‘No, you won’t be in trouble. Better you … Look, I’ll help.’
Mr Navitski doesn’t seem to want to take him by the hand, but takes him by the hand nonetheless. There is a little bathroom just by the assembly hall, and together they go in. The water in the taps will take forever to warm up, so Mr Navitski fills a sink with cold and lathers up a cake of hard soap.
‘How long have you been wearing this shirt?’
The boy shrugs, because something tells him he should not mention the forest.
‘We’ll find you a new one, from lost property.’
‘Can I keep this one?’
‘You mustn’t wear it to class, but we’ll keep it safe for you.’
Mr Navitski’s hand strays from the boy’s shirt to his hair, where he begins to tease out pieces of twig. When his hand brushes the blisters, the boy recoils. ‘What happened here?’
‘It was the ice.’
‘Ice?’
‘I was wearing my papa’s hat, and it iced to me.’
‘You’re in his tenement now, aren’t you? Doesn’t he have the heating turned up?’
This the boy knows not to answer.
‘When was the last time you had a proper meal?’
The boy remembers cattail mash, washed down with pine-needle tea. ‘It was last night.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘I have some leftovers my wife packed away for me. I’ll have them warmed through.’
After he has rinsed his face and hands and even his arms up to the elbows, Mr Navitski finds a brush and tugs the tangles out of his hair. By the time they are finished the assembly is over, and it is time for class.
‘You’ll have some catching up to do.’
‘I know.’
‘Come on, then. We’re learning about the war.’
‘The wars of winter?’
Uncertainly, Mr Navitski says, ‘Well, when the whole world was at war …’
‘Was it when the Winter King fought the King in the West? And there were some men who had to wear stars, and went into the forests and lived there and ate cattail roots and pine-needle tea, all so the soldiers didn’t catch them?’
A smile curls in the corner of Mr Navitski’s lips. ‘You mean the Bielskis, and people like them. They were Jewish partisans. They broke out of the ghettos and went into the wilderness, into the pushcha itself, and built a whole civilization there, and the Germans just couldn’t find them. There were Russian partisans too. They went into the pushcha and found ways to fight back. Oh,’ he beams – because some stories thrill grown men as much as little boys – ‘men were crawling all through the pushcha during the wars.’
‘When all the world was the Russias?’
‘Well, one might say that …’
‘And they might still be out there, even if they’re gone, because the trees drink them up and everything that ever died turns into trees, doesn’t it?’
This time, Mr Navitski hesitates before replying. He nods only vaguely, his brow creases again, and he shepherds the boy into class to join children who look at him differently, oddly – because, now that mama is gone, he is not really like them at all.
It turns out that the project is what our families did in the war. In turn, the boys and girls will tell about their own families, and what happened to them in that long-ago time. One girl tells how her Grandfather was a soldier and got put in a prison and had to spend the whole war there, learning ways to escape. Only, when he escaped, he found he was hundreds of miles from home and somehow had to get back. In those days there were no motor cars, and the trains were filled with wicked soldiers, so lots of people had to walk. Like those men in Grandfather’s story, they had to live wild in hedgerows and forests, and some of them looked like cavemen and others more beastly still.
Yuri’s project is a pile of crumpled notepaper and a map, like the one on his bedroom floor, which shows all the Russias and the countries along its side, places like Latvia and Lithuania, a big scribble called Ukraine and after that the tiny Belarus, coloured in with trees.
‘Aren’t you telling about your papa?’
‘No,’ scowls Yuri, scoring another tree into his map.
‘Why no?’
‘Because,’ he says, poking a pencil in Mr Navitski’s direction, ‘he said not to do my papa, because, in the war, the police were no good. But how can a police be no good? Police are there to help.’
Yuri lifts his map and cups it around his mouth. ‘I’m sorry about your mama.’
It is an incredible thing to hear. Such a little thing, but the boy’s lips start to tremble, his hands hot and slippery as a fever.
‘What’s it like, living with your papa?’
Any words the boy might have would come out like sobs, so he swallows them.
‘What did your papa do in the war?’
‘Is it the wars of winter?’ the boy finally says.
Yuri considers it. ‘I think so. In the pictures, it’s awfully cold.’
It is dark by end of day. Outside, mothers cluck around the gates and, as the boy ventures out, he feels Mr Navitski’s eyes boring into his back. He stops to watch, because even Yuri, with a sleeve encrusted in spittle and bits of dinner, has a mama to run to. In the gloom at the end of the schoolyard, Yuri’s mother scolds him, strikes him once around the ear and takes his hand to lead him away.
Grandfather is waiting on the other side of the road, prowling up and down by the car like a man in a cage. The boy takes flight, not stopping to look as he barrels over the road to find him.
‘Papa!’
Grandfather looks up. ‘I didn’t know when this all ends,’ he says, with what must be deep relief.
‘Have you been waiting?’
‘A little.’
‘I’m sorry, papa. Are you cold?’
He beams, ‘Well, they don’t let you build cookfires in the middle of the street, do they? Jump in. It’s getting dark.’
The boy’s eyes drift to the skies. Clouds have gathered, but a half moon still shines. ‘It’s dark already, papa.’
‘Not this,’ Grandfather grins. ‘I mean real dark. These people don’t know real dark, do they? But we do. Your papa and you know about real dark. Woodland dark.’
The boy slides up front, and the car complains bitterly as Grandfather rolls it into the traffic.
‘Where did you get that shirt?’
It is only now that he realizes he is still wearing the shirt Mr Navitski found for him.
‘I’m sorry, papa.’
‘Why sorry?’
Grandfather slows the car down to a halt, even though they are in the middle of a road, approaching an intersection where dark tenements huddle together.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t ever say sorry, boy.’
After that they drive in silence. The boy wants to ask: what did you do today, papa? Were you lonely on your own? Did you talk to Madam Yakavenka