The morning shed light on the things he hadn’t seen the night before. On her stomach, the small birthmark like another spot of jam, the exact pink of her nipples. The tuft of hair slightly darker than her blonde head, almost brown like her eyebrows and long eyelashes. He saw tiny scars scattered randomly over her torso almost like bird footprints in the snow, or the tally marks she kept carving into the wall, and there, on her left cheek, he felt the large jagged B. He traced it with his finger, and she flipped off him.
“What?” he asked, already wishing he hadn’t touched it.
“What are you doing?”
“Nadia. What is it? Was it some kind of rite of passage?”
“You could call it this.”
She lay on her back, quiet. The fire let out a loud snap, and she jumped. Kache held her tighter. He didn’t know what to say so he said he was sorry. He lay back and looked at the coal-smoked beams on the ceiling, listened to the rain and the sizzling fire, and waited.
FORTY-THREE
Nadia listened to Kache’s heart beating and beating until she felt brave enough to speak. She started slowly, hesitating, not sure how much to tell but then needing, finally, finally, to tell everything. She told him about Niko and the move her family made deeper into the woods and Niko’s marriage to Katarina. She told him about the years that followed and how she’d turned her focus from marriage to her studies. She started to tell him about the arrival of Vladimir, but the words caught in her throat.
“I think,” she said, “we need a break, yes?” They needed to go to the bathroom, refill the woodstove. Kache ran out to feed the animals and Nadia heated up leftover soup for lunch. While the rain kept thrashing the roof and windows, and the fire kept sputtering and breaking apart with loud cracks now and then, they ate their soup silently.
They left their bowls in the sink for later, returned to the living room. Kache lay down on the futon and patted the space beside him, under his arm, and Nadia climbed in.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Are you?”
“Yes. I want to hear more. But only if you feel ready.”
She did. In the crook of his arm she told him how Vladimir had swooped, a stranger who charmed everyone in their tiny village, and how once they married he changed. He hurt her.
“Hurt you how?” Kache asked.
“It is ugly to hear this,” she said. The shame felt so hot on her face. But he held her tighter and she told him about her wedding night and the impotent nights that followed until Vladimir brought out the knife. “From then on, there was always a knife and so there was always an erection.” Finally putting this into words made her scars ache, as if newly drawn blood might appear. “Soon there was often my blood too. But never enough for anyone to see, once the bandages were in their places. He promised me he would set the village on fire. He said he is destroying everything and everyone if I tell a soul—and I believe him.
“He said, ‘I will make an accident. A dog knocked over candle.’ He snap his fingers in my face. ‘Altai, the lost village. No one will suspect.’”
She wiped her eyes with the corner of the quilt and told Kache how she kept silent. She woke before her fear each day, began her tasks as if she were a happy wife washing the shirts of a kind husband, but as the evening approached, so did her quaking. The quaking in her limbs set in and wouldn’t stop and this angered Vladimir. “He said, ‘You act like one of the foxes or squirrels in my traps. Or are you shaking with desire, you slut? You’re little rabbit is what you are. A horny little cottontail.’” He would threaten to cut her more severely if she did not lie still, which of course, made her tremble more. “His anger, it grew. He liked to hold knife against my throat especially. But he would move it lower to cut me, so the wound it will not be seen. His knife began to pierce my skin, this happens deeply and more frequently. The wounds more severe. He would come back from town with gauze and medical tape and ointment. He pulls them out of bag as if these are gift, in the way some men they bring their wife her flowers.” She tried to steady her voice, to lower it back down from where it had climbed higher. “Kache, I was very scared. But not outside our home. Outside our home, he was still good-natured Vladimir and I do not show this fear. It was crazy time, and I myself felt crazy and ended up doing a crazy thing.”
“Did you kill him? I hope you killed him.”
“No.” She turned her head to the side, looking directly at Kache. She said, “I should have. Instead I kill me.”
