The figure curled in the doorway was almost unrecognisable, her hair lank and greasy, pulled severely off her face. A large coat was wrapped around her, hiding most of her face, but the sores were clearly visible.
Yael sank to her knees. Her heart thudded. She reached out a hand, but almost immediately drew it back again.
“Eva?” she whispered.
The girl in the doorway looked back at her. She was too weak to answer. Stretching out a thin hand, she attempted to grasp Yael’s dress. Instinctively Yael drew back. Her mind baulked at Eva’s prone body, skeletal, pale, her skin almost translucent, the veins running dark beneath the tissue-thin surface, yet she was breathing.
“I thought…” Yael stammered.
The image of Eva with the others, with her parents in the forests by the pits, flashed across her mind. She gasped and felt the darkness opening up beneath her. Staggering, she put her hand out to balance herself.
An icy wind skimmed across the crust of snow and buffeted the house. Eva winced, her delicate features screwing up as though the cold was no longer bearable. In the distance a wolf howled. Yael took Eva’s hands and pulled her to her feet. So icy were her fingers, Yael shivered.
Eva seemed barely able to walk. Yael led her stumbling across the kitchen and into the bedroom. She laid her on the bed and covered her with a blanket. Immediately Eva closed her eyes, sinking into the softness. Sitting beside her, Yael could feel the cold creeping through the blanket. She found another cover and laid it over the first. On top of that she laid Aleksei’s coat. Eva did not stir. Her eyes remained closed. Yael might have believed she was dead, except that, plucking up the courage, she lowered herself level with Eva’s face and brought herself close enough to her lips to feel the gentle stir of breath upon her cheek.
Yael got up and went to boil some water and made a thin broth from some leftover bones. Eva was sleeping so deeply, so calmly, Yael did not want to wake her. She put the cup on the floor and cleared her throat. The steam rose in the cool evening air. Yael hoped the scent of the broth would rouse her, but she didn’t stir.
When Yael woke in the morning she found Eva’s eyes were open, coolly regarding her.
“You’re awake!” she said stupidly.
Eva did not respond. Yael sat up and reached out and touched Eva’s forehead. Her temperature was still cool, but more normal than it had been the night before.
“How are you feeling?” Yael asked.
“Better,” Eva whispered.
Her voice was hoarse as though it was painful to talk. She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. Yael marvelled at how beautiful Eva’s eyes were. Even now. They were light, hazel, flecked with gold, framed thickly with dark lashes. Despite being visibly malnourished and dirty, her face was still attractive, and her lips, though colourless, were full and moist.
Eva had sat in front of Yael in the small schoolroom. They had not been friends, though Yael would have liked that. Many afternoons she had sat gazing at Eva’s long hair, enraptured with the amount of colours in it as the sun fell heavily through dusty windows. She had day-dreamed that Josef would fall in love with her and then Eva would notice her and they would be like sisters.
“You must be hungry?”
Eva nodded, her eyes widening slightly at the thought of eating. Getting up, Yael took the cup of broth she had left by the bed and poured it back into the pan that rested on the edge of the stove. She opened the cast-iron door and rekindled the fire, pushing fresh log chips into it. When it was hot enough, she latched the door and moved the pan across to the ring, from which she removed the metal covering, so the flames licked the bottom of the thick black pot. While it was heating up, she took a couple of buckets and collected snow to melt for water, and pulled the tin tub out into the middle of the kitchen.
Eva was sitting up in bed when Yael came in with the steaming cup and a crust of bread. She took the broth and drank it greedily, wincing at its heat.
“Eat slowly,” Yael counselled her, quietly. “It will make you sick if you haven’t eaten for a while.”
Eva flashed her a look that quietened her. She laughed a low, guttural, ironic chuckle. The heat of the broth had flushed her cheeks, and she looked immediately stronger, invigorated.
“Don’t you worry about me,” Eva said. “I’ve managed.”
“You look thin.”
“I’m not the fat one,” Eva said, eyeing her. “Never have been! Got-tse-dánken!” She reached out and placed the tips of her fingers on Yael’s sleeve, removing them almost instantly.
Yael looked down at the floor. In the time she had spent in Aleksei’s house, she had grown. She had put on some weight, despite, or perhaps because of the limited diet she and Aleksei lived on. The weight had not gone exactly where she would have preferred, so that her breasts remained quite small, whilst her hips and thighs were thicker. Looking in the mirror, she had been pleased to see that her body was becoming womanly, but now she felt suddenly self-conscious under Eva’s gaze.
She stood up and straightened her clothes. She was wearing a collarless shirt and a pair of Aleksei’s trousers, which she held up with an old pair of his braces, and a belt, in which she had had to punch new holes. She took the cup from Eva.
