Erast Fandorin 04 - The Death of Achilles

by Boris Akunin

  When Achimas was seven years old, nine-year-old Melhisedek, the blacksmith’s son, deliberately splashed ink on his schoolbook. Achimas tripped him up and punched him on the ear. Melhisedek ran off, crying, to complain.

  The conversation with his father was long and painful. Pelef’s eyes, as pale and bright as his son’s, became angry and sad. Then Achimas had to spend the whole evening on his knees, reading psalms. But his thoughts were directed to his mother’s God, not his father’s. The boy prayed for his white eyes to be made black like his mother’s and her half brother Chasan’s. Achimas had never seen his uncle Chasan, but he knew that he was strong, brave, and lucky and he never forgave his enemies. His uncle traveled the secret mountain paths, bringing shaggy carpets from Persia and bales of tobacco from Turkey, and ferrying weapons in the opposite direction, out across the border. Achimas often thought about Chasan. He imagined him sitting in the saddle, surveying the slope of a ravine with his sharp eyes to see if border guards were waiting in hiding to ambush him. Chasan was wearing a tall shaggy fur hat and a felt cloak, and behind his shoulder he had a rifle with an ornamental stock.

  * * *

  TWO

  Achimas spent the day when he reached the age of ten locked in the woodshed from early in the morning. It was his own fault — his mother had secretly given him a small but genuine dagger with a polished blade and a horn handle and told him to hide it, but Achimas had been too impatient; he had run into the yard to try the keenness of the blade and was discovered by his father. Pelef asked where the weapon had come from, and when he realized that there would be no answer, he decreed that his son must be punished.

  Achimas spent half the day in the shed. He felt wretched because his dagger had been taken away and, on top of it all, he was bored. But after midday, when he had also begun to feel very hungry, he suddenly heard shooting and screaming.

  The Abrek Magoma and four of his friends had attacked the soldiers, who were washing their shirts in the stream, because it was their day for washing. The bandits fired a volley from the bushes, killing two soldiers and wounding two more. The other soldiers tried to run to the blockhouse, but the Abreks mounted their steeds and cut them all down with their swords. The sergeant major, who had not gone to the stream, locked himself in the strong log house with the small, narrow windows and fired out with his rifle. Taking aim in advance, Magoma waited for the Russian to reload and show himself at the loophole again and shot a heavy, round bullet straight into the sergeant major’s forehead.

  Achimas did not see any of this. But with his eyes pressed to a crack between the boards of the shed, he did see a man with a beard and one eye walk into the yard, wearing a shaggy white fur hat and carrying a long rifle in his hand (it was Magoma himself). The one-eyed man stopped in front of Achimas’s parents, who had come running out into the yard, and said something to them — Achimas could not make out what it was. Then the man put one hand on his mother’s shoulder and the other under her chin and lifted her face up. Pelef stood there with his lion’s head lowered, moving his lips. Achimas realized that he was praying. Sarah-Fatima did not pray, she bared her teeth and scratched the one- eyed man’s face.

  A woman must not touch a man’s face, and therefore Magoma wiped the blood from his cheek and killed the infidel woman with a blow of his fist to her temple. Then he killed her husband, too, because after this he could not leave him alive. He had to kill all the other inhabitants of the village as well — evidently that was what fate had intended for this day.

  The Abreks drove away the cattle, heaped all the useful and valuable items into two carts, set fire to the four corners of the village, and rode away.

  While the Chechens were killing the villagers, Achimas sat quietly in the shed. He did not want them to kill him as well. But when the hammering of hooves and squeaking of wheels had disappeared in the direction of the Karamyk Pass, the boy broke out a board with his shoulder and climbed out into the yard. It was impossible to stay in the shed in any case — the back wall had begun to burn, and gray smoke was already creeping in through the cracks.

  His mother was lying on her back. Achimas squatted down and touched the blue spot between her eye and her ear. His mother looked as if she were alive, but instead of looking at Achimas, she was looking at the sky — it had become more important for Sarah-Fatima than her son. But of course — that was where her God lived. Achimas leaned down over his father, but his father’s eyes were closed and his white beard had turned completely red. The boy ran his fingers over it, and they were stained red, too.

