The Librarian (14 page)

The enemy had already set out his brigade in chess formation. Most of the Gorelovites had massive clubs that were like baseball bats, except for the spikes screwed into them. Some of them had identical carbonized steel machetes—clearly industrially produced imports. Spears tipped with flat blades rose up out of the formation. Every soldier was wearing an ancient military bulletproof vest and a helmet, so that the Gorelovites looked just like Pushkin’s sea heroes, “all chosen to match”.

As soon as we completed our descent, a long line of men holding kayak paddles appeared around the top of the depression. From the glittering, sharpened edges of the steel blades it was clear that these items of sports equipment had been adroitly converted into weapons. As if to confirm this, a man with a paddle, apparently limbering up, performed several vigorous strokes, slicing his blades through he air. It was easy to guess what would happen to anyone who took a blow from a paddle like that…

“Remember, in ancient Rome, the lictors?” Lutsis whispered. “Only they had poleaxes, not paddles…”

“Lictors?” I asked uneasily, as if this were important.

“Or seconds. Those guys with the paddles keep order too. They only intervene if the fight isn’t fought according to the rules.”

Our brigade stretched out in a double line, divided into three groups. In the centre was the Shironin reading room, the ten warriors from Kolontaysk were on the right flank, and Burkin and Simonyan’s people were on the left. I particularly disliked the fact that I was standing in the front row. All eyes seemed to be glued to the casket with the Book.

“What now?” I anxiously asked Lutsis, who was standing beside me. “Will it start soon?”

“When everybody realizes that they’re ready,” he said, looking straight ahead, like a man under a spell.

“Afraid?” Pall Palych suddenly asked from the other side. “That’s because you haven’t read the Book. The meaning of life hasn’t been revealed to you yet. And without meaning you’re always afraid…”

I had recently heard a similar idea from Margarita Tikhonovna, and now Pal Palych had repeated it in his own manner.

“Don’t you be afraid. The Gorelov reading room…”—he paused for a moment, pondering how to characterize the enemy—“… is a load of rubbish! They’re mercenaries, and that says it all. You should know that there aren’t any special fighting techniques or fancy little moves… That is, there are, but that’s not the important thing. It’s what’s inside that matters, the guts, the heart…”

“Your late uncle was a hero to beat them all,” said Timofei Stepanovich. He swung the sack down off his shoulder and the fabric-wrapped sphere lay beside his boot. “That means you’re a hero too. Blood’s thicker than water, or vodka. Understand?”

A man with a Book in his hands mounted the grassy rostrum. He cleared his throat gently and declaimed:

“The Silver Channel.”

“Oh, how humane we are this time,” I heard Margarita Tikhonovna’s sarcastic voice say. “Obviously especially for the Gorelov reading room. A gift from Shulga.”

“The convict’s getting nervous,” Lutsis remarked. “Maybe he’s not sure of his own men.” He looked at me. “Sit down, Alexei, we’ve got at least three hours to spare now. We’re going to listen…”

“Well, now, thank God,” said Marat Andreyevich, crossing himself. “I’m feeling better already.” He winked at me encouragingly. “The Book of Endurance. We’re alive and kicking, Alexei.”

“What Book is that? What’s it for?” I asked in relief.

“It’s something that has to be done…” said Timofei Stepanovich, turning one ear towards the rostrum and holding it with his hand to amplify the sound.

The reader started at a frantic pace in a staccato gabble, like a sexton in a church: “April began with eddying winds and frost. And then suddenly winter surrendered. Only a few days earlier there was not a patch of earth to be seen in the field, only little bushes showing through the snowdrifts, but suddenly on the south slope tilth appeared, with rooks stalking about on it. When did they arrive?”

I listened inattentively, more absorbed in my own feelings. At first the reader’s monotonous, hurrying voice irritated me, but then it lulled me, like the steady beat of the wheels in a railway carriage.

