Russian Roulette (3 page)

I remember saying those words. I can still smell the smoke coming from a bonfire somewhere on the other side of the village. I can hear the water rippling. I see Leo, twirling a piece of grass between his fingers. Our bicycles are lying one on top of the other. There are a few puffs of cloud in the sky, floating lazily past. A fish suddenly breaks the surface of the river and I see its scales glimmer silver in the sunlight. It is a warm afternoon at the start of September. And in twenty-four hours everything will have changed. Estrov will no longer exist.

When I got home, my mother was already making dinner. Food was a constant subject of conversation in our village because there was so little of it and everyone grew their own. We were lucky. As well as a vegetable patch, we had a dozen chickens that were all good layers, so (unless the neighbors crept in and stole them) we always had plenty of eggs. She was making a stew with potatoes, turnips, and canned tomatoes that had turned up the week before in the shop and had sold out instantly. It was exactly the same meal as we’d had the night before. She would serve it with slabs of black bread and, of course, small tumblers of vodka. I had been drinking vodka since I was nine years old.

My mother was a slender woman with bright blue eyes and hair that must have once been as blond as mine but was already gray, even though she was only in her thirties. She wore it tied back so that I could see the curve of her neck. She was always pleased to see me and she always took my side. There was that time, for example, when Leo and I were almost arrested for letting off bombs outside the police station. We had got up at first light and dug holes in the ground, which we’d filled up with the gunpowder stripped from about five hundred matches. Then we’d snuck behind the wall of the churchyard and watched. It was two hours before the first police car drove over our booby trap and set it off. There was a bang. The front tire was shredded and the car lost control and drove through a bush. The two of us nearly died laughing, but I wasn’t so amused when I got home and found Yelchin, the police chief, in my front room. He asked me where I’d been, and when I said I’d been running an errand for my mother, she took my side, even though she knew I was lying. Later on she scolded me, but I know that she was secretly amused.

In our household, my mother and my grandmother did most of the talking. My father was a very thoughtful man who looked exactly like the scientist that he was, with graying hair, a serious sort of face, and glasses. He lived in Estrov but his heart was still in Moscow. He kept all his old books around him, and when letters came from the city, he would disappear to read them and at dinner he would be kilometers away. Why did I never ask more questions about him? I ask myself that now, but I suppose nobody ever does. When you are young, you accept your parents for what they are and you believe the stories they tell you.

Conversation at dinner was often difficult because my parents didn’t like to discuss their work at the factory and there was only so much I could tell them about my day at school. As for my grandmother, she had somehow got stuck in the past, twenty years ago, and much of what she said didn’t connect with reality at all. But that night was different. Apparently there had been a fire at the factory . . . nothing serious. But my father was worried and for once he spoke his mind.

“It’s these new investors,” he said. “All they think about is money. They want to increase production and to hell with safety measures. Today it was just the generator plant. But suppose it had been one of the laboratories?”

“You should talk to them,” my mother said.

“They won’t listen to me. They’re pulling the strings from Moscow and they’ve got no idea.” He threw back his vodka and swallowed it in one gulp. “That’s the new Russia for you, Eva. We all get wiped out and as long as they get their check, they don’t give a damn.”

This all struck me as very strange. How could the production of fertilizers and pesticides be so dangerous?

My mother seemed to agree. “You worry too much,” she said.

“We should never have gone along with this. We should never have been part of it.” My father refilled his glass. He didn’t drink as much as a lot of the people in the village, but like them, he used vodka to draw down the shutters between him and the rest of the world. “The sooner we get out of here, the better. We’ve been here long enough.”

“The swans are back,” my grandmother said. “They’re so beautiful at this time of the year.”

There were no swans in the village. As far as I knew, there never had been.

“Are we really going to leave?” I asked. “Can we go and live in Moscow?”

My mother reached out and put her hand on mine. “Maybe one day, Yasha. And you can go to university, just like your father. But you have to work hard . . .”

• • •

The next day was a Sunday and I had no school. On the other hand, the factory never closed and both my parents had drawn the weekend shift, working until four and leaving me to clean the house and take my grandmother her lunch. Leo looked in after breakfast, but we both had a ton of homework, so we agreed to meet down at the river at six and perhaps kick a ball around with some other boys. Just before midday I was lying on my bed, trying to plow my way through a chapter of
Crime and Punishment,
which was this huge Russian masterpiece we were all supposed to read. As Leo had said to me, none of us knew what our crime was, but reading the book was certainly a punishment. The story had begun with a murder, but since then nothing had happened and there were about six hundred pages to go.

