Sarah St.Vincent - Ways to Hide in Winter

The silence descended again. Slowly, I folded myself and sat down.

The lake was no longer frozen, not entirely. Islands of ice loomed on its surface, looking as though they were suspended in the darkness.

“Is your name really Daniil?” I asked.

Looking out across the water, he opened the bottle and took another sip. The whiskey had begun to go to my head, and as I watched him, it felt as though the ground had begun to revolve gently beneath me.

“No,” he replied quietly.

I nodded, closing my eyes.

“Everything else I told you is true,” he said, adding after a pause, “For better or for worse.”

I waved a hand at him. “It doesn’t matter.”

After a moment, he sat down next to me, and I felt the sand shape itself around our bodies. The shore curved before us, and I remembered the day I had run out onto the ice, tempting fate. Or simply needing the danger in order to feel alive, to feel as if I were still myself.

“How long is it going to take them to figure that out?” I asked. “That the passport is fake?”

“The passport is real—it’s just somebody else’s. The people who brought me here, they arranged for that. They put my photo in it somehow.” He touched his forehead and tugged at a strand of his hair. “Those officers said they didn’t have a reason to arrest me. But…I’ve never been very good at telling lies, I’m afraid. I think they could see that. Maybe they’ll forget me, but I think maybe they won’t. They went away, but they never actually said they were finished.”

I’d lent him one of my other sweatshirts, and his wrists stuck out of the sleeves. I looked at them, the fine black hairs on the backs of them. There was a feeling pressing in on me, warm in the wrong ways, agitating, rising inside my chest. Guilt. I shouldn’t have made that call, shouldn’t have tried to judge what wasn’t mine to judge. But this wasn’t a useful emotion, not now. I tried to press it back down.

“One thing I don’t understand,” I said carefully, “is why you’ve always seemed to think somebody was hunting for you. From the beginning, I mean. I just don’t see why anyone would be so interested in you, especially if nobody tried to…arrest you, or whatever they could have done, after you went in front of the judge. Unless we just hunt for everyone we think is here illegally, and I don’t know it.”

He looked down at the bottle he still held in his lap. “Well,” he said, with the same gentle, slightly regretful tone as always, “partly, I worry about people from my own country.” He raised his palms. “But the other thing, the police…I don’t know. It’s a mystery to me, too. I’m Russian; maybe they think I’m some sort of spy.”

I knew it was meant to be a joke but found it impossible to laugh. I let myself fall back, resting my hands on my chest and nestling my head in the sand.

The stranger drew a breath, as if he would speak, but stopped.

I waited. When his words did come, his voice was thick.

“I wish,” he said slowly, “that things had been different. That I had done things differently. Of course I do.”

I kept still, watching the back of his head.

“You know, I grieve about the things I did. That might not be how I should say it, but it’s the best explanation I can give. I grieve as you do when someone dies. It’s…somehow, it’s a loss within me. As if, when I made the decisions I made, someone came and started taking the thing that was me out of my body. I walk around and yet I’m not myself.” He paused, and I heard him exhale slowly. “I’m a coward, I know. If I weren’t, I would go back and face…well, face what would happen. In my country, the authorities don’t look kindly on those who have talked about what happens there. If I went back—if I were sent back—I would be punished. Wherever they took me, I would not walk back out again.” He fell silent for a moment. “But then, there are those who would say I deserve to be punished. And I can’t say they’re wrong.”

I watched him pick up a handful of sand and let it run through his fingers.

“This will sound absurd,” he said, “but sometimes I feel so angry that…that there’s nothing in human life we can ever take back. I don’t believe in a God, but whatever it was that arranged things so we only experience time one way, moving forward, just forward…there are moments when that seems truly unfair. But I try not to lose myself in self-pity.”

He stopped playing with the sand and rested his chin on his arms. Then he lay back as well.

“That’s probably what forgiveness is for,” I said, groping toward an idea that seemed faint but real. “It’s a way of letting other people erase the mistake. Isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure who would forgive me. And I’m not sure I would ask that of them. Just think, if—if it were you, would you forgive someone who had done what I did?”

Something deep in my body constricted. I started to speak, but my throat was dry from the liquor, and I coughed. Rocking forward, I rose slowly and walked to the edge of the lake, stumbling as my feet sank into the sand. Where the water met the shore, I bent down and cupped my hands, raising them to my face to drink. The water numbed my fingers; it tasted of leaves and stone. Looking up, I saw myself walking out onto the ice, my head high, so angry, so proud. So obviously distraught, as I understood now.

“No,” I said when I sat down again. “I don’t think I could. And in fact, I would probably be tempted to want to hurt you.” I pulled my sleeves over my wet hands. “But I don’t think anyone deserves that, either. You know, all our lives, we get told there’s some person or some group of people out there who deserve to be killed or put in pain, because of what they did or how dangerous they are or whatever. And some people think other people are just…lower. Like they can be hurt, and it doesn’t matter.” I let out a breath, shaking my head. “There was a point in my life when I saw through all that. I’m not saying I’m especially smart; I’m not. Things just lined up in a way that let me see it. And I was pretty furious when I did. I felt like…like we were all getting tricked. Or even like we were made to become just like the thing we all thought we hated.” I hugged myself tighter. “It’s hard to keep sight of that, sometimes. Believe me. But I do think it.”

The chill from the ground was reaching up into me, making my body feel as if it were gradually turning to stone.

“So, no, I’m not much for forgiveness, really. I think things should be fair. But hurting people isn’t fairness. And I know that.” I raised my shoulders, then dropped them. “Maybe that’s what forgiveness means—maybe it’s just that you’re able not to want to hurt someone anymore. But I’m no priest. What do I know?”

I took a long swallow of whiskey.

“I think you know a lot,” he said.

A twig fell into the water, creating ripples. Together, we watched them.

“Tomorrow,” I said then, “we’re going. You can decide where. But we’re going. You can’t stay here. In fact, I don’t think you should even stay in your room tonight.” The surroundings were beginning to spin, and my thoughts seemed to be running together, but I pushed on. “I’ll take you as far as I can and then I’ll—I’ll see what I can do.”

He opened the bottle and drained the last of it, wiping his mouth with his hand.

Looking out, it was still possible to see the ripples spreading.

“All right,” he said.

We sat together, looking into the darkness side by side.

“Thank God,” I replied after a moment. “I was getting sick of arguing with you.”

His lips twitched, almost a smile. He planted the empty bottle back in the sand.