Every day he started early in the morning, had a long lunch break and then marched until he couldn't see anything in the darkness. Therefore, he shortened the cold night phases. Not until a week later did he dare again to light a campfire under the protection of darkness. The first warm meal since the hasty departure at the lake seemed like a feast to him. Mischka stretched out comfortably by the fire. The fear of discovery had departed from him. For the first time he slept soundly and dreamless again.
◆◆◆
Lieutenant Litschenko stopped the search the next morning after following the stream for three hours. It was an exhausting march through rough terrain and dense undergrowth on the banks. The water was too deep to wade, so they had to stay on the shore. Although they carefully searched the embankment the whole time, no clear trace had been found. All irregularities could be explained. In addition, the storm had left a scene of devastation in the forest. There was nothing they could do without a tracker. If Michail Wulff had really stayed at the lake, then he had certainly done everything to fool his pursuers and shake them off. Litschenko had learned his lesson by now. That's why he thought it was pointless to keep following the creek.
"Come men," he finally decided, "we'll abort the search. Who knows if Wulff has been here and which way he took off. With a helicopter we certainly have more success than if we crawl further through the undergrowth here. At some point he will reappear, at the latest when his ears freeze during the first night frost. Without equipment and appropriate clothing, no one can survive a winter in this area."
The men were more than happy with that. So, they returned to the lake, where the helicopter picked them up again.
Axe blows echoed through the forest. A group of prisoners from the Djatlowo penal colony listlessly chopped the trees that would be fallen, while others pulled their saws through the wood of the trunks. Guards watched them with their guns off. Semjon Dubitzky drove a wedge with the back of his axe into the trunk of an oak tree. The old tree was extremely stable and didn't want to go down.
"Go, dude," Semjon started a discussion with the oak, "give up. You've stood here long enough. It's time you saw a little of the world. Perhaps you will become an ornate oak cabinet admired by high officials in the living room of a party bigwig. Then you can listen to their most secret conversations and get to know the art of politics. Isn't that much more interesting than rushing your leaves in this boring area?"
Michail Wulff, who sharpened a hatchet ten steps away, stood up and laughed: "Hey, Semjon! You can't convince the oak with sayings like that! On the contrary, you will frighten it so much with your future prospects that it will claw itself into the ground in panic!"
Semjon grinned mischievously and leaned against the trunk of the oak. Sweat was on his forehead. He wiped it with a cloth and loosened the tense shoulder muscles.
"All right," he willingly admitted, "it’s not exactly the most fortunate thing to have to share a room with a big shot."
At that moment the oak moaned like a badly injured person, tilted slowly and thundered to the ground. Instinctively Semjon jumped to the side. A cry of pain filled the air. Mischka looked up, startled. Tima Bekow lay next to the felled oak trunk. A branch had grazed his shoulder and pushed him to the ground.
"You idiot!" one of the guards yelled at Semjon. "You brainless idiot! How can you let a tree go down without a warning!" Threateningly, he jumped at the pale Semjon.
"Oh, you're one of those rare specimens of people who never makes a mistake!" Mischka intervened. "Or are you playing the old scapegoat game, Comrade Pankratow?"
"Son of a bitch! Bastard! Do you want to get cheeky?" shouted the soldier. “I might just have to give you a beating!"
Mischka stared at him with a challenging gaze, then turned to the bystanders and shouted: "You see: Comrade Pankratow takes out all meanness and accuses me of being cheeky just because I told him the truth."
The soldier clenched his fists and ducked to jump.
"Back off!" Lieutenant Litschenko jumped between the two opponents. "Everybody get back to work! Nothing happened!" He pushed Pankratow back. "Restrain yourself, comrade! You're not here with just any thugs."
"I'm gonna wring the neck of that blasphemer's mouth!" Pankratow growled angrily. His face was red and distorted with rage.
"You won't do that," Litschenko rebuked him, "and you won't report it either! You heard me, Pankratow! You'll shut up! Nothing happened! Bekow got away with a shock. No need to start a fight!"
