forget.'
'She's going to redeem you?'
'Maybe.'
'Renko!' Zurin waved with great agitation from across the hall. 'Damn it, Renko!'
For the first time Arkady saw Anton's eyes truly open, as if there were an interior never seen before. Anton opened his hands and let them hang. Arkady felt the entire hall go still.
'Renko, stay there!' Zurin ordered.
'Gate B10,' Arkady read from Anton's boarding pass. He handed back the tickets and papers. 'I'd go to the gate now if I were you.' When Anton started to say something, Arkady gave him a push. 'Don't look back.'
Anton joined the mother and daughter; framed by them, he did look more human. Arkady watched them gather their carry-ons and join a general migration toward the gates. Anton put on sunglasses in spite of the gloomy lighting. The girl waved.
'Renko, will you stay in one place?' Zurin arrived with a stamp of his foot. 'Who was that man?'
'Someone I thought I knew.'
'Did you?'
'As it turned out, not a bit.'
They returned to the pub. Zurin lit a cigar and read the newspaper. Arkady tried but couldn't sit still enough, not when there were so many people, so many possibilities, so much life rushing by.
19
They paid a visit in December. Eva decided that one day's exposure was permissible, although Zhenya went with all the enthusiasm of a hostage. At least Arkady had the boy wear a new jacket, which was victory enough.
A light snow had fallen, giving the village a crisp jacket of white. Brambles were transformed into snowy flowers. Every tumbledown cabin was traced in white, and every abandoned chair held a cushion of snow. The entire population had turned out: Klara the Viking, Olga with her foggy spectacles, Nina on her crutch and, of course, Roman and Maria, to distribute a welcome of bread and salt and samogon. Vanko had come from Chernobyl. Even the cow lifted her head from her stall to see what the noise was about.
Maria stuffed everyone into the cabin for warm borsch and more samogon. The men ate standing up. Windows steamed and cheeks got red. Zhenya studied the oven, with its shelf for sleeping, and it occurred to Arkady that the boy had never seen a peasant cabin except in fairy tales. He turned to Arkady and mouthed, 'Baba Yaga.' The room was exactly as Arkady remembered: the same woodland tapestries and red-and-white embroidered cloths, the family icon high in its corner and, on the wall, photographs, the coexisting moments of a young Roman and Maria, of their daughter with her husband and little girl, of the same granddaughter on a Cuban beach.
Eva was the center of attention because Maria and her friends wanted to know what Moscow was like. Although she made light of it, Arkady knew that for Eva the move to Moscow was not always a happy situation. She'd gotten away from the Zone and found work at a clinic, but many days she felt she was occupying Irina's place or was a shell of a woman pretending to be whole. But other days were good, and some were very good.
Under the influence of the samogon, Vanko confided that since Alex Gerasimov's death, funding from Russia for ecological research had slowed to a trickle. A research team from Texas was moving in, however, and they would probably need someone local. Perhaps the British Friends of the Ecology would like to contribute. He hoped so.
Maria laughed at everything Eva said. In her bright scarves, Maria looked like a twice-wrapped present, and her steel teeth gleamed. An almost childish glee seemed to have infected all the old villagers, an excitement that bubbled over in spite of their politeness.
Roman shyly pulled Arkady aside to say, 'None of our families have visited for almost a year. Not even to the cemetery, if you can imagine.'
'I'm sorry to hear that.'
'I understand. They're busy people, and they're far away. I hope you don't mind if I take advantage of your visit, but I don't know when I will have three men here again. It takes at least three men. That's why I invited Vanko. Don't worry, I have old clothes for you to wear.'
'That's fine with me.'
'Good!' Roman refilled their glasses.
Arkady backtracked. 'Three men to what?'
Maria couldn't hold it in any longer. 'Kill the pig!'
Snow was falling again in soft handfuls.
Roman came out of the barn in boots and a rubber apron. Vanko had tied one of the pig's legs across its chest to keep it off balance, but Sumo was strong and agile, and it understood in a moment that the same people who had been its benefactors for a year were going to slaughter it. Dragging Vanko in its wake, the pig squealed its outrage and terror, plunging one direction and then another while Roman hung a double pulley and rope over the barn door.
'Roman used to butcher pigs for the whole village,' Maria said. 'Now it's just our pig, but we share with our friends.'
It was a simple proposition: Sumo would die so they would live. Yet the scene also had the feel of a country fair. Vanko was dragged across the white yard, and the old women cheered him on as if they expected nothing less than bedlam. When the pig broke for the gate, Nina, her eyes lit, steered the beast back with her crutch.
'I'm sorry,' Eva whispered. 'I didn't know this was going to happen.'
'It's December, it's time to fill the larder. I understand Roman's situation.'
'Will you help with the pig?'
Arkady made a noose from a cord. 'I'll let Vanko wear him down a little more.'
From nowhere, Zhenya stripped off his jacket and tackled the pig. They rolled over the ground. The pig was fast, heavy and fighting for its life, pale eyelashes fluttering, squealing for help. Even when Sumo shook Zhenya off, he held onto the cord. A boy whom Arkady had never seen lift more than a chess piece hung on with one hand and waved with the other. 'Arkady! Arkady!'
Arkady dove for the pig. He and Vanko and Zhenya were dragged over the snow until Arkady got the noose around the pig's other front leg. The pig plowed forward on its jaw, still charging with its rear legs.
'On three,' Arkady said. 'One… two…'
He and Zhenya used the animal's momentum to turn it on its back and slide it to Roman, who pressed down on the pig's front legs and slit its throat in one crescent-moon stroke.
The rubber apron made Roman a different, more impressive figure. He tied together the kicking rear legs, hooked them to the pulley, pulled the pig into the air upside down and kicked a zinc tub into place underneath to catch the spurting blood.
Smeared bright red, Zhenya staggered in the snow, his thin arms out, laughing. Vanko rose from his knees and lurched toward the samogon, while the pig hung kicking and squealing. Roman looked on with magisterial calm. He dug a finger into the pig's eye and plucked it out. Arkady looked at Eva as she looked at him.
'To drain faster,' Roman explained to Zhenya.
As soon as the pig was still, Roman moved it into a wheelbarrow to the center of the yard, where the women came to life, heaping hay on the pig and setting it on fire. Flames swirled in the snow, orange beating against white. Once the hay had burned, Roman straddled the pig and scraped off the singed hair. Maria released the chickens, who raced around the yard pecking at blood and chasing the eye. When the pig had been burned and scraped several times, Roman washed off the blood; it was remarkable, Arkady thought, how clean an operation it was. Roman cut off a crisped ear and offered it as a treat to Arkady. When he declined, Zhenya took it.
The rest of the afternoon was spent reducing the pig. First with a hatchet to chop off the head, because it took
