Siberian Education (28 page)

The molotovs were ready.

We had a quick meeting, at which I outlined my elementary plan:

‘We'll cross the road directly from here and get to the wall of the warehouse, then we'll creep towards them, getting as close as possible. They're expecting us to appear from the other direction; we'll take them by surprise, attacking them with the molotovs, and then close in and beat them up. That's our only chance of getting out of the district on our own legs.'

They all agreed.

We ran across the road all together, very fast. When we reached the wall we slowed down. Geka and I were carrying the crate full of molotovs.

Suddenly we started to hear their voices: they were just around the corner. We stopped. I stuck my head out a little and took a peek at them: their position was a perfect target. They were all close to the wall, sitting round the fire in the bin.

One of them I knew, he was a thug about four years older than me, a born imbecile, called Crumb. He'd killed three cats that belonged to an old woman, a neighbour of his, and then gone on boasting to everyone about this heroic deed for a long time. He was a real sadist.

One day we'd all got together for a swim on a beach by the river, and one of the boys of our district, Stas, nicknamed ‘Beast' – a really nasty type, a guy who was angry with the whole world – heard him boasting about his exploit with the cats. Beast didn't waste any words: he went over to him, grabbed hold of his hands and crushed them so hard you could heard the sound of the breaking bones. Crumb went white in the face and passed out; his hands became swollen and purple, like two balloons. His family carried him away. Later I heard they'd fixed his hands in hospital, and that he'd resumed his life as a hooligan, telling everyone that he was going to take his revenge one day. But he never had time to, because Beast died soon afterwards, killed in a shoot-out with the cops. So Crumb swore vengeance on our whole district, and made a pact with the Vulture, vowing to destroy us. There was a rumour that they had held a black mass in the town cemetery, during which all of us Low River boys had been cursed.

I took two molotovs and gave another two to Geka and Finger. I didn't give any to Mel, because when he was small he'd thrown one too high and it had come apart and spilt part of its contents over us. Since then he had always been given the job of holding the match or cigarette lighter at the ready.

I shook the bottles well, raising the sand from the bottom, set fire to the two rags, jumped out from behind the wall and threw two molotovs simultaneously at the group. A moment later I already had two more in my hands, lit them and threw them, in rapid succession.

The enemy were in a panic – boys with burnt faces threw themselves in the snow; there was fire everywhere; someone ran off so fast he vanished from our sight in a flash.

The three of us emptied the crate in less than a minute. Before Mel had even had time to put out his match, we had finished.

I pulled out my knives and rushed towards a guy who had just got up off the ground and was about to pick up a stick. He had no burns: the fire had only reached his jacket and he'd had time to roll in the snow. He was very angry, and kept whooping like a warrior. He tried to hit me a couple of times, always keeping me at a distance. Suddenly I dived towards his feet, avoiding a swipe from the stick, and plunged my knife into his leg. He kicked me in the face with the other leg and split my lip; I tasted blood in my mouth. But in the meantime I had managed to give him several stabs in the thigh and to cut the ligament behind his knee.

Behind me Mel had already felled three, one with half his face burnt, another with three holes in his head from which serious blood was oozing: the black stuff, the kind that comes out when they get you in the liver, only thicker. The third one had a broken arm. Mel was furious, and was walking around with a knife stuck in his leg.

Finger was standing by the wall. At his feet were three others, all wounded in the head; one had a broken bone sticking out of his leg, below the knee.

Geka, too, was leaning against the wall; he had taken a blow to the forehead, nothing serious, but he was clearly scared.

Meanwhile, those two maniacs Fima and Ivan were both laying into a giant, a colossus stretched out on the ground who, for some reason, wouldn't let go of the wooden club he held in his fist. His face looked like a lump of minced meat, and he must have passed out some time ago, but he still didn't release the club. I bent down over him and noticed that the club was fixed to his wrist by an elastic bandage. To leave him a souvenir from Siberia I cut the ligaments under his knee. He didn't even utter a moan, he was completely unconscious.

