One Crow Alone (3 page)

With a final heave, she pushed the coffin into the shallow grave. With a dull thump, it slid down on its side, sending up a puff of snow. But the lid held. With the last of her strength, Magda hacked the frozen pile of earth down onto it.

She said the prayers she thought the priest would have spoken.

But everything was wrong.

Even now it did not seem possible that Babula wasn't stirring a pot in the kitchen. Magda made her way, trembling, with sad steps back to the house. “Azor. Come.”

He looked up. “Come,” she repeated quietly.

Slowly the dog crept up the steps.

“Come on. Come inside.”

He put his paw tentatively over the threshold. She dragged him by the scruff of his neck. Pushed the door shut. Locked it. Breathed a little easier.

“You can eat kasha, dog.” She took an enameled basin from above the stove and ladled the remains of the morning's porridge into it.

“See. You are the man of the house.” She placed the bowl on the floor. “Fleas or no fleas, you have to look after me now.”

It felt better not to be alone.

Mama said that in England people had dogs living in their houses. They let them sleep on the bed. On the bed, Azor! They had coats for their dogs. And chocolate. There were
whole shops
selling coats and chocolates for dogs.

Azor wolfed down the kasha, sniffed about, slumped panting beside the door and closed his eyes.

Magda piled fresh wood into the stove. Pulled off her boots. At least Babula had died peacefully. Kowalski's wife making the soup in the last days, and holding Magda's hand. What more could she do? Magda had no way of contacting her mother even. No way to tell her: Babula is dead. I'm alone, Mama—

And now what? Wait?

Babula would have said, “If you have no answer, then make no decision. Sleep on it. When everything stops making sense, then sense is all that's left. It is better, Magda, that you suffer for doing what is right, than for doing what is wrong.”

A wind rattled the shutters.

In the fading afternoon light, Magda sat by the stove. When her eyes could stay open no longer, she crawled into bed, pulled the cover over her head, and listened to her own breath against the pillow.

There is no use in crying. Death comes to everyone. It is just the way. And whatever has happened in the village has happened. There must be some explanation. Tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, the storm will break. Tomorrow you will have to think what to do. But now there is no better thing to do than sleep.

She kicked the blankets up around her cold feet, drew them in, and turned to the wall.

In that terrible dark loneliness she was thankful at least for the dog guarding the door.

 

4

For a moment, as she woke, Magda forgot.

For a moment, everything was as it should be.

But the moment was gone with the opening of her eyes. She pushed the blankets back and got up.

In the kitchen, the dog beat his tail on the floor a few times. She caught sight of herself in the mirror above the dresser. Tugged at her hair. Stoked up the stove.

What will you do?

Babula would have prayed. But it would be better to go and fetch water from the well. There was the pony to feed.

She poured the last of the water from the pitcher into a pan of oats.

*   *   *

Stopko's radio!

*   *   *

Magda flung the pan onto the stove. Threw on her coat and boots.

“Azor. The radio!”

Stopko's Chinese radio. Maybe there was life in the battery.

The dog bounded after her through the snow. She ran across the street and jumped the steps to his door.

The door creaked open. The house was already cold with no fire to warm it. The television sat on top of an old cupboard. Magda pulled open the drawers: neatly stacked DVDs and a pile of faded newspapers lay inside. She went to the bedroom. Stopko's bed was unmade. As if he had just got out of it. The room still smelled stale. And there. On the table beside the bed was an empty bottle of vodka. And the radio. She grabbed it.

Back at home, Magda put the radio on the table. Her hands were shaking.

She switched it on.

Nothing.

She took the batteries out. Rubbed the greening connections inside the compartment. Placed the batteries in the lowest oven of the stove—she had seen Stopko doing it—ten minutes maybe, but not too hot, so she left the oven door open.

Please, God, make them work.

She inserted the batteries back into the radio.

Switched it on.

The radio crackled into life.
Krrrrghhhh. Krck. Kurrr.

