Notes from My Captivity(62)

Twenty-Three


We have no time to talk. By the time we reach the hut, we must grab what we can—brooms and birch bark buckets—and rush to help the family defend their homestead from the fire that crawls down the mountains, through the dry woods, straight for their garden and everything they own. I have never fought a fire before. I have no idea how it can appear in one place and then another. How it can grow and fade and bite your feet and be beaten down and spring back again. Frantically we carry water from the creek in any container we have. We beat at the fire with branches and shovels. We scatter dirt on the flames. Soot fills the air, and the sun sinks in the sky.

Slowly, we inch up the mountain and the fire retreats, only to swell again when a breeze comes up and fans it. The woods, dry all summer, are crackly with dead leaves and bark. It is a forest full of tinder.

Smoke burns my eyes and chokes my throat. My hands and arms turn black. It’s like being inside a chimney. I grab a bucket from Gospozha and hurl it at the blaze. Marat shouts orders and the family moves into a line, Clara at the edge of the stream and Marat and Vanya at the front of the fire, and we pass the homemade buckets as quickly as we can. I’m exhausted, but we can’t stop. We battle for hours as the sky grows dark and our only light is the fire trying to eat us. Gradually, though, it begins to fade, sparking up again and then relentlessly beaten back, and now it’s finally just a line of embers and a forest full of smoke. Together we move through the trees, stomping on whatever glows red and threatens us when the wind brings reinforcement.

It’s over. The fire is dead. My throat is scorched. Tears of pain run from my eyes. My skin is blistered. My back is in knots from lifting buckets of water. We start to go back to the campsite, but we are too exhausted to go more than a few feet, and collapse in the remains of the faded sunflowers, five ash-blackened creatures lying as though dead among those wilted blooms. We sleep that way, in the positions that we fell.

We awaken at dawn and look at one another. Clara smiles. Soot is caked in her nostrils. Her teeth are stained black. She points, laughing at the way her family looks. One by one, we join in the laughter, even Marat. We all look ridiculous and we are all alive.

We finally get the strength to stagger back to the hut. Gospozha lights the stove and Clara grinds the grain with a mortar and pestle and I go to fetch the river water that, when heated and added to the mixture, will turn it into gruel. Vanya lights a fire in the pit outside among the stones, a friendly fire that knows its place and does no harm. As the gruel cooks, we wash our arms and faces and hair in the stream. When Marat washes his beard, black water drains onto his shirt in a spreading stain. We all walk back to the hut. Gospozha stirs the gruel until it is soft. A measure of salt from the dwindling supply is added to the gruel in an amount that I know means celebration.

“We kicked ass,” I announce in English. No one understands, but it had to be said.

The meal is divided into five bowls. The family takes their positions on the stones, and I take my usual position on the stone behind them. They bow their heads and Marat gives a prayer of gratitude and relief. Just as I begin to take the first spoonful of gruel, Vanya sets down his bowl and stands up. He leaves the circle of stones and walks over to me. He extends his hand. I don’t know what he’s doing, but I take it, and he pulls me to my feet. His family has been chattering nonstop among themselves about the miracle of their deliverance, but now they fall silent as Vanya leads me back into their circle and sits me down next to him, on the stone where Grigoriy used to sit, or Zoya. The Osinovs stare at me. Clara’s eyes are wide. Marat opens his mouth to say something. His mother shoots him a glare and he closes it again.

We all eat together.

The days until the miracle pass slowly.

I can’t stop thinking about what Vanya said about his father, about mine. I’m not feeling so good lately. My skin is peeling. I have sores on my feet. My teeth hurt. I know I’m missing some essential vitamins and minerals that could be found at any GNC, if any were local to the middle of nowhere.

Marat’s nose is blistered, as are Vanya’s hands. Gospozha thrusts a clean needle through the blisters and presses on them until they drain.

And we go back to work. We have to. When we look up, we see the first snowfall on top of the mountains. We have firewood and pine nuts and buckets and buckets of potatoes to gather. Vanya manages to kill another rabbit. It doesn’t last long.

My arm feels weak but serviceable. Summer is passing, in a way that summer does everywhere—getting warmer and warmer until the day it will collapse and fade. More and more, I’m beginning to understand the gist, if not the details, of the family’s conversation. I know they worry about Marat’s last unsuccessful hunting trip and the effect the dry summer is having on the crops.

A bear has been hanging around the main river. They wonder if it’s a sign of something, an omen. They see things in the sky: objects, lights. I know they are not pleased with this year’s potato crop, and they dread the coming winter. Marat accidentally damaged the family Bible while trying to turn a page. The fragile state of the family book disturbs them. It is all they have of the word of God.

Gospozha is a mystery. She is very thin and yet incredibly strong. I’ve seen her run through the meadow with a full pail of water and not spill a drop. She’s an avid fisherwoman but catches very little. She hums through her nose. She is a teller of stories, and as I listen, night after night, I start to understand that many of the stories are the same story told a different way.