by James Meek
‘I don’t know.’
Nekovar came and stood back to back with Broucek. They turned their heads east and west and east and west, sweeping the forest tiered on the escarpments on either bank. The colour and geometry and motion outdetailed all their eyes together, the rowan berries plump scarlet on the branch, the yellow birch leaves flittering their pale and rich sides quickly in the wind, and the clumps of larch needles nodding. Between the colours the darkness did not stir.
‘Did you hear something?’ said Nekovar.
‘No,’ said Mutz. How did you bury a hand?
‘I thought I heard a sound,’ said Broucek. He was afraid. They all were.
A ragged scurf of crystal settled on Nekovar’s sleeve and he said: ‘Son of a bitch.’ The first snow came dark and sparse and barely frozen out of the yellow sky yet soon they were all blotched with it like a quick lichen on their woollen tunics.
‘Someone has been watching this place,’ said Mutz. ‘Lukac didn’t fall standing to attention.’
‘It could have been whoever cut off his hand who laid him out, then left,’ said Nekovar. ‘Hell, I hate to see snow falling on the lately departed.’
‘Someone’s been keeping the wolves from his body, and the crows from his eyes, right up to now,’ said Mutz. ‘Someone’s close.’
‘They didn’t keep scavengers from chewing on that extra hand there, now did they?’ said Nekovar.
‘Wolves don’t wrap their food,’ said Broucek.
‘The most dangerous scavenger here is the same as the most dangerous predator,’ said Mutz, ‘and it’s got teeth enough, and it walks on two legs.’
Mutz and Nekovar fell silent. The snow touched their faces. Broucek whispered the Lord’s Prayer to himself. Their muscles prickled at the sense of being meat for another man. In a dark place in the infinite taiga a cross-legged butcher bowed his crusted jaws to a flayed thigh, fist round separated white kneejoint, fist round separated white hipjoint. And so along more tangled needle-muffled paths through the larch labyrinth until all the choice cuts and soft parts were eaten and only a hand was left for nourishment.
‘God forgive me if I’m showing disrespect for the dead,’ said Nekovar, ‘but if I was a cannibal, and down to the last hand, and I came across a fresh corpse, and an entire horse, I’d make more of a feast than’s been made here.’
Mutz nodded. Broucek raised his rifle, stopped back, sighted and said: ‘There!’
Mutz and Nekovar followed the line of the gun into the trees above them. They couldn’t see it.
‘A white creature,’ said Broucek. ‘Merciful God, like the devil’s own ghost.’
‘What? A hare? A fox?’ said Mutz.
‘A man, in the shape of a man! Not a hundred metres away. White, with red eyes.’
‘How could you see his eyes?’
‘I can see,’ said Broucek. ‘I can’t help but see well, I was born to it.’
They all saw the movement then. It was a quick paleness from shadow to shadow, large and lightmoving.
‘Don’t shoot,’ said Mutz. ‘Not until we know what it is.’
‘What if there are ten of them?’ said Nekovar.
A chip of stone snapped out of a rock close to where Mutz was standing and the air gasped with the passage of a bullet. After a moment they heard the shot. Mutz, Nekovar and Broucek ran for the cover of the trees. Two more shots followed them to the birches.
‘On the bridge,’ said Broucek. ‘Reds.’
Mutz could see two or three figures moving along the bridge, but they were just faint black motions through the thickening snow.
‘Can you tell?’
‘I can see their pointed hats. Red stars,’ said Broucek. ‘I could take one out at least.’ He lifted his gun.
‘Don’t,’ said Mutz.
‘They’re taking the trolley.’
Mutz watched the trolley creep away from them towards the far end of the bridge, as if under its own power. The Reds were at most fifteen minutes from Yazyk by train, an hour by horse. Who knew what they wanted from the town? How easily he had come to think of Bolshevism as an invincible force whose plans were unknowable to its enemies, but which knew its own will perfectly. It was about will, the desire to struggle which migrated from cause to cause, leader to leader, people to people, without anyone being able to hold it. In the Reds, though, will had found a long resting place, able to lift up a giant made of millions of people which would walk the earth, shedding dead like hairs as it advanced, and sprouting new believers to replace them.