Anyway, I was lying there with my head close to the window, allowing the sun to slant in on the pages. The time now was five minutes past twelve. I was wearing my watch, a Pobeda with black numerals on a white face and fifteen jewels, which had been made just after the Second World War and had once belonged to my grandfather. And that was when I heard the explosion. Actually, I wasn’t even sure it was an explosion. It sounded more like a paper bag being crumpled somewhere out of sight. I climbed off the bed and went and looked out the open window. There was absolutely nothing to see. I returned to the book. How could I have so quickly forgotten my parents’ conversation of the night before?

I read another thirty pages. I suppose another half an hour must have passed. And then I heard another sound—soft and far away but unmistakable all the same. It was gunfire, the sound of an automatic weapon being emptied. That was impossible. People went hunting in the woods sometimes, but not with machine guns, and there had never been any army exercises in the area. I looked out the window a second time and saw smoke rising into the air on the other side of the hills to the south of Estrov. That was when I knew that none of this was my imagination. Something had happened. The smoke was coming from the factory.

I leaped off the bed, dropping the book, and ran down the stairs and out of the house. The village was completely deserted. Our chickens were strutting around on the front lawn of our house, pecking at the grass. There was a dog barking somewhere. Everything was ridiculously normal. But then I heard footsteps and looked up. Mr. Vladimov, our neighbor, was running down from his front door, wiping his hands on a cloth.

“Mr. Vladimov!” I called out to him. “What’s happened?”

“I don’t know,” he wheezed back. He had probably been working on his tractor. He was covered in oil. “They’ve all gone to see. I’m going with them.”

“What do you mean . . . all of them?”

“The whole village! There’s been some sort of accident!”

Before I could ask any more, he had disappeared down the muddy track.

He had no sooner gone than the alarm went off. It was extraordinary, deafening, like nothing I had ever heard before. It couldn’t have been more urgent if war had broken out. And as the noise of it resounded in my head, I realized that it had to be coming from the factory, more than a kilometer and a half away! How could it be so loud? Even the fire alarm at school had been nothing like this. It was a high-pitched siren that seemed to spread out from a single point until it was everywhere—behind the forest, over the hills, in the sky—and yet at the same time it was right next to me, in front of my house. I knew now that there had been another accident. I had heard it, of course, the explosion. But that had been half an hour ago. Why had they been so slow raising the alarm?

The siren stopped. And in the sudden silence, the countryside, the village where I had spent my entire life, seemed to have become photographs of themselves and it was as if I was on the outside looking in. There was nobody around me. The dog had stopped barking. Even the chickens had scattered.

I heard the sound of an engine. A car came hurtling toward me, bumping over the track. The first thing I registered was that it was a black Lada. Then I took in the bullet holes all over the bodywork and the fact that the front windshield was shattered. But it was only when it stopped that I saw the shocking truth.

My father was in the front seat. My mother was behind the wheel.

I
DIDN’T EVEN KNOW MY
mother could drive. We hardly ever saw any cars in Estrov because nobody could afford to buy one, and anyway, there wasn’t anywhere to go. The black Lada probably belonged to one of the senior managers.

Not that I was thinking about these things just then. The front door opened and my mother got out. Straightaway, I saw the fear in her eyes. She raised a hand in my direction, urging me to stay where I was, then ran around to the other side and helped my father out. He was wearing a loose white coat that flapped around his normal clothes, and I saw—with a sense of horror that was like a pool of black water sucking me in—that he had been hurt. The fabric was covered with his blood. His left arm hung limp. He was clutching his chest with his right hand. His face looked thin and pale and his eyes were empty, clouded by pain. My mother had her arm around him, helping him to walk. She at least had not been hurt, but she still looked like someone who had escaped from a war zone. There were streaks running down her face. Her hair was wild. No boy should ever see his parents in this way. It is not natural. Everything I had always believed and taken for granted was instantly smashed.

The two of them reached me. My father had no more strength and sank to the ground, resting his back against our garden fence. And all the time I had said nothing. There were a million questions I wanted to ask, but the words simply would not reach my lips. Time seemed to have fragmented. The first explosion, the smoke and the gunfire, going downstairs, seeing the car . . . they were like four separate incidents that could have taken place years apart. I needed them to explain it for me. Somehow, perhaps, they could make it all make sense.

