Hour of the Wolf

by Andrius B Tapinas

  A night guard, a lantern in his hand, came into view on the side of the Town Hall and with a bored expression on his face strode along his usual route – along the Town Hall Square, then into Stikliu and Jewish Streets, and later into Coin Street, which was also known as German Street, leading him back to the Town Hall. The night guard was in no rush and would occasionally stop to pull on his cigarette.

  The first figure, its head cautiously poking from around the corner, followed the night guard turning into Stikliu Street with his eyes. He then beckoned to his companions, slipped out of the shadows and pulled the scarf from his face, letting the pale blue light of the moon reveal his young, almost child-like face.

  Solomon Klein was only fourteen. At twelve, he had run away from the orphanage and covertly travelled to Tsarist Kaunas, where he had found employment in Leibovic’s bakery. He worked hard washing the floors, cleaning the ovens and kneading dough. But the baker Leibovic was surprised when, a month later, the malnourished teenager demanded his pay, instead of showing gratitude for food and the roof above his head. Only after suffering a thrashing at the hands of the baker and being kicked out of the bakery did Solomon find out that it was Leibovic’s practise to take on beggars who were easy to get rid of and forget, as they had no one to turn to with their complaints. But complaining was not in this youngster’s plans.

  From inside a little chest he pulled out a neatly wrapped self-made pistol, walked back to the baker and repeated his demand, emphasizing it with a shot at the ceiling. If it produced little smoke, it brought even less use. If truth be told, Leibovic did soil his pants, but Solomon never laid his hands on the money anyway, as he was swiftly dragged over to the police station by gendarmes, who were pretty quick to answer the call. The disinterested judge showed no mercy on the boy either, imposing on him three years of labour camp, away from decent people. If not for his companions in trouble, Solomon would now be in charge of making thin soup for some woodcutters in Zarentuiskiy labour camp. Fortunately for him, two notorious anarchists, united with him in the punishment being sent to Siberia with the purpose of harnessing the virgin land, had something else up their sleeve. One muggy summer evening, when all three prisoners were being transferred from the Tower prison to Kaunas Railway Station and the supervisors, exhausted by the heat, let their vigilance slip, the anarchists, with Solomon in tow, took advantage of the situation and escaped.

  The boy liked being with the anarchists – no one would harm a hair on his head or laugh at the pistol story. On the contrary, they taught him how to use real guns and make bombs. That was how Solomon Klein became a member of the Utopia anarchist group. These people did not only hate the Tsar, they also hated the rich in the free cities of the Alliance.

  After a while, Solomon earned the trust of the Utopians and was posted to free Vilnius. He settled down in the Blots, gathered a gang of adventure-hungry teenagers and started working for the good of Utopia.

  Absolute freedom, nightlife, other gang members’ respect and roubles falling into your lap from the sky – what else could a fourteen-year-old boy want? It had been a few weeks since Solomon had started trying the night guards’ patience by defacing the walls of the most elegant buildings with his red scribbles, as he was about to do again now. He was illiterate, but that did not stop him. At the agreed place and time, he would collect the notes with the text, as well as the roubles, all wrapped up together in a small bundle. Due to the night guards being pea-brained and the Legionnaires never being there, the job was easy as pie, and Solomon could not help but wonder if the stories about the harshness of Sluskai Palace owners, widely shared in the Blots inns, were actually true. And his tasks were becoming more and more enthralling – yesterday, he decorated the walls of Chodkeviciai Palace; today, he was about to do the same with the Town Hall; while the day after tomorrow, he would daub his paint on the grand Cathedral of Vilnius.

  Brush in hand, Solomon sprinted to the Town Hall. A moment later, he was joined by two other boys, one with a can of red paint, the other holding a little lantern and a note with the words. They were pressed for time. In a few minutes, the night guard would be back by the Town Hall, unless he stopped for a cigarette. Solomon was hastily drawing the familiar letters, not putting too much effort into writing neatly. He was tense, expecting the vigorous barking of a dog at any moment – the agreed sign that the night guard was strolling back and it was time to leave urgently, which was to be given by the third accomplice.

