White Blood

by James Fleming

  Kobi rained kicks on him. I thought he was going to pass out. Bending over Glebov I said, "I know what you did to her, you don't need to tell me. But it wasn't you who killed her. I did that. I, Charlie Doig, her husband."

  He started up. Eyes suddenly hard, testing me for the truth.

  "I shot her in the temple." I took my Luger from the holster and jammed it into his head. "There, at the nervous place."

  He said nothing: continued to stare up at me with shrinking pupils.

  "So who was the coward and who was brave, Glebov? It was my Lizochka who had the courage. How many women would ask to be shot? Your Sonja bitch, she howled for her life. On her knees, all ugly and blotchy. I heard it from the police."

  His tongue, a thing of wet pink, dabbled round his lips.

  "For Lizochka I fired from a distance so as not to mark her skin with the blast. But for you ..."

  "Do it, do it quickly," he whispered.

  ". . . for you there will be no shot." I laughed. "Why should I be merciful?"

  I walked to the horses and got out my razor. Flicked open the blade and ran my thumb across it. I ordered Kobi to tie Glebov to the tree and to put a second rope under his chin.

  He turned off the paraffin. Tea could wait.

  "Strangle him a bit?" he said, tensioning the rope with a stick.

  Glebov's head was against the tree, his jaw tilted and his throat taut. His eyes were closed.

  I said, "Praying?"

  "There is no God."

  "You'll need one"—and I put my forefinger on the edge of his eyelid, where the lashes started.

  He opened his other eye. "What are you going to do?"

  "Cut off your eyelids." I pulled at the skin, drawing it out to consider the angles next to his nose.

  "Blind me instead. Anything but piece by piece. Blind me, Doig, and then let us forgive each other. That's how true men should behave. It's not our fault we commit these crimes. We're driven to them. It's the fault of the times we live in."

  This was such typical Russian humbug from a man on the brink of the pit that I bent down with my hands on my knees and stuck my face into his. I laughed outright at him. "Ha ha ha, no-God Glebov is now of a mind to seek forgiveness. Ha ha ha. The rapist repents. So how would that leave things between us? Should I expect my Lizochka to shout down from heaven: Prokhor Fyodorovich, because you repent I forgive you for what you did to me ... in fact, you may do it again ... do anything you want so long as you repent—is that how my wife should be thinking? Ought I to be kissing you and calling you brother, is that what you mean?"

  "I never talked of repentance. That was your idea."

  "So what's forgiveness if it's not to involve repentance?"

  "Quits, that's what forgiveness is. You blind me in one eye— quits."

  "One?"

  "It was Blyzov who tortured her. Let him bear half the price."

  "You think one eye sufficient for what you did to my wife?"

  "It happens to the women of Russia every day, especially in the cities. Women are weaker. No one can say that's untrue. However ... in view of what Blyzov did . . . Come, Doig, you can see what my men have done to me. I'm helpless. Let's get on with it. I forgive you in advance."

  "Keep your tricky words for God, not me. Yes, God, whom you say is nowhere. See if He's around when you need him." I'd started to shout. All his talk about forgiveness was revolting to me. I was shouting, and spitting into his race, which was Diotcny and had hair coming up in clumps like a sprouting potato. "If He's out then try the Devil. They're the same to you."

  He said, "I won't recoil. I'll make it easy for you. If I could just have something to bite on . . ."

  He was a cunning bastard. Bringing in the idea of forgiveness was his first ploy. It made me mad with rage—but it lodged the seed. It gained him a little tempo. It was like someone saying, Have another glass of tea. You know you don't want one but a few moments later you begin to think about it: perhaps I will, after all . . . You see his game? Anyway. Then saying he wouldn't flinch—that was his second trick. That this murderer and rapist could offer to be my assistant—I was astounded. He wouldn't recoil! I'd work my razor into the corner of his eye, just beside his nose, which is not easily done, slice the skin between the eyeball and the bone—and he wouldn't even twitch! Not a murmur! He'd probably expect me to say, Thank you so very much, Mister Glebov, you've been an ideal patient. He'd worked it so that in the end it was I who'd be in his debt . . . There he was half frozen to death, with a smashed leg, on the point of being condemned to continuous wakefulness until he grew new eyelids, if he ever would, and he came out with a remark like that. It took my breath away.

