The Kaminsky Cure

by New, Christopher;

  Her mother’s eyes widened suddenly and she glanced round in alarm, as if startled by some sudden sound. The girl touched her hand again. ‘It’s only the church bells pealing,’ she told her mother.

  ‘Yes,’ her mother went on. ‘Everyone was excited. They were standing crowded together in the square, all pressed shoulder to shoulder, chattering and impatient, waiting for the festival to begin.’

  Again her mother hesitated and again the girl looked up. Her mother wasn’t smiling at the happiness of the people in the story, but staring about her, staring with fearful eyes, her mouth open, her lips pale and dry.

  And then suddenly the girl heard beneath the sound of the church bells pealing something that her mother had already heard. It was the steady tramp of marching feet, the tramp of soldiers, strange men she had never seen before, with shining jackboots and shining guns. Her mother shuddered and uttered a choking wordless sound.

  And then the soldiers were all round them. The girl was frightened now, she wanted to run away. But her mother sat there motionless. There was terror in her mother’s eyes, and yet she did not try to escape. Some of the soldiers took her mother away and the girl could only watch, because others were holding her still. Then they took her away too, they dragged her to the market square. There was a large crowd there, but a space had been cleared in front of the church, and everyone was silent, watching the space. The great old wooden doors of the church were closed and locked, and the bells had all stopped pealing.

  ‘Look!’ said one of the soldiers as he pushed her to the front of the crowd. And when she looked she saw her mother standing all alone in the middle of the clearing in front of the church. All alone she stood there, her hands behind her back, staring down at the ground as though she was ashamed. Her lips seemed to be moving, but no-one could hear what she was saying. She stood there between the church and the fountain, her head bowed as if she knew she was guilty, yet didn’t know what she was guilty of.

  ‘Mother!’ the girl cried, but her mother took no notice. Perhaps she did not hear her daughter’s voice. The girl tried to go to her mother, but the soldier held her back, his hand gripping her arm. Then another soldier went up to her mother. He was holding a pistol in his hand.

  And while all the villagers held their breath and watched, there was suddenly a single loud shot. Her mother’s head jerked, she staggered backwards a pace and fell down. She lay there very still, her lips no longer moving. But after a moment blood began trickling out of her mouth. Now the soldier who had been holding the girl let her go. He gave her a shove and she ran over to her mother and knelt down and whispered into her ear.

  ‘Get up!’ she whispered. ‘Get up! Let us go home.’ But her mother would not get up. She would not look at her either. Her eyes stared fixedly at the cobblestones where her blood was draining away, as though that was all that mattered to her now or ever would again.

  Everyone was watching the girl, almost as though they too were stunned, and the hushed silence stretched out longer and longer, as if it would never break. But then the soldiers started cheering, and then someone in the crowd cheered too, and then someone else and someone else. And before long everyone was shouting and cheering. The cheering flooded back through the crowd like a wave that came and passed and came again. The people leaning out of their windows were the last to cheer, but when they did, they cheered the loudest, as if to prove they were as eager as the rest of them to show how pleased and happy they were.

  After some time – it might have been one hour or many – the crowd began to leave the market square. The villagers all shook hands with each other and wished each other goodnight. Everyone said what a wonderful festival it had been and how much better the village was going to be now. But the girl stayed kneeling by her mother’s body.

  Then some men came with a cart and took the dead woman away. When the girl tried to go with her, they knocked her to the ground and kicked her. She lay where she had fallen, staring at her mother’s drying blood beside her cheek.

  Soon it was suppertime in the little village, and behind the shutters there was the smell of steaming soup and dumplings. When they had all eaten their fill, the villagers went to bed and fell sound asleep. But the girl lay there still on the cobblestones outside the church, half-asleep and half-awake, unable to move.

  Hour after hour she lay there, until, when the moon was at its highest and its pale light reached her slumping body, a tall man in a long black cloak with a face serene and dark as night appeared in the market place. He went to the girl and raised her in his arms. Wrapping the folds of his cloak round her, he carried her slowly away from the closed church. He walked along the crooked streets, onto the road that led through the peaceful fields, out into the countryside towards the next village. Into that village he carried her, and through that village into the next, and then into the next village and the next after that.

  Through one village after another the tall dark figure walked, night after night, month after month, year after year, looking for a place where he could set the girl down safe at last and she could live in peace.

  And he is walking still.

  Fable, Sara’s written in her large round hand above this story. But it seems to me she might just as well have called it History.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978 0 86356 531 1

  eISBN: 978 0 86356 497 0

  Copyright © Christopher New 2005

  The right of Christopher New to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988

  This edition first published 2005

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