that finally got him moving; he had eaten nothing since the night before and knew that their own supplies were probably depleted. He got up, stretched, stamped his feet to ease the stiffness in his legs. It looked like midafternoon, the sun still high but starting to arc westward, the way he needed to go to rejoin Ilya. Time to move on, he thought. No point staying here, wherever here was. Regensburg lay to the northwest, a city, with a chance to meet more refugees, hear the gossip, find out how others were managing to survive. If he could only get his father-in-law back on his feet.
Avoiding the road, he followed an overgrown footpath, weaving between stands of evergreens interspersed with large deciduous trees. He found a stream, washed the grime from his face and neck, drank deeply with cupped hands. He remembered to fill the flask, wiped it on his shirt before returning it to his pants pocket. It would not last them more than the night, with Ilya’s feverish state, but the country was verdant and water was easily found.
More easily than food.
He had no money and nothing to barter but the offer of work. And what could he do? His experience building scenery for the theater group seemed like a lifetime ago; it was of no practical use to him now. Woefully clumsy at repairs, reluctant to get his hands dirty, uneasy around farm animals, he had little to offer in exchange for a meal. Unlike Ilya, who was resourceful, skilled with tools. And humble. Filip had watched him go, cap in hand, approach a farmhouse and come away a short time later with a piece of bread, some cheese, an egg, or a capful of apples. “I nailed up the shutters,” he would say, or, “The henhouse roof had a hole in it,” or, now and then, “Some people are just kind. They wanted nothing done, so I made them a pin with their son’s name. He is still missing.”
Filip had no aptitude for this kind of work. The few times he had tried, stuttering idiotically at the hard-eyed woman who answered the door, he was sent away like the vagrant he was, shamed and angry.
He followed the stream until it disappeared underground, reduced to a burbling trickle. Keeping the sun straight ahead, he found the footpath again, leading him ever westward. His feet ached. He thought about returning to the stream; he could almost feel the cool fresh water soothe away the fatigue of so much hiking, but it was getting late; he had to press on.
The path meandered through green fairy-tale woods. Any thicket could hide a wolf, a bear; entering a clearing ringed with tender saplings and huge old trees, he half-expected to see Baba Yaga’s dilapidated hut on its spindly chicken legs, foul-smelling smoke hanging in the air as witness to her cannibalistic proclivities. Or maybe he would meet Mayne Reid’s headless horseman, his black cloak floating like a curse around his emaciated body, while his severed head scattered drops of blood along the trail. Shunning these horrors, and to divert himself from the gnawing in his gut, he imagined himself as James Fenimore Cooper’s pathfinder, sure-footed and vigilant, or a latter-day Robinson Crusoe, fashioning a new life from the shipwrecked remnants of the past.
He was not entirely alone. Deep in the woods, he heard children’s voices calling and laughing, sounding like all children everywhere. When the path led him closer to the road, he glimpsed a sturdy woman herding a reluctant cow; occasionally, he was aware of the blur of a cyclist, or an ominous speeding automobile. Once, he saw a group of people, two women, a teenaged girl, a small boy, an old man—walking slowly single file along the very edge of the road, turning to talk to one another as they went. What language were they speaking? He strained to make it out, but they were too far away, their voices muted, the words indistinguishable. He soon left them behind.
All of it struck him as familiar, bucolic and unexceptional, yet also inescapably strange. I am a refugee. Bezhenets. The word haunted him, the designation frightening in its paradoxically permanent transience. I am a man with no home.
Abruptly, the woods ended and Filip found himself in a large clearing facing the back of a midsized wooden structure, the sharply gabled roof topped with what looked like a small bell tower. Not surprisingly, there was no bell; all metal would have been melted down for the war effort. The building stood in a pool of gravel, wildflowers and grass reclaiming their place among the finely crushed rocks. He walked around to the front and saw a wide tree-lined alley leading back to the main road.
So this was the church. Ilya had said something about rumors of a refugee community, people who had received temporary residence permits in exchange for work on reconstruction projects. But that was north of here, closer to the cities, he was sure, where the damage was greater and the need for extra hands more urgent. And the old man was in the grip of fever, his words unreliable. He might have misheard, or simply dreamed the whole thing, the idea planted in his mind by the same earnest desire for reunion with his family that gave his life purpose.
Yet here it was, with the Orthodox cross over the doors. “Like a target,” Filip said with a smirk. “Easy for the Soviets to find us, round us up in groups rather than catch us one by one.” No, there must be more to this; something he didn’t know. People on the run did not foolishly expose themselves to risk this way. Or did they? He thought of Sergeant Evans lending him his Bible to practice English, saying, If you want to find your family, start with the churches. It’s where a lot of people go when they’re in trouble. What if it was true?
Filip stood outside the building, noted its small windows and completely unremarkable exterior. It was built atop broad stone stairs leading to wide double doors. How had they managed this? With the nearly total lack of building materials and the refugees’ universally impoverished state, he could not help but be impressed. Where did these people get their determination, their strength?
