“I so much appreciate you are with me for this occasion. I still haven’t made any friends here.” Rita took Ulya’s hand again, her grip surprisingly strong. “You know, until Bagdan is back, let me show you the surroundings. It’s so beautiful here in the woods. I know you like wild strawberries. What a pity, you missed the season. Soon, there will be blueberries, wild raspberries, honey agarics, or porcini mushrooms. Ah, fried potatoes with mushrooms,” she closed her eyes and licked her lips, “will make your mouth water. But that’s later into summer.”
She was chatty, just like the Rita she knew, and overwhelmed with happiness at that.
“Ulya, I like it here so much. See how lush the vegetation is, not like our Volga steppes. Even the air smells different. Tomorrow, we won’t have time, so let me show you around if you are not too tired.”
“Not at all,” Ulya said, intrigued by her friend’s anxiety.
“This way.” Rita motioned, and Ulya followed her around the house to the back where the laundry hung from a length of twine strung between two apple trees and along the vegetable beds covered with some sprouts. From there, hardly discernable footpaths ran in different directions. “Toward that conifer tree.” Rita showed the tree Ulya had already spotted from afar on her way from the bus stop. “A giant, isn’t it? If you go to the west, you’ll get to Vitba river.” Rita halted and placed both her hands on Ulya’s shoulders. “After graduation, you never showed up. But I understand. You didn’t want to endanger me. I’ve heard about your father. Was he—”
“Yes, he was arrested, but obviously, his fault was not so big since they granted him the right to correspondence. He was sent somewhere behind the Urals, and he works there. Not jailed as you may think. He is . . . not complaining about his life.” Ulya caught herself on the strange words she used, “not complaining.”
“But why was he—?”
Ulya didn’t let her finish. “Are you interrogating me?”
They both burst out laughing and walked on. The broad soft shade of the wood wrapped round them on all sides. Last-year’s dead leaves, not yet concealed by a new grass, rustled under their feet.
To prevent Rita’s eventual question, Ulya said, “But of course, you are curious where I work. At a canteen in an orphanage for Down syndrome children. Nothing to talk about. You better tell me about yourself.”
“I’m a judicial consultant at the Kommintern metal-working plant. Boring.” She tripped over a twig and almost fell, but to Ulya’s surprise, straightened herself as though she was well-trained. “I’d like to show you something. But—” She made a zip gesture along her mouth. “Not a word to anybody, otherwise Bagdan will kill me. If you stay with your back to the conifer tree and take twenty steps in the direction of those two twisted birches, you’ll get to—One . . . two . . . sixteen—” Rita stopped abruptly to scare away a cloud of insects that bobbed in front of them. “Nineteen . . . twenty.” She leaned to one of the knee-high knolls and pushed it aside with her hands, revealing a hole with a narrow ladder that led into a manhole. “Now, after me.”
They got down into the earthy-smelling inside, which could hardly accommodate two people unless they felt like clinging to each other like lovers. Built-in iron boxes lined two walls.
“Bagdan told me his father hid here from Germans during the First War. Later, Bagdan kept himself out of sight of his father when he knew his father would lash him for mischief.”
“What’s in the boxes?” Ulya touched the cool, smooth surface.
“He uses them as storage for fruit and vegetables during wintertime. Empty now.”
“And this?” Ulya motioned with her eyes at the one-and-a-half-meter elongated object wrapped in burlap that rested against a wall.
“That’s Bagdan’s. Against wolves.”
They climbed out of the dugout into the warm outside full of bird chatter and the smells of the mixed forest.
“Want me to show you where the locals fish?”
As though she knew Ulya’s answer in advance, Rita moved along a hardly discernable path of the unkempt grove, which Ulya first had mistaken for a wood.
They walked for about five minutes. The wood was full of sounds and aromas: the scented new grass and blooming bushes, the buzz of insects, a high unpleasant call of a bird, a sudden beating of wings against water, the plop of a fish jumping. The trees stopped abruptly, giving a lovely view of a quietly flowing river, ducks and swans dotting its surface gray-green and white.
“Vitba or West Dvina?”
“Vitba. Not as broad as in other parts of the city but challenging enough.”
“Did you . . . get to the other bank?” Ulya didn’t know what prompted her to ask, maybe because she knew Rita was a bad swimmer.
“Yes. Once. So proud of myself.”
Ulya hugged Rita. “Glad for you it’s not the Volga River.”
“Making fun of me?” Rita returned her smile.
From Vitba, Rita led Ulya through a marsh, indicating the passable places. The earth beneath their feet squelched. Why all this sightseeing? asked a little voice inside Ulya’s head.
As if answering her unspoken question, Rita went on. “I scouted the area since Bagdan and I . . . since he started inviting me to spend weekends with him.” All of a sudden, she threw her arms up. “What an idiot I am! You must be hungry, and I think Bagdan must have returned home already.”
He was.
Wide-shouldered, squat, short brown hair with some premature streaks of gray and short reddish beard, he gave an impression of a peasant. He extended his enormous hand to energetically press Ulya’s in his. His sharp and assessing eyes caught and held hers. “Heard a lot about you.” But he did not say what it was exactly he had heard.
Ulya suspected he was at least fifteen or more years older than Rita. What did she find in him? At his age he must have been married and have a bunch
