The Summer Garden (100 page)

Marina started to shake. “But she is not coming.”

“No?” Saika smiled. “Perhaps you’re right. And you know, it
is
getting late. It’s three, and we told your mother we’d be heading back at four. We’re still kilometers from the shore. I’ve got the compass. It’s cloudy. It’ll take us a little while, but you’re so right. We really should head back.”

“Head back where?” Marina whispered.

“Back to the boat, Marina. Where did you think?”

“Without Tania?”

“Well, I don’t see Tania here, do you?”

Saika’s face was shrouded in dusk. Marina could barely make out the shiny eyes. Trying not to get hysterical, Marina gasped, “You want to go back to the boat
without
Tania?”

“If we call for her, she’ll win. How do we know it’s not her pride that’s keeping her from calling out for us?”

“What pride?” And before Saika could move toward her, Marina opened her mouth and screamed with all her strength: “TANIA!!!!”

Saika’s hand went roughly around Marina’s mouth.

Marina bit Saika’s hand.

“Bitch! What did you do that for?”

Marina pulled away and continued screaming. “Tania! Tania, Tania, Tania!”

Saika slapped her. “Don’t ever do that to me again or I’ll slice your tongue out of your mouth with your Tania’s knife, do you hear? Now come on, are you coming? Because in one second I’m going to go without you.”

There was one thing Saika did not know about Marina, that Marina had no intention of sharing with Saika at this precise moment, and that was: Marina was terrified of the woods. The thought of being in the woods alone at night was more than Marina’s heart could take. She was scared of Saika, but not as much as she was of crushing black terrors. Saika had the compass, the knife, the watch, and the matches. Saika was a paralyzed Marina’s only path out. She had to follow Saika.

Biting her lip to keep herself from screaming for Tatiana again, tears rolling down her face, Marina slowly moved behind Saika as they began to make their way through the forest.

There were no sounds, just the occasional shrill whir of the large-winged cicadas.

From her pockets, Saika pulled out a handful of muddy pebbles and threw them on the ground. “Make my load a little lighter.” She smiled with an easy shrug. “I thought the pebbles would make it too easy for her to find us.”

The Second Largest Lake in Europe

Tatiana worried about them at first.
She waited for them, yelled and yelled for them, not moving from the clearing where they left her. Soon the forest had lost the saturation of daylight. It didn’t have that much to begin with, with so much cloud cover. The brush was broken in many places, every spoke out of the wheel of that clearing looked exactly the same, and the pebbles to help her find her way back were gone. She didn’t know which way the three of them had come.

Belatedly realizing they were playing a prank on her, Tatiana finally left the clearing. She walked in one direction, calling for them, then in another. She did not hear them, not an echo, not a stirring of the lower branches. How far could they be? She walked and called for them. Then Tatiana started to worry. What if they were lost? The pebbles were gone for them, too; what if they tried to find their way back to her after they saw the joke had misfired, and couldn’t?

Marina had fears about everything; if she was lost, she’d be scared, especially as evening was falling. But how far could they get from her? Tatiana called for them so loud and so long, she got hoarse and had to stop.

It got darker.

She started to hyperventilate. She had to sit down.

Night fell.

And now Tatiana was on the ground in a fetal position, afraid to move, to open her eyes, to unclench her hands. She heard noises in the forest, she couldn’t see the sky, the stars, nothing. She imagined all manner of life around her, every nocturnal creature sending out signals that there was a member of another phylum among them. She tried to focus her thoughts away from the darkness, away from the forest.

When would Aunt Rita and Uncle Boris notice they weren’t back? Let’s say they weren’t fighting; how much time would have to pass before they became worried?

And what could they do even if they did become worried? It was late now and dark. They’d say, we can’t do anything tonight. We’ll look for them tomorrow morning.

Oh, but to get through this night.

Why won’t sleep come? What’s bothering me here in the dark? It’s not the badgers, it’s not the snakes. What’s bothering me? Something darker is worrying a hole inside me—look how my legs are trembling. Stop moving, Tatiana. That’s how the carnivores find you, by the flash of life on your body, they find you and eat you while you sleep. Like venomous spiders, they’ll bite you first to lull you into sleep—you won’t even feel it—and then they will gnaw your flesh until nothing remains.

