‘We’ll be hungry, papa.’
Grandfather shrugs, ‘I’ve been hungry before. So hungry, boy …’
‘There’s something else.’
Grandfather’s eyes lift. ‘What is it?’
‘Come outside, papa. Please. Please try.’
The boy tries to take him by the hand. At first he will not be taken, but at last he relents; the boy folds his hand inside Grandfather’s and, pretending that it is the old man leading him, teases him out of the bivouac and along the wild grass. They have gone only yards from the shelter when Grandfather stops. The boy feels his weight on him, realizes he is using him as a crutch.
‘Does it still hurt?’
‘It won’t stop hurting now.’
‘Look,’ says the boy.
He looks into the aspens, but it is not the trunks that have drawn his eye, nor the empty darknesses between. It is leaves, the colour of rust. Even as they watch, they spiral to the earth. A carpet of russet and gold spreads between the roots.
‘It’s going to be cold soon, papa. Then there’ll be frost. Then ice and snow.’
Grandfather nods.
‘The trees survive the winter, don’t they, papa?’
‘Yes.’
‘But we can’t. We don’t have bark.’
Grandfather gives him a look that means: well, that’s not quite true.
‘We don’t have enough food. We don’t have enough furs.’
Something in Grandfather seems to relent. He holds the boy’s shoulder with a hand near as skeletal as the trees are soon to become, and levers himself to the ground. As the boy watches him go, he has a dreadful premonition: his papa, lying down there and letting the wild grass part around him, letting the leaves float down to make him a golden shroud. The trees would drink him up and here, in this distant stand of aspens, a trunk would bulge with his papa’s face.
‘What about baba’s house?’
‘What about it?’
‘There’s always baba’s house. Don’t you remember the hearthfire? We lived a winter there once, papa. It was in the long ago, but we can live there again. And have the fire and catch our rabbits, and find cattails by the cattail pond.’
‘I can’t walk, boy.’
‘You can. You can, papa.’
‘I’ll need help.’
‘What can I do?’
‘The trees will help you, boy. Here, take my axe.’
Grandfather reaches to the sling, now back at his belt, and draws out the axe. When the boy takes it in his hands, it seems strangely light.
‘What should I do, papa?’
‘Go into the trees, boy. Cut me a stick.’
Now the boy understands – something to help him walk. He goes into the first of the aspens. Here are trees with trunks tall, without any protrusions, and he has to go deep into the reddening mist before he finds what he needs: a rowan, its trunk split, with fists of branches opening up from close to the ground.
The wood is still soft, and the axe blade bites easily. The bough that falls is as tall as he is, with a fork at the top where Grandfather might rest his shoulder. It is too supple, perhaps, but it will harden. The boy hurries back to where his papa lies. ‘Will it work?’
Grandfather’s tongue is heavy. ‘Give it here, boy.’
Awkwardly, his crooked leg hanging behind him, Grandfather rises. First he slides the axe back into the sling at his side. Then, he tries the crutch. The bough fits neatly into his shoulder. He puts his weight on it; the wood warps, but does not crack. He takes a step, pushing the branch out first, grinding it into the earth, and then heaving himself forward.
It is no third leg, but perhaps it will do.
There is snow before morning ends. It does not settle. What flakes there are are few, and pirouette around the boy as he works the sorceries to conjure up a campfire and hems it in with rocks from the undergrowth. Over the flames stew nettles and wild ransoms. The boy watches as a tiny flake eddies above, dissolving in the curling steam to add its water to the broth.
Soon he will need more clothes. He brings a rabbit fur out of the knapsack. Grandfather has taught him how to use sinew to bind them together, but his patchwork will need to be tighter come the deepest snows.
In the afternoon they cross the marshes, the boy going first to pick a path that Grandfather might follow. More than once they have to double back as the ground gives way underfoot. By the time they have reached the other side, and lurch again under the opening treetops, the evening dark is already gathering. Dusk creeps upon them earlier and earlier, night conquering day as insidiously as mama’s cancer.