He mounted the steps, noting how deeply cracked the stones were, pitted and chipped as if they had withstood a battle. Closer to the doors, he saw that the walls looked recently erected, the wood scarred with burn marks, deep gouges in some of the mismatched planks. The doors, while solid, showed traces of bullet holes and heavy wear. He pulled, and found them unlocked.
Inside, the church was dark, lit only with a few candles near the iconostasis at the front, a small glass votive candle—just a wick immersed in fragrant oil—glowing before each icon. Lampada, he told himself, remembering the word from his childhood, before his mother stopped taking him to church in Yalta. He recognized some of the likenesses represented on the icons: Christ on the right, his mother Mary on the left. John the Baptist. How had he known that? When had he paid attention? Two archangels, he didn’t know which ones, but you could tell by the wings and the solid virility of their stance. Michael? Gabriel? Some of the other saints looked vaguely familiar, but he didn’t know their names, or their importance.
Where had these icons come from, and at what cost? Even he knew you couldn’t just paint one; it was an art with specific traditions, strict rules, and rigorous training. Living with Ksenia and Ilya, he had felt some of that passionate spirit, that bullheaded stubbornness that did not admit defeat no matter what the difficulty. But this, this effort was extraordinary. “Miraculous,” he said with a sardonic smile.
His ears caught a sound, no more than the softest swish coming from the depths of the empty interior. A gaunt stick of a man emerged, his pale face and graying beard floating toward Filip as if on air, black robes blending into the surrounding gloom. The man spoke, his voice a gravelly basso profundo, in a language Filip recognized as Slavic but did not understand.
Filip shrugged, shook his head. “Po Russki?”
“Horosho. Very well.” The man smiled, his face creasing into deep folds around his eyes and mouth. “Are you here for vespers? We start at six o’clock, but you may wait there.” He pointed to a row of wooden chairs along the back wall, his Russian confident but lightly accented.
“No. Vespers? No. Is that the evening prayer service? I’m looking for my wife. This tall”—he raised his hand level with his own head—“blonde, with a . . . a baby.” He stopped, put his hand down. He didn’t know how else to describe the pers
on whose features were so clear in his mind. “She is beautiful.”
The man nodded as if in recognition. “We see new people almost every day. Many move on, but a growing number are receiving work permits and starting to build a small community—Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, like me. Stay for vespers, or come tomorrow, Sunday. There will be more people. You can ask them about your family.”
Before Filip could answer, the door creaked open, letting in a welcome shaft of light and some people. Filip recognized the group he had glimpsed through the trees, walking along the road. They greeted the cleric and spread out, each intent on what seemed to be assigned duties. The old man cranked open the windows. He stepped behind a low counter near the door and set out a tray of slender candles, a stack of notepaper, and a few pencils. The boy busied himself with the incense burner, stirring the cooled embers, adding a few fresh crystals to the plain metal cup, touching them with a straw lit from a burning candle. Carefully, he lowered the ornate slotted lid onto the rim of the cup.
Almost at once, the church filled with the aroma of frankincense, familiar even to Filip. He breathed it in, his mind reeling with confusion. He had no attachment to these rituals. None. He disdained his mother’s unquestioning reliance on ancient traditions, mocked her belief in miracles and benevolent spiritual protection, considered himself a thoroughly modern man who embraced rational thinking and the advances of science. He did not believe in God. And yet something pulled at him. Nostalgia, he told himself. That’s all.
He stood awkwardly in the room. The woman and the teenaged girl, kerchiefs tied over their hair, swept the rough, age-stained floor, wiped down the painted icons, collected the burnt-out candle stubs and wax drippings into a large pickle jar, talking quietly among themselves. How often had his mother taken him to church? Had she, too, performed these homely tasks? In that time long ago, the time before conscious memory, had he formed impressions, stored in some recess of his mind; impressions that now, nudged by the sight of candle flames undulating before doleful Byzantine faces and, even more, by the scent that reached directly back into an intimate place completely unknown to him?
Filip shook his head to clear away the bewildering thoughts. “Just hungry,” he muttered, then louder, “Thank you, Father . . .”
“Stefan,” the man answered. “I am only a deacon. I can lead prayers and Bible reading but am not authorized to perform the Mass. Once a month, we have a priest come from the city to conduct a proper service, along with baptisms and weddings. Burial services I can do, of necessity; they cannot wait. I also bake the church bread for Communion.” With a hand on Filip’s elbow, he led him toward the counter near the door. “Write the names, first names only, of your loved ones, living and dead, in separate columns. We will add them to our prayers. Leave a coin, if you can, to help us buy flour and oil. If not, God bless.”
Well, what can it hurt? Maybe someone would recognize the names, grouped together like that. The paper was rough, with an ochre discoloration around the edges, an Orthodox cross hand-drawn at the top. In the column headed zdravie (long life), he entered “Zoya, Vadim, Ksenia, Ilya, Galina, and child,” realizing he did not know his child’s name. Under za upokoi (in memory), he wrote “Maksim,” and, after a moment’s pause, “Boris.”
