“Are we dead?” she asked.
“We should have picked a few shoots and run,” Grisha said, calm.
He peered intently into the bushes. Behind them on the path, more quick, random movements, as if the patrols were clearing all the ordinary people out of the park, where now…
“But how? How is it possible? Do they really have cameras everywhere? Everywhere we go? In every park? How is it possible?”
But Grisha hushed her. He sat down, feeling his army instincts stirring in him. He looked around. The movement was only behind them, coming from the main path. How many there were wasn’t clear. But quite a few. It’s been a long time since they stopped coming in threes.
Ahead of them it was as quiet as before. He didn’t sense an ambush there. They might also be able to get away to the right, and head down to the streetcar tracks. Five hundred meters through the bushes, dodging between the tree trunks. Out of the park. Jump onto a streetcar and ride off as far as you can, if you get through. Or mix with the crowd, if there’s a crowd down there. But we won’t get through. And no, there’s no crowd. Besides, the park only gets wider on that side. It wouldn’t be easy.
“Maybe it’s not the cops?” Angie asked. Hoping.
Grisha wasn’t about to waste time being ironic, all the more so since irony tended to be lost on him. If not the cops, then what’s behind those trees? Dressed in black uniforms? Carrying walkie-talkies? Ha, ha, ha. Well, maybe he would get the hang of irony yet.
Reconnaissance. At eleven o’clock, north, on the left, the factory wall, limiting the search. At six o’clock, the enemy, a firearm, possibly automatic. Number unknown, but no less than a platoon. One and a half kilometers of hard running. The park abuts a busy square in front of the department store. People are heading home from work. Lots of people. Cut into the crowd. Mix in. Go down into the Metro. Jump in the first car you see. Get out the last stop. Wait it out at the dacha. Head off into the woods. Live in a tent.
But first—run. Run. Escape. We all cling with our lives to the idea of escape. What would we do without it.
“So, listen up,” Grisha said sharply. “Now. We get up and run. Straight ahead. You go first. Don’t look around. As fast as you can and as hard as you can. Straight ahead. I’ll run right after you. If they shoot, they’ll hit me first. If we break through to the department store, we’re only two hundred meters from the Metro.”
She raised her lips to him—like, to kiss. “Idiot. This isn’t a movie! Come on, move!”
Angie rushed forward, swinging her bouquet, scattering pearls on the moss. Leaving a trail to give them away. The cops will turn up right at the dacha, in the basement, in the dorm, in the tent—there’s no way to get away from them, throw the bouquet away, throw it away. Grisha followed her easily. He looked back as he went, not slowing down. Damn! Five, seven, ten silhouettes. They were busy with something over there, probably asking for orders. That’s right, guys, keep asking. Meanwhile, we’ll get a bit farther away.
To the right came the howl of a siren, muffled by the trees, and the screech of brakes. We did the right thing not running to the streetcars. The right thing. But why so many sirens?
Running’s easy, when you’re running you don’t have to think. Just run. Around the tree trunks. Tree trunks make you hard to hit. Back there, something smacked, thudded, twitched; he instinctively pushed Angie, fell, rolled over and covered her. But it wasn’t the crackle of gunfire, not that. They’d just turned on the loudspeaker.
“Attention,” an amplified voice roared. “Attention,” it repeated, obviously trying to make itself sound more important—how ordinary it was, how plain looking, how easily ignored by its superiors—with its newfound decibels. The park went quiet; even the birds fell silent, as if they recognized, if not this voice, then this same intonation. “Attention. You have violated Article 256 of the Amended Criminal Code…” The voice trailed off, evidently trying to recall the exact wording of this Article, but, concluding that a person needn’t trouble himself with details when he can speak this loudly, continued, “…forbidding the destruction of wild flowers and grasses that have been entered in the Red Book.”