Another night, another camp, another flurry of snow through the brittle leaves. This time it leaves a dust on the forest floor so that, come morning, the boy will see the switchback tracks where rabbits have been running, or the tell-tale signs of fox and wild lynx.
By return of dusk they have reached the emperor oak. Alone among the trees of the forest, its leaves still hold their emerald hue. Mottled yellow and reds creep along their veins, but the fringes of the leaves still live.
‘Not far now, papa.’
Grandfather only tips his scarred chin in reply.
The blackness is almost absolute when they come past the cattail pond. The boy goes to fill his tin can, and finds the thinnest sheen of ice forming on the surface. It fragments under the tiniest pressure of his fingers, and the water he draws up is too cold to drink, even if it was clean.
‘We’ll build a hearthfire, won’t we, papa? And boil the water and make a soup. And I’ll get in my eiderdown, and you can have your chair, and …’
They go on, following the old trail, changed and overgrown since last winter. In places the briars are beating a retreat, leaving trails marked in the earth. The boy kicks their tendrils out of his path, listens to the satisfying crunch underneath his feet that tells him: here comes the first frost of winter.
He is some way ahead of his papa when he reaches the edge of the forest. That is why he does not cry out when he sees the light through the trees. Instead, he dawdles to a stop, disbelieving his own eyes. The undergrowth has risen thick along the edge of the garden, and he recoils as his hands, reaching out to find a way through, are raked by thorns.
He senses a shuffling behind him, Grandfather catching up at last.
‘What is it, boy? Why have you stopped?’
‘Look, papa.’
The boy finds a likely tree, and grapples with the bark to hoist himself up. As he scrambles into the lowest boughs, he sees where the light is coming from. There are squares of it, in the face of a proud stone house: two lights on top and two lights on bottom, and another tiny point of yellow glaring from the lock of the door.
He sees this house, with its windows and curtains and porch, but he does not see the ruin. He whispers, ‘Something happened, papa …’
Below, Grandfather levers forward, using his staff to force a path through the wall of thorns. The undergrowth closes behind him like a set of jaws, and then he is gone.
He is out of sight for only a few shuffling moments. Then he reappears. From his vantage in the tree, the boy watches him venture into the space where the garden once lay. Light spills from the windows, and Grandfather steps into its flickering pool.
Nothing is the same.
He moves like a shadow, a thing with three legs, misshapen as he claws his way to the edge of the house. For a moment it looks as if he is going to take the handle and venture in, but instead he simply follows the wall, cups his hand to the window as if he can peer in past curtains drawn tight.
Now, the boy drops awkwardly from the branch. Quietly, he leaves the fringe of forest and goes into the garden. Grandfather is still there, camouflaged against the wall of the new house. ‘Papa, it’s all gone …’
At the bottom, the stones are pitted and weathered, wearing the scars of a hundred winters. The boy’s eyes drift up, and here the stones are smooth, chiselled only weeks or months ago. There is mortar between the ston
es, just like in the city, and the windows are set in frames of hard wood. On the door: a big brass knocker, with the face of a fairybook wolf.
He hears voices coming from inside the walls. He feels the heat radiating from the windows.
‘Somebody’s been sleeping in our beds, haven’t they, papa?’
Grandfather nods.
‘And somebody’s been sitting in your chair, in my eiderdown.’
Grandfather nods.
‘And somebody’s been eating at our fire, haven’t they?’
Leaning into his staff, Grandfather takes off past the boy, through the thorns and back into the fringe of the forest.
‘Papa!’ the boy cries. ‘Where are you going? Papa!’
Too late, he understands what he has done. He hears a low growl, turns to the door to see the fairybook wolf glowering down. Now the growl erupts. The door quakes. On the other side, some fell beast hurls itself at the wood.
‘Down, Mishka!’
This voice is the voice of a man. It quells the dog in an instant.
‘What is it, girl?’ the man goes on, voice muffled by the wood. ‘Is something out there?’
Unseen, the dog whimpers.
