“But there’s no god to pray to,” said the younger Leonid.
“Maybe it’s not who you pray to,” said Grandmother, “but who you pray with that matters.”
“Grandmother,” said the older Leonid, “we have to go. They’re expecting us.”
“Go, go,” said Grandmother, shooing them away like she sometimes did to Kasha when the dog tried to come inside. “I don’t want to implicate you in my illegal activities.”
The twins shuffled out, one after the other through the narrow front door. Grandmother sat with her elbows on the table, hands folded in front of her.
“Is it really illegal?” asked the younger Leonid once the twins were away from the cottage.
“Grandmother’s right,” said the older. “Who is there to stop her? Let her pray if she wants.”
“But I don’t want her to be arrested. Do you remember when they came and took Mr. Shvets away? It was the middle of the night and the whole village awoke to the sounds of Mrs. Shvets shouting at the soldiers. I remember Mykola standing beside her. He was silent, but weeping.”
“When was the last time you saw a soldier? They only did such things when they first came, and then they left.”
“What if they come again?”
“Grandmother’s wise enough not to be caught praying if they do.”
They walked the dusty trail between their cottage and the rest of the village, where the Tarasenkos lived. Mr. Tarasenko had injured his back the day before, in the middle of repairing their cottage’s exterior wall, replacing rotted clapboards. Colder weather was just ahead, and now there was a hole right through the wall to the inside. As the twins approached, they could see the Tarasenkos waiting at the table, sipping hot drinks from mugs. Probably not tea. Most of the village had been steeping tree bark instead. No tea leaves had arrived on the train in over a year.
It was just Mrs. and Mr. Tarasenko in the cottage, both of the same generation as Grandmother. They had a son, supposedly a great friend of Father’s, and like Father, he’d disappeared through the mountain pass on the train. What left on the train never returned. When the twins were younger, the Tarasenkos were frequent guests, arriving with sweetcakes and hearty laughs. Now, though they were still friendly, they seldom visited. But it was not just them. No one seemed to have time for things like that anymore, even though everyone had more time on their hands.
The Tarasenkos saw the twins through the hole in the wall. Mrs. Tarasenko rose from the table and greeted them outside. She was a small woman, shrunk even more in recent years, and her dress, yellowed and tattered, fell shapeless around her like a collapsed tent. Her smile revealed several missing teeth, black gaps in almost perfect squares. She led the twins around to the side of the cottage. The twins greeted Mr. Tarasenko through the hole in the wall, and he grunted in response.
“Don’t mind him,” said Mrs. Tarasenko. “He’s just upset that he needs you boys to help. He’s too proud to be grateful.”
“I can hear you,” said Mr. Tarasenko.
“It’s good to know that your ears work better than your back.”
She laughed, a cackle really. Mr. Tarasenko turned to her. The twins had expected anger, but he was fighting back a smile. He sipped from his mug and turned back to face the table.
“Thank you, boys,” he said.
Mrs. Tarasenko showed the Leonids where the new clapboards could be found, and then instructed them in how to properly hang them. She and one of the twins would each support an end while the other twin hammered in the first few nails that held the board in place. The fresh wood of the new boards, sap still seeping out along the grain, looked as bright and yellow as a fresh-bloomed flower compared to the weathered gray of the old ones. The project only took an hour, the top of the sun just cresting the eastern mountains as they finished.
“It looks like we replaced one hole with another,” said the younger Leonid.
“Better a hole that will keep out the cold,” said Mrs. Tarasenko.
She offered them tea, but the boys declined. Neither drank tea, and certainly not the stuff that passed for tea anymore. When she opened the door, Mr. Tarasenko shouted his thanks from inside. The door slammed shut, shuddering the whole cottage. The Leonids worried that their work would fall apart as soon as they had completed it, but the cottage held together, like it always had.
THE LEONIDS WALKED home down the dirt path from the village. A dry scent kicked up with the dust. The route was not the most direct—it was a much quicker jaunt through the forest, where a trail had been worn by years of the twins’ shortcutting. The village had been as quiet as the forest this morning, everyone holed up indoors. Maybe a few out trying their hand at hunting, up the mountain in the thicker forest, hoping to snare a dinner of stringy squirrel meat.
A long, low whistle came from the direction of the pass, rising in pitch throughout its duration. The train. It had been months since it last came. The older Leonid had almost forgotten the sound. As if choreographed, villagers emerged from their homes, tugging light coats over disheveled shirts. Gathering barrows, slings, and carts, they formed a line and marched in the direction of the station. The Leonids joined the procession next to Oksana. She carried a basket large enough for one of them to fit inside. Her face bore a wide scar on the cheek, a mark that the older Leonid did not remember from before.
The screech of the train’s brakes carried over the trees, the pitch short and high. The twins knew this meant there was not much cargo. When it used to arrive fully laden, the sound of the brakes was more of a moan, as if the mountain itself griped against holding up the train’s weight. The villagers ahead of them picked up their pace.
Shouts came from the station as soon as the brakes silenced. The voices were too far away to make out what was said. A few words carried through the trees, but still did not make any sense. Russian. The Leonids had learned some of the language before the teacher was taken away, but the words they heard now they did not know. The shouting stopped, followed by a series of pops, the sound like punctuation.
Oksana pulled the twins to the side of the road.
“Go back to your home,” she said. “Go inside and stay there, and if anyone comes, let them in.”
“Who’s coming?” asked the older Leonid.
“Go now. Run.”
From around the bend several figures came into view. In some places they seemed to sprout extra limbs. Rifles. These were soldiers, like the ones the Leonids remembered from years ago, like how their father had looked in his uniform, buried in the middle of all that equipment. The twins turned and ran, jutting off the main road onto the path through the woods.
Grandmother waited for them on the front step, wringing a cloth in her hands. When they made it to the door, she ushered them inside and had them sit at the table.
“What happened?” she asked.
“The train arrived,” said the younger Leonid, “but soldiers got off. They fired their guns before we got close to the station. Oksana told us to run home, so we did.”
“Good, good. You’re to stay at this table. Even if a soldier comes to the cottage, stay seated. If they tell you to do something, do it. Do not raise a single word in protest.”
“What’s happening?” asked the older Leonid.
“All will be well. We just have to wait for the soldiers to leave.”
Grandmother joined the twins at the table. Minutes passed and then time stretched into a blur. Grandmother fetched three cups of water, but no one drank.
Usually, the older Leonid could only sit still for so long. The energy pent up inside him would build and build until he could not contain it. Grandmother would be scolding him to stop fidgeting before he even realized he had begun. Sometimes he excused himself outside if only to run, to release the feeling of being trapped inside himself. But this type of sitting was different. Instead of filling him with energy, it drained him. He stretched his hearing as far as it could go, searching for the faintest noise in the distance, trying to deduce what was happening in the rest of the village by variations in the wind. Whenever he noticed his own body, all the muscles were tensed. He forced himself to relax, only to tense again as soon as his mind returned to listening. Even breathing became difficult, like when the air was thick and soupy in summer. But it was not summer.