Notes from My Captivity(5)

I close the travel guide, tired of learning, and look out the window. The cloud bank stretches out below us; pure blue sky is all I see above it. It’s June, but up here, it’s nothing. No time, no seasons. I suppose Sydney Declay would be already writing her article, and so wearily I open my laptop. “Even before I enter a foreign environment, I begin to put words on a page,” Sydney once wrote. “Thoughts, feelings, bursts of conversation around me. Although I have no idea how an article will shape itself, I know that a story is like a tourist in a foreign land. Every bit of direction that you can give it is appreciated.”

Since there are not a lot of newsworthy events here on the plane—NEWSBREAK: the baby in the seat behind us just let out a screech that I feel up and down my spine—I start typing my thoughts.

Those crazy Osinovs. Peaceful hunter-gatherers? Cannibals? Sorcerers? Fairy tale? Depends on who you ask. Five years ago, the family supposedly kidnapped Yuri Androv, a reporter from Kiev, Dan’s most trusted source, and according to Sydney Declay, a liar and a drunk. The story he told seemed to confirm all the pieces my stepfather had put together—that somehow this young, extremely religious married couple had fled Moscow thirty years before, had journeyed up the Erinat River, and had a family of their own—one that grew up with no known contact with any civilization. Dan’s breathless recounting of Yuri’s wild tale seemed hyperbolic even to me—a mere tween at the time I read it. But the colorful Russian’s account of the ordeal was so detailed, so passionate, that I could understand how someone as dedicated to the story as my stepfather could believe it—minus the kidnapping theatrics. But what I don’t understand is, after what Sydney Declay dug up, why does Dan still believe it today?

It’s time for a little investigative journalism. I pause, close the laptop, glance at Dan, who is busily going over some notes, making little scribbles in the margins.

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

He puts down his pen. “Just checking a few things. Want to make sure I get the crew up to speed first thing. Lots of moving parts on this trip. The weather should be good, but you never know. You’ll like them, Adrienne, those two. And I couldn’t get the guide I wanted this time, but I got the next best thing, his son. He’s supposed to be great!”

There it is, the patter of Dan’s speech getting faster. He’s supercharged, so confident. I don’t want to kill his good mood so that he clams up, so I’m very careful when I introduce the subject.

“I can’t wait to meet Lyubov,” I begin. “She must be so interesting.”

“She is! Just got divorced over the spring. I never met the husband, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting to divorce such a fascinating person.” His fingers are spread out, jabbing at the air, underscoring how dumb the ex-husband must have been.

“So Yuri Androv’s invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.”

A look of annoyance crosses Dan’s face. His fingers fold up and drop into his lap. “What invitation?” he asks.

“You know, to go on the trip. Didn’t he go on the last trip?”

Dan seems to deflate a little. “Yes, he did,” he says guardedly. “But I haven’t been in touch with him since . . .”

“Sydney Declay’s article came out?” I ask. Despite Dan’s apparent enthusiasm to discuss all things Osinov, he has never discussed the article with me. His eyebrows go up.

“You read the article?” he asks.

Of course I did. About fifty times. “Yeah,” I say.

He’s silent for a moment. He rips open a tiny bag of pretzels. “What did you think?” he asks, and then dives in with his own opinion before I can even answer. “It was a total hatchet job. She came into it with an agenda and it was evident in every sentence. She’s always promoted herself on the backs of dedicated researchers. Just remember, Adrienne”—he shakes the pretzel at me like a lecture ruler—“being a skeptic is easy. It’s belief that’s hard, and her article did nothing to shake my belief in that family.”

“But what about the part where Yuri made up that other story out of thin air?”

Dan bites the pretzel, chews, and swallows before he answers. “The one where he took enemy fire with a group of Chechen rebels?”

“Right. She proved he was in Kiev at the time.”

He shrugs. “So, yes, he can tell a tall tale. I don’t believe every single story he slung at me while getting drunk on vodka. The man thinks he’s bigger than life. That doesn’t mean he lied about the Osinovs.”

“No, but I can understand that if you find out someone lied about one thing, it’s harder to believe them from then on. He’s lost credibility. My dad used to talk about that a lot when he’d put a witness on the stand.”

Dan crumples the pretzel bag and stuffs it in the seat pocket in front of him. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought my dad up and how awesome he was. “I still believe Yuri,” he says, a bit defensively. “There are too many things that match the accounts of Grigoriy Osinov’s cousin in Moscow. Physical descriptions, items that were missing from the original apartment, books and tools . . .”

“She explains how Yuri could have faked all that by tracking down original source material.”

“I know, but the campsite I found, the shoe, the book for God’s sake . . .”