The Camp Beneath the Earth

The smell of the Karelian forest had changed; wet earth had crept into the resin of the pines, as if the ground itself were trembling before the sky had even begun to fall. Through the window of the pickup, Andrei Volkov saw the “Svetly Bereg” sign for the first time: its paint flaking, its letters barely legible. This place, left to him by his uncle, had always lived in his memory beneath summer sun. Now the sky was the colour of lead.

When he climbed out of the vehicle, the first thing he noticed was the harshness of the wind, the second was the sound. Not screaming, but laughter. Children were running between the wooden cabins, fourteen of them, as far as he could count. Yet the season hadn't started; the bookings did not allow for it.

“Who sent these children here?”

His voice sounded strange even to him, hoarse and hard. No one could answer; the man sitting in the administrator's chair only shuffled his papers and muttered something in a flurry. Andrei turned and went into the office.

On the desk lay a dusty notebook, filled with his uncle's handwriting, its cover leather, its edges rotting. He turned the pages and stopped at an entry dated 1944.

> “As they withdrew, the Germans buried something beside the well. This place was a field hospital then. The soldiers were in a hurry; they did not cover the ground properly.”

A mine. The word was not written on the page, but Andrei felt ice fill him; there was a fear between his uncle's sentences, felt even in the slant of the lines.

Just then thunder rolled across the sky and the windows shook. Outside, the children's laughter broke off, and a scream took its place, but this time it was because of the rain, only the rain. Andrei shut the diary and ran for the door.

The wooden bridge over the River Suna went under water before his eyes. The phone line died with a crackle.

The camp, with its children, had been cut off from the world.

Andrei tucked the diary under his arm and ran to the administration building. Yuri sat at his desk, shuffling a pile of papers; when the door flew open without a knock he raised his head, but there was no alarm in his eyes, only annoyance.

“The bridge is gone, the line is dead,” said Andrei, out of breath. “But that's not the problem. There's something in my uncle's diary. Nineteen forty-four, something buried beside the well.”

Yuri straightened the papers and set them down, as though Andrei's words were no more to him than a speck of dust.

“The programme goes on,” he said. “Fourteen children are here, the parents have paid, the ministry is waiting for its report. I can't shut down the camp over a notebook.”

Andrei tried to say something, but Yuri raised a hand; the conversation was over.

In the kitchen he found Marina, her hands buried in dough. He opened the diary and showed her the page. The woman squinted and read, then gazed into the distance, as if she had gone back to a morning long ago.

“The well wasn't as it is now,” said Marina. “When the Germans left, they changed the ground and put a hut up over it. Do you know where that hut is now? The generator shed. The one next to the dormitory.”

Andrei's stomach knotted. Just then Nastya burst in through the door, her knees muddy, her face flushed.

“Uncle Andrei,” she said, gasping, “there are cracks in the ground by the generator. They weren't there this morning. Now one's opened up as wide as a hand, and it's getting bigger.”

Marina's hands stopped in the dough. As Andrei looked out of the window toward the dormitory, he noticed for the first time the low hum of the generator, steady and patient, drawing something under the ground a little closer to the surface with every tremor.

When Andrei ran into the administration building, Yuri was still busy revising the programme. Andrei slammed the diary down on the desk.

“There's no time left,” he said. “The Germans buried something at the bottom of the well, Marina knows it, under the generator shed. The ground is cracking, Yuri. Right now, this minute, we have to get the children out of there.”

Yuri's face first went to denial, then, at the sound from the window, the generator's hum no longer steady but rattling on and on, its colour changed. He didn't speak; he only nodded and blew his whistle.

The women who led the groups quickly gathered the children and took them out of the dormitory. No one shouted; Andrei told everyone, in a calm voice, to walk in a single line. The floodwater had eaten away at the valley, and the stream before the old stone chapel had turned into a raging chasm. Two men, wet to the elbows, passed long planks across the water and flung them over, making a swaying bridge.

Nastya was among the first to cross, her braids swinging on her back, her eyes fixed on the plank in front of her feet. Andrei took each child by the hand and passed them over one by one. The last child, a small blond boy, stumbled for a moment in the middle of the plank, and Andrei's hand caught him.

As their feet touched solid ground, the sound behind them drowned out everything. The earth shook, the generator shed was hurled into the air, and splinters of wood and a cloud of dust came crashing down where the dormitory had stood. Nastya screamed, but Andrei pulled her to him.

Everyone was inside the stone walls of the chapel, gasping, unharmed.

Morning came without a trace of the storm. The sky had cleared, and a thin mist lay over the forest. Within the stone walls of the chapel the children slept huddled together, wrapped in blankets. Andrei had not closed his eyes all night; he had kept watch at the door.

At first light a crew from the village repaired the bridge. New boards replaced the rotten planks, and when the first truck crossed, Andrei's phone buzzed. One call, then another. The outside world had come back.

Cars from the highway pulled up one by one in front of the chapel. Mothers held their children, fathers wept quietly. Even in her mother's arms, Nastya turned and looked at Andrei, that old curiosity still in her eyes.

“What was really under the well?” she asked.

“Something left over from the war,” said Andrei. “It's out of the ground now. It won't threaten anyone ever again.”

While he spoke with the police, Andrei laid the diary on the table and went through every page, every date, one by one. Experts arrived and cordoned off the area with tape. A professional search team would comb the ground inch by inch; this time without concealment, done properly.

Yuri stood for a long while before the ruined shed. Then he turned to Andrei, and for the first time his voice shook.

“You were right,” he said. “We won't take a risk like this again. Every building will be inspected, every decision put on record.”

Andrei nodded and didn't answer. There was much to be said, but now was not the time.

Marina appeared at the chapel door with a tray of tea in her hands, her eyes tired but calm.

“At last the earth will be able to breathe,” she said.

Weeks later, while the camp was being rebuilt, Andrei decided to stay. He moved into his uncle's room and put the diary on the shelf, this time not buried, but where everyone could see it. As he watched the water of the Suna from the window, for the first time in a long while he felt at ease.