The Librarian

by Mikhail Elizarov

  The man who had taken the Book from me was lying on the ground, with Sukharev raising his chain with the bunches of padlocks dangling from it and crashing it down on the body that was shuddering in agony.

  Down on my hands and knees, I feverishly ran my fingers round my mouth, trying to feel my tongue. My numb, insensitive fingers were immediately smeared with blood and I couldn’t understand a thing. Horrified, I wiped the bitten-off piece of flesh on my sleeve. It looked as if it wasn’t a tongue after all, but a bite taken out of a wrist. I was racked by a nauseous, retching cough and spat up blood—either my own or someone else’s—for a minute. Then Garshenin and Dzyuba ran over to me and lifted me up. Sukharev handed me the box with the Book in it, and I hung it round my neck again.

  No more new fighters were climbing in, and the final enemy succumbed in uneven battle on two fronts with Anna and Marat Andreyevich, taking a blow from the head of the flail.

  From the side where the yard was enclosed by a brick wall, fresh forces suddenly broke in. The only one left alive at the gates was the light-haired leader himself. He was no longer trying to break through to bolt, but skilfully dodging the Vozglyakovs’ spades and Kruchina’s bayonet as he retreated along the stockade. “Fuck it, will get you get a move on!” he called hoarsely to his accomplices.

  Lutsis, Vyrin and Ozerov dashed to intercept the reinforcements, with Timofei Stepanovich struggling to keep up with them.

  The light-haired man launched a desperate counterattack. Svetlana’s spade broke under a crushing blow from a cleaver and it was a miracle that she wasn’t killed herself. The second cleaver caught Kruchina. I heard Igor Valeryevich give a wild roar, pressing his hand to the spot on his temple where only a second ago he had an ear. Veronika’s spade sank into the enemy leader’s breastbone with a crunch. He roared. Veronika leaned on the handle with her full weight, pinning her adversary to the stockade. The light-haired man went limp and dangled on the spade like a puppet whose strings have all snapped at once.

  Their leader’s death did nothing to stiffen the attackers’ courage. One of the six immediately fell victim to Vyrin’s entrenching tool and Timofei Stepanovich’s mace crushed another one’s skull. Ozerov’s pike transfixed the ribs of a third. A ball bearing precisely flung by Lutsis hit a fleeing enemy on the back of the neck. The man howled, clutched his head and fell, and Nikolai Tarasovich stamped his boot down on the man’s shattered neck vertebrae.

  One of the fighters who was still alive flung his axe at Ozerov, but luckily it was only the handle that caught him on the chin. Ozerov toppled over and didn’t see Marat Andreyevich reach his foe and dispatch him. The sixth hero didn’t waste any precious time; he just hopped back over the wall.

  “Out there… Only four of them…” Garshenin whispered, pointing over the stockade. “We have to make a sortie to finish them off…”

  Ievlev, Kruchina, Sukharev, the Vozglyakov sisters, Tanya and Dzyuba split up and stood at both sides of the gate. Garshenin pulled out the cross, and Kruchina and Ievlev pulled the heavy, creaking gates inward.

  Four men immediately dashed into the opening. They ran a couple of steps and then halted. Their astonishment was replaced by confusion. They backed away and took to their heels without thinking twice. The long point of Garshenin’s scythe caught the slowest enemy, whose inertia pulled him off the blade, but after running a couple of steps, he ran out of steam and collapsed. Anna flung her spade just above the ground, spinning it through the air like a windmill. A second runner collapsed into the grass with his legs broken and Ievlev was on him in two swift bounds.

  Their comrade’s dying shriek lent the other two invaders strength. Breaking away from the panting pursuit, they reached the forest and hid behind the trees. They were not pursued any farther. The battle was over.

  I was shuddering in an icy fever. There was a deafening pulse beating in the nape of my neck and my eardrums. The adrenalin rush subsided. The spot where my hair had been pulled out started burning again. My black eye swelled up, the eyebrow and eyelid stung. A nagging pain, like toothache, was twisting my swollen cheek. I stood in the middle of the yard and watched Ievlev throw the body of a fallen enemy over his shoulder, while Sukharev and Ozerov dragged another by the legs. The other Shironinites were also coming back.

