The People's Act of Love (45 page)

Hallowed father, our Redeemer,

A singing nightingale in the green garden,

While the Holy Ghost, the true first mover,

Sounds the heavenly bell

Calling the white sheep to him:

‘You, my sheep, my white sheep,

You will go to Paradise in joy,

In your hearts, you will all be happy,

You will not be naked forever,

In the garden, you will be precious birds,

I shall protect you from all misfortune,

I shall put grace in your hearts;

He who wants to receive grace,

So must he suffer for God.

You must apprehend the works of God,

You must receive the golden cut,

That your soul will have no sins to answer for,

That your hearts will be forever pure.’

Our father, our Redeemer,

Is at his golden table always;

The fearless ones shall see him

The hard, audacious ones,

To them is Zion given.

For them, a white horse shall be brought.

Quickly mount this white horse, my friend,

And rejoice in your heart,

Hold tight to the golden reins

Travel far from here,

Walk through your country

And slay the fearful dragon.

We will plant green gardens everywhere.

Two hundred yards from the bridge crossroads a Czech sentry stepped out from behind a house and ordered the procession to halt. Balashov said he had brought a good horse for Captain Matula.

‘Who are the other people?’ said the soldier.

‘These are my friends.’

‘They should stop their singing.’

Balashov turned and nodded and the singing stopped. Matula came out from cover with Hanak, who was warning him about the sniper.

‘Not with these people around,’ murmured Matula, who was gazing at the horse. His eyes were as lifeless as ever but the skin around them trembled at the thought of a mount.

‘How much do you want for it?’ he said to Balashov.

‘It’s a gift, Captain.’

‘I know the classics! You’ve got twenty Reds and Yid soldiers hiding in its belly, haven’t you.’ Matula stroked the horse’s head. The beast shifted its feet. It was saddled. ‘You were singing about a white horse.’

‘We know horses of different colours.’

‘I’ve never seen any of you God-botherers riding a horse before, let alone one like this. Where did you steal it? What do you want?’

‘We hope you can prevent the destruction of the town,’ said Balashov. ‘Would you like to ride him?’

Matula looked up and down the road. ‘Why don’t you ride him, local man?’ he said. ‘Show me what sort of pride the beast’s got. If he drops you in the dirt like a sack of flour off the back of a cart I’ll know he’s worthy for an officer to ride. Go on, up you get. Come on, man, there’s no need to go hugging and kissing your friends, it’s a horse you’re mounting, not the gallows.’

Balashov began to mount the horse, but put his right foot in the stirrup. The Czechs laughed. Balashov tried again, swung into the saddle heavily and tugged the reins to try to make the horse turn round. The stallion would not budge.

‘The horse should be riding you!’ roared Matula, slapping his thighs. His eyes filmed with water, like rocks after rain.

Somehow Balashov made the horse turn round and the two began to amble back the way they had come, through the procession, which had fallen back a little to either side of the road. Matula was careful to keep the villagers between him and Broucek as he watched Balashov trot down the road.

‘Well, he’s managed to stay on, which marks down the horse,’ said Matula. ‘Gorgeous animal,’ he muttered.

Balashov reached Anna’s house and turned Omar again. He saw Anna looking at him.

‘What are you doing?’ she said.

‘Going away.’

‘Where?’

‘Where I need to go. Go inside, it’s not safe out. How’s Alyosha?’

‘The same. Gleb, whatever you’re doing, I’m begging you, don’t.’

The horse bowed and tossed its head and pawed the slush of the half-frozen road. ‘You know,’ said Balashov, ‘when you’re no longer a man, and no longer an angel, life can be very tiresome.’

Anna began to move towards him. ‘You sound more like a man to me than you have for a long time,’ she said.

‘And, though you’ve been kind today, no longer a father.’

‘I told you, you’re still that,’ said Anna. ‘I burned all my photos of you.’ She held up her camera. ‘I have a couple of plates left. May I?’

‘I have to go,’ said Balashov.

Anna sighted and pressed the shutter. ‘It’s done,’ she said.

