I raised my gauntleted fist and smote the air. I spoke their names: George Doig, Elizaveta Doig, Nicholas Rykov, Mikhail Baklushin. I saluted them, my mother too.
Then I'd go to Chicago where I'd be freed from memory.
"Hurry," I said to Kobi, "or he'll get out on the railway." Then we drew away to the south of Glebov's route so as to fetch a semicircle and grab him by the neck.
Seventy-six
Night fell and made no difference to us. Beneath a sheet of stars our horses strode implacably through the forest. A time came when I reckoned we'd gone far enough to the west. I made a sign to Kobi and we turned north on a course of convergence. This wasn't admiralty navigation but my instinct alone. When it felt right, we dismounted and went on foot.
Kobi scouted in front while I followed with the horses. If I was right we'd soon cross their line—or meet them head on. I didn't want that. I wanted to lie back a little and play on Glebov's nerves. But first we had to find them. We went very slowly. It would have been better on skis.
Now something good happened to us: our luck turned. Once it's on your side you can do no wrong. If that horse hadn't sneezed, we'd have walked right into them. But it did, on cue, and that's the difference luck makes.
It was down the slope, about four hundred yards away, where the forest was a bit thinner. I couldn't see the horse. The rapist was leaning, smoking, against a tree. It was all we could make of him. He was in a shadow of the moon, in a nicotine dream. Shall we leave him? Kobi's look asked me. I nodded. He handed me his rifle, hauled his shapka well down over his face—slipped away into the night. I bound the muzzles of our horses and waited.
When he returned we mounted and rode back to a dry hollow we'd passed earlier. We didn't unsaddle the horses but sat comfortably on the quilts and ate the slab of cold gruel we'd taken from Misha's porridge drawer and some wrinkled apples from his loft. I fired up Nicholas's little travelling stove and made tea.
I said to Kobi, "So it's possible."
His eyes gleamed. "They're tired men."
"Then yes?"
"Yes. But we need to come in from another angle."
We took it in turns to doze.
By three the moon was well down the sky. The safest course was to take the horses with us in case we had to make a run for it. The easiest was to leave everything where it was and bet the bank on success. That's what I did. I could feel luck circling me— like a dove. Nevertheless I hobbled the horses and tied them to a tree. If they ran away you couldn't have snapped your fingers and got more from the shop, the forest wasn't that sort of place.
We came in at a slant, as Kobi directed. I was carrying our rifles wrapped in a quilt.
"Three sleeping, three as sentries," he whispered.
In front was the ridge above Glebov's camp. To the left was the gully that Kobi had marked. He took the bayonet out of his belt. He kissed it. He gave me a quirky sardonic look. Within twenty paces he was invisible.
Pushing the rifles in front of me, I crawled to the ridge. The tip of a sentry's cigarette glowed. I could smell the coarse tobacco. The glow walked round for a bit. Sat down: disappeared.
Throughout the forest branches were groaning and cracking. The cold was unbelievable, even for Russia. I had my hands deep inside my coat, rammed into my armpits. They were under me as I lay there. It would have taken long seconds to get into a firing position. But I knew the sentry'd be no quicker.
He yawned, lengthily and gustily. These were common soldiers. They were having a good time: plunder, rape and killing. No one was in pursuit. Hadn't they been diligent with their precautions? So why shouldn't they get some sleep? It wasn't the army they were in now.
The moon found a chink among the trees.
He was seated broadside to me, clasping his knees beneath his chin and rocking gently. God I bet he was cold. I got my hands out of my coat and sighted the rifle on him. Easier to maim than kill in that position. He'd be slow to his feet if the balloon went up. He'd probably stand and listen—dither for a few seconds. Like the old Jew's horse. Then I'd shoot him at the sixth thoracic vertebra below the neck.
It was up to Kobi to squirm down that gully, do it and get out unseen. I wanted Glebov to know fear—the fear that turns guts green. Liza had known it as she ran; looked back over her shoulder when she heard the shout and felt its iron shaft. Glebov should know it also. I wanted him to brood upon the corpse he'd find beside him in the morning. His sentries—still in position. No noises, no alarms. But here was a dead man with sixteen inches of bayonet sticking out of his throat.
