Rodinko smiled. “Absolutely. I am so glad we understand each other. For taking the sugar, you and your wife are to spend two weeks without pay at a kholhoz in Pelkino, helping with the summer harvest. Let that be part of your rehabilitation and re-education. And from now on, there will be no more bags of sugar falling at the feet of your family, no matter how accidental, no matter how providential. Am I making myself clear?”
“Very clear.”
“Have a good day, Comrade Metanov. You and your wife leave for Pelkino tomorrow morning at eight. Come here first for your papers.”
Deda’s Burning Questions
That night after dinner, Tania was gently swinging in the hammock with Deda, his arm around her. She knew Pasha was waiting for her, but she didn’t want to go just yet. Her heart was unusually heavy.
“What’s wrong, Tanechka?” Deda asked. “We got off easy. Just two weeks on a collective. Better than five years in Siberia. And I don’t mind doing my part to feed the people in the cities. After all, we are those people. The day may come when we need food, too.” He smiled at her.
But Tatiana wasn’t worried about Deda or Babushka, two weeks and they would be back; no, there was something more ominous that troubled her. She asked, “Deda, do you think Saika knows about her parents?”
“Probably not. Children blessedly know little about their parents. Why do you ask?”
Murak coming to their house because Saika told him about the bag of sugar. Wasn’t that reason enough? She didn’t want to tell her grandfather about Marina’s river “incident,” or the biking “incident.” Or Saika coming by with Stefan just when Dasha’s Mark was visiting. Or glimpsing the black malevolence inside Shavtala.
She chewed her lip.
“I’m going to tell you something about me, Tania,” Deda said. “Did you know I was asked to become a Party member? Yes, at the university. They offered to make me a full professor and to double my salary. They promised me that Pasha will be kept out of active combat when he reaches draft age. And some other benefits too.” He smiled. “Now see what I mean? Even you didn’t know that, did you?”
Tatiana was silent. Breathlessly she asked, “What kind of benefits?”
Deda laughed. “Vacation villas in Batumi on the Black Sea. Triple meat rations. Our very own five room apartment.”
“When did they offer you this?”
“Last year. I would also get a good pension, and that’s something I must think about since I’ll be retiring soon.”
Tatiana was still breathless. “Did you tell them no?”
Deda smiled. “Did you want me to tell them yes?”
That stumped her. “Do they ask you for things in return?”
“What do you think?”
She mulled. “Maybe they just ask you to wear a little hammer and sickle pin.”
“Yes, first. Then your son is expected to become a Party member. And your grandchildren are required to become Comsomols. And then they ask you why the son refused, and why the insubordinate, impossible youngest granddaughter refused, and why the people down the stairs have been meeting with foreigners in secret and I, as a diligent Party member, never said a word about it.”
“What people down the stairs?”
“Precisely. Everything comes at a price, Tatiana. Everything in your life. The question you have to ask yourself is, what price are you willing to pay?”
Tatiana felt a cold shiver. “I think it’s right to keep away if your heart tells you to keep away,” she said.
“Yes, you’re a great believer in that. Well, my heart told me to keep away.” Deda paused. “What is your heart telling you about the girl next door?”
“I think . . .” she drew out her words, “it’s telling me to keep away.”
Deda nodded. “Pasha certainly seems to think you should.”
“But really, Deda, I’m not sure of anything anymore. Everything seems so muddled this summer.” She heaved a sigh out of her shoulders.
Deda nodded again. “And what did I tell you to do to unmuddle? Whenever you’re unsure of yourself, whenever you’re in doubt, ask yourself three questions. What do you believe in? What do you hope for? But most important, ask yourself, what do you love?” His arm was around her. “And when you answer, Tania, you will know who you are. And more important—if you ask this question of the people around you, you will know who they are, too.” He paused. “Here, I’ll give you an example. I believe in my word. I don’t give it lightly, but when I give it, I keep it. I hope for my grandchildren. I hope you will grow up to have love. And I love your grandmother. That’s who I love most of all.” He smiled. “I think she’s listening to me just inside the porch.”
Tatiana, barely breathing, listened to her grandfather, looking up at him. “I love my family,” she said. “Since that’s all I know, that’s all I can answer.”