She told Kache how it went on for two years until after a night too brutal to fully recollect, Nadia hobbled, hunched in pain along the zigzagged path alone to the beach. She climbed into a canoe and she began to paddle.
But she realized he would come after her. Of course he would. She had to time this right. She paddled back, walked home and made Vladimir dinner. “His frustration turned its focus on this fact that we do not conceive, and so torture, it was now long, nightly sessions. I knew I had little time before he lost control of the knife and pressed this too hard into vital organs or my veins. But I was at mercy of the tides.”
She returned when the tide was finally low enough to walk, but would soon sweep in; just enough time for her to run along the beach. The previous night with Vladimir had been the worst yet. The night he had carved the B. It was the first letter in his name when it was spelled with letters from the Russian alphabet:
Nadia did not pay a last visit to her parents or grandmother, her brothers or sisters, because she felt she would begin to weep and never stop. She brought an extra pair of shoes and left them on the shore, full of wet sand and shells. A jacket, wrapped in kelp and thrown into the water. She left the canoe, tipped over. Her cross, wrapped and tangled around the oar. Her hand-woven belt—mandatory attire, along with the cross, for all Old Believers—half buried in sand. And then she ran along in the waves, ran and ran and ran, carrying her extra shoes, wearing her extra coat. She ran until the tide came in.
As she neared the end of her story, the words tumbled and crashed out of her, rushing toward the finish. “I slept in the woods six nights, eating clams and berries and mushrooms. I was so very, very cold and tired, thinking I might die, when I stumble upon this homestead. I am prepared to beg for mercy of some kind, I think perhaps I can trade work for room. But what I found is this place abandoned as my own life, waiting for me to step inside.” She took a deep breath, looked up at him, at the up and down of his Adam’s apple, the stubbled underside of his chin, the bump on his nose, which she now traced with the tip of her finger. “And so, I step inside.”
FORTY-FOUR
Kache listened. He held Nadia and smoothed her bangs back off her forehead. He didn’t reply for some time, watching the story unfold in his mind, then turning it over and over. His throat ached and all he managed to get out at first was, “I’m so sorry, Nadia.”
He saw Vladimir crashing through the woods—a grizzly dressed as a jovial, strong and devout man—who claimed he saw things their way, believed in the perfect order of their ancient faith as it was and always should be forever and ever amen.
Fucking psycho liar.
With his fucking pervert knife.
It must have taken an unbelievable amount of courage for Nadia to leave the way she did. He brought her closer, trying to hold her more tightly and more gently at the same time. But she wasn’t fragile. Far from it.
Later, after dinner, after Nadia carved her tally mark in the wall in the stairwell, settling back on the futon on which they’d spent most of the day, he failed to keep down one of the questions he’d been fighting.
“So your mom? Your dad? Your sisters and brothers? You have never seen them?”
She shook her head.
“They think you’re dead?
“Yes. I am certain.”
“I’m pissed that they didn’t see that freak for what he was.” Kache tucked a piece of her short hair behind her ear, even though it did not need to be tucked. “You went through an agonizi
ng horrific hell and I’m amazed at how you saved yourself.” He took her hand and held it as he spoke. “But I can’t help thinking, you know, from where I stand, I can’t help wondering what your family would think if they knew you were alive.”
She had stayed calm while she’d told the story, but now her eyes filled again and she said, “I have thought of this every day. That thought, and the fear of seeing Vladimir and what he would do to me, but mostly, to them, is what has kept me here.”
“What if you went back to see them? It has been so long. I can find out if Vladimir is gone.”
She looked up. “Gone? No. Not likely.”
“People like that, their true colors start to leak through if they stay too long. I bet he’s gone. If he is, I can go back to the village with you.”
“No. I will never do that. It would cause them such pain. Too much time, it has gone by.” She twisted the gold posts in her ear, as if adjusting the volume in her head. “Kache, you see … they have gotten used to my death. Nado privyknut. This is their motto: One must get used to it.”
