“Your people won’t believe that.”
“Our structure is so rigid it can be resisted only by the most audacious means,” I said, “and then often very successfully. It is probably one of the few advantages of orthodoxy.”
“You’re full of bullshit, as ever,” she said. “You can’t do what you did to me a second time. I’d kill myself.”
I moved close to her so that my chest was on a level with her lovely head. We did not embrace. She did not look as grey or as drawn as she had when she had first been given confirmation of her illness. As she looked up at me I was impressed with her gentle beauty. She was at once noble and pathetic. Her eyes began to fill with tears. One fell. She apologised. I told her there was no need. I touched her shoulder, her cheek. She began to speak my name several times, holding tightly to my hand.
“You don’t look well,” she said. “You were afraid you would go crazy, weren’t you?”
“I am not going to go mad,” I told her. “I often wish that I could. This state of control is a kind of madness, isn’t it? Perhaps more profoundly insane than any other kind. But it has none of the appeal of irresponsibility, of giving up any sense of others, which the classic lunatic experiences.” I laughed. “So it has no advantages.”
“What about your duty?”
“To the War?”
“Or your cause, or whatever.”
“Excellent excuses.”
“What’s more important?”
I drew a breath. “I don’t know. Affection?”
“You’ve changed your mind. Your rationale. Your logic.”
“I had to simplify.”
“Now?”
“I am defeated. I can no longer maintain it. Things remain as perplexing as ever.”
“What are you saying?”
I shrugged. “Love conquers all?”
“Not you!” She shook her head.
“I do not know,” I said, “what the truth is. It has been my duty to lie and to counter lies. Duty allows this, demands it. The only other truth for me is the truth of my feelings, my cravings, and senses. Anything else is hypocrisy, self-deception. At best it is a sentimental rationale. We are all moved by self-interest.”
“But sometimes self-interest takes on a broader form,” she said. “And that is when we become human. Why are you here?”
“To see you. To be with you.”
“We’ll lie down,” she said. “We’ll go to bed.”
The bed was very large. The place had belonged to her parents. Now they were in Iowa where they believed themselves to be safer. We undressed and I took her in my arms. We kissed. Her body was warm and still strong. We did not make love, but talked, as we always had. I told her that I did not know the meaning of love and that what had brought me back to her was a sense that the alternatives were less tolerable to me. I told her that a mixture of sentimentality and power politics had been the nearest substitute for love I had been able to afford in my circumstances. Altruism was a luxury. She said that she believed it a necessity. Without altruism there was no virtue in human existence, therefore if one rejected it one also rejected the only rationale for the race’s continuation. Could that be why I was now on leave from the War?
I praised her for her fine fundamentalism and said that I regretted my inability to live according to such principles. She told me that it was not difficult: one did not take extra responsibility—one relinquished power and in doing that one also relinquished guilt. The very idea, I told her humorously, was terrifying to the Russian soul. Without guilt there was no movement at all! She shook her head at what she called my cynicism, my self-contempt. I said that I preferred to think I had my own measure.
I got out of bed and went into the hall. From my bag I took a pendant I had bought for her in Maracaibo. I came back and presented it to her. She looked at it and thanked me bleakly. She set it aside. “You’ll never be free, then?” she said. “I believe not,” I said. It was too late for that.
She rose and put on a robe, walking with her hands folded beneath her breasts into the room she used as a studio. “Love and art wither without freedom.” She stared at a half-finished portrait stacked against the wall. I seemed much older in the picture. “I suppose so,” I said. But I was in the business of politics which, by definition, was opposed both to lovers and to artists. They were factors which always would over-complicate the game and cause enormous frustrations in those of us who preferred, by temperament, to simplify the world as much as possible.