The apocalyptic thunder of the voice shackled one’s will. It was quite clear that the fugitives needed to run on instead of listening to it, but it was impossible not to listen. The voice was now telling them of their fate. And you could feel that it had in its power to say, “Look, we forgive you, just come out with your hands up, you will be sentenced to ten years of community service, just come out, we won’t really hurt you, maybe just knock out a couple of teeth, after all, it’s your first offense, since it’s everybody’s first offense, no one ever gets a second.” But the voice, pronouncing each letter of its speech clearly and slowly, did not know mercy. Which was probably why it sounded so loud. The voice kept on: deafening. Not just its volume, but its intent.
“Deadly force will be used against you. I repeat. Deadly force will be used against you. The park has been surrounded. Surrender now.”
Grisha raised himself on his elbows and looked out from behind some fern leaves. The police, in chain formation, were coming closer. Each one held a small, gleaming pistol.
The megaphone stood at a distance, hidden by the trees, so that it seemed the stern and slow voice was coming from nowhere and everywhere.
“We have to run,” said Grisha under his breath. “We have to keep on running.”
From the side of the approaching chain came some muffled noises, crunching sounds. Peeping out, Grisha saw the cops had started jogging, were running straight at Angie and him. You could already see their shoulder straps and bulletproof vests, the cords on their calves, their stripes and buttons.
Grigory jumped up first, grabbed her hand, and dragged her forward, pulling her along, and just then behind them something roared and began to crack-squeal through the tree trunks, hacking branches to pieces and cutting down leaves. Angie jerked and cried out, but no, she didn’t drop to the ground—they didn’t hit her—she was just terrified, the little idiot; she’s never been shot at before, but pistols are hardly Kalashnikovs. They fire like a bull pisses, as his deputy commander used to say. He’d taught his men not to be afraid of bullets. A bullet is stupid, but dura lex—the law is severe. That’s what’s embroidered on the sleeves of these jokers dressed in black. Anyway, since when are cops good shots? It’s just that there’s a lot of them. Really a lot. Let’s say ten, and each has six rounds. And a spare in a holster. That adds up to a hundred twenty bullets. A hundred twenty for just the two of them, him and Angie.
And Grisha had already picked out a clear goal—a broken-down concrete box, probably once a transformer station, transforming something or other, but now simply concrete, through which pistol bullets can’t penetrate. If only there was a wall like that around at the dacha. On all sides. And live like that. Thick concrete. Dura lex. Little idiot, what have you done? You pulled on your long pants a little early, kid, and it’s not so easy to run in them—they catch on every branch.
They’d almost reached their goal, were circling behind the tons of life-saving, seamless concrete, ricochets spraying the air around them, when suddenly Angie’s foot caught on something, dura lex, and she fell forward and crawled on her stomach about a meter and then lay that way, and he had to drag her to safety by foot and blouse, to safety behind the concrete, and here she’s flapping her eyelids and gasping for air, and is shaking and repeating, “I’m hit, I’m hit,” and she points—as if he wouldn’t believe her otherwise—points to her blouse, where, by her shoulder, there’s a round hole.
“Does it hurt? Does it hurt?” he asked.
Angie shook her head and the leaves were reflected in her eyes. She was breathing heavily. The hole’s nowhere near her heart, and it seems her lung is fine too, there’s no pinkish froth on her lips. Grisha tore her blouse. Now he sees her bra, and in it such a boring, such an uninteresting—now that they’re on the run—breast. But there’s no blood. Somehow there’s
no blood. The entry wound is round, clean, and there’s no exit wound. The bullet is stuck inside. In Angela. A bullet in Angela, getting cold, getting warm from her body. A bullet. In Angela. What organs do women have two centimeters below their shoulder? Will she die? Is she already dying? And why isn’t there any blood? And why is she breathing so fast? And why are there leaves in her eyes? One hundred twenty bullets for two. Well, that’s too many. Too many.
Panting and weak, Grisha threw several pinecones from behind the wall at the police, who scattered in a flash. Grenades, they thought. Immediately, in retaliation, came a deep-throated rumble, and the concrete crunched and popped.
He turned to his Angie.
“Can you walk?”
In reply, she fainted. I see. She can’t stand. Is it shock? Or did they hit something vital? Shit, what should he do?