  I straightened up. The razor was still open in my hand. I looked at it, I looked at Glebov. The image reached me of his two pallid triangles of skin lying on the flat of my palm. I could see them, the lashes still trembling. Were they trying to do something, get rid of a loose hair or a spit of melting snowflake? At what stage would life depart completely? Would they attempt a final blink? Would I go on feeling this tiny fumbling on my skin, as of two white grubs, for the remainder of my life?

  That was the idea I had as I stood over him. It defeated me. I stayed my hand.

  Kobi was disgusted. It was the duty of the weaker man to provide a spectacle. They'd been invented for the purpose. "What makes you so soft, Doig?" he yelled, kicking Glebov on the point of his hip. "This is the second time. Remember in the house, when we were looking for your woman?"

  I snapped my razor shut. "Not in cold blood."

  Kobi said petulantly, "It doesn't have to be his eyelids." In his annoyance he slashed in half the rope holding Glebov, so ruining it.

  "He'd only have fainted," I said. "So why do it?"

  "It'd have been good to watch. Then I'd have shown him his face in a mirror."

  "Why?"

  "Show him what a woman would see."

  I looked at Glebov stretching and manoeuvring his neck. His blue eyes regarded me superciliously: I'd proved weak. But he said nothing, which was wise.

  He passed out as we settled him on the packhorse—we had to rope his broken leg to his good one beneath the animal's belly. But Kobi brought him round.

  In the afternoon we reached the Dniepr. It still had a good flood from the earlier thaw and was free of ice. The ferry wasn't much more than a floating platform with a wooden rail round it. I suppose it had a vague bow and stern. Four men with sweeps operated it—a family arrangement. We could have hidden nothing from eyes like theirs. Seeing the direction of their thoughts I pointed at Glebov's legs: "He tried something on us." Then they became respectful. Their head man struck up a conversation and named to me the regiments whose retreat was thronging the highway: 102nd Vyatski, Krasnostavski and so on. Their tribe occupied an entire village that he pointed out to us, on a promontory a little way above the landing place. Because of their monopoly over the ferry, the menfolk were able to select whatever woman they fancied from the surrounding villages.

  We chose not to dismount and were shipped across sitting like conquistadores. It took forty minutes. We paid with Glebov's money from out of his boot—fifty roubles for us all: they were in a position to squeeze the traffic.

  The railway line was about a mile to the west of the river. We camped near it. I wanted to get an idea of the trains that were moving.

  Another mile over was the Moscow road. It was clogged with peasants pushing handcarts or tugging at their ruined cattle, with deserting soldiers, with dingy canvas two-wheeled hospital wagons, with curs, thieves, children and shuffling old babushkas. Every age, nationality and degree of wretchedness was on display.

  The noise they made from afar was a sullen, shapeless roar, the noise of thousands of frightened people on the move. But when I went closer I couldn't understand where it was coming from since no one was speaking, except to curse. They were too exhausted, too demoralised, too near the point of giving up and dying. It must have been the sound of their movement along the r
oad, of wooden wheels churning through mud, of despair and their inner lamentations.

  On my return to camp I said to Glebov, "That's where you should be, in a Red Cross dvukolka," referring to the hospital wagons. "I'll find one for officers tomorrow. They'll straighten out your leg for you."

  Seventy-nine

  He survived the night. One could say no more. We took him to the highway where we stood back among trees so as not to draw attention to our horses, which were still in good fettle. (Animals such as ours were the equivalent of ready money.) Soon a convoy of ten Red Cross carts came along. Beside the first one a giant of a man in a greatcoat and officer's cap was levering himself along on crutches at a good rate. When his coat flopped back I saw he'd had his left leg amputated halfway up his thigh.