Then he'd know I was toying with him, that he could have been the body if I'd ordered it.
There's a point, reached very early by some people, at which hatred expressed in word and thought ceases to be a sufficient ointment for the soul. A curse goes only so far before it loses its sheen. Once the plaintiff recognises that the criminal is unmarked by his abuse and admits to wishing for a better result, he's more than halfway to revenge, which should be cruel, elaborate and humiliating in order to assuage at the highest emotional level. Refinements, that's what I'm leading up to. Stabbing Glebov as he slept would not have been revenge but a cheap form of murder. The pinnacle of revenge is to destroy a man before his own eyes.
This is what I was considering as I lay in the snow beneath the groaning trees and the milky arctic sky. I'd lost my wife, I was about to lose my country. I was owed revenge, principal and interest together.
I admired the waning moon. I targeted the sentry's head. I waited for Kobi's return.
If Glebov's camp suddenly exploded with gunfire and shouting, the game was up. I myself was as good as dead. But the alternative . .. Silence was success: silence was revenge slithering down a snow-filled gully. Would fifty years be long enough to dull my appetite for it? Perhaps everything would fade when I reached Chicago. I could find a new woman and grow faithful to the United States. Or the killing of Glebov might satiate me—
The tawny owl hooted to my left. Turning my head I saw Kobi approach like a shadow through the trees. I went backwards down the slope with the rifles. I could read nothing in his sunken eyes. For a moment I was gripped by the awfulness of failure. Then he turned into the moonlight and held out his hand. It was wet and shining, the most perfect blood I ever saw.
Seventy-seven
We slept a little but well. Around dawn we were back in the saddle.
For some time we had before us a defile between two low, wooded hills. It was the obvious route for Glebov. Being down to five fit men, he couldn't spare any to guard his flanks. So he'd rush it, come barrelling through in a bunch. If we had a good position we could take out a couple of them. Disabling the horses was one way. Ditto the men another. But all round dead was the best, apart from Glebov.
Beyond the hills I thought would be the railway. When we got there I found that first came the river, the huge sullen gunmetal grey of the Dniepr. How was Glebov going to do it? It was obvious that he regarded his escort as pawns and intended to finish up alone, on the train, with the entirety of the spoils. How was he going to get to the railway without being stripped and dumped by the ferryman?
What could be on his mind?
We tied the horses and found ourselves a handy place on the forward slope. There was only one decent track in the forest. We were on top of it where it left the trees. In front of us was a substantial boulder, bright with lichen. We fixed on it as a firing mark. The ground was open for another hundred yards beyond. We had ample room to follow through.
I said to Kobi, "Does this remind you of anywhere?"
He smiled grimly.
We wiped our rifle barrels with leaf mould to prevent them glinting and settled behind the bank. Kobi lined up the path's debouchment from the trees. He grunted. "If I was a man reaching that point, I'd pray for wings."
I reminded him not to kill Glebov. We spoke no more.
A Zeppelin was strafing the main road to Moscow, Napoleon's road. What I'd taken in the distance to be
brown ploughed fields was a continuous flow of retreating infantry and refugees. Or fleeing or deserting, however you want to express the fact of people having their lives destroyed. Slowly the Zeppelin cruised northwards, firing as it went. Packets of smoke from the few of our guns that still worked pursued it.
Did the airship have any metallic protection against our shells, or was its gas wrapped only in an onion skin? I pictured Glebov trapped in a stricken Zep: frying and screaming, the fat round his waist forming pustulous black bubbles like the pouches that despatch riders wear.
Ant-like soldiers scattered and regrouped as the bombs fell amongst them.
Glebov wouldn't want to be involved with that rabble. They'd have his plunder off him in seconds. Loot the looters! Indeed. Now the Zep was turning, like a plump, cumbersome louse—
The shot rang out. Close by, from within the forest.
It was exactly like the Jew whom I'd killed that this soldier bolted from the wood. Monstrous boots clubbing the laden horse in its ribs, hands pumping at the reins, a gasping mouth and a wild, scarlet, blown-out face.