  Lettering saying JOBB, FOOD, JUSTISS was slowly becoming apparent on the wall. A few more strokes and the job would be done.

  Somewhere a dog gave a yelp, but it all went quiet again. With their ears pricked up, the boys froze, waiting for the barking to start again. Suddenly the dull thud of running feet resounded across the square and the boys were blinded by the blazing yellow light of magnesium flashes.

  “This is Vilnius Legion! Everyone hands on heads, face down on the ground!” roared a voice amplified by a mechanical howler.

  Solomon’s buddies, who had been cowed into terror by the blaring announcement, squealed weakly, dropped to the floor and began to bawl.

  For these lads, an exciting night-time adventure had turned into a nightmare. However, Solomon was slightly more astute and had assumed that sooner or later this might happen, so before each and every night outing he would thoroughly survey his place of work. And today, he had taken a mental note of a rusty iron grille covering the entrance to the cellars of the city’s sewer system beside St Casimier’s Church. Solomon had spent a few early morning hours stubbornly banging his chisel against the most corroded parts of the grille, until it finally gave way, and Solomon was able to push it back, making a small gap just enough for a skinny teenager to slip through.

  Blinded by the light, the youngster dropped his dripping brush and, relying solely on his instincts, threw himself in what he hoped was the direction of the grille.

  “Stop!” – a command caught up with him and a man’s gloved hands were about to grab him by the waist, but the small boy was as slippery as an eel. He swiftly slipped from the other person’s grip and, having regained his sight, spotted the dark grille. By a stroke of luck it was as he had left it – no yard keeper had pushed it back in place in the evening, as he had feared could happen. A few more steps and Solomon was sliding down the tunnel, taking no notice of his scraped and bleeding elbows and knees. A ray of light pursuing him down to the vaults, he picked up on his pursuers’ voices overhead. While the city guards tried to decide whether to pursue the boy, or not, Solomon ran a good race around the dark labyrinth of tunnels, only vaguely making out the thud of the grille being pushed in. The boy stopped to let his heart calm down.

  He was cut off from the rest of the world. Only now did it dawn on him that he had not thought of everything. Even if the grille had not been put back in place, the Legionnaires would wait and trap him as soon as he decided to climb out. He could not go back to his shelter in the Blots either, as his accomplices would not only spill the beans once the Legionnaires threatened them with Sluskai, but would spice up the story too. Solomon had no choice but to pay a visit to his cache of money and run away from the city, missing out on the opportunity to decorate the walls of the Cathedral. But before anything else, he had to figure out how to escape the reeking tunnels.

  The place indeed stank to high heaven. The ancient vaulted underground tunnels were made of stone and were once used as prison and crypts; now, however, they intertwined with the newly excavated sewage canals, carrying gushing slops all the way down to the Neris. In the narrowest parts the filth rose almost to the height of Solomon’s knees. Surrounded by pitch-black darkness, the boy was suddenly overpowered by a feeling of terror. Heedless of the putrid-smelling liquid splashing up on him, he ran for his life. At times barely visible moonlight or a glimmer from a city gas lantern would make its way into a steep sewer, diluting the darkness a little. Solomon attempted to climb up one of the sewers, but kept sliding backwards and at one point ne
arly plunged into the slops. Besides, he could see that the sewer was covered with a grille at the top.

  The distraught boy eventually paused, abandoned his search for the passage to freedom and broke down in tears. He had never been so terrified in his whole life, and now he was crying his eyes out. His sobs resonated along the tunnel walls, dying out in the dark.

  Suddenly Solomon felt that the surrounding darkness was not so thick anymore. The boy looked around. A cluster of dimly twinkling beads was floating in the air around his feet and body, rapidly increasing in numbers in front of his very eyes.

  They were eyes.

  The turbid liquid moved and something touched Solomon’s leg. At first the child gasped but then, eyes riveted on his feet, he screamed at the top of his voice.

