They told me that as far as they knew it was another valley, similar to this but larger. The hills looked steeper and were wooded. It would be a difficult climb for us unless there was a road. I got out the map. There was a road indicated. I pointed to it. One of the old men nodded. Yes, he thought that road was still there, for it led, eventually, to this village. He showed me where the path was. It was rutted where, some time earlier, heavy vehicles had been driven along it. It disappeared into dark, green, twittering jungle. All the jungle meant to me now was mosquitoes and a certain amount of cover from attacking planes.
Careless of leeches and insects, the best part of the division was taking the chance of a bath in the stream which fed the paddy-fields. I could not bring myself to strip in the company of these healthy men. I decided to remain dirty until I had the chance of some sort of privacy.
`I want the men to rest,' said Savitsky. `Have you any objection to our camping here for the rest of today and tonight?'
`It's a good idea,' I said. I sought out a hut, evicted the occupants, and went almost immediately to sleep.
In the morning I was awakened by a trooper who brought me a metal mug full of the most delicately scented tea. I was astonished and accepted it with some amusement. `There's loads of it here,' he said. `It's all they've got!'
I sipped the tea. I was still in my uniform, with the burka on the ground beneath me and my leather jacket folded for a pillow. The hut was completely bare. I was used to noticing a few personal possessions and began to wonder if they had hidden their stuff when they had seen us coming. Then I remembered that they were from the towns and had been brought here forcibly. Perhaps now, I thought, the war would pass them by and they would know peace, even happiness, for a bit. I was scratching my ear and stretching when Savitsky came in, looking grim. `We've found a damned burial ground,' he said. `Hundreds of bodies in a pit. I think they must be the original inhabitants. And one or two soldiersat least, they were in uniform.'
`You want me to ask what they are?'
`No! I just want to get away. God knows what they've been doing to one another. They're a filthy race. All grovelling and secret killing. They've no guts.'
`No soldiers, either,' I said. `Not really. They've been preyed on by bandits for centuries. Bandits are pretty nearly the only sort of soldiers they've ever known. So the ones who want to be soldiers emulate them. Those who don't want to be soldiers treat the ones who do as they've always treated bandits. They are conciliatory until they get a chance to turn the tables.'
He was impressed by this. He rubbed at a freshly-shaven chin. He looked years younger, though he still had the monumental appearance of a god. `Thieves, you mean. They have the mentality of thieves, their soldiers?'
'Aren't the Cossacks thieves?'
`That's foraging.' He was not angry. Very little I said could ever anger him because he had no respect for my opinions. I was the necessary political officer, his only link with the higher, distant authority of the Kremlin, but he did not have to respect my ideas any more than he respected those which came to him from Moscow. What he respected there was the power and the fact that in some way Russia was mystically represented in our leaders. `We leave in ten minutes,' he said.
I noticed that Pavlichenko had polished his boots for him.
BY THAT AFTERNOON, after we had crossed the entire valley on an excellent dirt road through the jungle and had reached the top of the next range of hills, I had a pain in my stomach. Savitsky noticed me holding my hands against my groin and said laconically, `I wish the doctor hadn't been killed. Do you think it's typhus?' Naturally, it was what I had suspected.
`I think it's just the tea and the rice and the other stuff. Maybe mixing with all the dust we've swallowed.' He looked paler than usual. `I've got it, too. So have half the others. Oh, shit!'
It was hard to tell, in that jungle at that time of day, if you had a fever. I decided to put the problem out of my mind as much as possible until sunset when it would become cooler.
The road began to show signs of damage and by the time we were over the hill and looking down on the other side we were confronting scenery if anything more desolate than that which we had passed through on the previous three days. It was a grey desert, scarred by the broken road and bomb-craters. Beyond this and coming towards us was a wall of dark dust; unmistakably an army on the move. Savitsky automatically relaxed in his saddle and turned back to see our men moving slowly up the wooded hill. `I think they must be heading this way.' Savitsky cocked his head to one side. `What's that?'
