“Now then,” he rubbed his hands, as if speaking before an audience, “I shall refer to our situation and compare our life with prison, and us with prisoners. You and I are prisoners of life. I am a weary, broken intellectual, torn from my dear homeland, a man without a future, without money, without anything to tie him down, a man who knows not for what purpose he lives. But I should like to know. I’m a prisoner—and so are you. You’re a wanderer, Life’s stepson. She will lure you with false promises, scatterings of the wealth of others, beautiful love, bold flights of fancy—everything that beckons through a prison window looking out over sun and sea. But it’s a fraud. Just like any proletarian, you have but one chance in your favor, one versus the many millions that are against you, for the world teems with proletarians. Surely you must feel the shackles of our current situation, those with which we have been fettered since birth, those that jangle especially painfully? We have been cast out, like whelps, just because we have no money. We’re lost in a strange land. Life is trying to force us to make a thousand efforts: to go on foot, then to find a boat, or perhaps to build a raft, to starve, to get drenched in the rain, to suffer torments—and after all this, only then to arrive at our destination and ask ourselves: ‘What awaited us here?’ You, a man of an old and cultured race, know what I mean. We are people, human beings from head to toe, with all the inherent right to life that people have, the right to health, love, and food. But we have nothing, because we are life’s prisoners. And so here, under the open sky, on the edge of this wonderful enchanted forest, within the walls of this splendid prison, I propose that we declare a hunger strike—to life. We’ll lie down right here and not move an inch—come what may.”
I was ready to tap his forehead with my finger, but there was no madness or irony on the Russian’s face. Baranov’s deep-sunken eyes gazed at me searchingly while he stroked his beard, clearly expecting an earnest response from me.
Intrigued, even somewhat stunned by the fervor in his voice and the outlandishness of his suggestions, I said:
“All right, we’ll lie down. Then what?”
“Nothing,” he declared simply, as though talking of the most ordinary thing. “Day will become night, and night—day. We shall grow weak and be visited by morbid, famished hallucinations. Then, there will be either a miracle, or else …”
“Death,” I said. “You are proposing death.”
“Yes.”
I said nothing while I considered the most emphatic but inoffensive answer possible. And again, as I had done that night on board the ship, when Baranov first appeared, I felt a revolting, sweet, stupefying sensation, one of stupor and alarm. But then, the usual thoughts of the day’s goings-on rose to the surface, and Baranov began to disgust me, like a slippery mushroom one finds in a cellar when you reach out for a hammer and instead your fingers graze the mushroom’s moist cap. Evidently my companion took me for the same sort of person as he—an archetype of some rare and freakish race of people.
“Look here,” I said, “you lie down here and snuff it. But I can see something better up ahead: a handcar. Do you see it? It’s standing in the siding next to the signal. Everyone is on a break right now, and there’s nobody about on the line. How about we get on and travel down to the river?”
I confess, pride wouldn’t allow me to do this alone, leaving the Russian behind. I wanted to show him how cheerfully and swiftly an unfortunate life flowed in the right hands.
“Regarding what you said,” I added, “know this: that I, Bangok, shall come up trumps.”
“And if you don’t?” he countered, clearly enlivened by my derisive tone.
“Over my dead body. But so long as there’s air in my lungs …” And there I remembered that I truly was alive, and that I held all the cards in my hand. “No, my dear fellow,” I added, “to me you’re nothing but a catalyst. Now I’m beginning to sputter. Come on!”
With a listless smile, the Russian followed me. The gleaming, well-oiled handcar had taken my fancy from the moment I laid eyes on it. Besides, after all that had been said, it was too late to go back now.
I took the handle and pressed down, remembering that we had to get away from there as quickly as possible, while Baranov sat there with his head bowed. We thundered across the points at the signal, gaining speed, and, gliding along the brand-new rails, our purloined chariot rounded the corner.
IV. THE DEVIL’S SECOND TEMPTATION
I.