‘We have to get back to Yazyk, and we can’t go by the bridge,’ said Mutz. ‘The Reds aren’t likely to move till tomorrow. We need to find a way up through the trees here, up the side of the gorge and over to the other side, and reach the railway line from there.’
‘It’s getting dark,’ said Broucek. ‘There’s something terrible in among the trees.’
‘We don’t have a choice,’ said Mutz. He took out his pistol and began to lead them further into the forest, away from the river.
Some snow reached the ground as snow and filled the margins between the rocks and the ground. The rest was caught in the trees above their heads and began to melt, casting heavy drops onto their uniforms, which were soon sodden. The forest hissed and pattered with falling water. Their boots sank into the floor of moss and rotten twigs and leafmould and made tiny cracking sounds as they broke old larch needles. The rocks were black and shiny with damp. Mutz had never felt so cold. He had left his greatcoat on the trolley. All he had besides his tunic, breeches, boots and hat was his pistol, which he hadn’t cleaned for days. It was getting dark; he had no idea where they were going, except up.
The rocks began to thicken, and their vertical faces became higher, with fewer spaces between them. The trees themselves had to balance on thin crazed roots to grow. Mutz, Broucek and Nekovar began to use their hands as much as their feet. They climbed in short spurts; Broucek would cover them, while Mutz climbed with his gun in its holster and Nekovar with his rifle slung over his back. Then Broucek would climb while the others watched the woods and rocks around.
‘Take my coat, brother,’ said Nekovar to Mutz.
‘I’m fine,’ said Mutz.
‘You’re shivering, brother.’
‘Shivering is good, it keeps you warm.’
His cold wet clothes chafed at his cold wet skin. Water had leaked into his boots through cracks in the leather. His hands burned as if the water in them was acid. He pressed his teeth together to stop them chattering. The spongy patch of ground under his feet, chill and damp as it was, would be comfortable to lie on. He wondered if Nekovar had brought food with him.
Broucek hissed from above that it was time for them to climb.
‘I can’t see anything,’ whispered Mutz. The snow had stopped but it was completely dark.
‘In front of you. Between the rocks, a space, and stones like steps. That’s it. Climb. Damn! I can see him.’
‘Don’t shoot!’ said Mutz. ‘What do you see?’
‘The white creature. He’s been shadowing us.’
‘Wait till we get up.’ Mutz climbed up through the narrow space, his shoulders squeezed by rock on either side. A trickle of icy water ran down Broucek’s steps, which seemed to end in a blank wall. Mutz flapped his dead arms in front of him and found that the wall ended some way above his head. With an effort he grasped the ledge and squirmed his way up the chimney of rock, bracing his feet and shoulders against the sides. When his elbows were in the dirt and gravel he felt Broucek grasp him and help him up. They reached down together to drag Nekovar up after them.
‘Let’s go on,’ said Mutz.
‘I can’t find a way,’ said Broucek.
The ledge where they stood, about the size of a large room, had enough earth on it to be muddy and for a couple of spindly larches to grow. It was enclosed by sheer walls of rock, with no safe footholds for night. In the distance below they could hear the sound of the river. A light shining briefly
out of cover showed where the Reds had made their position on the bridge. They couldn’t go up; they couldn’t go down.
‘We’re here till first light,’ said Mutz. Saying it, he began to shiver again, squatted down and wrapped his arms round his knees.
‘You won’t last the night without shelter,’ said Nekovar. ‘Take my coat.’
‘I won’t take it.’
‘Take it. I’m going to do some exercise.’ Mutz let him drape the soaking heavy coat over his trembling shoulders and wondered if his body was too cool for it to help. He heard Nekovar begin to work at the larches with his hatchet.
‘Our white friend?’ said Mutz.
‘Gone,’ said Broucek. ‘Can’t see him.’
‘Do you have any food?’
‘No.’ Broucek squatted down beside him. ‘I wish I was in the shtab at Yazyk.’
‘Aim higher,’ said Mutz. ‘You’ll be home next year, drinking beer and eating pork knuckle and dumplings with mustard sauce.’
‘It hurts when you say that.’