The barrel of Kobi's rifle followed him. "Wait!" I laid my hand on top of it so he couldn't see the foresight.
A second shot from within the wood threw the soldier against the horse's neck. He slithered sideways towards the ground. His feet got caught up in the stirrups. He hung there, pulling the saddle over, fingertips brushing the snow. Kobi, baulked and astonished, inched his head higher to see everything more fully.
Two more soldiers rode out of the forest, neither of them Glebov.
The leader flicked the used shell out of his rifle, which he kept at the ready. He had our bayonet slung by a cord across his back. He held the reins in both hands, above the pommel, riding-school style. Toeing the stirrups, heels well down. Talking out of the side of the mouth to the man behind, though with an eye always on the horse standing in the track in front of him. He had the jaunty air of a professional adventurer. But my private opinion was that not for all the undrunk vodka in the world would I have been him, riding in front of an armed man when the question so obviously concerned the spoils of war.
So maybe there was a war throughout Europe, and a civil war starting in Russia. Maybe the present sequence of history was unfavourable to me. Maybe I was witnessing the forging of a new hell. And maybe we should have shot both those soldiers as they rode before us.
But the fact remains that a man and his horse going in unison, stepping out as if in love with each other, is a spectacle so sweet that it has forever been gazed upon as if it were treasure. Which it is, for a woman and a horse are equal in the estimation of man and to witness either on their honeymoon with him is to truly understand the romance of history. He had this little bay mare gripped between his legs, the pair of them moving with a beautiful sense of balance. He was haranguing the man behind him, slicing the air with his gesticulations. His horse, listening to him and feeling his movements, was batting her silken ears in admiration. They were going at a small bouncing trot, snappily, in complete and trusting harmony.
He said over his shoulder in his rough voice, "No, they're mine. We've talked about it enough. You agreed. I refuse to discuss the whole business again. Be content with the . . ."
My eyes were fixed on him. Should I have this fellow executed while he was riding so tenderly? The question engaged me. I wanted to hear what their quarrel concerned. But the best moments for killing him were going fast. I said to Kobi—
I said nothing to Kobi. As I opened my mouth the second soldier shot his friend. The bullet struck him in the base of the spine: the words ceased. Spasming he arched his back—clutched at his waist and stiffly, like a milk churn, toppled from the saddle. His shapka came off as he rolled down the slope. He had thick grey hair. He stopped himself, hands clutching at the snowy tussocks. Lips clenched, an expression on his face of manic hatred, he began to haul himself up on his elbows. His back was broken. He dug in his elbows one after the other, his useless splayed-out legs dragging through the snow. Another shot finished him off.
"No, let them do our work for us." I kept my hand over the barrel of Kobi's rifle.
The second man went quickly through the other's pockets. He found what he was after, threw open his coat, jerkin and shirt, pulled up an undergarment and stowed the small package in a belt next to the skin. He tried on the man's greatcoat, glancing over his shoulder at its length behind him. He rolled up his own coat and rammed it into a saddle bag.
The man who'd been killed first had kicked off the stirrups in his death struggle and was on the ground. The soldier went through his pockets as well. He took both their rifles and ammunition and lashed the stirrups of the two captured horses over their saddles. Holding their reins he looked back into the forest. Then he rode past us and out of our sight as fast as he could. He'd have galloped if the track hadn't been so rough.
"We could have shot him and still got Glebov," Kobi said.
"We might have scared him off."
"He's not coming out this way. They've quarrelled. Shared the stuff and split up. Last night frightened them."
"Anyway that's three more. Four including the man last night. Leaving two of them, one being Glebov, plus the wounded man."
"Forget him. They'll have tapped him on the head. Just Glebov and a friend. But where, Doig?"
"Back."
We rose stiffly to our feet. We checked our rifles for snow and dirt. Kobi said, "I'm going down to get the bayonet back. I like having it."
From behind us, up the hillside, there was a dry cough. Someone wanted to say something. I thought, That mother of all cunts has made a monkey of me again. He won't mess around this time. It'll be a bullet each.
