Project - 16 (18 page)

“
To find Saska, of course!” he said with a wry
grin.

“
The real reason?” I said.

“
You think I am lying?”

“
Maybe not lying, but not quite telling the truth
either.”

He stared into the bottom of his cup and the grin faded. The
rain had started again and it tapped against the window with a
steady rhythm as if pacing our conversation for us. It was funny
how a sombre mood quickly became infectious.

“
You're as perceptive as your Papa once was, God rest his
soul.” He sipped the last of his tea, then poured himself some more
from the pot. “How long would you have waited to tell me of his
death, Miller?”

“
You know it wasn't like that,” I said. “I had no way of
getting in touch with you. The Americans were breathing down our
necks in the days leading up to his death and the ones after it.
Any attempt to make contact would have been totally
misunderstood.”

“
Eight weeks. Eight fucking weeks, Miller. I still haven't
gotten over it, you know? Not being there. Not saying my
goodbyes.”

“
He knew,” I said. “He knew how you felt.”

“
Did he? All I can think about is the last argument we had. It
was something trivial.”

“
It always was,” I said, grinning.

“
Not always. Sometimes we just couldn't see eye to eye on
something. Neither of us could back down.” He drummed his fingers
on the table. “It was here that I last saw him. It was in this
chair that we last spoke. Then I returned to Russia and only found
out once he was in the ground.”

“
I can't change that, Piotr. I can't fix it for
you.”

“
I know, I know,” he said. “I just felt I had to say it again.
Not to you, not as a rebuke, but to the house, to the place your
Papa called home. Call it atonement or something.”

I smiled and got up to put another pot on the boil, feeling
the weight of what he was saying. Could I have done more to tell
him about my Dad? Maybe. I was a mess back then, I wasn't thinking
straight and the Americans had expected me to just pick up where he
left off. It would haunt me as much as it haunted him.

Once we'd put that conversation to rest, I returned to the
question of why he was here. Now. In this place.

“
What I told you is the truth,” he began once the tea had been
poured. “The General wants his beloved daughter back. But you're
right, it's not the whole truth. Do you not feel it, Miller? Do you
not sense what is wrong?”

“
I don't know what you're getting at.”

“
I don't know if it's reached this far,” he said, but not to
me, to the room, to himself perhaps. “It's certainly in America. I
must admit, I haven't felt its presence here.”

“
Felt what, Piotr? You're speaking in riddles.”

“
The darkness, the black depression, the...” He wrestled with
the idioms, even in his own Russian, to describe what he knew. “The
dog, following, chasing you, sapping you of all will to
act...”

I waited, watching the pained expression on his face pass
through several worrying stages as he tried to explain it to me. I
was at a loss to understand him.

“
It began as a small thing,” he said. “Doctors began noticing
a rise in suicides, in people coming to surgery suffering from
depression, people feeling tired and not wanting to get out of bed,
that sort of thing. It was easily dismissed. Lethargy, too much
alcohol, that sort of thing. The newspapers were the first to alert
us to what was happening. It began to pull figures together,
figures from everywhere it could, the army, the students, the
workers, a broad sweep of people. They began to see a pattern. A
growing number of deaths from suicide or neglect, like people were
just giving up and choosing to just die the way a wounded animal
might, or an old dog trying to find a dark corner to lie down
in.”

“
How long ago was this?” I asked.

“
I can't be sure. Some say it began 10, maybe 15 years ago and
we just never noticed, it was that subtle. The figures weren't
perfect but it seemed to show the rise beginning about then. The
first places that were effected were near the north, near the
taiga, but then it crept slowly downwards, heading south. I saw a
graph once. Someone suggested wind patterns but it was dismissed.
No one was thinking virus or contagion at that time. It was too
wide spread.”

“
Were animals effected?” I asked.

“
No,” he said, shaking his head violently. “That struck the
thinking people as really strange. It almost looked like it had the
exact opposite effect, like it helped them to thrive, to
expand-”

“
The thinking people?” I said with a smile.

“
Yes, I call them that. In their white coats and their
degrees. They think things up like that. I like my life simple,
trees and tracks and hunting.”

“
So go on, you were saying...”

“
Yes. When I came here during those years, I think maybe three
times, I saw the animals breeding, I saw you and your Papa happy
and content, and I tried to understand what was happening in my
home. Had this thing been an American weapon used against us? To
crush our spirit? To prepare us for invasion? All these things I
thought but could not reconcile. Not until now.”

“
You're think of Saska and Alex.”

“
Yes, Miller. I'm thinking they know what's happening and are
either trying to stop it or...” He gave me a knowing look and I
nodded.

“
So are you blaming the Yanks for it?”

“
At first I did and so did the General. Then we realised the
same thing is happening over there - and not just there. China.
Israel. Even Australia. Some of the remotest places are all showing
the same signs though at different stages.”

“
But you haven't seen it here?” I asked.

“
No,” he said, shaking his head. “But it follows me
still.”

Silence. He sipped his tea. “What is it like,
Piotr?”

“
I... It is like Death is behind you, whispering in your ear.
Telling you things... telling you how worthless you are, how
unimportant you are... I...”

He slid into the wordless void and when I looked back from
the stove there were tears streaming down his weathered
face.

“
How long have you felt it?” I asked.

“
Too long. The people on the boat, they all felt it. The
General, everyone, they all knew it was coming...” I felt
uncomfortable, unable to respond or offer any comfort to him other
than more bloody tea. I felt nothing of what he was describing and
yet here he was, sick in a way none of us could understand. Would
it spread to me too? To Claudia? If it could, it would be too late
to do anything now.