  Garshenin stopped beside me, dishevelled and dirty.

  “Victory! Congratulations!” he exclaimed, his eyes glowing in exultation.

  “Looks like we squeezed through without any losses,” said Dzyuba. “May God be praised…”

  “Oh, no, we’ve got losses!” Kruchina hissed. He was holding his hand to the wound on his head, with blood seeping between his fingers. “I’ve lost half my ear, dammit! Now I’ll have to walk around like a convict!”

  “You can cover it with your hair. No one will even notice,” Tanya reassured him as she poured peroxide onto cotton wool from a little bottle.

  Kruchina took his hand away from his temple, revealing for a moment a crimson stump that looked like a tulip, and applied the lump of cotton wool.

  Ozerov got up off the ground unsteadily, his beard covered in blood; Timofei Stepanovich, sitting with his back against the wall, clutched his handkerchief, wearily wiping his face, as purple as a new-born baby’s.

  There were about a dozen enemy bodies lying around in the yard. Five of them had met their death beside the brick wall. Three were still dangling on the stockade and four storm troopers were lying by the gates, with their light-haired leader squirming nearby.

  “Interrogate him, Alexei. Interrogate him immediately,” Timofei Stepanovich hissed. “Find out who sent them.” The old man could barely even draw breath, as if he had been running hard.

  The light-haired man was in a really bad way, and I had to hurry if I was going to get anything out of him.

  I walked up to the dying man.

  “Listen, we’ll try to ease your suffering, as far we’re able…” I swung round. “Marat Andreyevich, bring some Analgin quickly!”

  The enemy leader’s eyes shuddered murkily, like a fish’s.

  “Where’s the Book?”

  “Here,” I said tapping on the steel casket. “And now tell me who set you on us.”

  “Show me the Book…” he wheezed painfully.

  “All right,” I said and set the case on my knee.

  He waited patiently for me to find the key and open the lock, even raising himself up slightly. The broad red patch on his caved-in chest glittered as fresh blood flowed into it, as dull and greasy as crude oil.

  “There you are…” I showed him the Book lying on the velvet. “And now tell me how you found out about us.”

  “The wrong one!” he slumped back feebly and looked at me with desolate, weary hatred. “It’s a different one!”

  “What did you expect to see?”

  “The Book of Endurance!” the light-haired man barked out in a fury, and rivulets of beetroot-red blood spurted from his nostrils.

  “And who told you we had a Book of Endurance?”

  “The old woman…”

  “What old woman?”

  “A clever old woman! We drew the lot to try first… Three years we’d been waiting for our turn, and then this chance came up… It didn’t work…” He stirred feebly. “It hurts… The Book of Endurance…”

  “We only have a Book of Memory.”

  “You’re lying,” the light-haired man whispered indifferently.

  “No, it’s true…”

  The wounded man laughed, with a gurgling sound in his throat.

  “So, the old woman tricked us… I told you she was clever. But you’re going to die anyway. No one will get away. The old woman’s decided…”

  “Has that shed any light on things? Who are they?” asked Dezhnev, squatting down beside us. He was holding a syringe with an analgesic mixture that looked like spittle.

  “I can’t tell… It doesn’t sound like the council. He talked about some old woman. Tried to frighten me with her.”


  Marat Andreyevich slid the needle into one of the light-haired man’s veins.

  The man watched the movement of the plunger indifferently and asked:

  “Did you kill all my men?”

  “Three of them escaped.”

  “They were lucky…”

  He didn’t say another word. Soon he closed his eyes. The rustle of his departing breath struggled out through his clenched teeth, like a little moth fluttering its wings in a fragile porcelain throat. His blood-choked nostrils flared like gills and then froze.

  “Alexei! Marat Andreyevich!” Tanya suddenly called in a piercing voice that broke into a shriek.

  I shuddered and looked round. Startled by the heart-rending cry, the Shironinites were already hurrying towards the stockade. When we reached the site of the commotion, we saw Timofei Stepanovich. The old man was still sitting there, leaning back against the logs. His shaggy head had slumped forward into his chest, as if it had been severed. His right leg was drawn up, but his left one was extended, so we could see the worn-down heel of his dusty boot.