But even the animals eating her alive was not the thing that worried the sick hole in Tatiana’s stomach as she lay in the leaves with her face hidden from the forest, with her arms over her head, in case anything decided to fall on her. She should’ve made herself a shelter but it got dark so fast, and she was so sure she would find the lake, she hadn’t been thinking of making herself more comfortable in the woods. She kept walking and walking, and then was downed and breathless and unprepared for pitch black night.

To quell the terror inside her, to not hear her own voices, Tatiana whimpered. Lay and cried, low and afraid. What was tormenting her from the inside out?

Was it worry over Marina? No…not quite. But
close
. Something about Marina. Something about Saika…

Saika. The girl who caused trouble between Dasha and her dentist boyfriend, the girl who pushed her bike into Tatiana’s bike to make her fall under the tires of a downward truck rushing headlong…the girl who saw Tatiana’s grandmother carrying a sack of sugar and told her mother who told her father who told the Luga
Soviet
that Vasily Metanov harbored sugar he had no intention of giving up? The girl who did something so unspeakable with her own brother she was nearly killed by her own father’s hand—and she herself had said the boy got worse—and this previously unmentioned brother was, after all, dead. The girl who stood unafraid under rowan trees and sat under a gaggle of crows and did not feel black omens, the girl who told Tatiana her wicked stories, tempted Tatiana with her body, turned away from Marina as Marina was drowning…who turned Marina against Tatiana, the girl who didn’t believe in demons, who thought everything was all good in the universe, could she…

What if…?

What if this was not an accident?

Moaning loudly, Tatiana turned away to the other side as if she’d just had a nightmare. But she hadn’t been dreaming.

Saika took her compass and her knife.

But Marina took her watch.

And there it was. That was the thing eating up Tatiana from the inside out. Could
Marina
have been in on something like this?

Twisting from side to side did not assuage her torn stomach, did not mollify her sunken heart. Making anguished noises, her eyes closed, she couldn’t think of fields, or Luga, or swimming, or clover or warm milk, anything. All good thoughts were drowned in the impossible sorrow.

Could Marina have betrayed her?

Tatiana failed to imagine the morning, with sunshine perhaps, with flowers. Tomorrow, there would be sun, and she would find the lake. How hard could it be to find a large lake that has swamps around it, that smells so strong of freshwater, a lake 27 miles long and 21 miles wide, the second largest lake in Europe after Lake Ladoga?

What if they had run, run gleefully through the woods, picking up the pebbles, run back to the boat, and rowed back home? Could the hapless Marina have agreed to lose Tatiana in the Lake Ilmen woods?

A womblike coil wasn’t enough to hide from the black betrayal.

Honor Among Thieves

“Well, now what?”
Marina and Saika had been walking for what seemed like a long while. Marina heard no other sounds from the woods. “Where’s this lake, Saika?”

“Oh, be quiet. Can’t you see I’m trying to find our way out?”

“Saika, you didn’t pick up
all
the pebbles, did you?”

“Shut up with your pebbles already. Of course I didn’t pick up all of them. They’ve disappeared.” She paused. “Maybe Tania took them.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Maybe the rabbits took them.”

“The
rabbits
,” said Marina, “took the pebbles?”

“I don’t know. Can we just keep walking? I’d like to find a rabbit now. I’m hungry. And so thirsty.” Saika tipped her flask, but there was nothing in it. A few drops dripped into her mouth.

It was impossible to tell how long or far they had walked. Saika kept glancing at the compass, which Marina might have found amusing under different circumstances. The tall pines and spruce obstructed the sky, and the underbrush was severe, slowing them down. There were fallen trees and rocks and uneven ground, but there was no break, and there was no lake, and there was no Tatiana.

“I don’t understand,” Saika muttered. “The compass is pointing northwest, which is the direction we should be heading, and I’m sure we walked as far as we did when we came this way, yet there is no lake. I just don’t understand.”

Marina laughed softly. “Are you relying on Tania’s compass to get us out of here? What about the pebbles on the ground?”