The antenna. She pulled it up, turned the dial.

Kughrrr. Krck.
A voice faded in across the airwaves.

“—ee evacuated to the nearest city. Government forces will reach you soon. Wait in your houses. I repeat, a State of Emergency has been declared. Bring only what you can carry.
Krck. Krr.
Government forces will be with you soon. Citizens of Malpolskie District. This is your governor speaking. All villages will be evacuated to the…”

The batteries died and the voice faded away.

*   *   *

Magda's heart felt as if it had fallen to the ground and rolled away like a stone.
The men who came were not coming to steal—they were coming to evacuate the village. And you hid. Hid in the cellar.

Why had no one noticed she was missing? But then, of course, it would have been dark. Mayhem, villagers not wanting to go, animals dragged out of barns, old women crying, Stopko shouting.

But why had the men come? What was the emergency? What terrible thing had happened?

Maybe it was the snow. The power lines had come down and no one had mended them, it was true. The villagers had talked. But they didn't question after a week or two. What could you do anyway? they said. It makes no difference to us. We have our pickled cabbage and apples in the attic. Summer will come.

You will have to go to the village of Mokre. Someone must be there. Someone who will know …

Magda did not know what else she could do.

A log cracked in the stove. She pressed the buttons, but the radio would not come to life again.

She took a piece of paper and laid it on the table.

Wrote a message and weighted it down with a cup:

I have been left behind in the village. The weather is very bad. I will take Bogdan Stopko's pony and try to reach the village of Mokre. If there is no one there, I will go to the road and try to find the others.

God help me.

Magda Krol

10 January 2039

She looked about the kitchen. On a high shelf by the window was Babula's small Bible. She took it down. Old and worn, the Bible was inscribed on the first page:

Agnieszka Maria Krol

1958

And written below that in a child's hand:

In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence and his children shall have a place of refuge.

Magda took out the faded piece of paper with her mother's address and telephone number on it, folded it very carefully, and put it in her shirt pocket. Then laid the Bible back on the shelf.

She took a deep breath and looked about at the familiar walls. The clock ticked loudly on the shelf.

There will be no one to wind it until you return.

She wrapped some bread and the remains of a ham, filled a bag with oats, took a sliver of soap from the sink, then rolled the blankets from the bed and tied them to her bag.

At the door she turned, glanced one more time at the scrubbed wooden table and worn floorboards, at the mugs hanging above the sink and the photographs on the wall.

She pulled her hat tight over her ears. What use was there in crying over yesterday's burnt kasha?

*   *   *

The dog was sitting by Stopko's fence.

“There is nothing for you where I'm going, Azor. No kasha, no meat. Nothing.”

But there was nothing for him in the village either and he stuck to her ankles like a tick.

The pony was well fed, a little round in the hindquarters even, his dun-colored winter coat dirty and unbrushed. He hung his head low as Magda threw the rope over his neck, a dark wiry mane falling this way and that. She grabbed a handful and scrambled onto his back. The pony flattened his ears and twisted his neck and nipped at her leg. She swiped it away and buried her gloved hands in the tangled mane and kicked him on into the weather, with Azor trotting at their heels, down to the icy riverbank and the blizzard still graying the big, wide sky.

It was no day to make a journey.

*   *   *

A mile or so later the pony snorted his way up the bank between the low, shuttered houses of Mokre.

Every house was shut and empty. No need to knock on doors. There was no smoke, no nothing.

She turned her head, looked out at the snow-covered hills all about, the dark of the forest traced on the skyline, the distant mountains looming over the empty village with intent.

You are just a speck on this earth. Who will care if you sink in the snow and are covered? These mountains won't care.

The wind gusted, unrelenting. Maybe she should take the low road to Karlikov. There might be other people there. Just maybe.

She clucked at the pony and retraced her steps down the slope, the dog following close.

