Siberia
For Jacinta
Elizabeth
Jones
Seed Corn must not be ground.
—Goethe
Arriving . . .
The little girl
and her mother get off the train at a deserted platform in the middle of nowhere. The men in uniform who have looked after them all the way, never leaving Mama’s side for a moment, get down too. There’s a small hut, with a notice on the door that is half hidden by a splash of frozen mud. A tractor waits beside it, with an open metal cart hooked up behind. The railway line stitches a scar that trails away to the horizon. There’s nothing else to be seen except the snow, the wide sky, and a distant border of darkness, in every direction, which the little girl knows is “forest,” though she isn’t sure what a “forest” is. The men help Mama and the little girl into the cart, and put their bags in after them, then turn away without a word.
“Goodbye!” calls the little girl. “Thank you, and safe home!”
The nicest of the four men looks back, and smiles sadly.
The tractor starts to move. There’s nowhere to sit except on their bags, or on the dirty metal floor. The little girl thinks this is strange, but everything has been strange since Dadda went away; she’s getting used to it. The cart bumps and rattles over the frozen ground, and the little girl soon becomes fascinated by the whole experience. The tractor is like a giant toy, there are no tractors in the city except in toy shops. The flat open space all around is unbelievably
huge
. She lies on her back on the floor, and the jolts and jumps are like a funhouse ride. The sky is so empty it seems to be roaring silently. “Rosita!” Mama’s voice comes. “Rosita, sit up. Your coat is getting dirty.” The little girl sits up, and carefully brushes the dirt from her cherry red coat, which she loves, with her mittened hands. The journey goes on, for what seems a very long time. I am hungry, I am thirsty, thinks Rosita, but she doesn’t complain, this isn’t the time for complaining. She nestles by her mother’s side. The emptiness of the cold land is like magic, so wide, so wild. It catches at the little girl’s heart, and fills her with a longing she can’t express.
At last black marks appear on the endless white, and grow until they are huddled, bow-shouldered huts like the one at the station platform. There are tracks leading from one hut to another, dirty and deep-gouged between walls of snow; larger buildings can be seen in the background. The border of forest is where it was, neither nearer nor farther. The tractor stops. There are people waiting, but nobody is in uniform. It seems wrong that there are no guards: it must be very dangerous to be on an adventure so far outside the city.
Rosita speaks, for the first time in hours. “Where are the guards, Mama?”
The mother looks at the little girl, with a sad smile that reminds Rosita of the nice man at the train station. “Guards aren’t needed here.”
“That’s
good,
” says the little girl, because she thinks Mama needs cheering up.
Someone’s lifting out the bags. In a moment it will be Rosita’s turn. She peers over the edge of the cart, looking down at the rumpled, ice-packed surface onto which she’ll be lowered, like a package. Midwinter is a dry season here: there’ll be no new falls until spring is on the way. The snow is old, but Rosita doesn’t know about that. She looks at her feet, her red shoes. She can feel how thin the soles are. Suddenly she knows how it will feel to walk on that icy snow. It will be as if she had no shoes at all! A shock runs through her. She wants to say something: Mama, you made a mistake, we can’t stay here. . . . She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t want to upset her mama, who has been so sad since Dadda went away. She only
looks
.
The mother takes the child in her arms. She’s a small woman and the long, cold journey has made her stiff and clumsy, but she manages to get out of the cart without any help. The people standing round are fat bundles of grubby clothes with hollow faces, they don’t look like people at all, more like ugly toys. Is this Toyland? Is this where bad toys go? Rosita hides her face. Mama carries her, along a track and into one of the huts; and sets her down.
* 1 *
The little girl Was me, Sloe. I was Rosita. (I had to give up my name, I’ll explain why when I get to that part.) That tractor ride is my oldest memory. I think about it often and I treasure all the details, because I can’t remember anything from the time before. I have been told things, and I’ve seen photographs, but I can’t remember my father’s face. It’s as if my life began that day, under the wide blank roaring sky, with the nice guard who smiled, the coldness; my cherry red coat. The strangest thing is remembering that I didn’t know there was anything wrong. When I realized that my shoes were too thin for the snow, I was frightened because my mama had made a mistake—and Mama never made mistakes! I didn’t know what had happened to us, I didn’t know what was going on at all.