It was a distant shriek. Then a whole squadron of planes was coming in low. We could see their crudely-painted Khmer Rouge markings, their battered fuselages. The men began to scatter off the road, but the planes ignored us. They went zooming by, seeming to be fleeing rather than attacking. I looked at the sky, but nothing followed them.
We took our field-glasses from their cases and adjusted them. In the dust I saw a mass of barefoot infantry bearing rifles with fixed bayonets. There were also trucks, a few tanks, some private cars, bicycles, motorbikes, ox-carts, hand-carts, civilians with bundles. It was an orgy of defeated soldiers and refugees.
`I think we've missed the action.' Savitsky was furious. `We were beaten to it, eh? And by Australians, probably!'
My impulse to shrug was checked. `Damn!' I said a little weakly.
This caused Savitsky to laugh at me. `You're relieved. Admit it!'
I knew that I dare not share his laughter, lest it become hysterical and turn to tears, so I missed a moment of possible comradeship. `What shall we do?' I asked. `Go round them?'
`It would be easy enough to go through them. Finish them off. It would stop them destroying this valley, at least.' He did not, by his tone, much care.
The men were assembling behind us. Savitsky informed them of the nature of the rabble ahead of us. He put his field-glasses to his eyes again and said to me: `Infantry, too. Quite a lot. Coming on faster.'
I looked. The barefoot soldiers were apparently pushing their way through the refugees to get ahead of them.
`Maybe the planes radioed back,' said Savitsky. `Well, it's something to fight.'
`I think we should go round,' I said. `We should save our strength. We don't know what's waiting for us at Angkor.'
`It's miles away yet.'
`Our instructions were to avoid any conflict we could,' I reminded him.
He sighed. 'This is Satan's own country.' He was about to give the order which would comply with my suggestion when, from the direction of Angkor Wat, the sky burst into white fire. The horses reared and whin- neyed. Some of our men yelled and flung their arms over their eyes. We were all temporarily blinded. Then the dust below seemed to grow denser and denser. We watched in fascination as the dark wall became taller, rushing upon us and howling like a million dying voices. We were struck by the ash and forced onto our knees, then onto our bellies, yanking our frightened horses down with us as best we could. The stuff stung my face and hands and even those parts of my body protected by heavy clothing. Larger pieces of stone rattled against my goggles.
When the wind had passed and we began to stand erect, the sky was still very bright. I was astonished that my field glasses were intact. I put them up to my burning eyes and peered through swirling ash at the Cambodians. The army was running along the road towards us, as terrified animals flee a forest-fire. I knew now what the planes had been escaping. Our Cossacks were in some confusion, but were already regrouping, shouting amongst themselves. A number of horses were still shying and whickering but by and large we were all calm again.
`Well, comrade,' said Savitsky with a sort of mad satisfaction, `what do we do now? Wasn't that Angkor War, where we're supposed to meet our allies?'
I was silent. The mushroom cloud on the horizon was growing. It had the hazy outlines of a gigantic, spreading cedar tree, as if all at once that wasteland of ash had become promiscuously fertile. An aura of bloody red seemed to surround it, like a silhouet
te in the sunset. The strong, artificial wind was still blowing in our direction. I wiped dust from my goggles and lowered them back over my eyes. Savitsky gave the order for our men to mount. `Those bastards down there are in our way,' he said. `We're going to charge them.'
`What?' I could not believe him.
`When in doubt,' he told me, `attack.'
`You're not scared of the enemy,' I said, `but there's the radiation.'
`I don't know anything about radiation.' He turned in his saddle to watch his men. When they were ready he drew his sabre. They imitated him. I had no sabre to draw.
I was horrified. I pulled my horse away from the road. `Division Commander Savitsky, we're duty-bound to conserve ...'
`We're duty-bound to make for Angkor,' he said. 'And that's what we're doing.' His perfect body poised itself in the saddle. He raised his sabre.