When she had gone as far as she could along the riverbank, she headed up to where the road should have been. She stared at the deep white all about. Slid off the pony's back. A freezing wall of wind took away her breath.

If you had been beating against the winds high above, you would have seen the tiny figures shrouded in the storm, bending against the weather: struggling and sinking and sweating and freezing. Drowning in the snow like ants in a puddle. And Magda, shielding her face, breathing hard against the upturned collar of her coat, looked up at the hillside—still visible through a haze of snowflakes—and managed to cajole the sweating pony; up to that bush there, the top of a rock jutting through the snow, a little higher to that sheltering tree. Up, up, up. Out of the drifts. It had been madness to try to take the low road. If she could just reach that firmer ground higher up, then she would be able to get to the shelter of the forest—and over the hill to Karlikov before nightfall. She pushed Kowalski's tales of wolves to the back of her mind.

*   *   *

At last she came in among the trees.

Two jays set up a racketing clatter high in the branches. The blizzard lashed the treetops, swaying and creaking overhead, but there was a kind of calm on the forest floor, and she stopped for a moment to catch her breath.

The weather is impossible. You should have waited. Should have sat by the stove with a plate of hot food for a day more.

The dog wagged its snow-crusted tail. Well, there was no understanding dogs.

And if she found the foresters' track she was certain she could reach the northern edge of the forest before nightfall.
Wolves indeed, you foolish girl!
She picked her way under the sheltering boughs with growing confidence.

But she hadn't realized how long it had taken her to climb the hill. By four o'clock the winter sun began to drop below the horizon. The gray sky, shrouded already by the forest, grew dim and bleak.

Yes, dusk came quickly. All of a sudden she could barely see the trees looming around her.

“Azor.” She wanted him close.

She tried to calm her rapidly beating heart.
It's not far to Karlikov. It is only the sinking sun that has changed everything. The world hasn't changed. It hasn't disappeared. It is only the coming nighttime.

But she found that the heartbeat of the dusk-fallen forest was stronger than her prayers. The dark dropped like a curtain. There was something in it that gripped her innards. The twisted tree trunks seemed grim specters. Reaching out from dusky shadows. There was no safe corner to put her back against.

“Aagh!” Her shins hit a fallen branch. She stumbled down onto her knees. Up ahead was a bright swathe under the trees. She clutched the pony's rope and pulled herself up. The night sky rushed with unseen clouds and the shuttered moon appeared briefly from behind them and lit the edge of a clearing. She stepped out with loud breaths, her boots crunching across a glowing ribbon of open snow.

On the other side of the track was something square and solid in the gloom.

A twig snapped.

She stopped as still as a post. The wind rattled the treetops.

It was a broken-down foresters' hut, the door hanging open—weathered boards roughly nailed to the walls under a snowy tin roof. A fallen branch lay over one side.

Magda lashed the pony to a tree and pulled at the stiff wooden door, leapt back in fright as a clutch of twigs fell at her feet.

The hut smelled damp. It smelled of earth. She peeled the rucksack from her shoulder and dug about for the matches. Struck one.

The interior appeared in its guttering flame. Dusty cobwebs sagged in the corners. Ivy had grown in through the walls—snaking up through gaps in the boards. Along the back wall was a low bench with dead leaves heaped in mounds on top of it, an untidy pile of sticks beneath, and a small flat-topped stove rusting in the corner.

Kneeling down, Magda opened the stove and piled a handful of dry leaves on top of the congealed char inside it, and shielding the match with her hand she lit the tinder.

Soon the fire was burning strong. She crouched down with her arms around her knees. Tried to forget the fears hammering inside her head—
claang claang claang
—like a blacksmith at his anvil. Struggling to make sense of it all somehow.

It was true the villagers had begun to talk. Even Babula.
These are the hardest winters I have ever seen, Magda. And now too in Paris? In Rome?
Those
are places! God help your mother. Maybe it is bad in London too?—You must call her.