  Sukharev and Vyrin laid Timofei Stepanovich out on the ground, and Marat Andreyevich clutched the old man’s wrist with its black veins, listening intently for any life that might tremble under the skin, and then, unable to believe his own inconceivable diagnosis, he said:

  “Nine satisfactions, Neverbino—he went through them all without a scratch. And now his heart’s given out…”

  “What kind of crap’s that?” Ievlev roared. “What do you mean, his heart?” He pressed his hands down on the bony ribcage. “Breathe, old man, breathe!” he said, buffeting the lifeless body.

  Some secret fermentation stirred inside Timofei Stepanovich, and a spate of thick lymph and bodily fluids gushed out through his blue, half-open mouth and splashed onto Ievlev, who cried out and staggered back, hastily wiping the death slime off his face and clothes. Then it was finally clear to me that Timofei Stepanovich was no longer with us, and one more name had been added to the doleful list of the Shironin reading room’s losses.

  THROUGH THE FOREST

  IN HALF AN HOUR Sukharev, Kruchina and Lutsis had dug the old man a shallow, cramped grave. The clayey soil yielded reluctantly to their spades. It was a hasty funeral, with no speeches and no commemorative snacks. The bodies of our enemies were carried to the ravine and covered over with brushwood—there was no time for a more thorough burial.

  We loaded all our things, food reserves and weapons into the trailer and the bus haphazardly; all we wanted was to get out of there before sunset.

  Meanwhile Ievlev fiddled with the chainsaw, mixing petrol and oil together like an alchemist. The proportions of the liquids weren’t right, the second-hand saw was acting up and Nikolai Ivanovich, mentally forwarding his curses to the inventor of the two-stroke engine, took it apart again, adjusted the magneto, cleaned the carburettor, emptied the tank and poured in the new mixture—and then on and on like that, until the Taiga started cackling at the first tug on the starting cord. The chainsaw had no right to cut out that evening.

  The goal we had set was far from simple. We intended to break out through the blockage and escape from this trap. If the light-haired man’s dying words could be trusted, we were smack in the middle of a full-scale altercation. There were embittered, deprived readers lurking in the forest, and they wanted to acquire a rare and valuable Book from outcasts like us. We couldn’t understand what mysterious old woman it was that had set this pack of aggrieved hounds on us.

  Our desperate calculations were founded entirely on the hope that the fugitives from the gang we had just destroyed would spread word of the horror they had suffered through the forest and cool the martial ardour of the other marauders. Apart from that, I had a fairly clear idea of the strategy of this campaign of pillage. The horde could not unite. Dividing up a Book between temporary partners was not a realistic prospect. There could only be one winner. That was probably what the light-haired man had meant when he told me they had drawn lots. His men had been given the opportunity to get the Book, and they had lost. Now a new team would try their strength against us. The marauders were taking turns.

  The sun was already sinking in the west when the cavalcade set off, fully armed and equipped, into the dangerous unknown. Leading the squad were Sukharev, Vyrin, Lutsis and Garshenin, peering keenly into the twilight of the branches to spot the slightest signs of danger, with the dogs running alongside them. Immediately after the watch unit came the chugging motorbike driven by Anna, with Ievlev and his chainsaw in the sidecar. The bus and the Niva crept along slowly behind them. Marat Andreyevich was driving the bus and Veronika and Svetlana walked alongside the LAZ, protecting its wheels. The Niva was driven by Ozerov. Kruchina and Dzyuba came last, guarding the rear.

  Judging from the voices in the avant-garde, we had reached the blockage. The chainsaw’s motor roared like a moped rearing up on its back wheel. The buzzing ribbon of steel ripped into the wood. The low-voiced Taiga gave a falsetto howl and made short work of the forest timber. Then it ripped into wood again with a squeal.

  After only a couple of minutes the future corridor through the impassable blockage was already marked out and there was a heap of branches lying beside Nikolai Tarasovich. I tried to lift a sawn-off round of log the size of a small butcher’s block. The damp wood was as heavy as stone. I rolled it to the bushes beside the road and sensed, rather than saw, figures lurking behind the tangled branches of blackthorn.

