by Serhiy Zhadan; Reilly Costigan-Humes; Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
Looks like a big dumpster that someone’s carelessly set on fire: metal beams, a shattered tree, clothes stomped into a ball of soot. Melted glass, destroyed foodstuffs, sandbags ripped like pillows in a child’s room. Off to the side, between tree trunks slashed by shrapnel, a gate arm lies on the ground. A busted-up booth, trenches all around—also burned out and packed with frigid sand. The cold steel of train tracks, white as bone. Marks left by mortar fire and a bunch of military equipment. Shredded, blood-stained camo scattered across the embankment. The blood hasn’t frozen yet—looks like the garment was just cut off someone’s body, just a little while ago, and it looks like whoever cut it off is somewhere nearby, hasn’t gone far, could come back any minute now. But that’s not it. It’s just that there’s a Ural-model truck, loaded with dark crates, parked behind the booth, on the other side of the embankment. The cab’s burned out, the wheels reduced to scorched scraps. For some reason, the crates aren’t burning, though, just smoldering, and smoke rises off them, like the truck bed is a crematorium, methodically filling the winter sky. “Guess this is where the smoke’s coming from,” Pasha surmises. “This is what’s burning.” Pasha lowers the kid onto the ground; they stand there, apprehensively eyeing the Ural. The women who were following them come running over, wheezing wearily. A woman carrying a large plastic bag slings it off her shoulder, collapses on top of it. She doesn’t have the energy or words to gripe about anything.
“What is that?” a frightened woman—roughly fifty—yells to Pasha. Heavy fur hat with black-dyed hair sticking out, dirty sheepskin coat, winter boots with broken heels. Her makeup has been washed away like a drawing in the sand.
“It’s on fire,” Pasha explains. “Shrapnel, probably.”
“I mean what’s the smoke coming from?” she continues, still yelling. “What’s in the crates?”
“Dunno,” Pasha admits. “Food, maybe?”
“Food?” she yells. Terrified, she covers her mouth so as not to scream and then darts forward, over the embankment, across the tracks, far away. Just get away from here.
The kid yanks on Pasha’s sleeve.
“C’mon,” he yells. “Quit standing around. It’s gonna blow.”
He darts forward, too. Pasha runs after him. They cross the tracks, slip through some bullet-riddled cinder blocks, dodge trenches, coils of barbed wire, tumble behind the last dugout. Out of the corner of his eye, without turning his head, Pasha sees a black army boot on a breastwork—right foot, cut shoelaces, blood everywhere. Pasha even thinks there’s a foot inside, the remnants of a foot, with bloody mush inside it. He wants to stop and move closer, wants to get a better look, but the kid, still running, shouts piercingly. C’mon, c’mon! Keep moving, follow me! And Pasha runs forward, down the ripped asphalt, through the black, broken forest and the wet afternoon air, running, grabbing the kid by the shoulder and dragging him along. He wants to give the woman in the fur hat a hand, but she lurches back, as if she’s just seen her death at the front door, and Pasha and the kid abandon her, leaving her on the black road. They run, not looking back, racing farther and farther down the winding, wooded road, charging ahead, only thinking about one thing. Now, right now, any second now, at this very moment—it’s gonna blow, wipe everything out, implode this wet, wintry space, implode the sky above them, stop time, now, right now, right here.
They reach a row of trees, collapse into the snow, gasping for air, breathing laboriously, like they’ve just taken the stairs up to the top floor.
“Hear that?” the kid asks once he’s caught his breath.
Pasha listens intently. Engines. He lifts his head, glances at the main road. Way up there, atop a hill, beyond the fog, two jeeps are creeping, crawling along. They descend apprehensively, as though they’re afraid of bumping into something unpleasant. Haven’t turned their headlights on, though—they’re too afraid.
“What should we do?” It’s unclear who Pasha’s asking. “Are those our guys? Hope they’re on our side.”
“What if they’re not?” the kid asks him.
“That’s bad if they’re not,” Pasha answers. “Really bad.”
“You know, Pasha,” the kid says to him, his tone serious, judicious. “If those guys aren’t on our side, they’re gonna kill you. I have no idea why they haven’t killed you already.”