  We dragged Glebov over to the giant, his legs trailing. At first he tried to scumble along on his good leg but Kobi kicked it away every time. I asked the giant if it was an officers' wagon. He said they all were. These days officers had to stick together. I showed him my Tsarist travelling papers—holding them privily between us. I rolled my eyes towards Glebov. "It's not a hotel," the giant said.

  He hopped round to the back with me. We rolled up the canvas and looked in. It was like a mass grave, all the bent, dishevelled, torn limbs. The smell of shit and rotting flesh was indescribable. But eyes were glinting in the grey light and after a bit I saw there was an order to the bodies.

  "Room for another, boys?" my friend asked.

  The grumbles being subdued, Kobi and I each took an end of Glebov and swung him over the backboard.

  Kobi flipped down the canvas and addressed the ties. I said to the giant, "He's a bolshevik."

  "Tickle him up, then?"

  "Slowly."

  He put his head through the gap between the canvas and its supporting pole and spoke into the hellhole. Turning to me with a grin, "They say they'll need to interrogate him before they feel entitled to take any further steps."

  Swinging himself round the cart to his old position beside the driver's seat, he pointed to our horses with his crutch: "Those yours? Must be. You're too clean to have come here on foot."

  Kobi went to fetch them. There was only Glebov to keep us there.

  The man opened a conversation. "Bravo your catching that fellow! The fate they dish out to us officers,"—he ringed his lips and puffed out a cloud of hatred—"it doesn't bear thinking about. I suppose I've been lucky—sliced in two for a noble purpose, that of helping our country. I'm a big man . . . What's your name? Doig, that's a funny one. Thought there was something in your accent . . . The nurse told me afterwards about getting my leg to the dump. It kept slipping off her shoulder. She felt like a butcher carrying a side of pig. In the end she had to call a friend. They bent my leg at the knee, tied it up with string and wheeled it away in a barrow. Life's droll! None of us expect to end up where we do. Your fellow—you yourself—your man here—and look at me! Consider my life for a moment, sir . . . Do you have the time? I won't be technical. It was like this. Floor by floor, room by room, my widowed father came down in the world until he had to sell the house of his parents, its garden and its orchard. At that time I was halfway between boy and man. He took me to live in an old summerhouse down by the river. It was only one floor and we thought we could go no lower. But the mists got into his bones. He fell gravely ill. To pay the doctor he had to surrender one of his cow meadows. All he had grass left for was one milking cow with a tousled topknot between its horns that he'd named Brisket.

  "She was his mistress. That's not a lie, sir, Brisket was by then the only woman in his life. She was warm and large and indolent and her milk bubbled like champagne. She loved him as he loved her, and would produce cavernous gurgles from her stomach and flash her eyes and toss mouthfuls of grass in the air when she saw him coming. Then she died of bloat. It was the truest form of tragedy for my father. Without Brisket he couldn't afford to keep me. He sent me off to be a sailor. The only book he ever read to me was about the sea, and I loved it, that was how that happened.

  "Imagine it, I was once a sailor! And now I'm a one-legged soldier—a cripple, to be sure. By the end of the week I may be dead. Who knows except for Him, and He's busy these days. Back into the pack I'll go for shuffling ... I tell you, Doig, the whole business is a drollery. It's the only way to consider it unless you want to live like a vegetable or in a shoebox . . . Hey, there's your fellow starting to sing . . . Go and have a peek— I'll hold your horses for you."

  We went to the back of the wagon. I wanted to be sure that Glebov was paying his dues. I wanted to see him properly suffering and for him to see me watching, so that he understood all the connections.

  The officers had him naked on the straw-covered bed of the cart. Which was just, for they had him like he'd had my wife. Sprawled round him with their slings and splints, picking and prodding at him, all in this thick sweet gangrenous fug, they were discussing what to stick up him—castration of course— fingernails—humiliation and pain—his grating leg bone—the order of proceeding—how to make it last—how to prevent him becoming unconscious.

  "What's the best stimulant in your opinion?" an officer asked me.

  I smiled on him, and on Glebov, to whom I said, "You should have settled for eyelids."

  "Eyelids!" exclaimed that officer as if making a medical discovery.

