The Orphanage

by Serhiy Zhadan; Reilly Costigan-Humes; Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler

  “I don’t know who’s doing the shooting.”

  “Really?” Nina’s surprised yet calm. “I do, though. Want me to tell you? Do you know what direction the gym faces? Valera knows, he’s the gym teacher.”

  “I don’t know,” the gym teacher answers just as flatly.

  “I do, though,” Nina says. “The gym faces south. And the shell came from the south. And what’s to the south? Valera, what’s to the south?”

  “Well, how am I supposed to know?” the gym teacher replies, irritated.

  “You know, you know perfectly well. The border is to the south. The national border. The former national border,” Nina corrects herself. “And the shells are coming from down there. And what don’t you get about that? And what’s so confusing about that? And if you don’t want to admit that to yourselves, who’s going to tell you?”

  “There are shells going the other way, too,” Valera snaps back.

  “Yeah,” Nina agrees. “But you don’t talk about that either. Like it has nothing to do with you. Even though you should’ve made up your minds and picked a side a long time ago. You’re so used to hiding. So used to staying out of things, letting someone else decide everything for you, letting someone else take care of things for you. Nobody’s going to decide for you, nobody’s going to take care of things. Not this time. Because you saw what was going on, you knew. But you kept silent, you didn’t say anything. Nobody’s going to judge you for that, obviously, but don’t count on your descendants’ appreciation. Basically,” Nina says, standing up resolutely, “what I’m saying is, don’t delude yourself—everyone’s going to answer for this. And those who aren’t used to answering for anything will be the worst off. I’m going to make lunch, Valera. You can help me, if you want. Yeah, Pasha, you can stay for lunch, too. Sasha’s waiting for you, though, so you might want to get going. Just make sure you take something for the road.”

  Pasha thanks her, bewildered, stuffs several cans in his pockets, and leaves without another word.

  The kid’s sitting in the hallway, his back resting against the wall. He sees Pasha, gets up, wordlessly walks across the gym toward the exit. Green autumn jacket—wrong season—black jeans, leather backpack, and in his hands the baseball bat. And sneakers on his feet.

  They walk around the outside of the orphanage. The gym teacher’s coat looms in the window. It almost looks like Valera’s waving goodbye to them. Just can’t see his face, though. Or his hand. The clothing’s still there, but there’s no person.

  It’s 2 p.m. The fog has settled; it’s getting dragged down the streets, thickening in the trees and slowly trickling down into the valley, into the city. They approach the gate, hop the fence, walk across the grounds. The kid confidently dodges piles of leaves. Pasha tries to keep up. They aren’t talking to each other. In the wet air, steps ring resonantly, like someone’s hammering nails into a tree. Pasha stops at the edge of the grounds; the kid hears this, stops in his tracks. He keeps quiet, though, waiting for Pasha to say something.

  “We aren’t going through the city,” Pasha says. “Gotta get to the road that runs around it.”

  “All right,” the kid answers, a little condescendingly.

  “Do you know where that road is?”

  “Yeah, I do,” the kid says reluctantly. He hasn’t decided how he’s going to act around Pasha.

  “Let’s try and get out of here before the sun goes down,” Pasha replies. “Sound good?”

  The kid hesitates—should he keep being mad or loosen up? The wind is blowing away from the city, pulling scraps of fog up out of the valley. The sweet taste of something burning instantly appears in the air. The taste of metal and wet dog. Pasha twitches; the kid cringes, gripping his bat even tighter.

  “All right,” he says. “We gotta head through this neighborhood, then there’s a fork in the road. We should steer clear of it, there used to be a checkpoint there. I know a shortcut, though.”

  Pasha stands still, weighing what he’s heard. The trees overhead start making noises. Pasha lifts his head. Something is up. Eventually it hits him—he sees trees, fog, and the sky somewhere up above. No birds, though.

