The next time Enna woke, black smoke was rising over the road east of Rulini. Through gaps between the barn’s timbers she watched the oily clouds spiralling upwards. The firing had stopped now and it was very quiet. There might have been screaming but she couldn’t remember.
She looked at the few things lying around her in the straw. The painkillers and water were all gone and she was very thirsty. She didn’t remember how long she’d been here - hours or day. She knew something was wrong because moment by moment she felt herself losing the ability to decide whether or not remembering mattered. The things that were important a day ago were unimportant, almost unrecognisable, now. Her awareness had lost all focus that much was clear to her. Part of her mind cringed in shock and horror while another part was cogniscent of what was happening and grieving the change.
She knew her body was already recovering, starting to move and respond without direct thought. Just now she’d noticed that the straw underneath her was soaking, so she’d moved very slowly to a drier place from where she could look across the yard into the farmhouse. Once she saw a movement across a window, a slight shift of light.
When the baby came out he was not even as long as her thumb. She had hardly felt him leave her in the generality of pain. He was very pink too, even after she’d washed off the blood. Looking closely she’d seen the tentative signs of gender and the two dark spots where his eyes would have been. She’d put him in the woollen cap beside her and stroked him with a forefinger; so small a thing.
Now she had put the cap away from her side and the pain had receded to a muffled, grey sensation. Daylight faded. Rain fell, heavy and silent, dissolving the blood in the farmyard dirt, drawing it into the earth. Leonid Petrovich appeared rifle in hand and stared for a moment without expression at the bodies of his wife and daughter. Absolutely still, Enna watched through a gap in the plank wall as he seized each body in turn by the ankles and dragged it into the smaller barn across the yard from her hiding place.
They looked surprised, she thought, Zuria and Tamar, as though things had not turned out as they’d expected.
At the entrance to the barn he turned and glanced up at where Enna was watching. She stiffened, every nerve jangling as she looked directly into Leonid Petrovich Serpukov’s thin face. Did he know she was here? Had he stood and looked down at her when she lay unconscious as he’d just looked at Tamar? He sniffed the air a few times then turned, picked up his gun and walked away.
Instead of going towards the farmhouse as she expected, he disappeared into the forest moving fast as though he had important things to do. She breathed out. He was unaware of being watched, she knew this from the way he stooped more, wrapped in himself. Old as he was, his body retained the coiled energy she’d recognised from the window of Tamar’s room. She remembered Leonid Petrovich melting into the dark as the men entered the yard. She remembered Tamar with a bucket and her mother’s old black skirt stained with blood and mud. She remembered the shotgun in her own hands and the face of the man who had tried to kill her and had succeeded in killing her baby. The precise events were starting to fade though; blurring, losing sharpness like an old photograph. She felt sure nothing important was forgotten, not from now and not from before.
In what seemed like moments the weather shifted from rain to a dense, milky mist that penetrated every roof, every wall, every ear and eye. Enna moved slowly over bales of stale straw, saving her energy for the climb down the ladder. Leonid Petrovich might be gone for hours, or not and this was her chance. Mist soaked her hair so that it clung to her face in long strands, curling into her neck and cheek. She could not see the far side of the barn for the white air seeping through its walls.
As she moved, grasping piled straw, the pain shifted then settled again to a burning hum. She picked up the cap but didn’t look inside. She touched the badge and remembered the pills and water someone had left inside the cap for her. There was a flash of a young man’s wet, distorted face, but the image slipped away before she could grasp it.
After tucking the cap carefully into the long, sheepskin jacket she wore, Enna climbed down the ladder, stumbling at the bottom and grasping the rough wooden doorway. Loss of blood, lack of food and mist all disorientated her but she had accepted that the state of her body was not important at this moment. Hunger, cold, pain she felt and did not feel them. This new, empty woman had new limits and potentials and she was already making choices which did not include the other Enna, the one who could not survive this.
Under a white cloak of invisibility she entered the farmhouse through the front door. In the kitchen were the remains of food prepared by dead women and she ate all of it, scraping the pan, licking the spoon and her fingers. The cupboard doors were painted with scenes of summer hillsides, flowers and birds. At six years old she had stood on a stool to reach this smooth, scrubbed surface and helped her mother make bread. Three-year old Tamar had played with a doll her mother’s brother bought in Mestia the month before his tractor’s brake cable broke, sending him down through blade-sharp trees into the ravine.
For a moment Enna hesitated as memory threatened to overwhelm her; but it was already too late for that, the unnecessary past was being rapidly shut away, the key hidden.
Opening the cupboards she made a careful selection and piled it onto the table in the middle of the room. She fetched a large canvas bag from a curtain-covered space beneath the stairs and put the tins and jars inside it along with a flaying knife, a tin opener and all the boxes of matches that she could find. In a small room off the kitchen she stood in a stone tub and poured cold water over her naked body. Her flesh contracted with chill, the skin around the breast wound puckering. Blood still trickled slowly from between her legs; she watched it, swirling and fading around her feet.
She dried herself with a kitchen cloth then covered her breast with a clean rag, sticking it to her with tape that spread over her chest like the legs of a spider. Lifting the heavy scissors used for making strips of animal fat she took a hank of hair and cut it close to her head. In minutes the floor was under a layer that coiled around her ankles. Her head felt light and small as she stepped away.