She didn’t want to lose this moment with her grandfather. He kissed her head and embracing her, whispered, “Tania, you’re making your grandfather want to cry. It’s the first time you’ve come and sat and wanted my advice. Please don’t tell me you’re growing up, my little baby.”
Tatiana had hoped that things would return to normal, but right after her grandparents left for Pelkino, poor Dasha for some mysterious, grownup, tear-stained reason had to quickly return to Leningrad. She didn’t say how long she’d be gone, but because there was now no one to take care of Pasha and Tatiana, Dasha arranged for Pasha to be sent a week early to the boys camp in Tolmachevo, and for Tatiana to be sent fifty kilometers east to Novgorod to stay with Marina’s parents on their dacha on Lake Ilmen.
Though Tatiana loved going with Marina to Lake Ilmen, her joy was short-lived indeed when Marina said, “Tania, my mother said I could bring Saika, too! Isn’t that great?”
Everything was so fine in Luga once, but recently there had been nothing but unbounded chaos. What did Blanca Davidovna rasp to Marina, just before the girls left? “He will wile away, and he will chip away, and he will erode your goodwill and your strength, gram by gram, grain by grain, and the glass that was once round will become jagged with his ministrations. He will not rest until he has you in his clutches, because you are susceptible, because you can be swayed.” Marina said she didn’t know whose tea leaves Blanca was talking about, because while she was saying this to Marina, Blanca was gripping Tatiana’s hands. But Tatiana knew. And she knew because of only one thing. Tatiana knew that like Deda, she could not be swayed.
Swimming on a Summer Afternoon
Lake Ilmen is an immense twenty-seven-mile-long lake, shaped like a dolphin and surrounded by flat shores and tall elms. The lake is shallow, thirty feet deep at most, its many low-lying areas silt and swamp. Because of this, the lake is warm to swim in. A hundred rivers and streams feed into Lake Ilmen, but only one flows out—the Volkhov River, which flows north to Lake Ladoga. On the shores of the Volkhov River and Lake Ilmen stands a nine-hundred-year-old city: Novgorod, or “New City,” the oldest city in Russia. Novgorod was ideally placed along the trade route from the East to the West, and flourished and grew in its wattle and daub splendor until Moscow overtook it in importance in the fifteenth century and St. Petersburg, the new capital of Russia, further diminished its glory from 1703 onward.
But the ancient ruins in the town remain on full display, and the myriad white onion-domed churches are magnificent even without the gold crosses on the crests. The river runs through the center of town, connected to Rurik’s wall and St. Sophia’s Church by a stone footbridge.
Tatiana loved to walk with Pasha and Marina through Novgorod’s cobbled streets, and on top of Rurik’s wall. This time, however, there were no excursions to the city from the dacha, just a short bus ride away. Pasha was not here, and Marina and Saika didn’t want to go. All they wanted to do was lie indolently near the lake and talk in lurid whispers, and if Tatiana came too close, they would say, go away, Tania, this conversation is not for you.
So Tatiana went away. Aunt Rita and Uncle Boris??
?s small dacha was nestled on a gentle slope leading to the lake, covered by a canopy of elms, blissfully isolated. Tatiana read, swam, and even went to Novgorod by herself once. Upon returning, she found the girls as she had left them, on their stomachs on the blanket, legs up at the knees, heads together, eyes toward the lake.
Tatiana noticed Aunt Rita and Uncle Boris were fighting more than usual. They had always clashed, but there had not been this constant stream of hostility through the sap-covered house. It wasn’t the fighting she didn’t understand. Her family fought too. It was the lack of loving that troubled her.
While inside Aunt Rita and Uncle Boris argued and outside Marina and Saika conspired, what Tatiana did was daydream. She sat with her back against the trees and daydreamed of Queen Margot and La Môle. What if Margot weren’t queen, married to a king? What if La Môle had been tortured but not beheaded? What if they escaped, ran away to the south of France perhaps, found an unnamed cobblestoned village and became lost? They married. They were alive. They were together. What bliss. What happiness. But what would a queen and a commoner’s grand passion look like in the everyday? Would it all be like this? Did even the most soaring love affair turn into Aunt Rita and Uncle Boris after a while?
