Cold Blood (51 page)

Looking at it another way: four hundred rounds per machine gun—therefore eight hundred separate chances of death.

Had I been any use to the world? Did my beetle really count for anything? Was there anything else I could be proud of?

The noise of the Fokker suddenly shrank. We looked up together, Stiffy flicking the sweat off his eyebrows with one finger. Glebov had swung away. He'd calculated that he'd time to get round in front of us and take us head-on. He was going to rake us all the way down, from bow to stern, about twenty yards before we got to the trees.

“Tickle her up, man,” I shouted to Shmuleyvich. Our impetus had slowed drastically. We were almost down to drifting speed. But we could still get there if Shmuley gave the barge some boot.

I had another thought, stemming from something Shmuley had said earlier: maybe I could induce Glebov to give us the breathing space we needed by exhibiting our women. Maybe when he saw them out there on deck, all soft and innocent, he'd become polite, compassionate, gentlemanski Glebov. I've said it before, when a revolution comes along, people try out new personalities. They have to, to survive. One should be surprised by nothing in a revolution. Novelty is their purpose.

The women had gone into the wheelhouse for shelter. “Kick
'em out of there,” I shouted to Shmuley. “Get 'em where he can see them. Have 'em take their blouses off and shake their tits out.”

Kobi started firing. His rifle shots punctuated the rumble of our engine and the howl of the Fokker. I could make out Tornado safe among the trees. That'd have been Kobi's first priority. If we were killed, he'd have a means of escape.

A series of crashes from the wheelhouse: Shmuley was bashing the glass out of the windows with a wrench, to stop it flying about when the bullets struck.

He thrust a broom into Lili's hand. “Here, girl, into the river with that glass, it'll take your mind off things. Don't listen to him about showing yourself. You're not a tart.”

Stiffy and I were beside the machine gun, watching to see what she'd do—which was to saunter over to us as if there wasn't an enemy within a hundred miles. She pointed to a minuscule piece of glass at my feet. Vast shards of the stuff were lying in heaps round the wheelhouse. But that wasn't the point. That particular fragment of glass was where she was going to start.

It had been hot work barricading the wheelhouse. She'd taken off her tunic top. What was left was a vesty sort of thing tucked into her skirt band. She smiled up at me. Not coyly, not flirtatiously, more like experimentally. Then she bent to her work, harassing that piece of glass towards the scuppers with the smallest and least effectual dabs of her broom that any human could have devised.

White white shimmering skin, smooth as milk. No blemishes of any kind. Ribs just visible. And nodding beneath her shift, like lazy young animals, her glamorous, sweating breasts.

Stiffy drew in his breath sharply.

I said to him, “Changing your mind about women?”

“Never seen anything like them,” Stiffy said.

Then tossing a burst of gay laughter at us over her shoulder, Lili threw herself into the sweeping, sending great heaps of glass cascading over the side.

“Blimey, the things I can tell Mum,” exclaimed Stiffy.

Then we huddled as close to the winch as we could. But it was a pretence, and we knew it. When Glebov started to strafe the deck, only luck could save us.
Looking round, I saw Lili was still out there, checking that she'd got the last of the glass. “Get into the wheelhouse,” I bellowed. “Don't be such an asshole.”

Her huge blue eyes stared at me, then went flickering towards the Fokker. She propped the broom against the wheelhouse—

“Holy God, woman, stop fooling around. Get inside, go below, get out of it.”

She paid attention that time. It was the last I spoke for a while.

One hundred miles per hour—I gave him a good lead. The barrel swung easily: Kobi had kept it well oiled. In the same sight line I saw Glebov's bullets tripping up the deck towards me. Tufts of wood were springing up at great speed, in two distinct furrows. They were pointing straight at us. Only the winch could save me. As for Stiffy—God what a din there was, and smoke and the rattle of empty shells, and soon I'd be firing vertically overhead and my throat'd be full in his sights, would be white as a lily, would be waiting for the carotid to be split by a small dull cone of lead dug by man from the earth.

Dug by whom? What was his name? Put his foot on the spade and up it comes and he says to himself, That'll do for Doig— was that how it was, that I was to be killed by some ignorant horny-handed peasant?

