by Greg Wilson
From beyond the walls of the coffin he heard the sound of a steel door ringing shut then footsteps followed by voices, incoherent at first, becoming clearer as they drew near.
He snared a breath and held it, trying to remain perfectly still. Could it be time? Had he been in here an hour already?
He closed his eyes and concentrated on the voices, separating one from another, counting four, maybe five in total. Then they were right there, around him, and a single voice was taking charge, the tiny shafts of light his only connection with the world beyond, now irritatingly interrupted by a shadow – of an arm, he assumed – waved above the coffin to emphasize direction.
“Two either side. That’s it… you. The trolley, move it up. Now push… harder.”
Around him Nikolai felt the coffin moving. Groaning forward along the timber bench. He held his breath and braced his palms flat against the sides while the voice from outside came again, thick with exasperation this time.
“You fools!”
The edge of the bench had become a fulcrum now with the top end of the coffin tipping across it. Beside him Nikolai could feel Florinskiy’s body slumping backwards under its dead weight, his own involuntarily starting to follow. What if the casket fell to the floor? Split open against the concrete? He fought back the panic and tried to brace himself harder against the sides of the box but the sweat of his palms was as slick as axle grease against the smooth timber surface.
“Get the trolley in place first!” The voice again. “How stupid are you? Don’t you understand? Get it up again. Use your brains. You must have some for Christ’s sake! Here, lean on it. Like this.”
The coffin lurched back again, levelling itself. Nikolai felt a clutching in his gut. His neck and face were wet with perspiration. And for some reason every sound had now become curiously exaggerated, each beat of his heart as deep and hollow as the throb of a drum beneath water; each shallow pull of his breath as loud in his ears as the sound of a rasp dragged across steel. Beneath him there was a sudden shudder as something connected with the bench below, then the box was sliding forward again, on an even plane this time.
“Ahhh.” The voice. Illumination thickened with sarcasm. “So, you manage it after all. Congratulations, all of you. Your future prospects are unlimited. Your horizons boundless. Who knows where you may go from here. But for now just try and keep the damn thing on the trolley until you get it into the truck. Okay?”
They were moving now. Nikolai could feel the tight vibration of the trolley’s wheels against the concrete floor below while above him the strands of light that played over his chest seemed to be following, jostling to keep up. Then his brain split apart with a sudden, jarring crash as the end of the casket nearest his head slammed into what felt as though it could have been a stone wall, but was probably the door to the loading dock. And now the light was trailing away and falling behind. Strangely enough the darkness felt soothing and suddenly Nikolai realized why. Over the last nine years darkness had been his only refuge from the torture of reality. His only escape.
When Zalisko had finished the first tattoo there had been just one tower on the cathedral at the center of Nikolai’s chest: a single tower standing for a single conviction. Since then six more had been added, the first by Zalisko following his conviction over the incident in the bathhouse, the rest by other artists Nikolai had encountered along the way – at the prison colony at Perm where they had taken him after the first two years at Samara, then at the camp at Pechora in the north where he had almost died one winter of pneumonia, and now finally, here at Novokuznetsk, where the last two towers had risen. Six more towers with a death head inscribed for each as a symbol of the lives they represented. Only two of the killings had been classified as murder and for each of those another six years had been added to the original sentence for treason. It would have been more on the outside, of course, but life within the system was acknowledged as having a lesser value. He had accepted the judgments of the prison courts without dispute since that was what they had been. Murder. Pre-emptive strikes against others who, given the chance, would have thought nothing of taking his own life first, but murder none the less. The other killings had been a matter of defense – either his own or that of someone else – and for those the extra sentences had been lighter. A year here, three there, but by then what did the time matter since all the numbers added up to one single inescapable truth. The system owned him now and there were only two possible ways out. Death or escape.
It was Florinskiy who persuaded him of that.