“You’ve always found my reasoning stupidly romantic, haven’t you?” she said. She discredited my intelligence, I said. We lived in a world of power and manipulation. Currently political decisions (I took her hand) decided if we should live or die—if we should love or create art. My realism, I said, was limited to the situation; hers was appropriate to her life as an artist and as an individual who must continue to hope. “But I am dying,” she said. “I have no need for hope.” She smiled as she completed the sentence. She turned away with a shrug which had much of her old gaiety in it. She ran her hands over the frames of the canvases. “I wish my life to have had some point, of course.”
I could not answer her, yet suddenly I was lost in her again, as I had been during the early days of our affair. I went towards her and I embraced her. I kissed her. She recognised my emotion at once. She responded. There was a great generosity in her, a kindness. I could not at the moment bear to think of its leaving the world. But I should have a memory of it, I thought.
I told her that I admired her tendency to ascribe altruistic motives to me, to all other people. But most of us were far too selfish. We had to survive in a cynical world. She said that she had to believe in self-sufficiency and altruism was the only way by which we could, with any meaning, survive at all. One had to keep one’s eye on the world as it was and somehow learn to trust oneself to maintain tolerance and hope. I said her courage was greater than mine. She acknowledged this. She said that a woman found it necessary to discover courage if she were to make any sense of her life as an individual. “But you pursued me,” I said gently. “I love you,” she said. “I want you for myself and will do everything I can to keep you.”
“I cannot change.”
“I would not wish it.”
“You have won me.”
“Well,” she said, “I have won something of you and for the time being am content. Have I won it honourably, do you think? Did you return simply out of pity?”
“I was drawn here, to you. I have no reservations.”
“You don’t feel trapped?”
“On the contrary.”
“You’ll stay here?”
“Until you die.”
“It might be—I might ask you to kill me when the worst begins.”
“I know.”
“Could you?”
“I suspect you were attracted to me because you knew that I could.”
She became relieved. The tension between us vanished completely. She smiled at me and took my hand again: in love with her executioner.
Crossing into Cambodia
In homage to Isaac Babel, 1894–1941?
1
I approached and Savitsky, Commander of the Sixth Division, got up. As usual I was impressed by his gigantic, perfect body. Yet he seemed unconscious either of his power or of his elegance. Although not obliged to do so, I almost saluted him. He stretched an arm towards me. I put the papers into his gloved hand. “These were the last messages we received,” I said. The loose sleeve of his Cossack cherkesska slipped back to reveal a battle-strengthened forearm, brown and glowing. I compared his skin to my own. For all that I had ridden with the Sixth for five months, I was still pale; still possessed, I thought, of an intellectual’s hands. Evening light fell through the jungle foliage and a few parrots shrieked their last goodnight. Mosquitoes were gathering in the shadows, whirling in tight-woven patterns, like a frightened mob. The jungle smelled of rot. Yakovlev, somewhere, began to play a sad accordion tune.<
br />
The Vietnamese spy we had caught spoke calmly from the other side of Savitsky’s camp-table. “I think I should like to be away from here before nightfall. Will you keep your word, sir, if I tell you what I know?”
Savitsky looked back and I saw the prisoner for the first time (though his presence was of course well known to the camp). His wrists and ankles were pinned to the ground with bayonets but he was otherwise unhurt.
Savitsky drew in his breath and continued to study the documents I had brought him. Our radio was now useless. “He seems to be confirming what these say.” He tapped the second sheet. “An attack tonight.”
The temple on the other side of the clearing came to life within. Pale light rippled on greenish, half-ruined stonework. Some of our men must have lit a fire there. I heard noises of delight and some complaints from the women who had been with the spy. One began to shout in that peculiar, irritating high-pitched half-wail they all use when they are trying to appeal to us. For a moment Savitsky and I had a bond in our disgust. I felt flattered. Savitsky made an impatient gesture, as if of embarrassment. He turned his handsome face and looked gravely down at the peasant. “Does it matter to you? You’ve lost a great deal of blood.”
“I do not think I am dying.”