  They move swiftly down a broken road, pass charred rebar and the destroyed bus stop, then the store, leaving the well behind. Here a street starts. Long, endless. Brick houses, garages, additions stacked on top of one another. Slate riddled with shrapnel. Gas pipes running on both sides of the street. One of the pipes is broken and bent. Looks like there’s no gas here. Or electricity. There aren’t any people in sight either. Not a single person. Only trees. Their bare branches tap against one another overhead. A metal gate squeaks somewhere nearby. But behind them, in the valley, in the city, things are just getting started. Lunch has just ended, probably, and now they’re feeling refreshed, so they’ve gotten back to work. The explosions grow more intense; soon something hits very close by, right here in the fog. Pasha and the kid speed up. They’re hurrying, nearly running. But the faster they go, the scarier it gets, as if somebody is chasing them down the dead street. Pasha even starts to think that someone really is following them, right on their heels, keeping pace. “Just calm down,” Pasha tells himself. “There’s nobody here.” But he looks around from time to time, trying to make something out, anything at all, beyond the fog, which is making everything invisible, suspicious. Suddenly, he actually spots someone over there. Someone’s moving. He can hear someone’s heavy breathing. Pasha tries to put it out of his mind. He just speeds up, but the kid notices the crazed, frightened look on his face and realizes that something’s up, something’s going on.

  “What?” the kid asks.

  “We’re fine,” Pasha answers, but he can’t help but look back again.

  The kid follows his eyes and looks back, too. There’s no escaping out here, though. They stop, stand, look into the fog, wait. One second, two, three. It gets colder, which scares them even more. Someone’s definitely over there, someone’s standing there, trying to catch their scent. It’s just that they can’t see anything beyond all the pieces of fog. Then Pasha crouches. And notices the dogs. A dozen, maybe more. Skinny strays, abandoned by everyone, standing several yards away from them, extending their skinny, soaked necks, listening intently. The kid crouches too. He sees them too. The cautious, careful dogs. They aren’t the least bit frightened, though. It’s immediately obvious who the outsiders are, who’s out of place here. Their eyes are heavy, ferocious, but their voices are silent. They’re waiting.

  “Let’s go,” Pasha says, almost inaudibly. “Leave them alone.”

  They stand up straight and keep walking, trying not to panic, not to rush. Pasha gives in first. He turns around, crouches. The dogs immediately freeze, keeping their distance. Pasha stands up straight again and takes a step back. The dogs retreat reluctantly. But as soon as he turns around, they hurry to catch up.

  “Ignore them,” the kid advises. “They can feel that you’re scared of them.”

  “I’m not scared of them.”

  “Yeah, sure,” the kid says quietly. “Even I can tell you’re scared of them. I’m scared, too. Who knows what they’ve been feeding on out here. Keep walking. Stay calm.”

  They keep walking, faster and faster, more and more anxiously, almost breaking into a run. But they realize that running isn’t an option—that would be a signal, a sign for those stalking them. Pasha’s on edge, soaked with sweat. He scrambles to come up with something, feels panic creeping up to his throat. “Why’d I drag the kid out here?” he thinks. “How could I? How am I going to protect him now?” The kid has a more confident air about him, though. He is holding a baseball bat, after all. But the fingers gripping that bat have turned completely white. Probably from the cold. Pasha notices some crushed bricks on the road. “This is ridiculous. Gotta do something,” he thinks. “Can’t keep running like this.” And he’s just about to pick up a chunk of brick when the kid suddenly says to him, quietly yet clearly:

  “Look to the left.”
r />   Pasha looks to the left. He sees a green gate that opens into a yard. The kid grabs his sleeve and drags him toward the gate before he can figure out what’s going on. Pasha’s boots hit the wet asphalt hard as he races after the kid. The dogs bolt after them, a dozen hungry, cold throats responding, growling with thrilled despair, so loud the whole world can hear. They lunge at them, their teeth snatching thick pieces of air. The kid leaps into the yard; Pasha stumbles through the gate after him. “Hope it closes all the way,” he thinks. “Just hope it closes.” He yanks on the gate from the inside. For an instant, just a brief instant, it’s stuck, won’t move. Then it budges and swings shut with a bang. The dog closest to them, the leader, pounces, his front paws landing on the gate, but Pasha manages to close it in the nick of time. Bang on it all you want—they’re in the clear now. The dogs realize that; disappointed, they rub their muzzles against the gate, snarl, bark out all their disappointment, and try to crawl under the metal fence.

  “Hurry up,” the kid yells and darts away from the gate.

  Pasha runs after him. There’s an asphalt walkway in the yard. A truck has smeared red clay across the asphalt—must’ve been loading possessions. Their own or someone else’s. The lock on the front door of the house has been removed, but the door itself is closed. Right behind the house, the garage door is wide open. Inside, cardboard boxes, tools, and pieces of metal are scattered all over. There’s an outdoor shower behind the garage; the water tank’s in a dampened, darkened flowerbed. Then there’s a fence and a vegetable garden behind it. The kid pushes the crooked gate, runs down a soggy path. Pasha can feel the mud sticking to his boots, weighing them down, making it hard to run. But he has to run. They run through the black unharvested garden, past soaked cornstalks, past heavy, rotten vegetables. And they run straight out to a scorched clearing. The kid races out and then freezes—frightened and mesmerized. Pasha runs after him and his eyes immediately land on a bloody heap of mush in the middle of the scorched grass: scraps of cowhide, bones, tendons mixed in with mud. “They butchered the cattle,” Pasha figures. “And smoked the meat.” The kid’s stopped dead.

  “Don’t look!” Pasha yells. “Don’t look.”

  He covers Sasha’s eyes. The kid suddenly goes limp, doesn’t resist, doesn’t say anything. He lets Pasha drag him away from the mountain of rotten innards, stumbles through the thick grass, shakes Pasha’s hand off him, keeps running, not looking back, not exhaling. “That time was just like this,” Pasha thinks. Just like right now—the kid, pale and limp after an attack, the teary-eyed doctor standing over him, not knowing what to say. Best not to think about that.

  Behind the gardens is a dirt road that’s been ripped up by tank treads. They move through the deep ruts, viscous masses of clay sticking to their boots, and run across a wet pasture toward what used to be a farm. Two wrecked cowsheds, concrete slabs lying in the grass, a rusty water tower off to the side, a low-hanging, silvery sky poking through the fog up above. The locals took the doors off one of them. The structure itself looks like the skeleton of a large animal, a large, horned animal—walls whitewashed by rain, beams bent by the snow. Everything else has been cleaned out, taken to another house or burrow. No windows, no doors, just black holes and cold drafts. They run inside. There are two large straw nests in the corner. Looks like someone was here, lying low. There aren’t any shell casings around, so they didn’t do any shooting. They were just waiting things out. They were probably wounded: straw soaked with dark blood, empty vials stomped into the dirt floor, disposable needles, sodden bandages. The nests are wet. Clearly, whoever was lying here left a few days ago. The place smells sharply of urine and mud. Pasha walks over to a smashed window and tries to discern something, anything, in the fog. It’s just before dusk. The fog gleams and settles in the fine rain. The neighborhood’s roofs, tall trees, and dark rows of corn loom beyond the rain. Farther along, to the right, the horizon hovers and then drops off, and down there in the valley lies the city. They can’t see the city, but long black streams of smoke are rising from over there. They have been since yesterday; it’s as if the ground has been ruptured and now something truly terrible is coming out of the earth, and nobody knows how to stop that something, the worst thing, since nobody knows how it happened, how the earth split and released all its blackness, which is now creeping across the January sky and filling up all its cracks and openings. “Who’s going to put out the smoke?” Pasha thinks. Everything around here will burn, like in a medieval city, the flame skipping from house to house, from street to street. Give it a few days, and nothing will be left.

  “That’s the warehouses burning,” the kid says.

  “What warehouses?” Pasha asks, confused.

  “By the railroad,” the kid explains. “See that?

  The kid points at something in the rain. Pasha looks intently. Beyond the corn and the rain, he can make out gray smoke that’s settling heavily, pressed down by the rain, unable to rise.

  “Can you imagine how much stuff is gonna burn?” the kid says with some sort of delight in his voice.

  “Yeah,” Pasha replies. “Let’s take a break. Are you hungry?”

  “Nah,” the kid answers. “Not after seeing those guts.”

  “Nina . . . ,” Pasha says and then pauses. “She’s kinda harsh.”

  “No, she’s okay.”

  “Why does she have to lecture everyone? Like she’s a teacher or something.”

  “Well, she is a teacher,” the kid reminds him. “What’s she supposed to be like? That’s what she always says. That’s why people don’t like her. Because she lectures everyone.”

  “Well, there’s no need to lecture me,” Pasha says, aggrieved. “I’ll figure things out on my own.”

  “You’ve really got things figured out, huh?” the kid asks.