The rebuked man looked at him with his squinted eyes, turned around and walked away without a word. Helplessly, Litschenko looked after him. He knew there would be trouble, and he hated trouble. But people like Pankratow never rest until they have reacted to their unbridled aggressions. They are a constant burden for their fellow human beings, especially for the weaker, who cannot defend themselves. Without these Pankratows we might already have peace in the world, he thought, but in any case less suffering and violence.
Mischka was sentenced to ten days in prison. Pankratow had personally reported the incident to Lieutenant Colonel Wdowetschenko in the evening. Litschenko had received his lecture without being able to present his version of the incident. The camp commander didn't even let him get a word in.
In the second night of his detention the door to Mischka's dungeon suddenly opened. He could see the stocky figure of Pankratow in the pale moonlight. He held a rubber truncheon in his right hand.
"Your time has come, bigmouth," Pankratow hissed threateningly. "Let's see if you still have that big mouth."
The first blow hit Mischka so hard on the head that he almost lost consciousness. He did not dare to defend himself for fear that Pankratow would beat him to death in his rage. As best he could, Mischka only tried to protect his head and face with his arms. The blows pelted down on him, hit him on the ribs, in the abdomen and the kidneys. Mischka heard only the clapping of the blows and the wheezing breath of Pankratow. Then he sank to his knees with a groan, tilted to the side and lay crouched on the floor of the dungeon. Pain flooded through his body, making him weak and helpless like a child in a fever dream.
Pankratow stood before him. His breath went heavy and intermittent, as if he had physically overexerted himself.
"I am your conscience Pankratow," Mischka whispered in a final flare-up of resistance to the brutal violence of the thug. "I am your conscience that you want to silence. You seek the evil that dominates you in others. You punish them, knock them down and believe that you are free from your shadows. But are you really free, Pankratow? Say it, are you free?"
Pankratow spat contemptuously on the floor, turned on his heel and walked to the door. When he went out, he just mocked, "Anyway, I'm freer than you, big mouth!" Then he slammed the door into the lock.
Mischka heard his footsteps move away. He was overcome by a strange feeling. He had the impression that he was slipping out of his body and squatting in the corner of the dungeon. From there he watched himself lying frozen in pain on the ground, rolled up like an embryo in the protective womb of his mother. Compassion for the maltreated body rose in him. He himself, on the other hand, felt light and carefree, yes, almost euphoric.
Later Mischka told his friend Semjon about this experience. Semjon scratched his head. "You know, Mischka, I started training as a male nurse. But not much has been left of it. As far as I can remember, what you've experienced is triggered by endorphins."
"From Endor...? What's that?"
"Endorphins are hormones," Semjon explained, "which our brain releases in stressful situations. They create a feeling of elation. You feel light and almost weightless, and they also make us insensitive to pain. It's a sensible arrangement of our body, isn't it?"
Mischka listened with interest. "That's why severely injured people often feel no pain at all! And what about the situation where I could observe myself?"
"When a situation becomes unbearable for someone, endorphins sometimes cause hallucinations. There are people who claim tha
t in this moment the soul leaves the body. But that's nonsense, because these phenomena also occur in shocking experiences."
At the time, when he seemed to look at his own body in the moonlight, Mischka knew nothing about hormones and hallucinations. He just wondered about this new experience, which he couldn't explain. A few minutes later the dream ended. Mischka felt the wave of pain pulling through his body again, almost robbing him of his mind. Arms and legs trembled uncontrollably, beads of sweat stood like drops of water on his forehead, and in his mouth the sweetish taste of blood spread.
That dirty swine had beaten him terribly! That violated the camp rules, but where there are no witnesses, there is also no plaintiff. This was one of the rules of the penal colonies, where black sheep of society were to be educated to become good citizens.
"Well, wait, Pankratow, one day I'll catch you, and then you'll get it!" thought Mischka full of hate. "Your hour will come!"
