Footprints from the Pond

Who is he? On the third night Hanna saw water beading straight out of Semen's skin. His hair was dry, his shirt was dry, but a cold drop swelled at his temple. Then a second one. It smelled of the pond and raw earth, as if a grave had just been dug open. On the floor, from the door to the bed, dark bare footprints. In each one the left little toe was tucked under its neighbour. Semen's had been crushed by a wheel when he was small. Hanna had known that foot for thirty years.

The prints led only to the bed. Semen remembered nothing. In the morning sand crunched between his teeth. A day later he spat a scrap of fresh duckweed into the washtub. He smelled more and more of wet willow and silt. He began sleeping in his shirt. In the morning the cloth stayed dry, but the body under it was cold and wet. Hanna pressed her palm to his chest and felt movement under the skin, as if water had sloshed in there. Semen heard it too.

He was silent a while, then fetched a rope from the storeroom. "Tonight you'll tie me to the bench." "What for?" "I want to know which of us is lying. Me or my feet." On the fourth night Semen held his hand out to Hanna himself. She pulled the knot tight twice, then checked it once more. The rope was thick, the kind they tied a calf to a tree with. Semen lay on the bench and stared at his wrist until his eyes burned.

The next thing he remembered was cold water up to his knees. A torn end of rope hung from his arm. He grabbed his wrist. Not a scrape. Not a mark from the knot. The pond lay ahead, black and smooth. The frogs screamed so loud he lost the sound of his own splashing. Then they all fell silent at once. The reeds went on swaying a little without any wind. In the middle of the open water a woman's face was slowly rising.

At first Semen thought she was standing on the bottom. Then he remembered: the water there was three men deep. It came up to her chest and did not stir around her body. Her hair spread across the surface like roots. She was so beautiful that Semen stepped closer before he had time to be afraid. Water ran without stopping from her hair, her lashes, her chin. The woman looked at him. "Does Hanna still sleep on her left side?"

Semen said nothing. The woman raised a hand. Water ran off her fingers, but above the elbow the skin was already dry. "Who are you?" She drew her tongue over her lips, seductively. "Tomorrow you'll tell me whether her hair still smells the same." Semen ran. At home Hanna backed away from him while he was still in the entry hall. "Don't come near." Through the dry shirt a dark stain showed on his chest. It crept slowly upward, toward the throat.

Then Hanna, in tears, told him about Sashko. It had happened many years ago, when she was already living with Semen. Sashko, her first love, had long had another life. One night she dreamed of him in the middle of the pond. The water around him darkened in a narrow ring. "Do you still remember me?" "I remember." He smiled and went under the water without bending his knees. Hanna woke barefoot by the door. Her feet were covered in silt.

Two days later word came: that night Sashko had vanished near the water. The next night Semen went back to the pond on purpose. The woman was sitting in the shallows. Her hair still floated in the water, but her back was dry and warm - with a stranger's, borrowed warmth. He touched her shoulder. Something stirred under his tongue. Semen spat out a small white shell. The woman laughed in her throat, uncertainly, as if she had only learned yesterday.

"Hanna looked at me like that too." "When?" "When she came for Sashko." "How do you know him?" She touched a finger to her temple. "At first I saw him through her eyes." Just under the surface lay a man's face. One eye higher than the other. The ears mismatched. The mouth a little to one side. When Semen leaned down, the face under the water repeated the movement, half a heartbeat late. In the silt by the cheek a ring gleamed. Semen took it.

The face opened its mouth at once. The water around the lips shuddered and was drawn inward, as if it had taken a long breath. Semen recoiled, and the thing lying under the water went on smiling at his movements for another moment. Hanna recognized the ring. Sashko had given it to her when she was seventeen. She had lost it in this pond, and not a living soul knew of it. "After that dream I went there." "You saw Sashko?" Hanna was silent a long time.

"The first one I didn't recognize." Semen raised his eyes. "The first one?" "The second one already knew my voice." She squeezed the ring until her fingers went white. "Don't ask any more." Semen suddenly tried to recall his mother's face. He couldn't. Semen didn't sleep. The dread wouldn't let go. At midnight Hanna heard him retching outside. In the grass, barely visible, lay a puddle of clean cold water and a few green stems. Semen sat beside it, white.

"Hanna, what colour are your eyes?" She began to cry. He touched her cheek and looked a long time at his wet finger. "I no longer remember what people need tears for." From the direction of the pond, someone laughed in Hanna's voice. They went together. On the bank stood another Hanna. Barefoot, dry, in the same shirt. The Hanna beside him squeezed Semen's hand. The one by the water said: "Semchyk."

That was what his wife called him only in bed, in a whisper. Then the other one rubbed a fingernail with her thumb, the way Hanna did when she was nervous. Semen felt the hand beside him weaken and grow cold. He looked at them both. The night was freezing, but breath steamed only from the mouth of the one standing by the water. Between the bank and dawn, nothing remained in Semen's memory. They returned to the house together, the two of them. Hanna said nothing.

Semen pulled off his boot, shook out the silt with his left hand, leaned his shoulder against the doorpost and tilted his head to one side. Hanna sat down where she stood. "What?" She looked at him as at a drowned man sitting at her own table. "Sashko used to do that." "What Sashko?" Hanna barely smiled. "Better this time." "What's better?" "By the third try it hardly shows." With the first warm days Hanna was gone. Before she died she told me:

"If Semen comes to you wet, don't open the door." One night Semen knocked at the inn. Dry. I opened. He sat by the window and pulled off his boot, because he'd rubbed his heel raw. Five straight toes. "Ivan, what are you staring at?" I didn't answer. Three knocks came at the door.

Water seeped out from under it. From the yard came Semen's voice: "Ivan. Don't open it to him." The one by the window turned his head. "Look at the left foot," said the voice outside. I had already looked.