The People's Act of Love (44 page)

Balashov, who had been sitting hunched, looking at his feet with his hands clasped together, looked up and asked Samarin what he meant.

‘What do you think? Take the knife. Do what you do. Castrate me.’

Balashov took the knife and threw it on the bed, shaking his head. Samarin grabbed it, prised Balashov’s fingers open and pushed the handle into Balashov’s hand. He threw off his coat, loosened his trousers and let them fall.

‘It’s not there,’ said Balashov, shaking his head. ‘That’s not the place love is, otherwise what kind of world is the one you’re trying to make?’

‘Geld me,’ said Samarin. ‘I can’t be like this. It’s not love, it’s a sickness, it’s a power over me I can’t endure.’ He dropped to his knees in front of Balashov, lifted up his shirt and held his scrotum in his fist. His lips stretched and quivered and two tears made wide tracks in the soot on his cheeks. ‘Castrate me, Gleb,’ he sobbed, ‘Or I’m no good to the future.’

Balashov dropped the knife on the bed again, stood up, pressed Samarin’s head against his belly and stroked it for a few moments. He bent down to kiss it, then left Samarin crying and began walking towards Yazyk.

Tripping The Demons

D
ownstairs, there was a knocking at the door. