The Orphanage

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

  “Here?” Pasha’s confused. “Like in town?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “What’s wrong with her skin?”

  “Fucked if I know,” the teenager answers honestly. “She’s sick, don’t get too close to her.”

  “But why’s she running away?” Pasha’s still confused. “If she lives here . . .”

  “Everyone’s running away, so she is too,” the teenager explains. “I’m telling you, she’s sick. Don’t get too close to her,” he reminds Pasha.

  He lifts his hood and goes around Pasha and the kid, hopping through the puddles and running ahead.

  The road slopes downward, into the valley. There’s more snow all around. Cattails line the road. Sharp, deathly stalks show what direction the wind’s blowing. The women stop more frequently, wrap headscarves around the children, toss their clothing on the children’s shoulders, walk slower and slower, their arguments growing quieter and quieter—all this jostling around in the snowy slop is taking a lot out of them. It’s best to keep quiet. The descent into the valley is long; then they climb back out, ascend a hill. When they reach the top, they see a freshly made path that runs off the road. Over there, off to the right, about two hundred yards away, several structures loom: a small hamlet. Poplars around the buildings, barns. Looks like someone’s farm. One line of travelers heading away from the road. And another line heading back, away from the buildings, toward the road. They approach, their expressions somewhat empty, and scared, seemingly regretting that they spent time there, that they went there in the first place.

  “What’s over there?” Pasha asks the women who are making their way out of the deep snow, back to the road.

  One of them immediately hangs her head, turns away, and keeps walking, as though she didn’t hear him. Another woman runs into Pasha, then goes around him, which makes her trip on her fur coat. While she’s lifting the flaps and stepping onto the asphalt, she says:

  “You can get warm over there. They made a fire.”

  Hurrying to catch up to her friend, she’s not looking at Pasha either. “Who are they?” Pasha thinks. “No bags, no things. Where are they going?”

  “Let’s go warm up, all right?” he says to the kid.

  The kid nods wordlessly. All right, let’s get moving. Quit standing around.

  They walk down a narrow path as a wet crust coats the snow right before their eyes. Don’t want to veer off the path—the snow’s pretty deep here. The closer they come, the stranger things get: large house with a slate roof, apple trees by the windows, sheds, small fence, people scurrying around the yard. Can’t tell what’s going on. A man who was toward the front of the pack heading away from the town emerges from someplace outside, walks over to the fence, knocks down part of it with a kick. He picks up the broken boards, carries them back to the house. Bricks and slate are scattered across the yard; the remnants of a broken couch poke through the snow.

  “What was this place?” Pasha asks himself.

  The kid doesn’t know what to say. They turn the corner of the building. It looks like a stage once the colorful curtains have been taken down—now you can admire the bare brick walls and the disgruntled stagehands wandering around, not knowing what to do with themselves. One of the walls is completely gone—probably a direct hit. The house has been split in half; furniture spills outside, like someone’s guts after they’ve been cut open. The house is large, yet destitute. There’s hardly anything left inside: dishes filled with snow, broken plates, sauce-covered curtains stomped into the wet floor, jagged shards of brick, newspapers, rags. And a lot of folks inside, clearly freezing. They’re sitting by the stove, burning the fence, trying to get warm. It looks as though the place was cleaned out a long time ago, and there’s nothing more to take—no food, no valuables. The owners might not even know how many walls they have now; they might be hoping nobody breaks in, worrying about someone busting the lock. Well, nobody’s busted any locks, it’s just that one of the walls is missing. Oh, and the porch is gone, too. And the front door. Pasha steps inside, under the roof. It’s full of holes, but there’s hardly any rain inside and it’s even warm by the stove. Granted, pushing his way over there won’t be easy. Men in black jackets have occupied strategic positions. They’re the ones who keep an eye on everything, determine who to let near the family hearth and who to chase out into the rain. They look at Pasha like he’s their enemy. Who’s this character with the glasses and beard? Where’d he come from? They instantly sense competition. The women who were with Pasha at the train station avert their eyes, acting like they’ve never seen him or the kid before. But Pasha unabashedly steps over some bundles, approaches the fire, and gives one of the men a gentle punch.

  “Let the kid get closer,” he says.

