by James Meek
‘I don’t know. But he did bring your son back. I don’t see how that could be a part of any vision of his destroying intelligence. Alyosha and you should be nothing to him. There. That’s all I know. I have to go. I’m sorry about Alyosha. Don’t torment yourself. The Reds have a doctor. If we can get past Matula to surrender to the Reds he’ll be all right.’
‘Thank you,’ said Anna. ‘Will you forgive me?’
‘If I have anything to forgive you for, I forgive you. But to forgive you isn’t going to change you.’
‘Take me with you to Prague when we leave here.’ Oh, yes, it was what she wanted, what Alyosha needed, a brave, careful, clever man in a neat busy little country in the far-off west. Not a punishment for her stupidity, no, no, look at the kindness and thought and coolness in Mutz’s dark eyes, none of the bloody madness that her other lovers were poisoned with. Now she would love with wisdom.
‘I can take you, if we live,’ said Mutz. ‘Do you want to go?’
‘Yes!’
Mutz couldn’t help smiling, even though he still didn’t believe. Anna’s eyes were almost back to where they had been before, eager, inquisitive, daring you to show that whatever difficult new game was to be played she had skills to play it.
‘I’ll ask you again at this time tomorrow,’ he said.
Downstairs there was a knock at the door.
Samarin’s Request
Balashov was asleep in his dark cabin next to the stable. The door opened with the kick of a stranger’s boot and the latch banged off the inside wall. Sunlight arrived. Balashov opened his eyes. From what light got past the silhouette in the doorway it was late, nine o’clock at least. He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Samarin came in and sat next to him. He put his arm round Balashov.
‘Good morning, Gleb Alexeyevich,’ said Samarin. He was hearty and cheerful.
‘Good morning, Kyrill Ivanovich,’ said Balashov. ‘What do you want?’
‘How unwelcoming you are for a man of God!’ said Samarin. ‘You’re always good for some food, my dear. Let’s have some breakfast.’
Balashov pointed to one of the chests. Samarin went to open the other one. It was locked.
‘Secrets, secrets, secrets,’ he said, lifting the lid of the chest Balashov had pointed to and rummaging. After a while he took out some dry fish, a piece of bread, some brick tea, some cups and a pan. ‘May I?’ he said.
‘My guest,’ said Balashov, standing up. ‘Let me get water.’
‘No,’ said Samarin. ‘No, you stay here. I’ll get the stove going and make tea. You’ve been up all night, I think, you must be tired. All that shooting to the north of town and you didn’t hear a thing, did you? Well, it was a small busi ness, a few people hurt.’
‘What people?’
‘Be patient, Gleb Alexeyevich. All in good time.’
‘I have things to do. I don’t wish that you be here.’
‘That’s because I haven’t told you why I’ve come! There’s a small thing I want you to do for me, and then I’ll be on my way.’
Samarin prepared the food in silence, except for when he sang a phrase from a song. ‘Among the worlds,’ he sang. Waiting for the water to boil, he stood watching it for a while with his back to Balashov, then spun round.
‘Here’s one,’ he said. ‘What do you call a vegetarian with six legs and one big cock? No? A castrate on a horse!’ He laughed. Balashov didn’t. ‘You led your horse on quite a parade last night. Round and round the paddock, man and beast walking side by side. You can still see the foot and hoofprints out there in the snow. After a while, you stopped leading him, didn’t you? No more footprints, just hoofprints! I’d like to say the hooves looked a bit heavier with you on his back but I’m not a tracker. It must be fine, if you haven’t got a cock and balls of your own, to go cantering around on a stallion in the moonlight, in the snow. Bareback, perhaps? If only there were wild mares out there to mount. You must feel like a centaur. Half man, half horse. Well, half man, whole horse. And now here we are together in your cosy cabin. One and a half men. The horse is beautiful, Gleb Alexeyevich. What’s he called?’
‘Omar.’
‘Omar. I went into the stable to look at him this morning. He’s very fine. Don’t look at me like that! I didn’t touch him. But he is very fine. It would be so wonderful for me if I could have that horse. I haven’t seen such a beautiful horse in a long time.’ He paused, tapping his foot. ‘No, Gleb Alexeyevich, you’re supposed to say: “Please take him.” It’s Christian generosity. Come on. “Please take him.” Say it now.’