The Silver Channel
was a turgid, opaque lyrical narrative. Two characters sleepwalked through the text, from spring to spring: a forester in love with nature and his little son, to whom the poetic beauties of his native parts were gradually revealed. Along the way father and son encountered various people, simple Soviet toilers, and each one had a story for the boy. The culmination of the novella was a long, dreary scene in which children helped old people to build a haystack: how the stooks were driven up, how they stacked them up, topped them off the stack, adjusted them with rakes, pressed them together with poles…

The reader closed the Book and I suddenly saw that the night had turned bright, with a milky moon and white stars that looked like scars.

Our people got to their feet. Timofei Stepanovich stealthily pricked his flabby wrist with his awl and nodded in satisfaction, licking away the drop of blood that oozed out.

Margarita Tikhonovna tugged on my sleeve.

“Alexei, everyone will go running forward, but you stay here. They’ll remember you, and if anything happens they won’t abandon you. Here…” She glanced round, choosing. “Annushka will guard you. No need to be afraid with her.” She beckoned to her. “Anyuta, will you keep an eye on Alexei? All right?”

Anna Vozglyakova shielded me with her mighty shoulder and I felt a little more confident.

Meanwhile on the left flank Margarita Tikhonovna was already conferring with Simonyan’s Garshenin; he agreed with what she said, stroking the metal-bound handle of his scythe.

“Alexei,” the traumatologist Dezhnev whispered in my ear, “what Margarita Tikhonovna told you is quite right…” He hesitated. “But if the situation does get a bit tricky, for God’s sake, don’t just stand there waiting for the wedding… Move about, dodge! If you hit out—don’t follow through after the blow. Whether you hit the target or not, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to keep moving all the time.” He drew his sabre. “I’ll try not to let you out of my sight.”

Anna, clutching the handle of her spade in her thick, coarse fingers, suddenly spoke to me.

“I wanted to ask…” she said in a voice that proved to be very thick and low. “You studied in an institute, didn’t you? Did you have that subject—psychology? You did? Oh! Explain this situation to me. A long time ago, in fifth year, I planted a birch tree in the school garden. Then suddenly this boy there wanted a thin stick, maybe for a cane to play at horses. Well, he started breaking it off my birch tree, and the tree was no more than a cane anyway, so
he snapped almost all of it off. And I shouted at him: ‘Hey, you, get off that!’ And he said to me: ‘Big deal! One little branch… It won’t do your birch tree any harm.’ I said to him: ‘And what if everyone goes breaking off a branch? What then?’ The little boy suddenly started crying and ran away…” Anna wrinkled up her forehead and her fingers tightened their grip on the spade handle. “The thing is, why did he start crying, eh? I didn’t hurt him. I didn’t hit him. Maybe you know why?”

In my previous life I would certainly have mocked this simple-mindedness in my heart of hearts, while outwardly passing some slimy comment like: “I wish I had your problems, darling…”

I understood why Anna had started telling me about the broken birch tree. In her own way she had been impressed by the reading of the Book of Endurance, with its endless descriptions of nature. Anna just wanted to talk about some lofty theme, and there was nothing loftier than Gromov. The story of the birch tree seemed to her a perfectly valid pass to those empyrean regions where brainy people like me probably philosophized about something noble and exalted.

While I was still assembling the circumspect phrase “I rather neglected psychology”, it all began.

T
HE GAP BETWEEN US
and the Gorelov reading room closed implacably. If only our enemies had shouted something like “hurrah”, it wouldn’t have looked so terrifying. But they ran without a word, with a rumble of boots in the silence of noisy breathing. Lutsis, Sukharev, Vyrin, Larionov, Ogloblin and Provotorov flung heavy ball bearings at the attackers. The steel spheres hit home, and several of the Gorelov warriors tumbled over as if they had slipped on a wet floor, felled by a direct hit.

Our side rushed forward. I prudently stayed apart, backing away rapidly and moving as far away as possible from the fighting.

