“Conduct yourself, faggot, or I’ll tear your jugular out myself before these shitbags have time to fire a bullet into your chest,” he growled.
How many men had Igor killed? And why? Did it even matter now? Robbery, rape, murder. The scars all over his body were testament to his hundreds of fights, years of prison and correctional facilities that had left his skin covered in tattoos, one for each year he spent there. Igor had never expected a long life, but he did expect a satisfied life. Fuck piety and mercy, fuck God and angels. The present moment was all there was. And his was coming to an end. Why didn’t they shoot already? He was tired of listening to this fucking Georgian whimper. It was cold and about to snow again. The squad leader had yet to give the order for his men to aim. Six rifles for two chests: easy odds as long as they had steady hands and didn’t close their eyes when they pulled the trigger. Igor glared at them, full of hate. Kids, he thought, rookies who are scared to death.
“My ass is getting cold, comrade!”
The squad leader, a veteran sergeant, fired a scathing look his way and then turned his back, focusing instead on a man in a black raincoat who was showing him a piece of paper. Igor sensed that something strange was going on. He knew what the GULAG officers were like, the deportation police. You had to be very careful with these bastards. They were capable of beating the ever-loving life out of a reptile like him just to prove they could make him howl in pain. After a few minutes’ deliberation, the sergeant in charge ordered the men at ease. A Chechen jailer approached, getting just inches from Igor’s face.
“You’re one lucky Jew pig. But I’m afraid those you meet from now on will not be.”
Igor flashed his rotting teeth. “If I could, I’d rip your tongue out; you know that, don’t you?”
The sergeant barked out a maniacal laugh and gave him a ruthless head butt, opening a gash in Igor’s brow.
“Get this scum out of here and onto the trucks. Now!”
Shortly before dawn, after three hours on the road, the truck stopped without warning. They were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the dense fog rising up from the riverbanks. On either side rose huge birch forests. Elías thought they had been taken there to be shot, as did many others, who began to stir uneasily and murmur. When the door was thrust open and the guards forced them out, their murmurs turned to screams and fits of hysteria. At one point there came a tremendous uproar. Guards were struggling to make everyone climb down, but people were refusing, clinging to one another and screaming. It was absurd, Elías thought suddenly.
“Maybe we’ve only been banished from the city,” someone whispered. It was illogical reasoning, completely improvised, but it gave them hope. And the most fragile hopes seem ironclad when there’s nothing else to cling to. Everyone was forced to line up single file. Other trucks had arrived before them, and more and more headlights appeared from the edges of the forest. Elías noted in shock that there were hundreds of people there. This was a large-scale operation. Slowly the human column grew to several hundred yards long, and then after a signal they began to move like a disciplined army, flanked by armed guards. Soon, railroad tracks came into view, and the lights of a freight car. Steam rose from the locomotive at the front like a snorting thoroughbred. Ironically, people cried out in relief: This sinister train meant that, regardless of what was to come, their journey had not reached the end. It was just beginning.
“To the east,” murmured a young man walking with Elías. His arm was in a sling and his face horrifically disfigured from a recent beating.
“Excuse me?”
The man pointed first to the river, then the train tracks and the direction the locomotive was facing. His name was Anatoli and he was a geographer. From Leningrad. The resignation on his face was clear.
“Siberia, maybe Kazakhstan. But we’re headed for the steppe.”
Through swollen eyelids, Anatoli glanced meaningfully at Elías’s heavy coat.
“You’ll do well to take good care of that. Believe me, you’re going to need it.”
Slowly the horizon took on a steely gray tone offset by the long convoy of wooden train cars. Guards filled with a sudden sense of urgency, as though everything had to be done before the day dawned, tried to direct the crowds to the trains. It was a night of different accents, lamentations, excuses, supplications, insults, and threats. But one after another, people fell silent as they were forced through the dark doors assigned them.
Inside the cars, the air was stifling. The floor was covered in rotting straw. Dozens of people crowded against the cars’ narrow wooden slats, hungrily ensuring their own access to the cold outside air. Shoved farther in by those entering behind him, Elías was forced toward the back. He wondered how many more were going to be put in this car; there was hardly enough space to move as it was, and it was impossible to avoid the breath of those around him, inches from his face. To the degree possible, he turned his body sideways so that at least his arms could move. Something strange was happening: Though they had less and less room, those at the back of the car had stopped moving, leaving a full third of the space unoccupied.
“Move back or we’ll suffocate,” he shouted in his tentative Russian.
No one listened. In fits and starts, Elías elbowed his way as best he could to the front of this human wall to see what was going on. Those around him turned away or stared at the floor, frightened; some even chose to back up and be crushed in the crowd.
“What’s going on? Why won’t you move into this empty space?”
Half a dozen men leaned calmly against the car’s wooden walls, some even stood smoking with their legs apart. One had lain down, stretching out the full length of his body and using a sack for a pillow.
