Notes from My Captivity(34)

Farther up the hill is another crop, covering a square space about the size of the average kitchen. I can’t tell what it is, although it looks like some kind of flowering grain. Clara looks at me as though to see if the garden gets my approval. I look at her and smile, giving her a thumbs-up. She carefully puts her thumb up, mimicking me. I wonder if she knows what that means. I’ll save teaching her emojis for later.

“Good!” I say in English, and she whoops with joy. She takes my hand again, and we head to a stream that serves as the border between the meadow and the woods. It’s clear and shallow, tumbling down the mountain out of sight. Clara leads me across a rickety wooden bridge.

On the other side of the stream and in among a sparse grove of pine trees is, finally, the family outhouse. And then I see something else. A narrow path that leads back down the mountain.

This is the way home.

Clara doesn’t seem to notice what’s caught my eye. She gives me a handful of leaves.

I look down at them. “I prefer Charmin, thank you,” I tell her.

I smile, and she smiles at my expression. My mind is whirling with the new information. Clara is small, a tiny slip of a girl. She couldn’t hold me back if I bolted into the woods. But first things first. I take the open outhouse door, prepared for the horrors within.

I’m pleasantly surprised that, though it consists of a low bench with a hole cut in it, I can actually detect nothing but a brisk pine odor. I’ve encountered far grosser bathrooms in my high school.

It’s awkward to go through this process with a broken arm. It makes everything more difficult. The leaves are not terribly absorbent. But I do the best I can. It takes me quite a while to get my pants up. I crouch by the door in the dimness, gathering the courage for my escape attempt.

Clara calls to me. “A-drum? A-drum?”

“Coming!” I call in English. I grab the rope that opens the door, take a deep breath, and burst out into the light.

I pull up fast, stopping in my tracks.

The younger brother stands next to his sister. He’s holding Sergei’s gun in his hands. He’s not pointing it at me, but the meaning is clear. I’m not going anywhere.

“A-drum!” Clara cries, seizing my hand in delight, but the brother does not look so delighted. Maybe he read my guilty expression, I don’t know.

We troop back together across the stream, into the clearing, and past the garden. I keep glancing at the younger brother. Under that beard, he really has a pleasant and even handsome face. Although he is carrying a weapon, his body language is rather shy.

He needs a name. I can’t keep calling him “the younger brother” or “the possibly non-murderous one.”

I’m going to name him Woody. It just feels right, something homemade and at home in the wilderness.

As we are walking toward the hut, we pass the older brother, busy at work with his pickax, and I glance down at the hole the men have been digging.

I gasp. My empty stomach clenches.

It’s not a hole. It’s a grave.





* * *



Yuri told me that the family was clearly starving, the father thinnest of all. Yuri could see his veins through his skin.

Dr. Daniel Westin

New York Times article



* * *





Thirteen


I’m back in my chair. Every nerve in my body on edge. Thoughts racing. Mouth dry.

It’s true, what Yuri said. They are planning to kill me, just as they were planning to kill him before he escaped. They are simply taking their time.

I watch the women prepare dinner. The fire inside the stove warms the boards of my homemade cast, but I take no comfort in the sensation. They’ve made a stew with some kind of meat I can’t identify and potatoes and onions, as well as some herbs and a few sliced carrots. The aroma of blood is strong. I wonder if whatever animal they are cooking died in fear.

Clara and her mother talk among themselves, occasionally throwing glances at me as though to make sure I’m still there. Each time they glance at me, I look away, afraid I will somehow antagonize them. Part of me wants to jump up at that very moment and run for it, but I can hear the voices of the brothers outside over the chopping of wood.

They are strong men. With sharp utensils. I don’t stand a chance. All I can do is wait for a chance to beg for my life, although even the Russian word for life escapes me. Tears and a pleading tone and a few words are all I have. Very primitive tools for such an urgent task.

Just as the hut begins to darken, the men come in, and I stiffen. Woody throws me an unreadable glance. The older one scowls, sets a torch in the middle of the hut, and lights it. The hut fills with an orange glow. I’m amazed to see the mother start ladling soup into small white bowls. It’s hard to imagine a family who looks and sounds this strange to be eating out of bowls that look very much like the ones in our house.

I watch the bowls. I haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours. And yet, I count four bowls, and the amount of soup the mother ladles in hardly fills any of them more than half before the ladle makes a scraping sound against the bottom of the kettle. I notice, for the first time, how thin the mother’s arms are. I imagine that, like all mothers, she takes the smallest amount for herself.

The family gathers at the table. The mother sets down their bowls and then sits down herself. They bow their heads as the older brother leads what must be a prayer in a grim and gravelly voice.