My mother was holding the syringe up to the light, tapping it with her finger, examining the glass vial. She pressed the plunger with her thumb so that a bead of liquid appeared at the end of the needle. I began to struggle. I couldn’t believe that she was about to inject me.
My father wouldn’t let me move. As weak as he was, he kept me still while my mother closed in on me. It must be every child’s nightmare to be attacked by his own parents and at that moment I forgot that everything they were doing was for my own good. They were saving me, not killing me, but that wasn’t how it seemed to me. I can still see my mother’s face, the cold determination as she brought the needle plunging down. She didn’t even bother to roll up my shirt sleeve. The point went through the material and into my arm. It hurt. I think I actually felt the liquid, the antidote, coursing into my bloodstream. She pulled out the needle and dropped the empty hypodermic onto the ground. I looked down and saw more blood, my own, forming a circle on my sleeve.
My father let go of me. My mother closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, she was smiling. “Yasha, my dearest,” she said. “We don’t mind what happens to us. Can you understand that? Right now, you’re all we care about. You’re all that matters.”
The three of us stood there for a moment. We were like actors in a play who had run out of lines. We were breathless, shocked by the violence of what had taken place. It was like being in some sort of waking dream. We were surrounded by silence. Smoke was still rising slowly above the hills. And the village was still completely empty. There was nobody in sight.
It was my father who began again. “You have to go into the house,” he said. “You need to take some clothes with you and any food you can find. Look in the kitchen cupboard and put it all in your backpack. Get a torch and a compass. But, most important of all, there is a metal box in the kitchen. You know where it is… beside the fire. Bring it out to me.” I hesitated so he went on, putting all his authority into his voice. “If you are not out of the village in five minutes, Yasha, you will die with us. Even with the antidote. The government will not allow anyone to tell what has happened here. They will hunt you down and they will kill you. If you want to live, you must do as we say.”
Did I want to live? Right then, I wasn’t even sure. But I knew that I couldn’t let my parents down, not after everything they had done to reach me. Not daring to speak, my mother silently implored me. I could feel my throat burning – I reeled away and staggered into the house. My father was still sitting on the ground with his legs stretched out in front of him. Looking back, I saw my mother go over and kneel beside him.
Almost tripping over myself, I ran across the garden and through the front door. I went straight up to my bedroom and, in a daze, pulled out the uniform I had worn on camping trips with the Young Pioneers, our Russian scouting organization. I had been given a dark green anorak and waterproof trousers. I wasn’t sure whether to carry them or to wear them, but in the end I pulled them on over my ordinary clothes. I quickly put on my leather boots, which were still covered in dried mud and took my backpack, a torch and a compass from under the bed. I looked around me, at the pictures on the wall – a football club, various helicopters, a photograph of the world taken from outer space. The book that I had been reading was on the floor. My school clothes were folded on a chair. I could not accept that I was leaving all this behind, that I would never see any of it again.
I went downstairs. Every house in the village had its own special hiding place and ours was in the wall beside the stove. There were two loose bricks and I pulled them out to reveal a hollow opening with a tin box inside. I grabbed it and took it with me. As I straightened up, I noticed my grandmother, still standing at the sink, peeling potatoes, with her apron tied tightly around her waist.
She beamed at me. “I can’t remember when there’s been a better harvest,” she said. She had absolutely no idea what was going on.
I went over to a cupboard and shoved some tins, tea, sugar, a box of matches and two bars of chocolate into my backpack. I filled a glass with water I had taken from the well. Finally, I kissed my grandmother quickly on the side of the head and hurried out, leaving her to her work.
The sky had darkened while I was in the house. How could that have happened? It had only been a few minutes, surely? But now it looked as though it was going to rain, perhaps one of those violent downpours we often had during the months leading up to winter. My father was sitting where I had left him and seemed to be asleep. His hand was clutched across the wound in his chest. I wanted to carry the tin box over to him but my mother moved round and stood in my way. I held out the glass of water.
“I got this. For Father.”
“That’s good of you, Yasha. But he doesn’t need it.”
“But…”
“No, Yasha. Try to understand.”
It took a few moments for the significance of what she was saying to sink in and at once a trapdoor opened and I plunged through it, into a world of pain.
My mother took the box and lifted the lid. Inside there was a roll of banknotes – a hundred rubles, more money than I had ever seen. My parents must have been saving it from their salaries, planning for the day when they returned to Moscow. But that wasn’t going to happen, not now. She gave it all to me along with my internal passport, a document that everyone in Russia was required to own, even if you didn’t travel. Finally she took out a small, black velvet bag and handed it to me too.
“That is everything, Yasha,” she said. “You have to go.”
“Mother…” I began. I felt huge tears swell up in my eyes and the burning in my throat was worse than ever.
“You heard what your father said. Now, listen very carefully. You have to go to Moscow. I know it’s a long way away and you’ve never travelled on your own but you can make it. You can take the train. Not from Rosna. They’ll be checking everyone at the station. Go to Kirsk. You can reach it through the forest. That’s the safest way. Find the new highway and follow it. Do you understand?”
I nodded, miserably.
“You remember Kirsk. You’ve been there a few times. There’s a station with trains every day to Moscow… one in the morning, one in the evening. Take the evening train, when it’s dark. If anyone asks you, say you’re visiting an uncle. Never tell anyone you came from Estrov. Never use that word again. Promise me that.”
“Where will I go in Moscow?” I asked. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay with her.
She reached out and took me in her arms, hugging me against her. “Don’t be scared, Yasha. We have a good friend in Moscow. He’s a biology professor. He worked with your father and you’ll find him at the university. His name is Misha Dementyev. I’ll try to telephone him but I expect they’ll have cut the lines. It doesn’t matter. When you tell him who you are, he’ll look after you.”
Misha Dementyev. I clung onto the two words, my only lifeline.
My mother was still embracing me. I was looking at the curve of her neck, smelling her scent for the last time. “Why can’t you come with me?” I sobbed.
“It would do no good. I’m infected. I want to stay with your father. But it’s not so bad, knowing you’ve got away.” She moved me away from her, still holding me, looking straight into my eyes. “Now, you have to be brave. You have to leave. Don’t look back. Don’t let anyone stop you.”
“Mother…”
“I love you, my dear son. Now go!”
If I’d spoken to her again, I wouldn’t have been able to leave her. I knew that. We both did. I broke away. I ran.
The forest was on the other side of the house, to the north and spreading to the east of Estrov. It stretched on for about thirty miles, mainly pine trees but also linden, birch and spruce. It was a dark, tangled place and none of us ever went into it, partly because we were afraid of getting lost but also because there were rumoured to be wolves around, particularly in the winter. But somewhere inside me I knew my mother was right. If there were police or soldiers in the area, they would concentrate on the main road. I would be safer out of sight. The highway that she’d mentioned cut through the forest and they were laying a new water pipe alongside it.