He helped her to sit up, leaned her back against the wall. That’s it, Angie, my sweet. That’s it. Sit a while. I’ll think of something. In her hand a fresh bouquet of lilies of the valley, snow white like underwear. Magic flowers. What I’d like to do is keep staring at this bouquet until the police come out from behind the trees, swinging their truncheons.
Grigory ran ahead. Ten, twenty, thirty meters. There was a clearing; it split the park in two. Just a little further. From behind the trees. The sound of distant bells. Pleasant, melodious. There, you can already see the department store. So many people! Sure, it’ll be difficult with a wounded Angie. Getting to the Metro. Cover the hole with my hands. The girl’s in a bad way. Still no blood. And, looking down to the foot of the hill, where the park ended, he went cold, not believing his eyes, but already resigning himself (after all, they’d picked flowers that were entered in the Red Book!). Near a hillock, at the entrance to the park, dozens of people in black uniforms were already milling about. That melodious ringing, which Grisha had taken for distant bells, came from the clanging of those half-meter steel barriers, whose segments were being unloaded from a nearby truck. Can’t jump those, and there’s no climbing over, especially with a wounded Angie. They’ll see us and open fire. And not with pistols anymore. With assault rifles. Point blank.
He went back to Angie. It was like waking up. The darkness of his despair and then, again, the tree trunks, the park, the concrete, the cops and their pistols. They were closer than ever, of course, already the branches were crackling right by their haven. What were the police waiting for? Were they really afraid of Grisha’s pinecones? How beautiful she is. Angela. His Angela.
He stroked her cheeks. She raised her head. There were tears in her eyes. Dura lex.
“It’s going to be all right.” It was easy to lie to her. All he had to do was focus on her eyelashes and not get distracted by the emerald leaves in her eyes. Because there, in those leaves, he’d find himself, and you can’t fool yourself for long. “Once you rest a little, we’ll run to the department store and jump into the Metro. There’s a crowd there now. No one will notice us. We’ll get to the dorm. We’ll open the balcony door. In the evening we’ll feel the coolness from the street and it will be so very quiet. For now, give me the bouquet. Stay here. I’ll be back soon.”
Grisha grabbed the lilies of the valley. The shoots and blossoms. She’ll go on waiting for him even when there’s no one left to wait. What a sad song! Angie is wounded, and now that he has the flowers, she’s almost not guilty. Maybe they won’t finish her off.
He buttoned his shirt. He sniffed the flowering sweetness. In the evening it will be so very quiet. They’ll meet once again. But what’s an evening, really? Is it worth it to live for an evening?
“Wait for me,” he asked her.
Just two steps. The first to the side, the second ahead, far ahead, over the wall, to center stage, so as not to see her anymore, so as to look only at them, the ones still approaching, and you want to take cover behind the lilies of the valley, as if this will stop them, but the flowers aren’t guilty, they don’t deserve it, at least let them survive. Two or three seconds of silence. Most likely they were taking aim, and then the whole park flourished with incredible, enormous blossoms, which had no smell but sparkled like dew, growing and growing through the sky, through the tree trunks, and through the leaves in Angie’s eyes.
When everything was over, they shoved Grisha and Angie into black, opaque plastic bags (someone even joked that they ought to share one, since then they could have one last roll in the hay on the road to their special numbered graves, out in the plot reserved for violators of Article 256 of the Criminal Code). No one knew what to do with the actual bouquet, however, now crumpled and touched by splashes of scarlet lipstick from the bullet wounds in Grisha’s body. No one felt like counting the flowers, filling out forms, filing reports for an already closed case, and so they ended up simply tossing them onto the carpet of moss, so that the picked lilies of the valley blended in with the ones still growing, and from a distance you couldn’t tell them apart, couldn’t tell them apart.
