Сергей Лебедев - The Year of the Comet

“Swimming,” Ivan replied. “Let’s go.”

“What if we get stopped?” I asked, embarrassed, even frightened by this swift new closeness with Ivan that had required nothing from me.

“I actually have a license,” Ivan said, opening the glove compartment, with his wallet inside. “Get in.”

We drove off; we drove past the pond, the nearby woods, the village, and the pea fields. Ivan drove smoothly, enjoying this unrushed “grown-up” style of driving, as if he were an old hand at it. The Volga passed a tractor, with kolkhoz women sitting in the hay in the trailer, returning from the field. Ivan slowed in the empty oncoming lane, and on my right a multiarmed, multifaced, tanned female creature floated by; the wind ruffled the dresses and kerchiefs, the fabrics were sweaty with labor; a young woman, using a burdock leaf as a visor against the sun, waved it like a hat, while another cupped her heavy breasts with a significant gesture. I was embarrassed, but as he drove in front of the tractor, Ivan gave a quick wink, as if to say all sorts of things can happen when you’re with me, he winked without salaciousness, enjoying the burdock leaf, the smile, and the lovely breasts.

We were driving to the Moskva River; the car dove into an old fir forest, the road led down into the valley, I knew this road, sometimes I came here with my parents by bicycle. But Ivan turned in a different direction, honked at the barrier, said something to the guard, and we drove inside the brick wall, where the same forest grew, but here it seemed darker and quieter, as if it were warning visitors. Another few hundred meters, two turns, and we came upon a brick castle in the English style, red and white with ornamental towers; people in bathrobes strolled along the paths, paying no attention to the Volga. I had never known this castle was in our neighborhood, it was my first time on the property closed to outsiders, and this was yet another miracle that occurred when you were with Ivan.

“The castle of Prince Kerbatov,” Ivan said, as if he were a personal friend of the prince and was about to introduce me. “If not for the walking corpses, this would be a perfect place.”

The place was beautiful; the fir grove gave way to a pine grove, hazel bushes ran down toward the river, and I could see patches of white sand through the grass, and it seemed that just stepping on the warm ground sprinkled with fragrant needles would release an invigorating sensation that mounted from your heels to your lower back. This was the slope of the valley, with hidden layers rising to the surface, natural springs, and the vegetation was thicker from the proximity to the river and its fertile fogs.

I recognized that the strollers were high-placed old men, perhaps generals, officials, men of power. Before, when I met them in the courtyard of the building on Sokol, I was afraid they would notice me, think it wrong that I was wandering on their sidewalks. I was used to the importance of their uniforms, their gray overcoats and hats, their right to barricade themselves behind barriers and fences, to live in special buildings, stroll in bathrobes down paths of an unknown castle, while their heavy uniforms and suits, ironed by servants, hung in the closets here.

But Ivan’s remark showed me a different picture: the old men were turned into ridiculous figures who did not suspect that their time was coming to an end. I was sure he had the right to talk that way—without adolescent irony, just as a person who knows.

Leaving the car, we went down to an empty wooden dock, where there were several rowboats without oars. Children and teenagers from local villages were swimming on the other bank, flickers of tanned bodies, shimmering splashes, and a fast current carried the swimmers down around the river bend. Here it was quiet, the nettles had a bitter and delicious tanginess, and the orange fins of tiny roach fish flickered amid the long shaggy water grasses.

Ivan had a white body; in the sunlight, against the rampant bright green grass, in the inflorescence of the clover, it seemed almost like marble. The sun, the rushing water, the splintered boards of the dock, the shouts and merriment on the far bank—all that was nobly alien to Ivan, and he squirmed in the sunlight, as if it burned.

Then he turned, and I saw the birthmark on his left shoulder blade. It was a delicate coffee and cream color; not a disfigurement of his skin, but a parchment seal, the form of which could have been an oak leaf, or a bat, or the paw print of an imaginary beast; it was noticeable, the size of half a hand.

Ivan’s mark spoke of his inner scale, the sign was beautiful, it attested somehow to Ivan’s already obvious specialness and superiority, a manifestation of higher powers.

Uncomfortable, I decided it was better to swim than to reveal my interest in his birthmark. I dove, swam to the middle of the river, and came back struggling against the current, while Ivan watched me from the dock, perhaps enjoying the simplicity of my joys—river, light, the bleak fish leaping near the surface in the translucent layer of sun spots.

I climbed out onto the dock; Ivan stretched, and then slipped into the water without a splash, as if he had been waiting for me to finish my swim and leave the river to him alone.

Downstream from the dock and closer to the middle of the river, a glacier boulder lay on the bottom. Above the surface there was a small gray roundness, like an elephant’s forehead, that looked harmless. But if you looked closer, you would see that the clear river water darkened behind the boulder—there was a powerful whirlpool there, pulling in the river streams, you could feel its hidden power from the shore.

Ivan swam toward that funnel. He did the crawl, then the butterfly, he was a fish then a bird taking off, and the current was carrying him to the boulder. Standing on the dock, I pictured the river to the very bottom, saw its depths, shallows, and snags, sand banks, and flinty rapids. I perceived the entire boulder—huge, the size of a railroad car, separating the river in two; the whirlpool had dug an enormous hole behind it, and the icy springs could burn muscles into spasm; no fish entered there.

The boulder was waiting in the river—for a weakened swimmer, a child risking to cross to the other bank, and I had time to wonder if it had once lain on the neighboring sandy cliff, if people made human sacrifices upon it.

I shouted to Ivan not to swim toward the boulder, but he did not hear me, his head appeared only for a second at a time, he must have been swimming with his eyes open, looking at the fish and grasses.

He swam headlong, fast, on a straight path. But now he crossed the outer circle of the whirlpool, his arms caught in a deadly chop, and his agile body started moving against his will, sucked into the deep.

Ivan dove, then surfaced, and started stroking harder, but the whirlpool slowly spun him around, and the strong swimmer became a trapped, floundering creature. Why had he swum in that direction? I thought, while I looked around for an oar; if there were boats tied up, there had to be oars, and I doubted they were far away. I found them under the dock, I pushed out a light plastic shell and rowed to Ivan. He was trying to reach the boulder, to climb on and catch his breath, but the rock pushed him back with a wave, filling his eyes and mouth with foam; Ivan stopped swimming, hoping the current would carry him out, but the whirlpool dragged him down.

The boat scraped against the stone, the vortex turned it around. Ivan, crazed by the struggle, waterlogged, still saw the shadow that blocked the sun and grabbed hold of the line I threw him. A few moments later, soaked, he was in the boat; his eyes held fear, anger, and joy. “You saved me,” he said with unexpected pleasure. “You saved me.”