The People's Act of Love

by James Meek

  Against the onslaught to come there were three, Mutz, Nekovar and Broucek, perhaps the albino, and perhaps three more. Dezort lay alongside Mutz on the roof, the flag of truce he had come under wrapped round his neck as a scarf. He had brought two soldiers with him. He was reading one of the Czech newspapers Mutz had been given by Bondarenko.

  ‘Finished?’ said Mutz.

  Dezort nodded.

  ‘Do you agree it’s genuine?’

  Dezort nodded again. The front page of the paper was given over to a decree from the new government of Czechoslovakia, promulgated in Prague five weeks earlier, ordering the entire Czech Legion in Siberia to disengage and move to Vladivostok for evacuation with all speed.

  ‘Matula must have known about this for a month,’ said Dezort. ‘The telegraph to Irkutsk and Omsk was working until a week ago. He’d never let anyone else see the messages, just him and Hanak. We could have got out, and now we’re trapped.’

  ‘You’re with us, then, brother?’ said Nekovar, from the far end of the roof. He put his hand in his pocket and held out a grenade to Dezort, nodding and smiling, like a man coaxing a cat out from under a bed with a treat.

  ‘It seems hopeless,’ said Dezort. ‘Matula has ninety men, and the Reds are about to attack.’

  ‘You came, didn’t you?’ said Mutz. ‘The lads heard what I said through Nekovar’s voice trumpet about the evacuation. How can they be loyal to him now? Everyone understands he’s lost his mind.’

  ‘They’re still afraid of him and his cronies. He’s a madman, but he’s one of your cunning madmen, you know. There’s another thing, Mutzie.’

  Mutz asked what, though he knew.

  ‘Matula’s been good at making everyone believe you’re a kind of spy, that you’re compiling a report about what happened in Staraya Krepost, the killings, you know. That you’re not really one of the boys in that sense, you won’t stick up for us. He tried to blame it on you that we had to stay here, and I don’t think anyone will believe that, but I suppose … we … they think you’ve made a deal with the Reds to testify against us in exchange for your life.’

  ‘You’re full of shit, brother,’ said Broucek, without taking his eyes from his rifle sights, watching the station road.

  ‘I’m as guilty as anyone for Staraya Krepost,’ said Mutz.

  ‘Josef,’ said Dezort, dropping his voice and moving his face closer to Mutz’s over the damp timbers of the roof. ‘You only watched. You hung back. I shot a man in the head when his hands were tied behind his back.’

  ‘Did I try to stop you?’

  ‘All three of you, Mutz, Broucek, Nekovar. That’s what you have in common. You all hung back while we did the killing.’ Dezort glanced over at Nekovar, who was staring at him steadily, mouth slightly open, about to smile yet not smiling, tossing the grenade gently up and down like a tennis ball.

  ‘I don’t like the way you’re playing with that grenade, sergeant,’ said Dezort. His lips rose over his dry front teeth and he licked them back.

  Mutz put a hand on Dezort’s shoulder. ‘Have I ever betrayed anyone in this company?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Have I tried to stop anyone being left behind in Siberia, even Matula?’

  ‘Up until now, yes.’

  ‘I want us to leave this place, and I want to haul those hundred arseholes all the way to Vladivostok without any of them dying or disappearing, and I want us to sail home to Europe, and take the train to the new country, and open our old front doors, into that smell of coffee and varnish and good tobacco, into warm arms, and take this filthy khaki off. All of us except one. They don’t need all of us, the Reds. They just need one. A sacrifice. They’re a big organisation, a big idea, the Reds. The Reds are a bit like a god, you see, Dezort. People talk about them as if they’re one big real thing with intentions and actions and needs, but you can never actually see it, just small signs of its power, in the things and people it made and destroyed. Even when it’s there, you never see it all. Like a god. Like a god, it wants the occasional sacrifice.’

  ‘Who?’

  Mutz frowned at Dezort’s obtuseness. The man seemed genuinely confused.

  ‘Matula. Only Matula. The rest go free.’

  ‘Oh.’ Dezort frowned, and laughed a hiding little laugh. ‘I see. Because he had a similar sort of idea. He sent me here to try to persuade you to come back. Then he was going to hand you over to the Reds as the real mastermind of the massacre at Staraya Krepost.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t have agreed to Matula’s plan.’