  Achimas went into all the farmyards in the village. There were dead men, women, and children lying everywhere. Achimas knew them very well, but they no longer recognized him. The people he had known were not really there anymore. He was alone now. Achimas asked first one God and then the other what he should do. But although he waited, he heard no answer.

  Everything was burning. The prayer house, which was also the school, gave a rumble and shot a cloud of smoke up into the air — the roof had collapsed.

  Achimas looked around him. Mountains, sky, burning earth, and not a single living soul. And at that moment he realized that this was the way things would always be from now on. He was alone and he had to decide for himself whether to stay or to go, live or die.

  He listened carefully to his heart, breathed in the smell of burning, and ran to the road that led first upward, into the mountain plateau, and then downward, into the large valley.

  Achimas walked for the rest of the day and the whole night. At dawn he collapsed at the side of the road. He felt very hungry, but even more sleepy, and he fell asleep. He was awakened by hunger. The sun was hanging in the very center of the sky. He walked on and in the early evening came to a large Cossack village.

  At the edge of the village there were long beds of cucumbers. Before this Achimas would never even have thought of taking someone else’s property, because his father’s God had said, “Thou shalt not steal,” but now he had no father and no God, either, and he sank down onto his hands and knees and began greedily devouring the plump, pimply green fruits. The earth crunched in his teeth and he did not hear the owner, a massive Cossack in soft boots, come stealing up behind him. He grabbed Achimas by the scruff of the neck and lashed him several times with his whip, repeating: “Don’t steal, don’t steal.” The boy did not cry and he did not beg for mercy; he just looked up with his white wolf’s eyes. This drove the owner into a fury and he set about thrashing the wolf cub as hard as he could — until the boy puked up a green mess of cucumbers. Then the Cossack took Achimas by the ear, dragged him out into the road, and gave him a kick to start him on his way.

  As he walked along Achimas thought that although his father was dead, his God was still alive, and his God’s laws were still alive, too. His back and shoulders were on fire, but the fire consuming everything inside him was worse.

  By a narrow, fast-running stream Achimas came across a big boy about fourteen years old. The young Cossack was carrying a loaf of brown bread and a crock of milk.

  “Give me that,” said Achimas and grabbed the bread out of his hand.

  The big boy put his crock down on the ground and punched him in the nose. Stars appeared in front of Achimas’s eyes and he fell down, then the big boy — he was stronger — sat on top of him and began punching him on the head. Achimas picked up a stone from the ground and hit the young Cossack above his eye. The older boy rolled away, covered his face with his hands, and began whimpering. Achimas lifted up the stone to hit him again, but then he remembered that God’s law said: “Thou shalt not kill” — and he stopped himself. The crock had been knocked over during the fight and the milk had been spilled, but Achimas was left with the bread, and that was enough. He walked on along the road and ate and ate and ate, until he had eaten it all to the very last crumb.

  He ought not to have listened to God; he ought to have killed the boy. Achimas realized this later, when it was twilight, and he was overtaken by two rider
s on a horse. One was wearing a peaked cap with a blue band and the young Cossack was sitting behind him, with his face bruised and swollen.

  “There he is, Uncle Kondrat!” the young Cossack shouted. “There he is, the murderer!”

  That night Achimas sat in a cold cell and listened to the Cossack sergeant Kondrat and the police constable Kovalchuk deciding his fate. Achimas had not said a word to them, although they had tried to find out who he was and where he came from by twisting his ear and slapping his cheeks. Eventually they had decided the boy must be a deaf-mute and left him in peace.

  “What can we do with him, Kondrat Panteleich?” asked the constable. He was sitting with his back to Achimas and eating something, washing it down with some liquid from a jug. “We can’t take him into town, surely? Perhaps we should just keep him here until morning and throw him out on his ear?”

  “I’ll throw you out on your ear,” replied the sergeant, who was sitting facing him and writing in a book with a goose-quill pen. “He almost broke the ataman’s son’s head open. Kizlyar’s the place for him, the animal, in prison.”

