I helped Leo out of his wet clothes and laid them on the floor to dry. He stretched himself out on the nearest bunk and I covered him with newspaper and a rug from the floor. It might not have been too clean but at least it would help to keep him warm. I had the food that I had brought from my home and I took it out. Leo and I had drunk all our water but that wasn’t a problem. I carried a saucepan outside and filled it from the gutter that ran round the side of the building. After the rain, it was full to overflowing and boiling the water in the flames would get rid of any germs. I added the tea and the sugar, and balanced the pan on the stove. I broke the chocolate bars into pieces and examined the tins. There were three of them and they all contained herring but, fool that I was, I had forgotten to bring a tin opener.
While Leo drifted in and out of sleep, I spent the next half-hour desperately trying to open the tins. In a way, it did me good to have to focus on a problem that was so small and so stupid. Forget the fact that you are alone, in hiding, that there are soldiers who want to kill you, that your best friend is ill, that everything has been taken from you. Open the tin! In the end, I managed it with the fork that I had found, hammering at it with a heavy stone and piercing the lid so many times that eventually I was able to peel it away. The herring was grey and oily. I’m not sure that anyone eats it any more, but it had always been a special treat when I was growing up. My mother would serve it with slabs of dry black bread or sometimes potatoes. When I smelt the fish, I thought of her and I felt all the pain welling up once more, even though I was doing everything I could to block out what had happened.
I tried to feed some to Leo but, after all my efforts, he was too tired to eat and it was all I could manage to force him to sip some tea. I was suddenly very hungry myself and gobbled down one of the tins, leaving the other two for him. I was still hopeful that he would be feeling better in the morning. It seemed to me that now that he was resting, he was breathing a little easier. Maybe all the rain would have washed away the anthrax spores. His clothes were still drying in front of the fire. Sitting there, watching his chest rise and fall beneath the covers, I tried to persuade myself that everything would be all right.
It was the beginning of the longest night of my life. I took off my outer clothes and lay down on the second bunk but I couldn’t sleep. I was frightened that the fire would go out. I was frightened that the soldiers would find the hut and burst in. Actually, I was so filled with fears of one sort or another that I didn’t need to define them. For hours I listened to the crackle of the flames and the rasp of Leo’s breath in his throat. From time to time, I drifted into a state where I was floating, although still fully conscious. Several times, I got up and fed more of the furniture into the stove, doing my best to break the wood without making too much noise. Once, I went outside to urinate. It was no longer raining but a few drops of water were still falling from the trees. I could hear them but I couldn’t see them. The sky was totally black. As I stood there, I heard the howl of a wolf. I had been holding the torch but at that moment I almost dropped it into the undergrowth. So the wolves weren’t just a bit of village gossip! This one could have been far away, but it seemed to be right next to me, the sound starting impossibly low then rising higher and higher as if the creature had somehow flown into the air. I buttoned myself up and ran back inside, determined that nothing would get me out again until it was light.
My own clothes were still damp. I took them off and knelt in front of the fire. If anything got me through that night it was that stove. It kept me warm and without its glow I wouldn’t have been able to see, which would have made all my imaginings even worse. I took out the roll of ten-ruble notes that had been in the tin and at the same time I found the little black bag my mother had given me. I opened it. Inside, there was a pair of earrings, a necklace and a ring. I had never seen them before and wondered where she had got them from. Were they valuable? I made an oath to myself that whatever happened, I would never sell them. They were the only remains of my past life. They were all I had left. I wrapped them up again and climbed onto the other bunk. Almost naked and lying uncomfortably on the hard mattress, I dozed off again. When I next opened my eyes, the fire was almost out and when I pulled back the shutters, the very first streaks of pink were visible outside.
The sun seemed to take for ever to rise. They call them the small hours, that time from four o’clock onwards, and I know from experience that they are always the most miserable of the day. That is when you feel most vulnerable and alone. Leo was sound asleep. The hut was even more desolate than before – I had fed almost anything that was made of wood into the fire. The world outside was wet, cold and threatening. As I got dressed again, I remembered that in a few hours I should have been going to school.
Wake up, Yasha. Come on! Get your things together…
I had to force my mother’s voice out of my head. She wasn’t there for me any more. Nobody was. From now on, if I was to survive, I had to look after myself.
The two remaining tins of fish were still waiting, uneaten, on a shelf beside the fire. I was tempted to wolf them down myself, as I was really hungry, but I was keeping them for Leo. I made some more tea and ate a little chocolate, then I went back outside. The sky was now a dirty off-white, and the trees were more skeletal than ever. But at least there was nobody around. The soldiers hadn’t come back. Walking around, I came across a shrub of bright red lingonberries. They were past their best but I knew they would be edible. We used to make them into a dish called kissel, a sort of jelly, and I stuffed some of them into my mouth. They were slightly sour but I thought they would keep me going and I placed several more in my pockets.
“Yasha…?”
As I returned to the hut, I heard Leo call my name. He had woken up. I was delighted to hear his voice and hurried over to him. “How are you feeling, Leo?” I asked.
“Where are we?”
“We found a shed. After the tunnel. Don’t you remember?”
“I’m very cold, Yasha.”
He looked terrible. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t pretend otherwise. There was no colour at all in his face, and his eyes were burning, out of focus. I didn’t know why he was cold. The one thing I had managed to do was to keep the hut reasonably warm and I had put plenty of makeshift covers on the bed.
“Maybe you should eat something,” I said.
I brought the open tin of herring over but he recoiled at the smell. “I don’t want it,” he said. His voice rattled in his chest. He sounded like an old man.
“All right. But you must have some tea.”
I took the mug over and forced him to sip from it. As he strained his neck towards me, I noticed a red mark under his chin and, very slowly, trying not to let him know what I was doing, I folded back the covers to see what was going on. I was shocked by what I saw. The whole of Leo’s neck and chest was covered in dreadful, diamond-shaped sores. His skin looked as if it had been burned in a fire. I could easily imagine that his whole body was like this and I didn’t want to see any more. His face was the only part of him that had been spared. Underneath the covers he was a rotting corpse.
I knew that if it hadn’t been for my parents, I would be exactly the same as Leo. They had injected me with something that protected me from the biochemical weapon that they had helped to build. They had said it acted quickly and here was the living – or perhaps the dying – proof. No wonder the authorities had been so quick to quarantine the area. If the anthrax had managed to do this to Leo in just a few hours, imagine what it would do to the rest of Russia as it spread.
“I’m sorry, Yasha,” Leo whispered.