Field Study by Rachel Seiffert

Author:Rachel Seiffert
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781407091969
Publisher: Random House

The Crossing

He has been there since dawn; head down, keeping pace with them.

Marta can see for miles along the broad riverbank, and she has kept one eye on his progress all morning, urging her children on, hoping they haven’t seen him. Marta is frightened. They were making headway till they hit the river. Every hour’s delay brings danger closer. And now the man. She has been walking her family along the wide surge of water since late yesterday afternoon. The anger from the east at their backs, she has kept them moving, one eye behind her, the other on the thick swirls of current churning the water slowly over and under.

Pressing on, praying for a way across, Marta carries her baby at her chest and a bundle tied to her back. Her eldest child, a daughter, walks in front of her with their bag, and her young twin boys walk behind. The river defences have been damaged in the fighting and Marta can hear the boys’ boots squelch in the marshy ground, tramping in step with one another, in step with her. The grass is long, the going uneven: they walk as if they are wading already. Moving on in silence, below the line of the flood barrier, level with the water, parallel with safety on the other side.

She looks back at the man and he is still there: no closer, no further away, but with his head up, now. Watching. White smudge of face under a black hat.

Marta drops her pace momentarily, ushers her sons past her, putting herself between her children and the stranger.

If she keeps pushing, Marta thinks they can stay ahead of him for another hour, maybe two. He will give up. Drop back. There will be a way across the water.

Up ahead she sees a bridge. The tall pillars are still upright in the slow current, but nothing connects them: bombed and the remains washed away. Marta helps her children up onto the road that rises steeply to the bridge. She reasons with herself, fights down the disappointment. There must be another, further along there will be another.

– We’ll keep going.

The twins run up the slope and stand at the edge where the road stops and twisted fingers of metal poke out of the blasted concrete. They lie on their stomachs, heads dangling over the edge, calling down to the water. Their laughter throws echoes around the tall columns, and Marta is afraid the man can hear them. They have slowed down: he could be in earshot now. Doesn’t want to draw any attention to them, not out here where there is no one to help them and no way of knowing what might happen. She walks with Ani her daughter, holding the baby close, calling to her sons.

– We’re not stopping.

But now Ani isn’t moving. She is pointing and pulling at her mother’s arm.

– There’s a man.

Marta knows he has gained on them before she has even looked round. Less than one hundred metres now, still walking, looking straight ahead, breaking into a run.

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