The People's Act of Love

by James Meek

  Snivelling, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, shaking, breathing too quickly, she put on clothes and laced her boots, dizzy from the sickening, heavy wheel that had begun to rotate in her mind, displaying the same sequence of thoughts over and over. She had killed her son for lust. She, Anna Petrovna Lutova, had killed her son for lust. She had taken the killer into her bed. She had sacrificed Alyosha because she could not bear the wanting to be touched and wanted and filled. She had lost her love, her joy, her warm tight squirming giggling pouting strutting essence of a boy, her dear pampered prince, that she bore and cared for so hard and so long, out of that sickness in her that couldn’t endure. No prayer could bring him back and she was damned forever. Her husband saw the slut in her and took the quickest way out of it. It was her fault. Could Alyosha be alive still? No, she was greedy. She was cursed. She was a fool. She had killed her son for lust.

  Anna ran up the road towards the station. The castrate carpenter, Grachov, said he had seen Alyosha hand in hand with the convict. He asked her what was happening and she did not answer. The wheel grated round inside Anna. She had killed her son for lust. Could he be alive still? She was a fool. There was more shooting in the distance, the thud of heavier weapons now. Czech soldiers overtook her. Chaos rippled outwards from the station. A soldier tripped and fell, picked himself up and ran on. The brilliant blue of the sky, the brightness of the puddle-ice, made this a shiny chocolate-box doomsday. The soldiers shouted at each other in Czech. They ran holding their rifles in both hands, looking from side to side, bent forward slightly, as if they thought the enemy was on either side.

  At the station a corpse lay half covered in a tarpaulin by the tracks, boots lolling at their dead angle. Anna felt as if a hand had reached inside her, gripped her by the heart and shaken her whole body. She was too broken up to cry out and she held her hair in her fists. The Czech soldiers milled like a mob. She could barely understand this language but she understood a train, their only train, had been stolen. She ran towards the heart of the mob, which was a man she recognised as the Czechs’ train engineer, sitting shivering in a blanket. One of the soldiers was squeezing and twisting the engineer’s leg. The engineer winced.

  ‘Who’s seen my son?’ said Anna. The wheel grated. The son she killed.

  ‘You fucking bitch,’ said the engineer in Russian, looking at her, and looking away said more in Czech. The other soldiers stared at Anna.

  ‘I don’t care what you call me,’ said Anna. ‘Where’s my son?’

  ‘The convict took him. We’re all like children to him. Oh, the little lad wants to see what the train driver does! Well come up and see, and bring your uncle with you!’ The engineer spat and the soldiers murmured. The engineer said: ‘Your brat knew what he was about, and so do you. Don’t worry about the boy. You’ll both be crow’s meat when Matula gets to you.’

  A man was shouting and waving down the line. He had a pistol in his hand. It was Dezort, yelling at the Czechs to move. They began to run along the tracks, Anna among them, red with tears and pounding blood, hardly able to see the sleepers and rails, shivering with self-hate. In a short time, they met up with the rest of the Czechs, who had cut across town to the railway straight from the square. Smutny and Buchar had set up the Maxim gun so it pointed down the line. Hanak walked in circles, roundshouldered and skinny, hands in pockets, watching everyone while they weren’t looking. Standing with his legs apart and his thumbs in his belt, straddling the line like a barricade, back to Anna, face down the line in the direction of the locomotive, was Matula. Anna ran to him and around him so that she could look at him. How could his eyes report the presence of a living mind behind them, and be so without life? The wheel grated round inside Anna. It seemed to her Matula had become part of the punishment she had earned by betraying her son, by taking a convict into her bed. Those opaque eyes of Matula’s, lacking even the comfort of malice, spite or hate to assure her of his humanity, now seemed natural. It was not that his eyes were, as she had thought before, alien in their lack of feeling. It was that she had not until now committed the sin to enable her to understand how much a part of the human world his inhumanity was.

  ‘Where’s my son?’ she whispered.