Then without warning, the barge stopped dead—not brick-wall dead but near enough. I was flung against the winch— turned and flung, shoulder first, my head striking one of the handles. Stiffy—he was sent skidding down the deck, ended up yards away.

The pain was like having an arrow through my shoulder. I worked my arm a bit—got to my knees. Everything had slid off the wheelhouse roof. There was no sign of Shmuley. Mrs. D. was at the wheel.

“Mudbank,” she shouted. “Got to be.”

The Fokker—God knows what had happened to its bullets. Must have skewed everything for him, us stopping like that.

Lili staggered out holding her head. She'd got her tunic back on—looked unmarked, thank God. A splinter of wood in that young flesh'd have been the worst sort of crime.

“Watch out!” shouted Mrs. D. “He's coming in again.”

This time we were dead mutton. He wouldn't overshoot us a second time. He could take all day, make every one of his bullets count.

I went to haul the gun round to face the stern; it was where he was bound to come from next. Stiffy was out of it—alive but not doing anything very quickly. My shoulder was hell— then Lili was there to help me. One—two—three: we grunted together as we dragged the gun round.

I had my back to the winch now. We had no protection of any sort when he attacked.

She lay flat on the deck—gripped both sides of the ammunition belt, said, “Like this?”

“Get out, woman! Get back under cover!”

There was no time for more. A sort of silence fell upon us. Angels were hovering, death was approaching.

Shmuley had reappeared, had the engine racing, trying to back us off the mud. But we remained stationary, all eighty feet of us. We were up at the bow—well and truly grounded. The nearest tide to lift us off was at Gibraltar. We'd have to wait for a winter flood. Could be Christmas.

I thought of Christmas and the black Fokker attacking through a snowstorm.

Glebov completed his turn and levelled out for the kill.

Stiffy had slithered back to his post, was trying to push Lili aside.

“Get ready, General.” Not budging, brave as a lion, her little fists clenched with battle-fever.

“Wait till you see the whites of his bandages,” said Stiffy.

We were going to die in good humour. And I was going to die in love, which Alexander Pushkin had always wanted to do.

Think ranges and trajectories, I said to myself. Concentrate.
Kill the swine.
One bullet through his black leather helmet, that's all that it needed. Jaw, skull, earhole, I wasn't particular.

He was coming in even lower than before, wheels only inches from the river. He'd have to climb sharply to clear the willows. His belly would look the size of a Zeppelin—if I was still alive to see it. So I'd aim for his head and keep my thumb on the button.
Hope
for his head, that was nearer the truth.

“Now!” said Lili and Stiffy together.

I started firing.

I can tell you nothing about the next twenty seconds, which were a yammering delirium of sound and smoke. I'd had the idea that Glebov'd be so full of choler that he'd shoot too soon, would maybe lose control of himself and run out of ammunition. If he kept a straight head on him I'd see the bullets running up the water towards the rudder: see them entering my barge over the stern counter, ripping the wood as they had the last time. I'd fling myself on top of Lili, to be killed or not. I'd keep my eyes open and watch the bullets approaching up the deck. That way I'd know the future before it arrived.

The vibration coming up my arms from the machine gun was like having my shoulder struck with a jackhammer. But I set my jaw and let rip, firing straight at his goggles. Lili's forearms were constantly jabbing into my sight as she fed the belt through. Flecks of cordite and hot oil were flying out of the gun's action, spattering us left and right.

The Fokker was about level with our stern. It began to lift to get over the willows. Then Glebov flumped the plane back down—steadying it, wings rocking like anything, but maybe coming in at too flat an angle. I thought, It's like the attack on the train, he hasn't got the nerve to come in at the best angle, a steep one—then there he was above us, engine screaming, flying wires howling like a tortured animal, so low that Lili could have reached up and had his wheels for earrings.

He'd hit the trees, had to, would never pull out in time—the notion was no sooner in my head than an updraught off the river, maybe from a pack of air gathered under the willows, swept him up and over. Was this a new manoeuvre? Was it proof of what everyone was saying about the Fokker triplane, that it could dance on a kopek?

I watched it rise—saw it waver—cursed sun and sweat for making everything blurry.