Dust clung to wet feet as she walked naked along the hallway and stiffly, like a much older, heavier woman, climbed the stairs. Movement caught her eye: a dirty mirror and a face, bluish grey from cold and shock. Realising she was alone, that the face in the mirror was herself, the violence bubbling in every cell subsided and briefly she nodded, acknowledging the woman in the glass.
In Tamar’s bedroom a crucifix hung with strands of wild goat hair stood on the table beside the bed. Years earlier she and her sister had shared this room. Now, staring at the crucifix, she remembered laughing at Tamar’s muddled faith. Her sister had said, ‘Goats are important to God too’.
At the back of a drawer she found a colour photograph of the
Her sister’s clothes hung loosely on her; the trousers were too short and only the boots fitted properly, but she put on several layers and what she couldn’t wear she piled into the bag. Descending the stairs she passed the mirror again and saw an unknown woman looking back at her.
In the cellar she made her way to the gun cabinet. It was locked. She smiled. He knew she was around then. He may not have known she was in the barn, but he’d assumed she was alive, that maybe she was with her cousin, Iveri. She checked for treachery, for devices intended to do damage. The third lock had a blade inserted under the old brass catch. She remembered that trick; the games he taught her were learnt too young and too well to be easily forgotten. Using a piece of wire she opened everything. It seemed his interest or ingenuity ran out after the locks, or perhaps fifteen years alone with Zuria and Tamar had made him lazy, made him forget that he taught his eldest child to think like an inquisitor. She smiled; he’d been inside her head, but he didn’t realise that she’d been inside his.
She took down the same shotgun she’d used to try and save her mother and sister and a large box of cartridges which went into the bag.
At the back of the cabinet her fingers closed on the small, old-fashioned pistol she’d coveted at fourteen. She drew it out, smoothing the dull barrel and blowing dust from the stippled grip. As she released the safety catch the thing came alive in her hands with a flash of blue and white. She dropped it, panting. A minute passed, then another. From behind a pile of crumbling harness she pulled an ancient fishing rod and standing as far as the rod would reach poked at the gun, gently at first, then harder. Finally, she picked it up, threw it. Nothing. No more tricks then, at least not yet. He wanted to enjoy her return at his own pace, maybe see if she was still any good at their games, or if the world had dulled her edge. She hunted through heavy, warped drawers for ammunition, then loaded the pistol and put it in the pocket of her jacket. He’d always caught her just as she’d started to relax; she wouldn’t forget that again.
The afternoon was bright and warm when Enna left the house. The mist had vanished as quickly as it came. Crossing the yard she paused by the empty animal sheds. All were silent. Leonid Petrovich must have already taken every creature to sell or slaughter, as if he’d wanted not one thing left alive to remind him of his previous existence in this place. Except her, she thought and wondered how long she had been unconscious, how many days had passed since it happened.
She walked to the back of the barn where the bodies of her mother and sister lay, grey and small. She thought Tamar had been alive when she’d first reached her, but maybe she’d been wrong about that. She noticed how blood had pooled in the undersides of their legs and arms because they’d lain so long unmoved. She looked from one to the other. In death they were alike, fair skin and hair; even the head wounds which probably killed them were similar. Their eyes were closed and she didn’t bend to kiss or touch them; instead she brought out the woollen cap from inside her jacket. She remembered now where it all came from, the sheepskin, the medicines and how she was still alive; but there was no longer a face attached to these memories, just a voice and the word ‘hermitage’, whispered over and over into her ear.
She laid the cap with its tiny occupant on the ground between the two women then walked through the barn lighting small fires. She stood motionless as straw and timber roared into life around her and even when the skin of her face and hands started to redden. She waited, rigid, waited for the fire to reach the three at the back of the building. Beams were collapsing around her as she turned, finally and walked away. She moved stiffly at first, then faster and straighter. When she entered the forest she held the shotgun in one hand and across her shoulders she carried the canvas bag.
Under the shade of the trees, the heat starts to fade from her face and hands but the smell of burning followed. It’s a while before she realises she’s carrying it with her. She walked carefully, avoiding roads and even paths. Pain still stretched around her hips like a steel band, tightening with each step, but she pushes it away.
When the ground rises, the sound of gunfire is clear. She can make out small arms fire and the crash of something heavier. Aircraft roar over the forest, trailing clouds of vapour; down here under the trees they are as real to her as dragons.
At the edge of a small birch glade she pauses, breathing the scent of soil and leaves, one hand shading her eyes against the dappled sunlight that pricks the ground. Flies drift silently through yellow air. All is quiet, as though pausing to witness what the woman with the gun will do. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply again before crossing the glade and joining a near invisible path.
Slow but confident, she moves through the familiar world of muted greens and browns, dark as an aquarium. Soon the forest floor slopes steeply downwards and boulders rise from the ground between trees grown crookedly to accommodate them. After half an hour she starts to tire, every movement of her hips a torment. Then, at the base of a high rocky overhang she pauses, listening intently. The silence is dense, all sound absorbed by wood and stone. She scents the air, tastes it, searching for something she recognises.
Creepers and ropes of ivy conceal the lower rock face and using the shotgun like a probe Enna pushes foliage aside, searching for the entrance to a place she last visited half a lifetime ago. In a land where magic should ooze from every twig and stream, this secret place is the only truly magical thing she ever found - she and a young boy whose name she no longer remembers.
The weapon disappears behind a curtain of foliage. Enna gently parts the growing strands with her head and shoulders and stepping forward, vanishes.
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