Savitsky nodded. He was economical in everything, even his cruelties. He had been prepared to tear the man apart with horses, but he knew that he would tire two already overworked beasts. He picked up his cap from the camp-table and put it thoughtfully on his head. From the deserted huts came the smell of our horses as the wind reversed its direction. I drew my borrowed burka about me. I was the only one in our unit to bother to wear it, for I felt the cold as soon as the sun was down.
“Will you show me on the map where they intend to ambush us?”
“Yes,” said the peasant. “Then you can send a man to spy on their camp. He will confirm what I say.”
I stood to one side while these two professionals conducted their business. Savitsky strode over to the spy and very quickly, like a man plucking a hen, drew the bayonets out and threw them on the ground. With some gentleness, he helped the peasant to his feet and sat him down in the leather campaign chair he had carried with him on our long ride from Danang, where we had disembarked off the troop-ship which had brought us from Vladivostok.
“I’ll get some rags to stop him bleeding,” I said.
“Good idea,” confirmed Savitsky. “We don’t want the stuff all over the maps. You’d better be in on this, anyway.”
As the liaison officer, it was my duty to know what was happening. That is why I am able to tell this story. My whole inclination was to return to my billet where two miserable ancients cowered and sang at me whenever I entered or left but where at least I had a small barrier between me and the casual day-to-day terrors of the campaign. But, illiterate and obtuse though these horsemen were, they had accurate instincts and could tell immediately if I betrayed any sign of fear. Perhaps, I thought, it is because they are all so used to disguising their own fears. Yet bravery was a habit with them and I yearned to catch it. I had ridden with them in more than a dozen encounters, helping to drive the Cambodians back into their own country. Each time I had seen men and horses blown to pieces, torn apart, burned alive. I had come to exist on the smell of blood and gunpowder as if it were a substitute for air and food—I identified it with the smell of Life itself—yet I had still failed to achieve that strangely passive sense of inner calm my comrades all, to a greater or lesser degree, displayed.
Only in action did they seem possessed in any way by the outer world, although they still worked with efficient ferocity, killing as quickly as possible with lance, sabre or carbine and, with ghastly humanity, never leaving a wounded man of their own or the enemy’s without his throat cut or a bullet in his brain. I was thankful that these, my traditional foes, were now allies for I could not have resisted them had they turned against me.
I bound the peasant’s slender wrists and ankles. He was like a child. He said: “I knew there were no arteries cut.” I nodded at him. “You’re the political officer, aren’t you?” He spoke almost sympathetically.
“Liaison,” I said.
He was satisfied by my reply, as if I had confirmed his opinion. He added: “I suppose it’s the leather coat. Almost a uniform.”
I smiled. “A sign of class difference, you think?”
His eyes were suddenly drowned with pain and he staggered, but recovered to finish what he had evidently planned to say: “You Russians are natural bourgeoisie. It’s not your fault. It’s your turn.”
Savitsky was too tired to respond with anything more than a small smile. I felt that he agreed with the peasant and that these two excluded me, felt superior to me. I knew anger, then. Tightening the last rag on his left wrist, I made the spy wince. Satisfied that my honour was avenged I cast an eye over the map. “Here we are,” I said. We were on the very edge of Cambodia. A small river, easily forded, formed the border. We had heard it just before we had entered this village. Scouts confirmed that it lay no more than half a verst to the west. The stream on the far side of the village, behind the temple, was a tributary.
“You give your word you won’t kill me,” said the Vietnamese.
“Yes,” said Savitsky. He was beyond joking. We all were. It had been ages since any of us had been anything but direct with one another, save for the conventional jests which were merely part of the general noise of the squadron, like the jangling of harness. And he was beyond lying, except where it was absolutely necessary. His threats were as unqualified as his promises.
“They are here.” The spy indicated a town. He began to shiver. He was wearing only torn shorts. “And some of them are here, because they think you might use the bridge rather than the ford.”
