The Art of Waiting (16 page)

Hope

Tambov Prison Camp 188, April 1943

Katerina stood in the sunlight of a Russian spring and watched the man behind the wire. She had seen him the other day for the first time, then again yesterday, leaning against the wire as if testing its strength. She glanced up at the guards standing in their watchtower and wondered if they might react. But they seemed happy to ignore him. She was glad about that, at least – you never knew what they might do, she had heard the rumours about what went on in there. And then it occurred to her, the thought that had been welling up in her since the first time she saw him – she might save him, somehow. One good deed, one person to another, something he might always remember her by. She took a couple of steps forward, tentative, keeping an eye out for the guards again. Poor man, she thought, as she saw him up close now, a bit off to the side still. What a mess, standing there, eyes closed, as if in a dream. Then his eyelids snapped open and for some reason she flinched. But he didn't seem to notice her, just went on staring, out towards the woods. She heard the sound of someone digging at the ground behind her, breathing hard, hacking at the ground with a spade. Then the sound of a fly buzzing in past her, homing in on the smell of the man behind the wire, no doubt. She saw him flap at it, flailing, but he failed, the thing lifting up again and buzzing off behind him, then going quiet, setting itself down somewhere she could not see, out of his reach now. They were clever like that, she thought, these bugs, and too many of them to count – there would never be an end to them. Different bugs, these ones, more hungry than the ones back home in Leningrad. His eyes were closing again now and she stepped towards him again, soft and
hesitant, the sound of her footsteps right in front of him now, then a breath from her as she reached out to him and touched his hand. His eyes opened wide and she withdrew her touch.

‘I'm so sorry,' she said. ‘I didn't mean to startle you.'

She looked into his eyes and she saw it in them now, that look, the look she had always loved, an unexpected recognition, something hatching up from nothing, as if he already knew her, as if he always had, or perhaps she reminded him of a friend, somebody just like her, someone he had loved.

Suddenly her hand was in her pocket, digging around for something, then pulling it out, a rabbit from a hat for him, a little piece of magic, her small white hand holding a dark piece of bread. And what a trick it was, how it made her feel, how it filled her leaping heart to be here, helping him, saving him, giving him a part of her.

‘Have this,' she said, twisting her hand between the strands of wire, catching her skin on one of the barbs. Up rose a tiny sphere of blood, red on the white of her hand.

‘I'm so sorry,' he said, at the sight of the blood, it seemed, as if he were somehow to blame for wounding her.

‘For what?' she said, wiping it away. ‘You've done nothing wrong.'

The wind carried her words away across the steppe.

‘Go on, take it. It's not exactly fresh, but I'm sure it's better than what you get in there.'

He reached out and took the gift, lifted it to his lips, bit off a piece of it.

‘Thank you,' he said at last.

She moved her lips, something uncertain, a kind of smile, remembering something she wanted to keep hidden. They stood there, the two of them, on the edge of wilderness.

‘I might come and see you again tomorrow,' she said. ‘If you want me to?'

‘Oh,' he said. ‘Yes, I would like that very much.'

‘Good,' she said. ‘Then I'll do just that.'

She turned to go, then stopped. ‘You know, I feel so sorry for you,' she said, then paused. ‘Well, I'll see you tomorrow.'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Yes . . . but . . . what's your name?'

‘I'll tell you that tomorrow.'

‘Tell me now. In case you don't come back.'

‘Don't worry, I will come back.'

‘Tell me anyway. Please. Just in case.'

She looked at him. ‘Katerina,' she said.

‘What a beautiful name,' he said, but she was turning away again. ‘Katerina, wait!'

She turned again.

‘Have this,' he said.

He was holding something in his hand and she reached out and took it. A little wooden fish.

‘I carved it myself,' he said. ‘A long time ago. When I was at home.'

‘It's beautiful,' she said. ‘I'll treasure it.'

‘It's oak,' he said. ‘It'll last forever, and it'll bring you luck.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Something to remember me by. In case you don't come back.'

‘Don't worry,' she said. ‘I told you I will, and I meant it.'

She went away down the path, her feet sending insects up out of the grass as she walked, and soon she was into the trees. At first she kept to the path, humming as she walked. She trailed her hand across the top of the long grass and bees buzzed up into the spring air. The sun cast dusty shards through the gaps in the leaves, the air noticeably cooler in the shadows, the path soft underfoot, the damp earth silently accepting her footfalls as she padded lightly into the green-lit depths. She was young – she felt young too, bursting with it – and her pace was steady and relentless. The path dipped between large rocks and opened out into a small clearing, a stream emerging from a tunnel of trees, burbling over mossy stones as it disappeared into the forest again. Katerina crouched down and dipped her chin into the stream, letting the icy water gush around in her mouth until her teeth hurt and her lips and her chin went numb, then she stood up and followed the path up a gentle rise, heavy dew soaking her feet. She reached the top of a small hill. She could see the edge of the forest a mile or so behind her now, and in the forest the
prison camp, and some distance beyond a cluster of houses, smoke rising from the chimneys. In one of these modest houses Katerina knew her aunt would be peeling potatoes or feeding the chickens or filling the samovar for tea. She wondered if she would be back in time. Perhaps not – it would depend on what she got up to in the meantime. She turned and set off again down the opposite slope, into a deep wooded valley cragged with rocks. There was no path to follow now but Katerina knew the way.