“No, Nadia. There are some things one can never get used to.” Of course she already knew this, and yes, even had the scars. Kache held back from saying all that ran through his head: They would be so overjoyed, Nadia. They would be so happy. They would be dancing from their domed church rooftop. Trust me on this. I know they would.
He could see them: Denny, Mom, Dad, passing the big window as they walked across the front porch, carrying their gear, waving, Denny wearing their mom’s old straw hat with the orange flowers and her huge sunglasses—the guy would stop at nothing to make Kache laugh—Hey, you’ll never believe this, but … But what? What might they possibly say that Kache would understand? There was nothing. Nothing less than a story that an alien spaceship had abducted their plane in flight and cloned them so their cloned, smashed bodies would be retrieved on the mountainside, their cloned ashes spread on this very land, and then had taken them for a twenty-year orbit. There was nothing they could say to him that would make sense or erase the pain of their absence, and probably nothing Nadia could say to her family. Still …
He held her there on the futon while she cried silently and the rain came down noisily and they sat in a strange time-warped capsule, the dead, and the asleep, the stopped and the stalled, in this house where everything had stayed the same for too long. He pulled his arm out from where it held her, and stood.
“Let’s hang that picture we bought.” He reached out his hand for her to take and pulled her up with him. “Come on. Let’s hang it now.”
FORTY-FIVE
Snag wondered if Lettie’s boots were lined with the sharp edges of knives. Somehow she had made it up to the top of the Clammit Dymit trail and was now heading down. With all the precautionary measures about not bringing smelly sandwiches, she was afraid her boots were probably filling with blood anyway, that the bears would smell the raw, ravaged meat of her heels and soles and toes. She thought of them now as separate; not as one foot but as five toes, one heel, one sole—seven different points of agonizing pain on the right and seven more on the left. Fourteen different wounds that made her want to scream with each step down the mountain. She almost heard the bears smacking their lips, dripping their bear drool.
“How you doing, Eleanor?” Gilly asked, looking back over her shoulder.
“Fine! Just fine!” Snag shaded her eyes. “Wow, would you look at that view?” She used this as an excuse to stop momentarily. A middle-aged German couple nodded as they passed her. Obviously Germans because they were über prepared and had top-of-the-line shoes and hiking poles. Snag was obviously Not German.
After they were out of sight, Gilly said, “Talk about shooting a mosquito with a bazooka—although, a bazooka wouldn’t really be overkill for one of our mosquitoes, now would it?” Gilly had been trying to engage Snag all day in conversation, but all Snag could think about was her feet and so she knew she was coming across as quite the dullard. That was fine. She would dazzle Gilly with her brilliance tomorrow when she was sitting comfortably in her mom’s room wearing her tennies or perhaps her lambswool slippers. Yes, she would wear those slippers for the rest of her life and she silently promised her feet this, if they would just get her off the mountain and home to her recliner.
And then she was no longer thinking about her feet. It began with the sound of a twig snapping, then a crash crashing, and she grabbed the mace canister hanging from her pack and held it out in front of her, her finger poised and ready to activate it while Gilly yelled “Shoo BEAR! GO AWAY!” clapping loudly while the crashing continued toward them, through the thicket of alder bushes on the upper side of the trail until someone yelled “DO NOT SHOOT” and jumped out three feet in front of them.
By then, Gilly and Snag were clinging to each other, screaming girly screams. When they saw it was just one man, they both put their hands to their hearts and blew out sighs of relief that were so long they seemed more likely to come from a pair of Belugas than from two women with average lung capacity.
“Please forgive me,” the man said. “I did not mean to scare you.” The man had an accent. “Nothing like having strange-looking man jumping out of the bushes,” he said. But he was extremely good-looking, Snag thought. His eyes were the bluest eyes—deep, deep violet—that Snag ever remembered having seen shining from the head of a human being. Maybe she’d seen a doll with eyes that shade of blue, or a pair of eyes that blue in a painting, but surely never coming from the real thing.