  ‘Of course not!’ The hiding little laugh again.

  ‘Because the Reds have seen their film about it. That was their investigation. The film. And they think Matula is the murderer in chief.’

  ‘This film. Am I in it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Are you with us?’

  ‘How are you going to capture Matula?’

  Mutz looked at Broucek, who turned for a second to meet Dezort’s eyes, before returning to his gunsights. ‘Oh,’ said Dezort. ‘I see. That way. The thing is … I know Broucek is a very good shot, but Matula won’t show himself now.’

  ‘I would have hit him an hour ago if you hadn’t distracted him,’ said Broucek.

  Mutz stepped off the rope and began sliding towards the guttering and the ladder leading to the ground. ‘Lieutenant Dezort, Sergeant Nekovar, Private Broucek, please defend the crossroads while I’m away. Don’t shoot at our friends unless it’s really necessary.’

  Mutz went down the ladder. He walked to the edge of the barn and realised with sadness he was an old soldier at the age of thirty. Like the inhabitant of a windy city, who knows by instinct that when he turns a corner he is liable to be hit by the prevailing gusts, Mutz knew without thinking that he was about to walk across a likely line of fire from Matula’s troops, down the broad flat station road. It seemed to have become very quiet. Mutz glowed with a fear sweat and his heart was busy. His guts churned. He began to imagine all the ways the bullet could cripple him. He looked up to see if Dezort was watching. It was like seeing a reflection of his own face. The same pallor, the same awareness of lines of fire, that they did not know how to get out of this, that they were far away from home, that nobody cared.

  Mutz ran across the street and went into Anna’s house. He paused for a moment. He was dizzy. He heard Anna calling from upstairs, asking who it was.

  Mutz was trembling. The fear of the bullet had given way to the fear of what would happen now with Anna. He ran upstairs, almost falling, and met Anna outside Alyosha’s room. She wrapped her arms round him and pressed herself warm against him. He felt her tears trickle down his neck.

  ‘Josef, I’ve been such a terrible fool,’ she said. Mutz’s presence, his familiarity and quietness, seemed like the beginnings of a gift of forgiveness to her. To be given such a chance now to confess, and offer herself. ‘I took the convict into my home. I slept with him. I should have trusted you. He stole my son to help him steal the train, and Alyosha was wounded, and now I’m afraid he’s going to die. I deserve to be hanged. I did it because I wanted him, Josef. Can you believe it? I wanted Kyrill Ivanovich so badly I forgot to guard my own beautiful son. When you’d been so good. When you’d tried to give me what it was I longed for. I’m worse than a whore, Josef.’

  ‘Don’t say such nonsense.’

  ‘A whore takes money and I didn’t take money, I let that beast have me and then steal my son.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Sleeping. Or dying. I shouldn’t say that, should I? I don’t know what to do. The albino went into the forest to make some medicine. That’s what I’m reduced to, Josef, isn’t it low? There’s Anna Petrovna, the slut, sending for the witch doctor.’ She was speaking quickly. She stopped, stepped away from Mutz, looked up at him and wiped her eyes and nose with a limp handkerchief she took from her sleeve. He was looking at her with doubt, of course; she would have to convince him. ‘You’re going to tell me to stop feeling sorry fo
r myself. Josef, I wonder what it is in me that stopped me from trusting you. A permanent fever. You never trusted the convict. If I were a good mother I’d have listened to you, and God, Josef, it’s not as if you weren’t ready to be with me at night. I’m ashamed.’

  Mutz was more drained of words by Anna’s self-hatred than he had been by her pride or turning away from him. To his own surprise, he asked about Balashov.

  ‘He hasn’t been here,’ said Anna. ‘He may not know. He may be hiding from the sound of the guns. If he came, I’d let him in. I don’t believe he’ll come. What difference would it make?’

  ‘Alyosha is still his son.’