“Yasha!” My father was the first to speak and it didn’t sound like him at all. The pain was distorting his voice.

“What’s happened? What is it? Who hurt you? You’ve been shot!” Once I had begun to speak I could barely stop, but I was making little sense.

My father reached out and grabbed hold of my arm. “I am so glad you’re here. I was afraid you’d be out of the house. But you have to listen to us very carefully, Yasha. We have very little time.”

“Yasha, my dear boy . . .” It was my mother who had spoken and suddenly there were tears coursing down her cheeks. It didn’t matter what had happened at the factory. It was seeing me that had made her cry.

“I will try to explain to you,” my father said. “But you can’t argue with me. Do you understand that? You have to leave the village immediately.”

“What? I’m not leaving! I’m not going anywhere.”

“You have no choice. If you stay here, they will kill you.” His grip on me tightened. “They’re already on their way. Do you understand me? They’ll be here in a few minutes . . .”

“Who? Why?”

My father was too weak, in too much pain to say anything more, so my mother took over.

“We never told you about the factory,” she said. “We weren’t allowed to. But it wasn’t just that. We didn’t want you to know. We were ashamed.” She wiped her eyes, pulling herself together. “We were making chemicals and pesticides for farmers, like we always said. But we were also making other things. For the military.”

“Weapons,” my father said. “Chemical weapons. Do you understand what I mean?” I said nothing, so he went on. “We had no choice, Yasha. Your mother and I got into trouble with the authorities a long time ago, when we were in Moscow, and we were sent out here. That was before you were born. It was all my fault. They stopped us from teaching. They threatened us. We had to earn a living and there was no other way.”

The words were like a stampede of horses, galloping through my head. I wanted them to stop, to slow down. Surely all that mattered was to get help for my father. The nearest hospital was kilometers away, but there was a doctor in Rosna. It seemed to me that my father was getting weaker and that the blood was spreading.

But still they went on. “This morning there was an accident in the main laboratory,” my mother explained. “And something was released into the air. We had already warned them it might happen. You heard us talking about it only last night. But they wouldn’t listen. Making a profit was all that mattered to them. Well, it’s over now. The whole village has been contaminated. We have been contaminated. We brought it with us in that car. Not that it would have made any difference. It’s in the air. It’s everywhere.”

“What is? What are you talking about?”

“A form of anthrax.” My mother spat out the words. “It’s a sort of bacterium, but it’s been modified so that it’s very contagious and acts very quickly. It could wipe out an army! And maybe we deserve this. We were responsible. We helped to make it . . .”

“Do it!” my father said. “Do it now!” With his free hand, he fumbled in his pocket and took out a metal box, about fifteen centimeters long. It was the sort of thing that might contain a pen.

My mother took it. Her eyes were still fixed on me. “As soon as we knew what had happened, our first thoughts were for you,” she said. “Nobody was allowed to leave the factory. That was the first protocol. They had to keep us there, to contain us. But your father and I had already made plans . . . just in case. We stole a car and we smashed through the perimeter fence. We had to reach you.”

“The siren?”

“That was nothing to do with the accident. They set it off afterward. They saw we were trying to escape.” She drew a breath. “They sounded the alarm and the guards fired machine guns at us. Your father was hit. We were so frightened we wouldn’t be able to find you, that you wouldn’t be at the house . . .”

“Thank God you’re here!” my father said. He was still holding on to me. He was breathing with difficulty.

My mother opened the box. I didn’t know what would be inside or why it was so important, but when I looked down, I saw that it contained the last thing I had expected. There was some black velvet padding and, in the middle of that, a hypodermic syringe.

“For every weapon there has to be a defense,” my mother went on. “We made a poison, but we were also working on an antidote. This is it, Yasha. There was only a tiny amount of it, but we stole it and we brought it to you. It will protect you.”

“No. I don’t want it! You have it!”

“There isn’t enough for us. This is all we have.” My father’s hand had tightened on my arm, pinning me down. He was using the very last of his strength. “Do it, Eva,” he insisted.

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 shirtsleeve. 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 flashlight 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 so 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—which was a sort of scouting organization that existed throughout Russia. I had been given a dark green anorak, waterproof pants, and leather boots, which were still covered in dried mud. 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 also took my backpack, a flashlight, 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 cans, 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 around 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 traveled 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 it for your father. 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 and he worked with your father. You’ll find him at the Moscow 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.”