by Yana Vagner
He presumably managed to get the attention of at least one of the men – I was sitting on the floor and couldn’t see anything – because the banging stopped. Waiting to make sure they were listening, Boris continued:
‘Now listen, boy, you’ll have to fire your gun, which you’re holding as if it’s a spade, and shoot through the thick timber, and I’m very much afraid you might miss first time round. You might also miss second time, too. And with this sweetheart,’ he continued, waving the muzzle in the air, ‘I’ll make a hole in your skull in one go. And if I’m lucky, and I’m normally lucky, I’ll drill a hole in the fuel tank of your truck and you won’t be able to take home that loot from the house across the road! And to start with, I’ll take out your driver. We don’t want any of that to happen, do we now?’
The air was still outside; it was so quiet. A snowflake drifted in through the window, then another, and they circled in the air in front of me, landing on the floor near my feet and starting to melt. Then I heard the truck door slam and the engine start. In half a minute, after the noise from the vehicle died down, Boris and I, without saying a word, jumped to our feet and rushed downstairs, then to the front door, and then across the snow-covered front garden. I didn’t have time to put on my boots and sank into the snow up to my ankles. Hurrying and missing the path, we flung the gate open and dashed across the road to Lenny’s house.
A few metres from the gate, to the left of the clean-swept path, we saw Lenny’s beloved pet dog, a beautiful white Asian shepherd, lying awkwardly with her front legs tucked under her, as if she had been stopped halfway through a jump. She was obviously dead, and the snow around her was red and porous, like the flesh of a late-summer watermelon. Lenny, with blood on his cheek – some his own, some the dog’s – was squatting next to her. When he heard us, he lifted his head with a look of childish confusion on his face. I came up closer and half-whispered:
‘Lenny—’
He put a finger to his lips for some reason and said, plaintively, ‘Look what they’ve done,’ and sat on the snow; he lifted the large, heavy, earless head, rested it on his knees and started stroking it with both hands. The dog’s head tilted backwards, her jaws opened slightly, and her pearly pink tongue fell out and dangled between the snow-white teeth.
I crouched by him and squeezed his shoulder while he buried his face in the thick, light fur and started swaying from side to side as if rocking the motionless dog’s body to sleep. Then the heavy wrought-iron door of their house opened and Marina stood there, pale and tearful. She looked at Boris and me and, without stepping out, said:
‘Anya, what’s going on? They took the fur coat and the TV. Did you see them?’
‘Be grateful, young woman, that they didn’t take you instead and didn’t dump you somewhere in the middle of the woods about forty kilometres from here,’ said Boris. ‘Pitiful idiots. As if they needed that shitty fur coat.’
Lenny lifted his head and looked at Boris in his felt boots and shapeless jumper, at him still gripping the heavy hunting rifle, and said respectfully, ‘Wow, that means business.’
Boris looked down at the long, scary object in his hands and said,‘It does, yes. Only it’s not loaded. Damn it, when are we going to realise that things have changed for good?’
4
New Realities
For a reason that escapes me, we all decided at the same time that our wooden house, more elegant than solid, was safer than Lenny’s brick fortress. This was now defiled by intruders, its door wide open, the coffee table upside down, a handful of scattered coins on the floor, boots and clothes dispersed throughout, dirty footprints on the mosaic tiles and a dead dog on the snow outside, whereas so far we had managed to protect the fragile security of our place. And that’s why Lenny, now roused from his torpor, went over to Marina, who brought their little sleeping daughter, wrapped in a blanket – Boris and I were waiting outside, unmoving – and without putting their coats on they both ran across the snow-sprinkled road between our houses and would have left their gate flung open, as well as their front door, if Boris hadn’t shouted to them: ‘Hey, whatever your name is, Lenny, you can’t leave it like this, you’ll scare the neighbours.’ And Lenny stopped, blinked, and went back to close the door and the gate.