I was working the handcar’s lever so furiously that I lost my hat. The wind plucked it from my head, and it went tumbling down the embankment before vanishing for good. Rails, sleepers, the dark-blue horizon with its forest-covered hills, it all came rushing toward us. Baranov got to his feet. With that same expression of dumb indifference, typical of him during moments requiring the greatest effort, the Russian, gripping the other handle and facing me, inclined his head like a bull and set to work.
“The fellow has bucked up!” I thought. He displayed remarkable strength. His gnarled fingers firmly clenched the lever’s wooden beam. We pumped away with abandon. Not a word was spoken between us. The platform of the handcar, rattling over the points, shook my whole body. Sweat poured over my eyes, and I was as wet as a fish.
We must have covered around twenty miles, since the nature of our surroundings changed several times before our very eyes. We were now racing through a valley in full bloom, just like the face of a country beauty, while up ahead, scattered about in islets, a marvelous forest of ibexes hurtled toward us, all rare patterns and outlines.
“A horn!” said the Russian. Wiping his face with the palm of his hand, he looked at me inquiringly and listened. I looked around: a locomotive—ahead or behind, it didn’t matter—would have knocked us off the rails. The claxon sounded again; its piercing shriek echoed through the surrounding area. We had already entered the forest; suffering from the heat, I extracted a handkerchief from my pocket and tied it around my head.
“If the train’s coming from behind and not head on,” I said, “we can still travel another half-mile or so. Come on, put some elbow into it!”
We began pumping so energetically that we risked dislocating our shoulders. The track began on an incline before making an enormous turn, and finally we came onto a section of track that was as straight as a needle, revealing a long stretch of forest and embankment. At the very end, puffing out little white clouds of steam, loomed a long train resembling a smoking pile of coals.
We hurtled past a quarry where black-skinned diggers, who were busily plying their shovels, turned to look at us in astonishment. I stopped pumping and shouted:
“Brake!”
The Russian applied the brake. The handcar, its axle screeching, traveled a further thirty-odd yards before coming to a halt. We jumped off about forty paces from the locomotive and the astonished face of the driver, and legged it in the direction of the forest. Glancing back as I ran, I saw a row of open wagons loaded with soil and clouds of steam as the train backed up. Baranov, breathing heavily, came running behind me. Understanding full well what we could expect if we were captured, I did not spare myself. The damp, wild undergrowth, the twilight, and the sprawling treetops crowded around us; my sprinting turned into a brawl amid a crowd—invisible enemies struck me in the face, arms, and whole body with fleshy green knots of vines, sabre-sharp leaves, and hard brushwood. A chorus of exclamations, dampened by the forest, came from the embankment; shots immediately rang out, and a shriek of bullets cut through the foliage above our heads, providing additional impetus to our legs.
Staggering with exhaustion, I came to a standstill. Baranov was right there; as pale as glass, he leaned his shoulder against a tree trunk, closed his eyes, and lowered his head. First I sat down, then I lay down. My head started spinning; the forest, the greenery, and I myself seemed like a great spinning top that had been set in motion with murderous speed. However, we must have made it quite far, since we were surrounded by total, gloomy silence. After sufficient rest, I got to my fee
t.
Baranov was sitting by a tree, rolling a cigarette with his fingers, which were still trembling from fright.
“We can’t be far from the river,” I said. “Our daring has paid off! Get up, we must get going.”
He silently rose. Evidently, even from his fantastical point of view, it would have been absurd to remain in the forest. For a moment we stood rooted to the spot—partly to give ourselves the necessary time to realize what had just happened and what yet lay in store, and partly because our legs were still unresponsive to our will. Then the Russian and I set off, keeping the railway track to our right lest we lose our way, and after about ten minutes, we saw, through the dark gaps between the tree trunks, which were entangled with the lacy patterns of creeping stalks, the sunlit mound of the embankment.