  Glebov was perfectly aware what was going on. He rolled his eyes towards me, then the whole of his face, pallid and hairy. Straw got shucked up beneath his cheek.

  I said, "You'll remember Elizaveta Doig."

  "My cause will give me strength." Even then there was pride in those fanatical blue eyes.

  "Anything else to say?"

  "You tell them."

  I waved on the officers to get busy. A second one, a fellow with a bandaged skull, called out to me hoarsely, "Bring us another fifty like this one, friend." I said for them to shout to me when Glebov began to beg.

  Kobi said to them, Did they need any help with Glebov, odd jobs and the like—and climbed in before anyone could refuse. I went back to see my friend the giant.

  But one horse only was there—our packhorse. And one man, the carter, with his puckered drooling idiot's grin.

  "What have you done with them, shitsucker?" I shouted.

  He pointed up the road with his stubby whip, direction Moscow, which is where the column was heading.

  Together we stared along that dull, drab coil of humanity. Then he turned his head towards me to gauge my harshness and simultaneously to stroke me, so to say, in order to lessen the blow.

  Spittle was running from the corners of his mouth down into his beard. I could see the droplets creeping around in it like lice. "Most sweetly he spoke, your honour . . . most handsomely considering his shortened leg—'Shall I go to my grave like a prince or like an earthworm?' I said, 'Like a prince, of course, Excellency' He said, 'Cup your hands under my last good leg, then, and let the glory belong to the swift.' What else could I do, your honour? A poet!"

  "What do you mean, do," I shouted. "You could have told him to go to hell. A man with one leg—a cripple—you let him ride off?"

  "But we must honour our poets, your honour. It's the only school learning I ever had."

  "What's wrong with shouting? Screaming?"

  "Whatever would I have shouted . . . ? Two good horses as well," he said reflectively.

  "It's late to be saying that," said Kobi at my side. The three of us gazed up the column of refugees.

  Already my friend was a quarter of mile away, lopsided in the saddle but riding furiously, with Kobi's horse tagging on at the end of a rein. The scarlet band of his officer's cap stood out boldly. I wondered how he hadn't been pulled to the ground and knifed. He seemed oblivious to the danger. I could see him hustling his animals along. (The animals of a man in Popovka, then mine and now the giant's.) I could hear him shouting to people to clear a way for him. The god that protects lunatics and drunkards had him under his wing. What a din he was m
aking! Ordering them about as if he was a general! Yet they willingly let him through. They could see he was one-legged, that his balance on the horse was precarious. They must have sensed his adventure and smelt the fire in his soul.

  "Zhivo! Look lively now!" a woman screeched. "To the Kremlin, then, golubchik!” meaning "my precious dove."

  These wretched people were honouring him. Out of nowhere he'd appeared, this huge lurching figure. They were showering him with the tatters of their hopes and their dreams—he'd become their child, their errant son off to conquer the capital. To ride one-legged into Moscow! Such a thing!

  He was at an angle, his cap was at an angle, his whole world was at an angle of his own making.

  The highway turned—and dipped. He disappeared, and our horses also.

  Eighty

  I said to Kobi, who didn't understand my moderation, "Look at the robber go. We had two good horses and now we're on foot. But that man is riding to victory. He was right. Life's droll, and there's the proof for you."

  And to prove it a second time, in his haste to go tilting the fellow had left us the packhorse on which was all that was valuable: rifles, ammunition, bedding and food.

  Glebov was squealing away. I thought of looking in on him— but then Kobi was beside me, sulky and complaining because he could no longer hold sway from the back of a horse, which is indeed a veritable dominion when everyone else is on the ground. He was stepping disdainfully through the slubby ochreous mud, like a cat.

  I said, "Then leave me. Take one-tenth of my money and quit. You've served me well. Give someone else a chance."

  He would have if he'd still had a horse to ride. But being at the same level as that tide of desperates had unnerved him. He was a man of the steppes, uncomfortable here, and it was obvious. People were eyeing him in a speculative way, asking themselves how an advantage might be had from him.