I follow the woman I now think of as Inessa. She doesn’t even look to see if I’m behind. Her hair is freshly combed, and again, very tightly tied back. Her single plait bounces against her cape. The cords swing from her left hand as she walks down a trail that leads into the forest. Just like Koliuzhi Klara, her movement through the trees is easy, even with bare feet.
There’s wood all around us, but for reasons I don’t comprehend, she walks right by it.
As we go deeper into the forest, the ground becomes spongier, and the light dims. We tread past lofty trees and drooping moss. The sound of the sea disappears, replaced by the sighs of the wind in the canopy far overhead.
Inessa leaves the trail. I follow, climbing over rotting logs and roots that buckle up out of the soil. Ahead, she stops and drops the cords. She leans over a fallen tree. With one foot planted squarely on the trunk, she twists a thin branch until it snaps. She throws it down, then wrenches off another, and throws it onto the pile of wood she’s started.
There are so many sticks everywhere. They’re probably wet, but they’ll dry soon enough. This should be easy. I choose one—it’s not heavy—and I add it to Inessa’s pile. The next one is slightly thicker and dappled with curls of pale lichen. I untangle it from the thatch and place it on our pile.
Inessa looks at the thick branch, then me, and laughs. She kicks the branch.
“What are you doing?” I cry.
My branch shatters, flaky as pastry. It’s rotten. It could never burn.
I wander away looking for better wood. I try to find a tree like the one Inessa is working on. As I search, I hear snap after snap of breaking branches as she builds her pile. The snaps grow distant, but I still can’t find a fallen tree that’s not completely rotten. I pick up a small stick that looks good. Then Inessa calls.
“Šu
uk!”[27]
I have only one stick, but I start to head toward the sound of her voice.
She calls out again. “Hitakwa
š
e·isid! wa·saqi·k?”[28]
When I get back, she’s standing beside two huge bundles of sticks that have been wrapped in the cords she brought. She looks at my single stick in disbelief, grabs it from my hand, then throws it into the bushes. She swings one bundle of wood onto her back and slips a band that I hadn’t noticed around her head. The band’s attached to the bundle of wood.
She leaves the other bundle for me.
Before she gets too far away, I lift my bundle and try to roll it onto my back just as she did. But when I finally do, I can’t reach the headband. How did she do it? I can’t remember which step comes first, which hand goes where, and I also can’t take the time to figure it out or I’ll lose her.
I lift the bundle of sticks into my arms and crush it against my chest. I can hardly see over it. But if I lose sight of Inessa’s back, I will have much greater trouble.
Inessa and I make several visits to the same grove in the forest. Each time, she collects and carries back most of the wood; each time, I also manage a little better. I’m very slow compared to her, but she doesn’t stomp on, or throw away, any more of the sticks I gather either. I watch her and figure out the series of moves it takes to successfully get the sticks onto my back.
When we’re done, Inessa gives me a basket as big as a coal scuttle, takes one for herself, and leads me along a path in a different direction.
We stop beside a small pond. A flock of ducks takes flight as soon as it sees us, calling krya-krya as the ducks disappear over the trees. Inessa walks into the water, bends, dips her basket in, and as she pulls it up, in a fluid motion, she rolls it along her shoulder and onto her back while slipping the band over her head.
“You can’t put water in a basket,” I say. I laugh in disbelief. “What are you doing?”
It’s the basket, not Inessa, that responds. Water runs down its sides and stops. From the way she walks, I can see the weight of her load. When she passes me, standing by the side of the pond, I look inside her basket. It’s full.
I brush my fingertips over the surface of my tightly woven basket. It seems illogical, but then I think of the woven bowls we used in the Tsar’s village. They were watertight. I just didn’t think you could make such a large basket that wouldn’t leak. I wade into the cold water, just as she did, soaking my skirt to the knees. I fill it, heave it onto my back, and slip the band around my head, all the while trying to imitate Inessa’s movements.
The full basket pulls at my neck muscles and seems to grow heavier as we get closer to the house. My wet skirt tangles in my legs, forcing me to take tiny steps that slow me down. Back at the house, we pour the water into square wooden buckets, the same size and shape as the cooking boxes. It seems all fresh water is stored in these containers. Then we go back to the pond, once, twice, and after that, I lose count.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
My days fill with wood and water, water and wood. Whether it pours, or tendrils of mist wrap themselves around the trees, or the sky clears and sunlight mottles the moss cushions scattered on the forest floor, Inessa takes me out, and we return, as reliably as the tide, with water and wood, wood and water.
We need firewood all the time. The fires here don’t rage as they do in the stone hearths of Petersburg, but still it takes much wood to maintain the intense flames that produce enough heat to warm the stones to cook, as well as to make a modest difference to the temperature inside. The need for water is similar. The women use basket after basket of water to wash for and feed these many people. A near-empty storage box is a disheartening sign that Inessa and I need to make another trip to the pond.
I’ve never worked so hard, so physically, in all my life. I’m weary at the end of every day, fatigued in a way that’s completely unfamiliar. Responsibilities I understand. I have duties to my husband, as he does to me, to the crew, to the company. Even when I was a girl in Petersburg, my parents would never have allowed me to be idle while they were themselves busy. But I lack the natural inclination needed for this kind of heavy labour. My mind has always been stronger than my body. Perhaps Makee could give me more suitable duties. “Like what?” he’d asked. I still can’t imagine what.
I’m a prisoner—and I have been since the day of the battle on the river with the Chalat Tsar’s people. I cannot go where I please. I’ve been traded in exchange for food. And now I’m compelled to work. Hard labour.
This is slavery, or, at best, some koliuzhi version of serfdom.
But then, like my father’s friends in debate, I argue with myself. I’m a prisoner—but I’m not locked up in a cell. I cannot go where I please—but where would I go? I only want to go home and Makee said he’ll arrange it. No one torments me, mistreats me, or withholds food. The work is hard—but who around here is not working hard? I see no idle man or woman, not even an idle child.
I think that whatever I am here—slave, serf, or a working guest, like a girl hired to be an old woman’s companion—there is no word in Russian to describe it.
I spend my days with Inessa and yet know so little about her—not even her real name. In the evenings, after our work is done, she eats her meal in a corner with other young women and children. They talk and laugh—who are her friends? What amuses them? Is she married? I think not, but surely she favours somebody. I watch to see if there’s a young man she gazes at, or who gazes at her with that kind of longing.