  “But it’s a shame to put him in prison, the way they treat little lads in there! You know yourself, Kondrat Panteleich.”

  “There’s nowhere else to put him,” the sergeant replied sternly. “We don’t have any orphanages around here.”

  “I heard that the nuns in Skyrovsk take in orphans.”

  “Only girl orphans. Put him in prison, Kovalchuk, put him in prison. You can take him away first thing in the morning. I’ll just sort out the papers.”

  But when morning came Achimas was already far away. After the sergeant left and the constable lay down to sleep and began snoring, Achimas pulled himself up to the window, squeezed between two thick bars, and jumped down onto the soft earth.

  He had heard about Skyrovsk before — it was forty versts away in the direction of the sunset.

  It turned out that God did not exist after all.

  * * *

  THREE

  Achimas arrived at the Skyrovsk Convent Orphanage dressed as a little girl — he had stolen a cotton-print dress and a shawl from a washing line. He told the mother superior, who had to be addressed as ‘Mother Pelagia,’ that he was Lia Welde, a refugee from the village of Neueswelt, which had been devastated by mountain bandits. Welde was his real surname, and Lia was the name of his second cousin, another Welde, a horrid little girl with freckles and a squeaky voice. The last time Achimas has seen her she was lying flat on her back with her face split in two.

  Mother Pelagia stroked the little German girl’s cropped white hair and asked: “Will you take the Orthodox faith?”

  And so Achimas became Russian, because now he knew for certain that God did not exist and prayers were nonsense, which meant that the Russian faith was no worse than his father’s.

  He liked it at the orphanage. They were fed twice a day and they slept in real beds. Only they prayed a lot and his feet kept getting tangled in the hem of his skirt.

  On the second day a girl with a thin face and big green eyes came up to Achimas. Her name was Evgenia and her parents had also been killed by bandits, only a long time ago, last autumn. “What clear eyes you have, Lia. Like water,” she said. Achimas was surprised — people usually found his excessively pale eyes unpleasant. When the sergeant was beating him, he kept repeating over and over again, “White-eyed Finnish scum.”

  The girl Evgenia followed Achimas everywhere. Wherever he went, she went. On the fourth day, she caught Achimas with the hem of his dress pulled up, urinating behind the shed.

  So now he would have to run away again, only he didn’t know where to go. He decided to wait until they threw him out, but they didn’t throw him out. Evgenia had not told anyone.

  On the sixth day, a Saturday, they had to go to the bathhouse. In the morning Evgenia came up to him and whispered: “Don’t go, say you’ve got your colors.” Achimas didn’t understand. “What colors?” he asked. “It’s when you can’t go to the bathhouse because you’re bleeding and it’s unclean. Some of our girls already have them. Katya and Sonya have,” she explained, naming the two oldest wards of the orphanage. “Mother Pelagia won’t check; she’s too prudish.” Achimas did as she said. The nuns were surprised that it had started so early, but they allowed him not to go to the bathhouse. That evening he told Evgenia: “Next Saturday I’ll go away.” Tears began running down her cheeks. She said: “You’ll need some bread for the road.”

  But Achimas did not have to run way, because the following Friday evening, on the day before the next bath day, his uncle Chasan came to the orphanage. He went to Mother Pelagia and asked if there was a little girl here from the German village that had been burned down by the Abrek Magoma. Chasan said that he wanted to talk to the girl and find out how his sister and his nephew had died. Mother Pelagia summoned Lia Welde to her cell and left them there in order not to hear talk of evil.

  Chasan was nothing at all like Achimas had imagined him. He was fat-cheeked and red-nosed, with a thick black beard and cunning little eyes. Achimas looked at him with hatred, because he looked exactly like the Chechens who had burned down the village of Neueswelt.

  The conversation went badly. The orphan either would not answer questions or answered them in monosyllables and the look in the eyes under those white lashes was stubborn and hostile.

  “They did not find my nephew Achimas,” Chasan said in Russian punctuated with a glottal stutter. “Perhaps Magoma took him away with him?” The little girl shrugged.