‘Is that the small thing?’
‘No!’ Samarin laughed. He handed Balashov a cup of tea, with flakes and stalks from the brick turning in the brown. Balashov shook his head. Samarin put it on the floor next to Balashov’s feet. ‘Now, the bread.’ He picked up the hunk of dry rye loaf. ‘A bit of luck. I’ve got a good sharp knife already. Not the old one. I took this one from Anna Petrovna’s kitchen, see? She’s a friend of yours, isn’t she? Not a very likely couple.’
‘What were you doing at Anna Petrovna’s?’
‘I asked you not to look at me in that way, Gleb Alexeyevich, anyone would think you cared more about Anna Petrovna than you do about Omar. I know you’re friends but it’s not as if it’s going further than that, is it? You can’t put it back now.’
‘I don’t understand,’ muttered Balashov.
‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘I don’t understand what it serves to be so cruel.’
‘It doesn’t serve. I don’t serve. You know that. I’m a manifestation. Of the present anger and the future love. But that’s all very fancily put, Gleb Alexeyevich, and I haven’t answered your question, which was: “What was I doing at Anna Petrovna’s?” Well, I was fucking her, for one thing. Woah! Steady there. Please don’t stand up. You might accidentally run onto this knife, and that would be the end of you, before you’d eaten your fish. Since it obviously bothers you, I didn’t force her. She was very eager. Her husband’s been dead for a long time, you see. It was lovely, the fucking, and before the fucking. You probably don’t know how nice it can be to touch with your fingertips that little soft moist place just inside the lips and see how she smiles and closes her eyes and twists her body and says something which is like a new word of delight and a breath and a heartbeat all at the same time. Do you know? Of course you don’t. You probably never put it inside a woman before you lost it. Well, Gleb Alexeyevich, all I can say is that if you knew what you were missing you would know what was missing from you. So that was nice – are you all right, Gleb Alexeyevich? You look pale. Do have some tea.’ Samarin took a bite of bread, tore off a piece of fish and chewed them with great effort, still talking. ‘Yes, that was nice, but that wasn’t why I did it. The thing was, I needed to get away from here, I needed to take a train, and to take a train, I had to get close to it, and to get close to it, I needed to borrow the widow’s son. What could be more natural than a boy’s curiosity about locomotives, dragging his strange convict friend off to the station early this morning while Mama’s asleep to have a look at the Czechs’ train? It worked very well. I stole the train. It was annoying that the boy refused to jump off and stayed on board. It was tiresome that the fireman was shot when we ran into some troops up the line. Reds, I think. It was tiresome that the boy was shot. Sit down, or I’ll kill you.’
Samarin held the knifepoint an inch from Balashov’s throat. His other hand held Balashov’s hair.
‘What happened to Alyosha?’ said Balashov. His voice was breaking. ‘Please let me go.’ He sat back down and Samarin stepped away.
‘You seem upset,’ said Samarin. ‘Did you have your eye on the widow’s son as one for the chopping board? An heir, perhaps? I suppose you have to get other people to have your children for you.’
‘Is he badly hurt? Is he alive?’
‘He’s alive,’ said Samarin. ‘It troubles me that you care. I thought you eunuch crackpots only cared about your own.’
>
‘You’re like the Jewish lieutenant,’ said Balashov. ‘You think love, even friendship, any human bond, fails when the Keys to Hell are thrown in the fire. It is not true.’
