“Hello,” said Vitaly.
“Hello.” Natalia came to a stop below the porch, not daring to climb those few extra steps. Was this all he had to say? After so much time apart? “I tried calling,” she added.
“I’ve been busy, you know.” He looked at the whimpering dog in an attempt to hide his shame.
“Don’t you want to see me?” The pain was evident in Natalia’s voice.
Vitaly let go of the collar and the dog raced across the porch and down the steps to greet Natalia. At least somebody was happy she’d come. Reaching down, she rubbed the dog on either side of the head as he licked at her nose. Still on the porch, Vitaly ran one foot back and forth over the floorboards, then stopped to clear his throat. “I heard that you’re a whore.” He looked at her with the fire of accusation in his eyes.
Natalia’s mouth fell open. “Is that so?”
“Is it true?”
“Who told you that?!”
“Everybody is saying it.”
“And you believe them, without even asking me?”
“Because it’s true. Isn’t it?”
Natalia’s blood ran cold with humiliation. She wanted to explain, yet knew it would make no difference. There were no shades of grey with Vitaly, or anybody else in this backward little village. There was black and there was white. She’d slept with men for money or she hadn’t. It was as simple as that. Natalia was the whore, who ran off to the outside world and sold herself. Accused in the court of public opinion, she couldn’t deny the charges. She would be a cautionary tale, told to young girls by mothers trying to keep them in line. She would be the one they snickered about at the market, whispering to each other, “Did you see her? Did you see Natalia over there, the prostitute?” Natalia was ruined in Drosti, for as long as she remained. Tears welled in her eyes but she fought to contain them, too proud to wipe them away.
“Bim!” Vitaly called out, clapping his hands twice. The dog trotted back past him and on inside. Vitaly took one step backwards and slowly closed the door, pulling it tight until the latch clicked into place.
Chapter Nineteen
“Father, wake up!” Natalia shook the old man’s shoulder to no effect as he slept soundly in bed. She pushed a little harder and Victor mumbled some unintelligible words before opening his eyes to small slits. “Father, we need to get your gun.”
“Gun?” his eyes opened wider. “What’s wrong?”
“We need to be ready!” Natalia answered.
“Ready for what?”
“In case the bad men come.”
Her father let these words sink in before he closed his eyes and pulled his blanket up over his shoulders. “Go to sleep,” he mumbled, trying to doze off once again himself.
Natalia left his bedside and found her way to the closet, fumbling in the darkness. She reached up to a shelf above her head and let her fingers run over various odds and ends until she felt the barrel of her father’s ancient rifle. She lifted the weapon off the shelf and brought it down carefully. Next, she reached back up in search of cartridges. These were harder to find amongst the hats, shoes and assorted clutter, but finally she felt a small cardboard box whose contents jangled when shaken. She took the box down and brought her cache to the living room where she sat in a chair and turned on a small lamp.
Natalia opened the cardboard box and poured a few brass cartridges into her hand, examining them closely. She wondered how old they were. This was the sniper’s rifle that her grandfather had used during the war, when he’d faced off against the Germans at Stalingrad. It had not been fired more than a few times since, and only then at crows and the occasional rodent. Natalia ran her fingers along the barrel and peered at the wooden stock, the trigger and the firing mechanism. She slid a cartridge into the chamber and locked the bolt in place, leaned back in her chair and turned her gaze toward the front door. They could come for her now. She was ready. If Vitaly wouldn’t protect her, Natalia would protect herself. She grasped the gun in both hands and settled in to wait.
The rifle was ripped from her hands in one violent motion. On instinct Natalia jumped from her chair, knocking her assailant backwards onto the floor. Only then did she realize that it was her father, lying on his back, rifle in hand. “What are you doing?” he asked, looking up at her. “You could kill someone with this thing.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Most likely yourself.” Victor slowly climbed to his feet as Natalia took hold of his elbow to help him up.
“I’m sorry, father, did I hurt you?”
“This gun hasn’t been cleaned in ages. You’d be lucky if it didn’t blow up in your face!”
“I was frightened.”
Victor looked his daughter up and down. “What could possibly terrify you so?”
Natalia wrapped her arms around him, refusing to answer.
“You’re home,” he did his best to console her. “Nobody will hurt you here.”
Natalia buried her face in her father’s shoulder. She wished that she could believe him.
