The People's Act of Love (16 page)

Chanov smiled and nodded again. He said I was right, no
beast could sin. Only man could. The man was master to the
horse, he said, but no-one was master to the man except man
himself, as God willed it. God was waiting for man to master
himself, to understand the way to bring himself back to obedience
and innocence and love, to be an angel in Paradise. What
could be tolerated in a stallion could not be tolerated in man, because man’s wilfulness was fearsome and cruel, and his desires
and ambitions wicked.

Chanov stood up, unbuttoned his braces and began taking
off his shirt. ‘I am going to bathe,’ he said, and told me to
wait and listen. It occurred to me much later that if anyone
had heard him talking to an officer in this way he would have
been flogged and stripped of his rank, but at the time, it never
crossed my mind to question his authority. He asked me, in a
way that didn’t call for me to answer, what it was that made
men so cruel and greedy. What drove them on to steal from
and exploit each other, to make war, to rape and abuse women
and children, to lie and cheat and strut like peacocks, to torture
animals, to maim Nature? What burden did they carry with
them, placed on them by God after tasting the Forbidden Fruit,
which made them despise themselves, live in guilt and shame
and terror of old age and death?

He turned his back to me then and let his breeches fall into
the water. He was naked in the stream except for the gold
chain around his neck.

He said: ‘I do not have this burden any more.’ He turned
round to face me. He said: ‘I have been made an angel.’

It was dim inside the tent, but I could see that between his
legs there was nothing, a gap. He had been castrated. The genitals
had been completely severed
.

Chanov squatted down and began to splash water over
himself. He told me that he had burned the Keys to Hell, that
he had Mounted the White Horse. He said that when war
came, he would be there for my salvation. He said many other
things I have forgotten. I could not listen any more. I left the
tent, took my boots, and began to run. I think I may have
fallen in the stream, I do not remember. I found Hijaz and
rode for hours, until I could see the glow of Poltava.

For weeks, I was in anguish. It is hard for me to admit now,
harder than you can imagine, but I truly thought Chanov was
insane, sick-souled. I was so disappointed! That it should come
down to the stroke of a knife. I felt I had been cheated. I had
imagined, in my faith, that he would reveal to me some secret
radiance, some long, profound prayer, even some course of
fasting and self-denial. This, castration, was ridiculous. Yet if
I look back honestly, even then, in my doubt, part of me
wondered at his courage, that he should believe so strongly in
the Word that he would sacrifice that. It is strange how many
people we can divide ourselves into when we are uncertain
about something. Inside our minds it is as if there is a group
of men sitting around arguing, and another part of us is standing
to one side with his hands over his ears, not wanting to
listen to any of it.

I thought of you, of course, and of Alyosha, how Alyosha
would never have been if I had been one of the farrier’s castrates,
how you would hardly have found enough in me worth loving,
let alone marrying, if I’d been some docile gelding. And the
strange thing was that last summer, before the war, the world
did seem more like Paradise than Hell. Perhaps it was chance.
Perhaps, after seeing Chanov, it was what I wanted to see. On
the ride back to the camp from Poltava everyone I passed
seemed to greet me gladly. I saw a peasant watering his old
carthorse in the river and stroking its neck and whispering in
its ear. I saw children running in and out of the rows of a
sunflower field. They were chasing each other in pure play.
They were laughing.

You were surprised, I think, when I came home a few days
later, and dragged you upstairs. You were not very willing. You
were hot and tired and you wanted to wash, but I would not
let you, and you came round. Would God have made these
Keys to Hell so cruelly, to give us so much pleasure, I thought
then? I thought you liked the way I used them. I wondered if
Chanov was not an agent of the Prince of Darkness, the Enemy.
I was in a fever that day. Do you remember? I spent so long
with my lips and my tongue between your legs, and I burst
my seed inside you, and spilled it a second time, on your tongue
and your lips. I wanted you to feel me penetrate every opening
in your body. I wanted to press it into your ears, your eyes,
your belly, your backside. And how I loved the taste of you,
the salty juice at the top of your legs.

And then the war came, and Chanov disappeared. Not just
him, but the apprentices. There was a terrible scandal. It got
back to the staff that the Colonel had turned a blind eye to
Chanov’s lack of respect for regulations, and had it not been
for the urgency of the situation, he would have been punished.
As it was they found some Ukrainian smith to do the job, and
we were put on trains west towards the Austrian border.

Everything was unfamiliar in those first days of the war, but
I did not feel a sense of dread, as I had expected. Sitting in
the compartment of the train – it was a regular coupé, the kind
you take to Crimea or Petersburg, the troopers and horses were
in wagons – it felt as if we were going on holiday. We were
in khaki, of course, but everyone told all the jokes they could
remember. We had no idea what was going to happen, or how
far we would go, or how quickly. We thought we might end
up riding into Vienna. Or even Berlin. ‘Paris!’ somebody said,
and then everyone pitched in with their ideas, till our heads
were filled with visions of a column of Russian Hussars trotting
through the streets of New York, Rio de Janeiro or
Baghdad. And yet we had swords and pistols weighing down
our belts, and they had trained us to use them.

When we reached our destination, a halt about twenty miles from the front, we were given some bad news. The Colonel,
who had gone on ahead to see about fodder and billets, had
been in a staff car which had come off the road when an
Austrian aircraft dropped bombs. The bombs had not fallen
close, but the driver had panicked. Everyone in the car was
killed.

We camped at the halt. The Colonel was replaced by his second
in command, who was less popular. He was a higher-ranking
noble than the Colonel, and he had always felt he should
command the regiment, but really he was a lazy man who had
never learned much except to punish juniors of lesser blood.
You probably remember him, a big man with a pale face, black
beard and bloodshot eyes. Rumlyan-Pechersky, that was his
name. He told us that we would move forward at dawn, possibly
to attack.