  In the deep millpond of forest twilight I saw the outlines of stooping shadows, skulking along like black holes that had come to life. There was a vague hubbub running through the forest, safely drowned out by the strenuous barking of the chainsaw. The men who had hidden behind the tangled ricks of blackthorn didn’t yet realize that they had been discovered. Signalling to his companions, one enemy hissed: “S-s-s-shh!” Then a long trill of birdsong ran through the bushes. A crow cawed hoarsely in reply and a woodpecker started tapping.

  Simultaneously with my piercing shout of “Ambush!” a staff with a long, narrow spearhead was thrust out through the cobwebs of branches as rapidly as a chameleon’s tongue. The weak point couldn’t pierce the tyre rubber of my armour, as tough as an oak board. A shaggy little body darted out of the bushes straight at me. I swung my hammer. The attacker flung out his arms and tumbled over backwards onto a bush.

  A demonic chorus mingled with the roaring of the chainsaw. I looked round. Small, dwarfish creatures were clambering through the forest tangle. Dressed in furs, with cattle horns sewn on above their ribs, and caps with the bony tops of horses’, deer’s or bulls’ skulls. The round faces with narrow eyes and straight, coal-black hair revealed that they belonged to vanishing races of the Far North. They howled, shaking their grandfathers’ lances, harpoons and bear spears. There were about fifteen of these men in their freakish animal armour.

  Before attacking they shrieked again, levelled their weapons and came rushing down. Latka growled and was immediately picked up on a bear spear and tossed aside like an old moth-eaten fur jacket.

  A bloody battle started up on the logs. Sukharev, Vyrin, Lutsis and Garshenin bravely fought off an enemy three times as numerous. Nikolai Tarasovich carried on working away with the saw, hurrying to complete a corridor wide enough to accommodate the bus.

  Lutsis sank the upper corner of his axe into a mare’s forehead, slicing through the helmet and the skull right down to the chin. Vyrin’s entrenching tools fluttered like the black wings of a swallowtail butterfly.

  Garshenin grabbed hold of a harpoon and jerked it towards himself. The long blade of his scythe slid along the handle—straight into a swollen, straining throat. Sukharev swung his mace above his head and brought it down hard on a horned helmet, raising a fountain of powdered bone.

  Someone recklessly attacked Nikolai Tarasovich’s chainsaw, sticking his fur sleeve right in under the cutting edges as they raced round their ellipse. The saw spat out a tattered bundle of bloody fragments and suddenly choked. The
dense nap had jammed the chain, which was designed for timber. Ievlev flung the useless piece of equipment aside and reached out his hands. Even stooping over, he was twice as tall as his squat adversaries and could rely on an unchallenged superiority of muscle power and height. He struck the first one with his fist of iron, neatly dodging a fifty-centimetre-long jagged blade. The face of the animal-headed warrior was flooded with blood from his smashed brow bone. The second one jumped from above. Ievlev caught him in the air by the scruff of his neck, smashed him down hard onto the ground and kicked him in the temple. Then he immediately broke the bear spear that had been dropped across his knee, converting the stabbing weapon into a two-handed sword.

  A second troop tumbled out into the road like spilled beads. These warriors entered battle wearing padded builders’ helmets with round metal plates on them and home-made boleros of coarse leather with metal plates sewn close together all over them. A heavy mace crunched into the windscreen of the Niva. Ozerov jumped out of the car and rolled across the ground, miraculously dodging a spiked club that ploughed up the earth beside his head, and jumped to his feet. An axe glinted in his hand.

  Kruchina, Dzyuba and Tanya retreated in triangular formation. Their attackers prodded at them with bear spears, seeking a gap in their defences, trying to catch a leg or stab a neck or unprotected side. Two of them had already misjudged the distance and paid the price by running onto the ninety-centimetre blade of Tanya’s rapier. The axe and the mace clashed resonantly, altering the trajectory of their blows. Ozerov’s axe, aimed at the head, fell crookedly, hitting a collarbone. There was a loud crack, as if someone had bitten a large bone in half.

  Marat Andreyevich dashed about inside the bus. I had given him the Book earlier and now he didn’t know what to do: wade into the battle or sit in the relatively safe bus, waiting for Ievlev to clear the way with his chainsaw.