“Don’t go near them. They’re common prisoners, murderers, rapists, bad people,” an old woman said, seeing the rage on Elías’s face.
One of the men’s faces was covered in scars and multiple tattoos. He sat in a squat, toying with a sharp piece of wood he’d pulled from the carriage wall, sharpening it with a rusty nail. Elías caught a look of merriment in his eyes; it was as though he found everyone’s fear amusing.
“You need to squeeze together,” Elías said firmly. “We have to share this space.”
Igor Stern set his penetrating gaze on Elías. His expression was one of tremendous viciousness and utter assurance.
“You have to earn your rights here, we don’t give them away. You want more space? Come fight for it,” he challenged, as the other prisoners snickered.
Elías was strong, probably stronger than this threatening man. But he knew that brute force had nothing to do with reputation in the world he’d been hurled into. His pride told him that he should cross the invisible line in the rotten straw, that once he entered the fantasy kingdom of this small band of prisoners the others would follow. There were more of them, and what could a few thugs do in the face of a desperate horde? And yet he didn’t move, fearing that perhaps they would not, in fact, follow. Fear was the only kind of strength that mattered here. Those who inspired it ruled the world, always had and always would. A small number of men endowed with uncommon cruelty controlled the subservient masses.
Through narrowed eyes, Igor weighed up this kid who could hardly speak Russian. He was good at gauging people. It was how he’d managed to survive—by picking his battles wisely and not underestimating his rivals. Others, many others, in fact, had underestimated their rivals, and this turned out to be a deadly mistake, even with him. They were dead and Igor was alive. He decided to put the kid’s determination to the test.
“I like your coat.”
Elías was paralyzed by fear, which only increased as he watched those around him shrink back, crowding together like sheep who sensed wolves about to attack. They turned their faces away in the absurd belief that if they couldn’t see the danger, danger couldn’t see them. He who was outside the compact mass was a sacrificia
l lamb. And Elías was alone there.
“Come get it,” he said, unaware of his words and lacking the determination to back them up. They had simply spilled forth, from a time in his childhood at the mines when the foreman gave the orders of the day and other boys tried to take Elías’s job aboveground pulling trolleys to avoid being sent down the ventilation shafts, which were dangerous and disgusting. Often the foremen and older miners would gather around to cheer as boys fought to stay above the pit; they placed bets and formed a circle to fence Elías in, jeering and encouraging him to fight. He always felt the burden of his fear, and his hatred for violence made him tremble in rage and terror. But he never let anyone take his job.
Igor scratched a gaunt cheek with the sharp end of his improvised awl. He sank his head into his shoulders and let out a giggle that made Elías’s whole body shiver. Slowly his laughter grew, until he was bellowing. Igor liked acting, liked the tragedy of life, liked playing roles. Not only did he have a good voice, he’d always been a good actor, donning one mask or another according to the circumstances or his frame of mind. Mother Russia had lost a great actor, he often thought; he was quite a player. He straightened back up, stretching tall like a giant emerging from the depths, and leaned back against the wall, feigning appeasement as he watched Elías. Elías, for his part, realized that he’d misgauged the prisoner. Once erect, Igor was nearly as tall as he was, and judging by the way he maneuvered his sharpened stick, the man knew how to use a knife far better than Elías ever would.
“The little puppy dog wants to cut his teeth. He thinks he’s ready for a fight.”
Igor’s entourage of laughing hyenas feted his joke. They were waiting for him to take the first swing before pouncing, still thankful for their fate. A few hours ago they’d been praying to their mothers—those who had met them—in their jail cells and listening to the terrifying monotony of the firing squad’s executions in the prison yard. Those who believed in God prayed; those who did not prayed as well. They spent what they thought were their last moments on earth reflecting on life, some thinking it hadn’t been too bad, most simply envisioning a grave enveloping them before the ground froze. And now, a miracle had been worked. They’d been set free like a pack of restless wolves among a flock of sheep. All for them. This was a dream.
Was his opponent brave or stupid? Igor wondered, weighing his chances of victory. He’d met all sorts of men and hadn’t learned much from most of them. He liked the brave ones, as long as their bravery came not from insanity or suicidal stupidity but from a force that kept them from acting like anyone but who they truly were, even at their own peril. How many beatings and scars had his body received for not having obeyed a guard or not backing off a fight that he was bound to lose? He detested men who were easily influenced, scum that bent in the wind and never broke entirely. Ass kissers, stool pigeons, snitches, men who were weak against the strong but cruel against the weak. Souls of jailers. All that mattered, the one thing that merited his respect, was the will to be true to oneself. He didn’t care if that truth was an angel or a devil; what counted was loyalty to one’s nature, regardless of consequences. Was that this kid? Or was he just a bully caught in the vanity of his ill-timed pride. He could have given Igor his coat without complaint, but it wouldn’t have saved him. Next Igor would have demanded his boots, and so on, until the boy was left naked, and even then he’d likely have stabbed him with his awl just to set an example for the cowering masses.