That was so distasteful to Tatiana that the daydream instantly ended— as if the reel in the film broke. How intolerable. Better for La Môle to sweat blood and die on the rack. And as she climbed into her creaking cot and closed her eyes, the images in her head darkening, the images outside darkening, she thought, not another day like this one, please not one more day like this one.
The next day was not quite like this one.
“Tania, why don’t you come swim with us?”
“I already swam. See? My hair is wet.”
“Tania doesn’t want to swim!”
“She’s afraid of the lake.”
“She doesn’t like warm water.”
“No, Marina,” said Saika, “you know what it is, don’t you? She is embarrassed. She doesn’t want to get naked. Do you, Tania?”
“Tania, you’re not embarrassed, are you, that you have smaller breasts than Pasha?” And this was from Marina!
Tatiana didn’t look up from her book. Suddenly she found two naked, tittering, dripping girls, standing over her and Queen Margot.
“Come on, Tania,” said Saika, hands on her hips. “Want us to help you get undressed?”
“Yes, we’ll help.” Marina pulled on Tatiana’s vest.
Tatiana jumped up. “Don’t touch me,” she said, pressing her book to her chest.
“Tania is a chicken!”
“Tania, have you considered the possibility that you will never grow breasts, or hips or hair?”
“Tania,” Saika said, putting on a serious face. “Have you ever been kissed? I really want to know.”
Marina laughed. “You know she’s never been anythinged, Saika. She’s saving herself for some of that Queen Margot loooove.”
“Unlike you, Marina? Unlike you, Saika?” said Tatiana.
“Oooh! She’s in a fighting mood today,” Marina said merrily.
“This brings me to my point,” said Saika to Tatiana. “No boy is going to love you if you don’t grow some boobies. And even more important, and you and I talked about this, no one is going to want your unbloomed unopened flower, Tania.”
“Come in the water, Tania,” said Marina, tugging at her.
“Marina,” said Tatiana, yanking her arm away, “what do you think Pasha would say if he heard you?”
“Oh, like your brother doesn’t tease you!”
Tatiana cast her disapproving eyes on her cousin. She did not look at Saika at all. “Why didn’t you do this in front of him then?” she asked. “You waited until you got me where you think no one can see or hear you. But you’re forgetting—I can see and hear you.”
“Tania,” Saika said mock-seriously, “do you know what I heard in Azerbaijan? That if you’re unbloomed but touch the hair and breasts of a developed young woman, you will grow hair and breasts yourself.”
Tatiana kept stepping away and they kept following her, two wet girls stalking her through the clearing.
“Saika, is that true?” Marina said. “I never heard that.”
“Oh, yes. It’s true.” Saika paused. “Well?”
“Well, what?” Tatiana snapped. “Just go back in your water and continue whatever it was you were doing there.”
“Also the reverse is true,” Saika said quietly. “You don’t believe me. But it’s true. You will bloom if you’re touched by someone with a little bit of... savvy. It’s for your own good. Do you want to remain breastless and unloved? In the interest of helping you, I’m willing to break, how shall I put it, um, your... cover.”
Tatiana nearly tripped and fell on the ground, staggering backwards.
“It won’t hurt,” Saika whispered. “I promise you, it won’t hurt.”
“Listen to Saika, Tania,” said Marina. “She is wise beyond her years.”
“Come on,” said Saika, reaching for her. “It’ll be so much better later. Let me touch you.”
Tatiana swiped Saika’s hand with the Queen Margot book, swirled around and ran away while the girls bounded back into the water, their laughing voices carrying in an echo across the lake.
“Tania, come swim with us,” Marina called. “We’re just joking with you.”
Tatiana sat under a pine and pined for her summer. That’s it, I’m going back to Luga, she decided. Blanca Davidovna can take care of me until Dasha comes back.
Marina and Saika were splashing each other, diving and giggling as Tatiana sat far away, grimly watching.