Mutz tried to focus on the sound of Nekovar’s hatchet, the only report from any of his senses which contradicted his urge to sleep. If he slept, like Samarin on the frozen river, he wouldn’t wake up. Broucek was asking him something irritating, in the way that it required thought. Broucek was asking about the hands.
‘What do you think?’ said Broucek. ‘The cannibal arrives at the bridge at the same moment a train comes across, and the accident with the horses.’
‘He arrives at the bridge,’ muttered Mutz. ‘Carrying his victim’s hand. Not the choicest cut. It’s the last of his supply.’
‘But if he sees the train, and the horses, he understands he’s reached civilisation. Why doesn’t he throw the hand away, pretend he never had it?’
Mutz struggled to keep his eyelids open. The darkness danced for him and his bones ached. He was moving in and out of a dream. Thinking about the cannibal he found himself watching as he walked along the riverbank towards the bridge, then he was the cannibal, the Mohican, presumably, watching the train. Then Broucek was shaking his shoulder, telling him not to sleep, and the hacking of Nekovar’s hatchet.
‘I do – he does throw it away,’ said Mutz. ‘It’s the only thing keeping him from starvation in the wilderness, his hard-won piece of meat. He earned it honourably: one of two had to die, and it wasn’t him. And then he sees the bridge. He sees the train. And the package he’s carrying becomes, in that moment, the most vile, hideous, evil burden that any unfortunate ever came to possess. A murdered man’s hand, with his own teeth-marks in it. Of course he throws it away. Too soon.’
Broucek began to speak. Mutz, awake now, interrupted him. ‘Wait. He becomes afraid that the hand will be found. Perhaps he throws it in the river. What if it’s washed up? What if it could be linked to him? He can’t find the hand he threw away. But there’s another hand there. The dead man, Lukac. He cuts one of Lukac’s hands off and buries it in the forest where it will never be found. Then, if his original victim’s hand is found, it won’t appear that some monster in the forest has eaten an entire human being.’
‘Why –’
‘He was being watched. Not from the bridge, from the forest. The white creature, perhaps. Another man of some kind. We don’t believe in ghosts, or Siberian gorillas, do we? The watcher recovered both hands, placed them there on Lukac’s body, and kept watch over Lajkurg. Why did he, or they, do that? They knew someone like us would come. They thought we might end up in the forest. And here we are.’
Nekovar came over with bundles of larch twigs which he spread on the ground, under the rockface. He leaned stretches of trunk against the rockface and spread branches across and between them to form a roof. They crawled inside and huddled together. Freezing rain began to fall and Nekovar cursed. More snow might have settled on the roof but the rain leaked through, soaking them again, and gusts of wind began to tear at the shelter. Mutz decided he would not fall asleep. It seemed to him it was getting easier to stay awake, which was good, because if he closed his eyes, he was unlikely ever to open them again. He felt light and alert. He was already asleep. He was already dreaming.
Causes
Anna made soup and potatoes for Samarin and Alyosha while they brought logs in from the pile outside and stacked them by the stove. Anna heard few words from Samarin while Alyosha talked on about his dead teacher, the Czechs, the cow, how he’d tasted pineapple once, and how in Mexico, the dogs were bald. Samarin restarted him with a question every so often. During the meal Samarin hardly spoke, not to thank her, or to ask why she’d agreed to let him be a guest in her house. He ate quickly, but not greedily. When she asked if he would like more, he said yes, and held out his bowl. While they were eating, she watched him. He would catch her eyes and hold them for a second or two before he looked down at his food again. He seemed more at peace than a man from such a prison camp would be, yet he kept arrogance out of his face. Nor was there humility. When he looked at her it was expectant. It was an opportunity for her to say or ask anything she liked, whenever she was ready, which was more delicate a courtesy than thanks, and more intimidating. The more so because he knew, without impatience, that she would ask. His eyes didn’t show curiosity so much as a readiness to devote all of him inside which thought, breathed and felt to whatever she said now. At other times, with other men, she would have found this waiting silence tiresome, and she didn’t understand why it was different now, unless there was something fascinating to her in his face, something which promised, not that she could see it but she would be able to see it if only she caught it at the right angle, which she was bound to soon.