He was a neat, quiet, educated man. A professor of physics who one autumn afternoon, while Gorbachev was still struggling with his initial reforms, had returned early to his apartment to find his wife in their bed with her lover. In a sudden fit of uncharacteristic rage he had killed them both with his bare hands and a strength that until then he had never realized that he possessed, after which he had quietly turned himself in to the police to admit his crime and accept his fate.
Florinskiy had been almost seventy when Nikolai had been allocated the bunk above him in the common cell at Novokuznetsk. Both kept to themselves but over time they had developed something of a tentative friendship that had its turning point one night during the early stages of the old man’s tuberculosis.
Just a few days previous, the cell had received its newest inmate, a pale and scrawny teenager whose arms crawled with the tattoos of spiders that marked him as an addict. Too stupid to comprehend the risks, or perhaps just too desperate to even weigh them, the young thug had crept from his mattress in the night, presumably to try and scavenge what he could, whether money or drugs, to feed his habit. He had been on his knees beside Florinskiy, rummaging through the battered cardboard box he kept beneath his bunk when the old man had woken with a start and, despite his age and condition, had instinctively gone on the attack.
The young hoodlum, though stunned, had recovered quickly and unsurprisingly had proved much stronger. Within seconds he had the advantage, clamping his fingers around the old man’s throat, pushing him back against his thin pillow and choking the air from his ruined lungs. Florinskiy would have died within seconds if no one had intervened.
At the time there were twenty-four prisoners in the cell. The following morning when they were led out to the yard for their ten minutes of daily exercise two of them remained in their bunks: Florinskiy, quietly wheezing in his sleep; and in the opposite corner, on the upper tier, the young hoodlum with the spider tattoos, his eyes open and glazed, staring wide at the ceiling, his neck twisted aside at a grotesquely inhuman angle.
When the other twenty-two were questioned none admitted the slightest knowledge of what might have occurred although the head Blatnoy, the last to be interviewed, offered the most creative supposition.
Shrug. “Perhaps he fell out of the bunk.”
“Then how come he was on the bunk when we found him?”
A pause. Consideration. Another shrug. “I dunno. Maybe the fall didn’t kill him. Maybe he climbed back up again.”
“With a broken neck?”
A dismissive wave. “Addicts. They’re crazy men. Crazy men don’t even know when they’re dead. You don’t believe me? Then what about Rasputin?” Followed by a change of subject. “You know, I’ve been thinking. I could really use a cell phone. You know anyone who could help?”
In the end the prison authorities had been content to record it as an accident. Not because they believed for a moment that it was, but simply to avoid the tiresome harassment of taking the matter further. As a consequence Nikolai’s tattoo had remained unchanged. No new tower and not even a further skull to mark another life taken since, the way he had come to see things now, neither the act nor the life qualified for any recognition. As far as he was concerned what he had done was of no more significance than treading on a cockroach.
Florinskiy, though, regarded his intercession as something more: an act of honor, or friendship perhaps. So, on the old man’s initiative, the relat
ionship between the two grew stronger with Florinskiy making it the mission of his last few months on earth to devise a scheme for Nikolai’s escape. After weeks of consideration, he had come to Nikolai one day and laid it all out with a conspiratorial grin. By then the old man had lost a third of his weight and was little more than a frail ghost; his face was a pallid gray, his stubbled skin sunken and caved against the bones of his face. When he spoke it was only with the greatest effort, the words falling out between the strains of his wet cough, but his faded blue eyes, Nikolai noticed, were bright with enthusiasm and purpose.
“I have it, my young friend.” He laid a trembling hand on Nikolai’s forearm. “I have it all worked out. I really don’t know why it took me so long: I should have seen it well before now. It’s simple really. You gave me my life so now I will give you my death.”
Survival. That was all that had mattered until now.
It had become a way of life and to sustain it Nikolai had sealed himself within the walls of his own fortified existence but Florinskiy had unexpectedly led him to the parapet and forced him to consider that there was still the possibility of a world beyond.