“Is there more?” Eva asked.
“Of course,” Yael whispered.
In the kitchen she regarded herself in the sliver of mirror. Her face was plain besides Eva’s, her eyes dully dark, lips less full. Despite Eva’s emaciated state, the dirt under her broken fingernails, her greasy, matted hair, she still bore about her an air of glamour.
“I’m heating up some water,” Yael said, when she took through the cup of broth. “You can have a wash.”
Eva nodded. She took the cup and sipped the broth more slowly, savouring it, dipping the crust of bread and allowing it to dissolve on her tongue. For some time they sat in silence. Eva examined Yael frankly, taking in the clothes, the changes in her body, her hair, which was clean and tied back loosely with a scarf.
“I didn’t expect to find you here,” she said finally.
“I thought you were dead,” Yael blurted.
Eva simply shook her head. Her eyes did not leave Yael’s. She did not seem to want to talk about what had happened. Yael did not either; the very thought of what had happened in the woods filled her with horror. Nevertheless, she felt an uncontrollable urge to know. Just to know.
“This house,” Eva said, interrupting Yael’s thoughts, “I was lost, but when I came out on the road up there and looked down at the house, I thought I recognised it.”
“We’re not far from Selo,” Yael agreed. “It’s about ten kilometres away.”
“This house though,” Eva continued, “Isn’t it the crazy guy’s?”
“Yes… no… I mean he’s not mad, he’s not crazy, really… He just can’t speak.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s gone to Selo to buy some goods.”
“He’s sheltering you?”
“Yes.”
Eva thought about this. Yael could almost see the thought process moving across her face.
“For how long?”
“I’ve been here about a year now.”
“You’ve been here a year and nobody has given you in?”
“Nobody comes here, Aleksei doesn’t communicate much with the world.”
Eva nodded. She drained the broth and handed Yael the empty cup. Sitting up, she swung her feet down to the floor. Her stockings were threadbare, her toes poked through holes in the tattered cloth, black with dirt and stained from the shoes she had been wearing.
“I need to wash!” she said emphatically.
While Yael heated up the water, Eva undressed carefully. She showed no embarrassment in front of Yael. Glancing up, Yael found her stood naked beside her. Her ribs showed clearly, her skin was dark with dirt, marked by the track of lice and in places sores marked her skin angrily. Still she was beautiful. She gasped when she stepped in the water.
“Oh!” she said. And then again, “Oh, you cannot know, you cannot begin to know how that feels.”
Yael smiled, pleased, and yet still she felt a sharp, little twinge of irritation that Eva seemed adamant she could not know how good the water felt. She recalled almost a year ago how she had felt stepping for the first time into the bathtub. Something that even now, a year later, she could not take for granted.
Taking a jug from the kitchen shelf, Yael poured warm water down over Eva’s long dark hair. She scrubbed her head hard with soap, rinsed it with hot water, then combed it through with a fine-toothed comb Aleksei had bought for her on a previous trip into Selo. The water in the tub was soon black, and Yael urged Eva out. She wrapped her in towels, heated more water and poured a new bath.
For three hours Yael bathed her, combing through her hair again and again, pulling out lice by the handful, cutting back her ragged nails and cleaning the dirt from beneath them, tending to the bruises and cuts and sores on her flesh. By lunchtime Eva’s flesh shone pink from where it had been scrubbed. Her hair glistened in the light from the window. She smelled of soap. Yael combed her hair into one thick plait that hung down her neck, showing off the elegant narrow curve of her throat and her defined, small shoulders. She dabbed perfume on her skin.
“Yael, you will never know how good it is possible to feel!” Eva declared with a grin.
Yael smiled, glad to see Eva so happy. She was radiantly beautiful. She pushed the naked girl through into the bedroom, and indicated the wardrobe.
“Find yourself some clean clothes to wear,” she said. “I’ll try to wash some of your clothes and see if they are salvageable.”
Piling Eva’s old clothes on the table, she threw away the underwear and stockings which were beyond repair. She examined the dress, but that was so infested with lice that in places it seemed as if the material had been stitched together from living things. Disgusted, she took the clothes and fed them all into the fire of the stove. She began to prepare some food when Eva stepped back into the room.
Yael started. Eva was dressed in the flowered silk blouse and trim black skirt Aleksei had kept wrapped in brown packaging. The clothes fitted her well. With her hair pulled back from her face, her skin pink from the hot bath, she looked elegant. As if she had just stepped off a Parisian street.
“Eva…” Yael stuttered.
A sound at the door caused both girls to turn at once. The door opened and silhouetted against the bright snow, Aleksei stood, a box cradled in his hands.