Chapter Twenty
Natalia rode her motorbike down a dusty, potholed street between decaying wooden buildings, mostly vacant and deteriorating. They dated back to the Soviet days, but to Natalia these agricultural warehouses and worker dormitories were never anything more than a ghost town. High school kids hung out here, spray painting walls, breaking windows, and sometimes throwing parties inside the cavernous halls. There was one building, however, that the kids had learned to avoid. In fact, they steered clear of the whole block. Natalia stopped before it and turned off her engine. It looked abandoned like the rest, weathered by years of exposure to the elements, but she knew better. Everyone in town knew better. This was where he holed up inside, all alone. Trucks came and went on occasion, usually late at night, from the alley around the back. In the middle of the afternoon, all was quiet. Natalia leaned against her handlebars, trying to summon the courage to approach. The windows were boarded up, with some of the wooden slats hanging at odd angles where nails had fallen out. What might he do to her if she willingly wandered into his lair? He was a rapist, after all. So the stories went. Only Natalia didn’t believe them. If she did, she’d never be here. She’d never consider actually asking him for help. But considering and asking were two different things entirely. Natalia tried to calm her nerves. She knew firsthand what men were capable of. After quietly watching the place for a few more minutes, she kick-started the bike, turned around, and headed back the way she had come.
“Why won’t you tell me about it?” Rita sat beside her sister on the steps in front of their home.
Natalia plucked a blade of grass from a crack between the wooden boards and then looked up to scan the horizon. “I can’t.”
“You know people are talking.” Rita’s demeanor was solemn, as though she were sharing privileged information.
“They are ignorant peasants,” Natalia answered. “Petty and cruel. They know nothing about what really happened to me. Only what their imaginations tell them.”
“Then why don’t you tell the truth? It couldn’t be as bad as they’re saying.”
Natalia knew that she couldn’t possibly admit to all that had happened. Who of them would ever understand? People knew what happened to girls who tried to leave this place. That kind of hubris was nearly always punished. Those without dreams of their own survived on the little scraps of joy that came from bearing witness to the misery of others. Natalia tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter what people said. She tried to free herself from the shame, even as she dreamt each night of Goran Zigic coming to finish her. She knew in her heart that he would try. That was the only thing that truly mattered. When he finally did, she had to be ready.
Under a clear autumn sky, Natalia stood in a field not far from the house, squinting down the barrel of her grandfather’s rifle at an empty tin can 50 meters away. She carefully pulled the trigger, felt the powerful recoil against her shoulder and then watched the can fly up into the air.
She lowered the gun to examine it, rubbing her fingers across the stock. What stories did this rifle have to tell? What horrors had it seen? And how many lives it had taken already? That was during wartime. Her grandfather was defending his homeland from an invading German army. Natalia wasn’t defending her homeland, she was defending her home.
“There was a scope on top.” Her father’s voice carried across the field as he approached from behind. “I took it off long ago.”
“Yes, I know.” Natalia opened the box of cartridges. She took out five more and loaded them one at a time into the gun. Her father watched as she shook the box and peered inside. “Is this the last of our ammunition?”
Victor nodded somberly. “You’re a good shot.” He eyed the cans scattered on the other side of the field. “Your grandfather would be proud.”
“I never much cared for guns.”
Victor furrowed his brow. This was hard for him. He wasn’t the type for heart-to-heart conversations. He told his children when an animal needed care, or a field needed irrigating. Otherwise he kept mostly to himself, but now he seemed worried. “Tell me,” he began. “Who are you so afraid of?”
“Bad men, father.”
“What men? Who are these men?”
“I can’t say.”
“You are at home Natalia,” Victor pleaded. “Nobody will bother you here.”
Natalia turned to face him, staring him in the eye. “Father, I’ve done a terrible thing.”
“What thing?!” Victor’s frustration showed.
“We have to vigilant, all of us. Do you understand?”
“How could I understand when you tell me nothing?!”
She looked away, afraid to explain any further.
“I know that I haven’t been much of a father to you, Natalia…”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. I left those things to your mother. I’ve let myself be a stranger to my own children.”
“Don’t blame yourself. Not for this.”
“I’m trying to help you. I wish you would let me, but you must talk to me. Maybe if I had been closer to you when you were younger… Maybe you would talk to me now.”
“I killed a man, father.” Natalia couldn’t keep it from him any longer. She couldn’t bear to watch him suffer through meaningless regrets. “They forced me to sleep with men for money,” she went on. “It’s true what people are saying about me, but that’s only part of it.”
Victor didn’t answer. His face went blank as he tried to process this information about his oldest daughter.
“These men, they’ll want revenge. They’ll never let this go. Never.” She worried that her father might not believe her.
“But here, in Drosti…?”
“Yes, even here. Pride will bring them for me, and none of us are safe.”
Victor looked back to the cans across the field. “How many will come?”
“I don’t know.”
Victor thought to himself. “We must explain this to the others. This is not your burden to bear alone. We are your family, Natalia. We will face this threat together.”
To Natalia it felt as though a huge weight had lifted. He believed her, and even more he still loved her. With the gun in one hand, she grabbed her father in a hug, wishing that she never had to let him go.
Chapter Twenty-One
Natalia stood in the shadows, bundled in a long grey coat to ward off the chill. On her head she wore a dark Russian hat, flaps pulled down to protect her ears. Across the street she could see him, Gregor Multinovic, sitting inside at a table near the window, twirling his pasta on a fork. When he glanced out, Natalia pressed herself backwards into the doorway where she hid. She’d been trying for weeks to gather the nerve to speak with him. This man of ill repute was the only one in town who might be able to help her. She knew she couldn’t simply stalk him forever. The time had come to act. Natalia stepped to the curb, paused for just a few seconds to gather her courage and then marched across the street.
