Move the Mountains by Emily Conolan

Author:Emily Conolan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2019-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

If you try to rescue Edik now, go to scene 23.

If you stay with Olenka until the morning, go to scene 24.

You decide that an opportunity to spend time in an engineer’s office is too good to pass up. The office is on the second floor of a brand-new building that still has the gluey smell of freshly laid carpet. There are big, boxy windows with a view over the little town, and the room is filled with the scratching of pencils and the clack of typewriters. The men who work here (and you’re dispirited to notice that, yes, they are all men) speak German, English and French. They talk about vectors and displacement and cubic tonnes.

Every day, as you walk through the big double doors at the main entrance downstairs, you make believe that you are one of the engineers who work here; that the whole enterprise of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority depends on you getting your calculations right. You walk into the office with your head held high, but by morning-tea-time you are always scurrying around like a mouse. You have memorised how everyone likes their tea, but no one seems particularly appreciative.

Sometimes, like today, you linger a while by the engineers’ tables. ‘If we make the gradient a little steeper, we can probably avoid tunnelling through that bedrock, but the mining carts might not be able to get enough traction,’ says Mr Klein (no milk, two sugars) to Mr Ford (milk, no sugar). You make a mental note to look up gradient, bedrock and traction in your English dictionary that night.

When you get home, you help Olenka with the chores. While she cooks a large pot of soup, you change baby Teodor’s nappy, leave him bare-bummed to try to cure his nappy rash, and put the stinky square of cloth in a bucket to soak. Little Lidia comes outside to watch you split the kindling for the fire and sings you some songs she’s learnt in English. ‘What’s howeye wunda whatchoo are mean?’ she asks, and you try to explain. When you come back inside, Teodor has peed on the floor, Olenka is on her hands and knees cleaning it, and the pot in the kitchen is boiling over. It takes both of you to manage this household, and you honestly wonder why any woman would sign up for this life of servitude.

Before bedtime, you and Olenka sit down to study together. You look up gradient, bedrock and traction, and Olenka works on memorising irregular verbs, of which English has an unfair amount.

‘Why they cannot say runned, swimmed and writed?’ she complains.

You roll your eyes. ‘They like making life hard for us,’ you tell her. That reminds you to ask Olenka something. ‘Olenka … is this what you wanted for your life? When you were a little girl, did you imagine yourself doing so much housework, from sunrise to sunset? Or did you imagine something … special … for your future?’

‘I imagine myself dead,’ she says bluntly, and you look at her in shock.

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