White Blood

by James Fleming

  I could describe to you in much greater detail the emotional quality of this event—the killing of Glebov. It was of the same order as the naturalist's chase except that I was carrying not a butterfly net but a Mannlicher .256 and the quarry was not an insect but a terrorist. The differences are not worth talking about. Some hours before I'd found a harmless old man nailed to his mattress by sixteen inches of bayonet. God alone knew if Glebov had murdered before or how many he might murder in the future. I had to get him. The imperative was the same as for a rare beetle—a second Wiz. Kill that thing.

  Purists will disagree, holding that human beings and insects are not identical.

  The pursuit excited me. The possibility when we started in the half-light of dawn that there might have been a figure in the shadows hoping to shoot me made my blood stand on end: excitement has two parts and fear is one of them. At the other end of the scale was the moment when, as I flicked up the two-hundred-yard sight and waited for his panting horse to stand, I could be certain that I'd outwitted Glebov. My heart tingled as though someone was sandpapering its quimmy pink tip. My entire imagination was dwelling in advance on what would happen to his entrails as the steel bullet blasted through them. And when he died I was as elated as anyone would have been.

  The elation was still there as Kobi and I rode along the track to the corpse. Within me an image was seething, of Liza packing our cases, of her indecision, of her flurries of despair, of her dark and determined beauty as she debated where to hide the pearls and awaited the tread of my horse. I glimpsed the train to Odessa—the voyage—docking in New York—

  But elation is too mild: I was shaking with relief, and joy, and even more, a feeling that by killing Glebov I'd captured all of happiness for myself. I mean all of it that humans know to exist, the entire stock, the whole airy warehouse in which it was kept. I made Kobi ride in front so that he shouldn't see that I was trembling like a custard in the saddle.

  All these I could draw out for you since they were my authentic feelings, and it was interesting to acknowledge them in myself during the process of hunting a man down in order to kill him.

  But the exercise would have not the slightest value. I could see from twenty yards that the man I'd shot was not Glebov but a complete stranger.

  He was lying half on his side—twisted at the waist. Middle-aged, an exhausted, decent, bourgeois face with a tuft of a beard below the centre of his lip. A government official or a lawyer. Mired and bloodied, lips snarling in his death agony.

  Kobi moved the man's arm with his toe. "Jew. Old dead Jew. The prisoner."

  He looked up at me. Our eyes locked like magnets. Glebov had known we'd be after him. He'd wanted us after him. He'd lured us up the forest track. Christ knows where the Jew had come from but the gang had had him ready, had given him a bald patch with horse clippers. Glebov had stuck him on his own horse, made him wear the sbapka with the scarlet cockade and padded out his belly with a quilted jacket. "You're free. Ride like hell, Jew, before we change our minds." Then he'd whacked the horse on the croup and sent it galloping out of the forest.

  Two hundred yards of freedom he'd had and then I'd shot him, clumsily. Having experienced nothing good for a while, he'd struggled even to die.

  The rifle shots: Glebov would have heard them both. Known me for a dupe and wetted his fat lips. We'd lain low—more time wasted, the hour hand gone floppy. Even now, as we were standing over the Jew, Glebov and his gang were riding on the Pink House.

  Sixty-eight

  You'll have heard of our saying, "It would make a stone cry." I never understood it until this day.

  I was goring my horse, punching its ribs with my stubby spurs. If it went faster because I hurt it, that was fine. Animals were created to serve our purposes, not theirs. Pansies try to persuade them to do this voluntarily. But I've never believed in the carrot. Give me a stick and make it strong.

  We were going back down that woodcutters' track. The reins were in my left hand. I had the horse tight on the bit. The sinews of my forearm were like strips of whalebone as I kept it balanced, steered it, and picked it up when it stumbled in the ruts. In my other hand I had a broken branch. Its side shoots had been snapped off leaving jags like teeth. I was without mercy. My bowels were boiling. The tears pouring from my eyes were as hot as a clear soup. My hand had acquired the notion that speed would save my Lizochka, and that speed was to be had by striking the horse with a ragged fir-tree branch and pummelling it with spurs. "Which I did. I was capable of nothing else. The tears coursing down my cheeks, I thrashed and I thrashed that servant of man. I thrashed it like no one has ever thrashed a horse. With every blow I thought of her—sometimes Nicholas and Misha as well but always of her: upstairs in our room, humming as she packed and listened, already wearing her travelling clothes so as not to be caught napping when I bounded up the stairs and shouted "Are you ready, then, woman?"