TRANSLATED FROM RUSSIAN BY SYLVIA MAIZELL
[AUSTRIA]
DIETER SPERL
Random Walker
DREAM (1)
Something’s held on, has adhered to you, has enveloped your body like a film. You’ve propped up your head, could linger this way for hours. A man is born. A woman is born. A man is reborn. Something is there, is moving. It is a woman, from another life, from many other lives. It is impossible, yet you see her, can see her, are overcome by this love, by this early love. You can see her, not touch her, cannot touch her. You speak with her, she comes next to you. This beckoning has proved enough to prevent you from resting. Are you there? Are you there?
There must be many births from which this culture grows, only to end up in a wooden box again and again. It’s a dream, just a dream, nothing more. One hundred thirty-one plastic locomotives in ten colors wait in boxes before your window. Many people emerge, wander up to you, disappear again, you can grow as much as you want to, they wander up to you, disappearing again. You move onto the street, are open for anything, a first love, although you’ve never kissed her, ever. She is a spirit, to evade the birds.
She says: People that don’t have any dreams die earlier.
There you are, and pictures, there you are and your pictures.
You say: People that don’t have any dreams die, sooner or later.
Sometime or other there’s a point where you love all people and all living creatures, a nightmare, because there can’t be any desire anymore, because there is no longer any desire in this land anymore, nothing, it crashes in upon you somewhere or other. Are you there? You embrace her before she disappears and lies down in your little wagon. And now? What now? She screams. She bawls, pees her pants, laughs. And you? And now? What?
Nothing. You take her in your arms, throw her into the air. She flies away. No. Now what? Nothing occurs to you particularly. You only know the halftime whistle. The dawn cannot rely on you. A truck, sleeping in the box with little Rottweilers tied on strings. It’s not proper to speak with spirits after work. Evolution finds the ways and means of not allowing us to have our peace. Although you haven’t kissed her. Never. Ridiculous. No one is there. Only wishes. Not even this much. A woman is stirring her coffee.
SEA
You’re sitting on the strand, cannot speak, cannot speak today, you do not hesitate, you just can’t. She’s sitting next to you. She isn’t speaking, she cannot speak today either. You’re both sitting a meter apart, have turned your faces to the ocean. She holds her hands around her bent legs, has propped her chin on them. You have stretched out your feet. All around you are many people also staring at the ocean. They look at the ocean, then frequently look at each other, then back at the ocean. Only a very few go into the ocean to swim. You’re sitting next to each other, don’t touch each other, don’t get any closer to one another, don’t move, sit next to each other, just this wind and the movements of the ocean. Gulls return again and again, infrequent noises become more noticeable, for whatever reason.
You don’t move, never toward each other, never away from each other. Perhaps you’re not even sitting next to each other. No one here even notices you. From time to time certain movements are put on show. She loosens her shoelaces, takes her shoes off.
You look at her shoes a long time, look at her feet, gazing a long time at her narrow feet. You are summoned to approach the ocean with your surf-board, but you don’t hear, cannot obey this call. She too, she doesn’t hear it either, can’t hear it, still looking at the ocean. You are summoned several times to approach the ocean. None of the people surrounding you know you. Therefore no one can tell the two of you that you must come to the sea with your surfboards. You both remain sitting like this, just so. You remain sitting until evening comes. Shortly before darkness finally overtakes all, you both get up in order to catch the last bus.
She looks back one last time. You two are the last that are going home. You both know that you ought to have been challenged at some point on this day to approach to the sea, you both know it. You both go home now. The sea is nearly motionless at the shore. She moves ahead and holds the surf-board with her right hand, you are following her. You are moving almost in the darkness. Then the bus comes and the last visitors to the beach get in. She presses her face to the glass, otherwise there’s just the rumbling of the bus and the streetlights that illuminate the darkness every few meters. Perhaps you’ll both come back. Probably not. You move not a millimeter closer to one another. Perhaps you’ll be able to distance yourselves from each other, perhaps not.
CLOUDS (1)
A piano is playing before empty music stands, it is late in the evening, a woman stands indifferently, motionless, she is looking at older people, how they glide their bodies across the dance floor with such ease, effortlessly, crossing like clouds, with such ease, for how long?
Best European Fiction 2011 Page 47