  There was something odd about the rats. They were not the usual local creatures, whose bodies were sometimes turned into steaks by the nimble traders of the Troubles. And they were not the overweight type that liked to nose about in the New World dumps either. The eyes of these rats hypnotised and blended into one glow – the artificial light turning the creatures into supernatural monstrosities – hostesses of the tunnels, lured here by the strange noises and curiosity to see who had dared to encroach upon their domain. The boy’s scream had obviously irritated the nasty beasts and their long sharp fangs sank into his cheap leather shoes. The seeping globules of blood trickled into the foul-smelling slops. The scent of blood drove the rats into a frenzy – the whole pack lunged at their victim, latching onto Solomon’s body and cleaving to his legs with their steel-hard incisors. The boy became swamped with piercing pain, his eyes bulged out with horror, his mouth released a helpless scream. The child swayed and was about to plunge into the squelching slurry as an offering to the rats and their bloody feast, but suddenly something changed.

  “Ahh-woooo,” a bloodcurdling howl rumbled underneath the vaults of Vilnius underground tunnels. It exploded in deranged anger, fury and heartbreak, gradually rising to a crescendo, which would have undoubtedly sent shivers down any living creature’s spine.

  “Ahh-woooo.” And the rats melted away as if blown by the wind.

  “Ahh-woooooooo.” The invisible beast seemed to be getting closer.

  The member of Utopia, his life scared out of him, raced like mad. Having ran along one tunnel, he turned left and lurched over to another branch. As the tunnel was a little wider here, the water was shallower – only up to his ankles. A small hope of triumphing over this damn labyrinth stirred deep down in Solomon’s heart, but then an unexpected obstruction – a stone ledge that had escaped his eyes until the last moment – tripped him over. He bashed his head against the ledge, collapsing in a heap in the middle of a thin stream of slurry.

  “Ahh-woooo,” a minute later the howling returned, only much quieter this time. It seemed that the invisible ghost had retreated.

  The rats did not return. What remained was the darkness, the stench and the unconscious Solomon.

  Before long, there was a sound of paddling feet. Someone was cautiously wading through the water, and a candle, stuck to the walking man’s hat, suddenly lit the tunnel.

  Solomon stirred and moaned quietly, this being enough to attract the man’s attention. He walked closer. His candlelight revealed a little boy lying in the slops, his body covered in blood. Suddenly the stranger swayed as if under the influence of hard liquor. His shaking hands pulled a glass bottle out of his pocket and hastily poured its contents into his mouth. He then shuddered and squatted down beside the lying Solomon. After inspecting the gash, which was still bleeding, he checked for a pulse by pressing two fingers to the boy’s temple and lifting his eyelids. Then he started to drag the body backwards along the underground tunnels, which he clearly knew like the back of his hand.

  The journey did not take long. A few passages later, the tunnel became wider, while its stone vaults rose higher.

  The man stopped at a hole in the wall. The hole had been bricked up once, but later the bricks had fallen out or had possibly been knocked down, and only the few bottom rows still served as a kind of a doorstep. Straining with the load in his arms, the man stepped over the bricks and entered a narrow hallway, lined with alcoves on both sides.

  A few steps down the hallway, the man paused at an iron-clad door, looking new and strong and set in the wall of the tunnel. Placing the bundle on the ground, he fished a key out of his inside pocket, unlocked the door and pulled Solomon in. Before closing the door and locking it from the inside, he pinched the candle out with two fingers.

  The spacious room was lit by the gas lantern that occupied one of its corners. Perhaps it had been a prison cell or a church burial chamber in the dim and distant past, but today it accommodated a quietly humming machine the size of a wardrobe. Aside from a few other pieces of machinery, the space contained an empty bed by the wall and yet another ‘wardrobe’ with wires snaking out of it on to the floor beside it. The room could be left through two other doors; the first one new and iron clad like the entrance door, installed recently by the look of it; the other, a plain iron-barred sliding door.

  The man did not waste any time. He removed his jacket and swapped his heavy boots for a pair of soft shoes, then grabbed the still-unconscious Solomon and heaved him through the barred door, which led to yet another room. Several wide wooden benches positioned next to the iron bars were dimly illuminated by the light flooding in from the first room. The end of this room, bare of any lanterns or lamps, was shrouded in darkness. From the door to the darkest part of the room, many wires snaked across the floor.