‘Would you like a cigarette?’ said Anna. Samarin said he would and they lit up. Anna took Alyosha to bed, made him take a big draw on her cigarette to keep his lungs clear of infections, read him a page of Tsar Sultana, kissed him goodnight, blew out the candle and went down to Samarin, who was turning the pages of a St Petersburg weekly.
‘That’s two years old,’ said Anna, nodding at the magazine. ‘Would you like some cognac?’
‘Yes,’ said Samarin.
‘It’s all I have,’ said Anna. ‘There’s nothing sweet to go with it.’
‘I don’t like sweets.’
Anna poured two tumblers and sat opposite him at the kitchen table. Anna hesitated, then, seeing Samarin wasn’t going to make a toast, raised her drink and said: ‘To liberation!’
‘Liberation,’ said Samarin, and touched his tumbler against hers. He didn’t knock the drink back. He drank half the tumbler and placed it down.
‘When you talked about the Mohican today,’ said Anna, ‘you spoke as if you admired him, even though he was a murderer. Even though he was making ready to eat you.’
‘Is it worse to know somebody is planning to kill you, or to know they’re going to kill you and eat you afterwards? Does what happen afterwards matter?’
Anna thought about it for a while. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘It’s worse to believe that your companion thinks of you as nothing but food. That’s worse than being his enemy. Then you would know, at least, that he still thought of you as a man.’
‘As far as food is concerned,’ said Samarin, ‘I say this not out of any disrespect for your late husband, but I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “cannon fodder.” I believe it’s worse to feed hundreds of thousands of men you don’t know to the guns than to feed one man you know to yourself.’
‘That can’t be right!’ said Anna. For some reason, she felt like laughing, not at Samarin, but at the world and the absurdity of reasoning in it.
‘Wait,’ said Samarin, raising his hands a little. He didn’t gesture much. ‘Of course I was afraid of the Mohican. I did long to believe that we’d become too close for him to use me in that way, and the more close it seemed to me we were, the more terrifying my imagining the moment when he would turn on me. But out there on the river, when we ran and the whole of nature was trying to kill us with cold, and even before, in t
he camp, where he was protecting me and fattening me up, the comfort I drew from thinking of him as a father was greater than the horror I felt at the thought of him as my butcher. Don’t you think it would have been the same for Isaac? Abraham’s son?’ There was a new edge to Samarin’s voice, as if, now, he was trying to persuade her of something, although she couldn’t think what it might be. ‘Isaac knew his father was going to kill him, yet he trusted him, and believed him, and loved him to the last.’
‘That was different,’ said Anna. ‘Abraham was listening to God, and Isaac knew that, as far as I can remember. The Mohican was just a criminal, a thief. He didn’t have a greater cause. Only staying alive.’
‘Is just a criminal,’ said Samarin. ‘You said “was”. Remember, I believe he’s in Yazyk. He might be listening. Outside.’
‘Good, now tell me how the Mohican can be like Abraham.’
‘Do you believe in God?’
‘If there is one then he’s a fool.’ Anna spoke more sharply than she’d meant to. Now it would be obvious to Samarin that she had a personal grudge. But he made no comment.
‘So, you don’t really believe in God, yet you believe Abraham believed, and that made it right for him to sacrifice his son? That gave him a cause?’
‘No,’ said Anna. ‘A God which demands such sacrifices is a God not worth listening to. I – I know people who have … shed their own flesh and blood for God and it hurts so much, so much more and further than the pain of the wound. But I don’t see what this had to do with the Mohican. You never said he was religious. You never said he was sick in the soul.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Samarin slowly. ‘Perhaps a time will come when you’ll hear more about all the things he’s done.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Anna.
Samarin said nothing, he sat back in his seat with his eyes a little wide and his lips pressed together. Looking at him Anna’s insides hollowed, her scalp prickled and she had an unpleasant feeling that he was holding himself prisoner. She wanted it to stop. She drank back the rest of her cognac, got up, filled their tumblers, drank a little more of hers, left the bottle on the table, and it did stop. She left her right hand resting on the table too, close to her tumbler. Samarin had regained control of himself. The sense of horror was fading and she wondered if she’d imagined it. Samarin leaned forward, put his hand on hers, and asked if he could address her with the familiar ‘ty’. She nodded and flexed her fingers so they wove in between his.