‘Of all the religions, yours is the funniest, Gleb Alexeyevich. When the lights go out for the last time and the world ends, somebody in their final sleep will wake up and chuckle over the men and women who mutilated their genitals because they thought it would make them into angels. Stay where you are! Listen. Will you listen? Can you? Things have happened which will not—which I will not allow to happen again. Your sect is ridiculous but it carries something which I need to take from you today, a method that is absurd in the way you carry it out and the beliefs you attach to it. Still, I need it. Things have happened which I will not allow to happen again.’ Samarin was breathing heavily. His voice was uneven. ‘What’s your philosophy? That to enter Paradise, you have to rid yourself of even the means to commit sin? Why don’t you take your eyes out and cut off your tongue? All you can think about is the forbidden fruit and carnal knowledge, which means – ffffffft! The knife. It’s shit, my friend. There’s no other world than this, and no other life. We have to make our own Paradise here if we want one, but it’ll take a long time, and many people will have to die. Do you know who I am? I’m Samarin. I’m the Mohican. I’m Samarin–Mohican. I’m thief, bomber, terrorist, anarchist, the destroyer. I’m here on earth to destroy everything which doesn’t resemble Paradise. There are others like me. Understand. Every office, every rank, every service, eveIt’s good that you came,’ saidry banker, shopkeeper, general, priest, landowner, noble, bureaucrat. In ten years we’ve left our mark. It has been difficult. Things have happened which I will not allow to happen again. There have been times when the mission has been hard, Gleb Alexeyevich. Hard. Too … hard. There have been times when the ones the destroyer needs to use, and destroy if necessary to move forward, or at least abandon, have …’ Samarin blinked rapidly as he searched for a word ‘… imprinted themselves on him. Do you know, I had a clear line from here to here’ – Samarin drew a careful horizontal line in the air – ‘six months ago. I was never a prisoner at any White Garden. That was a necessary lie. I was at liberty and had a clear journey and means from Moscow to Georgia to affect the course of what they called a revolution there. That was what I had to do. It was agreed with my comrades, but no agreement was necessary. The lines of life and action and necessity coincided so well. Yet I never went to Georgia. I made a six-month journey to the Arctic, on foot, for no purpose except to see if I could save a woman I once knew as a student, who was being held prisoner there. Katya. Why did I go up there? Do you know how badly I wanted to find her? Do you know how much she meant to me? I took a companion with me, a nice stout young socialist revolutionary, clever, so that I could kill him and eat him when our food ran out. And that’s what I did, Gleb Alexeyevich.’
‘God forgive your soul.’
‘God forgive, God forgive – fuck God. Are you hearing me? To plan to butcher and eat another man because you want to help one single woman who’s probably dead anyway? Not for a cause, but for yourself? What does that sound like?’
‘You must have loved this Katya very much.’
‘Idiot! What do you think love is? Is it going to haul a man a thousand miles through the tundra and make him a cannibal?’
‘Did you find her?’
‘Yes. She was dead. They were all dead. She was frozen. There were tiny pieces of ice on the soft down above her mouth.’
‘Kyrill Ivanovich …’
‘Listen, damn you! Can you not listen?’ Samarin kicked the cup and it shot under the bed and hit the wall, impregnating the raw floor timbers with a spreading stain. ‘Again! Today. A boy takes a small piece of shrapnel in his shoulder. He bleeds. He falls down. I have no cause to turn back. I can leave him lying there, jump off the train, run into the forest, and slip past the Reds to the west. That’s where I must be. That’s where the destroyer has to work. And again, another one of those bitches has hold of me, and drags me back, carrying her boy. I had to go on, and I went back, for the sake of that woman. I only spent one night with her, we sang, I kissed the little scar on her breast, and she had me. You know what I’m saying, Gleb Alexeyevich. It must not happen again. You reached the moment of it must not happen again, for the sake of a better world than this miserable one. Now I’ve reached it. Take the knife. Take it. Castrate me.’
Balashov, who had been sitting hunched, looking at his feet with his hands clasped together, looked up and asked Samarin what he meant.
‘What do you think? Take the knife. Do what you do. Castrate me.’
Balashov took the knife and threw it on the bed, shaking his head. Samarin grabbed it, prised Balashov’s fingers open and pushed the handle into Balashov’s hand. He threw off his coat, loosened his trousers and let them fall.
‘It’s not there,’ said Balashov, shaking his head. ‘That’s not the place love is, otherwise what kind of world is the one you’re trying to make?’
‘Geld me,’ said Samarin. ‘I can’t be like this. It’s not love, it’s a sickness, it’s a power over me I can’t endure.’ He dropped to his knees in front of Balashov, lifted up his shirt and held his scrotum in his fist. His lips stretched and quivered and two tears made wide tracks in the soot on his cheeks. ‘Castrate me, Gleb,’ he sobbed, ‘Or I’m no good to the future.’
Balashov dropped the knife on the bed again, stood up, pressed Samarin’s head against his belly and stroked it for a few moments. He bent down to kiss it, then left Samarin crying and began walking towards Yazyk.