`It's not like ordinary dying,' I began. But he gave the order to trot forward. There was a rictus of terrifying glee on each mouth. The light from the sky was reflected in every eye.
I moved with them. I had become used to the security of numbers and I could not face their disapproval. But gradually they went ahead of me until I was in the rear. By this time we were almost at the bottom of the hill and cantering towards the mushroom cloud which was now shot through with all kinds of dark, swirling colours. It had become like a threatening hand, while the wind-borne ash stung our bodies and drew blood on the flanks of our mounts.
Yakovlev, just ahead of me, unstrapped his accordion and began to play some familiar Cossack battle-song. Soon they were all singing. Their pace gradually increased. The noise of the accordion died but their song was so loud now it seemed to fill the whole world. They reached full gallop, charging upon that appalling outline, the quintessential symbol of our doom, as their ancestors might have charged the very gates of Hell. They were swift, dark shapes in the dust. The song became a savage, defiant roar.
My first impulse was to charge with them. But then I had turned my horse and was trotting back towards the valley and the border, praying that, if I ever got to safety, I would not be too badly contaminated.
(In homage to Isaac Babel, 1894-1941?)
Ladbroke Grove, 1978
'80s LILIES
Terese Svoboda
THE CALLA LILIES in New Zealand say we are dead, just step off the jadestrewn, rimed high-tide line here and a wave will rise up like Trigger, like some silent movie stallion, and suck us under, suck us beneath a continental shelf stuck out so far the waves whiten before they break. So too the calla lilies, all white and wild like that, all about to break in the greeny drizzle that the wind whips, all these wild calla lilies that will bear us away.
I see the lilies and I say Let's get off the bus. Then the bus' burring keeps on without us as we stand at the upper ridge of lilies, before they spill off the grave mounds corralled by wooden fences and multiply right on onto the waves. Lilies from old settlers' tombs, I say into the silencing wind with you tucking the baby onto my back and as far as we can see, green drizzle, jade beaches, white cups in clumps flattened by wind.
Mind the waves, she says. They will jump the beach and pull you in.
She comes abreast of us, nearly green-skinned in the green mist with a small-sized boy just as green, tugging at the end of her arm. Does she mean for us to mind those waves-or him, the green monkey among the lilies?
I hold up a rock. Jade? Really jade? I ask.
Tourists, she says in a tone that can't be confused. Tourists don't come here, she says.
Really? They skip this bit? I thumb toward all that various beauty. Those terrible tourists.
She laughs and my husband and I say all the little things against the wind that makes her lean toward us down the length of the beach until we are at her car that she unlocks and leaves in, waving. We wave back, a few more little things on our lips.
The baby takes away our wonder at the place and its people, the baby has his wants. At the end of the road the woman has driven away from sits a pub, curiously free of all the lilies, as if bulldozed free. We order pints there, and then we ask after rooms since the green mist can only give way to dark.
They have rooms.
We remark on the sheep smell of these rooms, and the drizzle-colored pub interior, its darts bent and broken, the dark growlings and the stares from the pub fiends, two steamy gold miners, silent and filthy in their mining gear, flakes of dirt green not gold falling from them onto their table, and we order another pint.
Going to the ladies, with the baby asleep, milk lip aquiver, I trip over huge bones in the corridor, vastly gnarled, prehistoric big grey bones that must be the source of the sheep stink. The dog that gnaws at such bones, as terrible an animal as he must be, thumps and growls from inside some further door when I shut mine, but he's quiet when I emerge, as if he has plans.
I haven't. I haven't said Yes yet to the room or to another pint. I just want to talk about those bones but at our seat there's no one to note my near miss with the bone-guarding dog, no man nor child.
One of the two miners nods to the window, Out there. She has them in her car.
Where else would you be putting up but here? she shouts over new pellmell rain. I have tea, she says.
