Notes from My Captivity(45)

“Rybachit’?” I say in his language. I make a motion like I’m hauling a fish in.

He lets go a stream of Russian then, at what must be my confused expression. He puts away his tool, takes up a stick, and kneels on the ground. I watch as he draws a line in the dirt, then the figure of a boat on top of it. He points in the direction of the hut and makes a small x below the river. He traces his stick down the line drawing of the river, then draws, very carefully, a familiar-looking animal. He’s not as good as his sister but better than me.

I plot my next move. We’re going to need some kind of way of communicating beyond gestures and smiles.

“Deer,” I say.

Hey, you’ve got to start somewhere with flirtatious banter.

He looks at me, tests out the word. “Dee-uh.”

“Deer,” I correct him. I hold his stare a little longer.

“Deer,” he says.

I smile at him. After a moment, he gives me a slight smile back.

I make the motion of a spear, throw it into the air, then move my fingertip from the drawing of the boat forward a couple of feet. “The deer are farther upriver,” I say in English.

He nods, at the motion if not the words.

Our eyes lock again. We’ve communicated. Part English, part line drawing, part Russian, part goodwill, part pure effort. Now that we’re having a conversation, sort of, I decide to keep going. After all, conversations lead to feelings, and feelings lead to Boulder, Colorado. Or so I hope.

I search for the phrase I’m looking for.

“Skol’ko tebe let?”

How old are you?

He smiles. “Dvadtsat.”

Twenty years old.

He points at me. “Skol’ko tebe let?”

“Semnadtsat.”

Seventeen.

I feel a surge of triumph, as though communication is a fire we’ve started out of breath and moss in the middle of a snowstorm. We’re leaning close over our marks in the dirt. I do feel a certain electricity coming from Vanya. He’s interested in me. My plan is working. All I have to do is act interested and be the only captive female in eighteen hundred square miles.

Vanya stands and motions me to come with him. I hobble after him into the woods. After a few feet he stops. An enormous pine log, stripped of bark, lies horizontally across a series of stumps on the forest floor. It is sanded and looks coated with some kind of polish. There are marks on the log that begin at the bottom and extend upward as far as I can see.

Vanya moves his finger up the marks until he finds a name.

Clara.

He looks at me, folds his arms and moves them as though rocking a little baby. I realize that the pine tree is a calendar, counting back the days. And on this day, in a moment of time that is now recollected in wood, was this when Clara was born? I can’t be sure.

His finger continues to trace the marks, tiny slivers in the surface, dozens upon dozens of cuts the width of a sewing needle, all of them in neat little groups.

He comes to another name. His own.

Vanya.

He looks at me. He continues down the log until he finds another mark. Next to that mark is written Zoya. He looks at me sadly, puts his hands together, resting his head on them, closing his eyes as though he’s asleep.

I think I understand. On this day in history, his little sister died.

He moves his finger until he finds his father’s name again. Looks at me. Shakes his head. So the sister died and then the father. Children should never die before their parents. Parents should never die before their children.

“Kak?” I ask.

How?

He says something rapidly.

“Ya ne ponimayu,” I tell him.

I do not understand.

He tries some more words.

“On bolel,” he says.

I nod. Sick.

He covers his mouth and begins to cough, demonstrating. In the back of my mind I chalk up one more similarity between his world and mine: in the deep woods of Siberia, in the coffee shops of Boulder, it’s polite and medically sound to cover your mouth when you cough.

He keeps coughing. The sound goes deeper. It’s a dangerous baritone now. I’ve heard that sound in sad movies before the nurse comes in and shakes her head. Finally his hand falls away. His eyes water.

We look at each other a long moment. Now my eyes are watering. I forget my plan for a moment. Maybe it’s the pure, crisp air, but his grief buzzes out of him, fills me. Another thing we share. I wonder if he wandered the woods, calling for his lost people, trying to bring them back with magic.

Everywhere in the world, magic works and doesn’t work and no one’s ever figured out how to make it more consistent, not with technology or potions or prayers.

Suddenly a harsh burst of Russian fills the air. Vanya stiffens. Marat comes out of the trees. He’s furious, gesturing at me and then the log. I don’t have to know Russian to know that this is a sacred place, like the graves, and Vanya has let me intrude.

Unlike Clara, Vanya doesn’t back down. He shouts back at his brother. The two of them draw closer together, their voices heated. Marat’s fingers curl into fists. The cords stand out in his neck and I don’t know what to do: apologize or run or simply stand there.

Finally I hobble back to the meadow. I can still hear them arguing from the edge of the garden.

I open my eyes. The hut is dark. The little girl is back. Moonlight streams through the windows and lights up her hair as she crouches near me, smiling.