We sat in the Pig House. I was sure my fury, righteous as it was, could not have been less than anyone else’s, but I also felt exhausted and utterly useless. Misha entertained Skuld in the kitchen, for he had the skill of setting misfortune aside and rising to the occasion in the precise way that children demand. He could have been the father to a happy hundred, I thought.
Ludmilla sat across from me at the table, staring bleakly into a cup of tea. “She loved it here.”
“What?”
“Svetlana. She loved Pyramiden. How many times did I beg her to consider a different line of work? But she would not have it, and Pyramiden would not have it. A person is given a role in the Arctic, especially in a company town like this one, and trying to change it would be like changing your face, or your fingerprint. I could no sooner find her other gainful employment, even here with us, than I could employ a dog. Yet still she wished to remain. She said her village was oppressive. Can you imagine?”
I shook my head, and Ludmilla went on, not looking at me. “She said she liked new places that were already in ruin. Where decay was part of the foundation.”
We sat in silence. I tried to understand the concept—perhaps Svetlana’s governing principle—but my mind was murky and I could not. Where was Helga when I needed her? She had gone off with Illya to investigate.
Several hours passed. Eventually Misha came into the living room and lit a lamp, for somehow it had become evening. Skuld was asleep in his bed, he said. He had begun to offer some gentle suggestions of food we might eat, strength we might require, when someone rapped at the door.
It was one of Illya’s trusty lads, and he looked stricken. “Please,” he said in Russian. “Come quickly!”
Ludmilla made a low animal moan. “What now?” she said.
“I will go,” Misha offered, but I stood and begged that he remain with Skuld and Ludmilla. I couldn’t sit idle for one more second anyway.
I followed Illya’s friend to a boardinghouse where some of the more valuable miners—those with seniority, or tied in some way to the Party—lodged in single and double-occupancy rooms. Outside one of the rooms sat Illya. He was hunched on the dingy floor, his knees pulled tight to his chest and his head between them. His hands were gripping his skull.
“Illya,” I said. “What is the matter? Are you all right?”
He looked up at me and it was as though he saw a stranger, his eyes cloudy and unfocused, but then he came back, his expression distraught.
“Sven,” he said. His voice was choked and he spoke in short bursts. “We found him. That is to say, I found him. So I hold myself responsible. I thought to scare him. Beat him. Maybe even cut his balls off, if it seemed appropriate. I do not know what I thought. I was just so angry, and I sent for Helga—”
“Helga?” I said. “Is she inside?”
Illya somehow nodded and shook his head at the same time.
I walked past him. The space was like an evil shadow of Svetlana’s room—same layout, same tiny window (this one operable), same low twin bed and bureau with flaking varnish. But no one had ever cared about this room or tried to make it a home. The colors were all gray and dun. He who dwelt here had not placed a great deal of value on his own life. And on top of everything else, it smelled like an abattoir. The copper tang of blood mingled with something fouler—kitchen midden, or sewage canal. But I could not see the source because Helga stood blocking it, her back to me, her elbows stiff and tight to her body, hands upright in the air, fingers splayed, as the surgeon who has washed before his delicate proceedings, or the high priestess at some dark invocation. Her fingertips were sooty black and dry as plaster. She did not turn or acknowledge my presence.
I moved warily to her side and beheld the scene. The man reclined on the floor as if at ease, his back resting against the bed frame. Strange sounds like the hooting of a snowy owl came from deep within his chest. He would not live long. A knife lay at his feet, discarded, its purpose fulfilled. Helga had opened his gut in a strong lateral motion. She had also taken two small lumps of Spitsbergen coal from the little hearth and shoved them into his eyes. Tendrils of smoke drifted from the burnt-out sockets, and half-cooked viscous fluid dribbled like egg white down his face. It was unclear which act had happened first. I doubt even Helga knew.
With effort I pulled my gaze away from the nightmare vision and looked at her. A sense of reality, and its pressing concerns, had begun to creep back into my mind. But not for Helga. She was elsewhere entirely. Her eyes were blank and hollow. I thought to see triumph there, or release, and found none. It was like peering into a cave.
“Helga,” I said, and I shook her arm. “Helga.”
She turned and seemed to stare through me.
“Illya!” I shouted. “I need you now. Please.”
He came in, a hand shading his eyes like a man who looks into the sun.
“Help me get her from the place,” I said. “Quickly.”
We half-carried Helga from the room and down the stairs. Illya’s young friend was waiting anxiously outside. Illya, now composed enough to act, spoke some words in rapid Russian, and the man departed. By the time we reached the Pig House, Helga sometimes walking and sometimes dragging her feet as though asleep, there was already a flurry of activity under way. Ludmilla was packing our things. Misha was speaking quiet words to another Russian I recognized somewhat.
Seeing me, Ludmilla took hold of my arm. She appeared shattered but calm.
“You must go, but the next ship to Longyear does not leave until tomorrow. If they find you here, there will be trouble. Spend the night in Illya’s vodka house. Then make your way through the outskirts of town before dawn, and be ready to board at first light. I do not think you need worry, once you get to Longyear. The Russians do not like to make waves, and they would not wish it to be said that their new mining endeavor is a lawless place of murder and mayhem. But if they find you here…” She left off. There was no need to speculate.
“Wouldn’t they think to wait for us at the docks?” I said.
“No, I doubt it. In sight of the Norwegians, they want everything to appear neat, clean, and otherwise decidedly un-Russian.”
At this point Misha finished his discussion with Illya’s friend. He embraced me, and then Helga, who did not so much as lift her arms to receive him, and finally he stooped to heave Skuld and hand her to me. There were tears streaming down the big man’s face.
“Thank you, Misha,” I said. He nodded once and left the room.
Accompanied by Ludmilla, we made our way to the vodka house, mud squishing under the planks. When we arrived, I lowered Helga onto the blankets—still there from my tryst with Ludmilla only a day earlier—and she was nearly limp. She turned aside and closed her eyes. I did not quite trust her with Skuld at that moment, so I kept the warm little creature bundled on my back, where she slept on. I stepped outside and stood there with Ludmilla. Moonlight sprang off the bottles, so that there seemed to be a hundred moons. Suddenly I remembered Illya, whom I realized, to my shame, I had lost track of in the melee at the Pig House.
“Passage has been arranged for him on the same ship,” Ludmilla said. “He can’t stay here either. The Russians might forgive one of their own, but never a Jew. His life in Pyramiden is forfeit.”
I nodded dejectedly. I felt expended, the world around me little more than an exercise in disorder. “Can you spend the night at least?”
“No,” she said. “I should be back with Misha in case the Russians come asking. It will look wrong if I’m not at home, and this way I can put them off your scent. Perhaps they will not come. I don’t know.”
“What of you and Misha? Will you be safe?”
“Oh yes. Russians care too much about their pork to bother with us.”
“Will I see you again?”
“It seems unlikely.”
Her eyes had become unreadable. It was as though we were already hurtling away from each other at great speed, like two objects that collide in space, leaving their stubborn marks, and then recoil. I thought my lungs might collapse.
So we parted.
In the morning Helga was ambulatory, though still speechless, and we made our way to the Norwegian ship. Illya met us at the docks, looking haggard and confused. He did not say where he spent the night.
A glaucous gull flew harried from horizon to horizon, and a tern followed close behind, hoping to steal everything it could. The town of Pyramiden seemed to be asleep. No one hindered our departure.