WE RODE THE ferry that sinks, the ferry with a creche where the children are roped to rockers through the big waves that slap the island apart, the ferry that, however, did not sink when we crossed but allowed us, vomitus, to board that bus.
That ferry's no problem, she says. Look in the phonebook.
I open the phonebook and the first page lists all the calamities: tidal wave, earthquake, floods, volcanic eruptions, and numbers to call. Such a safe place, I say they say, so safe for children.
We are fleeing, we explain, to some safe place. We're sure this time they'll drop it. We thought, Here's a place we'll be safe and gave the airlines our gold card.
They don't laugh, she and her husband. Just the way she doesn't laugh at the green rock I pull out of my bag, the rock, I say, that must be worth money. Their house is full of toys my baby knows and toys my husband can feel the remote of, and books I have read and admired. Her husband has my husband's charm and why not? They do nothing similar for work but charm makes the men match.
The baby inspects all the toys their boy brings so I can talk while she cooks because cooking is the point of visiting, isn't it, she says, a place where everyone meets. Then you can go back, if you like. After tea.
I look out into the pellmell greeny rain and even in the looking, smell sheep, and hear that growl. When real night falls about two drinks after tea-what is surely dinner-when the rain isn't seen but felt, they won't let us go, they make up beds.
Their boy bounces a ball off the baby's head and the baby smiles.
WE VISIT A gold mine in the morning, their idea.
Maybe they wanted to have sex, I whisper to my husband as he settles a hard hat onto his head.
A little late, he says.
We walk deep into the mines posted Do Not Enter and they say, Don't mind the signs, the baby is fine.
This is where we're going when it happens, says her husband. And he explains what he heard on TV yesterday, how it will blow ash all over the globe in ways nobody knew. Everywhere will be caught in the grip of its terrible winter.
Winter-you are obsessed with having seasons that don't match ours, I say. I look at my husband. So here is not safe either says my glance.
We walk along in the dark.
I expect a room of gold all aglitter at the end, jutting ore burnished to a sun's strength. What we get to is a small cave lit with mirrors which leave little flashes of faraway light on the dull rock.
Our faces facing the mirrors are just one grey ball, then another.
Their boy drops a rock down a shaft and it doesn't hit bottom. While we wait, the baby wakes as if the rock hits hard, and his wails echo all down the tunnel. We walk back through his wails, it's that physical.
WE STAY ONE more night.
We stay up late and my husband says, Maybe the threat will blow over.
Blow over. We all laugh, drinking the wine from the grapes that grow among the lilies. Then we talk movies, all the same ones we have seen as if together.
We really came to see you, I say. Does it matter if we flee if you are here?
IN THE MORNING they tell us they do not write, they will not. No letters.
Consider them written, says my husband.
We take the next bus, a dark cave filled with more miners abandoning mines. The settlers we leave behind, such settlers as they are, wearing our clothes nearly exactly, franchise for franchise, who wave as our bus burrs off past the lilies, the big waves behind them lapping and reaching.
THESE ZOMBIES ARE NOT
A METAPHOR
Jeff Goldberg
WHEN THE FULL-SCALE zombie outbreak finally occurred I was the only one prepared. I don't mean with supplies and weapons and secure shelter-though, yes, that is a part of what I mean-but, more importantly, I had the proper mental fortification.
Baxter said to me, "These zombies are a metaphorical scourge upon the Earth. They represent all that is evil in humankind." Then he went outside, got bitten, and turned into one of them.
I held a meeting with the rest of my housemates. "Let's be very clear," I said. "These zombies are not a metaphorical scourge upon the Earth. These zombies are an actual scourge upon the Earth." I pointed out the window. We could see the hordes of walking dead in the streets, tearing into the flesh of the living. "These zombies do not represent all that is evil in humankind. They do not represent anything except zombies."
Yes, yes, Manny and Jeannine nodded at me, blank affirmative stares, eager for leadership in the uncertainty of the world's end.
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