Notes from My Captivity(50)

I kneel on the ground, still cold in the early morning, and use a small rusted trowel to find the tubers, my good hand moving speedily and efficiently. I’ve done this a few times now, getting better at gathering them every single time. Dan would have been proud of my trowel-manship.

I try not to think about Dan and where he is now, submerged in freezing water in his red jacket. There’s nothing I can do about it.

Not yet.

When the bucket is half-full, I decide that’s enough. I can always come back for more later. I rise and brush the dirt off my knees.

I hear footsteps, and look up expecting Vanya or Clara, but it’s Marat who emerges from the trees and lumbers toward me. The hand holding my bucket trembles, but I force myself to face him as he approaches me.

My father once told me during a camping trip to put my arms in the air and make myself look big if a mountain lion ever stalked me. I don’t think this is going to work for Marat. Neither will climbing a tree or curling into a ball.

His eyes are staring into mine, and now he’s so close that I can sniff the musky odor of his body.

“Privyet, Marat,” I say in greeting. My voice sounds weak and scared.

He comes closer.

I take a step backward. The bucket of tubers slides out of my hand and falls to the ground. I keep backing up. Marat keeps moving forward. Finally my back comes to rest against a tree. I can go no farther. I decide to try to reason with him.

“Ty khochesh, chtoby ya ushla?”

You want me to leave?

He doesn’t blink. His eyes seem to blacken.

“Ty ne mozhesh uyti,” he growls.

You can’t leave.

I recognize something in his eyes. It’s not anger. It’s fear. I realize that he’s afraid if I leave, I’ll spread the word about the Osinovs, and his family will be discovered. Then what will become of them?

“Ya nikomu ne zkazhu,” I offer, trying to stay calm.

I won’t tell.

I hold a shaking finger to my lips to show him.

His eyes darken.

“Vy ne mozhete uyti!” he insists.

This isn’t working. I have to try something else. “Ya ostanus zdes,” I lie.

I will stay here.

This seems to piss him off even more.

“Nyet!” he hisses, and shakes his head. “Nyet! Nyet!”

He grabs my shoulder roughly.

I scream. Watch his expression change to something like surprise. I take a deep lungful of air and scream again. It echoes through the trees. He releases my shoulder and I scream again.

This time, I hear answering voices coming from the cabin. Vanya’s. Clara’s. They sound frightened and uncertain. Marat looks toward the cabin, glowers back at me, turns, and disappears into the trees. I sink to the ground and burst into tears.

Someone’s running up to me. I feel another hand on my shoulder. Lighter, kinder. I look up. It’s Vanya. His sister hovers nearby, looking worried.

“Chto sluchilos?” Vanya asks.

What happened?

I struggle to stop crying, to catch my breath.

“Tvoy brat . . .”

Your brother . . .

I wipe my eyes.

“Nenavidit menya.”

Hates me.

I expect Vanya to jump in, tell me no, of course not. But he exchanges glances with Clara. The two of them help me up, and help me pick up the tubers. Later, Vanya tells me never to collect tubers alone again.

I don’t know what they think they would do to protect me. Vanya is strong, and even little Clara has a kind of catlike grace, but the muscle of the whole family together would be nothing against Marat. After all, look what he did to the crew.

I notice Vanya glancing at me more and more. I really do think he’s starting to actually like me, and Vanya has the keys to the canoe. We have a broken language all our own, missing key ingredients that make a sentence a healthy, happy thing.

A prepositional phrase is replaced by a motion of the hand. Meaning is often lost. Sometimes we laugh at how ridiculous it is. I try to show him where I am from, a land called Colorado.

“Co-lo-ray-do,” he says.

“America,” I say, and he nods.

“Way over there,” I add.

“Cold?”

I can’t think of the Russian, so I say in English, “In the winter, yes.”

He cocks his head. He may understand, may not. It would be amusing if the circumstances weren’t so dire. Not so long ago, I had the power to say anything that was on my mind to anyone in the world. I had emojis and a screen and a lot of opinions. And now I am back to the basics again. Pointing and drawing things in the dirt. And yet Vanya seems to listen more intently than the boys back home. And sometimes, I have to admit, when Vanya looks at me a certain way, I get a slight shiver. Like a tiny bit of Boulder snow has just been sprinkled on my head. But this is just the electricity of hope. The chemistry of being rescued, of getting away from this place and never coming back.

He wants to know everything about the world outside this wilderness. I tell him, with pictures drawn in the dirt, gestures, and with whatever words I have, about the twenty-first century. All the things he has never seen or experienced. Refrigerators, cars, spaceships, space heaters, televisions, dishwashers, microwaves. Just the appliances exhaust me. But there’s more. So much more. Streets and cities and football stadiums and restaurants and coffee shops and the ocean and doctors and music and video games and voice mail and Christmas trees and alarm clocks and ice cream trucks and fireworks and candles and Band-Aids and M&M’s.