‘Goodbye,’ said Balashov. ‘We did love, didn’t we?’ He leaned forward, whispered in Omar’s ear, and moved away.

‘Yes,’ said Anna, when he was already out of earshot. ‘We did.’

Up the road Matula frowned as he watched Balashov canter back. ‘He’ll never control him at that speed. He’s going to break his neck. Too bad if he takes the horse with him.’ Horse and rider were approaching at a gallop. ‘It’s a miracle he’s staying on. He must have put glue on the sides of his boots. Although …’ Matula stroked the corner of his mouth, a gesture he had last performed under fire on the Baikal ice floe. ‘I wonder if local man has been a little deceitful with us about his experience, Hanak. What’s this fellow’s name?’

An instant before reaching Matula, so fast that only Matula understood what was happening, Balashov took his right hand off the reins, reached into his long coat, drew a cavalry sabre, held it high above his head, drew it back across his left shoulder, braced in the stirrups, and leaned off the saddle to the left.
As he passed Matula the full force of his released arm and the full momentum of the charging horse went behind the swing of the heavy, sharpened sabre, into the gap between Matula’s chin and his collar.

‘Beautiful stroke!’ cried Matula. His voice diminished to a crackling whisper as the upper part of the throat and the mouth from which it emerged arced, with his head, into the air and into a bunch of dock leaves on the far side of the road. A silly gush of blood fountained out of the headless man who stood there and lashed into the snow as the villagers scattered. Hanak fired his pistol twice at Balashov, shooting him in the back and killing him as he reined Omar in, before Hanak was hit himself by a single shot from Broucek.

Anna heard the shots and the cries of the villagers. She could go there. She would not. She would not leave Alyosha. She was sure she would never see her husband alive again. She caught sight of herself in one of the few uncracked panes of glass left in her house. Her face frightened her. It was like one of the faces of the railway platforms in times of famine, or of the Jewish women in times of the pogroms, when they are moving from living to enduring.

Alyosha was awake. He had heard the horse.

‘Did the hussars come?’ he said.

‘No. That was Mr Balashov.’

‘He said his name was Gleb, like papa.’

Anna hugged him. ‘It’s only a name,’ she said. ‘Although, little son, Mr Balashov has certain things in common with your father. For some men, the closer something is, the less they care about it, and the farther away something is, the more they want it. Oh, don’t listen to me. We’re going to leave Yazyk. We have to find a city to live in. What do you think about Lieutenant Mutz? Do you like him?’

Among The Worlds

A
nna and Mutz barely saw each other, and didn’t speak, until the next day. With the death of Matula the Czechs accepted the authority of Mutz and Dezort, and their promise that they would leave Yazyk. They put Matula’s corpse on a stretcher, head and body together, and went to the Reds with it, under a truce flag. Two of the Reds had been wounded in the fighting. In a meeting, eloquent proposals were seconded and voted for that all the Czechs should be put to death. Bondarenko argued for clemency, on sanitary grounds if on no other, and, when the discussion seemed to be going against him, pulled Matula’s head out from under the blanket covering it and waved it at the assembled rail workers, tempering their desire for revenge. Mutz saw that Matula’s eyes were open. In death, they had, at last, acquired an expression. It was little more than a dull surprise, though Mutz wondered if he saw there the echo of an instant of admiration for the sabre blow which decapitated him, and in that instant, an acknowledgement of his greater defeat, that there were others beside himself and the Tungus to contest for the rule of the taiga.

