Поехали! (Draft 2)

Alternating between heaving at her mother’s coat with both hands in a pantomime refusal to go on and pulling at her hair, collar and apron so as to look dishevelled and with a frustration that was airborne and contagious Svetlana asked for 12th time, ‘Why can’t we take the bus?’ Olga ignored her question with her 10th, ‘You know why.’ and carried on walking past the field at the bottom of their farming plot and out into the grove that bordered it. Svetlana mocked storming off at a tangent from her mother. Olga sighed inwardly, trying to show no weakness. Svetlana went off in orbit, eventually rejoining her mother at the last few large trees where the grove petered out into open farmland. ‘Ternovka is kilometres away! Mama, I am too old to be led around. I wanted to read with father, I could have cleaned! I could have cooked lunch for your return. I coul-’

Olga rounded on her daughter, ‘You are 12, Sveta. That is still young. I’d like to let you do what you want but we’ve spoken about this. Your schoolwork has been poor, you are rude to others and if you were not caught scaring animals in a stable like a petulant little vandal we wouldn’t have to give you such immature punishments as having to come to the market!’

Svetlana fell silent, not understanding why what was being asked of her was asked of her all the time. She began to wander off again tugging at the little red scarf wrapped around her neck. Loosening and tightening the knot over and over. Trying to make the knot small, yet prominent and have it sit in the centre of her throat instead of being askew. Olga kept her in her peripheral vision; saw her as a bright silhouette against the dull sky. She stood tall on a rock and waving over at her mother she held her head high, showing off a bulbous red knot where a boy would have his adam’s apple. In spite of the absence of a mirror to confirm her standards she called out, ‘Perfect!’ and Olga smiled, any notion of perfection in the scarf was undermined by her hair, billowing out in golden strands to her right and taking on mild waves as it was repeatedly tucked away behind her ears then freed again with the passing wind. She hopped down from the rock and strutted around, shadowing her mother at a distance.

‘Try and stay close. Don’t wander off. There’ll be a present.’

The orbit decayed and she came closer, suspicion crept into her voice now, ‘Really?’

‘Yes, a surprise though.’

‘What kind of surprise?’

‘Something from Saratov probably,’

She began to skip. All sense of oppression or penance forgotten. Olga tried to rein in her enthusiasm, ‘A small something!’ Sveta promised not to tell her father about the gift, ‘I think it will be ok to tell him; where else would you get such a thing? He may think you will have stolen it!’ Sveta shook her head, ‘No, papa would never think me capable.’
‘Your father believes that you can do anything you want to in your life, think about how that can cut both ways.’

‘Can I go skating? ‘

‘That’s not what I meant, this isn’t a daytrip!’

‘But I’d like to go skating. We could both go skating, on the Volga.’

’You can’t skate on the Volga in April dear, it’s too late for that. Maybe in winter.’

‘Winter is kilometres away!’

‘As far as Ternovka then?’

‘Further, you know it is.’

‘Well if you can get to Ternovka in less time than usual, maybe winter will hurry along as well.’

‘You can’t run towards winter. ‘

‘I thought we said you could do anything?’

She smiled and took off like a hare, racing ahead of her mother. She ran across a depression in the land and vanished from sight. Olga watched her go, then listened out for her laughing as she ran down the hill, grateful for the respite from her stubborn youthful anger and the frivolous and incessant questioning that it had eventually given way to. Olga desperately wanted her to grow up, to mature and succeed and settle down, and she could have all these little back and forth squabbles with some boy with whom it wouldn’t matter if they argued over small things. They would always know that such matters were beneath their attention and all their constantly forming tensions would immediately be dissolved by their love for each other. Olga was sure she put her own parents through such a trial, looking back she knew now that all those little disputes with them from her teens didn’t matter. But she had never told her parents that. She had taken this later revelation for granted and now sometimes she wishes she could have told them. Because now, on the receiving end of it. It was very hard to take.

A massive THUMP rung out over the landscape and Olga snapped round to her right. The sound was distant, yet massive nonetheless and followed by a smaller one now, thump. Along with the second noise she now saw a fount of dirt and dust rising on the horizon. She looked at the path ahead and she couldn’t hear her daughter laughing. She thought about the joke being played out but this did nothing to calm her voice.

‘SVETA! SVETA! HERE! NOW! NOW! SVETA!’

Svetlana came running over the ridge crying, ‘Mama!’ Olga crouched, double checking what she knew already, that she was alright. She untied her scarf from around her neck and fastened it over her hair, tying off the ends at the nape of her neck. She took her hand and looked out to the horizon, ‘Mama, did you hear that?’