The brigades clashed head on. Garshenin’s team, outrunning the others, ran through the line running at them with their sickles and tridents. Some were impaled on steel immediately. I saw a long fan shape of blood spurt out of a pierced throat. The brunt of the Gorelov warriors’ frontal thrust was borne by the Shironinites. Burkin’s volunteers and the Kolontayskites, armed with miners’ pickaxes, struck from the flanks—the appalling steel beaks rose up above the crowd and fell, embedding themselves in the human strata.

The human mass seethed as it intermingled in confusion. It was as if, following the invitation to dance, everyone had gone dashing to find themselves a partner, to start this elaborate swirling, while those who had not found a partner were filled with fury and started breaking up other pairs.

A Gorelovite stunned by a ball bearing and crawling on all fours was hammered into the ground by a terrible blow from Maria
Antonovna Vozglyakova, who did not seem to notice the knife that was thrust into her side, burying the full length of its narrow blade in her padded work jacket.

Igor Valeryevich arched over in a rapid lunge, driving his bayonet into his foe’s defenceless lower belly. Veronika Vozglyakova’s spade sliced open the face of a Gorelovite pressing forward.

Timofei Stepanovich, despite his age, doughtily held three enemies at bay. Squatting down, he shattered one attacker’s knee with a sweep of his dumb-bell mace, and then helped arrived in the persons of Lutsis and Larionov.

Sasha Sukharev bounded out of the crowd, pursued by a berserk Gorelovite. Sukharev’s right hand had been transformed into a limp rag; he ran off a few steps, took out a ball bearing, flung it with his left hand, missed and pulled out a long screwdriver. The adversaries clashed together and fell…

A baseball smashed into Grisha Vyrin’s unprotected back, but the Gorelovite who had crept up on him lived only for one more moment before Marat Andreyevich’s sabre flashed.

Vadik Provotorov ran by with an axe and flung himself at a Gorelovite armed with a machete. A flurry of backs hid them from sight.

A crushing, spiked blow to the face felled Pal Palych. Larionov, grabbing up a sapper’s entrenching tool, fervently pulverized a fallen foe until a knife was thrust into his back up to the hilt.

The swingeing blows of Ievlev’s hammer tossed into the air fragments of helmets and pink lumps that looked like boiled beetroot.

One of Burkin’s volunteers sat down in the grass and started busily binding up the stump of his arm, which was spurting blood like a guillotined chicken. Garshenin jerked convulsively on the handle of his scythe, but the blade had buried itself too deeply in a dead body. Garshenin kicked the body with his boot, but the sharp spur got stuck instead of helping him pull free. Someone brought a club down on his arms, breaking the bones as well as the scythe
handle, but Svetlana Vozglyakova laid out the Gorelovite with a precise bayonet thrust just below the collar.

A Kolontaysk ice-hockey player abandoned the fighting and staggered towards me, as if seeking help, then collapsed on his knees and dropped his miner’s pickaxe. Slow, thick blood oozed out through the eye slits of the white goalkeeper’s mask. A Gorelovite ran up and impaled the man who was already dead, then swung round and impaled himself on Tanya Miroshnikova’s swift rapier.

Lutsis finished off a fallen adversary, looked round for another, and missed an attack—the club struck the plastic of his helmet with a resonant thud. As he fell, Denis struck out with his axe, slicing through his enemy’s jaw. Ogloblin dashed at the enemy, ran him through with his fork and moved on with the stride of advancing infantry, and the spiked man could barely move his feet fast enough, as if it were some kind of dance…

If someone had said to me that the battle had been going on for no more than three minutes, I wouldn’t have believed them.

Suddenly I saw the Gorelovite librarian, Marchenko. I recognized him from his flaming crimson birthmark. The most frightening thing was that Marchenko was dashing straight at me. He had no helmet and his slashed upper lip bounced up and down in time with his running feet.