On the train, I thought about you. I promised to be honest,
Anna, and in the camp, as it got dark, I thought more about
Chanov. For the first time I heard the sound of artillery in the
distance. People always say it is like thunder and it is but thunder
stops. All night there was a coming and going of slow,
heavy trains, full of men and shells and animals, I supposed:
I could not see them, I heard their groaning and shrieking
and hooting and the sound of hooves, wagon wheels and marching.
And they were using aeroplanes! Remember, Anna, we
went down to the flying field with Alyosha to watch the aeroplanes
take off and disappear into the heavens. I thought they
were marvellous things. I thought when I saw the sun reflect
white off their wings so high up in the blue that man was
getting somewhere, that a new kind of time was beginning.
Now they were using them to drop bombs. Even though I had
been an officer for so long, I had never seen anything like
this effort all around me, this organisation, this busyness of thousands, directed towards something I had never witnessed,
but expected would not be wholesome. I still did not understand
what it had to do with Chanov’s ideas. It was absurd.

Late that night I went looking for Chernetsky. It was dark.
Some officers from his squadron were playing cards by the
light of a lantern in Chernetsky’s tent, but he wasn’t there. I
could see from the pile of paper money on the table that they
were playing for high stakes. They glanced at me with that
mixture of acceptance and suspicion I was used to. I had helped
each of them with a horse at some time or another, but I never
drank or gambled with them, or visited the public house. You
know that story, anyway. You helped me with them. They liked
you. So I asked where Chernetsky was and they looked at each
other and one of them said he was over on the other side of
the road, beyond the cooks’ wagons. They offered me
Chernetsky’s electric torch, a present from his aunt, so I took
it. I crossed the road and found the cooks’ wagons and asked
if they had seen an officer. They pointed into the darkness to
where I could just make out of group of trees. As I walked
towards it I heard a woman’s voice and a hand touched my
sleeve. The woman asked if I was lonely and would I like to
spend time with her. I said no and pushed her away, I hope
not too roughly. I got closer to the trees and I could see a
figure there with a cigarette in his hands. I switched on the
torch. It was Chernetsky. A little girl was kneeling on the ground
in front of him. At the touch of the light she took something
out of her mouth quickly and turned towards me, holding up
her hand to block the glare. I saw that Chernetsky was stuffing
his member into his breeches. Neither he nor the girl seemed
about to move otherwise. Chernetsky put his hand on the girl’s
head and with his smoking hand waved at me, swearing and
telling me to put the light out. He did not know it was me
until I spoke, of course. I switched the torch off and said that
she was only a child. I saw the cigarette end arc up towards
my friend’s mouth and glow as he inhaled. He said she was
fourteen, meaning that she was old enough to be bought by a
man, I suppose. He let the cigarette drop and I saw it glow
again as the child sucked on it. She had not looked fourteen.
I do not know how old she was. Twelve? Ten? A child, anyway,
however experienced in that trade. I think I spoke again, I said
something about him finding an older girl. I may even have
offered to pay. I did not go any closer. I did not want to. Then
I heard the girl speak in the darkness. She said: Who is that?
Chernetsky told her to shut up and do her job. He called me
by my first name and said: This is not for you.

I went back to Chernetsky’s tent and left the torch and they
asked if I had found him. I said I had not. Two of them said
at once: He found him! I asked them why it had to be with
such a young girl. They were unhappy at what I said.
Lashmanov said, quite seriously, that we all might be killed
the next day, and every man should take what he could, girl,
woman, grandmother, boy. I said that surely if we were going
to be killed we should be praying to God to forgive us our
sins. They all laughed and told me I didn’t have any sins. And
Lashmanov said – Anna, my dearest, you know I hate to use
such words, but I promised not to hide anything from you,
and now we are very close to the change – he said: A Hussar
drinks, fucks and fights, and then he prays. And then he drinks,
fucks and fights again.

In the morning the officers got their orders. The regiment
was to attack. The whole corps, the whole army, and other
Russian armies, were to attack. We knew we were to be in the
vanguard but we had a sense that we were part of a numberless
host, cities of warriors on the move, and we felt strong.
The fact that the senior officers had detailed maps of where
we were going, even though it was not Russian territory,
surprised and encouraged us. What they would not tell us was
whether we were to attack Germans or Austrians. We feared
the Germans, but the Austrians, we thought, might simply run
away. Many of them were not Austrians at all, but Czechs,
Slovakians, Slovenians, Croats, Bosnians, Ruthenians, Poles.
They might even come over to our side. Our pistols were
loaded and our sabres were sharp. The thing I feared most was
having to strike an enemy with my sabre. I was trained to do
it, of course, but the thought of coming close enough to a man
to kiss him or shake his hand and bringing my sabre down to
try to cut him in half was terrible. I did not think I could find
enough hate in me for a stranger, even if he was trying to do
the same to me. I had the same fear on the day we met, outside
the factory. Thinking about this, I started thinking about you.
I thought about Hijaz, the beautiful animal under me, carrying
me forward, and what Chanov had said, how he had asked
me if a horse could sin. I wondered if I was so different from
Chernetsky with the girl: even more so, since the girl was,
perhaps, not completely innocent, whereas Hijaz was. I thought
about Chernetsky’s last words, too, over and over again. This
is not for you. How I fretted while we rode out that morning.
Yet that day we never saw the enemy, even though by the time
it ended, almost all the men and all the horses in the regiment
were dead.