That night we set off with the first installment of things. The boy, whose name was now Nayden, rode atop the cart. To everyone’s surprise he’d recovered, then began sucking on the goat’s milk, and now rode wrapped in a sheepskin. Lena walked alongside the cart, holding onto the ropes.
At dawn we reached our new home, at which point my father immediately made a second run and then a third. He was like a cat carrying more and more of his litter in his teeth, which is to say all the many possessions he’d acquired, and now the little hut was smothered in things. That day, when all of us collapsed from exhaustion, my father set off for guard duty. At night, on his wheelbarrow, he brought back some early vegetables from the garden-potatoes, carrots, beets, and little onions. We laid this all out in the underground storage he’d created. The same night he set off again, but limped back almost immediately with an empty wheelbarrow. Gloomily he announced: “That’s it!” He’d brought a can of milk for the boy. It turned out our house had been claimed by some kind of squad. They’d already posted a guard at the plot, and taken Anisya’s goat. Anisya had lain in wait for my father on his escape path with that can of milk. My father was sad, but also he was pleased, since he’d once again managed to escape, and to escape with his whole family.
Now our only hope lay in my father’s little plot and in the mushrooms we could find in the forest. Lena stayed in the house with the boy-we didn’t take her with us to the forest now but locked her in the house to keep her out of the way. Strangely enough she sat quietly with the boy and didn’t beat her fists against the door. Nayden greedily drank the potato broth, while my mother and I scoured the woods with our bags and backpacks. We no longer pickled the mushrooms but just dried them-there was hardly any salt left now. My father began digging a well, as the nearest stream was very far.
On the fifth day of our immigration we were joined by Baba Anisya. She came to us with empty hands, with just a cat on her shoulder. Her eyes looked strange. She sat for a while on the porch, holding the frightened cat on her lap, then gathered herself and went off into the woods. The cat hid under the porch. Soon Anisya came back with a whole apron’s worth of mushrooms, though among them was a bright-red poisonous one. She remained sitting on the porch and didn’t go into the house; we brought her out a portion of our poor mushroom soup in a can from the milk she used to give us. That evening my father took Anisya into the basement, where he’d built our third refuge, and she lay down and rested and the next day began actively scouring the forest for mushrooms. I’d go through the mushrooms she brought back, so she wouldn’t poison herself. We’d dry some of them, and some we’d throw out. One time, coming home from the woods, we found all our refugees together on the porch. Anisya was rocking Nayden in her arms and telling Lena, choking on her words: “They went through everything, took everything… They didn’t even look in on Marfutka, but they took everything of mine. They dragged the goat away by her rope.” Anisya remained useful for a long time to come, took our goats out for walks, sat with Nayden and Lena until the frosts came. Then one day she lay down with the kids in the warmest place in the house, on the bunk above the stove, and from then on got up only to use the outhouse.
The winter came and covered up all the paths that might have led to us. We had mushrooms, berries (dried and boiled), potatoes from my father’s plot, a whole attic filled with hay, pickled apples from abandoned gardens in the forest, even a few cans of pickled cucumbers and tomatoes. On the little field, under the snow, grew our winter crop of bread. We had our goats. We had a boy and a girl, for the continuation of the race, and a cat, who brought us mice from the forest, and a dog, Red, who didn’t want to eat these mice, but whom my father would soon count on for hunting rabbits. My father was afraid to hunt with his rifle. He was even afraid to chop wood because someone might hear us. He chopped wood only during the howling snowstorms. We had a grandmother-the storehouse of the people’s wisdom and knowledge.
Cold desolate space spread out around us on all sides.
One time my father turned on the radio and tried for a while to hear what was out there. Everything was silent. Either the batteries had died, or we really were the last ones left. My father’s eyes shone: He’d escaped again!
If in fact we’re not alone, then they’ll come for us. That much is clear. But, first of all, my father has a rifle, and we have skis and a smart dog. Second of all, they won’t come for a while yet. We’re living and waiting, and out there, we know, someone is also living, and waiting, until our grain grows and our bread grows, and our potatoes, and our new goats-and that’s when they’ll come. And take everything, including me. Until then they’re being fed by our plot, and Anisya’s plot, and Tanya’s household. Tanya is long gone, but Marfutka is still there. When we’re like Marfutka, they won’t touch us either.
But there’s a long way to go until then. And in the meantime, of course, we’re not just sitting here. My father and I have commenced work on our next refuge.
The Miracle
THERE ONCE LIVED A WOMAN WHOSE SON HANGED HIMSELF.
Which is to say, when she returned home from the night shift one morning, her boy was lying on the floor next to an overturned stool underneath a length of thin synthetic rope.
He was unconscious, but his heart still beat faintly, and so the paramedic who came with the ambulance suggested that the son wasn’t really trying to hang himself.
Even though there was a note on the table: “Mom, I’m sorry. I love you.”
And it was only when she’d returned home from the hospital, having held her son’s hand as they rode in the ambulance, and then with him into the hospital as he lay on a stretcher, right up to the doors of the intensive care unit, where she finally had to let him go-only upon returning home did she discover that the wool sock in which she kept her savings was empty.
She kept the sock at the bottom of an old suitcase. It had contained two wedding rings, all her money, and her gold earrings set with rubies.
The poor woman then saw that the tape player-the one valuable thing she’d ever bought, because it was the only way she could get her son to return to school-was also gone.
Looking around some more, she found a number of empty bottles under the bed and in the kitchen, a mound of dirty plates in the sink, and traces of vomit in the filthy bathroom.
She knew the minute she walked in the door that there had been a party-her son was being drafted into the army and had wanted to invite his friends over, but the mother kept objecting.
And yet when she stood at the entrance to their studio apartment that morning and took in the crooked lamp, the table that had been moved, the overturned stool, and, above all, the rope and the body on the floor, all her angry thoughts left her.