The People's Act of Love (40 page)

Alyosha found that, when violent, unexpected events occur suddenly, it becomes difficult, a moment later, to remember the precise order in which they occurred, no matter how vivid the memory of each separate event. Inside the sound of the whistle came another sound, sharp, breaking out of the shriek. More than a sound, a blow to his ears, a clap, an explosion. Alyosha also saw a hand pulling the gun out of the holster. It must have been Samarin’s hand, and the sound of the gun being fired must have come afterwards. The Czech soldier could only have fallen to the ground, like a suitcase bursting open, as a result of the gun being fired at him, and this could only have been before Alyosha saw the gun, held by Samarin, pointed at the engineer. Yet all these things seemed to have happened simultaneously, and they danced together like freaks in the stage of Alyosha’s mind, the muzzle pointed, the dead Czech soldier, the shot that killed him, the speed of Samarin’s hand reaching to take the gun, the whistle. For the next few moments time melted and Alyosha could only watch the freak show of shocks dancing in his mind, even while he was aware of other things happening, of Samarin ordering the engineer to put him down, of the engineer lowering him to the footplate floor, of
Samarin telling the fireman to stoke for his life, of Samarin telling the engineer to raise pressure. Samarin didn’t shout. His eyes moved across the crew and at the yard around and back, swift and angled, like insects on a pond. He told Alyosha to jump off the locomotive. Alyosha pressed his back against the tender and wrapped his arm around a metal bracing strut.

‘Jump!’ said Samarin. ‘Don’t disobey me. I shall not turn round again.’ Alyosha shook his head. He was afraid and he knew Samarin was the centre of this terrible new trouble and he found that he wanted to be there, in the centre, with the trouble, and not watching the trouble come towards him or move away.

‘The devil,’ said Samarin. ‘Stoke!’ He kicked the fireman. The furnace was roaring. ‘Your pressure’s good!’ said Samarin. ‘Poshli!’

The engineer and fireman were pale and frightened. It showed in their silence and delicate motions. The engineer took the brake off and moved the regulator. Vapour crashed on metal and the locomotive began to move.

‘Jump!’ said Samarin. He reached behind him without looking to take hold of Alyosha. Alyosha squeezed his body away from the clutching hand. The fireman was throwing logs into the furnace now with a broadheaded shovel and the light from the doorway shone white and hot like the summer sun. It sounded a river roar and the old greased parts of the big engine stretched and hauled and tumbled and the pistons sucked and bellowed steam.

‘Where are we going?’ called the engineer.

‘Nowhere,’ said Samarin, and with two powerful movements of his leg, one to wind the spring and one to release, he pushed the engineer off the footplate. The Czech vanished, and it was Samarin’s hand on the regulator. Alyosha’s instinct was to rush forward to the doorway to see what had happened
to the engineer. It was far to fall without warning, and it seemed to him that they were moving fast now. But he only gripped the strut more tightly because he understood that Samarin would throw him off the train too if he saw a chance. As long as he pressed himself back in the corner, he was safe. Samarin was watching the controls, had the gun pointed at the fireman, and moved his head every few seconds to look out the window. From where he stood Alyosha could see moments of birch and larch passing in the precise autumn light. They were already beyond Yazyk. It was almost a year since he had travelled by train, and never like this. He had a growing hollow of worry in his stomach that he was getting too far beyond his mother’s reach, and at the same time the wind from the open doorway, the crash of steam and the quick tall back of the fearful, clever man in front of him promised a place to be safe that consisted of always running towards a far-off destination that could not be known or seen but was good and existed. Alyosha had only ever known one centre, to which everything returned: home, roof, mother. Now there was the centre of speed, journey, leader.

Samarin looked quickly over his shoulder at Alyosha. ‘Are you still here?’ he said. ‘Devil. I told you to jump. I’ll throw you off the first bridge if you don’t.’

‘You killed the Czech soldier,’ said Alyosha, full of wonder.

‘I don’t need a boy with me to count heads. Stoke, filth!’ To the fireman.

‘Who are you really?’ said Alyosha.

‘Destruction.’

‘Destruction of what?’

‘Of everything that stands in the way of the happiness of the people who will be born after I’m dead.’

‘What about Mama?’

‘She doesn’t mean anything to me, Alyosha, and nor do you. Everything in the world is broken now and can’t be mended.’

