Skillful Death (71 page)

We come to the back of a cabin and they take me around to the front door.

One of the young men knocks and a nice-looking older woman opens the door. She waves us inside without a word and closes the door before she speaks.

“He’s in his office. Please go in.”

The young men lead the way and we go through a door to an office with a big desk. There are two chairs, and the men stand in back. I take one of the chairs. Behind the desk is a fat guy I haven’t yet met. He’s probably forty-five or fifty. His hair is still brown, but his sideburns are mostly gray. I’m judging his age mostly on that. His fat has smoothed away most of his wrinkles.
 

He glances up as I sit but then his eyes return to the papers on his desk. He traces his finger across a line as he reads it, then he sweeps the finger back over to trace the next line. I’m going to wait for him to speak first.
 

I wait awhile. Apparently, this is a really important document he’s reading.

Finally, he looks up and clears his throat. It’s a throaty, phlegmy-sounding wet mess. Yuck.

“You’re not getting a house and pension,” he says, “like in the old days.”

I don’t respond.

“One, it’s not in the budget. Two, the people would have my job. Nobody’s in the mood to reward anyone. We’ve all lost too much.”

I cross my legs and fold my hands on top of my knee. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I sense his position is about to shift.

“I can find a little. I can pull in some discretionary money that won’t be missed, but you can’t stay in the village,” he says.

I scratch the side of my face without breaking eye contact.
 

I let him look away first. His eyes go back to his document. He’s still looking down when he speaks again. “Technically, your contract was never fulfilled.”

I clear my throat.

“Never mind, forget I said anything. Gentlemen, could you give us a moment?” he asks the men in the blue uniforms.

They leave quietly behind me.

The fat man waits several moments until he’s sure they’re gone.

“I’m an elected official, so I’m entrusted to enact the will of the people. When we negotiated your contract, we had to act in secrecy. It was the only way to give you even the slightest chance of success. But you can see how that leaves us in a precarious position, can’t you? How can we honor the agreement without causing an uprising? That would benefit none of us.”

You have to understand the position I’m in. I have no idea what this man is talking about.

“The best we can do is half,” he says. “And we will conduct a public banishment so everyone knows that your involvement with the village is completed.”

I let him stand by that proposal for about a minute, just to see if he’ll talk himself higher.

“I believe I’ve had quite enough public ceremonies for my taste,” I say.

“Well, we must have a ceremony. People will demand a ceremony.”

“I think you’re forgetting something,” I say. It’s not that I think he’s forgetting something—I think he’s purposely avoiding something. I can sense it in the way he’s talking. Assuming he’s not lying and I did cut a deal with him, I would have kept leverage. Just because I don’t remember that leverage, doesn’t negate it. I’ll just have to use it blindly.

“I’m not forgetting,” he says. He blushes a tiny bit, just at the tips of his ears.

“Then you will pay me in full, and we will have no public banishment. Instead, you will send me on my way with six soldiers to guide me through the bamboo.”

“Impossible!” he says. It’s not impossible. He wouldn’t have replied with such bluster if my request were indeed impossible. If anything, his response makes me understand that I could have pushed harder and settled for what I just asked. “You can’t expect me to volunteer the lives of soldiers just to escort you. They would never be able to come back. It would be a death sentence.”

“And you can’t expect me to believe that you don’t know of six young men who wouldn’t jump at the chance to see a little more of the world.” If losing my escort is the only point I have to concede, then I’m doing well. Of course, there’s one other problem.

“I’ll pay in full, and you can leave immediately, but no escort,” he says.

“You’re trying to take advantage of me,” I say. It’s important to allow him to feel like he has won.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he says, folding his arms. “It’s the most I can offer you.”

“I understand.” I put out my hand. He reaches over his desk and pumps my hand twice, dry and efficient.

“How would you like your payment?” he asks. A smile plays at the corner of his mouth. This is the other problem. I can’t let him figure out that I don’t know the agreed price. If he knows I’m in the dark, he can easily cheat me.

