Notes from My Captivity(53)

“Help me! Help—”

Vanya tackles me. The weight of him cuts off the air in my lungs as we go down together on the bank, my cheek hitting smooth pebbles, my body flopping like a fish, Vanya’s heaviness on top of me. His heart beating against my back, his breathing hard.

I can’t move. My face hurts from the fall. My homemade cast is trapped beneath me, digging into my ribs. I try to struggle, but Vanya’s holding me down. Everything is silent but for the wind and birds and river and Vanya’s breath steadying. I have screwed up. Showed my hand. All this time I’ve pretended that I am totally cool with living off the land as a guarded pet of his wild family and never seeing my own family again. Totally cool with strange rashes and bug bites and bears in the woods and weird ghosts who appear in the darkness of the hut. Cool with the near starvation and the hard work. Cool with the fact that my friends are dead, that Dan is dead. Now he’s seen me for what I am. A frightened person who just wants to get away.

His weight is painful. My cast hurts my ribs so much I’m afraid I’ll cry out. But I don’t. I surrender.

Finally he gets off me and stands. My breath whooshes back into the starving parts of my lungs. I rub my sore rib cage. He doesn’t hold down his hand to help me as I stagger to my feet. I don’t dare look into the sky, because his eyes will follow me, but I know that modern society is gone. It flew off somewhere to send a text or download a podcast or eat a Cronut, leaving us here several centuries behind, bitter, tired, alone.

Vanya’s clearly pissed. If he had the English mastery I’m sure he’d snarl, This is the thanks I get for digging your stepfather’s grave. He motions me with his hand and starts trudging up the bank in the direction of the hut.

I wonder if I’ve just completely botched my escape plan, if he no longer likes or trusts me and will no longer wish to save me. On the way back, I try to speak to him in English, then in Russian. He won’t answer me. He stays several steps in front of me. He juggles no rocks. He makes no whistling sound at the calling birds. He kicks at no Siberian pinecones. I’ve taken away his playfulness with my traitorous pursuit of freedom. And I think to myself, how oddly nice it must have been for him to live so long without being suckered by a girl.

“You know what, Vanya?” I say to his back. “Sorry I tried to save myself. But I come from a place where winter means a Rag and Bone sweater, not death. Do you care that there’s not enough food? Do you care I’m going to freeze? Or maybe that if somehow I do survive, your crazy brother will finish me off? Yeah, believe it or not, girls in America aren’t that easy. You just can’t bury their stepfather in a riverbank for them and expect to get in their pants.” My voice is angry, my tone defiant. He glances back at me and keeps on walking. “Oh, don’t pretend not to understand me. You understand a hell of a lot more English words than you’re supposed to. Which makes no sense at all to me.”

He walks a few more feet, stops, and turns around. We lock eyes. We are not friends. We are adversaries. Tarzan and Jane will never make Boy.

Vanya enters the hut, where Clara and Gospozha are immersed in their sewing. Clara puts down her fabric, comes and hugs Vanya, then me. It’s nice to feel her warmth and joy at the sight of me. Something Vanya evidently doesn’t share. Without a word, he empties the sack of flint we’ve collected. We haven’t had a productive day, and disappointment shows on Gospozha’s face.

“I eto vse?” she asks.

That is all?

“Prosti, mama.”

Sorry.

She frowns, looks at me.

“Prosti,” I say.

Vanya suddenly bursts into rapid Russian. His finger twirls in the air like a helicopter blade. Clara and Gospozha look fearful. He must be telling them about what happened earlier this afternoon, how we were almost discovered.

Gospozha shakes her head and says something I don’t understand.

They go back and forth. I wait for Vanya to tell on me, let them know I was trying to escape again, express what a traitor I am, but evidently he says nothing, because they don’t even glance at me. I can’t really blame Vanya for tackling me. He was just protecting his family, trying to keep them a secret from the people who had come looking for me.

Finally Vanya and his mother finish their conversation and she goes back to her sewing. I’m not really sure what just happened. Why didn’t he tell on me? Could it be that he might forgive me a little?

“Vanya,” I say softly, trying to get his attention. I want to apologize, start over. I don’t want to blow all the progress I’ve been making, earning his trust.

He doesn’t look at me. He leaves the flint on the table and takes off out the door, closing it hard.

Gospozha and Clara exchange glances. There is nothing I can do except pretend that all is well. I make a gesture to help them with the sewing. Gospozha shakes her head.

“Nyet, pochisti kartoshku.”

No, peel the potatoes.

She hands me a knife and points to a bucket of potatoes next to the stove.

After dinner, by faded light, I slip off into the woods. I know Marat may be lurking nearby and I’m not supposed to wander off alone, but I’ll take my chances. I still have an hour before sundown, and I make my way down the main path past the outhouse and keep going, following smaller paths until finally nothing is left but the floor of the forest. I remember a landmark of a rotted tree stump, find it, and continue on a few hundred paces. Yes, I remember that enormous pea shrub. Yes, that cluster of stones. And then there it is: Vanya’s tree. The one that contains his secret writings. A shiver runs up my spine. I feel like some kind of deep-woods detective.