I didn’t know anything: I was only four.
I don’t
remember
what I saw when my mother put me down, but I know how our hut must have looked when it was empty. I know that Rosita saw a rather long, narrow room (I thought it was big, until I knew it was our whole house), with a concrete floor. At one end there was a dark green enamel stove, with a chimney going up the wall. Beside the stove there were wooden sliding doors shutting off an alcove in the wall, that turned out to hold the bed Mama and Rosita shared. Along the edge of the cupboard-bed, the floor was covered by a kind of raft of wooden planks, gratefully warm to your feet compared with the concrete (which was like walking on gray ice, winter and summer). On the other side of the room there was a dark green sink, with a strange kind of spout standing by it and no taps. The walls were dusty bare planks, in places cracked so you could see the earth-bricks behind them. There was no ceiling, just the naked beams of the rooftree, and a shelf going all around, where the roof and the walls met.
Halfway down the room was a partition, with sliding doors like the bed-cupboard, but dark green and shining like the stove and the sink. Through there, Rosita would find the workshop where her mama was going to spend hours and hours, every day, turning out nails from scrap metal. The nails were to be used in the making of huts like ours, and furniture for huts like ours, in prison Settlements all over the wilderness: but the little girl didn’t know that. She didn’t know what the red light on the wall in the workshop meant either. She thought the machines were more ugly toys, and she hated it when Mama insisted on playing with them. All she wanted to do was to get
out
into snow, into the wild emptiness. . . . But if she had to stay in, why wouldn’t Mama play with her?
When we arrived our hut had nothing, not even a mattress for the boards in the cupboard-bed. Mama had a wad of start-up vouchers, better than the normal paper money of the Settlements (which was called scrip, and which would hardly buy anything, as we found out later). We went to one of the big buildings with our wealth, and bought a mattress, a table and two chairs, an oil lamp, and some lamp oil. There was enough to pay for delivery of the table and chairs. Mama dragged our mattress home herself on a sled, with me sitting up on top in my thin little baby shoes; then she returned the sled to the store. We had to go to another building for food supplies and kitchen things. We didn’t have to buy fuel for the stove. The heat came through pipes, from a smoky, stinky brown-coal power station. We didn’t have to buy water either. It came out of the spout by our sink when you pumped the handle . . . except in the worst part of winter, when we had to melt snow and boil it.
We thought we’d done well on that first shopping trip. In fact it was weeks before we had everything we needed. Mama didn’t know how to live like this. She didn’t know that you needed chemicals to drop down the hole in the earth closet, to keep it from smelling bad. She didn’t know what a can opener was. We didn’t know we needed vegetable seeds; or a sack of grit, to keep in the bin by our door. There was nobody to tell us these things. No neighbors came round to help us. We didn’t have any friends until much later.
There were no warm clothes or thick-soled shoes for a little girl in the store that month, and there was only one clothing store, so I had to stay indoors. Mama spared an hour a day teaching me to read and to play with numbers. The rest of the time I was very bored, and I sulked a lot. I spent
hours
pressed against the workshop partition, crying for her to come out. But the nights were cozy. I loved being tucked up with my mama, under our new rough blankets, between our new, scratchy sheets. On one of those nights (this is my second true memory, the second treasure) I woke feeling cold and Mama wasn’t with me. I sat up and dug out my socks, which I’d kicked off in my sleep (we slept in our socks, for extra coziness). I pulled them on and got down onto the raft of planks. The workshop partition was open a crack: I could see a moving shadow. Mama was playing in there, in the middle of the night. The stove was burning low. I went padding over, with the icy cold piercing through my socks and my little pajamas, and peered through. My mama was at work but the machinery was silent. She was crouched down on the floor,
under
the bench. In front of her she had a round white case; it was open. I could see tubes and droppers in a rack, and a row of glass dishes, all very small, like glassware for a doll’s house. As soon as I saw these things, I wanted to play with them. They were so neat, so small, so perfect: and I loved the way Mama looked like a child, a little girl like me, playing down there on her knees, under the grown-up things. She had a strip of white gauzy stuff over her nose and mouth, and her fingers glimmered, as if they were coated in magic. I saw her take the droppers, and drop something liquid into each of the dishes. . . .