At night he lay awake in the darkness allowing himself for the first time in years to imagine Natalia and Larisa… where they might be and what might have become of them. Exposing himself to the unbearable pain of the possibilities and wondering whether there might still be a way back to them. A bridge across the river of years that had flowed between them and, beyond that, something more. Something that until now he hadn’t even imagined might be possible.
Retribution.
Over the days that followed a strange thing happened. The images from the past became clearer while the pain they carried began to recede, leaving in its place a curious anticipation. Then, while Florinskiy grew weaker, Nikolai felt the anticipation begin to galvanize into resolve. After all, what was there to be afraid of any longer? Perhaps it was possible. Perhaps he was stronger than he had thought. Perhaps there was a way back.
Throughout the final three weeks of Florinskiy’s life they had planned and re-planned each step as though the future of both their souls now rested in the balance of the outcome.
Surprisingly, money was the least of the problems. In order to support himself over the years, Florinskiy had parlayed his intellectual skills into a talent with cards then taken his enterprise a step further by setting up as a money lender within the cell, providing low interest loans to the Blatnyie to assist them in the financing of their prison operations. As a result he now claimed outstanding receivables of almost two hundred thousand rubles – nearly seven thousand US dollars – a staggering amount.
“Safer with them than with me,” he chuckled as he explained the arrangement to Nikolai. “They’re my bank, you see. And now it’s time to make a withdrawal.”
“But you’re Jewish,” Nikolai responded when the old man told him of the deal he had made.
“So?” Florinskiy shrugged. “You think God won’t forgive me for this? You must be practical Nikolai. We are dealing with bureaucrats here. These are little men but they understand power. The Orthodox Church has more power than we Jews, so,” he tossed his hands apart, “we rent a priest. It’s a good investment, that’s all. At least this way we can be sure we’ll both get on the train “
In exchange for their commitment to meet his needs Florinskiy had agreed to write off the whole of the Blatnyie’s debt, while their true costs had been only a fraction of the amount owed: twenty thousand for the priest; ten for the prison permit to remove the body and another ten, more or less, for the freight to Tula. The old man had cast his hands in the air at Nikolai’s protest.
“Phsst! Don’t worry. It’s only money, and when I’m dead they’d get to keep it all anyway. Better to cash in what I can now and play on their sense of honor. They do have one, you know.” After that he’d split the seam of his mattress, pulled out a sheaf of dirty notes and counted them into Nikolai’s hands. Another thirty thousand, give or take. “Now with this you must handle Borisov,” the old man had lectured. “Because without him we have nothing, you understand?”
Nikolai understood.
He had had little to do with the doctor since that first day at Novokuznetsk. There was no doubt that Borisov still despised Nikolai, but that was of little consequence. The question was whether he still feared enough.
In fact it had been surprisingly easy.
Borisov had listened in silence while Nikolai had explained what was required. For just the briefest moment he thought he saw a curious expression shade the doctor’s face, as if his mind, in its recesses, was computing some complex equation, then the look passed and Borisov regarded his hands, folded before him, at the edge of his battered wooden desk. When he looked up at Nikolai his gaze was even.
“Let me think about it,” he had said. “Come back tomorrow and I will give you my answer.” Then he had called abruptly across Nikolai’s shoulder. “Guard! Take him back. I will need to see him again in twenty-four hours.”
A day later the price was the only outstanding issue. Nikolai had started at ten thousand; Borisov at thirty. They had met at twenty – eight hundred US, give or take – and Nikolai had counted off ten as a deposit.
He looked the doctor in the eye as he set the notes on the table. “So doctor, we have an understanding?”
Borisov responded with a curt nod. His fingers crept forward to claim the money but before they could draw it back Nikolai’s own hand clamped around them.
“Before you make your final commitment there is just one more thing you should understand.” His eyes closed on Borisov’s and held them.
“I have taken out some insurance, doctor, just in case you are tempted to cross me.” Borisov’s face clouded with sudden confusion. “A contract on your life,” Nikolai answered the unasked question. “There are three thousand prisoners here at Novokuznetsk, am I correct?”
