Notes from My Captivity(48)

The air is warm. The mountain is alive with flowers. Birds call, flying low over our heads. I duck when one swoops down especially close, and Vanya laughs. I like hearing his laugh. It’s shy and high-pitched, like his younger sister’s. I’m happy to get away from the hut and have some time alone out here, where I can pretend I’m out hiking in Boulder and a hot cup of cocoa waits for me an hour away. Vanya, it turns out, can make a sport out of anything. The woods have no internet, no Grand Theft Auto or Minecraft, so he makes do with whatever he finds. He shows me he can juggle rocks. He paces off and hurls them at saplings, where they hit their mark every time. He swings from branches. He makes a conch shell out of his folded hands and scares a bird off out of a low-growing bush. He is clearly flirting with me.

Maybe.

I point up at the retreating bird.

“Bird,” I say.

He seems delighted by the English word. “Burr,” he repeats. “Birddddd.” His eyebrows furrow as he forms the hard “D.”

“Khorosho,” I say. “Good.”

“Goodddd.” He points at another bird. “Ptitsa.”

I sound it back at him until it’s right, and that’s how we spend the next hour, hiking through the mountains and sharpening the languages between us, simple words that one day might join together into sentences, rough and scratchy but usable, like his hemp clothing.

Tree, blue, red, cold, wind, rain. We repeat the words back and forth, Russian and English.

He teaches me some words I already know, but I play along: mother, father, sister, brother, baby. When he repeats the last word, slowly for me, he rocks a pretend baby in his arms, and I imagine him performing that very task for his own little sisters, and it is with a sharp stab that I realize that one of those sisters, one that he knew every day of his life, is now gone. He looks up, notices my sad stare, and drops the pretend baby to hold up his hands.

“Chto takoye?” he asks.

What’s wrong?

“Nothing,” I say in English. “You just dropped the baby.”

We’re facing each other now. We point to each other as we continue learning: hair, arm, splint, broken, eyes, knuckles, and—I stop now; I know what I’m doing; just elect me Permafrost Tease of the Year—and slowly I reach out and touch my fingers to his lips.

“Lips,” I say, touching one and then the other. They are remarkably soft after a life spent in such brutal conditions.

He’s looking at me. He doesn’t say the word back to me in Russian. It’s as though he’s hypnotized. I must admit the feeling of his lips is rather nice. And we’re all alone out here, no Gospozha, no Clara, no Marat and his tragic flute. Gently I stroke his beard.

“Bearddd,” I say. “Beard.”

Suddenly he grabs my hand and pulls it away from his face. He starts walking again without speaking. I guess I’ve gone too far. Maybe touching a beard is second base in this country. I’m a Siberian tramp, a wilderness whore. I follow him until finally he slows his steps and I catch up to him. I want to tell him I’m sorry or explain myself or something, but I’m not sure if I should. I am hopeless at seduction. I will die this winter and be buried here and my tombstone with spell out, in Russian words: Cock-blocked herself, starved, froze.

Finally he points to a sunflower.

“Podsolnukh,” he says, which either means “sunflower” or “a skank like you would blow a Yeti for a boiled potato.”

I nod. “Sunflower,” I say. I’m going to have to move slowly with Vanya, I can tell. Tits and ass maybe shouldn’t be on the lesson plan for a while.

I go back to pointing at things and saying their English words. A little more friendship building here before I attempt romance again. We reach a stretch of rocky ground where the vegetation is sparse.

He stops, shows me his piece of flint, then sweeps his hand over the area. I scan the rocks, searching for a telltale glimmer as Vanya waits expectantly. I squint. I thought it would be easier, that I would triumphantly bring him to the miracle rock of fire and warmth and I’d be a hero. I look at Vanya.

“Kremen’?” he asks.

I don’t know what he’s saying, but I imagine it means, “So you are not useful after all?”

I shrug.

We walk another thirty yards and stop. I look again. This process repeats itself over the next hour, and I begin to understand why flint is so precious to this family—it is extremely rare and perhaps even extinct. A dodo bird of a rock. But suddenly I see something: a glimmer up ahead and off to the right. I start toward it, Vanya following me, his steps quickening as he gets close enough to recognize it.

He kneels reverently beside the rock. I sink down next to him.

“Khorosho!” he cries. “Khorosho!”

I raise a hand to high-five him.

He stares at me.

“High-five,” I say weakly, then, “Never mind.” I lower my hand. “Khorosho. Good.”

He smiles. “Good.”

He rises and gets to work, bringing his pickax down again and again, the heavy crack of metal against rock ringing through the forest, until he’s freed a small chunk of the flint. We look for another hour, but I can’t find any more. He says something in Russian that has a forgiving tone and holds up his sack and the heavy bulge the flint makes in it.

“Good,” he says. Then he adds in rough but understandable English, “Let’s go home.”