  I was holding the horse in suspension, the proper distance from the ground, for to begin with it was a steep downhill and the animal had the momentum of three months of stable fatness behind it, and the firs were flying past. Also I had it in my overwrought mind that because of the hill the creature's legs would go too quickly and run away with themselves; that unless I kept it upright it would gallop into the ground, up to the hocks and then up to the knees and so on until finally it would beach itself, on the keel of its breastbone, and be of no more use to me than a rocking horse.

  So my hands were occupied and I had to shake my head to fling off the scalding tears of disaster. They went over my shoulder and every time I did this I glimpsed Kobi galloping at my heels, likewise keeping his horse off the floor with his left hand.

  Under his long jerkin, tied at the waist, he was wearing a thick sheepskin waistcoat that we call a dushegreika, "soul-warmer." I remark on this because his chin was buried in the woolly tufts that straggled out round the neck and his head was between the horse's ears so that all I could see of his face were his slitted Asiatic eyes and his forehead, which was filthy with sparks of mud and snow.

  "Old dead Jew. The prisoner." Thus Kobi had summed up the abyss of our deception. Comprehension had come to us simultaneously. I was in the saddle before my brain had stopped twitching.

  And I was crying before my right foot was in the stirrup.

  For Liza and the ease of the fraud. Had it in fact been Glebov who'd screamed as he slew Bobinski, in order to wake me up?

  For my idiocy, therefore, for my utter simplicity.

  I was crying out of frustration: at the impeding ruts in the track, at Nicholas's fat and wheezing carriage-horses, at the slight thickening of daylight that betokened night was closer than dawn.

  I was crying because I could go no faster.

  But most of all I was crying from the anger born of my powerlessness. What use was my fancy rifle or my physical strength or the name of Rykov? What use was Kobi? I could have had an army marching at my back and been incapable of changing anything. For the fact was that we were in one place and what mattered was in another. The anger boiled within me like magma; deep in the stomach, sharp and seething as if I was pregnant with a tureen of acid. Had I galloped round the corner and found Glebov and his men there, in my road, I'd have charged them, into the teeth of their bullets. Without a second thought I'd have done it, trusting in Right to see me through, like a warrior armed with a prayer banner. My anger was unconquerable. I raked that gasping elephant with my spurs and when I dropped the jagged branch I curled my hand into a block and fisted it in the neck and smashed at its ears. Every part of it I could reach I punched or kicked.

  And all the time there were sudden spikes of bile jolting through my rage that I knew to be fear—fear for Liza. And a wider fear besides: that it was true, that our world was disintegrating.

  For what purpose? Was a great lump of goodness lying unused out there that no one had ever stumbled across before? Justice for all? Some benevolent way of government that was infallible?

  No, for the p
urpose of evil. The hoarse rasp of fear was insistent. It struck at me again and again, so that I pleaded with fate, "Anything, but let us not be broken," meaning Lizochka and myself.

  The scene changed from Liza packing in our bedroom to the photo of her that Uncle Igor adored, taken on a Crimean beach when she was about fifteen. Long dark shorts that were almost bloomers and a white short-sleeved blouse. She was grasping with the sly grin of a veteran fisherman the wooden pole of one of the shovel-framed shrimping nets they use for small bay work along the coast. The fisherman himself was in the background in waders and a wide-brimmed straw hat, and behind him, in the very distance, could be glimpsed a striped bathing machine. Wearing her hair short was still to come. She was lithe and confident, one might have said boyish except that in the angle of her blouse I could make out the swell of one sweet breast.

  Why that snap, unseen since I was last with Igor three years ago? It had occupied, by itself, a round occasional table in his favourite room, a sun-lounge in which he grew vines and semi-tropicals. In the due season it had rented out a space on the table to an orchid. A copy had been in his palace in Petrograd. How he'd doted on her—how I worshipped her—

  I banged the stupid animal down the track. "But let us not be broken ..."