  The man looks at Pasha with defiance and disgust, yet his disgust doesn’t last long, and his defiance lacks conviction, and he can’t say anything to Pasha, so he merely looks at him in silence.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” Pasha adds severely. He says it quite firmly, so the man’s compelled to answer, yet rather amiably—last thing he needs is to get into a brawl here, in the ruins.

  “Well, c’mon,” the man mutters. He’s about to say something else, but Pasha isn’t listening to him anymore.

  “Sit down,” the man says to the kid. He comes over, sits down on a pile of bricks, and extends his frozen hands toward the fire.

  “Take off your shoes,” Pasha advises him. “Put on some dry socks.”

  The kid complies: takes off his shoes, peels off his socks, roots around in his backpack for a dry pair. Pasha steps aside so he won’t agitate the serious-looking men in the black jackets. He finds a busted chair missing one leg, places it against the wall, gets situated, more or less. The men, seeing that Pasha has stepped aside and isn’t laying claim to anything else, ease up, leave the kid alone. They’re just like dogs—ward off the danger, then relax. The women stay away from them; they’re afraid, sitting off to the side and catching some warmth.

  “So where should we go?” one of them—dark face, yellow teeth, shabby hat, looks like a beaver—asks. “How far can you get?” It’s unclear who he’s asking.

  “We’ll cross the front line, get to the Station,” another guy—slight, mouse eyes, high-pitched voice—answers him.

  “Well, what’s the point?” the Beaver asks him. “They’ll take the Station any day now. You think they’re just gonna let up?” He points at the ceiling. “They’ll chase those guys.” He points in Pasha’s direction. “All the way to the Dnipro. So where are we supposed to go?”

  “Where are you headed now?” asks the guy with the high-pitched voice.

  “If only I could get to the motel,” Yellow Teeth says. “My daughter’s there. She’s a waitress. I’ll camp out at her place. She has her own room.”

  “The motel?” someone asks him. “At the edge of town?”

  “Yep, that’s it,” Yellow Teeth says with satisfaction. “I could camp out there until summer. Nobody’ll be trying to blow up a motel. I know the owner, too. He’s a good guy.”

  “What’s your daughter’s name?” Pasha interjects loudly.

  The group’s dead still; they all turn toward Pasha.

  “Anna?” Pasha asks, just as loudly.

  “Huh?” Yellow Teeth forces out a response.

  “I’m asking you, what’s your daughter’s name?” Pasha repeats clearly. “Anna?”

  Yellow Teeth’s somewhat flustered; he turns toward his pack and smiles somewhat timidly, seemingly apologizing to them for something. Like for leaving himself exposed. Then he hastily roots around in his pockets, produces an old cellphone—all dirty and beat up, looks more like a shoe brush than a phone—presses a button, runs outside just as hastily, and disappears around the corner. His friends are sitting around, their silence oppressive, looking at the flame, not knowing how to act. Eventually, one of them gets up, goes out into the rain, disappears. Then someone follows him. The small guy with mouse eyes is the l
ast to leave. He stands up, looks into the kid’s eyes obsequiously, tosses several boards into the stove, and runs out without saying goodbye.

  “Did someone call him or something?” Pasha asks loudly, turning to the women. But the women avert their eyes, not saying anything either.

  Pasha takes out his phone. No service, obviously.

  Wonder who could’ve lived here. Pasha scans the wrecked house. In the kitchen, above the table, last year’s calendar. In the large room, where they’re sitting around getting warm, faded wallpaper dangling loosely. Wooden floor. In the corner a bent metal bed. Three women, as dark as trees in the winter, lying on it. Several small, shredded pillows scattered around it. Clearly, children slept in that bed. Some people come inside, make their way closer to the fire. Others head out into the rain once they’ve warmed up a little and eaten something out of their bags. “I wouldn’t ever want a bunch of people to gather in our house and be all warm like this,” Pasha thinks. Examining someone else’s domestic life is like flipping through someone else’s porn magazines—you never know what not to touch. Here someone else’s whole life has been turned inside out like pockets. Actually, it’s like an orphanage. You can’t hide anything, everything’s exposed. The wallpaper and the pillows. And hundreds of strangers pass through your life, not leaving a single trace. They burn someone else’s furniture, not knowing who’s living in their houses now. Maybe someone’s fueling the stove with their library. “Gotta get out,” Pasha thinks. “Gotta get home fast. Dad’s probably scared out of his mind. Yeah, and the kid really shouldn’t be seeing all this.”