I was shivering until my teeth rattled, I had to clamp them shut or Mama would have heard me: but I was incredibly excited. I was sure my mama was doing magic. I was frightened, and so thrilled. I was sure something dreadful or wonderful was going to happen. I watched, my eyes popping out of my face, until each of the dishes had a drop of dark goo, and a shaking of pale powder from the little tubes. Then I couldn’t bear it any longer. I tiptoed back to the bed-cupboard as fast as I could, and hid my head under the covers, my heart beating fast.
Next morning nothing had changed. I didn’t say a word to my mother about what I had seen. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged it out of me, I was scared to death of having a mama who could do magic. It was as if I’d seen her turn into a swan, or a wolf, or a witch: and yet it only made me love her more. But I was so little that I forgot. By bedtime, the whole thing had gone out of my head like a dream. I didn’t think of the magic again until Nivvy appeared.
You wouldn’t have known it in the winter, but our huts were built on concrete pillars. If they hadn’t been, the heat from our stoves would have made them sink into the boggy ground in summer. When you looked out of the front door you were at the top of a flight of steps, buried in the winter snow. We sprinkled them every morning with grit (wise people put extra salt in it), to make them less slippery. Mama had given me this job. It was the nearest I could get to being outdoors until I had boots, so I made it last. A few days after that strange night, I was on my knees on our doormat, patting the grit and spreading it with my mittened hands. It tasted of salt, when I tried licking it. I was getting my mittens filthy, but Mama didn’t say anything. We both knew those city mittens weren’t going to last. . . . Suddenly, I saw something move (and this is the third treasure). A tiny animal, with brown fur and bright eyes, was sitting on the doormat beside me. I didn’t dare to breathe. I had never seen a wild animal, or heard of such a pretty one, except in a fairy tale.
“Mama!” I squealed. “Look!”
I stared at him. He stared right back, fearlessly. Then he jumped at my mitten and bit me, with teeth like tiny, white-hot needles. Instinctively, I grabbed him.
“Mama!” I ran into the hut, hugging him to my chest, blood dripping from me. “Mama! I’ve found a wild amnimnal, I’ve found a wild amnimnal!” (I couldn’t say
animal.
) “Can I keep him? Can I keep him, oh please say I can keep him!”
“Ooh, I don’t know if we’re allowed pets,” said Mama doubtfully. “Where on earth did he come from? Did you see where he came from?”
“I think he came from a tunnel in the snow. Mama, let me keep him! I can play with my amnimnal, and then I’ll leave you in peace!”
“Animal,” said my mother. “He’s an
animal,
Rosita. Well, yes, you can keep him, unless somebody tells us no. Put him down, let’s see what he does.”
“He’ll run away,” I protested. I didn’t know much about animals, but I knew what
I
would do. If I were captive, I would always run away.
“No he won’t,” said Mama. “He’s a wise little thing. He has sharp eyes, and looks before he leaps. Let him make this hut his territory, and he’ll never leave it.”
So I set him down. He looked carefully around him, then made for cover in the heap of toys: my toys, which Mama had brought from the city, which I had refused to play with. “Stay still,” said Mama. We knelt there, me hardly breathing, until his tiny head appeared from the window of a toy car. Gradually, rippling his slender body around and around, he made the toy heap his own, checking out every crevice. Then he sat up, with his chocolate nose quivering, and made a dart for me. He jumped onto my knees, grabbed my fingertip (not the bitten finger, I was hiding that hand!), and looked up with bright attention. “I’m your friend,” I whispered. My animal nuzzled and licked my fingertip, but he didn’t bite. He made a chirring noise in his throat and curled himself up, settling in my hand as if it was his nest.