  Then Chasan thought for a moment and took a silver coin necklace out of his bag. “A present for you,” he said, holding it up. “Beautiful, all the way from Shemakha. You play with it while I go and ask the mother superior for a night’s lodging. I’ve traveled a long way, I’m tired. I can’t sleep out in the open…”

  He went out, leaving his weapon on the chair. The moment the door closed behind his uncle, Achimas threw the coin necklace aside and pounced on the heavy sword in the black scabbard with silver inlay work. He tugged on the hilt and out slid the bright strip of steel, glinting icily in the light of the lamp. A genuine Gurda sword, thought Achimas, running his finger along the Arabic script.

  There was a quiet creak. Achimas started violently and saw Chasan’s laughing black eyes watching him through the crack of the door.

  “Our blood,” his uncle said in Chechen, baring his white teeth in a smile, “it’s stronger than the German blood. Let us leave this place, Achimas. We’ll spend the night in the mountains. Sleep is sweeter under the open sky.”

  Later, when Skyrovsk was left behind them, beyond the mountain pass, Chasan put his hand on Achimas’s shoulder. “I’ll put you in school to learn, but first I’ll make a man of you. You have to take vengeance on Magoma for your father and mother. This you must do, it is the law.”

  Achimas realized that this was the true law.

  * * *

  FOUR

  They spent the nights wherever they could: in abandoned houses, in roadside inns, with his uncle’s friends, and sometimes out in the forest, wrapped up in their felt cloaks. “A man must know how to find food and water and a path through the mountains,” said Chasan, teaching his nephew his own law. “And he must be able to defend himself and the honor of his family.”

  Achimas did not know what the honor of his family was. But he wanted very much to be able to defend himself and was willing to study from morning till night.

  “Hold your breath and imagine a fine ray of light stretching out of the barrel. Feel for your target with that ray,” Chasan taught him, breathing down the back of his neck and adjusting the position of the boy’s fingers where they clutched the gun stock. “You don’t need strength. A rifle is like a woman or a horse — give it affection and understanding.” Achimas tried to understand his rifle, he listened to its high-strung iron voice, and the metal began droning into his ear: A little more to the right, more, and now fire. “Vai!” said his uncle, clicking his tongue and rolli
ng up his eyes. “You have the eye of an eagle! To hit a bottle at a hundred paces! And that is how Magoma’s head will be shattered!”

  Achimas did not want to fire at the one-eyed man from a hundred paces. He wanted to kill him in the same way he had killed Fatima — with a blow to the temple — or, even better, slit his throat, as Magoma had slit Pelef’s.

  Shooting with a pistol was even easier. “Never take aim,” his uncle told him. “The barrel of the pistol is a continuation of your hand. When you point at something with your finger, you don’t take aim, do you, you just point where you need to. Think of the pistol as your sixth finger.” Achimas pointed the long iron finger at a walnut lying on a tree stump, and the nut shattered in a spray of fine crumbs.

  Chasan did not give his nephew a sword, telling him that his arm and shoulder had to grow more first, but he gave him a dagger on the very first day and told him never to part with it, saying: “When you swim naked in the stream, hang it around your neck.” As time went by, the dagger became a part of Achimas’s body, like a wasp’s sting. He could cut dry twigs for the campfire with it, bleed a deer that he had shot, whittle a fine sliver of wood to pick his teeth after eating the deer meat. When they halted for a rest and he had nothing to do, Achimas would throw his dagger at a tree from a standing, sitting, or prone position. He never wearied of this pastime. At first he could only stick the knife into a pine tree, then into a young beech, then into any branch on the beech.

  “A weapon is good,” said Chasan, “but a man must be able to deal with his enemy even without a weapon: with his fists, feet, teeth, it doesn’t matter what. The important thing is that your heart must be blazing with holy fury; it will protect you against pain, strike terror into your enemy, and bring you victory. Let the blood rush to your head so that the world is shrouded in red mist, and then nothing will matter to you. If you are wounded or killed — you will not even notice. That is what holy fury is.” Achimas did not argue with his uncle, but he did not agree with him. He did not want to be wounded or killed. In order to stay alive, you had to see everything, and fury and red mist were no use for that. The boy knew that he could manage without them.