  ‘We should go back, I want to watch over Alyosha. Come with me. I know, you have to go, Matula is coming, I know, just for a moment, come into Alyosha’s room and stay and talk to me, please.’ Anna took Mutz’s hand, looking up at him with a tenderness and humility he hadn’t seen before. He let her lead him into Alyosha’s room and they sat together on the edge of the bed. Anna stroked Alyosha’s forehead, and took his wrist in her hand to see that his pulse was good. She looked at Mutz, then looked at Alyosha. It seemed to Mutz as if Anna was inviting him to touch Alyosha, but he was too confused to stop staring at her.

  ‘You can put your hand on him,’ said Anna. ‘Talk to him. Maybe it’ll help.’ How strange that she had found Mutz’s awkwardness with her son irritating before. Now she was moved by it, his respect for the boy, for her, after what she had done. She would love Mutz, if he wanted; she would listen to him.

  Mutz knew he should talk to Alyosha, but he couldn’t. He could only watch Anna. He’d come into her house dragging with him a great prize of knowledge about Samarin, to turn her against the convict. Now he had no use for it. It was simpler than he could have hoped. Samarin had made it easy: he could not have done a worse thing to Anna. She was his, Mutz’s, if they lived. She had said so. Yet all he felt was sorrow eating at him. She was sincere. When she looked at him so tenderly and humbly, she wanted to believe she could love him, that good sense and a rational mind was what she must desire now. Truly, she was sure. But he knew she would not be so sure tomorrow. Today, believing she must love Mutz was part of Anna’s penance for the crime she thought she had committed. In the very moment of her offering herself to him he was most sure that he could never have her. Not knowing what to say, and knowing that he shouldn’t mention Samarin, he couldn’t help reaching for the news he had originally meant to bring.

  ‘The Reds held us prisoner last night,’ he said. ‘I found out some things about Samarin.’

  ‘I wish you could’ve sent a message. He so charmed me last night, in his distant way. We drank cognac. I was like a schoolgirl. I don’t understand why I couldn’t see he was a common criminal, like the thieves of the White Garden, like this Mohican who’s been running around murdering people. Shouldn’t it show? Am I really such a fool as that?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Mutz. ‘It’s his genius, to know himself so well that he can hide or show the parts of him that make him what he wants to appear. He’d never show you himself complete. It’d be too much, even for him, to do that, to be the whole man. It’s not that he pretends to be something that he isn’t but that you only see the side he wants to show you, and somewhere, above and beyond, his scheming intelligence sees it all, his student self and his criminal self, the degrees of his ruthlessness, his past, present and future, and the great glow of utopia in the distance, that he believes he’s cutting a path to. Anna, think what you just said! The thieves of the White Garden – who told you about that place? Samarin. The Mohican – who told you about him? Samarin. Samarin describes himself and the Mohican so well because he knows them both so well, because they’re both him.’

  Anna put both hands to her mouth. It muffled the shriek that burst short and shrill from inside her. Mutz was still talking but it seemed to her he was speaking much too quickly, mixing up his words, and it was hard to make out anyway against the evil whistling noise in her ears. She realised it was the effect of the blood pounding in her head. She wanted to ask Mutz to slow down, but couldn’t speak. She tried to put together what he had said, about how it wasn’t that the Mohican, the man who killed, robbed and destroyed without mercy, was pretending to be Samarin the anarchist revolutionary, or pretending to be Samarin the charming student, but that they were all faces of a single man, Kyrill Samarin the Mohican. About how this was the man who had killed the shaman with alcohol because the shaman was the only man in Yazyk who knew his identity, about how this was the man who had persuaded Racansky, under his spell and an enemy of Kliment, to kill the officer and carve the letter M on his forehead, to make the Czechs believe the Mohican could be on the loose while Samarin was in captivity.

  ‘Wait,’ whispered Anna. All the blood was gone from her face. ‘Speak more slowly, Josef. I can’t stand to think I kissed him, that I let him make love to me. I wanted him!’

  ‘I could stop,’ said Mutz. ‘I’d rather not tell you any more.’ It was true. If he’d thought he might have gained the tiniest pleasure from extinguishing his remaining jealousy of Samarin, he’d been wrong. Now that Samarin was gone the knowledge Mutz had gained, even having it, never mind inflicting it on Anna, made him feel unclean, like a torturer and the worst village gossip all at once.