Dread came to Alyosha. He said: ‘Did you hurt Mama?’

Samarin turned round and stared at Alyosha. His eyes were more terrible in their anger than any punishment. ‘No,’ he said.

There was a strange sound in the cab, as if a thin metal rod had snapped in two. Other delicate breakages sounded down the length of the engine. The fireman inexplicably sagged forward in the act of shovelling logs into the furnace, pushing the handle in up to his hands. His gloves began to blacken and smoke and Alyosha saw that his side, just under his ribs, was darkening with seeping liquid from a tear in the cloth of his coat. Except it wasn’t only the cloth which was torn. It seemed impossible, but a ragged part of the fireman himself seemed to have come loose as well, and from the dark entrance under that strip of cloth and flesh his lifeblood was flowing.

Samarin pulled the fireman away from the furnace and let him lie in the back corner opposite Alyosha.

‘Machine guns,’ said Samarin, going back to the controls. ‘Keep low.’

Alyosha crouched down onto the floor of the cab. He looked over at the fireman. His flesh seemed to be turning grey already, and his eyes were closed. The ease with which life could be taken from him was astonishing. Alyosha could hear the sound of the machine guns. They sounded far away, another thing altogether from the little clanging of metal against metal when the bullets struck the locomotive. How strange that those small sharp metal taps could stop a life of tens of years, all that talking and moving.

Samarin, looking ahead down the line, shouted something Alyosha could not hear and sounded the whistle, two or three times. The locomotive smashed into an obstacle on the line. Every
bolt and plate shuddered and the train continued on. The sound of the guns grew louder. There was an explosion nearby, a blast that seemed to pass through Alyosha’s head, leaving it light and empty, ears singing. The locomotive thundered on. Samarin began adding logs to the furnace. The guns were still firing.

A bullet struck the inside of the cab and something touched Alyosha on the shoulder. He felt an outrageous, unreasonable pain unfold in him and he was frightened. He knew part of him had been pierced by flying metal and he wondered if he would go still and turn grey like the fireman, and what would happen to the part of him that wasn’t still. The space between his chest and his clothes was filling with something warm and wet, which must be his blood.

‘Kyrill Ivanovich,’ he said, and was surprised at how faint and thin his voice was. Samarin wouldn’t hear it. When he spoke, his whole body glowed with pain, but now he was angry and afraid and he screamed. ‘Kyrill Ivanovich!’ It was loud, and he was crying, and frightened and in pain as he was, he still felt a little ashamed and babyish when he saw Samarin turn round and look down at him. Samarin was angry with him, he could see. Samarin put a hand over his eyes, struck the instrument panel with his fist, and dropped to his knees, bringing his head so low that it touched the floor. Then he lifted it and turned to Alyosha, touched him and spoke his name. Alyosha tried to answer but though his lips moved he couldn’t make a sound. It was hard to keep his eyes open. Samarin kept saying his name and the guns kept firing and there were more explosions. Alyosha heard the sound of the brakes being applied, felt the locomotive slow down and stop and then, after what seemed like a long time, with bullets hammering the train from end to end, it began to move back towards Yazyk. Alyosha felt cold. Waves rolled over him, pushing him deeper under each time, until he went still.

The Nature Of The Burden

A
nna woke with the wonderful feeling bad sleepers have when they know they have slept well, as if they have stolen something and got away with it. At these times, the memories of what led up to such deep sleep keep their distance for a few seconds, and those few seconds are perhaps the only time the world can ever be said to show mercy. She heard the whistle of a train in the distance and wondered if that was what had woken her. She remembered something extraordinary, dangerous and lovely had occurred. She remembered a broad hard bud had entered her and filled her. A man had kissed her with desire and she had pulled at his sex to get it inside her more quickly. What a long hunger satisfied once! She stretched and pedalled her legs under the quilt, and wondered where it was he’d gone, and what time it was. It was light outside, bright light. It was surprising Alyosha hadn’t been in to see her. Could he have hauled Samarin out into the garden to play at cavalrymen already? She smiled, it was likely. A sense of being part of threeness crept into her, and she knew how perilous that was, because it couldn’t last, but there would be more hours yet together. She got up and splashed her face. The noise of her hands in the water of the basin met a different silence, one that seemed cold and did not beat. It was the silence of one. Anna’s mouth dried in a moment and in her dressing gown she ran into the corridor and saw that Alyosha
was not in his room. She heard shooting in the distance. Aloud she spoke God’s name she did not believe in, over and over, while she ran downstairs. She shouted for Alyosha in the kitchen, in the yard, and ran out across the frozen ground, out of the gate until the splash of a tear on her foot made her realise she had no shoes or stockings on. She drew in breath till her lungs hurt and let it out in a scream that tore the flesh of her throat, ‘ALYOSHA!’