  ‘The village whore wants to know where her son is,’ said Matula loudly. The other Czechs hushed, stilled and listened. ‘They’ve all left you! Your Yid Mutz has run off, and your convict friend has taken your boy away. There’s nothing left for you now, is there, unless Lieutenant Hanak wants you.’

  ‘Why don’t you go after them?’ whispered Anna.

  ‘They will all fall to me,’ said Matula. ‘In the meantime, you forfeit the convict’s bail. We agreed that would be your life.’

  ‘I’ve been a fool,’ said Anna. She began to sob. ‘I’ve made bad mistakes. Please save my son.’ She went down on her knees. ‘Please save my son.’

  There was a shuffling of Czechs around and no-one spoke.

  ‘Kiss my boot,’ said Matula. Anna felt an instant of relief. There was to be no waiting. She’d been admitted to the place of punishment already: it could go on but it couldn’t be worse. The shooting had stopped and there was an entire silence. Anna bent her body and lowered her lips to the polished leather tip of Matula’s boot. It smelled of war, winter, scraped-off shit and mud. She pressed her mouth to the toe. It was hard but she wanted him to feel it. The worse the better. She straightened and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stood up and looked Matula in the eyes. His boy’s mouth was twitching as if he was about to laugh and to look in his eyes was like scraping your knuckles on rough granite.

  ‘Well, take her away, Hanak,’ said the captain, but as Hanak stepped forward they all saw a bulging figure walking towards them from where the line disappeared between the trees, about four hundred yards away. Anna began to run towards the figure and Hanak caught her by the forearm and when she struggled and tried to bite he wrenched both arms behind her back and held them there so she could not break free. He was skinny and slight but strong. Anna screamed Alyosha’s name.

  ‘Shall I send men out?’ said Dezort.

  ‘No,’ said Matula.

  Samarin walked towards them between the rails, quickly for a man with a burden, held in his arms in front of him, wrapped in a bloodstained once white shirt. Anna screamed Alyosha’s name again, and again. The burden didn’t stir. No-one else spoke. They watched, until they could see Samarin’s face clearly, and see how he was concentrating on his task. There was nothing else. Fast as he walked, he moved with great care, and that introduced into Anna the toxin, hope. Hope burned through her like acid: how it hurt, and when she cried Alyosha’s name again, her voice was weaker. They could hear Samarin’s feet on the gravel now, and his breathing. When he was twenty yards away Anna knew Hanak could no longer hold her and she broke away, almost tripping, and took her son from Samarin. She felt the boy’s warmth. Oh, she had been forgiven a little! He was alive, and only she would be punished now, perhaps, not him? The wheel would not stop turning. All that was around her became silent and invisible. She looked into Alyosha’s face. It was white and still and his eyes were closed, but he did not have the soiled, derelict look of the dead. ‘Alyosha,’ she whispered. ‘My good, my favourite, my love, my poor one.’ She put her cheek close to his slightly open mouth, then her ear. A thin breeze from lungs smaller than her hand. He was breathing. So far away as to be a rumour, on the other side of the world of her consciousness, there was a stirring of anger. One failed broken lover had returned, had brought the broken son back to his treacherous broken mother. Where were the others?

  ‘He was hit in the shoulder,’ said Samarin. ‘There was a lot of bleeding but it missed the vital organs, and the bones.’

  Anna glanced at him, and at Matula. She knew she had to run with Alyosha, but she didn’t know how.

  ‘Why did you take him?’ she said. She had no interest in hurting Samarin, it didn’t matter now, but she saw that the softness of her voice was like a blow to
him: she hadn’t seen him show an ounce of doubt before.

  ‘Because it’s more important to the future world that I should escape from here now than that Alyosha should live.’

  ‘Then why did you bring him back?’

  ‘Because I’m weak.’

  Alyosha stirred in Anna’s arms, frowned and made a small sound. She brought her face down to his, nuzzled his cheek and whispered in his ear that he was the bravest, the best, the most beautiful boy in the world. Alyosha whimpered again but didn’t open his eyes. Anna looked up.

