I didn’t expect to arrive at the turning on to the outer ring road so suddenly: I’d only just seen its lights twinkling far ahead, but now noticed the large white road signs with the names of towns and distances in kilometres on them. And then I heard Sergey’s crackling voice over the radio:
“Anya, turn right here.”
“I know,” I said, irritated, and realised as I was saying it that he couldn’t hear me because the microphone was still in the cup holder, where I usually kept my cigarettes – but nobody in the car pointed that out to me. The next moment the radio crackled again – but this time it was a new, unfamiliar voice: “Hey mate”, it said, sounding tense, “did you come across any open petrol stations on your way? I only need to get to Odintsovo, they’ve shut them all, motherf…”
Before Sergey could reply, I took the microphone, pressed the button and said: “Don’t go to Odintsovo. I’d turn around, if I were you.”
The man on the other end sounded worried: “What’s happening in Odintsovo, then? Do you know something?”, and then, without waiting for an answer: “Where are you?”
“Don’t tell him, Anya,” Boris said before I could reply. Then he reached over and took the microphone out of my hand and clasped it in his fist, as if trying to block any sound, in case I was going to answer this unknown voice, who was still shouting into the air: “Hello? Where are you at the moment? What’s happening in Odintsovo? Hello?”
“It could still be safe in Odintsovo, you know,” I said to Boris without turning my head, as we were leaving the motorway.
“Odintsovo’s ten kilometres from Moscow, Anya, how do you think it could be safe? And also, we’re on the same channel as everyone else, so no personal information – who we are, where we are and what car we’ve got, do you understand? If this man isn’t lying about petrol, even our small amount of fuel makes us a target for any ‘decent citizen’ running away from the city who’ll shoot us in the head to fill his tank. Let alone the usual crazies who infested this road even in the good times, before all this started’.
“I know that,” I said, still irritated, and we stayed silent after that. Sergey was silent too; in complete silence our three cars left the motorway and drove under the sign to Novopetrovskoye, beyond which we passed residential areas on both sides of the road. I noticed a petrol station and next to it, by the slip road, two long curtain-sided trucks with their lights off; the petrol station was lit up but very obviously shut: there was nobody near the pumps or the cashier’s window. We drove straight past, without even slowing down. I thought I saw a broken window and bits of glass glinting on the clear, dry pavement, but before I had a chance to take a proper look, there was a bend, and I lost sight of the petrol station.
“Did you see that, Dad?” Sergey asked; he was obviously avoiding talking to me, and I regretted being short with him earlier, and then – after I remembered that he hadn’t heard my reply anyway – I was sorry that instead of talking to him, I had talked to a stranger on the radio, who, as if on purpose, had just stopped hogging the frequency with his endless questions and finally fallen silent.
Boris brought the microphone to his mouth and said softly, “Don’t talk on the way, Sergey, we’ll talk later.”
After the fire at the gingerbread village the rural calm that surrounded us was no longer free from danger, even though everything seemed normal at first glance: the lighted windows, the parked cars in front of the houses, – but what seemed bizarre to me at the moment was the absence of people on the streets. It wasn’t late yet but nowhere could I see anyone walking, or children playing, or dogs running, or the usual old grandmothers selling their garish towels, potatoes and suspicious mushroom concoctions in glass jars of every size. There was an alarming, deadly stillness in the air, as if something really bad was waiting for us behind every corner and every bend of the road, and I was glad that we weren’t walking past these lifeless houses but zooming past them at hundred kilometres per hour – too fast for anything to stop us.
We passed a small building with a green roof and grilles on the windows, the size of a bus stop; underneath the roof we could just see the sign ‘Mini-market’. Despite the name, it looked more like a roadside kiosk. Maybe because the ill-fated ‘Mini-Market’ was closer to the road than the petrol station we left behind, the iron door had been ripped off its hinges and the windows broken; but there was nobody here either. Perhaps the unfortunate incident had happened in the morning, or maybe even the day before.
The deafening silence which was ringing in my ears must have affected everyone else as well, because Mishka suddenly said:
“Mum, put some music on, please, it’s so quiet…”
I reached out, pressed the tuner button and instead of the radio station I was used to, the empty, dead hissing noise reminded me that the city which we had left behind, was no longer there; I imagined a deserted studio, scattered papers, telephone receiver off the hook, – why on earth is my imagination so fertile? – and quickly switched to the CD player. Nina Simone’s deep, husky voice started– Ne me quitte pas, il faut oublier, tout peut s’oublier, qui s’enfuit déja’, and the silence, beating on my ears, suddenly ebbed and allowed her voice to fill the space – so much that for a second I forgot what we were doing there – three cars on a long, empty road, as if we were friends, out for a day in the country, rather than fleeing as fast as we could, unable to take our eyes off the road.
“Anya,” said Boris, annoyed, “is this a funeral march or something? Can you find something more cheerful?”
“It depends how you listen to it, Boris,” I said, turning off the song, “I don’t know if there’s anything more cheerful, but in any case all other CDs are buried under your lovely radio, so either it’s Nina Simone or we’ll have to sing ourselves.”
“‘The wheels on the bus go round and round’” Mishka chanted suddenly from his back seat, quite out of tune; I caught his eye in the mirror and he smiled at me, which made me feel better straight away.
I saw Lenny’s brake lights come on, so we realised he was slowing down. We fell silent trying to work out why he was stopping. Boris, swearing in a low voice, struggled to find the button to wind the window down, and started poking his head out before the window was properly open. I couldn’t see anything from my side, but, in order not to bump into the back of Lenny’s car, I also braked. Even though there was no one at the side of the road, it made me anxious and afraid to drive slowly.
“It’s only a level crossing,” Boris said with relief, and I saw the signalman’s cabin, with dark windows and a raised red and white barrier, and next to it a road sign and railway lights. The black circles of the lights, like the eyes of a toy robot, were flashing red intermittently, and we could just about hear the quiet melodic ringing through the open window. The Land Cruiser came to a halt; I wound the window down and saw Sergey’s car stop right in front of the rails.
“But the barrier’s up,” I said, and Boris grabbed the radio and shouted into it:
“Sergey, why are you waiting?”
“Wait, Dad,” Sergey replied, “the light’s red, can’t see a damn thing, wouldn’t want to run into a train…”
He didn’t have time to finish his sentence, because the door of the signalman’s cabin, which had looked deserted, flung open and two people came out and started walking quickly towards us.