Nobody ever did find Viktor Malenhov's remains. Three weeks later Isaak sealed the grave again and the height of the mystery waned.
But not for me. I pondered that day for many of my waking hours, and the images of the wrecked grave and Viktor's corpse crawling out of it haunted my sleeping ones too. Perhaps it wouldn't have affected me so severely if I hadn't already borne witness to Viktor's corpse moving of its own accord.
To make it worse still, it was though Aleksy knew I knew the truth, even if I would not allow myself to subscribe to it. My sweetheart noticed something wrong in me – said I seemed distracted, moody – and tried incessantly to coax me into talking about it. Marina was only nineteen at the time, and, as much as I wanted to confide in the woman I wished to spend my life with, there were some things her delicate ears were not ready to hear.
Even my mother took a moment out of her depression to ask me what was eating me. Surprisingly, I told her everything and pulled her in for a hug for the first time in years, feeling her very real, warm plumpness in my arms. Mama had not taken her own life. My father hadn't danced the last dance to the tune of pneumonia. There was more than one Alyovich in the village – many, in fact. It was more than likely Isaak was thinking of the wrong one.
That was it.
Life following Viktor's disappearance soon returned to the accepted norm for the village, and Aleksy and I enjoyed a particularly pleasant summer together, almost as brothers would. I took time out of my usual job and began trapping game with him for income, at which, you may be surprised, he picked up quickly. I soon began to learn the ways of hunting in the forests too, and by July I trapped and skinned my first young buck. We celebrated it with a few dark beers that same, long evening while the meat spat at us on the fire pit we'd built. Perhaps if Rusya had survived I would've cherished that summer with him instead, but by that age I pushed any thoughts of him away.
In August I rallied enough courage to ask for Marina's hand in marriage. She even cried a little. Whether with joy or disappointment that she would never share this moment with Ivan, or both, I tend not to dwell on. That September, following a long, solemn wedding in Darakyev, we were man and wife, with plans to build our first home together.
And, it turned out, my asthma had finally subsided.
For the first time since 1922 I felt like the Stefan Alyovich my father had hoped I'd be, and it was ... well, things were good.
But there was always the winter.
I'd been helping my father's old friend, Sep Frantsev, fix the drafts in his barn before the frost settled into the beams. The job would take up most of my week, but he'd promised me first choice of his frozen racks of mutton as repayment, which I considered exchanging for Tomas Yakunin's stack of treated lumber. Despite the thick snow, the brisk winds and the briefest of daylight hours, the two of us worked at a good pace, chatting little and stopping often to sip the steaming coffee that his heavily-pregnant wife provided us.
On her fifth visit, sometime in the mid-afternoon, she did not greet us with her well-worn smile.
"Stefan!" she panted behind her woollen scarf. The wind tugged her curly brown locks from its clip. "You need to come inside!"
I descended the ladder and tucked my hammer into my belt. "Why? What's wrong?"
"It's ... it's ... Oh, Lord, I –"
"Yelena, what is it?"
"It's Mariamna. Irina said ... she ... at the kabina –"
"Yelena," Sep snapped at his wife as he joined us, "spit it out. Is this important?"
"Da." She reached for my arm and gave it a hesitant pat. "You ...You need to come inside, Stefan."
When I burst into the farmhouse, Irina Soldatova and her husband, Avgustin, were there to greet me with solemn faces. Pyotr appeared in the front doorway a moment later with snow up to his thighs.
"Sorry I'm late," he blurted as he slammed the door shut behind him. "Long way out here from Darakyev. Stefan, my good man, are you all right?"
I scratched my chin. "Not likely. Seems I'm the last to know what's going on here. What's the problem? Why's my mother the talk of the town all of a sudden?"
"Stefan ..." Irina said sadly, and she came forward to hug me. I let her wrap her arms around my shoulders, but did not return her embrace. Her head felt heavy against my chest. "I'm so sorry."
I brushed her off. "Is nobody going to explain?"
Avgustin cleared his throat and produced a hand-written message. "Here," he said, far more wary than usual. "Irina found this in your house. Mariamna didn't turn up at the kabina this morning and so Irina went to check on her at home."
Irina's teary eyes met mine. "I-I know she gets an awful case of the blues sometimes," she said between sobs. "We all do, but when I walked into your house she wasn't by the fire. I thought maybe she was sick, or hurt, or you remember the time after your father passed that she –?"
I didn't want to hear it. "What happened?" I asked.
"I-I knocked on the upstairs doors and I found the Malenhov boy sitting there on a bed in all his outdoor clothes. He had this awful expression and ... He'd escaped from the cellar, Stefan. He ... Oh ..." She began to cry into my shoulder and her husband continued instead.
"Aleksy had something clutched in his hands. Irina said he was upset."
I bristled. "What's wrong with him?"
"Who knows? That foul thing doesn't have feelings like the rest of us. He told Irina he couldn't find Mariamna anywhere and then handed her this note without another word. He's still at the house now. I went in and chained him back up in your cellar. Let that be the last I ever see of him."
"Oh."
"That's all you're going to say, Stefan!?" Pyotr fired. "Oh? The rest of us are worried bleeding ill about your mother and you're not even remotely ruffled?"
"If you'll give me a second to read this note, perhaps I'll know what you're on about!"
I detached Irina from me again and sat down with the paper in my hands. Dearest Stefan ...
I stopped reading and crunched the note into a ball. "This can't be."
"What is it?" blurted my cousin.
Sep strode closer. "Did you read what it said?"
I looked away from them. I didn't want to read my mother's note there – not with all of them poised to deal with whatever they expected my reaction to be. It seemed I had little other choice of understanding the situation though, and so carefully uncurled it and continued.
Dearest Stefan, I don't want you to blame yourself, but I've chosen to leave Renkassk behind. Even before your father left us I fell for another man, and he for me. My reasons are long and complicated; perhaps one day you'll come to forgive me for them. Keep smiling my sweet boy – Mama.
My cousin leaned over my shoulder. He smelt of iodine. "What do you think?"
I read the note again. And again. Nothing to do with suicide. "A new lover. Is that all? Thank God. What about Aleksy?"
Pyotr smacked me hard on the temple. "Are you goddamn blind, Stefan? Your mother's left Renkassk with some man we've never heard of and you're worried about Aleksy?"
"Think what you like." I shot to my feet and tightened my scarf. "I'm going."
"Where?"
"To see that loathsome cannibal. Damn it, Pyotr, you know my mother can't even write."