Father Stefan stood by his side, combing the fingers of his left hand through his grizzled beard. With his right, he reached across the counter and extracted a diminutive loaf, no bigger than a small apple, composed of a flattened circle topped with a smaller disk of dough, stamped with a cross, the whole thing pasty white and hard to the touch. “It is only flour, water, and salt, unleavened as indicated in the Bible,” the deacon said, placing the bread in Filip’s hand. “And it is not consecrated, since that can only be done during Mass. But it will feed you, body and soul, if you will let it.” He turned and walked toward the iconostasis, crossed himself broadly, touched his lips to Christ’s image, and disappeared into the altar area, closing the door soundlessly behind him.
Filip knew he should save the bread for Ilya, but hunger got the better of him. He broke off a piece and ate it, almost without chewing, to quiet the relentless ache in his gut. The bread came apart in his hands, the two layers separating with only the slightest pressure from his fingers. He ate the bottom piece, saving the smaller disk, the one with the Orthodox cross etched into its surface, for Ilya. The old man would care about something like that, he told himself, neglecting to acknowledge that he had eaten the larger of the two pieces.
Back on the road, he walked rapidly, the late summer dusk gathering around him, gradually obscuring the landscape, painting the sky in shades of indigo and mauve. He had gone only a short distance when he glimpsed an object lying partially concealed in roadside weeds. His wallet.
He picked it up, turned it, felt the familiar horseshoe shape in his hands. When he opened it, after a minute’s hesitation, he was not surprised to find it empty. No money. No ring.
He felt nothing. No loss, no anger, not even disappointment. Nothing.
Filip quickened his pace, anxious to reach the shed and confront Ilya with the words that were forming in his mind. We can’t continue this way. If you can walk, let’s go. If you’re too sick, we must find help. I found the church. We can go there and talk to people, figure out what to do. He rehearsed his speech, his stride becoming purposeful, his will strong and clear. It’s time to stop hiding like rabbits, scurrying from hole to hole. Time to do something, find a way to live. If not here, then somewhere else. “And we need papers,” he said aloud, pulling hard on the door of the shed, dislodging one of its shaky planks. He kicked it aside and peered into the dim interior.
3
THE SHED WAS EMPTY. The smell of stale sweat and urine, unwashed bodies and soiled clothing, mixed in his nostrils with half-rotted hay, hard-packed dirt, a whiff of animal musk. How had they endured it, thinking themselves fortunate to find such a good resting place? And where was the old man?
Filip stared at the spot where he had last seen his father-in-law, as if willing him to materialize on the tamped-down hay that still held the contours of his body. Nothing there, only the faint, surreptitious rustling of mice in dark corners.
Nothing but the rucksack. It had been moved, dragged, judging by the track in the dirt, toward the door, but it was still there. So Ilya must be nearby. Maybe he felt better and decided to try to find some food or went out looking for water.
Filip picked up the rucksack and immediately noticed how light it felt. Thieves? But why not take the whole thing? He took a quick inventory: hatchet, boots, an extra shirt, socks, matches, his sketchbook and stamp albums, the shovel they had taken from the American camp. It was all there. The only thing missing was Ilya’s workbox, with its cutting patterns, sketches, half-finished pieces, scavenged wire, and materials.
Had the old man gone completely out of his mind? He was in no condition to work; his hands could not be steady enough, after days of fever, to cut, carve, or shape anything successfully. Something was wrong here, something that filled Filip with dread, a premonition compounded with the strong possibility that whatever had happened, it was once again his fault.
He slung the rucksack onto his shoulder, grateful, in spite of his alarm, for its lighter weight. He stepped out of the shed and stood looking around, immobilized by indecision. Which way would Ilya have gone? Did it make sense to look for him now, or should he wait until morning?
No, he needed to go now, before whatever trail there was grew cold. He adjusted the strap on his burden, felt it slip into the groove it had worn in his shoulder during these weeks of tramping, and set off toward the nearest farmhouse. He approached it from the front, but seeing light at the back of the house, he went around and knocked on the kitchen door.
The woman who answered eyed him with suspicion, holding the door open just enough to see him. It was enough for him to see, too; he glimpsed a bowl of boiled potatoes steaming on a painted wooden table, inhaled the incomparable aroma of cabbage and bacon
cooking on the stove. For a long moment, hunger rendered him mute.
“Well?” the woman said, with no hint of welcome. “What is it? I have no work for you.”
Filip gathered his wits, forced himself to look away from the food and into her questioning face. She was handsome, he saw, in the sturdy way of some middle-aged women, blue eyes set off by tanned, lightly freckled skin.
“I . . . no . . . I’m looking for my . . . friend. An older man, dark-haired, a little gray. He is sick. I must find him.”
“We saw no one,” the woman replied firmly. “We were in the field.” She waved her hand toward the outside, opening the door a little wider as she did so. Filip could see several children, ranging in age from a gangly teenaged boy to a small girl of five or six with big blue eyes and short yellow hair.
“I saw a man, Mutti, when I came back for water,” she declared loudly. “He was walking like this,” she demonstrated, weaving comically around the room. “He was drunk, ja?”
“Hush, child,” the woman said quickly. “You talk nonsense.”
Filip squatted down to the girl’s level and looked at her seriously. “Was the man carrying something? Did you see? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. He had a box. A big green ugly box.” The girl, suddenly timid from so much attention, ran out of the room.
Roads Page 29