  Pasha doesn’t say anything. He thinks of Nina, gets angry with himself. Why didn’t I say anything to her?

  “Seems like she never feels sorry for anyone.”

  “Who’s she supposed to feel sorry for?” the kid inquires. “The gym teacher? You?”

  “Well, I don’t have anything to do with this.” Pasha is trying to be more straightforward. “It’s just that you can’t blame everyone. Everyone’s different.”

  “Yeah?” the kid replies skeptically. “I’d say you’re all the same. The flag at the orphanage got torn down. Do you know how it happened?”

  “How?”

  “Basically, they wanted to tear it down, but Nina didn’t want to let them. Everyone else just stood there and watched.”

  “So what?” Pasha still doesn’t see what he’s getting at.

  “Well, basically, only two guys wanted to tear it down. Against one Nina. And everyone else just stood there and watched. And didn’t do anything. About a hundred people—they just watched, didn’t do anything. Everyone’s the same. I don’t feel sorry for anyone.”

  “All right,” Pasha replies. “Let’s go.”

  “Okay.”

  They go out into the rain and walk, cowering from the cold, sinking into the wet earth. An empty lot stretches out beyond the farm. Then a row of trees comes into view. They walk toward it. They’ve lost all sense of time. It’s tough going at first, and it doesn’t get any easier or any harder. They plod along mechanically, heavy mud caked on their shoes, tucking their freezing hands into their pockets. The kid warms one hand at a time, switching when the one holding the bat gets cold. They trudge up to the trees. Pasha fights through the prickly branches, the kid in tow. They reach an open area. A deep basin, a ravine stuffed with fog like a pillow with feathers, sprawls out before them. It feels like the fog has been dragged down, as if it’s flowed down there to hide for a moment.

  “Go around?” Pasha asks.

  “Can’t,” the kid answers. “That’d tack on a mile or two.”

  They stand there and look down skeptically. The ravine’s wide. Can’t see the bottom. Just a white, eerie feeling flowing over the edges, treading up to their f
eet. One step and you come out on the other side of life. Don’t feel like going all the way around, though.

  “Let’s go, okay?” Pasha takes several steps forward.

  The kid holds his hand, following his every step. The ground gives way; Pasha skids down, grabs the sharp blackthorn and briar bushes with his free hand, cutting himself. Blood starts trickling over his fingers, but he doesn’t have time to wipe it off. He has to hang on tight to keep himself from tumbling right into hell. Pasha’s getting angry, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want to scare the kid. He’s dragging him along, feeling the warmth of his hand. It’s nearly impossible to make out the kid, but he is here—Pasha can hear his breathing, the ground rustling under his sneakers, but can’t actually see him. Pasha talks to him, keeps repeating himself. Careful, careful. Watch your step. But what’s there to watch when you can’t see anything? They grab on to each other, on to the wet grass, on to the prickly blackthorn, ripping their skin up and sliding down into the endlessly long and endlessly deep ravine. They slide to the bottom, landing in a knee-deep pile of last year’s snow—December snow. It’s colder down here. The snow lies unmelted. Pasha touches the crust, pressing his lacerated hand with its dead fingers against it, cooling the blood flowing down his wrist. The kid tosses his backpack next to him and falls into the snow, face up. He lies there, catching his breath. Pasha picks up some prickly snow with his uninjured hand and starts devouring it.

  “Is it good?” the kid asks.

  “It’s cold,” Pasha replies.

  “Don’t eat too much. You’ll catch a cold,” the kid says without irritation—a first—his voice tinged with concern. Pasha may have just imagined that, though.

  Going uphill is even tougher, but they keep trudging along. Pasha’s out front. He’s carrying the kid’s backpack on his chest as he drags him along. The kid’s straining, trying to push through, but it’s clear that he’s exhausted. What isn’t clear is how much they have ahead of them. Climbing and climbing, latching on to taut grass, on to cherry roots. And when you don’t have any energy left or any certainty that you’re headed in the right direction, when the kid’s hanging down below like a warm, dead weight, when your injured hand is starting to go numb, you suddenly grab a cherry branch and realize that this is it—it’s the edge, the other edge of the abyss, the opposite bank of the river, the River of the Dead. He boosts the kid up, climbs out after him. They sit on the grass, their breathing labored, not saying anything for a while.