Many of the doors have notes pinned to them, to friends or relatives, stating a point of contact in the city. People have painted their family name on the door, an attempt to assert ownership. In dozens of apartments, they find tables fully laid for dinner.
They find a young couple sleeping in bed. They had been drinking for most of the night and lay there together under the sheets, oblivious to the commotion all around them. When the soldiers burst in, the man leaps from the bed in shock and then, realizing his nakedness, leaps back in again. The soldiers laugh, and Grigory asks them to leave and then sits on the bed and explains the situation to the couple, staring into the dark eyes of the young woman, gaining her trust with the gentleness of his tone. They wait in the kitchen, and when the couple emerge, dressed, carrying a few belongings, the soldiers clap and cheer and they smile shyly, and Grigory envies them their burgeoning love.
They put people in the truck and drive them to the relevant zones and then return and put more people in trucks. They pass a small graveyard and find a woman fisting soil from a grave—her parents’ grave—into a jam jar. She pleads to keep the jar, but they take it from her and empty the soil back onto the ground. The woman has no energy to protest.
They hear a noise from a lift shaft and break through an iron grille and find a young boy, perhaps five years old, sitting on top of the lift, clasping his hands to his ears. One of the men climbs into the shaft and emerges a few minutes later with the boy bouncing on his shoulders, making horsey noises and steering the soldier by the ears.
They continue to shoot pets, despite Grigory’s objections. Pets run from apartments, and the soldiers fire their pistols at will and argue over kill numbers as if they were war heroes.
Chapter 9
In the buses they don’t talk. They are too shocked for words. Artyom sits with his mother and sister in a double seat, five rows from the back, each of them replaying the incident in their minds.
Artyom’s mother watches the backs of heads bounce and nod and shake.
She didn’t know the door mattered to him. He had never placed great importance on it, and part of her wondered if he had tried to bring it with them as an absurd act of protest: “How dare you try to take my home, watch me take a part of it with me.” Of course, the children were astonished. Of course, the listeners were intrigued. There were many angles to the man that were only revealed at intimate moments, in the smallest of ways. Oddly stubborn. Wildly stubborn. No one knew. The kids perhaps had a certain insight, but no one really knew the unfathomable depths of his stubbornness.
Andrei could slow everything down, all around her. He could bend time for her. When they made love in their bed, with his mother sleeping in the next room, a tough woman, full of harsh judgement, the slightest noise would bring tension—the old woman had sharp ears. So Andrei would be so careful, yet still so generous. They would make love while hardly moving. They would rock with mere whispers of motion, and she would bring him to release simply by the warmth of her hands on his waist.
“When we go I want to go first.” She had always told him this, when they were alone, and he would nod, agreeing, because they both knew that he was the one who would endure, that she was the one who would collapse, helpless, overwhelmed.
And now he is alone somewhere, in a truck or a cell, and she has two child adults to look after, to reassure and lead as best she can, though they’re smarter, more aware than she is.
He will be sent along tomorrow. There can be no other possibility.
He will be sent along tomorrow.
Kids are moaning and shuffling. Artyom is sitting by the aisle, hanging off the side of the seat. There are families sitting on each other’s laps, but Artyom doesn’t want to suggest this to Sofya; the intimacy would be too strange.
The lights are on in the bus. They give substance to the cigarette smoke, a cloud of stained light hovering resolutely over them. Some children are sleeping, tired limbs slumped over the armrests, dangling into the aisle, heads lolling. A stream of whimpering trickles along the seats. There are intermittent rustling sounds, when people check which belongings they’ve forgotten, or dig into a plastic bag for an extra sweater. People are saying they’re on their way to Minsk, but there has been no announcement. He’s assuming there are some on the bus who recognize the route. Artyom looks around and realizes there aren’t many men. Some old men, yes, but very few his father’s age or younger. He didn’t notice this while they were being shoved into the vehicles.
His limbs want to strike out, to destroy something, anything. There are enough nervous people around, though, so instead he clamps his teeth into his inner cheek and bites down hard, feeling warm blood nestle around his teeth. He’s never seen his father look bewildered, this man so durable, so assured, crushed by violence.
He’d like to look out of the windows, be distracted by the unfamiliar sights, but he can’t get a proper view past his mother and sister, through the smoke. Sofya takes a carrot from her pocket and eats it, and Artyom does the same. They crunch on the tasteless lumps. Their jaws sore from a day of unwittingly grinding their teeth.
Artyom wakes. The bus has stopped, and Sofya is punching his shoulder.
“We’re getting off.”
It’s nighttime. The windows are matted with dull streaks of condensation. Artyom’s brain feels the same way. He rubs his eyes with his fists, a gesture that reminds his mother of her boy at five years old, a naïve gesture that he will now surely carry through to adulthood. They gather their sacks, hug them to their chests, and wait until it’s their turn to step into the aisle and out of the bus, spilling into the great pool of dislocated people.
Artyom looks to his left and sees that they’re parked outside the train station. An abandoned car sits squat on its axle, people swarming around it, and Artyom walks over and stands on the bonnet to get a better view.
The main bulk of people are walking in a thick line away from the building, following hazard lights that have been laid like a trail.
Again he looks for men, fathers, but sees very few.
His mother has decided they’ll go to her sister Lilya’s apartment. She’s not sure where it is, but she’d recognize it on a map. So they need to get out of the crowd and find their bearings. Artyom turns back to the station. There are still a few lights on, and a station guard leans against a column of the portico. Artyom signals to his mother and sister to meet him by the main entrance and, when he sees them making progress against the tide, he pushes forward himself and eventually emerges into empty space and approaches the guard.
“Is there anywhere to get a map?”