So saying, she waves her hand over the water as if over a pot of soup, says, “Warm her heart and bones” in medieval Russian. The ice around her relents, turns slushy, dissolves.
Her lungs fill with fresh air, they need air again.
She slips under the water, sputtering.
She is not a strong swimmer now.
Manages to break the surface of the water.
Hears pieces of what the woman says.
She is not talking to Nadia anymore.
“… will not rob you of your revenge… down to the ship… where she put you. Do it… be free.”
Nadia goes under.
When she comes up, a pelican has taken flight.
She hears its wings.
Something brushes against her foot.
A lamprey?
How harmless they were before, but now she has living blood again.
For a moment.
I’m miles from shore.
A boat full of dead men lies under me.
I put them there in a dream I had.
A long, long dream.
The boy in the rowboat is rowing away, humming a song.
“Wait!” she says. “Please.”
The oars dip, the humming recedes.
She kicks desperately.
Her human eyes can’t see in this darkness, even with the lamp of the moon.
She is alone.
She is already beginning to tire.
At that moment a strong hand grabs her foot.
81
The girl stole a big gulp of air before Misha yanked her down.
But now he is losing his grip on her—it is hard for him to make himself real enough to touch things, but he has been working on it. He has longed for the moment he might do this, grab the unnatural thing and break her. Even as he practiced picking up rocks or moving seaweed, he knew it would never be so. The rusalka was so strong she could dissolve him and the three other ghosts in the wreck just by looking at them crossly, scatter them like schools of small fish.
But this is not a rusalka anymore.
He feels no anger now.
It was very good for him to berate the wizard.
It felt just, he has just grievances.
But to let this girl drown?
He looks into her frightened eyes, sees no recognition, only the eyes of a young woman afraid to die.
Afraid of him.
How young she is.
Twenty-one?
She should be at university, kissing a boy, not dying over a boat full of corpses.
How horrible he must look to her, as horrible as the others look to him. The Canadian who has been here since 1960 has no lower jaw, gestures frantically to make himself understood. The rock-and-roll singer from 1989 has the long hair in the back and short on top that people now call a mullet; it has stayed doggedly attached to his wormy skull, still platinum blond with dark roots. His SUNY Oswego sweatshirt flutters like a ragged flag when he swims, tiny fish in his wake.
It is dark but Misha glows just enough for the girl to see his eyes.
His hand fades out and she kicks to the surface, coughs, tries to yell help but only sputters lake water.
She will die.
And what then?
Turn back into the thing she was?
He does not think so.
Become a ghost, like them?
He shudders.
Nothing is quite so perverse and lonely as a ghost condemned to haunt a lake.
She slips under again.
He can almost hear his Baba upbraiding him for weakness.
Let her die! The bitch killed you. This death is too merciful for her.
He remembers her at his window near the Volga.
The crone his mama pretended not to see.
The woman from the forest he was not allowed to look at.
She only spoke to him through the curtain, just a shape.
Your father is coming. Do you think he wants to see what a weak son he has? Do you know what fathers do to weak sons? That boy who bullies you, I was going to hang him from a tree, but that will not teach you. Your father would tell you to punch him, but that is not enough. You bite his nose, Misha. Not off, they will commit you if you bite it off. But bite it hard enough to scar him. If you punch him, he will work up his courage and hit you again. Or come back with friends. But if you bite his nose, you will surprise him, hurt him, make him afraid of you because he will never know what you might do. He will look at the ground when you pass.
But he is not like her.
He did not bite that boy, only hit him.
And it was enough.
They fought; the larger boy beat Misha badly but got a black eye doing it.
He moved on to easier prey.
Misha knew the boy beat smaller children because his stepfather burned him with cigarettes.
That was long ago.
Now.
The girl is dying.
Her red hair floats about her in a cloud, no longer knotted into ugly tails. Her cruel muscles and scars are gone.
Her tail is gone, replaced by legs.
Let her die!
But that is not his voice, it is the woman behind the curtain.
The woman at night, in the trees.
He grows a shoulder.
Butts into the girl’s ass and thigh, forces her up.
Her head breaks the surface and she gasps air in, shuddering.
He yells at her in English.
“Swim!”
She does not swim.
Begins to sink again.
He nudges her up.
Yells at her in Russian.
“Swim, goddammit!”
She swims.
The couple on the sailing ship scarcely believe what they’re seeing.
A retired astronomer and his wife who come out from Fair Haven on calm nights and anchor deep to stargaze.
A naked girl is climbing up over the rail, sprawling out on the deck, throwing up lake water.
The wife dumps her glass of Riesling on the deck, her boat shoes squeaking.
The astronomer sits agog.
“Don’t just sit there, Harry, get her a blanket! And call the Coast Guard! A boat might have gone down.”
The girl is barely conscious.
Warm hands have her.
A blanket.
English coming down at her.
“Do you know your name? Is anybody else with you? Can you hear me?”
She understands, but she is too tired to speak English.
“Nadia. My name is Nadia. I am from St. Petersburg. My father is a professor. My brother is in the cavalry. We know the tsar.”
She says this in exquisite Russian.
The older couple doesn’t understand, but they are kind.
They’ll see her home.
She turns her head away from them, looks at the white head bobbing in the black lake.
The old dead man.
She met him before he was dead but can’t remember how.
In the shower?
With a dog?
Was I dead with him?
He howls at her playfully.
Owwwwwooooooooooo.
He smiles for the first time in months.
She smiles back.
Weakly, but sincerely.
She moves her fingers in the echo of a wave.
He sinks.
The light is under the water.
A second moon.
The best thing he has ever seen.
He swims down.
A school of silvery fish he does not recognize parts for him.