Snivelling, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, shaking, breathing too quickly, she put on clothes and laced her boots, dizzy from the sickening, heavy wheel that had begun to rotate in her mind, displaying the same sequence of thoughts over and over. She had killed her son for lust. She, Anna Petrovna Lutova, had killed her son for lust. She had taken the killer into her bed. She had sacrificed Alyosha because she could not bear the wanting to be touched and wanted and filled. She had lost her love, her joy, her warm tight squirming giggling pouting strutting essence of a boy, her dear pampered prince, that she bore and cared for so hard and so long, out of that sickness in her that couldn’t endure. No prayer could bring him back and she was damned forever. Her husband saw the slut in her and took the quickest way out of it. It was her fault. Could Alyosha be alive still? No, she was greedy. She was cursed. She was a fool. She had killed her son for lust.

Anna ran up the road towards the station. The castrate carpenter, Grachov, said he had seen Alyosha hand in hand with the convict. He asked her what was happening and she did not answer. The wheel grated round inside Anna. She had killed her son for lust. Could he be alive still? She was a fool. There was more shooting in the distance, the thud of heavier weapons now. Czech soldiers overtook her. Chaos rippled outwards from the station. A soldier tripped and fell, picked
himself up and ran on. The brilliant blue of the sky, the brightness of the puddle-ice, made this a shiny chocolate-box doomsday. The soldiers shouted at each other in Czech. They ran holding their rifles in both hands, looking from side to side, bent forward slightly, as if they thought the enemy was on either side.

At the station a corpse lay half covered in a tarpaulin by the tracks, boots lolling at their dead angle. Anna felt as if a hand had reached inside her, gripped her by the heart and shaken her whole body. She was too broken up to cry out and she held her hair in her fists. The Czech soldiers milled like a mob. She could barely understand this language but she understood a train, their only train, had been stolen. She ran towards the heart of the mob, which was a man she recognised as the Czechs’ train engineer, sitting shivering in a blanket. One of the soldiers was squeezing and twisting the engineer’s leg. The engineer winced.

‘Who’s seen my son?’ said Anna. The wheel grated. The son she killed.

‘You fucking bitch,’ said the engineer in Russian, looking at her, and looking away said more in Czech. The other soldiers stared at Anna.

‘I don’t care what you call me,’ said Anna. ‘Where’s my son?’

‘The convict took him. We’re all like children to him. Oh, the little lad wants to see what the train driver does! Well come up and see, and bring your uncle with you!’ The engineer spat and the soldiers murmured. The engineer said: ‘Your brat knew what he was about, and so do you. Don’t worry about the boy. You’ll both be crow’s meat when Matula gets to you.’

A man was shouting and waving down the line. He had a pistol in his hand. It was Dezort, yelling at the Czechs to move. They began to run along the tracks, Anna among them, red
with tears and pounding blood, hardly able to see the sleepers and rails, shivering with self-hate. In a short time, they met up with the rest of the Czechs, who had cut across town to the railway straight from the square. Smutny and Buchar had set up the Maxim gun so it pointed down the line. Hanak walked in circles, roundshouldered and skinny, hands in pockets, watching everyone while they weren’t looking. Standing with his legs apart and his thumbs in his belt, straddling the line like a barricade, back to Anna, face down the line in the direction of the locomotive, was Matula. Anna ran to him and around him so that she could look at him. How could his eyes report the presence of a living mind behind them, and be so without life? The wheel grated round inside Anna. It seemed to her Matula had become part of the punishment she had earned by betraying her son, by taking a convict into her bed. Those opaque eyes of Matula’s, lacking even the comfort of malice, spite or hate to assure her of his humanity, now seemed natural. It was not that his eyes were, as she had thought before, alien in their lack of feeling. It was that she had not until now committed the sin to enable her to understand how much a part of the human world his inhumanity was.