“Haven’t given them a reason to,” Pasha replies, aggrieved.
“Uh-huh, haven’t given them a reason to, sure. You know what I’m getting at . . .”
“Yeah.” Pasha unexpectedly agrees with him. “Got to stay off the road. Who knows who’s over there.”
That’s exactly what the kid wants. He gets up and runs toward the road. They race across the asphalt, skid onto the shoulder, dive into the snow, and make their way down a barely visible track that shoots off to the side. It seems like nobody’s driven along this track for a while, but the frozen imprints of treads crisply come through the freshly fallen snow, like a scar through a thin T-shirt. They run along them, reach higher ground, and then quickly go down a hill, gradually fading out of view. The kid, still running, pulls the bat out of his backpack and hurls it into a heap of snow. “He’s all grown up,” Pasha thinks as he runs after him. “So mature, so serious. He’s absolutely right—they might not kill me, but they’ll throw me into some pit. And I’ll sit there until they pull me out. It’s all so obvious, who I am, where I work, what I do.” And Pasha realizes that he hasn’t actually seen the kid for a while. And that when he did see him, they didn’t have real conversations. They’d just exchange a few words about something trivial, something neither of them found interesting, and go their separate ways. Back to their respective corners, until the next time, until the next conversation. “Until the next fight,” Pasha adds to himself, and thinks back to how he found the kid among the trees, how he dragged him along, how the kid resisted, didn’t want to go with him. How he eventually bit Pasha’s hand. How he screeched in surprise and grabbed the kid by the scruff of the neck like a naughty puppy, how the kid squirmed and howled—just like a puppy, actually—fearfully and maliciously. How later on, at home, in the kitchen, everyone was yelling, their voices angry, like they were at someone’s funeral, like they were blaming each other for someone dying—no chance of forgiveness, no hint of leniency, letting their voices get loud and uncontrolled, not listening to anyone. That time the kid curled up into a ball. He started shaking, all shriveled up and huddled with convulsions. But everyone was yelling so loudly; they wanted to scream it all out, so they weren’t even paying attention to the kid. They only started when he let out a screech and began rolling across the floor, as though demons were crawling out of him. Pasha was the first to notice, but his voice just snapped. He darted over to the kid, turned his head toward him. Pale face, eyes rolled back in his head, a string of saliva dangling from his lips. Pasha picked him up and placed him on the bed. After that, his sister, the kid’s mom, that is, began wailing, howling as loud as she could, and then rushed over to the kid’s side. Pasha’s old man stopped short before he could get out his most cherished curse. Everyone was hovering over the kid, not knowing what to do with themselves or how to act; they stood there and watched warily as the kid got really quiet, as if he was falling into a warm, deep sleep. And Pasha rushed to call the ambulance, still not knowing what he would say or how to explain what was going on, while his sister was hovering around the kid and wailing—despondently, as loud as she could—scaring Pasha and his old man. “How old was he then?” Pasha thinks, trying to remember. “Nine, ten? How many more times did it happen after that? Twice, three times?” That went on until his sister started talking—quietly at first, on the phone, to her girlfriends, and then loudly, more firmly, with conviction, with authority to Pasha and his old man. The kid’s not doing well, need to do something, need to get him treated before it’s too late, even though, in all honesty, it’s already too late. There’s no real point, what’s done is done, it’ll be easier to just send him to the orphanage, save mys
elf the hassle. Pasha’s old man was indignant, obviously. And Pasha was indignant, too. But his sister did as she pleased. Neither of them, not Pasha and especially not his old man, could deter her, stop her. Maybe they actually started believing that the kid had something really wrong with him, and things would be better that way. But actually, they probably just didn’t feel like fighting for the kid. They surrendered him, didn’t protect him. Maybe they thought, “The kid’s just a kid, he doesn’t understand what any of this means anyway, we’ll see once he gets a little older.” But it seems that the kid understood everything; he understood everything perfectly well. “That kid, he really does understand things, and now he understands everything perfectly well, and he’s absolutely right,” Pasha thinks as he stomps down the snowy slope. “He’s really matured since then. Why am I such a wimp?” he thinks, wheezing. “Why didn’t I protect him? He’ll never forgive me for that. Never,” Pasha agrees with himself. “No matter what.”
