Notes from My Captivity(65)

“Grigoriy. Zoya.”

With each name, she closes her eyes and then opens them.

“I know they’re coming back tomorrow night. Vanya told me. My father died seven years ago. I think he is here now. I want to see him, too.”

And then I say his name.

“William.”

It shivers in the air. It was his name and saying it means hearing his voice and watching him tie his jogging shoes. Saying it hurts and helps.

“Please let me see him. Just one more time. I believe.”

I say the last two words in Russian. “Ya veryu.”

She says nothing. I’m not even sure she’s understood. I don’t know what else to say. I want to add, “Pozhaluysta”—Please—but it seems wrong. Like begging. Finally I walk away.

I’m heading back to the cabin, head down, when she calls my name. “A-drum.”

I realize I’ve never heard her say it before. She pronounces it like Clara does.

I turn around.

She looks at me for a long moment.

“Khorosho.”

Yes.

Clara wakes up all excited and talks to her family, too fast for me to follow.

All day long, I go about my chores with a gathering sense of bewildered excitement as I watch the family. They’re different. Lighter. More prone to laughter. Marat seems just on the edge of his first good mood. He blows cheerfully on his flute. I wince. He never gets better.

Near nightfall, as the air chills and the owls come out and the full moon rises, Clara returns from the forest with a small sack that the family keeps glancing at all through dinner. Clara keeps jumping up and looking at the sky and streaming some kind of live dove news that seems to further animate the family. I have no idea what’s going on, and no one will tell me.

Later that night, Marat lights the fire outside while Clara dumps the contents of her sack into a boiling pot of water on the stove. Gospozha stirs the pot; I lean in for a glance. The water smells earthy. I wrinkle my nose. Gospozha waves me away. After several minutes of a hard boil, she removes the pot from the fire and sets it aside to cool. Clara runs to the window again. She can barely contain herself. She throws her arms around her mother’s neck.

The tea is poured off into bowls. We carry them to the men, who are sitting on the stones, then join them with our own bowls. There is barely any wind tonight. The fire burns evenly, warming our faces. This is a tame fire, not like the wild fire that almost ate our lives. It’s like fighting a ferocious wolf in the woods and then going home to pet the dog.

Everyone looks at Clara as though waiting for a sign. I glance sideways at Vanya. His face is intense. Finally Clara nods and lifts her bowl to her lips. The rest of us follow her, drinking the liquid, which tastes terrible, like dirt. We look at one another. We wait.

The firelight curls, straightens. My head feels light in the center, as though that part of my brain has turned to froth. My eyelids flutter. The fire is now blue at the edges. It’s half a fire and half a body, moving and dancing.

I notice everyone is looking up at the night sky. I look up, too, and gasp. A brilliant yellow light undulates like a snake; from this light springs a red light. Like waterfalls of colored mists, they play together. The murmurs of the family around me prove that I am not imagining this, that everyone sees the same thing. Clara reaches her hands to the sky. We all do, as the lights spread out as though they have wings now, then fold back into one another. Purple emerges. Orange. Green.

Under this light, I feel joined not just with the family, but with the woods and the sky and the world. It’s all the same fabric now, something where nothing is lost and no one is strange. It’s an eternity of the familiar expressed in colors. I speak to the people around me in the circle, in a language of silence. I understand them perfectly, their fears and their longings and all the things they’ve dreamed about with me in the darkness of the hut. I know them, and I am not alone. I’m one of them, one of everyone and everything. The lights above us descend. The fire reaches out for them and then we are all enveloped in colored light.

Clara turns and cries out. I follow Clara’s gaze and then I see her.

It’s the little girl with the rosy-lipped smile.

Their sister, my sister.

Just behind her is an old man. He is thin. His beard is full, but his hair is cut short. His back is straight; his steps are light and easy.

There is nothing about their appearance that would indicate they’re anything but flesh and blood. They look like they’ve been out for a stroll and now they are coming back home.

“Zoya!” Clara cries. “Papa!”

The family shouts out ecstatic greetings and rushes to them, surrounding them. They are jubilant, embracing. I stand there, dazed, watching them. It’s not that I believe. I don’t have to. I’m here. I’m a witness. This is fact, as surely as it’s fact that I am alive, that I move and breathe. The miraculous is as real and basic and crucial as a pile of salt or a threaded needle.

I don’t have to believe or not believe. I am right here, experiencing it. I’m a part of it, a part of everything.

Zoya notices me. She breaks free of the family and comes to me and holds her arms out. We embrace. Her body is solid, and has the scent a little girl would have after running in the woods, sweaty and warm and alive. I can feel the beating of her heart as I hold her against me, the rest of the family making a circle around us. Clara cries with joy and the mother is reaching out to stroke Zoya’s hair, whispering, “Moya malyshka, moya malyshka.”