  ‘He needs a doctor,’ she said.

  The words ended the spell of watching and listening which had fallen on the Czechs. The engineer came hobbling up to ask after his fireman and Samarin looked at him without speaking. Matula put up an arm to hold the engineer back. He drew his pistol and cocked it.

  ‘Where’s my train?’ he said.

  ‘The boiler ran dry when I reversed back away from the Reds,’ said Samarin.

  Matula raised the pistol and gestured at Anna and Alyosha. ‘Go and stand in front of the convict with your bastard, madam. I’m going to see if I can do all three of you with one bullet. Too bad the Jew’s not here or I could exterminate you all as a family.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Dezort.

  ‘What?’ said Matula, turning to him in surprise. As he turned he drew in breath and dropped the pistol, coincident with the sound of a bullet striking metal. The sound of the shot followed a second later. The Czechs threw themselves into the gravel and weeds on either side of the track. Anna dropped slowly on her knees to the ground. Her care for Alyosha, that he should not be moved roughly, tethered her panic to a solid place. The wheel in her head would not stop grinding round. The message had changed, now it only said the word No over and over again, as a prayer to space and time. She closed her eyes and put her face into the warm dark space between Alyosha’s jaw and shoulder, seeking with her lips for his pulse, to hold to that as a measure. She couldn’t stop herself listening to Matula speaking in a joyful growl, his battle language, his happy time.

  ‘Find the sniper!’ he was saying. ‘Ten thousand hectares of forest land to the north of here in perpetuity to the man who takes the sniper down, and the title of Prince in my realm, and the widow here to breed off. She’ll bear a dozen more yet if you hobble her. Dezort, take three men and work up-line to the locomotive, secure it. Gods, I’ve never felt so in love with this place. Every man we lose here, his blood makes this ground more sacred to us.’

  A voice from far away rippled through the air, distorted and amplified and metallic, as if the person was speaking through a horn. Anna recognised the voice. It was Mutz, speaking in Czech. She heard Broucek’s name. Whatever Mutz was saying caused a strange tremor to run through the Czechs, a stiffening and a pain. Matula began to shout. ‘I’ll flay you!’ he screamed. ‘You clyping kike toerag, I’ll skewer you, I’ll cut the senses out of you one by one, eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin! The same goes for any scum here who listens to a sound that perjuring backstabbing Red-loving Yid pronounces.’

  Anna stood up and opened her eyes. She looked round. All the Czechs were watching her. The few who watched in hatred were trying to magnify it. The others were trying to hide their shame by imitating Matula’s stone eyes, but they could not imitate them. Anna moved away from them. Alyosha stirred in her arms. The marvellous boy had strength. Anna began to run. Samarin was not there: he had escaped.

  Declarations

  Alyosha lay delirious on his bed, raving about hussars and chocolate, while Anna cleaned and dressed his wound. The metal fragment had slipped into his small white shoulder under the collarbone, leaving a jagged slit where it had come in and a sorry gash where it had come out. The blood had stopped flowing. The boy twisted and arched when she touched the rawness deep with the hot wet cloth and Anna concentrated on that, on making the torn part clean, whispering good words to him, trying not to grip his hale shoulder too hard with her other hand as she held him still. The Tungus albino sat in the corner, watching. Anna had come across him squatting in their yard, staring at a shape he had made with pieces of straw in the snow. He had turned red eyes onto her and stood up and she had understood he was the shaman’s apprentice and wanted to know only what he could do for her. She told him her boy had been hurt in a battle and asked if he had any treatment. The albino shrugged, but followed her inside and upstairs. When she told him to bring hot water from the kitchen he went to prepare it. Later he sat on Alyosha’s little wicker chair, making it creak as he breathed. The way he watched Alyosha, attentive and indifferent, like a bird, gave Anna comfort.

