Why do people leave? Why do they pull up their roots and go? I suppose some people are chased away and forced to flee. Maybe it’s war or hunger or fear — it’s always fear. But sometimes you choose to leave because it’s the clever thing to do. A teenage girl might very well ask the same question as a holy patriarch: where can I find a life for myself, a life far away from everything here that I despise?
There was an abandoned barn in a field behind Mischa’s cabin, Mischa who was old, crazy and a little dangerous. We used to hang out there, Inez, Tatyana, Natalia and I. We had all known each other so long we couldn’t even remember how we first met. We staged trials in that barn. Inez had stolen some rope from one of the barges that went up and down the river. She was crazy; she had jumped into the cold water with a knife between her teeth and cut off a few lengths of rope that she tied to her legs and swam back to shore with. We made a few nooses — Natalia had a brother who had been in the KGB so he knew what a real hangman’s noose looked like. Then we proceeded to hang our enemies. We put straw and stones in the bags, pronounced the sentence and hanged them from one of the beams in the roof, one by one. We hanged our teachers and our parents; Tatyana’s dad was particularly mean and used to beat her once a week. I don’t think we ever thought too closely about what we were doing. There was just life and death, punishment and mercy. But we didn’t show anyone mercy; they didn’t deserve it.
