Vanja found Ivar’s shoes among the rocks on the beach, and his coat at the water’s edge. A ways out she could see the rounded shape of a back. Even though the waves seemed mere ripples on the surface, the body was drifting quickly toward the shore. Vanja took a couple of steps into the water, sucking in breath as her boots flooded with painful cold. She forced herself to move forward. After only a few feet, the water reached halfway up her thighs. She gasped as the cold made her legs burn, but the body was close enough now that she could grasp the pale yellow sweater. She pulled it to her and grabbed hold under the armpits. Only once the body was halfway out of the water did she turn it over.
Ivar had walked out on the ice dressed in nothing but his underclothes, and the lake had thawed underneath him, dropping him into the frigid water. The warm tone of his skin had turned pallid. His eyes were only closed halfway, revealing a glimpse of dark brown iris. Vanja crouched next to him. She took her mitten off and gently stroked his cheek. It was cold and unyielding. His unrelenting frown had been smoothed out; his lips had parted slightly, as if in sleep. But Ivar himself wasn’t in there anymore. Vanja carefully pulled him all the way out of the water. Thin as he was, his body was very heavy. She fetched his coat and draped it over him. It wasn’t long enough to cover both his head and feet, so she chose the feet. Cold feet were the worst. “I went and looked.” She tucked the edges of the coat under him. “I was going to tell you this morning. That you’re not crazy, that there’s something down there.”
Talking made her throat ache. “I wish you could have waited just a little while.” She patted his cheek. “I’m going to get some help. You won’t have to stay out here.”
Vanja walked back toward Amatka on numb legs. When she was almost there, she realized Ivar wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves. He would be cold.
No. He wouldn’t be.
At the clinic, two orderlies ushered her into an exam room, where they undressed her and swaddled her in heating blankets. They didn’t seem surprised by what she’d found in the lake. “Here we go again,” one of them said. “We’ll send someone to get him.”
“I have to tell our housemates,” Vanja said.
They noted her address. Vanja wasn’t allowed to go anywhere until they were sure she was unharmed.
They finally released her three hours later. Nina was still sitting at the kitchen table. She had stopped crying.
She looked up at Vanja, her eyes remote. “They were here.”
“I had to stay at the clinic. The water, I went into the water to get him, it was cold.”
Nina nodded. They were silent for a moment, Vanja by the door, Nina at the table. Finally, Nina pushed her chair back. Her voice was raspy and flat.
“Well, he finally went and did it. At least now I don’t have to wonder when it’s going to happen. That idiot. I saw it coming for years.” She went over to the stove and started making coffee.
Vanja sat down and watched Nina do the dishes and then violently clean the counter and stovetop. Nina talked while she cleaned. She talked about a quiet boy who became a melancholy but kind youth, who became the Ivar of recent years, slowly wasting away. “They tried everything,” she said. “Medication, light therapy, psychotherapy. Shocks. And at best he was… he functioned. He could get out of bed, get dressed, eat. He could go to work.”
She had given up on drying her cheeks. Fresh tears ran down her face now and then, and dripped onto her sweater. “Maybe he would have been all right in the end. But then this. Or… maybe he would never have been okay. Maybe he was incurable. Maybe he was just broken.” Her last word was accompanied by the loud bang of the scrubbed frying pan being slammed down on the counter.
Vanja topped up their cups. “I’m hungry,” Nina said.
She walked over to the fridge and took out a bowl, then fetched a fork.
Vanja rose halfway from the chair. “Let me heat that for you.”
“No need.” Nina mechanically shoveled bits of mushrooms and root vegetables into her mouth. “Talk. Talk about something. Tell me about Essre.”
Vanja told her about Essre: the square plant houses radiating out from the center; the massive commune office that housed the central administration; the circular streets; the throng of people. Nina stared into the wall, chewing and swallowing. When the bowl was empty, she pushed it aside.
“I know you’re up to something,” she said. “With the librarian, that Evgen guy.”
Before Vanja had time to reply, Nina continued: “Are you fucking him?”
Vanja started. “What? No.”
“Fine. Then what are you doing?”
“We talk.”
“About what?”
Vanja turned to the window. “For example… what happened to Ivar. What’s under the mushroom farm.” She took a deep breath. “I went out last night. I went down that pipe. To prove Ivar right. I was going to tell him this morning. But when I woke up he was already gone.”
Vanja braced herself and waited. When the silence went on unbroken, she glanced back at Nina, who had leaned back in her chair and sort of deflated. The shadows under her eyes were a bluish black. The rage had drained from her face, to be replaced by something worse. When she spoke, her words were almost inaudible. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I’m trying to help. To find the truth. To make things better. Down there, there’s…”
Nina held up a hand. “No. What you don’t understand is that it only takes this much”—she pinched her thumb and forefinger together—“to destroy us all. And if things have already started happening, then you’re making it worse.”
“But how do you know? How can any of us know? How do we know it’s bad? Maybe it’s just different. Better. Nina, anything is better than this.”
Nina gave her a look that made Vanja shrink back. “No. Anything is not better than this. I’ve seen Berols’ Anna’s colony. I know what happens.”
Vanja was dumbfounded. “How? When?”
“No. No, enough of this.” Nina held up both hands. “Just… leave it alone.”
She got up from the table and went upstairs. Vanja heard one door bang shut, then another.
Vanja stood outside Nina’s door for a long time, listening. At length she managed to muster enough courage to knock. No reply. She knocked again.
Eventually Nina opened the door. “What?”
Vanja’s mind abruptly went blank. “I just thought, I don’t know. I’m sorry.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Nina breathed in through her nose. Her words were slow and her voice flat. “You can’t help me right now. I want to be alone. You’d better leave.” She closed the door again.
Vanja lingered for a moment, staring at the door. Of course. There was nothing she could do. Nina and Ivar had been so close for so long, like brother and sister. What they had was so much bigger and more profound than what Vanja had with Nina. Anything Vanja did to comfort her would just be clumsy and clueless. At least today. She turned around and went back downstairs. Maybe Nina would want to be with her when she came back out. Or maybe not. She would grieve for a long time.
SEVENDAY
The leisure center filled up early. Instead of the usual games and organized play, a note by the entrance informed the crowd that song and poetry were on the program. The evening meal would be accompanied by a reading of Ivnas’ Öydis’s great poem “The Pioneers.” After that, communal singing. And after that, more readings—excerpts from Berols’ Anna’s Plant House series and several other poems Vanja didn’t recognize. It was remarkable that her poems were still allowed, considering what she did. Perhaps the power of her realist poetry was so strong that it outweighed her later deeds. And to the public she never did those other things, anyway. She had just died in the fire.