That night, he decided to flee the camp. He would never submit to this system, a form of society in which there seemed to be only two groups: those who tortured and those who had to be tortured without contradiction.
In a surge of anger and hatred he swore to himself that no Pankratow could ever beat him, Michail Wulff, with impunity again. He'd fight back in the future!
◆◆◆
He's been on the road a month now. Forest and steppe alternated with smaller spots of cultivated land, in which settlements with simple, often run-down cottages lay, which he wandered around extensively. Mischka started to put notches on a stick so as not to get confused with counting the days. He could not be surprised by the change of seasons. That's why he needed a calendar. Every seventh day Mischka carved an X into the wood and took a rest. He wanted to observe the age-old weekly rhythm of work and rest even during his escape so as not to wear out his body. Nevertheless he felt exhausted and tired after only one month. From the predominantly vegetarian food, he already had stomachaches and diarrhea in the second week after his escape. Since then Mischka ate every day a small piece of charcoal, which was formed during the slow combustion of the beech wood in his clay jug.
He attributed his weakness to protein and iron deficiency. Since he had eaten the last dried fish, he had hiked almost every day. He estimated the distance covered at be about four hundred miles. For such a performance the body also needed protein. If he wanted to survive in this wilderness, he had to learn to hunt. The next day he tried to build a bow and arrow, but the bow with the frayed string had too little tension and was worn out within a few hours. With a spear he would have to stalk the animals close enough against the wind to be able to hit them. Of all the possibilities, therefore, a trap seemed to be the safest solution. The next days Mischka looked for animal tracks. Although he had often seen deer, rabbits and pheasants, they always kept a safe distance from him.
Two days later Mischka discovered deer tracks which led to a pond. So that the animals did not smell him, he crawled parallel to the deer crossing through the undergrowth until he had found a suitable place for a trap. A birch tree trunk lay across the path, so that the animals had to jump over it in one leap.
Cautiously, Mischka left again. His plan was set. From an oak he cut two broom handle-thick, straight branches, no easy work with the old knife. He only sharpened one of the branches while removing the bark from the other and smoothing it. Over a small fire Mischka hardened the oak stick and continued to work it with his knife until it had become a useful spear. In the afternoon he went back to the deer crossing and approached the fallen birch from the side. He carefully checked the footmarks of the deer hooves in the damp ground, considered exactly how the animals would jump over the birch trunk and then drilled the sharpened stick diagonally into the ground. He reinforced his construction with two branch forks and withdrew behind a dense bush on the side facing away from the wind.
Whoever wants to hunt an animal must have a lot of time and patience, Mischka thought and made himself comfortable in the moss. Next to him the knife and spear were at hand. He wasn't sure if his plan would succeed. If not, he'd try a noose or a pit.
Mischka listened intently into the forest, but apart from the humming of insects and the rough gossip of a willow tit there was nothing to be heard. If only Semjon or Nikita could see him lying in wait! He wished they'd escaped with him. He lacked the self-confidence of the giant and the wit of Semjon. Although his body had become accustomed to the harsh climate of forest life, his soul could not. Loneliness can be endured well for a few days. You also need it from time to time in order not to lose yourself in the gear of time. But a hermits life of weeks, burdens even strong characters. This can also be seen in the peculiarities that some people develop when they are alone a lot.
Mischka tried to change his thoughts and concentrate again on the sounds of the forest. Brooding is no use, he thought, it only makes you depressed and rarely solves problems. It would paralyze him and rob him of the very powers he needed to survive in the wilderness.
Towards evening, when he had already given up hope, he heard animals coming towards him. In recent weeks his ears had become sensitive to the sounds of nature. It had to be deer. Then he saw the animals through the foliage of the bush. A deer and two does stood on the deer crossing and smelled. Apparently, they had noticed his presence. Mischka held his breath. He felt the throbbing of his heart up to his ears. Instinctively his hand went to the knife and clasped the handle. It seemed as if the deer wanted to turn around and flee from the lurking danger. But then the thirst drove them on.