Stiffy said in an inquisitive voice, “Is that an aileron hanging loose, sir?”

Baby hope drummed its heels in my breast. I grabbed Lili by the hair and shook her head, it being just handy.

The Fokker rose, engine pitch unchanged—no, maybe it was plucking at the air a bit. Its angle grew steeper, like a rearing horse.
Was he wrestling with the controls in there? Was it actually possible that something had been hit?

I jumped to my feet. “Shoot, keep on shooting at him,” I shouted to Kobi even though he was hundreds of yards away. Now the plane was getting to the vertical and not moving at much speed at all. Maybe there was an emergency lever he could pull, maybe he'd have everything ironed out in a couple of seconds and with a chuckle would swoop down and kill us and our stupid hopes.

The Fokker was stationary, hanging in the sky. Anyone could have hit it. And Kobi had my rifle, which had a scope.

“Get him, Kobi,” I yelled, quite out of control, “get the bastard.”

The Fokker was reaching the limit of what was possible for an aircraft standing on its tail. Its engine began to pink; a tinny echo nearly above us. I thought, May the bastard's heart be pinking too, and I thumped my fist into my palm.

Stiffy whispered, “He's had it. God bless that bullet.”

It was the signal. The Fokker accepted the impossibility of what it was trying to do and toppled onto its back.

For seconds it hung there. I thought, Christ, he hasn't been hit, he's just showing off, playing with us. Then the engine cut out. He went into a spin, the triple wings setting up a swishing fluttering sound as the plane spiralled down. Faster and faster it fell—but not plummeting, it was impossible with wings like that unless they came off. The propeller was dragging him down, that great heavy wooden propeller. If he was alive, he wouldn't know what day of the week it was, the rate at which the Fokker was spinning.

The willows hid him from our view. We waited. Seconds later there was a long slow ripping noise—then silence.

“God bless and sanctify that bullet forever,” said Stiffy. He turned, snapped to attention and saluted me.

Shmuley and Mrs. D. walked towards us, hand in hand, little Joseph tucked in behind them with Boltikov. We looked upon each other—with smiles, love and wonderment.

Shmuley said, “Now for Odessa.”

I said at large, “Where's Lili, then?”

Mrs. D. thought she'd nipped into the wheelhouse and went to see, saying, “Poor mite, what a baptism of fire.”

Wreckage from the Fokker began to drift down the river. A bit of its fuselage with the Red Star on it bumped along our side and I fished it out with a boathook. We agreed to nail it to the wall of the wheelhouse. Thinking about souvenirs made me ask Joseph if the Rykov flag had got onto the barge. When he said, Yes, of course it had, I took upon myself an air of triumph and looked gaily round the group to include them all in my suggestion, that we improvise a flagpole and hoist the Rykov wolf. Here and now, while the going was good.

Joseph and Shmuleyvich, happy grins from each of them, thinking about the gold. Boltikov was smoking the celebration cigar he'd been keeping. And here was Mrs. D.—God, what a tremendous day!

“Annushka,” I started, going to embrace her—but she held me off. She pushed me away to join the others. Raising herself up, making herself bigger and more important—the signals were unmistakable: “Glebov was Lili's father. She's just told me.”

I spoke my first thought: “Had to be someone.”

Then it struck home. “But she helped me! She helped me kill him!”

Implacably Mrs. D. went on: “What else could she have done? Ask yourself that. Anyway, you know what it means: she's lost both her parents in one day.”

She looked at me as if I'd personally slit their throats. Boltikov, harrumphing, stroked his jaw. Shmuley, he didn't dare go against her. Perhaps none of them did. They regarded me as men will in these circumstances.

So she had it in for me, for whatever reason. She wasn't saying anything about Elizaveta, about how it was Glebov's due. Or how I'd saved her from the Reds and got her a new husband and a share in a shipload of gold. Oh no. With some people it's only emotion that counts.

Shrugging, hands in pockets, I strolled up to the bow to see how deep in the mud we were.

I sat down on the towing bollard. I took my shirt off and felt all round my shoulder: bruising only, nothing serious. A
few more scraps from the Fokker floated past—wood, canvas, what looked like a pencil.