Half an hour later, the four of us were sitting in our lounge: me, Boris, Lenny, whose purple cheek was swelling up in front of our eyes and who still had the face of an upset child, along with Marina, who, for the first time in my memory, wasn’t looking like an aloof and perfect beauty. Her hair was a mess, her eyelids were swollen, her hands shook. Boris, squatting near the fireplace, was trying to start the fire, and the chubby-cheeked little girl, dressed in pink pyjamas with teddy bears, had just woken up and now sat on the sofa, blinking. I went to the kitchen and fetched the bottle Sergey and I had started the night before. Lenny’s eyes lit up with gratitude; he downed a glass of whisky in one go and pushed the empty glass back to me, to be filled up again.
‘Pour me one too, Anya,’ Marina said. She sat next to Dasha on the sofa, and without letting go of the little girl’s small pink heel lifted the glass to her lips. I could hear her teeth clatter on the edge of the glass as she drank it all, not flinching once.
Finally, the wood flared up, crackling. Boris closed the glass door of the stove, turned to the table and looked at all of us with an expression of contentment. I caught myself thinking that, perhaps now, after a long break, he finally felt that his son needed him, that he liked it that all of us grown-up, successful people who had never asked him for advice had turned into helpless children, now safe under his wing. I also realised that not one of us had thanked him since he had turned up on our doorstep in the middle of the night.
As if reading my mind, Lenny put his glass noisily down on the table and said, ‘Looks like you took the situation more seriously than we did. What an idiot I am – opened the door to them, thought maybe they needed water, or were lost, perhaps. If it wasn’t for you—’
‘Boris,’ said Boris ceremoniously and stretched out his hand to Lenny, who hurriedly rose from his seat to shake it.
‘If it wasn’t for you, Boris, I’d have gone the same way as my dog. I didn’t even have time to unleash her, just went and opened the door, silly turd that I am, and wanted to shake his hand.’
He grabbed the bottle and poured himself another glass, put the bottle down, but then took it again and poured out one more glass, which he moved towards Boris. I noticed Marina’s eager eyes and moved my glass and hers towards Lenny. It was a coquettish gesture, the sort of thing I might do at a party, and I immediately became ashamed; it dawned on me that everything didn’t rotate around us women any more. For a moment I thought that both glasses would remain unnoticed by Lenny, but he automatically filled them as well, even though he didn’t look at us. He was examining the hunting rifle, which was standing against the wall with its muzzle upward. When he had come in, Boris had loaded it and left it like this so he could quickly reach out and grab it if need be.
‘Do you have a licence for this? You were just like Natty Bumppo, Boris, when you stuck it out of the window. I mean, they wouldn’t have gone otherwise…’ He carried on talking, but I was thinking that I hadn’t expected Lenny, with his square head and bawdy jokes, to know Fenimore Cooper. I couldn’t picture him playing Cowboys and Indians, as the Pathfinder or Chingachgook. I looked up at him and heard him say: ‘She was a super dog, I got her from the best breeder I could find, as a guard dog. I had to escort our nanny past her, and my guests were afraid to step out for a fag. Marina moaned that we had a pet crocodile, but the dog was clever – she knew who she mustn’t touch. Dasha could stick her fingers in her mouth. She never did nothing wrong. And they came and shot her, without a thought, as if she was some kind of scum…’ His lips trembled.
I looked at him and felt the tears welling up which hadn’t flowed the whole day, not since yesterday morning, when they had all been sat here on the sofa (with our honeymoon seashells in D
asha’s chubby mouth, Marina, still with perfect hair and her morning make-up on, Lenny, tapping his hand on the sofa). Suddenly those tears were rolling down my face, hot, abundant, but I didn’t even have time to sob, and nobody was looking at me anyway, because we all heard a car pulling up near our gate.
The next second was so intense it could have lasted a minute. I saw Marina hug her daughter and sit down on the floor, crouching down; the rifle, which had been left propped up against the wall like part of a set for a staged photograph, was in Boris’s hand, and he flew up the stairs to the window; Lenny disappeared into the kitchen and came out holding a knife, and it became apparent in the light that the wide, dangerous blade was covered in some kind of grease, as if somebody had been cutting ham for breakfast; I was the only person who hadn’t moved and I felt uneasy because I had no idea what exactly I needed to do – and then Boris called from upstairs and said, in a relieved tone:
‘The guys are back.’
