Notes from My Captivity(19)

Sydney Declay

Washington Post article



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Six


The firelight glows through the fabric of my tent. I’ve always liked tents, the way they separate you from everything, creating a world inside a world. Sometimes I imagine lying inside a series of tents like a Russian nesting doll, going on forever, so that it would take someone years to cut through to get to me.

The warmth of the fire still can’t push away the chill in the air. I have on insulated socks and long johns, and my sleeping bag is thick with goose down. But my face feels cold to my fingertips. If Siberian nights are this frigid in June, what are they like in December?

I stare at the ceiling of the tent, my breath making mist in the air as I listen to the voices outside grow louder. Dan has gone to bed, and the crew is probably partying. Breaking out more bottles. I sniff. The aroma of marijuana smoke drifts into the tent. I’m not sure if one of the crew managed to smuggle it into Moscow or if Sergei did the honors. I do know that my stepdad is not down with marijuana, or any other drug for that matter, and if he wakes up and notices it, there’s going to be hell to pay.

I drift off to sleep, and when I wake up, there’s a girl in my tent, sitting in the broad stripe of moonlight that comes though the plastic window.

I gasp.

She’s small and thin and looks about twelve. Barefoot, a sackcloth dress. Unkempt brown hair and delicate features. Pale skin, almost purplish lips. Something warm and playful in her smile makes me more mystified than afraid.

I raise myself to look at her. She speaks to me in a sweet, soft language that sounds a bit like Russian and yet is something much stranger. In those words I understand nothing but moods and tones. It’s like listening to the rain in the woods; whatever meaning lives in the sounds is lost to me, but like the rain, the effect is calming. I can hear curiosity, though, and delight, and wonder. She seems to understand my confusion. She stops and slowly, deliberately says something that sounds much more like the Russian I’ve heard from my companions.

“Ya tebya vizhu.”

She disappears.

My heart is beating wildly. I wave my hand in the space where the girl disappeared. I’m wide awake, skin prickling on my arms. What in the hell was that? Slowly, I force my breathing to steady. I can’t get back to sleep. I stare at the top of the tent, at the steel bar that holds everything up, sounding out the words again and again, afraid I’ll forget them.

“YEAH tee BAH VISH U.

“YEAH tee BAH VISH U.

“YEAH tee BAH VISH U.”

At first light I’m out at the campsite, where the crew moves slowly, Dan studies the route, and Sergei boils water for coffee.

“YEAH tee BAH VISH U,” I tell Sergei.

He raises his eyebrows and smiles.

“I see you, too.”

The day is brutal. It’s raining. We have to keep stopping to chainsaw trees that are blocking our path, and the river has grown swifter, more dangerous. The boat lurches from side to side. Sometimes it’s so shallow that rocks scrape the bottom, and all of us except Sergei have to get out and walk along the river to take the weight off the boat so it can pass through the shallows. My face is sweating and I can barely breathe.

“You okay?” Dan asks me.

“I’m fine,” I say huffily. I don’t want to be the weak link, that’s for sure.

I’ve decided to say nothing of what I saw—or thought I saw—in my tent the night before, although this theme of a little girl appearing—first in the road on the way to the airport, then in Sergei’s father’s dream, then in mine—is starting to spook me. Could my mind just be playing tricks on me? At any rate, I keep it to myself. Sydney Declay once said: A great reporter knows how to pull things out of others—idle gossip, rumors, facts—but one of her best weapons is her own careful silence.

The river is starting to scare me, too. I know my way around the rapids of Colorado, but these are different. As though they’re waiting for me, luring me in, and then pouncing. My nerves rattle every time the boat lurches and the sides scrape the rocks. We have to keep on guard, duck under the fallen trees where there’s space so we won’t be knocked out of the boat.

Okay, seriously, how could the Osinovs have made it up this crazy river in a dugout canoe? Now that I’m here, living it, feeling it, that notion seems impossible. I glance at Dan. Is that what true belief is, a rejection of all evidence and experience that contradicts what you are already sure exists?

We haven’t seen a single soul on the river since we passed the last settlement, and it’s a strange feeling to see some part of the world that hasn’t been put to use. I think of the people crowding the farmers’ market in Boulder, the traffic jams in Denver, the photos I’ve seen of the swimming pools in China thick with people end to end. The earth is a fat, patient horse being ridden by a hoard of tourists, and yet this river has managed to say, “Leave me alone,” and get away with it.

We eat lunch on the boat, passing roasted sunflower seeds and jerky around. Dan eats some kind of plant protein mixture. I speak very softly into my recorder so no one will hear.

I can’t stop thinking about the girl. She was so real. Like I could have put my hand out and touched her. And the tone of her voice. It was like she knew a secret about me. Something she was just about to reveal before she faded away. Could this be one of the girls that Yuri described? He mentioned the light brown hair— “What are you mumbling about?” Sergei asks.