The track runs along the foot of a hill. People clearly used it to avoid the checkpoints on the main road. Their feet slide, a brisk wind wafts in from the steppe. It’s getting even colder, even more foul. In one spot, where the track veers to the right and goes uphill, they can see that some tanks stopped and lingered for a while, long enough for their treads to plow up the ground all around. The snow has sunk by the track. It’s as if someone did some digging and then filled up the pits, and the earth has sunk under the pressure of heavy rain. Pasha stops and looks, trying to figure out what this is, what’s buried here, what it could be. The kid comes over, catches Pasha’s eye. They stand there, not daring to speak. And then a phone rings. Right in the middle of the field, in the gray, wet, snowy field. Pasha twitches. He immediately thinks of the demolitions guy by the orphanage. “From underground,” he thinks, terrified. “They’re calling from underground. Buried him with his cellphone.” And the kid cowers, tucking his head into his collar, not saying anything. Then he can’t take it anymore.
“C’mon,” he says. “Pick up already, someone’s calling you.”
Pasha slaps at his pockets, pulls out his phone. Someone really is calling him! His dad. He holds the phone against his ear, tries to make something out, anything. Mechanical noise, crackling, then some sort of cold echo, like the call is coming from a barrel that’s been welded shut. The call drops. Pasha tries to call back, but he doesn’t have any service. There’s no knowing how his old man got through.
“Dad called,” Pasha says. “I’ve got to call him back.”
“Yep. And what are you gonna tell him? That you’re hiding from tanks out in some field? Let’s go.”
He starts moving again, tucking his hands into his jacket pockets, not saying anything. Pasha’s breathing heavily, but he’s keeping pace. Suddenly, behind them, where the woods are, something explodes. Pasha slumps onto the snow, the kid crouches. One, then a second, then another.
“What’s that?” Pasha yells.
“It’s coming from the woods,” the kid answers intently, adamantly, seemingly afraid that Pasha won’t listen to him. “Run, hurry up.”
They get up, run down the track, sliding on the hardened, snowy crust, go down into a gully, and dodge some thornbushes. There are more and more of them as they go. The track snakes between black, twisted branches, and they suddenly pop out by some people’s yards. Back there, amid the thorns, in the field, Pasha heard dogs’ voices—chilled, hoarse—but he thought he was just imagining things. But no, he wasn’t. There’s a village up ahead. They’ve popped out right on someone’s property, and a dog—somewhere over there, in the early twilight, beyond the snow and trees—is tearing through the air with his teeth, sensing their approach, wailing, warning everyone that outsiders are approaching, snapping the sonorous afternoon silence.
“Stop,” Pasha yells.
The kid stops, discontentedly. Pasha walks over, places his hand on his shoulder. The kid’s wiped out, wheezing, his eyes red with fatigue, scanning the area for any possible danger. He waits wordlessly.
“What are we gonna do?” Pasha asks, looking the kid right in the eye.
“Well, isn’t it obvious? Let’s find someone who’s still alive and get the scoop.”
“What if they turn us in?” Pasha asks quietly.
“What if they don’t?” the kid asks in reply.
“It’s risky,” Pasha says.
“It’s cold,” the kid reminds him. “Get with the program, Pasha. Let’s go look for some people already.”
The street starts abruptly, seemingly coming out of nowhere, out of the air. And the air all around is like a boot someone’s kicked off after coming in from the snow and placed by the radiator so the cold water can drip off it. It starts raining again. The first yard is spacious. An old brick house hides behind a lopsided fence. There’s a pile of firewood by the porch—somebody clearly stocked up that morning. Moisture seeps into the fresh notches on the wood. The windows are dark. But everything around here is dark; there aren’t any lights on in the house across the street either. Just dogs erupting in some barns nearby.
“It’s dark,” Pasha says, nodding at the house.
“Clearly it’s dark,” the kid answers. “They cut the power lines.”
