Anthony Marra - The Wolves of Bilaya Forest

Vera didn’t understand. “You want the wolves to stay?”

“We want to protect the forest from logging companies,” the young woman explained.

“Protection,” Vera repeated, thinking of Sergey sitting at her kitchen table, eating cake and explaining why Ivan did not fear the police. She dropped the clipboard to the ground. The concrete sidewalk stretched to the intersection, and how many times had she traveled it in silence? How many times had she censored herself, afraid of whom she might betray, afraid of whom she might lose? “Fuck protection,” she mumbled, her voice so low that the young woman leaned forward to hear her. She wanted to denounce Stalin and the state and Sergey and Yeltsin. Russia and America and Gilbert and Yelena and Ivan. Her primary-school teacher, who had given her high marks but did not teach her the multiplication tables. Her husband, who had claimed that cunnilingus was antirevolutionary. The commissar, whose hand she shook days after he sentenced her mother. She wanted all of Bilaya to hear her evidence. But her voice did not rise above a whisper. “Fuck protection,” she said over and over.

Vera’s reaction did not surprise the young woman, who had recently watched her own grandmother descend into dementia. The young woman’s grandmother had cursed the clouds, the sky, the names of loved ones whose faces she no longer recognized. The curses contained no malice, only confusion and fear. And here, before her, this babushka was cursing the proposal of a nature preserve. One must have patience and compassion for the bewildered elderly , the young woman thought, as she took hold of Vera’s hands and spoke in a comforting tone. They are from a different time. “Just breathe,” she said. “Everything is okay, grandmother. Everything is fine.”

Vera clutched the young woman’s hands. She would have fallen over without the young woman’s support. Until this moment, she had not realized that she would never be a grandmother.

A week later, a knock. Vera carefully approached the door and looked through the peephole. Sergey.

“I know you’re there,” he said after a moment. “I can see your shadow beneath the door.”

She did not respond. She knew better than to ever speak again.

“I’m sorry, Vera,” he said, and through the peephole his face looked round and wide. “I’m moving to Moscow next week.”

Vera watched Sergey pull an envelope from his jacket and bring it to the door. The mail slot lifted, then fell shut as the envelope dropped to the floor. She steadied herself against the wall, knowing what the envelope contained. It had to be true. It had happened before. A final letter from Lidiya, her last words transcribed by Sergey under the frozen branches of Bilaya. Her heart swelled with such hope that she was willing to forgive Sergey for one final message from her daughter, one last letter to love and hold and keep safe in the cigar box. She fumbled with the envelope, forcing her fingers against the flap. The envelope was thick, too heavy for a single letter. She tore through it. Inside was a stack of banded thousand-ruble notes. In black ink scrawled in cursive across the face of the first bill, a single word: compensation . She wanted to run after Sergey, wanted to throw the money at his feet so he would know that this loss could not be recompensed. But the winter still had months of life left. The gas bill was due, and she needed to eat. She went to her bedroom and pulled the cigar box from beneath the bed. The manila envelope would not fit inside, not with all the other envelopes. One by one, she withdrew the letters from her mother and the letters from her daughter and placed them on the bedspread. She unwound the rubber band from the stack. She spread the bills across the yellowed newspaper clippings, mixing them with what remained of the weekly payments, and closed the cigar box. Then she knelt and prayed.