‘Papa,’ he says, ‘is it a story?’
At the fire, Grandfather bends to feed more wood to the flames.
‘It is,’ he says, ‘but for another night …’
In the morning there is no talk of the tenement. Before the sun struggles into the sky Grandfather leads him off, deeper into the forest.
‘I remembered the way,’ he says. ‘It came to me in the dead of night.’
‘To the stream?’
‘It runs underground but comes to the surface for just a little while …’
It turns out that Grandfather is looking for cattails. Cattails, he says, grow by streams and you can dig them up even in the dead of winter. If you cook them right they can taste just like a potato.
‘But we have potatoes in the tenement, papa.’
They stand by a depression in the land through which Grandfather is certain the stream once ran.
‘Do you want to go back to the tenement, boy? Is that it?’
‘I don’t want to leave her, papa, but …’
‘What’s in the tenement?’ Grandfather sinks to his knees and runs his hands through tall bladed grass. He seems to be feeling their textures, teasing out the occasional one and following its stem all the way to its root. ‘Your mama was the only thing in the tenement that mattered, and now she’s here. In spring she’ll be in every tree, just like baba.’
‘Do you miss baba, papa?’
‘Only every day. Might be I’d forgotten how much, until you made me come here.’
Now the boy understands: it is his fault. His papa pleaded with him not to make him come, but the boy pleaded back. There must be old smells and memories rushing on Grandfather every second. Maybe he remembers how baba smelt, how she spoke, the things that she said.
‘Are the trees your friends, papa?’
‘They saved my life, once upon a time.’
Grandfather plunges a hand through the crust. The earth seems to swallow him, up to his elbow. He fights back, gripping his arm with the other hand as if struggling with whatever cadaver lurks beneath the surface. Finally, he topples back, the cattail in his hand, trailing pulpy white flesh beaded in dirt.
‘It’s for dinner.’
‘What about school, papa? I have to go to school.’
Grandfather’s eyes roam the grasses, searching out another stalk.
‘I never heard of a little boy wanting to go to school.’
‘I haven’t been since … before mama. They’ll wonder where I am. What about … Yuri?’
‘He’s your little friend.’
The boy shrugs.
‘You want to watch out for friends. When I was a boy, a friend was a dangerous thing.’
Grandfather’s hand plunges back through the snow and comes out with another cattail root, wriggling like some poor fish just plucked from the water.
‘Come on, boy. Aren’t you hungry?’
Cattail mashed with acorn is not so very bad a dinner, if it’s been two days since you had hot potatoes and hock of ham. By the time it is done the afternoon is paling and snow smothers the forest again.
Night means a different thing when there are no buzzing electric lights. Now Grandfather is ready for bed as soon as the darkness comes. He rests his feet, still in their jackboots, on a crate and sprawls back in the ragged armchair, tugging the bearskin hat to the brim of his eyes.
‘Will we go back to the tenement tomorrow, papa?’
‘We’ll see.’
‘We won’t see, though, will we?’
Grandfather opens one eye. It rolls at the boy with a taunting sparkle. ‘You need your rest.’
He really doesn’t, but he gets under the eiderdown all the same. Soon he can hear the tell-tale wheeze that means Grandfather is asleep. He rolls over, the Russian horse lying rigid in his belly, and dares to close his eyes.
When he wakes, the flames are still dancing and an advancing tide of melt frost runs down the wall. Without clocks or the sounds of the tenement hall he has no way of knowing what time it is, nor how long he has been asleep. He squirms out of the eiderdown, leaving the Russian horse to bask in the hearth’s demonic glow.
In the armchair, Grandfather does not move at all.
The boy steals over. There is a desperate silence in the room. It is the silence of snow, which devours all sound, save for the howling of storybook wolves or a foundling baby’s cries on the doorstep. By the time he has reached Grandfather’s side, that silence is overwhelming.
‘Papa, are you awake?’
He dares himself to touch the thin, unmoving arms. Yet, when he does, it is a strange coldness that he feels. His eyes flit to the dead wood piled by the hearth; Grandfather’s arm feels the same as those branches, brittle and somehow empty.
‘Papa?’
When there is no answer, the boy relents, sits in a nest in the eiderdown and draws the Russian horse back into his lap. He studies his papa’s face for a long time, as fingers of firelight lap at his hanging skin. He should be snoring. His head is thrown back in the way it always was in the tenement, but no sound comes up from his throat. His lips do not tremble, nor twitch; his chest, buried beneath greatcoat and dressing gown, does not move at all.
That must have been how mama looked: open-mouthed and bald, without any breath left in her breast. They wouldn’t let him see her then, but the firelight plays a cruel trick and it is as if he is seeing her now.
He feels a fist of stone rising in his gorge, like a mother bird regurgitating food for her young. He fights it back down, but the stone must burst in his stomach, churning up whatever horrible slime lurks within. Back on his feet, and the room seems to be whirling.
‘Papa!’ he cries. And then, ‘Papa!’ again. But each time he has cried out, the silence is thicker; and, each time he has cried out, the idea that Grandfather is gone is clearer, more defined. Now he is like a storm-fallen tree, lying in the forest; he has the same shape as ever, the same ridges and fingers and branches and eyes, but what made him a living thing has disappeared.
The boy gulps for air. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. His feet want to run, but where he would run to, he has no idea. If only to stop that stone from rising back up his throat, unleashing his terror, he goes to the backdoor, thinking perhaps to ask mama for help. The world is silent. The snow no longer falls. But mama cannot help him now and never will again.
He goes back to Grandfather’s side. ‘I’m sorry, papa … I didn’t mean to make you come. Papa, I have to get help.’
Doctors and ambulances have different kinds of sorceries. There is always a hope that their words can bring life back to Grandfather just like Grandfather’s words bring life back to deadened fires. There is, he tells himself, always the car. If he finds the car, he can find his way to town. To squatting factories and endless streets, to a tenement with its window eyes gouged out. To help.
The boy steals down the passage. When he tugs the front door back, snow pours in, burying him knee-deep. With it comes winter, that relentless marauder. He gazes up the incline to the border of black forest, thinks he can make out the jaws of the trail he and Grandfather followed.
If he is going to do this he will need to be prepared. He retreats to the hearth and wraps himself in the eiderdown, one, two, three times. Now it is too stiff to walk, so he loosens the blanket