I pulled the knife out of Mel's leg, then retrieved the elastic bandage and divided it into two: one part I put over the wound as a plug and with the other I made a tight bandage. Mel had taken off his trousers to simplify the operation and now said that he didn't want to put them back on. He said he wanted to get a bit of air, the nutcase.

Finger was looking at Fima and Ivan with a smile that didn't fade. They waved their iron bars proudly, like heroes.

I helped Geka to his feet. He was fine, except that after the blow he felt a bit groggy and at the same time agitated. I took a sweet out of my pocket.

‘Take this, brother; chew it slowly. It'll calm you down.'

This was bullshit, of course, but if you believe it a sweet works like a tranquillizer. ‘The psychological factor', my uncle called it; he had induced one of his cellmates to give up smoking by telling him the cock-and-bull story that if he massaged his ears for half an hour a day he would lose the habit in a month.

Geka took the sweet and felt better. He had a long purple bruise which ran across his forehead and down to his left ear. I told him we had to get away fast, leave Railway as soon as possible.

Geka was scared to go home in case they knew where he lived.

‘Don't worry, little brother,' I reassured him. ‘When we get to our district I'll tell the Guardian the whole story. Uncle Plank will sort things out.'

I tried to explain to him that with us he was safe, protected.

‘How can you be sure we're in the right and not in the wrong?' he asked me.

At the time his question seemed stupid to me. Only later, with time, did I come to see how profound it was. Because the real question was not whether we boys were right or wrong in that situation, or in other similar situations, but whether our values were right or wrong with respect to the world around us.

He was a philosopher, my friend Geka, but I wasn't clever enough with words, so I answered him with the first ones that came into my head:

‘Because we're genuine, we don't hide anything.'

When he heard my reply he smiled in a strange way, as if he wanted to say something but preferred to keep it for another time.

Meanwhile Mel had searched our enemies' pockets and come up with three knives, six packets of cigarettes, four cigarette lighters – one of which was made of gold, and which he immediately slipped in his pocket – more than fifty roubles and a plastic bag full of gold rings and chains, which those thugs had no doubt just stolen from someone.

We found more booty inside a cloth bag near the bin. A thermos full of badly made but still quite hot tea, about ten cheese sandwiches and the biggest surprise – a short double-barrelled shotgun, with no butt, and a lot of cartridges scattered here and there, even inside the sandwiches. I checked the cartridges: the original ones I kept, the home-made ones I threw away, because I didn't trust cartridges made by strangers, especially guys from Railway.

Mel was surprised and kept asking over and over, like a cracked record:

‘Why didn't they fire at us? Why didn't they fire at us?

Why didn't they fire at us?'

‘Because they haven't got the balls . . .' I replied, but only to stop him asking that question, because in fact I couldn't understand it myself. Maybe the guy who had brought that shotgun with him had been taken by surprise and hadn't had time to get it out . . . Maybe, maybe not. The only certain thing was that if he had used it our whole story would have taken a different course and I might not be here now to tell it.

Mel wanted to take the shotgun, but by right of seniority it was due to Finger: I gave it to him, and he hid it well under his jacket. Luckily Mel wasn't offended, but agreed with the decision; he just started teaching Finger how to shoot with the thing.

We set off at a brisk pace towards the park. As I walked along, chewing a frozen sandwich, I thought to myself what a bad omen it was that I'd got into all this trouble on my birthday.

‘Okay, I'm in for a hard life,' I said to myself. ‘I only hope it's not too short.'

By the time we entered the park it was already dusk. In the winter the darkness falls quickly; the daylight retreats without much of a battle, and before half an hour has passed you can't see a thing. There were no lamp-posts in the park; all we could see was the weak lights of the town twinkling between the trees.

We walked along the main path. As we drew level with the sanatorium I expounded to Geka my theory that the crisis wasn't over yet. I felt in my heart that there was another ambush waiting for us, and since the park was the best place for laying it, isolated and dark as it was, I feared for all of us.

