Notes from My Captivity(69)

A growl behind me. I whip my head around. Fifty yards away, the bear barrels toward me. I drop the pickax, scramble to my feet, and run straight for the woods, the bear gaining on me, roaring now, my arms and legs puffing, losing my breath, fleeing as fast as I can, my ears ringing from the cacophony of the roar and the two voices shouting, GO! GO! GO!

I’m at the edge of the woods now. My shoe catches on something and falls off, and I plunge into the trees, vines raking my face, the woods growing dark and thicker. The bear is right behind me, his roar has heat, and I throw myself into a stand of slender trees, trying to find shelter.

The bear bats at me through the trees. His claws rake the air inches from my chest. He’s furious and foamy and determined, and I scream as the creature pushes on the trees holding him, the trees begin to give, and a set of claws comes out in slow motion and catches me just below the thigh. I hear my skin open. I feel blood pour down my leg.

I fall back as the bear takes my leg in its mouth, but it’s so violent, so swift, that it’s painless. I don’t even know earth from sky from tree anymore. It’s all part of a pattern.

Then I hear another growl, just as furious and distinct.

Marat’s.

The bear releases me, and I struggle to stay conscious as I hear the bloody battle going on between man and beast. My blood soaks the ground around me. I don’t hear the bear’s roar, or Marat’s.

Confusion.

Vanya’s rushing footsteps; he’s got me now. Arms around me, saying my name, begging me in Russian to look at him. His face comes into focus, then fades out again as he strips off his shirt and ties it tight around my leg. I come back again, turn my head, and see that the bear is gone, blood covering stumps and ferns.

I see Marat’s bloody spear.

I see Marat.

He seems to be sunk into the ground, but I blink and see that half his chest is gone. So much blood but barely any on his face. He’s looking at me with calm, still eyes. I’ve never noticed the color of his eyes. They are hazel.

“Don’t look!” Vanya urges.

But I can’t help it. I look at Marat until his brother lifts me in his arms and carries me away.





Twenty-Seven


I wake up in the bottom of the canoe, smelling familiar varnish and facing the night sky. I thought it was morning. Why is it night? The canoe suddenly hits something, half spins, and rights itself. It bucks and shakes. I’m not sure if I’m dead or alive or somewhere in between, because I’m not afraid. I feel calm, as though the wild river is part of me and I am part of the wild river.

I heard Vanya’s voice, angry. He is shouting Russian curse words. Trying to navigate the rapids. I want to tell him it’s okay, but I’m too tired. Instead I stare up at the stars. They are calm although the water is rough, and I think of them switching places: rough, swirling currents of stars and the water beneath me still as glass.

I don’t know how much time passes before the boat stops rocking and simply glides along. Vanya’s breathing is ragged.

“Vanya?”

His face appears above mine, upside down. “Adrienne.”

“Where are we going?”

“To people,” he says simply.

I look down at my leg. It’s wrapped tight in different-colored bandages. I recognize Sergei’s sleeve. The fabric of Lyubov’s sweatpants.

“The bear,” I murmur.

“Yes. The bear hurt you very bad.”

My leg doesn’t hurt so much as throb, as though trying to expand past the bandages.

“Marat?”

Vanya doesn’t answer me. His oar dips into the water, dips again. I try to sit up so I can see, but Vanya makes me lie back down. His voice is gentle, sorrowful. “You are hurt bad,” he says.

We don’t talk. We don’t need to. My mind has cleared a little, and I have done some very slow and basic math.

Vanya’s the man of the family now. His mother and sister can’t survive without him. He has to stay in the forest with them. He has to stay a legend. He has to stay a ghost.

We have no future tense.

And so we share the canoe and share this understanding in the final hours during the long trip to Qualiq. He paddles all the next day, the next night. The water is swift and pushes us onward. I sleep off and on, and in my dreams my two families mix together. Marat plays computer games with Jason. Gospozha shops for produce with my mother. Dan takes Clara by the wrists and swings her around and around.

It’s not yet dawn when the canoe scrapes land. Vanya has brought the nut-gathering backpack with the boat, my backpack. I have no idea what I could take with me that isn’t shattered, lost, or bloody, but I appreciate the gesture.

Vanya takes me in his arms and carries me through the darkness. Dogs begin to bark. He must hurry or soon he will be discovered.

He sets me down by a doorstep of an old cabin. Lifts my head tenderly and puts the backpack under my head.

More dogs join in the barking.

“You have to go,” I tell him. We don’t have time to say, Goodbye or I love you or I’ll find you someday.

He pounds loudly on the door.

“Go now,” I say.

I’m at the hospital in Moscow. A series of machines from the twenty-first century got me here. A motorboat. An SUV. A private plane, handing me off like a bucket of water traveling to a fire. They have sheets here. And electric lights. And a team of doctors that saved my leg, although I won’t be able to walk for a month or so.