She came to the shore of a lake, blue-green water stretching out flat as glass to the far bank. She stood in the long grass that bordered the lake and looked out across the sparkling water, then began to skirt around the shore and up onto a rocky outcrop high above the lake. She looked straight down into the depths and watched as shadowy fish dimpled the surface here and there, sipping down insects that chanced upon the water. She removed her coat and her shoes and dived straight in. Rising to the surface, she stretched herself out, her body long and thin as an eel, feeling the goosebumps rise as she ducked under again and swam down through the water and touched the lakebed with her hands, and she crouched there, holding onto lengths of green weed bright in the sunlight, then pushed off and felt herself fly up, weightless as a leaping dancer, emerging again into the air a long way out from the shore. She looked around. A cove of grey sand lay fifty yards away and over to one side, beyond a jutting spit of land, she could just make out Viktor Belanov's house.

She had come across Viktor's house by chance the previous year, on one of her first excursions into the woods, sometime during the hot summer of 1942. She had found the little beach then, and the day had been especially warm, so she slipped into the water and out towards the island in the middle of the lake. She was strong as well as young and the long swim to the island was easy for her. She had swum round to the far side and pulled herself out onto the rocks. She was removing her dress to dry herself in the sun when she heard
the slapping of oars and saw a rowing boat sliding into view from behind the trees. The old man in the boat averted his eyes as she looked up.

‘Oh, I'm sorry,' he cried out.

‘So you should be!' she called back, quickly pulling on her dress.

‘I wasn't spying on you,' he said, still looking away, covering his eyes with a hand as if he had just seen something awful.

‘Oh yes you were! Until I saw you, that is!'

He removed the hand from his eyes and turned to look at her as the boat drifted in.

‘Is that your lunch?' she said, pointing at the little pile of trout that gleamed in the bottom of the boat.

‘I suppose so,' he said. ‘But one's for the cat.'

‘They look very good. Too good for a cat.'

‘Not too good for
my
cat,' he said. ‘What's your name anyway?'

‘Katerina.'

‘Well, Katerina, little mermaid, you can join the cat and me for lunch if you like. But you must swear you'll keep this place a secret.'

‘You're not a pervert, are you?' she said, but then she looked into his eyes and decided she would trust him. ‘All right,' she said. ‘You and your cat will get fat if you eat all those fish by yourselves.'

She clambered into the boat and the old man rowed them back to the shore, with surprising vigour, she thought, for someone his age. Must be all the fish. A small wooden house stood just back from the treeline, the wooded slope rising up directly behind.

‘You're my first visitor in three years,' he said as Katerina followed him into a large room with whitewashed wooden walls and a window in each of its sides. There was a rough table in the middle of the room and three rickety chairs.

‘Don't sit on that one,' he said. ‘The last person who sat in it broke it. It's only here now because I can't bear to part with it.'

A woodburner stood by the far wall, the heaped ash of winter fires still in it. To the other side of the room stood a large sideboard, picture frames and jars of pickled vegetables, greens and yellows and reds, arranged upon its shelves.

‘Sit down. Please, sit down. Oh, I'm sorry, I haven't introduced myself, have I? I've been out here so long I've forgotten my manners. I'm Viktor. And this is Koshka, my lovely cat.'

‘Hello, Koshka, you are lovely indeed. And a funny name, you have. Rather literal, perhaps.'

‘Easy for me to remember,' said Viktor. ‘I'm an old man now, after all.'

‘You're only as old as you feel.'

‘And I do feel old. As old as the woods all around us.'

‘Do you play?' she said, gesturing towards the pair of violins that shared a shelf with the pickles.

‘A bit. But mostly I make them.'

‘You
make
them? Wow! That's a special talent.'

He picked one up and plucked at a string, then damped the note down. ‘It doesn't sound too bad, I suppose,' he said. ‘But who's ever going to play them out here except me, and I'm no musician really. It's difficult to get hold of the right wood now, with the war and everything. I just use what I find in the forest, the same wood I use for the fire. Not the best, but better than nothing.'

They ate their trout as Koshka sat in the broken chair and ate hers straight off the table beside them. Then they drank a spirit with a hint of honey from small squat glasses etched with the patterns of leaves, and they talked about their lives: Viktor about the first war and the revolution and the sons he had lost to the commissars; Katerina about her life in Leningrad.

‘I came here in the summer of 1941,' she said. ‘When the Germans invaded, my mother put me straight on a train to Moscow, and then out here to stay with my aunt. Everyone thought it was highly irregular, that I'd never make it here without being stopped and sent back. But I was lucky.'

‘You certainly were. You'll be safe here. The Germans will never make it this far, we'll stop them long before then. You must miss your home, though?'

‘Oh, yes, yes, I do. Whatever's left of it. I think about it every day. And my mum, and my friends, my best friend, Oleg. And my
ballet, of course! Oh, my ballet! Sometimes I feel I'll die without it. There were times I really could have died on stage and not minded. They were just small theatres, but it was the only place I wanted to be. I'd go home after the show and cry because I knew it would be a whole week before I could dance in front of an audience again.'

‘I can understand that,' he said. ‘I can imagine what it must have been like.'

When they finished eating, Viktor showed her the easiest way back to the beach where her shoes still lay warm in the sun, and she retraced her steps through the woods, passing the spot where she would first notice the prison camp the following winter, and where she would one day observe Aldo's bent figure standing day after day on the other side of the wire.

The day after that first lunch with Viktor, Katerina scrambled again down the secret path to his house and he let her in and as she sat at the table he picked up a violin.

‘This one's my favourite,' he said. ‘I made it the year that my first son was born.'