I do not recall for how long we walked. Keeping the track in sight to guide me, with Baranov following behind, I moved mechanically, without irritation or impatience. I walked because I had no alternative. Fatigue rendered us speechless; strange, magnificently plumed birds flew through the air, and the living coil of a serpent, hidden in the grass, slithered away at the sound of our footsteps; sounds recalling a strangled scream, a sigh, a muffled whistle, a distant trampling skimmed along on either side of us in the mysterious depths of the dark-green wooded groves, while we, numb and exhausted, listlessly made our way toward the river, our weary attention dully noting the forest animal’s hidden, solemn feast of life filled with enchantment. The sun’s golden tresses, falling on the shady thicket, glinted red, stretching out and cooling—a sign of the approaching evening.
From time to time, experiencing pangs of hunger, I would smoke, but this was of little and very dubious help: gulps of smoke intensified my weakness. I was hounded by the steady, persistent thought of food; yesterday had come and gone without sustenance, and today promised more of the same. Aside from the revolver weighing heavily in my pocket, we had no other weapons; it was ludicrous to hope for a successful hunt with only seven bullets. I asked:
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” replied Baranov, “and that’s the worst part. I haven’t eaten for three days, and even then it was a light, dainty meal.”
He paused, raising his hand to shade his eyes, a look of certainty flashing across his face.
“The river, Bangok,” he calmly pronounced. “It’s the river.”
Cheered by this, I looked in the direction of his gaze. We were standing very close to the embankment; on the other side of the track, through the gaps in the opposite wall of forest, which was evidently no more than a small, narrow promontory, water glittered in the low light of sunset.
I heaved a sigh of relief. The river—a direct route to civilization, the city, the ocean, and a ship.
II.
The shoreline was low, empty, and covered in tall grass, sand, and seashells. Looking downstream, I saw that the forest now extended as far as the river, now withdrew in a semicircle to reveal sandbanks, glades, and snaking pools of water. The rainy season had ended about five days prior to this, and the Adara, laden with water, lazily eddied, flowing darkly in its calm splendor, with drowning reflections of the steep bank on the opposing shore. White-headed birds fluttered their wings over the surface of the water, pecking at it, and the quicksilver of fish thrashed about in their beaks, shedding droplets of limpid water.
“If we’re to sail,” said Baranov, perching on a rock, “then we’ll need a boat. Or, as you said, a raft.”
With this in mind, I examined the shore carefully. My penknife would have been useful for building a child’s water mill, but even before I pulled it out, I knew that it would never fell a tree. I was counting on there being tree trunks carried away by the river and washed ashore, but there were none to be seen. We would have to keep looking; this was, after all, a common occurrence in wooded areas.
I wanted to keep going but couldn’t: my stomach was in knots with hunger. I dreamed of impossible things—edible sand, branches made of dough, the prospect of finding bread. Of course, all this was ridiculous. Whistling as he went, Baranov chewed on a stalk of grass.
All of a sudden, as though conforming to our foul mood, the river ceased glittering. The sun, ready to go to sleep, enswathed itself in the clouds; the great airborne chrysanthemums they formed, saturated with red and pink light, accumulated fancifully on the horizon, while the color of the water turned wan and grey.
“In half an hour,” I said, “darkness will fall. We need to think about shelter for the night.”
“What about food?” he asked wearily.
“That too. Why don’t you collect some brushwood and get a fire going, while I try my luck.”
Weakened and tortured by hunger, I saw in my mind’s eye the seven bullets of my revolver and the accidental but inescapable fate awaiting some unfortunate bird. Baranov set off in one direction picking up branches while I headed in the other.
In the fading light of the semidark, almost sleeping forest, I extracted my revolver and cocked it as I looked around. It was quiet; every now and then, the shadow of a bird would flicker against the backdrop of a deep-blue evening sky; and an invisible cockatoo would mutter away in the branches, like a monk reading vespers. Carefully, trying not to frighten my impending victims, I moved through the brush. I was not having much luck. Nothing alive caught my eyes; sometimes, mistaking a tangle of branches or oddly shaped leaves for a living creature, I would stop, with my heart pounding, raise the revolver and lower it again, realizing the illusion. Suddenly, I spotted a bird.
It was resting quite nearby, whistling melodically between two branches that stretched out in parallel; a round eye glinted on the side of a head turned toward me. My eyes, having grown accustomed to the darkness, could make it out rather well. It was the size of a hen, dirty pearl in color, with gray wings that turned to red and a white plume on its head. A gently curving feather stretched down from its tail.