Farther down the street, a fallen pole lies on the ground. The wires around it look like hair that’s been brushed with a rough comb. Beyond the trees, at the end of the street, they can hear a powerful engine. Sounds like a tank. There’s no knowing where it’s going, but it’s best not to wait around.
“C’mon,” the kid says, slipping through a hole in the fence.
Now the kid’s telling Pasha what to do, and he’s listening. “Well, why not?” he thinks. “He’s absolutely right, knows what he’s talking about.” They walk through a little garden. Garage to the left, smells like gasoline, rickety addition to the right, a soggy path between them. They walk, watching their step, past the garage. And here, bursting at their backs, comes a dog’s heavy bark. The kid leaps forward, Pasha instinctively ducks—a dark German shepherd with yellow spots is thrusting all of its muscular body at a wobbly barn fence, extending its hind legs like a ballerina in pointe shoes, trying to break out of its open-air cage, its mouth grabbing air spitefully, viciously barking at these two outsiders, sticking its snout out into the rain. The smell of wet dog. The front door swings open; on the threshold, warily hunching over and peering into the twilight, stands a man. Track bottoms, shabby sweater, bare feet. He’s curling his toes, like he’s stepping into the cold sea. He’s shivering, can’t make anything out.
“Who’s there?” he yells and breaks into a coughing fit. He’s holding on to the door with one hand so it doesn’t shut and he’s holding an ax, which he apparently used to chop the firewood just before this, in the other. “Who’s there?”
The dog’s going wild, lurching at the fence, banging his tense body against it, trying to break free somehow and devour them.
“Cool it!” Pasha suddenly yells. “We aren’t going to hurt you!”
They move closer. The man is about fifty. He gives them a frightened look, still not lowering his ax.
“We’re from the Station,” Pasha yells over the dog. “I have a kid with me. We just want to get warm real quick.”
He squeezes the kid’s shoulder. I’ll do the talking, you just keep quiet. The kid plays along, slouching and sniffling out in the rain. The man keeps coughing; then he turns around and disappears into the house. Without closing the door behind him. Pasha walks up the steps, the kid in tow.
There’s a table heaped with apples on the porch. The apples are as chilly as the extinguished meteorites that kept falling in the steppe all through autumn. The place smells of dampness and rot. They walk into a room. Bed in the corner, winter coat instead of a blanket. A lightbulb dangles like a disconnected studio microphone. The lights are out, the owner’s got a gas lamp burning. He’s sitting at the table, his expression surly. He’s placed the ax next to him, on the table. Two mugs, two plates, gray bread
. One might think he’s planning on slicing it with his ax. There isn’t much light, but his face is still visible. Yellow skin, heavy bags under his eyes, bald spots. “Heavy drinker,” Pasha thinks. “Or he used to be.” His bare toes tap across the dirty rug. Pasha and the kid stand in the doorway, in no rush to come in, yet not intending to leave.
“Excuse me.” Pasha’s tone makes it sound like he’s telling the owner to go screw himself. “I’ve gotta dry his clothes, otherwise he’ll catch a cold.”
“Who are you?” the owner asks gloomily. He’s clearly trying to sound tough, but he lacks natural toughness. And the bags under his eyes make him look hungover, not intimidating. He’s speaking Russian, but it’s far from flawless. He’s stressing the wrong syllables and such.
“I’m a teacher,” Pasha explains. “From the Station. We were in the city. Heading home now.”
“You’re coming from the city?” he asks, surprised. “How’d you get through? They closed the checkpoint over there, at the railroad crossing.”
“There’s no checkpoint there,” Pasha replies, and then wordlessly begins peeling his jacket, heavy with moisture, off his body.
The owner looks at him morosely, yet doesn’t say anything; he restrains himself, observes. The kid pulls off his shoes—also wordlessly, without waiting for an invitation—squelches over to the table in his wet socks, and sits down, opposite the owner. And then a woman peers out of the next room. Fat, frightened. Short hair dyed chestnut brown, heavy chin, wet eyes. She sees her husband at the table, the ax next to him, two strangers—one an adult with a beard and glasses, the other just a kid. Who are they? No clue.