  The man laid Solomon down on one of the benches and removed the boy’s shoes. He rolled up his trouser legs and inspected his limbs, still bleeding and smeared with the sticky slops and mud. Lost in thought, the man licked his lips. He walked back to the room with the quietly humming, outlandish machine, from where he headed for the other door, and yet another room.

  This room was lit by orange flames dancing inside glass lanterns standing in all corners of the space. The University Dominium scientists would have fallen straight into the grip of the green-eyed monster had they laid eyes on this incredibly spacious place filled from floor to ceiling with menacing machines.

  The light exposed the aspect of the man. He was quite short and, on first impression, fairly young, but with prematurely greying hair and a wrinkled face. His complexion was an unhealthy shade of grey, in some parts sagging, as if not properly supported by the underlying muscle, while in others, it was firmly stretched over the sharp bones of his face.

  With a large wooden box under his arm the man returned to the room where Solomon lay, taking care not to step on the trailing wires.

  The man sat on the chair beside Solomon’s bunk, pulled the little table closer, and placed his box there. The box disgorged a variety of items – the table was soon cluttered with two small bottles (the first one contained some white liquid, while the other was stuffed with the leaves of some unknown plant), scissors, a few swabs of cotton wool, bandages and a pair of Goodyear rubber gloves. With the gloves pulled over his scrawny hands, their skin covered in brownish grey spots, the man unscrewed the bottle and shook out a pinch of the leaves in his palm, then tossed them in his mouth and began to chew. Still munching, he poured some of the white liquid over a small cotton wool swab, and thoroughly cleaned the bite marks on the boy’s legs and the gash on his forehead. A few moments later, he spat the leaves out onto the table and, deep in concentration, picked up the chewed mush with his forefinger and smeared it over the wounds.

  The boy moaned and stirred. Without lifting his gaze away from the object of his work, the man used his other hand to reach into the box and pull out a small, damp cloth, which he pressed against Solomon’s face. This calmed the child immediately. Finally, the providential healer bandaged the wounds. Mumbling under his breath, he carefully inspected the child’s legs and forehead. Evidently satisfied with his work, he pulled off his gloves, moved the bottles, cotton wool and bandages back i
nto the box, and closed the lid.

  His gaze stopped on the leather handcuffs, dangling on both sides of the bunk, and then continued to the quietly lying boy. The man sighed, shoved the box under his arm and shuffled out of the room, leaving the boy alone.

  Chapter XVIII

  Vilnius, morning

  24 04 1905

  A ray of morning sunlight slid down the window ledge and gently brushed the sleeping girl’s face. Mila opened her eyes. After staring at the white ceiling for a while, the girl tried to shake off the languor and remember where she was. Outside the window, the air was filled with the chirping of birds, followed by the loud but slightly hesitant crow of a rooster, apologetic for his late appearance.

  “Where am I this time?” Mila asked herself, her lips moving slowly. The answer hit her before she could finish her train of thought, as the smell of freshly made pancakes, so heavenly and reminiscent of childhood, wafted into the room.

  “At home,” the girl said to herself and smiled, but then suddenly gasped, racked with debilitating pain, brought on by her attempt to stretch. This happened every morning but the severity of the pain stunned her every time.

  Mila knew what to do in situations like these. She started to breathe deeply, trying to relax: panicked tossing about could end in her being paralysed. Despite the stabbing pain, the girl closed her eyes, slowly extended her arm toward the bedside table and felt about for a little mother-of-pearl chest. As soon as her index and middle fingers slithered into the appropriate holes, a hissing sound came emanated from the box, and its lower part released a tiny velvet-lined drawer. In the blink of an eye half of Mila’s tenacity was gone and the pain became unbearable. Teeth clenched, she took a metal object from the drawer and performed the daily procedure.

  In a flash the pain was gone, her strength gushed back like a tidal wave, and the light came back to her eyes. Waiting for her breathing to stabilise, Mila stayed in bed a little longer. Her attention was drawn to a tiny wound on her wrist. It was not there last night.