Notes from My Captivity(20)

“Just a dream I had.”

“Was it about me?”

“Not so much.”

Later in the afternoon, the channel gets narrow and canyons close in steep and craggy, denying us sunlight and sky, and the trees withdraw, leaving exposed black granite. The rain slows, then stops.

We round a corner and I suck in a hard whistle of air.

I am the first to see the enormous beast, and my gasp directs the others’ attention to the shore ahead, where a bear stands on the bank next to the rushing river. We come right for it, a hard current carrying us toward it as Sergei shoves the tiller hard to the side, trying to guide the boat away.

“Oh my God,” Lyubov breathes.

Sergei reaches for his rifle as the bear rears up on its hind legs. A cry escapes Dan’s throat, and the sound of it—so tiny, so helpless—freezes me to my place. Time slows down to a crawl so that each moment seems like a frame in a terrible dream about a bear. The motor strains against the rushing current. The bear stares right at me. Its head is enormous.

The urge to scream rises up in me, but my throat closes. No sound comes out.

Sergei is struggling with his rifle and the tiller. Viktor, the closest man to him, tries to rise in slow motion.

I think I hear my name again. I don’t even know who’s saying it. Maybe I’m saying it to myself.

The bear opens its mouth and lets out a roar. It’s not so much a sound as an intent to kill. To destroy, annihilate. The anger is so primitive and ferocious. Lips curled back and teeth enormous. The boat is drawing closer, and Sergei can’t hold the rifle straight, and Viktor can’t reach him in time, won’t reach him in time. I know all these things—I’m not like my father on the night he died, minding his own business—I see death coming. I hear and smell and feel it, it’s crazy and stupid and right on top of me, I close my eyes, my heart isn’t beating, I’m not breathing, I’m almost dead right now, and all it will take is a swipe of the great paw to scalp me clean, and the roar continues, it forces itself through my body, and there’s nothing that can be done anymore. . . .

Daddy, I think, and then something changes. Time is speeding up again. Senses rushing back to me. Suddenly shades of excited and breathless voices rise around me, and I open my eyes to my survival . . . the boat a few yards upriver, the bear behind us, the roar fading but the beast remaining on its hind legs as we chug onward between the sharp bluffs.

“Adrienne!”

I blink, shake my head. It’s Dan’s voice.

“Answer me!”

“I’m okay,” I gasp. I’m still trying to catch my breath, taking great heaves of the warm, clean air.

“Jesus,” Sergei whispers.

“Holy shit!” Lyubov declares.

Dan asks Viktor, “Did you get any film?”

“Film? Are you fucking with me?” Viktor answers. “I was busy shooting piss out of my pants!”

There is no fire when we camp that night on the riverbank. No one even bothers with dinner. Sergei seems too exhausted to flirt with me, which is fine, because I lack the energy to flirt back. Dan is not happy with our progress. We’re behind schedule by several hours.

“Fuck the schedule,” Viktor says.

“No,” Dan answers. “We have only so much time to find the Osinovs before we run out of supplies and money. The schedule means everything.”

“Tell that to the river,” Viktor answers.

Sleep comes to me quickly, despite the sounds of crickets and an owl that calls from nearby. I’m thinking about crickets and owls, how they sound the same in Boulder and Siberia, no change in tone and tempo, that universal cricket-owl symphony that travels the globe. I’m thinking about the bear again, how it stood up by the river and stared at us, just before the roar, that expression on its face that said, Ya tebya vizhu, but far less playfully than the girl from the dream. This is danger. This is what I thought I wanted.

I think my story has enough danger now.

The third day on the river is the worst. The rapids are even stronger here. The cliffs so steep that sometimes just a tiny sliver of narrow sky shows above us, the rocks too big and smooth for anything but sunlight and moss to live there. We use poles to help Sergei keep us off the rocks. The motion of the boat makes me want to throw up.

By midafternoon the water has calmed just a little bit, and maybe that’s what takes us off guard. The river turns sharply, and we all see the fallen tree in front of us and all duck, except Viktor, who is loading his camera. There is a sickening crack of his head hitting the tree, and he falls forward into the bottom of the boat. His video camera falls the other way, making a loud clanking sound.

“Viktor!” Lyubov screams. She and Dan lean over him as Sergei looks for a place to stop the boat. But there is no bank in this stretch, just jagged rocks.

“Get the medic bag!” Dan barks at me, and I start pawing through his backpack. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lyubov, who has been stroking Viktor’s head, pull her hand away. It’s sticky with blood.

Finally I find the bag and toss it to Dan. He pulls out some compresses and puts them against the side of Viktor’s head. Viktor’s lids are half-closed. His body is limp. That face, always animated and full of good humor, is still now. A terrible feeling grows in the pit of my stomach.

The boat hits a current and the tip of it bucks. Dan and Lyubov have to hold on to the side with one hand and tend to Viktor with the other. Sergei mumbles something in Russian that sounds too pleading to be a series of curse words. I feel helpless. I would wish and hope and pray, but in my heart I don’t believe it would do any good. Instead I stare at Viktor. The shaking and pitching of the boat have no effect on him. He looks as peaceful as a man gently swaying in a hammock, and that’s what worries me the most. Once I saw a man who wore that same perfectly serene expression. He wasn’t on a hammock. He was in an ICU bed, and he wasn’t okay at all.