“And the attacking force for tonight?”
“Based here.” A point on our side of the river.
Savitsky shouted. “Pavlichenko.”
From the Division Commander’s own tent, young Pavlichenko, capless, with ruffled fair hair and a look of restrained disappointment, emerged. “Comrade?”
“Get a horse and ride with this man for half an hour the way we came today. Ride as fast as you can, then leave him and return to camp.”
Pavlichenko ran towards the huts where the horses were stabled. Savitsky had believed the spy and was not bothering to check his information. “We can’t attack them,” he murmured. “We’ll have to wait until they come to us. It’s better.” The flap of Savitsky’s tent was now open. I glanced through and to my surprise saw a Eurasian girl of about fourteen. She had her feet in a bucket of water. She smiled at me. I looked away.
Savitsky said: “He’s washing her for me. Pavlichenko’s an expert.”
“My wife and daughters?” said the spy.
“They’ll have to remain now. What can I do?” Savitsky shrugged in the direction of the temple. “You should have spoken earlier.”
The Vietnamese accepted this and, when Pavlichenko returned with the horse, leading it and running as if he wished to get the job over with in the fastest possible time, he allowed the young Cossack to lift him onto the saddle.
“Take your rifle,” Savitsky told Pavlichenko. “We’re expecting an attack.”
Pavlichenko dashed for his own tent, the small one close to Savitsky’s. The horse, as thoroughly trained as the men who rode him, stood awkwardly but quietly beneath his nervous load. The spy clutched the saddle pommel, the mane, his bare feet angled towards the mount’s neck. He stared ahead of him into the night. His wife and daughter had stopped their appalling wailing but I thought I could hear the occasional feminine grunt from the temple. The flames had become more animated. His other daughter, her feet still in the bucket, held her arms tightly under her chest and her curious eyes looked without rancour at her father, then at the Division Commander, then, finally, at me. Savitsky spoke. “You’re the intellectual. She doesn’t know Russian. Tell her that her father will be safe. She can join him tom
orrow.”
“My Vietnamese might not be up to that.”
“Use English or French, then.” He began to tidy his maps, calling over Kreshenko, who was in charge of the guard.
I entered the tent and was shocked by her little smile. She had a peculiar smell to her—like old tea and cooked rice. I knew my Vietnamese was too limited so I asked her if she spoke French. She was of the wrong generation. “Amerikanski,” she told me. I relayed Savitsky’s message. She said: “So I am the price of the old bastard’s freedom.”
“Not at all.” I reassured her. “He told us what we wanted. It was just bad luck for you that he used you three for cover.”
She laughed. “Nuts! It was me got him to do it. With my sister. Tao’s boyfriend works for the Cambodians.” She added: “They seemed to be winning at the time.”
Savitsky entered the tent and zipped it up from the bottom. He used a single, graceful movement. For all that he was bone-weary, he moved with the unconscious fluidity of an acrobat. He lit one of his foul-smelling papyrosi and sat heavily on the camp-bed beside the girl.
“She speaks English,” I said. “She’s a half-caste. Look.”
He loosened his collar. “Could you ask her if she’s clean, comrade?”
“I doubt it,” I said. I repeated what she had told me.
He nodded. “Well, ask her if she’ll be a good girl and use her mouth. I just want to get on with it. I expect she does, too.”
I relayed the D.C.’s message.
“I’ll bite his cock off if I get the chance,” said the girl.
Outside in the night the horse began to move away. I explained what she had said.
“I wonder, comrade,” Savitsky said, “if you would oblige me by holding the lady’s head.” He began to undo the belt of his trousers, pulling up his elaborately embroidered shirt.
The girl’s feet became noisy in the water and the bucket overturned. In my leather jacket, my burka, with my automatic pistol at her right ear, I restrained the girl until Savitsky had finished with her. He began to take off his boots. “Would you care for her, yourself?”
The Best of Michael Moorcock Page 26