Borisov answered with a hesitant nod.
Nikolai joined him. “What you need to understand, doctor, is that a month from the day I leave here one of them is programmed to kill you…” A flash of panic lit the doctor’s eyes. “Unless,” Nikolai continued, “he hears from me first.” He paused, his gaze unfaltering, watching the sudden pale comprehension reflected in Borisov’s face. “So this is your gamble. You have my word that if I reach safety I will send my message and the contract will be cancelled, but if I don’t…” Nikolai’s eyes fell to the notes trapped beneath their stacked hands. “Perhaps you should think of it this way: take this money and you will automatically contract a terminal illness for which only I have the cure. So before you take it, doctor, think about it for a moment. Understand what I am saying and make your final decision with a full appreciation of the facts and the risks.”
Nikolai lifted his hand from Borisov’s and drew it back to his own side of the desk. The other man’s fingers remained frozen, splayed across the fan of notes. Then Nikolai saw the doctor’s mind working again and the color began to return slowly to his cheeks.
Borisov nodded softly to himself.
“You are a clever man, Aven, I give you that.” He dragged the deposit back to his side of the desk. “But you need have no fear. I will honor my end of the bargain. It seems I have no option other than to trust you to honor yours.”
Nikolai regarded the other man for a long moment. Could it be that easy? Or had he missed something somewhere? And if so, what? If he had, it was too late now. Events were in motion. It was too late to stop them. Too late to turn back. He took a silent breath and fixed Borisov with his gaze.
“Then we have an understanding,” he replied.
From outside the coffin Nikolai heard a new noise: the low churning rumble of an idling engine. Then the trolley jarred to a stop and the voice came again, rising above it.
“That’s it. Raise it carefully.”
The coffin quavered as unseen hands lifted it, taking the strain.
“Now set it down and push. Slide it forward.”<
br />
Beneath him timber scraped on timber, jarring his jaw and spine. “That’s it. Keep going. All the way in.” The box snagged to a stop and Florinskiy’s body slumped sideways, falling back across his shoulder. Beneath him Nikolai clenched his teeth. Held his breath.
“You!” The voice rose louder against the throbbing engine. “The tailgate. Close it.”
The heavy slam of timber against timber. Bolts shot home. A new odor began to saturate the foul, damp air inside the coffin: diesel fumes seeping through the cracks and crevices and nail holes, smothering the remaining frail traces of oxygen, creeping into his nasal passages and down into his lungs. Nikolai pressed his eyes closed tight, fighting back the overwhelming urge to choke and gag.
“So, that’s it then. Finished!” The voice was muffled now, as though a heavy curtain had closed around it. “Thank you for your efforts, gentlemen. You may all return to your quarters now, to prepare yourselves for whatever enjoyments you have planned for the rest of the evening. And now…” The voice rose higher. Two slaps. Abrupt. A hand striking timber.” Driver, if you will. Our passenger is ready to begin his journey.”
Nikolai heard the engine rev higher then jolt in protest as the driver threw the lorry into gear. Then they were moving. Rolling forward.
The fumes were settling now, air that tasted almost fresh pushing them aside. Nikolai closed his eyes and returned to his darkness, imagining their path. Imagining the truck as if he were seeing it from above, winding its way across the compound yards between the tall barbed wire fences that defined the internal roadways, creeping slowly towards the prison gates. Edging closer to the one remaining barrier that now stood between him and freedom.
17
NEW YORK
All the time. Where had it gone?
Kelly Hartman examined her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Turned side to side, measuring and comparing lines then gave a little shrug. Useless worrying about them – they were only going to get worse. And in fairness, there weren’t that many to complain about anyway. She lifted the bottle of cleanser from the counter and tipped it into the pad of cotton wool. Set the bottle down and leaned in to the mirror, gently working the path below her eyes, her slender fingers guiding the damp soft cushion around and out, sweeping away the remnants of her make-up.