Notes from My Captivity(58)

Of course I have put two and two together: the drawing and the words of her dead sister, He is coming. And this isn’t just some new wilderness riddle I can carry back and write about without ever having to solve. This is my life. This is my heart. This is my faith, so long abandoned, that the world lives on.

That he lives on.

That the hours I spent wandering the hills where his ashes were scattered weren’t wasted but simply the beginning part of the trail that ends here, in the other world. If this is magic, I want it. I will pay any price for it. My breath is heaving now as I gain on Clara. It occurs to me that she’s letting me catch her. Suddenly she turns and stops so suddenly that I run into her and we both fall in the ferns. She’s laughing. Then she notices I am crying, and she stops. Her eyes widen. She touches my tears as though to confirm them. Speaks to me in the language she was left to speak alone when her twin died. Begins to cry herself.

“Vse normalno,” I reassure her, wiping my own tears on my shirt sleeve.

It’s okay.

I wait until she’s in the sniffle stage and then I begin, in slow, broken Russian, to ask about my father. I know she understands Russian and speaks it perfectly, but she’s always chosen dove talk with me, of which I don’t understand a word. And I need to understand and I’m not leaving this forest, even if a helicopter lands right on my head, until I do.

“Gde on?” I ask.

Where is he?

Her answer is confusing. She points to above her and in front of her, into the trees, into the sky, then sweeps her arms as if to say everywhere.

“Did he speak to you? Did he say something?” My Russian is hurried and rough. Verb tenses all wrong, words left out. Clara seems spooked by my intensity, because she draws her knees up close to her body and hugs herself.

“Please, Clara!” I beg. But it’s no use. She won’t answer me. She seems distressed now. Maybe in her world, giving me this present is a tiny, simple thing, the Siberian equivalent of liking an Instagram post, and I’ve gone and made a big deal about it.

I look at the drawing again. Ashes and birch bark have brought my father back to life. I can see so clearly not just his face but his essence. The man he was. The lawyer and husband he was. The father and the friend. His expression is peaceful, contemplative, as one would expect it to be on a stroll in a forest so far from the world.

And yet, how? Is remote Russia where dead fathers go? I think back to the hand that grabbed my wrist. The large footprints on the bank. Was he the one who saved me from drowning? But how could that be?

Suddenly I’m no longer worried about bears or freezing to death or bugs or my clothes coming unraveled without a single Forever 21 in sight. This is news; this is big news. This is the biggest story of my life, of anyone’s life. Maybe I’ve come all the way to the other side of the world to learn that maybe our loved ones don’t die. Maybe they are still here.

Maybe death is not the end.

Maybe that sorority girl did not kill my father, just put him in a different realm that I can reach somehow out here in the wilderness.

I must find him. And I’m not leaving here until I do.





Part Three





Twenty-Two


The birch bark picture is hot as fire in my hand. I can’t put it down, so I take it and look for Vanya. Tonight I was going to kiss him. In the morning I was going to make my plea for escape.

But this can wait. My father is here, somewhere. I approach Vanya while he’s working on the canoe with Marat. They have reached the varnish stage. I have no idea what stinky liquid they’ve siphoned out of the woods and are now wiping into the wood of the canoe with the rough cloth that used to be Sergei’s pants. Now I believe, looking at them, that Sergei wouldn’t mind giving back in this way.

Marat gives me a dirty look as I approach, but dirty looks can’t stand up to seeing my father again. I ignore him, whisper, “Talk by water,” into Vanya’s ear, and walk quickly away toward the stream, wading in fields of sunflowers, their hairy stalks brushing my arms.

I sit down by the stream and wait.

It’s peaceful here. Everyone busy with their chores. I stare at the water and remember all I used to think about was how this water flowed into the river, and the river flowed back to the world. Now I’m thinking about the mystery that lives here, and I’m shivering with excitement and curiosity and wonder.

I hear footsteps behind me, and then Vanya sits next to me. Splotches of varnish cover his arms and the back of his hands.

“I have something to show you.” I hand him the picture.

He says nothing.

“Vanya, this is my father.”

His raised eyebrows are the only indication that he’s surprised at all. He studies the picture some more silently, then looks at my face. Back to the picture, back to my face.

“Your eyes,” he says. “Same.” Gently he touches my brow line, then moves his fingers down my nose. I can smell the varnish on his hands. It’s sharp and bitter and a little sweet. “And here and here. Same.” He touches my lips as an electric energy rushes through me. “But here, different.”

“I have my mother’s lips,” I say, and I know this can’t continue, Vanya stroking my face and and talking genetics, always hot, but I need to return to the subject at hand. “I think when I was drowning in the river, my father pulled me out. Is that crazy?”