Igor refused to let anyone usurp his position, not when he was surrounded by wolves still wondering if they could be the leaders of the pack. The thing was, he liked this kid. The way he stared at Igor without hatred and also without concealing his fear, but with his legs apart, knees slightly flexed, ready to fight for his coat—which at this moment was a metaphor for everything he had—and unwilling to let it be taken from him if he could help it. Igor could have let things be. There would be plenty of opportunities, battles more easily won. He considered the possibility of taking him into the flock but sensed that it would never happen, he could see it in Elías’s eyes. He was a decent kid, and the thought almost made him burst out laughing: decency. Thousands of decent men were rowing the boats of hell, lamenting their lost decency.
His mind didn’t stop to think. He didn’t order his hand to move and acted with no hesitation or doubt. When his instinct kicked in, reasoning was overpowered. In a fraction of a second, Igor Stern—son of a Jewish cartwright skinned alive by a band of Cossacks—bridged the distance between himself and Elías Gil—son of a union miner, engineer, the great promise for a better tomorrow—and stabbed his right eye with the tip of his awl. He could have gone deeper, pushed the sharpened wood in with force, severed the kid’s optic nerve and bored into his shocked brain, but he didn’t. Instead he let him stagger around, shouting in pain with the awl in his eye as his body convulsed, reeling and then falling backward where there wasn’t even space enough to hit the ground.
“I said, I like your coat,” Igor repeated drily. Take what you want until someone stops you. That was his motto. He leaned over Elías’s bloody face and yanked the coat violently, and no one stopped him. He tugged on one sleeve and then the other.
“No!” Elías roared, clutching it with astonishing rage.
Igor stopped, perplexed. And before his surprise turned to rage, he felt the tip of Elías’s boot against his nose and knew immediately, by the crack, that this maniac had just broken his septum. Dazed, he straightened up, touched his face with both hands and contemplated his bloody fingertips in astonishment. Worked into a frenzy by the fight, Igor’s entourage pounced on the fallen prey. Elías whimpered, pierced by the searing pain in his eye, yet with everything he had, arms and legs flailing, he managed to hold on to his coat.
Like a miracle conceivable only among humans, the mass of anonymous faces parted, this time not to run away but to surround the poor young man and his coat. Hands and arms hid him from the ferocious wolves, protecting him at the center of the flock. How paradoxical for the sheep suddenly to close ranks and stand up to the wolves, who in turn backed up, disconcerted, returning to the safety of their circle. Growling, hackles raised, but slowly edging back.
In the days and nights that followed, Elías lived in the bleary haze of fever and delirium, unaware of almost everything. Sometimes he’d awaken to see a woman’s face, watching him with a concerned expression, her voice murmuring like the ocean, speaking words that didn’t reach him. Then he’d sink back into troubling darkness, a place fraught with jumbled images and thoughts impossible to string together. His body surrendered and his mind sizzled like lava before turning to stone. When he regained consciousness, he could feel the prickle of infection in his eye beneath the filthy bandage, could smell the wound’s foul stench—the smell of his own rotting flesh—and hear the shouting of guards beating people, beating him.
The woman remained steadfastly by his side and forced him to drink, holding a bowl of soup—boiled water, really—to his lips. Then she made him swallow crumbs of frozen bread that she had softened in her own mouth, patiently feeding him, like a child with a wounded sparrow. Meanwhile, their journey continued, the vastness swallowing up human beings, turning them into tiny insignificant particles much like the snowflakes falling impassively onto the trees.
Elías woke up on a night when the sky was full of stars so close it was as though he could reach out a trembling hand to touch them, as though they were painted onto a cupola. His head was heavy and his body like jelly; he’d lost weight and a scratchy beard had sprouted beneath his eye socket.
“Welcome to the world.”
It was the voice of the woman who’d been caring for him. Her shirt was partially open and the scent of her warm breasts reached Elías as she bent over him to lift the bandage, sliding an index finger into the gap where his eye had been as though to return it to its place.
“The infection is getting better, but you’re not going to get tha
t pretty green eye back. Try to think that from now on you’ll see things as if you were winking.”
“Where are we?”
“In the middle of nowhere, somewhere between Moscow and Tomsk.”
Elías touched the bandage and gave an involuntary shiver. The image of Igor piercing his right eye with that awl, the fight for his overcoat—which he still had—seemed something out of another life, and yet it had all been just ten days ago. Standing by the woman was a man wrapped in a blanket, hands reaching out to seek the fire’s heat. His right hand was bandaged in a dirty rag and missing two fingers. Elías struggled to sit up, resting on one elbow, and focused on the young man’s profile.
“Don’t stare at me; you should see what you look like.”
“Claude? Is that you?”
A Million Drops Page 13