The Red train steamed into the station, shunting the Czechs’ broken-down locomotive before it. The sides tended to their wounded, while the castrates extinguished fires and began repairing the damage to their homes. None of the villagers had
been hurt in the fighting, but most of the houses facing the railway line were damaged or destroyed, and there were scuffles as the castrates accused Czechs or newcomers of looting. Red flags appeared over the station and the administrative building. Bondarenko led a squad through the town like a sorcerer, pointing to things and declaring them to be the property of the people. Mutz spent hours persuading; persuading the Reds’ overworked, hungover doctor to go to see Alyosha, persuading Bondarenko that the Czechs should be allowed to keep their weapons and, until they reached the Pacific, their train, persuading the suspicious Czechs that the Reds were to be trusted and persuading the socialist Czechs that they weren’t. There was no fraternising until the evening when Mutz, Dezort and Bondarenko came out of hours of unsuccessful negotiation on the terms of the Czechs’ departure to find that the senior Czech and communist cooks had agreed on the best way to cook a heifer which had been killed by shellfire (boil it).

Next morning a troop of Red cavalry arrived, their horses painted with mud up to their knees and the riders dirty and haunted, bulked up with sheepskin vests over their greatcoats. Their commander, an Avar called Magomedov in an Astrakhan hat and a Cossack cloak, was jealous of Bondarenko for the congratulatory telegram he had received from Trotsky on capturing Yazyk, and Mutz found himself being taken by Bondarenko as an ally in the argument that began over which parts of the people’s property the two commanders’ people should be quartered in. Magomedov’s political officer Gorbunin excused himself and went off on foot to explore the town. He came upon Anna Petrovna standing on her doorstep in a black overcoat with patched elbows. She was holding a camera.

‘Good morning,’ he said.

‘Good morning.’

‘Your windows are broken.’

‘I’m waiting for the carpenter.’

‘Gorbunin, Nikolai Yefimovich.’ He nodded.

‘Lutova, Anna Petrovna.’

‘Peasant?’

‘No.’

‘Worker?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Bourgeois parasite?’

‘Widowed mother.’

‘Your camera?’

‘Mine.’

‘Take good pictures?’

‘Can do.’

‘What d’you think of this?’ Gorbunin took out a flimsy newspaper, four pages printed on a single folded piece of paper. It was called
Hooves of the Soviets
.

Anna studied it. The frost made her cheeks pink and, since the doctor had been and reassured her about Alyosha, the shine of curiosity and hunger was in her eyes again.

‘It doesn’t have any pictures,’ said Anna.

‘It’s my paper,’ said Gorbunin.

‘Congratulations.’

‘D’you like it here?’

‘No.’

‘Leaving?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘Prague.’

‘When?’

‘Soon.’

‘D’you like me?’

‘Can’t say.’

‘I like you.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Can you ride?’

‘Yes.’

‘Children?’

‘A boy. He was hurt, but he’s going to be well soon.’

‘Does he ride?’

‘He could learn.’

‘The paper needs pictures.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you want to leave Russia?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want work?’

‘Depends.’

‘Come and work for me.’

‘As what?’

‘Photographer.’

‘Would there be food?’

‘Of course.’

‘Clothes?’

‘The people provide.’

‘And my house?’

‘Confiscated.’

‘Why?’

‘Bourgeois.’

‘And if I stay?’

Gorbunin thought for a moment. ‘Confiscated, definitely.’

Anna frowned and nodded slowly. ‘Photographer.’

‘Yes.’

‘And school for my boy?’

‘There are three teachers in my unit. Including me.’

‘What do you teach?’

‘Philosophy, French and elementary horsemanship.’

Anna stared at the man, well built, not tall, in his early forties, with lines around his mouth and eyes suggesting a benign impatience, a life of pondering difficult lessons, and a readiness to laugh. His eyes were black and vertiginous.

‘What kind of photographer?’ said Anna.

‘You’re the photographer.’

‘What did you see last week?’

Gorbunin came inside to tell her about it and, while he drank tea in her kitchen, Anna began to see pictures between the words of his stories: a very old woman crying over hot bread. Three crows on a corpse. A horseman nailing a picture of Lenin to a church door from the saddle. Shadows of riders on bright new snow. Gorbunin’s face in rusty water. Tracks in the mud around a fallen statue. Two peasants at a fire frightened by a Tartar’s glass eye. A tired girl. An unwashed baby. A mad father. Gold teeth in an old palm. The entrance into hushed cities. Red banners twisting in the wind and mouths open to sing.