Marina was on the shore reaching for a towel when Tatiana heard Saika’s voice from the lake. The voice sounded not quite panicked but not quite calm either. Saika said, “Marina,” and there was a tense timbre that made Tatiana get up off her haunches to better see Saika, who remained in the lake up to her waist, muddy and covered with what looked like weeds.
“Marina!” Saika said once again.
Marina, who was bent over a towel, said, what, then turned around— and started to scream.
When Tatiana heard the screaming, she ran to the lake.
It wasn’t weeds on Saika’s body. It was leeches.
Tatiana knew the leeches that lived in the silt of Lake Ilmen—long, fat, black, with hundreds of minute teeth in their two circular jaws that sawed through the skin of the host. Painlessly they attached themselves with one clamp at their mouth and another at their anus. Then they relaxed their bodies and began to suck, emitting an enzyme that prevented the two wounds from clotting. The blood suckers were four to eight millimeters in length and another seven millimeters in their ringed diameter. Dozens, hundreds of these, covered Saika’s body. Each of them could drink twice their body weight in blood before it fell away bloated.
“AHHHHHH! AHHHHHHH!”
That was Marina—who knew something about the Ilmen leeches, having once been bitten by one so badly that she required a week in the hospital and intravenous sulfa drugs to battle the infection that had spread into her abdomen.
“Marina, could you... stop.” That was Tatiana. She took another step to the shore. The leeches were all over Saika. One was on her face. Tatiana had no doubt they were in Saika’s matted black hair. She didn’t want to think about it, but she was sure they were in all of Saika’s hair, the hair Saika not ten minutes ago had asked Tatiana to touch. Tatiana stood in her white vest and white underwear, wanting only to turn and run back to the house and put on more clothes to cover herself, while Marina in a palpitating panic was running up and down the clearing, shrieking, “Oh, no! Oh, no! MAMA!!! MAMA!!! What are we going to do?”
“God, Marina!” Tatiana said quietly. “Tatiana,” Saika said quietly. “Can you help me?” She smiled. “Help me, Tania, please. I’m sorry about everything.”
Aunt Rita, having heard Marina’s screams—who hadn’t?—came running from the house, her eyes as panicked as Marina’s
voice. But once Rita saw that Marina was all right, not only did she not offer help, she didn’t offer much sympathy either. Her face a mask of disgust, Aunt Rita backed away, and her expression did not escape Tatiana— or Saika.
To make matters worse, Marina used that moment to start retching and throwing up her lunch of eggs and fish. Aunt Rita did not make matters better by flying to Marina and crying, “Darling, are you all right? Poor thing, look at you, oh, darling, let me—”
“Aunt Rita,” Tatiana said, walking toward Saika, “I need some salt and matches right away. Also some iodine.” She did not ask for a response nor invite any. Aunt Rita hurried to the house with Marina securely in tow.
“Tatiana,” Saika whispered. “Will you please fucking hurry before they suck me dry?” She pulled one of them off her stomach. The worm hung on and when she threw it away, it left a pair of bleeding circles.
“Don’t pull them off like that,” Tatiana said. “You’ll scar.” For a moment, the girls’ eyes met on the word scar.
Tatiana took another step toward Saika. “Come out of the water and lie on the ground.” Saika did as she was told.
Opening the bag of salt as soon as Rita brought it to her, Tatiana poured the coarse crystals over Saika’s body. The girl twitched; the reaction of the slugs was also instantaneous. They jerked and shriveled, attempting to crawl away, crawling through more salt as they did so. In their death agony, their black elongated bodies began to drip out their slimy entrails onto Saika’s naked flesh, mixing with her blood and their own anti-coagulant protein, hirudin, a whitish, pus-like liquid. Where they had been sucking her, small, coin-like wounds remained, trickling blood.
Making Saika turn on her stomach, Tatiana poured the salt over her hair and back and buttocks and legs. There were many leeches that did not let go. For them, Tatiana needed matches. She had to burn them off.
Saika was quietly howling.
Tatiana lit a match and lowered it to a leech that was oozing from the salt, yet remained alive and vampirous. Lighting a wet, salted slick worm was harder than one imagined, the leech in damp self-preservation refusing to self-immolate. Saika twitched. “Tania, wait—”