Olga could still see a thin plume of smoke and dust settling in the distance. ‘I heard it, it sounded like an accident. Stay close now. No running away.’ She looked back in the direction of the kolkhoz, trying to measure how far off the sound had come from there. With their home immediately behind them she felt it must have been someway off, maybe as much as 5 miles from their home. Svetlana’s agitation was only compounded now that she was tethered to her mother by a warm and reassuring yet firm hand. ‘Maybe it is an attack; maybe we should inform Aleksander Abramovich?’

‘No, I mean, maybe we should, but having that old war hero running around could make a situation worse.’

‘Mama, that is disrespectful.’

‘Don’t worry yourself over attacks. The only thing you have to worry about is frightening those poor horses.’ Svetlana bowed her head and huffed slightly, the punishment not forgotten in spite of the sudden concern over her. Olga’s had always dealt with the concerns of others by reducing any crisis back down to personal every day matters. Her own mother had done it during the Great Patriotic War, as a way of managing her daughters worry at their own proximity to the war and their collective helplessness to directly affect the situation. In hindsight Olga knew it also kept her grounded, allowed her focus on her work, aware that the war effort at home was measured in vegetables picked, boots cobbled and tanks assembled.

‘It is probably not an attack; we live in a lovely place that is important to me, but Stal-Volgograd and Saratov we are not. Besides, we would hear sirens. That bang should have wakened the entire village. No, if it was an attack we would hear sirens. There may have been a grave accident though-’

‘Maybe it was anarchists! Or Counter revolutionaries!’

‘Svetlana Nikolayevna enough of this please! We will go back. Your father will know we are safe and in case of the worst, we will do what we can to help. But if it is the worst I will not have you drumming up rumours of spies and armies!’

Svetlana pointed into the sky and gave a ‘But…’ that was little more than a murmur. Olga followed her daughters pointing to the oblique and circling oval of a parachute in the grey sky. Horror stories arose in her without her daughters prompting and she began to squeeze her daughter’s hand for blood as they watched the descent. Her instinct was to run, to warn all the old guardsmen and soldiers in the village of another threat to their home but he was falling faster now. He seemed to be out of control and kept flailing his arms as he fell, he was coming down between Olga and Svetlana and their home. They would have to work their way around him. The man seemed to crumple as he hit the ground and the parachute buried him as it billowed and sank around him. Frantic activity under the giant sheet saw it shrink in size to its centre until a short mannequin like figure emerged.

Here, Olga’s panic began to give way to confusion. The stumpy man, if it was a man, was wearing some sort of bright orange diving suit, trailing wires and hoses and parachute cabling around him. His head was an inflated white bulb, covered in black scorch marks and set within the front of this diving helmet, there appeared to be a face. He began to stagger forward, limping off to the left and gathering the parachute behind him like a cape on his right. He sank to his knees into the collected material once, then twice, and then having noticed them simply stood where he was and waved.

They began to retreat, Svetlana pulling her mother away, no pantomime this time, back towards the edge of the hill where they could hide. Olga stood steadfast, only considered retreat when the figure suddenly called out and pointed to his head; there under the black burnt carbon, Olga could make out the insignia which mobilised the lives of some 300 million people, CCCP. Olga, gave a hesitant wave back and the figure beckoned them forward. She felt a possessive tug on her arm, ‘Mama, no.’ the figure sank to his knees, seemingly exhausted and cried out again, as if for mercy, ‘I AM A FRIEND, COMRADES, A FRIEND!’

Olga moved her hand to the small of her child’s back and urged her to walk forward. Svetlana resisted, looked up at her with eyes that presented more questions than she could physically ask. ‘It’ll be ok, I’ll go first, but I need you to stay beside me ok? Walk behind me, if anything happens; I know you’ll get help.’ Sveta nodded her consent and Olga pressed forward to the orange diver wrapped up in his blanket. As she approached, she looked him over, finally grasping the meaning of his arrival, ‘Can it be that you have come from outer space?"

The face inside the suit burst out laughing, "As a matter of fact, I have!’ She reached out to help him up, he rose carefully. Wincing over his left leg, she moved underneath his arm to keep him upright. He began to bundle up the parachute again in his right hand, still laughing, Sveta began to retreat and he called her closer to him, ‘Don't be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!’

‘I am Olga Stepanovna Perlov, this is my daughter, Svetlana. I’m sure we can help you, are you ok?’

He held out the parachute to her, and she moved forward to take it from him, his good humour began to trail off and was replaced with a heavy laboured breathing.

‘Yes, I am fine. Please, really, I just need to get to a telephone.’

Faced with this man from the future, Sveta draped the parachute around her shoulders and turned to lead the way, she let out the last of her youth in a proclamation, ‘Let's Go!’