  “All warmed up?” Pasha asks.

  “I’m fine,” the kid answers.

  “Time to go,” Pasha says. “It’s almost one. Don’t want to be walking in the dark.”

  The kid gets up, tosses a painted board into the fire. The flame immediately licks the old, cracked paint. The women sit there, their eyes fixed on the fire. And not saying anything, afraid they’ll say too much. No one’s listening to them, though—everyone has had enough as it is.

  Soon enough, their clothes are wet again. Their shoes squelch, it’s tough going, and there’s nowhere to stop and get warm. Endless rainy fields that drop off in the south, turning into heavy, soggy slopes that roll all the way down to Azov. They’re white from the snow and black from the dirt on the bends. A low, twisted row of trees that’s supposed to block the wind and snow stretches along the road. It doesn’t actually block anything. Wind crawls under their clothes, clutches them, constricts their movements. Discarded belongings occasionally loom in the snowbanks: an empty bag, an extra pair of shoes, a woman’s sweater. Travelers shed what they don’t need. It’s a long, arduous trip—ascending past the chalk quarry or sliding down to the empty steppe lakes surrounded by cattails. This one hill is particularly tough. Their feet slip, the wind cools their blood, an endless expanse of white stretches to the other side of life. It feels like you’ll never get out of this valley, this trap, like you’ll be trudging on among these wet, frightened travelers until you lose consciousness. On his way up, Pasha notices that a crowd’s gathering at the top; they’re standing around, discussing something, in no hurry to move forward. “Might have to turn around,” he thinks, scared, and picks up the pace. He’s dragging the kid along. He asks the kid if he’s all right every once in a while, and the kid nods wearily in reply—I’m all right, just fine. They crest the hill. The wind’s particularly nasty up here. The rain has let up, though. The air smells like wet snow. The next snowy valley opens up before them; a cold forest sinks into it blackly. And the road under their feet falls sharply, weaving between some trees into a cold, frozen thicket. On the other side of the forest, the path shoots up a hill. Spoil piles from the mines and the gray blocks of buildings come into view beyond. It seems as though a whole new life begins over there. It’s really close—just go down the hill, walk through the forest, head up the next hill, and you’re saved. The only problem is that a black tail of smoke—thick, ominous, like someone’s burning casualty lists—hovers high and crooked over the forest. The thing is, the road leads down there, to where they’re burning them, and there’s no going around the forest. Unless you want to wade through knee-high snow for who knows how long, who knows how.

  “Where’s the fire?” Pasha asks the men who are standing around and anxiously smoking.

  “By the tracks,” answers one of them, turning around. It’s the Beaver. He immediately recognizes Pasha, bites his tongue, but it’s too late. “At the railroad crossing.”

  “In the woods?” Pasha asks incredulously.

  “Well, yeah. The front line runs along it. There’s some guys on one side,” he says, giving Pasha a confidential glance. “And some other guys are on the other side. It’s like a border.”

  “What about the trains?” Pasha’s still confused.

  “Well, they let some through,” the Beaver explains. “And stop some others. It’s just like a border,” he reminds Pasha.

  “What’s burning?” Pasha inquires.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” The Beaver grows anxious, choosing his words with care, and turns toward his friends. They avert their eyes, though, not saying anything. “It might be a stronghold.”

  “What now?” Pasha walks right up to him, looks him in the eye, not letting him step aside.

  The Beaver realizes that Pasha has no grounds to get tough with him, but something forces the Beaver to keep standing there, on his tiptoes, and keep answering his questions. He can feel something inside Pasha that he knows he should be wary of. And his friends, wet and smoke stained, are just biding their time, not getting involved. They’re smoking out in the wind, tucking their cigarettes in the sleeves of their black winter jackets.

  “Well, I don’t know,” the Beaver says. “Hafta go back, maybe.”

  “Go back?” Pasha’s surprised.

  “Well, there’s smoke everywhere.” Pasha’s reaction scares the Beaver. “How are you gonna get through?”

