Do you know why They took you? I asked.
No, said the child. They never said.
I daresay They wouldn’t, I said.
We used to call out of the hole, she said, but then we heard… we heard people coming to help us, and the… monsters… always…
It’s all right, I said hastily. Don’t feel bad.
She said, So we stopped.
Are They hurting you? Are They… experimenting on you? I said. Behind me, V. said: Eva. Shut up, I told him.
Olga said, No. But there isn’t much to eat. And sometimes people come by and they… take us out. Usually the young ones. And they don’t come back.
After a judicious pause she added, They haven’t taken me yet, of course, because I’m almost eleven.
I said, Sit tight. We’re coming to get you out. Soon. We’ll come back. We’ll come back.
No reply. I suppose she doesn’t believe us. I wouldn’t either. And what if it’s… I can’t help but think. What if I don’t believe her? What if it’s a monster or something, imitating her voice? Are They capable of something like that? What if it’s a trap, meant to lure in the very, very last few survivors?
I can’t believe, though, that They would think of that.
The doors are chained shut, the windows boarded. Next time, V. said as we ran back to the flat, we’ll bring some bolt-cutters and get in there, and… But I wasn’t listening.
I am already planning. We can’t, I think, go in through the inside. Too many hallways and doors, good for an ambush. We’d be ripped to bits. But from the outside, where no one expects it…
I don’t think They would play a trick like that, V. said when I brought up my theory about the voices. But I can believe that Their agents would. That’s an old trick, a wartime trick. They lure you with something. Warehouses full of food. Ammo dumps. Hostages, POWs. Wives. Children. And then, when enough soldiers fall for the lure…
That’s true, I said. And we fell silent.
There’s ages of majority, I thought, and before that, we as adults are assumed to be the custodians of the young. We make decisions for them. We pick them up, we put them down. We drive them around. We tell them: You will go to such-and-such a school, you will study such-and-such an instrument. Oh, there may be some input; but we don’t allow them to be decision-makers, we don’t allow active participation in their lives. Maybe other parents did, I don’t know. But there’s no five year-olds I would trust to make a good decision about their future, because they’d just run right into the street.
And yet, I did not ask these children: Do you want to come out? Into the world? It will not be the world you remember.
Of course, they’ve been kidnapped by transdimensional monsters. If anyone says ‘No’ I suppose it’ll just be Stockholm Syndrome.
Still, though.
November 17
We have a plan, not a good one, and depending equally on luck that we cannot count on, science we do not know, and risks of which we are blithely and necessarily ignorant. Truly, it is the kind of plan you picture people coming up with in the old days, when their brains were mush from hunger and propaganda, when everything seemed like a good idea.
Back in the old neighbourhood, we four, our strange little family, gathered at A.’s place, and he called in the others as surreptitiously as he could over the space of a few hours. I made a speech. V. made a speech. P. curled up on the sagging sofa and chewed on her knuckles till they bled. You’re just a child yourself, I wanted to tell her, but of course, if she was at the university, she was in every respect not. But I keep comparing her to me and thinking: Look at you, I have a pair of shoes older than you.
I think I do, too. Or did.
The others fell silent after we spoke; B. rocked back and forth, and watched me, his mouth opening and closing as if he was going to speak. An inconclusive meeting. We made no new recruits. Disheartening: and we have no means to do what we plan anyway. Hell, by the time we figure something out, all the kids might be gone. But if we don’t go back soon, they’ll lose hope.
The time has come to pray, but I find myself speaking into a humming void: not the proud and obnoxious atheism of my twenties, not the uncertain agnosticism of my childhood, but just… calling a line, and hearing it ring and ring and ring, no one picking up. Pick up, I beg, and I clasp my hands now at night. Let me feel as if there’s something there.
Perhaps They have usurped God too, shoved Their way into where He lives, I don’t know. If there are any strange angles up there, They will find them; They always do. I find myself childishly, exhaustedly glad our new flat is all curves and circles.
Instead of praying for help or comfort I find myself mumbling at night to the children who cannot hear me.
Here, children, I will say when we get them out. We have saved you; we have delivered you into this world that some of you may remember, and some of you may well not.
Here, you must know the good guys from the bad guys.
The bad guys no longer label themselves with sharp black uniforms or mangled crosses, nor do they bear our flag, or the badge of our city; they are like and unlike the simple images in your schoolbooks. Do you remember those?
I make these speeches to myself in here only. I would never say such things to children.
And yet: Look, children, we have rescued you. You owe us nothing, not even your gratitude; and we owe you everything, merely for staying alive. But I want you to look carefully at this world.
Here are the bad guys. Are you paying attention?
Hunger. Thirst. Illness. Injury.
Rain. Snow. Dust.
Sickness. Loneliness. Despair. Mistrust.
Agents. Looters. Rats.
The statues of the conquerors.
The trees which seek to seize and skin you.
The small monsters which seek to harry and eat you.
The Them, who have come from far away, and a different time, to drag you into the darkness. But Them you already know.
Did They speak to you, in the darkness? What did They tell you? Did They admit that They were the enemy? It should have been clear to you that They were, but you are all very young. Well, never fear. We have gotten you out.
I choke on: And I will be your mother now.
I’m a mother already. I’m a mother of two. That is part of me, part of who I am. But where are they now? They’re fighting and they were too young to fight, I—
I weep now, writing these words. We will never get them out, will we? And then even if we survive, it will be for nothing. Nothing, absolutely nothing.
I rehearse the plan in my head, I stare at the lines on my left palm, cramped around this pen, but conveniently, even mystically, aligned with the map I have in my head. Here, this bubble on my lifeline is the old seminary; and here is the river, its ice cracking under the weight of a sparrow; and here are the train tracks; and here is the lake; and here, at my wrist, where the blood beats thickly in the green veins, is freedom.
Oh, we can’t do this. What were we thinking?
What will we do?
November 18
B. is dead. Note how I don’t say ‘missing.’ Confirmed. Added to the tally at the back of the book.
No burial place.
And he couldn’t even—I hate to say it. He couldn’t even hang himself? Neatly, quietly? Or shoot himself? We would not have begrudged him the bullet. There’s lots of ammunition left if you know where to look in the city, and there must still be handguns around here and there.
No, I’m sorry to say, he concocted some kind of homemade device and blew up not merely himself but his entire building.