We were standing there right out in the open. He had us covered whatever we did.
I tensed for the shot. I prayed to God it'd be Kobi he went for first. That way I'd have a chance. With lowered eyes I judged the best place to dive over the bank. Then very slowly I started to turn.
Seventy-eight
But it was only a wolf staring down on us, whisking its brindled tail. It moved off into the trees, a glossy mature bitch with swinging dugs.
I couldn't bring myself to look at Kobi. Nor did he look at me. We acted as if we'd known all along it was a wolf.
Abruptly he seized me by the arm and exclaimed, "The horses!"
It was like cats that we went up that hill. Any moment we expected to hear their scream of terror. They could break loose— disappear for good into the vastness of the forest. What then? What could we possibly accomplish on foot?
They'd scented the wolf and were twitchy as hell: stamping and rolling their eyes and rubbing their heads against their forelegs, trying to get their muzzles off. We croodled them and let them smell us all over. They quieted down. We gave them a nosebag with a little hay each. We had something to eat ourselves, some more of Misha's cold porridge. Then we mounted and began a back-cast to Glebov's camp.
I was quite clear about most of what had happened. The soldiers had pushed out shit when they awoke and discovered that someone had crawled through the sentries, bayonetted a sleeping man in their midst and crawled out again. A bayonet haft and a pool of ice-white blood are not cheering sights at dawn. So they'd divided the spoils and taken off into the forest. Every man for himself, true brotherhood.
But Glebov—had they deposed their fat little king? Slit his throat before I could?
There was a lesson in all this hide-and-seek with Glebov and I'd learned it already: getting the answer wrong was a sentence of death.
We therefore circled the camp at a safe distance and examined spoor for half the day. At length Kobi was willing to swear that early in the morning five men had left on horseback with four packhorses and two on a loose rein. That left no horses for the last two men. One had been the man stabbed by Kobi. The other should be Glebov.
Not inevitably, not like night following day. But it was probable. I was willing to bet on it. We started to close in.
&
nbsp; He was propped against a tree. Dead, I thought from a distance. Eyes shut, his head at an angle. But closer up I saw there was colour in his pig-bristled face, and when Kobi kicked the sole of his boot he screamed.
"They've broken his legs," I said.
"Wait." Very deliberately Kobi kicked each boot in turn. Again Glebov screamed. But Kobi shouted at him, "Liar," and seizing one boot by toe and heel twisted it back and forth to show me the leg was a good one. "It would have been cheating," Kobi said to me humorously.
"Why? What did you have?" Kobi kicking Glebov freely, "What was it they wanted from you, scum?"
Glebov screamed terribly. He tossed his head and banged it against the tree. His pale eyes looked first at Kobi and then me. "The pearls. The pearls that were bought with the blood of my countrymen and sported by the breeding sows of your family."
I admired his spunk. For sure he knew what was coming to him. I told Kobi to get out our travelling stove and make tea. At last we'd got him, alone in the forest.
Glebov said, "Are you going to cut me?"
"No fuck could be worth what I'm going to do to you."
"I did it for the sake of history."
"Of course."
He lay slumped, watching me, blinking slowly.
"Which one took the pearls?" Kobi asked. "The man with grey hair, who sat his horse well?"
Glebov nodded. "Blyzov."
"He's dead. He can't help you."
I said to Glebov, "There's no loophole."
"Nor is there a God. So I shall suffer only once, here on earth, at your hands. God is tripe. Only mankind is worth suffering for."
"What you did to my wife was an abomination both to mankind and to God. It'll take you a long time to die."
"It was for the sake of Sonja, whose execution your class ordered, that I had your woman. It was for my country that I authorised that syphilitic rabble to go after me. Such white aristocratic skin, unblemished by want or hardship. Being used solely for fucking, thus to perpetuate your class. It was satisfying to destroy such perfection, especially to the soldier called Blyzov. It was he who killed Potocki, for having had him flogged for a crime he didn't commit. The regimental stripes on her legs— the final touch. It was Blyzov who thought of it. That was afterwards. But it was I who had her first—"
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