  ‘Is there more?’ asked Anna after a while, her voice a little stronger.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it … is there nothing good?’

  ‘Perhaps. But not before worse.’

  ‘It’s hard to understand what you’re saying, Josef,’ said Anna. She shuddered. ‘If Samarin is the Mohican, does it mean Samarin escaped from the White Garden alone? That nobody tried to … that nobody took a companion as food for the journey, as Samarin said?’

  ‘No,’ said Mutz. ‘No to all of those things. Samarin wasn’t alone. He didn’t escape from the White Garden. And there was such food.’

  ‘Oh, Alyosha,’ said Anna, lying back and resting her cheek on the pillow so she was looking into the sleeping boy’s face. ‘What have I done?’

  ‘Samarin wasn’t escaping,’ said Mutz. ‘He was travelling to the White Garden, not from it. He was never a prisoner there. His description – it was so real, wasn’t it? – was a fiction. He made it so real because he believed it himself, not that it happened in reality but that it could happen to people like him in the future. That’s the span of time and of possibility over which his mind works. He really was imprisoned, in the past. He really did escape. But none of it happened there, and then, in the Arctic. And because the Tsar and old Russia is Samarin’s enemy, and treats him as such, any way he imagines his enemy treating him could become the way men like him would treat their enemy, if they had the power. Samarin himself won’t survive the Reds. His destructiveness is too pure. But the way he described the White Garden, it wasn’t a true history, it was a prediction. It was a premonition of the righteous retribution of the Tsar’s enemies.’

  ‘I don’t understand. If there was no White Garden, where was he going?’

  ‘There was a White Garden. It was the camp of an expedition led by an aristocrat called Prince Apraksin-Aprakov, an amateur geologist who thought there were deposits of rare metals in the foothills of the Putorana mountains, by the upper reaches of the Yenisey. For some reason, Samarin made a journey there, or tried to reach it. If he left one of the river ports of south Siberia in spring, he could have travelled there and back in this time. You can imagine how hard the going would have been through the taiga and the tundra, with the rivers and swamps melting and the mosquitoes, for a man on foot. He must have known he couldn’t make it without taking another man with him as food. And he did take that man, and he did eat him, down to one hand he discarded the day before yesterday by the riverbank when he came to the railway bridge.’

  Anna closed her eyes. After a while, she said: ‘Go on. You said there might be something good.’

  Mutz felt as shy as when he had first knocked on Anna’s door. They had b
een so intimate since and now that had been put away as memory. Every word he spoke, he knew, was pushing them further apart. It was as if he wanted to destroy what he couldn’t mend. ‘You hurt me when you turned me away, and you hurt me again when you fell in love with Samarin before you even met him.’

  Anna got up quickly, took Mutz’s hand and led him away from the bed so that they stood facing each other by the window. She looked into Mutz’s eyes. It was too intense. He looked away. It was too intense, but it was not the same consuming hunger that had been. ‘Josef, you’re so clever, how can you speak like that, like a little boy? What do you mean fall in love? You know it wasn’t that. You know it was never that with Samarin. How old are you, and you know so little of what a woman needs and feels? Do you really think only men feel lust? I know I turned you away, but I was mad, Josef, foolish, impatient, greedy. I’ve paid for it, don’t you think? You can forgive me, surely? We can be together now, can’t we?’

  ‘Do you want me to finish telling you about Samarin?’

  Anna nodded, touching the inside of Mutz’s palm with her fingertips. Mutz took his hand away. He reached inside his tunic and brought out a newspaper, Red Banner, the copy Bondarenko had given him. ‘Here’s a description of what an aerial expedition to the Arctic found at the White Garden not long ago,’ he said. ‘It speaks of a terrorist, Yekaterina Orlova, being kept by the Prince at the White Garden in some kind of bondage, as her sentence for carrying a bomb. It was her exile. When we arrested Samarin two days ago, he was carrying a piece of bark with a message scratched on it. It said “I AM DYING HERE. K.” I think the K was Katya, as in Yekaterina. I think Samarin, the Mohican, travelled to the White Garden to rescue her. I don’t know why, whether he was acting as part of a strategy with his terrorist comrades, or for some other reason.’

  ‘What other reason could there have been?’ said Anna.