Gilly said, “I’ll take a strange-looking man over a bear any day,” and laughed. Snag heard relief in her laugh. Surely Gilly didn’t really think he was strange looking? Did she like him? Snag reminded herself once again that it was none of her damn concern if Gilly, her friend, liked someone.
“I did earlier this week come across bear,” the man with the blue eyes said, smiling. The accent, Russian. “It wandered away into bushes, more interested in blueberries than in me.” Snag thought to warn him that the bears might accidentally pluck his blueberry eyes clean out of their sockets.
The man tipped his hat and continued down the trail. He carried sacks on his back and Snag guessed he was out checking his traps. He was probably after fox. She wondered if he knew Nadia.
“Hey!” she called after him, but he was already around the bend.
Oh Handsome One stuck his head back and said, “Yes?”
But Snag thought better of it. There were lots of Russians on the Peninsula, and he was clean-shaven, not an ounce of stubble, obviously not an Old Believer. She didn’t want to sound ignorant. “Oh, never mind, nothing. Just be careful.”
He must have thought she was joking because he laughed and then disappeared for good.
“Okay,” Snag said. “That scared the bejeesus out of me. But that was one beautiful man. If you’re into men.”
“You know who that was?”
“No. You know him?”
“That was the guy who tried to buy our drinks at the bar that night.”
“It was? Do you think he recognized you?”
“Probably not. It’s always dark in there. Which was why he probably tried to pick me up in the first place.”
“I doubt that very much, Gilly. Why’d you say no?” Snag silently congratulated herself for sounding so cool and encouraging. Like a true friend.
Gilly shook her head and grinned. “Rex said he’s a weirdo, remember?”
“Since when does anyone believe Rex?”
“Not to mention, the guy’s too young. I’m done with youngsters. I’m looking for someone more mature.”
“Well, you’ve got lots of very mature men to choose from at work.” They both laughed. It was good to talk like this despite the initial twinge of jealousy. She’d been successful at squashing the feelings before they’d taken root. Gilly was a good friend and that’s exactly all Snag needed from her.
Gilly resumed walking on her own comfortable feet in their perfectly fitted hiking boots while Snag hobb
led behind.
Snag leaned her back against the inside of her front door. She’d begged off dinner with Gilly, saying she would just pop something in the microwave. Inside her boots, her feet lay decimated, dying. “I’m so sorry. Let’s get these torture chambers off you,” she said, and trudged the six excruciating steps over to the couch, where she eased the boots off, then peeled off her socks to assess the damage.
Forget the knives. Someone had set off an atomic bomb inside her mother’s boots, and her feet were the victims of the nuclear fallout. She grimaced. “You silly woman.” The cat came out to inspect her feet, and even licked her little toe once before Snag shooed her away.
That’s when she heard a car pull up in the gravel and a knock on the door.
“Kache?” she called.
“No, it’s Gilly.”
Crap. Snag thought about trying to cover her feet but she couldn’t bear it. She sighed resignation and yelled, “There’s a key under the pot of pansies.”
Gilly let herself in. She took one look at Snag’s feet and said, “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Pride.”
Gilly silently went to get a pot, filled it with warm water, got a towel, sat down and pulled Snag’s feet into her lap where she took a good look at them. She bent Snag’s legs and put her feet in the pot. “They’re going to be okay.” She went into the bathroom, came out with the Neosporin, then went straight into Snag’s bedroom.
“Ah?” Snag said, starting to get up but surrendering back into the comfort of the warm water and the couch.
“If I remember correctly, you keep your foot balm in your bedside table drawer so you can apply it every night, right? That’s what you said when you sold me the stuff.” She came back out holding the still-sealed balm. If she’d seen the photo of Bets, she said nothing.
The House of Frozen Dreams Page 18