For a while we were all busy parking the car in the driveway and unloading it, carrying big white rustling plastic bags, as if preparing for a grand family gathering. Sergey brought in the last box and put it on the floor in the corridor. ‘Don’t take them any further,’ said Boris. ‘Leave them here, we’ll have to load them back into the car anyway.’ Something clinked in the box, and Sergey said:
‘We got almost everything, apart from fuel. There was a kilometre-long queue at the petrol station. We wanted to get home before dark. We’ll go again tomorrow.’
‘That’s bad,’ Boris said, ‘but you’re right, it’s not worth going now. We’ll have to wait till morning.’
‘Oh, it’s OK, Dad, we left a week for getting ready, and we’ve already got most things from the list – provisions, medicines. We only need fuel now. We’ll take our cans and nip out tomorrow. We’ll have to go round a few petrol stations as the guys in the queue were saying that they were rationing the fuel per customer. And the nearest guns and ammunition shop is in Krasnogorsk, and the other one’s in Volokolamsk, I think, but that’s not on our way, so perhaps we can buy some cartridges in Ryazan, near you?’
They came into the lounge. Sergey had a sheet of paper in his hand, covered on both sides with Boris’s compact writing. Mishka followed, with the keys to Sergey’s car. We hadn’t let him drive on a main road yet, but he went round the village as much as he liked and was pleased every time he got to park the car on the driveway.
‘We won’t buy anything there,’ Boris said after a pause. ‘I doubt if we’ll find anything in Ryazan by the time we get there.’
Only now did Sergey raise his eyes from the list. He looked around at us all and finally noticed Lenny’s bruised and swollen cheek, and the knife, which he was still gripping in his hand.
‘What on earth has been happening here?’ he asked after a pause, and Lenny, shy under his gaze, quickly put the knife down near his empty glass. The blade clinked on the polished surface of the table. Lenny wanted to say something, but Boris was first, and said what I’d been thinking since we came back to the house but had been afraid to say out loud:
‘It’s not good, Sergey. We’ve had visitors. Judging by the vehicle they had and by their uniform, the units which patrolled the city have disbanded. They don’t have anyone to report to any more, so they decided to do a bit of looting. We’re fine, don’t worry, it could have been worse,’ he carried on, glancing at Lenny. ‘I hope I’m wrong, but in my view, this only means one thing: the city’s dead.’
Sergey sat down and his face became pensive, rather than worried.
‘Damn!’ he said. ‘I’m glad we didn’t venture outside the circular to Krasnogorsk. It’s probably a real mess there now.’
‘What next?’ Lenny said. ‘What’s the plan? Are we going to hold the fort here? I see you loading up on food, cartridges, all this shit, that’s cool, only what are we going to do next time, when they come here in a tank?’
Sergey and Boris exchanged glances, and while they were thinking of a reply, I was looking at plump, loud Lenny, who had always irritated me with his banal remarks and his noisy laughter at his own jokes, his ability to fill any space with his presence and dominate in any company, whether or not there were raised eyebrows and peeved faces. I surprised myself by saying:
‘We can’t stay, Lenny, it’ll soon be a nightmare here. So we’re leaving. We’ve got almost everything we need, and I think you should come with us.’
‘Sure,’ Lenny said quickly. ‘Where are you going?’
‘My place in Levino isn’t an option after all,’ said Boris, with regret. ‘You’re twenty kilometres from the main road here, and look how quickly they got this far. I was hoping that all these elite villa communities on the New Riga road would keep them occupied for a bit longer. My village is quite a distance from Ryazan, but it’s only about six kilometres to the main road. We’d gain a couple of weeks max, and then they’d catch up with us. We need to find some dense forest, with nothing around. Wish we were in Siberia, but it’s hard to find a place like that anywhere within reach, damn it.’