‘You’ll have to get used to it, girl. This isn’t Brest anymore.’
Frozen in the middle of a lawn freshly planted, the boy watches as the fairybook wolf jolts, its jaw moving up and down as somebody fiddles with the lock inside. There comes a click, and then a sliver of light appears along the edge of the door frame. He can hear the dog named Mishka scrabbling to get out.
He turns. He flees.
He plunges, without thinking, into thorn. He would flee further, into the welcoming arms of the woodland, but other arms gather him up. He finds himself buried against Grandfather’s shoulder, struggling to fight past. The old man is down on one knee, his staff cast aside. He holds him fast.
The boy reaches up, whispers into his papa’s ear, ‘The dog can smell us, papa.’
‘No,’ Grandfather intones. ‘She can only smell the forest.’
A bright pool of light has fallen out of the open door, and from it a man has emerged. Perhaps he is no taller than Grandfather, but he holds himself differently, his back upright, his head with no stoop. The boy has to look twice, his vision impaired by this unfamiliar light, to see that he is carrying a shotgun at his side.
‘It’s him, papa …’
‘Who?’
‘Don’t you remember? We were in the woods, and we found the murder tree, and then they came past – a mama and a papa and a little girl …’
Grandfather’s head turns, to consider the stalking figure. ‘Is it him?’
‘They’ve taken our house, papa!’
The dog, a wolfish creature yet certainly no wolf, stays at the man’s side. Only at the man’s command does it nose forward, running its snout close to the ground. It turns in frenzied circles, finally landing on a scent and following it to the undergrowth at the edge of the garden.
Grandfather’s arms around him, the boy feels himself drawn back, past another tree.
‘There’s nothing out here, Mishka.’
The dog pants, dismissively.
‘Go on, in!’
Reticent, the dog drops its tail and turns to follow its master back towards the light. As the door closes, Grandfather’s arms soften about the boy. He reels out of them, down the bank, back to the thorns. It is a moment before he understands in the roots of which tree he is standing. He looks up. The branches are bare; only a single leaf remains. He reaches out, plucks it, holds it tight in his fist.
‘Mama?’ he whispers, begging for a voice he knows gone.
‘Come on, boy,’ Grandfather murmurs. ‘We mustn’t stay here.’
‘But why mustn’t we? Maybe they’ll …’ The words fail him. ‘… let us in. Maybe there’s a room. Maybe they’ll let us share.’
In reply: only the wind in the trees.
‘It’s our house, papa.’
But all that Grandfather says is, ‘We can’t build a fire this close to the garden.’
Then the old man turns. Three lurches and he is gone to the forest.
The boy remains, huddled in the roots of mama’s tree. He watches as the lights die, one by one, in the house, until finally only one is left.
Something about that window, lit up in brilliant white light, captivates him. It is not like the drab oranges and reds that would stare out of the tenement walls like diseased, scabrous eyes. It is clean and bright. It is a portal into some other world, where the walls don’t let in the wind, where there are beds and bedspreads and mamas and papas to put a little boy to bed, a world where the wolf is a loyal companion and not some rival to scrap with over a shred of red meat.
His eyes linger on the window for the longest time. Yet it is only as he stands to finally heed his papa’s call that he knows why he has been staring. For there, in the window, its underbelly lit up by slivers of light coming up from beneath the ledge, stands the little Russian horse that was a present from his mother. Its chipped eye glaring. Its mouth, open and wild.
WINTER RETURNS
‘What will we do, papa?’
The old man brings the axe from his sling, seems to study it in his hand. With a flick of the wrist, he sends it sailing over the cattails to bury its blade in the bark of the elm hanging there, its branches twisted as if to mock.
He opens his mouth and makes a gurgling sound, a rough approximation of words. Then, turning his shoulder, he reels down the incline to the waters. A thin pane of ice, already shattered in places, bobs in the surface. He stabs it with his staff, fracturing it further, and levers himself down to take in the water. He seems to have forgotten the lesson that he taught the boy in that long-ago winter: still waters must be boiled. Now he is like an animal, uncaring for the globules of black he takes into his lips.
