One Crow Alone Read online

  But there was no answer.

  * * *

  She made her way to the next cottage, up to Kowalski’s porch. Opened the door. Nothing.

  Her pace quickened.

  Magda left Stopko’s door until the last. It was a hope. If Stopko had disappeared, then there was trouble that wasn’t going to go away: You don’t just turn up and drag Bogdan Stopko out of his warm bed in the middle of the night without a fight.

  But she knew as she turned the handle.

  His kitchen would be as empty as the others.

  * * *

  The village was deserted.

  * * *

  Just that dog.

  “Stop your barking, Azor!” And when she rounded the side of the house to his kennel the dog did stop barking. He wagged his tail and grimaced with his teeth at the same time.

  He was a big white sheepdog, tied on a chain all winter. But he didn’t try to bite, seemed pleased to see her, so she untied his collar and set him loose.

  The dog shook himself hard. Then came leaping and jumping at her as she made her way to the long barn back behind the sticks of the hazel copse. He cocked his leg against a tree, yellowing a hole in the snow.

  “Azor!”

  The dog bounded over, up to his chest in the drifts. Magda pulled open the doors of the barn. The smell of hay and animal came rich from inside.

  There in the stall was Stopko’s pony, picking at forgotten wisps of hay on the ground. It whinnied when she came in. She threw a bundle of hay into the rack, then went outside and hauled a bucket of water from the well. Leaning over the bitten wooden rail of the stall, she filled the stone trough and the pony drank, long and grateful.

  Magda sat down on the log pile. Her head sank onto her hands. You are alone. And you have no idea why. Or how.

  A startled cat hissed from the top of a haystack, its back arched like a briar. The dog barked loudly, throwing himself back on his haunches. The pony started at the commotion, flinging its head up from the hay. Dog gave up, sniffed along the haystack. Came over and stuck his cold nose under Magda’s hair. Sparrows flitted in the beams. Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow, or reap, or gather into barns.

  She pushed the dog away.

  You must get back and light the stove.

  * * *

  There was worse at home. Babula in her coffin. Heavy as lead. No Dudek brothers to help carry her out now. There was just a cellar full of potatoes, a pony—and Stopko’s dog.

  In some ways it was better that Babula wasn’t alive to witness such a morning.

  The stove slowly broke into life. Magda regarded the flames with an unfocused gaze and fed sticks through the heavy iron door.

  The dog curled up underneath the porch, biting at his tail. Then thought better of such wasted freedom and snuffled off along the drifts.

  Magda managed to fix up the broken door so that it closed, and the stove slowly seeped a sort of warmth into the room. She lit a candle and sat beside the coffin.

  They have all gone, Babula. Men came in the night. I heard them. They broke the door.

  But Babula could not help her.

  And Magda pulled the sheet over the old woman’s face and turned back to the fire.

  Why had they taken the villagers? All of them.

  Trouble had happened in the village of Zborov last winter. The shepherds told Stopko: “Strangers have been. They came and stole our food, Pan Stopko. What should we do?” Old guns were brought out and hidden under beds by even older men. But in Zborov the strangers had only taken chickens and cheese. They had been hungry marauders from the town, desperate during the long cold winter. Only a few men standing firm over their cellars were hurt. No one taken away. Not like this.

  And you heard other news when Bogdan Stopko came back from the market, counting out a wad of zloty with his big, hard hands. “It is snowing in Rome. In Paris. In London. Snowing everywhere! Everyone is hungry. But our mutton and honey are fetching high prices! Keep singing, boys!”

  Stopko had even bought a radio.

  “Made in China, my friends!”

  The men listened to the music crackling out of it. Brunon Dudek, kicking his heels up in the sawdust, a bottle of vodka splashing in his hand, singing badly: “But if you will not drink up, whoever sticks two to it, lupu cupu, cupu lupu, whoever sticks two to it!”

  And Babula tutting over a stirred pot. “Our luck is another’s misfortune, Magda.”

  But she had been happy enough with their share of the money.

  * * *

  Outside, that wretched dog was barking again. Magda got up from her chair beside the coffin. Peered out into the blizzard. The bad day was slipping away. But the dog was only chasing a whirlwind of snow.

  You must put Babula in the ground.

  Magda took the narrow wooden lid leaning against the wall and placed it on the coffin. She hammered the nails in with a shoe.

  Where are you all? Where have you gone?

  Soon the dark would fall.

  And, like wolves, the spirits of the unburied dead would creep out of the forest, crawl along the frozen river, up the banks to the house, slither through cracks in the door and come creaking over the boards.

  Maybe the candle will gutter. And blow out. And it will be the dead of night.

  In the dark you will be alone.

  And the spirits will tap tap tap to wake dead Babula. And her old bent hands will scratch at the coffin lid. You nailed me in with your shoe, wicked girl! And the dirty long fingernails of the spirits from the forest will prise the lid open, laughing. You didn’t bury her! You didn’t bury her! They will scratch and rattle, and you will be lying in your bed shaking. In the dark. Because there is no weight of earth covering her. No. You must get her in the ground before nightfall.

  * * *

  Magda lifted the foot of the coffin, she kicked the chair to one side and rested it heavily on the floor—then did the same with the other end.

  Grasping the coffin with both hands, she pulled it across the floor. The rails grated, catching on nail heads and gouging tracks in the floorboards. She kicked the front door open with her foot. It was snowing heavily outside. The wind battered like a shovel, slapping the hair across her face. Then she had it through the door. Out on the porch, the coffin hanging over the step with the full weight of the body inside it weighing on her arms.

  The dog appeared at the gate.

  She hauled the coffin down the steps. Cadunk. She felt the boards sag. She stepped back. The path was icy. She squared her feet and pulled again.

  Down came the coffin. Bump, bump, bump. Thumping to the bottom of the steps. The body inside it slumping toward her as she fell.

  The dog barked.

  “Go away!” she shouted.

  He slunk backward.

  She untangled herself, kneeling in the maelstrom of snowflakes, rubbing her bruised knee. She put out a hand, turning her mouth from the freezing drafts of wind. “Azor—I didn’t mean it. Come. I won’t hurt.”

  Her head sank down onto the rough boards. “Babula,” she whispered into them. “Babula, give me strength. I am alone. Try not to be so heavy.”

  The dog sat a little way off, and Magda put her hands under the coffin once more and began dragging it across the snow. She stopped to catch her breath and looked up at the deserted houses, the rim of trees dark on the hill behind the village. Hadn’t she heard Kowalski say that wolves had been seen at the forest edge?

  The dog pricked his ears. If she let herself, Magda might have thought he was listening for them. But Kowalski was a worrier: his chickens always egg-bound, his potatoes blighted, his cellar damper than anyone else’s. Wolves indeed. Had anyone even heard them?

  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.