Marchenko was belatedly noticed by our fighters too. Anna, who had been set to guard me, flung the charging Gorelovite back with the handle of her spade, but someone who had not been finished off grabbed her leg and Anna stretched her full length on the trampled grass. With a swift flourish of his sabre, Marat Andreyevich cleared himself a path through the halved body of a Gorelovite, but it was clear that he would be too late.

I ran to the slope. Looking back for an instant, I saw Timofei Stepanovich fling his sack. The mace struck Marchenko in the back like a comet and felled him. Marchenko growled and started crawling on all fours, slowly straightening up; in the anthropology
textbooks, that was how they illustrated the transformation of a monkey into erect
Homo sapiens.

I hurtled up the slope, stumbled, dropped my flanged mace and clearly heard Lutsis shout: “Alexei, come back!” A second’s paddle hummed past just above my head like a propeller.

I slithered back down on my knees and took off the chain with the Book. My first thought was to fling this awkward item aside in order to distract Marchenko. But the moment I looked into his bloodshot eyes with that trembling bulldog’s lip below them, I knew there would be no mercy.

And the chain was lying so conveniently in my hand. Then a second thought appeared. I swung the Book like a sling and brought it down on Marchenko’s head. The steel case slammed straight into the base of the skull. A vertebra snapped with a repulsive crunch. Marchenko crawled no more; he tumbled over onto his side, working his legs as if he were turning invisible pedals.

“The satisfaction is concluded!” a short, scrawny man of about forty with a terribly mutilated face declared in a loud, imperious voice. Margarita Tikhonovna took off her helmet. One of the lenses of her glasses was broken and her cheek was soaked in blood. Panting as she spoke, Margarita Tikhonovna said:

“Comrade Kovrov, do not prevent justice from prevailing.”

There, about fifty metres away from me, the finishing touches were being put to the battle. Kolontaysk fighters were vigorously beleaguering a lone Gorelovite. The Vozglyakov sisters rhythmically raised their spades and thrust them into squirming bodies. Timofei Stepanovich was crawling about, finishing off the wounded with an awl. Ogloblin and Dezhnev drove a solitary adversary onto the slope; the fugitive fought them off, backing away, until he took a blow from a paddle and collapsed, impaling himself on the pike held out for him.

Kovrov turned to the morose Tereshnikov, who shrugged and said in a loud voice:

“In the name of the council the battle is concluded!”

Tanya took off her battered mask; her cheekbone was decorated with a massive contusion. Lutsis was swinging his head about like a dog, trying to shake out his concussion. Ievlev was pressing his hand over a wound on his right forearm. Marat Andreyevich was wiping down the blade of his sabre with burdock. Margarita Tikhonovna, smiling broadly at me, blinked away the blood that had accumulated under her shattered lens with a cleft eyelid…

And then I puked up bile as caustic as acid into the grass.

The spectators left the slope and helped to sort out the mutilated corpses.

Ogloblin and Timofei Stepanovich laid out dead Pal Palych on the grass with his face shattered as if a tank had driven over him. Igor Valeryevich carried over the lifeless Larionov with a knife in his back. Vadik Provotorov had been killed—I hadn’t even seen how that had happened. He was brought out, his throat slashed, with the purple breathing innards peeping out through it. Maria Antonovna Vozglyakova had died of stab wounds. Grisha Vyrin was lying unconscious. Marat Andreyevich examined him and said that his spinal column didn’t appear to be damaged. I realized that I was partly to blame for what had happened to Vyrin. If not for me, those loyal Soviet roubles would have protected Vyrin’s back.

Our allies had also suffered serious losses. The Kolontayskites had lost three warriors, only two of Simonyan’s six volunteers remained, and only one of Burkin’s volunteers had survived the battle.

The Gorelov reading room had been reduced to five people. These survivors huddled together in a bloodied gaggle. The other thirty-something, including the librarian Marchenko, had met their death on the field of satisfaction.