“It’s a harder question than I imagined earlier,” I say. This is guesswork. I hope he gives me a clue.

“I should imagine.”

No help there.

“What would you recommend?”

“It’s none of my concern.”

“You realize that I can still make this difficult for you, don’t you?” I ask. If our positions were switched, I would punch through this argument with joy. I hope he doesn’t realize his advantage.

“Fine,” he says. “We have gemstones. They’re light and easy to carry.”

“And I will have to trust you that the value is commensurate?”

“I suppose you will.”

“And you will bear in mind what I’ll do if I discover you’ve cheated me?”

“Yes,” he says. He tries to stay puffed up, but I see that he’s a tiny bit deflated.

“Then that’s acceptable.”

“Very good,” he says. He stands up and calls for the uniformed men.

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They take me in a steam-powered cart to the grounds of the Harvest Festival. My pack is heavier than when I arrived, since I’ve added Bud’s tent and the pouch of gems. I have no idea what they’re worth. They could be glass, but I don’t really care. I just want to get out of this crazy village.

I walk down the slope and think about Bud as a boy, leaping from the bamboo to confront a lion. I can easily picture what he saw, but the setting doesn’t seem right. When I imagine the lion it’s standing in the middle of a road. I must be confusing it with his story of the snake. I don’t think I’ll see that lion again. I think Bud’s machete made an indelible impression on the lion’s foot. It probably won’t seek human company any more.

Along with my pack, I bartered for two blades. I’ll be ready if the rats come back. I’m going to get through the bamboo quickly. I don’t have any intention of being stuck in the bamboo any longer than I have to. I think that’s why so many people have failed to make it through. They don’t believe they can make it so they move too slowly. I’ll get through quickly.

I glance back as I step between the sharp leaves. The uniformed guys are up at the top of the hill near the walnut trees. Put them on the banks of a river and they would seem familiar too.

I’m not as good as Bud was, but I develop a good rhythm of slashing and stepping between the stalks. I stop frequently for water and to listen. No rats, no lions, at least none that I can hear.

Sometime in the middle of the night, my headlamp breaks through the light-green leaves and shines through to trees. I’ve made it out. Now if I had a GPS or a map, I might have an idea of which way to go. In a way, I do have an idea. I’ll just move consistently in one direction—any direction—until I hit a road. They’re everywhere around me. I’m bound to hit one eventually.

I have enough supplies to last a few days, even without Bud to hunt for me.

For the moment, I’m satisfied to hike to the top of a hill and set up the tent for the night. I won’t be able to maintain a steady course without the sun, and I’ve been hiking too long. It feels like I’m past the immediate danger now that I’ve made it past the bamboo.

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I’m not ready when the attack comes. I want to hit the snooze button, or blink away this bad dream so I can get more sleep, but the growling and tearing won’t stop. I’m on my feet when something brushes my leg. It’s a good thing I’m sleeping on top of the bag, and just pure luck that my hand finds the headlamp as I push myself up to standing.

A big hole is torn into the tent and an enormous growling head pushes through the hole. My light reflects green spots in the center of the brown eyes. For such ferocious creatures, bears have the cutest little round ears.
 

Fortunately, the zipper breaks away as I crash through the flap of the tent. I’m stumbling backwards away from the tent and the bear, as he shreds his way through the bag I was just sleeping atop. I scramble through branches and try to stay along the ridge. I’m tempted to climb a tree. What’s that old expression? A black bear will climb a tree to eat you. A grizzly will knock the tree down. Trees seem like a bad idea. I glance back. He’s occupied with my pack. He’s tearing into the food there. I should have hung it from a tree. Then he’d probably be eating me instead of the food.

When I’m far enough away that I can’t see him anymore, I stop and reconsider climbing a tree. I can hear him, eating the food and probably half the contents of my pack. Maybe I can get up high enough so I can wait him out. Then I could go back for whatever’s left of my clothes, and sleeping bag, and maybe even the gems. Shoes—it would be nice to have shoes as well. I was sleeping in my clothes, but I did take off my shoes so I could relax.