I raised my revolver, took aim, and, with the target in my sights, fired. The bird flitted up to a higher branch. Anxious, I fired a second shot and, lowering my trembling hand, saw the gently curving tail feather flicker through the leaves and fall. The bird beat its wings against the ground; I made a dash for it, but just as my hands were about to seize my prey, it began to thrash about noisily before taking off and disappearing.
Having run a few paces in the direction of its flight, I stopped, spotting a squirrel. Clinging to a tree trunk, the squirrel flexed, ready to race to the top of the tree. Enraged by the bird’s escape, I began shooting at the squirrel from where I stood; the first bullet forced it to make a bewildered upside-down turn around the tree; the second made him corkscrew up; and after the third, with all the energy of a steel spring, it jumped over to a neighboring tree with its tail outspread, vanishing. I searched for it for a long time but was unable to find it.
I had two bullets left. I didn’t dare waste them. They might prove useful for something far more important than squirrel fricassee. My anxiety and excitement evaporated as soon as I realized this. I wanted to drop to the earth and scream or let out a long, lingering howl. Tears of rage welled up in my throat; clutching the revolver in my hand, I made for the shore. In a passage running between two tall bushes that were as tangled as a skein of wool, I noticed pear-shaped blackberries hanging under each leaf, and so I popped one into my mouth. I had an irresistible urge to swallow it without chewing; fearing that it might be poisonous, however, I slowly rolled the berry around in my mouth with my tongue; the stale, bitter taste of the fruit made me spit the filthy thing out.
The sun vanished and darkness fell. Before me, slashed by the branches’ black claws, Baranov’s fire glowed. I stepped out of the forest. The flames’ reflections stretched out across little puddles and the sand, which was damp from the dew; my companion’s moving figure was silhouetted against the background of a flickering, fiery, red crown.
“Bad news,” I said, approaching the fire. “But there’s nothing to be done about it.”
/> “I see-e …” he drawled, glancing at my hands. A strange look of satisfaction and mockery appeared on his face; he seemed to rejoice in the power of the circumstances supporting his icy despair.
My heart sank. I sat down, but in full view of the nocturnal river, the wilderness, and the silence of the starry sky, I wanted to rise up, to stand tall and hold my head high. The silence oppressed me. Baranov lay down and closed his eyes; as the light of the fire fell onto his drawn face, it cast shadows over the sockets of his eyes and the hollows of his cheeks, sharpening his features; the man lying before me resembled a corpse.
I, too, lay down and closed my eyes, feeling as though I were sinking into the earth, descending into its very depths—and I fell asleep. I was tormented by hungry dreams. I saw warm, freshly baked loaves, chunks of fried meat, dishes of fruit, game pies, sumptuous hors d’oeuvres aplenty, and wine. With the great zeal of a cannibal, I devoured all these marvels, unable to sate myself. The Russian and I awoke at dawn, our teeth chattering from the cold.
The fire had gone out. Black embers smoked feebly amid the gray sand. The river, white with a gauze of mist, slowly eddied, while the army of morning clouds was brightened by the pale fire of the stirring sun.
I leaped up, hopping from one foot to the other and waving my arms to get warm. Propping himself up on his elbow, the Russian said:
“We’re done for …”
“We cannot be certain of that,” I retorted.
“Damned will to live,” he continued, while I scrutinized him and saw the face of a man who was totally deranged and on the verge of madness. He was not even pale but a bluish gray; his wide-open eyes glittered nervously. “Yes, dying … is necessary … but the moment you begin to suffer, your body revolts. Do you believe in God?” he asked unexpectedly.
“Yes, I believe in God.”
“I do not,” said the Russian. “But I, you see—I need there to be someone higher, cleverer, stronger, and better than me. I’m prepared to pray … but to whom? I don’t know. Pray for bread? No. Pray that my strength is returned to me, that my life becomes orderly … and you?”
Fandango and Other Stories Page 16