  She asked the albino to come to help her, to hold pieces of lint against the wounds while she bound a bandage tightly round Alyosha’s shoulder. His peeling fingers were barely darker than Alyosha’s skin. He smelled of smoke, fallen leaves and worn deerhide.

  ‘Is he your only son?’ asked the albino.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is the father?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘How does he die?’

  ‘In battle.’

  The albino thought about this. ‘Your family’s unlucky,’ he said.

  ‘The idea of bad luck used to be a great comfort. Not now. I made this happen.’

  ‘Are you a witch?’

  Anna found it in herself to laugh, an older, cloudier laugh than the laughter of the night before. ‘If I were a witch, wouldn’t I make him better?’ A fresh wave of self-hatred rushed over her and she leaned down to kiss Alyosha’s eyes, but his head moved violently from side to side, and she put her hand on his hot forehead instead.

  ‘You must have seen your shaman treat wounded people,’ said Anna.

  ‘Yes. He sends me out to gather what he needs. Moss, plantain, honey … this isn’t the best time of year.’

  Anna looked at the albino and said harshly: ‘Why are you sitting there, then? Go and find what you can for medicine.’

  ‘No,’ said the albino. ‘You don’t need our medicine. You need one of your doctors.’

  ‘There’s no doctor here. If I don’t put something on this wound, anything, it’ll be like letting go his hand while he’s slipping down a steep slope. Wouldn’t it be easier if I believed in those wonderful terrible forces over the horizon, like you and Mutz and Samarin and remarkable Mr Balashov, none of whom can help me now? I understand Alyosha doesn’t matter, I don’t matter, we’re too shamefully small. But I wish my boy was more important to the world than this. Would you go, please, and see what you can find? What’s your name?’

  ‘Igor.’

  ‘Your real name, in your language.’

  ‘Develchen.’

  She asked him again to go.

  ‘I’m not a shaman,’ said Develchen. ‘I can’t see into the Lower World and the Upper World, as Our Man can, learning whether a place is being kept there for a sick one.’

  ‘I don’t care about that!’ shouted Anna. ‘I don’t care, do you understand? I don’t care about heavens and hells and gods and demons and tsars and empires and communists and the people this and the people that. Don’t tell me any more. I want something for my son’s wound and whatever kind of forest witchery comes with it doesn’t matter, d’you see?’

  Develchen stood up and walked out of the room. Anna turned to Alyosha and murmured: ‘Is this what happens when a foolish, greedy woman who doesn’t believe is left with nothing else to lean on? When you don’t believe in anything, that one day you’ll end up believing anything? Oh, just be healed, little son.’ Alyosha moved his head from side to side.

  Develchen left the house by the front door and walked east, away from the town, the station and the fields and into the woods. He looked up once at the roof of a high barn which stood opposite Anna’s house, overlooking the crossroads it stood on, with a clear view of the bridge to the west and the station road to the north. Mutz, Nekovar and Broucek were there, with other armed men Develchen had not seen before. He hurried on.

  Mutz lay on a blanket
on the steeply sloping roof, braced, like the others, against a length of thick rope Nekovar had slung along the roof’s length. With their feet on the rope, they could keep most of their bodies covered while watching the approaches to the crossroads. The castrates were hiding in their homes. The sun thickened the woodsmoke coiling over the town streets. Mutz wondered if he would have a chance to see Anna before the fighting began in which they would all be killed. What could stop the Reds attacking Yazyk? They must have taken Samarin’s attempt to escape in the train as a previously worked out plan to deceive them, even though Samarin had smashed into the trolley Mutz and the others were riding back to town on, a second after they jumped clear.

  Common sense said that Matula would direct all his forces towards defending the town against the Red attack, but Matula did not have common sense, and Mutz had now absolved him of any obligation for saving his life. Most likely Matula would divide his remnant army in half, one to cover the railway against the Reds, the other to attack Anna Petrovna’s house, which is where he would assume Mutz would be. The Reds would then destroy the town in order to crush Matula. It was all perfectly normal.