  Flicking away the tears of rage and love and fear, I saw the blossoming stain of blood on the snow behind me. Kobi gestured to the flanks of my horse.

  "Then halt, for God's sake," I shouted. "If that's what you want, halt."

  My wrecked horse dropped its head. Its ribs heaved with huge, shuddering breaths. The blood from my scourging dripped off its fur into the snow, also blood from its nostrils. I willed it not to collapse under me. Kobi's grey was little better. We could have cooked a meal on the steam coming off them.

  The sun had reappeared, a brutish birthmark purple. It hung like a cheap lantern, half in and half out of the clouds so that it seemed to be squinting at us.

  The corners of my mouth were crusty with dried foam and spittle. I spat into my palm and wetted all round my lips, cleaning them off on my sleeve. My breathing came back to normal. It was like regaining consciousness. The anger that had fired me had been drained by the insanity of our riding. We were back in the present tense.

  I studied Kobi, as if for the first time. I looked round to see where we were.

  About a mile away on our left, through the trees, was Popovka. The rusted old gates into the grounds of the Pink House were directly below us. Glebov's tracks ran straight for them.

  Kobi was trying the air like a dog. "They haven't burned the house."

  We stood at our horses' sunken heads. I said to him, "The animals are finished. What else has Nicholas got? What's in Popovka?"

  He said, "I don't know, but I know who does. The man who was opposite you at your wedding feast."

  What we were both thinking: was Glebov still at the Pink House? We'd heard no shots. Had he ridden on? Would we or would we not need fresh horses?

  I said, "How far is he in front of us?"

  "A long time. More than two hours."

  So he'd have done his purpose. I said, "We'll ride down to the ford and see how many tracks are going up to Popovka. That's the way they'll have gone."

  This involved a detour and more time wasted. But it kept us under cover in case they'd left a man watching, and gave the horses a breather.

  I said, "You tell me why they haven't burned it."

  "Because the Count shot some of them. Then they ran."

  "And we didn't hear the shots?"

  "We were a distance away. Galloping, with the noise of the horses in our ears."

  Having said that Kobi turned away and examined the powdery snow by the ford. "Six men and one bleeding. Same horses as before."

  "Prisoners?"

  "No. They're well spaced out, except for the horses being led. Riding hard."

  "Women?"

  "No."

  Sixty-nine

  The purple sun had slid down the clouds and taken up position on top of the stiff bare trees. There it was crouched, a vast battered eye half closed by the afternoon shadows. Beneath it, in total stillness, lay the rambling snow-covered bulk of the Pink House.

  We tied the horses to the old iron railings. The brutes were scrap, good for nothing more than carrying our saddles around.

  The gates had been torn off their hinges and thrown aside in the snow. But the ornamental ironwork arch had been beyond them so under the Rykov wolf we slunk amid a host of footprints, animal and human.

  It was true we'd seen the tracks leading away from the house, towards Popovka. But I was afraid of surprises. Mines would have been too bulky, even the smallest, but explosive in the brick was light and easy to lay. To have booby-trapped the house instead of burning it would have struck Glebov as a pretty amusement. We moved slowly, scouting for Bickford cord, solitary footprints, the telltale smell of marzipan.

  The monstrous sun studied me as I scanned the dark windows for life: a twitch of her scarf—or the swivel of a rifle barrel.

  Was anyone watching us? I didn't get that feeling. I could sense no tunnels such as the human eye bores through the air as it stares out, waiting for something to move. The atmosphere was empty. The windows, overhung by ledges of snow like white eyebrows, stared blindly at me. There was no smoke from the chimneys, none from the conservatory furnace, no starlings on the ridge beams, no busy wrens insecting under the eaves. In the back courtyard the morning's washing hung as stiff as suits of armour. A man's shirt was in two sections, sliced down the seam.

  I'd agreed no formula for communicating with Nicholas. Neither of us could have expected this situation. When I said goodbye to him I'd been in a hurry. Bobinski was congealing upstairs. I was going to go out into the forest to kill Glebov: to do it and be home for luncheon.

  "Don't be late," my bride had said. We were departing for America.

  So where was she?