Tripping The Demons
Downstairs, there was a knocking at the door. Mutz went to see who was there. He took out his pistol. Anna heard him cock the gun as went down, the warning of industrial death against the bootsoles on the wood. She heard the door opening. Instead of voices, there was a moment of silence, and what might have been a word. Then the door closed and she heard feet coming up the stairs. It wasn’t Mutz.
‘Hello Gleb,’ said Anna to Balashov. He looked different. His serenity was broken. He didn’t look as if he’d been on a good trip to Heaven for a while.
‘I heard about Alyosha,’ said Balashov. ‘I’m sorry I came, but I wanted to see him.’
‘It’s good that you came,’ said Anna. ‘He’s your son, in spite of everything.’
‘Mutz left,’ said Balashov. ‘He looked at me and shook my hand. He just said “Matula”, shook my hand and left.’
‘Alyosha’s sleeping. He was hurt in the shoulder. It went right through. The damage isn’t so terrible, it didn’t touch the bone, but it’ll hurt, poor one, and I’m worried about infection. He was feverish.’
Balashov went over to the bed and knelt down beside it. He was about to touch Alyosha’s head when he stopped and went to wash his hands in the bowl on the dresser. Anna watched him. There was something about the way he moved that was more careless than before. He looked like something that Anna had not seen him look since she arrived in Yazyk: alone. Well, she was all cried out, empty now. Balashov returned to his post on the floor by the bed. One of Alyosha’s hands was outside the covers and Balashov put it between his own. Anna wondered whether, if Alyosha woke up, he would be frightened, or if, in some deep place he would never find, he would recognise his father as his own flesh and blood.
‘Do you mind?’ said Balashov.
‘No. But if he wakes up, don’t tell him you’re his father.’
‘No. Do you mind if I pray? Without speaking.’
‘No.’
Minutes passed in complete silence. Balashov got up and came over to Anna.
‘You’ve changed,’ said Anna.
‘What we do … there are changes to our bodies …’ said Balashov, blushing. ‘The skin is smoother, we are heavier.’
‘No. Since yesterday.’
‘Do you see something?’
‘Is there trouble in your fellowship?’
‘I can’t lead them any
more. I’ve begun to lie to them about my visions. I’ve lied to you as well, and I always meant to tell the truth to you, and to keep my promises, after I broke so many to you before. I promised you that I wouldn’t help any others to purification, and a few nights ago I broke that promise.’
‘You took the knife to a man?’
‘Yes. He was nineteen.’
‘Oh, Gleb.’
‘I met the convict on the road back from Verkhny Luk and he found out what I’d done. He said he’d say nothing if I said nothing about him taking a litre of spirit from me. I knew Samarin killed the shaman, Anna. I could have warned you all. This is my doing. I was too proud to tell you. I was too proud to let you know that I’d broken a new promise to you. So I became a liar. A liar can’t be an angel in the house of God. What it means is that I care more about what you think than what God thinks.’
‘That pleases me.’
‘It doesn’t please God.’
‘Gleb, I invited Samarin to spend the night with me. We slept together. We made love.’
‘I know.’
‘I was the fool who itched for him and couldn’t do without him, and trusted him. I let him steal our son.’
‘Our son!’ Balashov smiled. ‘It sounds strange.’
‘Whatever you do to yourself you can’t make it that he isn’t.’
‘Why did you come to Yazyk? I never imagined you would. When I saw you at the station with Alyosha for the first time, four, five years ago? For a moment I was glad. Then it was like the knife again. I hated you. I wondered if the Devil had taken your shape, to torment me. That was easy. I prayed, I fasted, I spun. Later it was harder, when I saw it was really you. At first, I still hated you. I felt like a small child playing some wonderful game on a summer evening that never ends, who notices that an older child is watching from a distance, and though the small child still believes in the game, he can’t help feeling the eyes of the older child, who thinks their castle is just a pile of sticks, and their magic robes are just sheets borrowed from the big house. Then I stopped hating you. I tried to help you. You remember that was the hardest of all. I’d left the world, I’d boarded the castrate ship, I’d burned the Devil’s keys, and still you had some hold on me that was nothing to do with passion. As if you and I had once shared a great secret, and now I’d forgotten it, and I knew you had it, but I couldn’t get back to you any more to find out what it was.’