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Page 10.

Anadyr was quite as Nayden had predicted: a desperate, bleak outpost with a few brightly colored blocks of apartments to give it some artificial cheer. Marianne had few reference points in her distant, hazy memory—just images of inside the warm, smoky tavern and the frozen black water outside. In this grim daylight, overcast the color of bluish-gray fish scales, nothing matched the map in her soul, no landmark, not a single sign post of her past. Where she thought Auntie Dora’s tavern had been—she could not even remember its name—she found rows of long abandoned concrete ruins that once had been fish processing plants.

Her appointment to walk into the police station was for early the next morning. Disappointed, though not surprised, and perhaps a little relieved to have this over with, she boarded the last, mid-afternoon helo for Ugolny. As the chopper clattered over choppy estuary waters, she looked ahead to a long, hot bath and an early bed time. She wanted to be rested and awake for tomorrow’s heart-wrenching journey.

Later, back in Ugolny at the airport hotel, she took a long, hot, soapy bath. She rested in the safety of her locked bathroom, enclosed by warm tiles (almost like the comfort of being behind Auntie Dora’s bar). Floating in blue water, in an oversized and luxurious tub, she closed her eyes.

What do I feel?

Nothing much, with this overload.

Am I afraid?

Of course.

But why should I be?

The truth shall set you free.

She thought of the grave.

But the truth is only the beginning. From there, you must travel back to the beginning, and start over. In time it will dawn on you: life is an endless circle, like in the T. S. Eliot Four Quartets.

It was like being stuck on a heavy wash cycle, waiting for rinse to endlessly trade places with suds. She grinned wanly, with little humor, but glad to have that small life preserver of sanity.

As long as I can laugh, I am alive. Laughter makes us free.

She imagined a barren plot of land on which a few weeds waved in the rough air. She dreamed of a silence that had lain over the sand bar for half a century, and would lie there as long as the galaxy wheeled overhead at night, and as long as San Francisco beckoned thousands of miles over the curvature of the ocean. Mama would hold her hand and reassure her—there was nothing to fear from the dead. Only from the living, who ran like wolves in the forest around her. The predators never rested. Their eyes and teeth glittered in the polar moonlight.

After an uneventful helicopter ride across choppy waters hypnotically twinkling with Arctic sunlight, she landed at the heliport in Anadyr. Carrying the urn of ashes in her gray Adidas carryon, she trudged through half-frozen slush to the police station.

As she approached the low, concrete-block structure on a hill street, she smelled a whiff of marijuana smoke. With one foot on the concrete step, and a hand reaching out to the door knob, she paused and sniffed. Yes, it was unmistakeable. At a police station?

She entered, and saw the small blonde woman at the desk, who looked up from some paperwork with a sharp Da?

“I am Marianne Didier, from Paris,” she said in English, the universal language.

“I am Sergeant Varov,” said the girl. “I was expecting you.”

Marianne hefted her grip with the urn in it. “I have an appointment.”

“Yes.” The woman closed her books and folded her hands on the front counter. A back door opened, and two young men came in. They wore constabular uniforms, and looked a bit sheepish. Marianne guessed they were at least slightly stoned, probably from a very bad grade of trávka or weed. Then again, Siberia was vast. Theoretically, you could grow entire Kansases and Minnesotas full of eight foot high cannabis sativa, and nobody would ever notice. The trouble would be getting past the bizenis men to market. Hence, the police were smoking bad dope here. The two young constables eyed Marianne with suspicious, veiled eyes. They looked violent and scary. She was glad Lenka Varov stood between her and them.

“Meet my brother Anatoly,” Lenka said, “and my cousin Mikhail.”

“Hello,” said Marianne. She put her satchel on the counter, and managed a weak grin and a wave. “Nice to meet you.”

“And you,” said the stoned policemen, like cats standing shoulder to shoulder.

“So,” Lenka said. “You need guides to help you find mother’s grave and leave ashes. Native people here would respect your intentions greatly.”