  “Yeah,” adds the small guy with the high-pitched voice and mouse eyes. He’s standing somewhere down below. “Gotta head home and wait. We’ll come back tomorrow.”

  Then they all suddenly turn toward Pasha and the kid, seemingly on cue, and start talking. “Yeah, yeah, gotta go back home and wait. We’ll come back tomorrow. And you can wait with us, too,” they hint cautiously. “Don’t be afraid. Just wait it out with us. What do you have to be afraid of?” And the Beaver notices that everyone’s turned toward Pasha, walked over to him, and they keep repeating, seemingly to each other, to no one in particular, yet actually to Pasha, first and foremost: “We’ll come back, yeah, just have to wait it out.” And the Beaver lowers his head and looks at Pasha defiantly, feeling he has his friends’ backing. We’ll wait it out, we’ll all wait it out. And you’ll come along with us. Pasha senses his gaze on him—and not just his. Mouse Eyes with the high-pitched voice tries to block Pasha’s path with his chest, but he doesn’t have much to block with. Pasha easily pushes him aside, pulls the kid along, and then turns around.

  “Yeah,” he says. “We’ll come with you. Be right there,” Pasha says. “Let’s go,” he whispers to the kid.

  They head downhill, trying not to hurry, getting farther and farther away from the group. Pasha can hear the men having an anxious discussion that quickly turns into a fight. Why the fuck did I have to tell him? You should’ve stopped him. Why were you just standing around? And so on. “Faster, faster,” Pasha whispers under his breath, more to himself than to the kid. “Faster, faster, they won’t run after us, they don’t have the guts.” The afternoon sky hangs low over the forest itself. A dark rope of women, just women, both young and old, walking down the road cautiously, afraid they’ll slip. But the closer they get to the forest—smoke splits above it—the hastier their movements become, the more anxious their strides become. Pasha and the kid speed up; they walk, not looking back, hurrying to distance themselves from the group on the hill. They pass some women, now nearly run
ning. The women see that they’re hurrying, so they speed up, too. Those two, they might know something, maybe we should go hide in the woods right away, maybe, back there, behind us, on the hill, something terrible, something that you just can’t run away from, something you just can’t avoid, is going to appear any second now. Pasha and the kid can hear the women conscientiously splashing through the puddles, trying to keep up. The string shuffles along, runs to the first cluster of trees. They don’t even cast any shadows under the gray January sky. And it doesn’t get any easier when the forest encircles them. It gets worse, scarier: trees battered by shells, trenches stretching along the side of the road, and snow, the snow!—a dark yellow, like it’s rotten or something, like someone died a few days ago and is now rotting out in the fresh air. In a few spots, the yellow stains have spread and turned completely brown. In others, dark clumps show through faintly, like birthmarks on someone’s skin. But it’s all like this, touched with rot.

  “What’s with the snow?” the frightened kid yells, running, gasping for air, yet not stopping. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “I don’t know!” Pasha exclaims, not stopping either. “Run for it.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” the kid demands.

  Horror and hysteria cut through his voice. It’s as though he’s on the verge of bursting into tears, but he realizes that he can’t cry, he shouldn’t cry, even though he really wants to. So he holds it in, but he can only hold it in for so long—that’s obvious. “That’s obvious,” Pasha thinks, immediately understanding what’s going on. “That’s obvious. He can only hold it in for so long.” This is just like that time. Just like when he had his first attack. When he turned his stomach inside out, and he ran out of the house, into the night, and Pasha had to run after him, chasing him between the trees, like he was trying to catch his own shadow. “The same thing’s going to happen now,” Pasha says to himself. “That’s obvious.” So he picks up the kid, along with his backpack, and heaves him over his shoulder. He immediately feels all the weight of this thirteen-year-old kid and all the weight of his winter clothes, and he feels all three days’ worth of fatigue. “Just stay on your feet,” Pasha reminds himself, and he keeps running, hearing the weary women’s labored breathing alongside him. He runs past the yellow, dead snow and the slashed trees, down a long, very long winding road littered with boards ripped out of something, pieces of metal stomped into the snow, dirty rags. The farther he runs, the darker the snow becomes. Then suddenly it’s just gone. There’s only black burned earth between the trees. And the trees are all burned, too. And smoke and fire seep through everything around them. And then they reach the railroad crossing.