I decide to keep moving. The image of being stuck in a tree while a bear paces below haunts me. It’s one of those sticky images that once thought, can’t be unimagined.

I run for a while in my socks. It seems like a good idea to have some sort of protection on my feet, but it turns out to be a terrible idea. Anything pointy, like a stick, gets caught on the sock and then you step on it. I take the socks off and try to place my feet carefully. It’s not that painful as long as you can avoid the rocks.

It doesn’t take long before I’m trudging. Running gave way to trotting, walking, shuffling, and now trudging. I don’t think the bear is chasing me, but I’m not going to stop until I fall down.

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It’s morning when I claw my way up a little bank to an asphalt road. The road is flat and straight. I walk to the center of the road, put the sun at my back, and start walking down the dotted white line. My bare feet slap at the pavement. It’s much more comfortable on my feet to step on the white paint, so I’m thinking about moving to the side, were there’s an uninterrupted white line to walk on.

I hear the approach of a vehicle behind me.

I turn and stick my thumb out. I don’t know why, since it would be hard for the guy to ignore me. I’m standing in the middle of the road.

He slows down and stops. It looks like a big garbage truck. There’s a picture of a couch on the side.

I walk up to the driver’s window.

“What?” he asks in Russian.

“Ride?” I ask. I put my hands in my pockets to turn them out so he will know that I don’t have anything to offer. I’m basically begging for a ride. Miraculously, my fingers find a gem in the bottom of my pocket. It must have fallen from the bag at some point when I was still carrying the payment around in my pocket.

I raise the stone for the driver to see.

He waves me around to the other door. When I climb up in the truck, I hand him the gem. He looks at it for just a moment and then puts the truck in gear.

My Russian is still terrible, but his English is worse. I listen to him talk in Russian and I catch about a third of it.
 

His wife wants to get another dog. Either that or she wants to take another lover. I missed part of the setup to the story, and you’d be surprised how many details could fit either scenario. I don’t have any luck making a determination, so I just try to nod at the appropriate parts.
 

He’s headed to a place called Kobryn, where he says he will give me change for my payment. The way he says it, I think he wants an opportunity to study the gem a little more so he can decide if he’s going to beat the tar out of me for trying to pass a fake gem. I certainly hope it’s not a fake. Who pays for a ride with a gemstone anyway? If I accepted a gem as payment for a ride, I don’t think I would be angry to find out it was fake.

He pulls into a depressing dirt parking lot surrounded by a high chain-link fence. He waves me into a little building. It has painted concrete blocks for walls, with a glass door. Second-hand merchandise is stacked on shelves up to the ceiling. As he walks by, the price tags hanging from the handles of chainsaws all spin in the breeze.

He stops at a counter where an angry-looking guy is slumped over a newspaper.

My driver—I never quite understood his name—takes out the stone and puts it on the counter. The angry man spins the gem between his fat fingers. He doesn’t pull out a magnifying glass, or hold it up to the light. He just spins it. I don’t hear the price he names. The driver turns and smiles at me. After he sells the gem, he turns and hands me a small stack of Rubles.
 

I lift a foot and point. “Shoes?”

The angry man points his finger to his right. I follow his finger and find a shelf of old boots. Some are even in pairs. I sit down on the floor and roll back so I can get the socks out of my pockets. Between my feet, the socks, and the shoes, I’m not sure which is dirtier. I find a pair that will do. The angry clerk doesn’t let me put the shoes on the counter. He takes back about half of my money for the shoes.
 

The driver left while I was picking out shoes.

I turn to walk out when the angry man stops me with a question.

“Where you get?”

I turn back and he’s holding up the gem. I point to my left ring finger and say, “Wife.”

That makes him smile.

I walk for a while before I see another building. The pawn shop was like a little depressing island of filth in the farmland. The surrounding countryside is really pretty. Although, I’m sure that a large part of what appeals to me is that I can finally see the sky. There are no overhanging trees here, smothering the view.