Geka was of the same opinion:

‘It can't be a coincidence, can it, that Vulture hasn't shown himself yet?'

He suggested we all walk close together, so we'd be ready to cover each other's backs if they jumped out on us suddenly.

We bunched together in an instant, and all walked in step, like soldiers, expecting the enemy attack at any moment.

We went right across the park, but nothing happened. When we saw the lights of Centre we were so pleased we were almost jumping for joy. Mel even started hurling bizarre insults in the direction of Railway.

We entered Centre; walking along the lighted streets we were already quite relaxed and even able to crack jokes. Everything seemed so natural and simple . . . I felt such a lightness in my body that I said to myself: ‘If I wanted to, I could fly.'

Mel started making snowballs and throwing them at us; we all laughed as we walked homeward.

We took a short cut near the library, along a quiet little street that went past the old houses of the original town centre. I was dying to get back to celebrate my birthday with the others who were waiting for us.

‘They'll be pissed out of their minds,' joked Mel.

‘They'll already have eaten everything, and when we get there we'll have to do the washing up.'

‘If we do, boys, the next time I have a birthday I'm going to spend it on my own; you can all go . . .' I didn't finish the sentence: something or someone struck me a violent blow on the right side. I fell down on the frozen ground, banging my head. I was in pain, but I reacted at once, and when I got to my feet in one jump, I already had the knives in my hands.

The street was narrow and dark, but somewhere, a little way off, there was a lighted window, and thanks to that light it was possible to see something. There were shadows coming towards us.

‘Shit, what was that? Are you all right?' Mel asked me.

‘I think so; somebody pushed me. It's them, I'm sure of it . . .'

‘Holy Christ, I've already thrown away my stick,' he looked at me despairingly.

‘Take one of my knives. What happened to those blades for the circular saw?'

Mel put his hand in his pocket and gave them to me.

‘Throw them at their faces, boy.'

I didn't need telling twice. I hurled a blade at the nearest shadow, and a few seconds later there was a terrible scream.

I saw Fima jump forward with the iron bar, shouting:

‘You damned fascists, I'm going to tear you to pieces!'

He threw himself at a boy who by now was so close to us you could see his face; the boy tried to dodge the blow but the bar hit him full on the back of the head and he fell down without a moan.

Out of the darkness three of them charged at Fima; Ivan tried to hit them with his iron bar as best he could.

Geka was on the ground; he had a broken hand, he was getting beaten by a giant – another one – armed with a stick. In a second Finger threw himself at the giant with his shotgun lowered: he shot him at point-blank range, right in the chest. The giant collapsed in an unnatural way, as if pushed by an invisible force.

I set about helping Fima: I kept throwing blades, hitting two attackers full in the face. Another one I stabbed in the side; I felt the knife go deep into the flesh through a layer of cloth, then I realized they'd been so sure of taking us by surprise that they hadn't even stuffed themselves with newspapers. I stabbed him twice more in the same place, in the region of the liver. I hoped to kill him. Immediately afterwards I felt a sensation of weakness in the hand that was holding the knife. It was as if I was losing control of the arm, a kind of paralysis.

‘That was all I needed . . .' I thought.

I tried to pull myself together, to grip the knife more tightly, but my right hand wasn't listening to me, wasn't responding any more. So I grasped the knife with my left hand and at the same moment, from behind, Mel seized me by the neck and dragged me away. Meanwhile I heard a lot of footfalls in the dark: the sound of people running away.

I was winded, struggling to breathe. The blow on my left side hurt, but I didn't think it was anything serious. I thought that at worst they'd broken a couple of my ribs, and indeed the pain increased when I breathed in.

The giant was on the ground, motionless, and groaning. There wasn't a drop of blood. The bullets Finger had used to shoot him must have been those rubber ones with an iron ball inside them: specially made not to kill, but when fired from close range they can do serious damage.