  We stole through the shrubs, trying not to dislodge their snow. Soon we'd be in open view from the house. I tied my handkerchief to the end of my rifle and pointed it to the sky. I pushed my breath to the bottom of my lungs and held it there. Then I stepped out onto the snow-covered lawn, at the end of the archery pitch.

  "Nicholas!"

  My stomach was flinching, as if it contained a fragile glass bowl. But nothing happened. I walked forward a few paces.

  "Lizochka!"

  The sun glowered at me with its great purple face. I hated its smugness, the ease of its lolling existence. "Don't you ever have to struggle?" I shouted, shaking my rifle at it. Kobi, still in cover, hissed at me. I said to him over my shoulder, "What's the matter? There's no one here to be quiet for."

  I stood on the archery lawn and I cursed the sun. I hated it for its pomposity. I hated it for its empty offer of warmth and happiness. "Don't bother coming back," I shouted, "waste of time. This is the new Russia. They don't need old farts like you. Science will do everything. You're like Misha, superfluous." It was a vain and bloated sun and I hated it for its snooping, sat up there in the trees, flaunting its roseate arse like an ape.

  I hated it for not being Lizochka.

  Kobi came out from the bushes and joined me: stood at my side nervously whisking his sidelong eyes. He was better when the enemy was unambiguous.

  We were still wearing our long snow capes. They were cumbersome when the proceedings were on foot.

  The o'clock was at that point in a winter's afternoon when the true force of the gathering frost becomes perceptible. I could feel the bite of it on my cheek. The air had taken a glaze of light mauve from the sun—very light, the colour when winter glow is set in frost.

  We were at the end of the archery lawn, walking up it towards the house and the tea-terrace, which was slowly disclosing itself to us. We could not have been more exposed. A machine-gunner up in the attic would have diced us for stew within seconds. Yet we halted. As one, without exchanging a word, we halted and stared at the section of the terrace that had just come
into view.

  There was the cannon, the greenish ceremonial falconetto that had been fired by Louis to celebrate the wedding of Lizochka and myself. And there was my godfather Mikhail Lvovich Baklushin, the ancientest friend of my family, the noblest man in the world.

  Kobi, who saw it all first, looked away, looked down at his feet. Even Kobi did that. Then it was my turn. I couldn't hold my gaze. My blood went into reverse. Bending, I shot a tawny stream of vomit into the snow.

  We have obligations of reticence to our especial friends: non-prying pacts. We succour them, apply comfort when they're distressed, and restore their self-confidence after humiliation. This general office we perform most willingly on account of friendship. We do it without poking around or spying. Between friends there is an easy privacy since so much has already been disclosed. In the same vein we are guilty of disrespect if, in describing the manner of their death, we show them as they would not have wished to be shown to strangers.

  But there are times when we must say shit to our obligations simply because the civilisation to which they belong has ceased to exist. Also because it cannot be restored until the possibilities of barbarism have been displayed in their full bestiality.

  The properties of revenge are as numerous and varied as those of love. Upon the terrace there was an exhibition of them.

  Its mildest form was a pile of Misha's clothes. Its most extreme was Misha, naked except for his waistcoat. The Jew pushed out of the forest for me to kill had been practice, playing scales, call it what you will—perhaps even an act of clemency now that we were introduced to the full range of Glebov's filth; of his bitterness; of the prices on the board in Utopia.

  Memory must be one's handmaiden, not an enemy. I write of the way in which we found them, both the dead and the single living person.

  Seventy

  Misha had been stripped, or forced to undress himself, stuffed back into his green and gold brocade waistcoat as if he were an organ-grinder's monkey, and roped to the mouth of his own cannon—navel to the hole, stretched down the barrel to face his torturers. He would have had to take their jokes and taunts and watch the soldiers having make-believe stabs of the lighted match at the vent. Covering their ears, jumping at the imagined roar of the cannon, shading their eyes to mark the fall of shot, breaking their ribs with laughter. Words would have passed between them as the metal grew ever colder against his flesh and the soldiers cocked their heads and giggled into his terrified eyes, whispering, We'll soon warm you up, Excellency. I hoped that he'd snarled at them and not known terror. But in my heart I knew he was too human.