Then something I can’t explain happened. Or at least, I can partly explain it. You see, I knew that Nivvy had not really come from a tunnel in the snow. I hadn’t seen him until he was sitting by me on the doormat, but I knew he must have come from inside our hut. He was like something from a fairy tale, and I had seen my mama doing magic. I looked from her to the warm little creature in my hand, and felt dizzy.
“Mama, did you
make
him?”
Mama looked at me as if she were seeing me for the first time. (This is the bit I can’t explain, how it felt to have Mama gaze at me then: so carefully, so solemnly.) “No,” she said. “Life made him, the same as Life made you and me. But you have asked an important question, and I’m going to start telling you the answer.”
I must have looked frightened, because she smiled, and kissed me.
“Not now, but in a little while. Don’t worry, Rosita, it’s a nice answer.”
That was how Nivvy came into our lives (I’ll explain how he got his name soon). Before long he chose a home for himself, a small grain jar with a narrow neck, that we kept on its side up on the roof shelf; but I was always his preferred territory. He’d spend whole days climbing over me, or sleeping in my pocket. I got bitten hard from time to time, but I didn’t care. He grew, quickly, until he was a little more than the length of Mama’s hand, with a slim, sinuous body and a furry tail. He played with me, he watched over me, he guarded me while I slept: and just as I’d promised her, he kept me happy, so my mama could work. Nobody except Mama and me knew about him. He never left the hut, and nobody came to visit us in those days except Mr. Nail Collector.
Once we got caught by Mr. Nail Collector. At first I’d been respectful of this man because he wore a uniform, like Mr. Security, who stood in the hall of our apartment block in the city, and was always nice to us. But Mr. Nail Collector’s “uniform” was just a tattered collar with a number on it, stitched onto a jacket made from old hairy blankets, and though he didn’t scowl as fiercely as the uniformed ladies at the stores he was rude to Mama. He came to visit us often in that first month, even though we never invited him (and I thought this was rude too). The first time, he threw the boxes Mama had filled with nails all over the floor of the workshop, and shouted at her that she didn’t know how to work, and he would report her. It got better, but he’d always find something wrong with at least one box.
Usually he came to the door at the workshop end of our hut, and I would stay out of sight, although I peeked through the partition, to see what was going on. The time he saw Nivvy we were taken by surprise, because his motor sledge pulled up at our front steps. He talked to Mama there and they both came indoors. I knew that Mama was upset to have him in our living room, though she was smiling. I thought, Oh no, he’s going to throw her nails on the floor again. I decided I would run over his foot with my toy tractor, which had quite sharp wheels.
Then I remembered Nivvy.
I could
feel
that Mama was afraid. It was as if there were a wire connecting me to her, and it was pulled too tight. . . . I stayed on the floor, among my toys, and didn’t look up as I felt the Nail Collector’s eyes running over me. Out of the corner of my eye I could glimpse Nivvy, up on the roof shelf. He’d been playing up there: looking into things, sniffing around, making sure there was nothing new. The Nail Collector sat down, and Mama gave him a cup of tea. He asked in a wheedling voice did she have something sweet, maybe a little jam?
“Not this time,” said my mama, with a smile in her voice, and deadly fear behind the smile. “We’re rather short of extras—”
“That’s because you don’t know how to work,” said the Nail Collector. I felt him looking at me, and he gave a cough. “You could sell the child’s toys.”
“That’s a
good
idea,” said Mama. “I’ll have to see about that.”
I wasn’t angry. I didn’t care about any old toys, I only wanted to keep my Nivvy safe. I was trying to watch him without looking up, and I knew Mama was trying to watch him too. I prayed he would be scared and stay out of sight. But Nivvy had no fear. He was never, never afraid. He came to the edge of the shelf, by his grain jar. I saw him peering curiously at the top of the Nail Collector’s head, and had to bite the inside of my mouth to keep from gasping with horror. I knew what Nivvy could see. He could see a big furry thing—the top of the Nail Collector’s hat—moving gently up and down as the Nail Collector sipped his tea. I knew what would happen next. Nivvy couldn’t possibly resist. He could never resist pouncing on anything that moved! He would have to attack the hat.