Multinovic hardly looked up when Natalia opened the door to the restaurant and walked inside. A handful of customers occupied other tables. Natalia recognized the banker and his wife, eating their dinners quietly. Further in the back, two field workers shared a joke over a bottle of vodka. Natalia took off her hat, clutching it in one hand as she went straight to Mulitnovic and took a seat at his table. Too intimidated to speak, she looked him directly in the eye and fought the urge to flee.
“Good evening,” Multinovic said in his gravelly voice. “I suppose you’ve come to explain why you’ve been following me?”
The blood drained from Natalia’s face. “How did you know?”
“It is part of my business to know these things.”
Natalia gripped her chair with her free hand. “What is your business, exactly?”
“Staying alive.” Multinovic didn’t take his eyes off her. “So answer my question.”
Natalia looked down at her lap. “I need your help,” she managed to get the words out.
“My help?” he laughed lightly. “You want my help?”
“What is so funny about that?!”
“Nobody here wants my help. Nobody wants to speak with me. Or to be in the same room with me. Nobody wants to live in the same little shithole of a village with me, but they’re too afraid to do anything about it!” he raised his voice. The banker and his wife stopped eating. The field workers put down their vodka. “And you say that you want my help?” Multinovic continued in disbelief. “What could you possibly want from me?”
Raisa came into the dining room and stopped in her tracks, her mouth open wide as she stared at Natalia. “What are you doing here?!”
“Hello, Raisa.” Natalia glanced across the room. “I thought I might have some pasta.”
“Why are you sitting with this man?!” Raisa’s voice rose in alarm.
“He looked like he could use the company.”
Raisa stood where she was, a perplexed expression on her face, not knowing what to say or what to do.
“Are you all right?” Natalia asked as the other customers watched intently. The two field hands resumed their drinking.
“Yes. Of course I’m all right.” Raisa retreated from the room.
Multinovic looked slightly amused. “See what I mean? I am a leper in this town.”
“That much we have in common.”
Multinovic shrugged. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“If your reception here bothers you so much, then why do you stay?”
Multinovic looked up at the ceiling. “I never said it bothered me. It suits my purposes.”
“What purposes?”
Multinovic turned his attention back to his meal without an answer.
“You must be lonely here,” Natalia said.
“I’ve learned to live with it.”
“We are all social creatures.”
“I used to think so.”
Natalia detected the first glimmer of uncertainty in his eyes. “Will you help me?” she asked again.
“What kind of help are you seeking?”
Clearing her throat, Natalia finally came out with it. “I thought you might sell me some guns.”
“Ha!” Multinovic laughed. “Why would I have guns?”
“Don’t you?”
“You’ve heard conjecture. Innuendo, that’s all.”
“I’ll pay you for them. Whatever price is fair.”
“I have no guns. Besides, even if I did, a gun in the wrong hands is a dangerous thing.”
“Only someone who has guns would say that.”
Raisa came back into the room and placed a plate of pasta before Natalia along with a glass of cola. She gave a wary look to Multinovic before moving on to her other customers. Multinovic downed what was left of a glass of red wine and then wiped his mouth with his napkin.
“You’re a Serb, aren’t you?” Natalia tried to hide the hint of bile in her tone.
“What of it?”
<
br /> “Just like Zigic,” Natalia answered, mostly to herself.
“Zigic?” His head tilted sideways. “Which Zigic?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“Tell me.” His voice was intent. It was no idle request.
Natalia shifted in her seat. “Goran Zigic. The man who wants me dead.”
Lost in thought, Multinovic raised a hand to his unshaven face.
“You know him?”
“I’ve heard the name.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.” Multinovic seemed annoyed.
“What have you heard?” Natalia pressed.
Multinovic said nothing more. Instead, he placed some money on the table, stood and walked out the door.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Winter came quickly to the Transnistrian countryside. Once the frost arrived there was little to do on the farm. It was the beginning of the long, cold season of darkness. For the family, winter was a struggle against both against the elements and the boredom. They had each other, but that could be a blessing and a curse, cooped up in a small house together for months on end. While she was locked up in the brothel, all Natalia could do to keep her sanity was think about home. Now that she was home, she found herself dreading the months to come.
“Your move,” said Ivanka. They sat near the fireplace, playing a game of chess on a well-worn board with hand-carved wooden pieces.
“I’m sorry, I was distracted.” Natalia moved a rook forward.
Ivanka immediately captured the rook with her knight. “It seems that you’re still distracted.”
Victor came through the front door, a cold chill blowing into the room with him. He was bundled in a coat and held a bag of potatoes and a jar of pickled beets. He also carried a small brown cardboard box that he laid on the table near Natalia. “This is for you,” he said.
Russia Girl Page 9