In front of the birch trunk the deer started to jump. His muscular body barely missed the deadly spear. Mischka cursed his bad luck. He had miscalculated the jump of the animals. Also, the trailing doe missed the trap. But the last animal hesitated for a moment before it jumped, and that was its downfall!
Mischka heard the cry of pain of the wounded animal, jumped on his legs and stormed to the game crossing. The doe staggered helplessly over the path with the spear in her body. Mischka tore the animal to the ground and stabbed it in the throat with a knife. It sighed again before the light broke in its eyes.
Mischka rose and stared at the killed deer. He was sorry! It was a graceful animal. So far, he had been certain that he could not consciously kill a higher creature. But now his instinct for self- preservation had forced him.
"You certainly loved life and freedom as much as I do," he said quietly as if to apologize, "but I had to kill you so that I could live."
These words seemed to him like an ancient, sacred truth. In order for him to live, an innocent one had to die. Wasn't that the core of all religion? Hadn't that man from Nazareth done this for the people? Tima Bekow had talked about it over and over again. Mischka broke free of his thoughts. He noticed that since his escape he was thinking and dreaming more than in the years of his student days. Loneliness had made him receptive.
With the rest of the string he tied the hind legs of the deer together, loaded it onto his shoulders and brought it to his camp. There he hung it over a strong beech branch to make it easier to gut. At first he detested this work, but it had to be done. Then he tried to skin the animal. It was harder than he had thought.
Mischka was sweating with effort as he tried to separate the fur from the meat. After an hour he finally did it! He quickly cut off some pieces of meat for dinner before he went to the pond to wash himself.
He fried the meat in small strips over the campfire. Despite the unusual wild taste, Mischka devoured the pieces with a ravenous appetite. He had to force himself not to eat too much at once, even if he still had appetite. He couldn't afford stomach problems.
During the night he fried part of the meat and smoked the rest to preserve it. What remained of the deer, he placed on the branch fork of a beech to protect it from vermin and small predators.
When the first rays of sunlight came over the orange-red horizon, he put out the treacherous fire and hung the meat up to dry. In the evening, he wanted to keep smoking it. Mischka had no
idea how long such a smoking process would take until the meat was really long-lasting. So, he decided to hang it in the smoke as long as possible and dry it in the sun as well. After a refreshing swim in the pond, he lay down in the shade of the beech. Until the afternoon he slept deep and dreamless.
There was still a lot for him to do. He could use the tendons of the deer just as well as the fur. His felt boots were completely worn. He needed new shoes so badly. But before he could process the fur, it had to be tanned. On the shore of the pond he laid out a hollow that filled quickly with water. Then he dissolved ashes in the water and added grated acorns from the previous year. After he had carefully scraped off all the meat and fat residues from the fur, he kneaded it in the mixed broth until it was clean. Mischka hoped that the tannin of the acorns would tan the fur and make it durable. Then he rubbed it with the fat of the animal until it became smooth. Finally he could hang it up to dry.
The next day he found out that his tanning attempts had only been amateurish. Nevertheless, he was able to process the leather further. With a piece of charcoal he painted the outlines of his feet on the leather, added sides and tops and began to cut out the patterns. Because there was still a piece of leather left, he drew a narrow spiral on it, which he carefully cut out with a knife. Now he had a long strip of leather. Later he wanted to weave a string out of it.
He cut further strips of leather from small scraps, with which he finally tied his moccasins together. They just fit tolerably, but they were better than walking barefoot. Satisfied with himself and the world, Mischka lay this afternoon in the half-shade of the trees and dozed off.
◆◆◆
He remembered exactly how he had stumbled through the forest with the bundle of ropes. Once again he experienced the events of that day in his mind's eye. He was to tow the ropes to the clearing where a brigade of the penal colony had fallen trees in the past days. Pankratow swung his baton behind him and urged him to hurry.
The Trace of the Wolf Page 6