The boy takes a tiny step after him, ventures the words so softly, ‘Papa, what about the tenement?’
The old man looks up. Dusk has hardened to night and, without luminescent snow, the woodland dark is already impenetrable. His eyes sink, his brow creases, and the boy wonders: does he even remember the word?
‘We could go back to the tenement. Papa, the car …’
The old man braces himself on his staff and rises. Coming back up the slope, his single jackboot slips. He sprawls forward, struggles to right himself. The boy reaches out, offers a hand, but the old man will not take it.
‘Come on, papa. I’ll take us there. I remember the way.’
To get there, they must go back in the direction of … He can no longer call it a ruin. He can no longer call it baba’s house. How did he not know that, when that family came to the woods, they were coming to take his home?
He sets off in that direction, scenting chimney smoke ahead, but he knows after only a few steps that the old man is not following. Looking back, he sees him standing at the elm, with his hands wrapped around the handle of the axe.
‘Papa, please?’
The axe sails out of the trunk, carrying the old man with it. In one oddly graceful motion, he swoops around and, still leaning into his staff, comes after the boy, his single jackboot heel clicking behind.
They emerge from woodland halfway up the dell, where the grasses sparkle with frost. The lights are still on in the house: not the light of hearthfires or a cookfire behind the kitchen grate, but buzzing electric lights like he last saw at the schoolhouse. For a moment they stand on the fringes of the forest, hawthorn tendrils around their shins; then he thinks to venture out.
‘No, boy!’
The boy’s eyes plead with the old man, but the old man takes him by the scruff and ushers him back into the forest. ‘They’ll see.’
Even so, they skirt the very edge of the dell. As they go, the boy’s eyes are drawn back to the glowing face of the cottage. He sees shadows move against curtains lit up like gold. He thinks he sees three: a mama, a papa and … the little girl? The same one from that day in the forest? She had
hair as golden as mama’s, and a scarlet coat with a hood that bobbed behind.
Soon they plunge back into the woodland. The shape of the forest has shifted through summer, so that now new branches claw out, and now new thickets of undergrowth have fought their way into being. The boy doubts he can remember the way after all, but it does not matter, for suddenly the old man is leading. He strides in front, his staff a third leg keeping him aloft.
They do not follow a trail. They weave between chestnuts and beech, and reel down a bank to where the car is sitting.
The old man lurches towards its bonnet, stepping aside to reveal it to the boy.
That thing sitting at the bottom of the bank used to be the car. It used to bounce him up and down as it bore him between the school and the ruin. Now it is a jagged, discoloured shell. Its yellow has gone, to be replaced by bubbling brown as he imagines a sea of lava. It is not only ice that rimes its windows and rims, but creeping greens too, moss of a hue that makes him think of disease. The wheels are bedded in thickets of their own, tough grass and thorns. A claw of briar grows from the darkness underneath and plasters itself across the back windscreen like a splayed hand.
The boy sobs, ‘But maybe she works, papa. Maybe she still works.’
The old man rounds the car. At first the boy thinks him inspecting it for wear, when really the damage is plain to see. Then he looks again: his papa has the same look as the storybook wolf on the new house’s door. His fingers appear from his sleeve and stroke the sling at his side.
‘No, papa!’
The boy starts forward, but already the old man has wrenched the axe from its sling. He lifts it high, brings it down in an arc almost magnificent, to strike the windscreen. Glass erupts. Snagged in the crumpling sheet, the blade keens. Weeping now, the boy presses his hands over his ears, watches through a blurred veil as his papa opens up the bonnet and plunges the axe inside.
He draws it back, trailing wires, black with ooze.
In an instant, all is calm. The old man cleans the blade on a tussock of wild grass. His mouth thick with tongue: ‘She was dead already, boy.’
‘I know,’ the boy whimpers. ‘But I want her back.’
Gingerbread Page 17