“
Is there anything that can be done?” I asked. He shook his
head, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

“
Nothing. Only a faint hope that-”

“
This is why he sent you here to find Saska.”

“
Yes. But not to bring her back.” Piotr suddenly looked old
and tired and I felt a wave of pity for him. “If she is somehow
responsible, or is in any way helping who ever is...”

“
I see.”

“
You know, I think you do, Miller. I think you do.”

After showing Piotr to the room he usually took when he came
to stay, I went for a walk around the grounds in my big coat with
the hood up and the rain beating down on me, pushing me down,
pressing me into the dirt. I'd never seen a man react like that
before and it bothered me. I felt nothing of this depression and
nor had my Dad when he was alive. Was it a man-made thing? Or had
nature decided to clean house? I had a lot of questions that I
didn't have before Riley and her mission showed up. It wasn't her
fault of course, but life had been a lot simpler before.

I passed the student huts and stopped to look at the sheep
who'd wandered in again and were nibbling the sparse grass. They
didn't look too depressed from where I was standing. I left them,
walking along the old fence, checking some of the various nests I
knew about, most of them empty now.

I found myself near the southern edge of the land that
stopped just short of a series of cliffs where chalky white stone
burst through the soil like fractured bones. They glistened in the
wet and the odd brave sheep ventured across them, heading around
the western slopes. From here I could look towards the distant
towns I'd long since begun avoiding when, after a brief time
looking for bits for the house, one of the buildings had collapsed,
almost burying me alive. Since then I'd stayed away from it and the
land had started swallowing it whole. Only the old church spire
remained untouched by the parasitic moss that crawled imperceptibly
across the faces of all the other buildings and from here I could
just make out the hands of the clock, stopped between 12 and
half-past.

I stayed there until I could feel the rain in my boots and
then returned to the house. I got undressed in the drying room,
stripping down to my shorts and under shirt, then padded bare-foot
into the house, mopping up Piotr's boot prints as I went. I made
myself two slices of toast, topped them with honey and went to my
Dad's library with a cup of tea in one hand and the toast balanced
in the other. I lit the fireplace, sat down in his chair and took
up his notebook again - the one about the bunkers.

It seemed like he'd never set foot in any of them whilst he'd
been exploring but had taken the time to note down the location of
each one anyway. It seemed odd as I sat there, slowly getting warm,
and I felt that somewhere there was something I was missing,
something he'd wanted me to know but yet...

I ate the toast and dusted the crumbs off my lap but still no
solution presented itself. The fire crackled and spat and my legs
began to feel hot. I turned page after page of handwritten notes,
all done with meticulous sketches, diagrams and information about
each area he'd encountered over a six year period. Nothing leapt
out at me. But it was there. I knew it. I just couldn't place
it.

I must have dozed off in the chair because I woke to the
sound of the front door slamming shut. The fire had turned to
smouldering embers and I got up in time to see Riley heading out
into the drizzle, jogging away as the evening came in, no doubt to
relieve some of the tension through her dance. By now the rain was
spent and as I went to check on the stove I saw that the water had
run down my improvised funnel system and almost filled the water
drum by the back door.

I made up a pot of coffee and sat there staring at the
notebook, willing it to yield some answers. It reminded me of a
trip me and Dad had gone on with a troop of G.I's once. They'd been
hard work at first, refusing to listen to what Dad had had to say
to them. It sometimes happened that way; arrogant lads who think
they know it all show up and have to be put down like little kids.
Dad had a great way of doing it though. He'd take them as far north
as he could, usually in winter, then lead them around the old slate
mines until they were so disorientated that they had no hope of
finding their way back. He'd make sure they had enough kit to last
them four days, then we'd lose them around a hillside, double back
and watch them struggle from a distance with binoculars. From time
to time we'd intervene and grab one of them who'd managed to get
cut off from the others. One by one their numbers would drop and
they'd panic even more. By the end of the fourth day they were so
lost that when we showed up they were almost in tears.

Dad would lead them back and they'd be quiet as mice with
their heads bowed. It would be 'yes sir' all the way home and once
they'd had a hot meal and dry clothes he'd sit them down and show
them the map. It would be criss-crossed with red ink where they'd
blundered around in circles, killing members of their own team as
they'd been left behind. It was a sobering exercise designed to
show them how serious his teachings needed to be taken.

That's how I felt at that moment as I looked at the notebook.
I felt like I was blundering around the mines, trying to get a
sense of something and Dad was somehow there watching me, laughing,
hoping I'd see the obvious answer like any good teacher does when
he has a stubborn student.

I lost track of time leafing through the pages and before I
knew it Riley had returned, sweating and panting as she came into
the kitchen.

“
Penny for your thoughts?” she said, sitting down opposite me.
She had a bottle of water which she was emptying with long
gulps.

“
I'm trying to make sense of this,” I said and pushed the book
towards her.

“
Your Dad's work?” she asked.

“
Yeah. He went to a lot of effort to write all this down, but
I can't figure out why. I can't escape the feeling that he thought
it was important for me to know something in here - but I can't
grasp exactly what that something is!”

“
Leave it with me. I might be able to see something you're
missing. I'm good at puzzles,” she said.

“
Really?”

“
Fuck yeah. I try and do a Sudoku every morning on my
tablet.”