“Oh, will you quit with the fucking pebbles!” yelled Saika.

Marina continued to laugh. In a minute she thought she would roll into hysteria. “There are two idiots in these woods,” she said. “Give me that.” Roughly she ripped the compass from Saika’s hands. Turning it over, she grabbed the small steel square that was adhered to the bottom and yanked it off. The girls stared at the compass needle that turned sharply east, then sharply west, then spun around, stopping in a quiver between northeast and north. It did not move again.

“What
is
that?” Saika said.

“That,” said Marina, “is what Tatiana thinks of your little directional.” She flung the compass to the ground. “The compass is useless. Don’t you remember Pasha telling you Tania spent last summer trying to make gunpowder?”

“What does
that
have to do with the compass? And what do you mean useless?”

“I don’t know how I can be more clear.” Marina laughed. “And now…” she said, more subdued but trembling, “I give you the rest of your evening, Saika and Marina. It’s nearly eight o’clock. You have no compass, no rocks, no way out, no food, no light, no matches. And no Tania.”

Short of breath, Saika said in a seething voice, “She did this on purpose.”

“Did what?”

“Handed me the compass without saying a word, knowing it wasn’t working.”

“You didn’t ask! You said, give me the compass. She did as you asked. How did she know you were going to ditch her? Perhaps had she known that, she would have kept her stupid broken compass. She would’ve been able to find her way out with it backwards and forwards, no matter which way the needle was pointing.”

“Well, then perhaps she already did—even without it. Perhaps that’s why she didn’t call for us: she ran straight to the boat. Perhaps she rowed home,” Saika said. “Left
you
here in the night woods by yourself.”

Marina shook her head. “She got the leeches off
you
. She touched
you
when no one else would come near you. Tatiana would never row home and leave
me
in the woods.”

“As a prank? She’d do anything.”

“No, she wouldn’t. That’s not Tatiana.” Marina stopped talking. “That’s not her,” she whispered after a moment.

“I’m glad you’re so sure,” Saika snapped. “All I know is, she was supposed to come looking for us, and she didn’t. And you and I have a broken compass that
she
gave us. I think she’s playing games with the mouse, Marina.”

“Whose idea was it to hide? Hers? Oh, let’s hide, Marina, let’s hide, it’ll be so funny!”

“Well, if you didn’t think it was going to be funny, why did you do it?”

“I did it because I thought we would hide for a few minutes!” Marina exclaimed. “Because I thought we ran along the pebbles! Because I thought we were close to Tania, because I thought she’d find us, that’s why.” Breathing hard, she said, “I hid because I thought it was a
joke
. Because I trusted you.”

“Why did you do that? Tania’s been telling and telling you, I’m not to be trusted.”

“God, I should’ve listened to her.”

“Yes,” said Saika, “you should’ve. But I am unrepentant. I don’t care about her or you if you stand in my way. All I want is to get to the boat before it gets completely dark. Now are you coming, or are you going to stay here and rot?”

For a few moments Marina stood in front of Saika, motionless, haggard, hungry, thirsty in the coming of night.

Then Marina said, “I’m going to stay here and rot.”

“Great,” Saika said, and she turned around and began to walk away.

Marina pressed her trembling body against an oak, hoping to get some courage from the sturdy trunk.

A few minutes later Saika came back. “Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “Come on. Two in the woods is better than one.”

“There are two in the woods,” said Marina. “Me and Tania.”

“So clever. Stop it and come with me.”

“No.”

“Come, I said.”

“What are you going to do, drag me with you? I’m not coming with you. You don’t know where you’re going. Wherever you’re headed I don’t want to follow. Go ahead. Go, find the lake, row just yourself across, and then explain to my mother and father how you left Tania and me in the woods. You go on and be reconciled with your universe, Saika.”

Saika stormed off. Huddling against a tree, Marina tried to focus on the feel of the bark, on the sifting leaves in her hands. The forest had gone dark. There were no human sounds in the woods.

Behind her she heard a voice again. “Come on, don’t be stupid. Don’t just stand there. Let’s walk together, let’s move forward.”