CHAPTER EIGHT
Six days after the battle, we wake to heavy, steady rain. It traps us inside with fellow prisoners, darkness, and dreariness; time slows in this confined space. The children fare best with our imprisonment. They bound around as though catapulted from wall to wall, gamboling like they have learned their play from lambs. What fun Zhuchka would have with them, chasing them, yelping to get their attention, and then running from them while they chase her. I half expect a reprimand from the Tsar and the men deep in conference in the corner or from the women tending the fires and handling hot rocks as they prepare the food, but no one speaks a harsh word or lays a corrective hand on them.
In Russia, there’s no such lenience. Though we love children, we believe they’ll be spoiled if not taught to be good. My own parents always tried to be fair but firm because they knew proper discipline would determine my future, and, like all parents in Russia, they aspired to raise a responsible adult. I feel ambivalent about how the koliuzhi children are behaving. Part of me is enchanted by the purity of their joy and I feel nostalgic for the times in my childhood when I felt so free. Another part of me is more cautious and I wonder if this lack of discipline will harm them.
Though the children play, the rain is no excuse for idleness among the adults. Several women are once again crouched before their looms, weaving slowly and purposefully in this dull light. Talk and laughter wrap around them like a transparent shawl. The looms are decorated with stones or shells, maybe even teeth—I don’t know which—that are set into the upright posts like jewels. Some women work on looms of three sticks lashed together at the top with their legs spread wide like the tripods my father uses in his turret observatory. After some study of their work, I realize the tubes they’re weaving will be skirts.
Other women sew, their white needles small fish that dart up and down and flash when they catch the firelight. One of the women is plump-faced and thick around the waist. She’s expecting a child. She pulls her needle aloft, then lowers it, draws a bead onto its point and once more lifts it. The bead slides down the thread. An instant later, she does it again. She barely looks because she’s engrossed in the words of the woman with the silver comb in her hair. Her previously stern face has relaxed. She’s making a basket as she speaks. Her hands are swift, and she, too, never looks at her work. Suddenly, all the women burst into shrieking laughter and the beading woman drops her needle in her lap.
I recall the day on the brig when we were becalmed for so long that I turned to my embroidery project with the napkins to pass the time. How easily I let my patience fade and allowed myself to give up. After six long days of waiting here with nothing to occupy my time, I would relinquish my supper to have that napkin and needle back in my hands today, and if it could be instead my telescope and star log, I might give up a week’s worth of suppers.
The beading woman wipes tears from her eyes, finds her needle, and resumes her work. What’s she making? It’s too dark and I can’t tell. I sit up on my knees and lean to the side.
“Korolki,” I cry. “Maria—they have korolki!”
The blue Russian trading beads are piled on the mat where the women work. There are heaps and heaps—more than what we brought on the Sviatoi Nikolai. They have the ones as small as a baby’s fingertip and the big tubular ones that are nearly black. Their facets glitter.
Maria opens her eyes and I point. “Look! Korolki!”
“Korolki,” repeats the beading woman. She says something to the other women and they laugh. The woman with the silver comb in her hair turns and looks at me expectantly. Her fingers rhythmically work the basket fibres. As she watches me, a slight smile on her lips, she doesn’t once look down at her work.
Again, I will disappoint them. I have nothing else to say. I’m as helpless and unable to express myself as an infant. I flush but contemplate this: though neither is destined to get us very far, there are now two words we share.
The rain persists through the night and into the next morning. Kotelnikov dozes off, snoring, and Yakov brushes his cap while he and Maria talk about an Aleut they haven’t seen in a long time. Yakov thinks he’s left the Russian-American Company and gone home, but Maria heard he died in Hawaii. Around midday, I can no longer bear the boredom. I take advantage of a lull in the storm and leave the house. Ostensibly, I’m going to relieve myself, but I plan to go far from the house, and return slowly, cutting downstream if the guard will allow me, and stopping to watch the river empty into the sea.
The trees are dripping. The leaves of the bushes are luxuriant with beads of moisture. The air is a misty veil and the earth is covered in puddles. I avoid the trail—it’s all mud—and pick my way around mossy, decomposing logs and boggy hollows.
Despite the rain, the Murzik is out somewhere. I’m followed instead by a child. He’s small, with wrists as thin and knobby as the legs of a bird. It looks like a wind could blow him away. How old is he? His face is as smooth as a baby’s, and he behaves nervously—walking too closely behind me, lurching to my side with his arms raised when I jump over a puddle as if to prevent me from fleeing.
High in the trees where lacy crowns caress the clouds, a fragment of blue sky emerges. It’s the colour of hope itself. I know my Polaris is up there, invisible in the sunlight, and that when night falls, she will again reveal herself. I wonder for an instant if I could escape. I’m alone with the boy. I’d only have to outrun him. If I couldn’t? Then, I’d have to knock him unconscious with a stone. I look around—are there any stones nearby? Once he’s knocked out, I’m sure I could go far before anybody notices.
I’d have to look for Nikolai Isaakovich and the others. How? Where could they be in this forest? Which stars would lead me to them? How long would it take me to find them—and what would happen to me, alone in this vast forest, while I was searching?
When have I ever knocked anybody unconscious with a stone?
My eyes fill. I’m trapped here until they come to rescue us. What’s taking so long? Has Nikolai Isaakovich forgotten me? I need my husband. I need to see him, to be near him, to breathe in the scent of him in his damp greatcoat, his breath warm against my neck as he whispers, “Anya,” because he needs me, too.
A boom resounds through the forest.
Gunfire.
My thoughts slip from my fingers like a crystal goblet that shatters when it strikes the floor.
Another shot. There’s another. Then another.
They’re coming from far upriver.
My husband is near. My heart floods with hope and dread.
The boy looks sideways upriver, staring hard, as though he could bend the course of the water and fell all the trees with his thoughts. He shouts at me. He hammers and twists his skinny fists in my direction. No words are needed. I know what he wants. Without relieving myself, I run back to the house.
At the doorway, I’m engulfed in chaos. People push in and out of the house, nearly knocking me down as I try to squeeze inside. The looms have all been tipped over. The contents of the baskets of tools are scattered among the spilled beads. A baby shrieks. Men carrying spears and bows and arrows push their way outside.
I can’t see Maria. Then I spot her, huddled on one of the benches behind me. I go and crouch beside her.
“What happened?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I didn’t see anything.”