‘Forest!’ Sergey shouted, and jumped up from his seat. ‘Of course! What an idiot I am. Anya, I know where we’re going.’ He rushed out of the lounge and, after tripping over one of the rustling bags piled in the corridor, disappeared through the study door. I could hear him swearing under his breath, rummaging through the books. Something heavy fell with a thump, and shortly afterwards he came out holding a book, which he plonked on the table, hurriedly pushing the glasses to one side. His face was alive, and all of us, even Marina and her little girl, who hadn’t made a single sound since they had stepped across our threshold, leaned over the table to see what Sergey had found, a green book with big white letters on its cover: ROAD MAP. NORTH-WEST RUSSIA.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Marina in a complaining voice.
‘Lake Vongozero. Anya, remember? I’ve been trying to persuade you to go there with me for the last three years.’ Sergey sounded excited. ‘Dad, we were there before Anton was born.’ He grabbed the road atlas and started flicking through the pages, but Boris reached over and stopped him.
‘Brilliant idea, son,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t think there’s a better place. We’re going to Karelia.’
‘There’s a house there, Anya, I told you, remember? A house on a lake. There’s an island in the middle of the lake, you can only get to it by boat.’ Sergey started rustling pages again, but I already remembered the lake’s surface, grey and shiny like quicksilver, the faded, almost transparent reeds growing in the water, and several mounds of scattered islands, overgrown with dark forests: this was the leaden, bleak Karelian September, which, as soon as I had seen it in the photos Sergey had showed me, left behind a feeling of dread in me – it seemed so cold and alien compared with our warm, sunny, orange and blue autumn. And in the winter! I thought. What must that be like? Even here, I’d try not to look out of the window at the slippery black branches and grey sky. I’m always cold no matter how warmly I wrap up. ‘You’re like a badger inside a burrow,’ Sergey would tell me. ‘Come on, go out, you’ve been in for three days.’ I’d tell him I didn’t want to, adding, ‘I hate the cold and the winter. I keep it away from me with fire and cognac.’
But how much cognac will I be able to take with me? How long will I be able to store the warmth in me – the warmth of our climate, which I can’t live without – in a small house of weathered wood, soaked with the damp of the glacial lake?
‘There’s no electricity there, Sergey,’ I said. I knew that it was pointless to protest, that we didn’t have anywhere else to go, but it was important for me to voice my fear of the place. ‘And there are only two rooms. It’s really small, your hunting lodge.’
‘There’s a wood burner, Anya. And trees everywhere. And a whole lake of pure water. As well as fish, fowl, mushrooms and a forest full of lingonberries. And you know what else, the most important thing of all?’
‘I know, yes,’ I said wearily. ‘There isn’t
. A single. Soul. There.’
The matter was settled.
What I didn’t expect was Lenny’s excitement about our imminent escape. He looked like a child who’d been allowed to join a grown-up party at the last minute. Within five minutes he was talking louder than everyone else, poking the map with his finger. ‘Let’s not go through St Petersburg, there’s bound to be chaos there,’ he said, pulling the shopping list, which everyone had forgotten about, from under Sergey’s glass. ‘Potatoes – OK, we’ve got three sacks in the basement. Marina, you’ll need to check, we’ve got plenty of pulses, I think, and I’ll buy more tinned meat, I’ll go first thing tomorrow.’ And then he went silent, frowning, like a child who didn’t find a present under the Christmas tree. ‘I haven’t got a proper gun,’ he said. ‘I’ve only got one that fires rubber bullets.’
‘I’ll give you a gun, I’ve got three,’ Sergey said comfortingly, and they sat together, heads down – Boris, Sergey and Lenny – talking away, Mishka next to them, with bright burning eyes, caught up in the general excitement. I poured the rest of the whisky into the two remaining glasses and gave one of them to Marina, who grabbed it with her free hand (the other holding her daughter) as if she’d been following my every move. Our eyes met and I saw in this withdrawn woman, whom I barely knew, with whom I’d hardly exchanged a word in the two years that we had lived here, the same emotion that was suffocating me: a helpless, paralysing fear of what had happened to us, and of what was still awaiting us ahead.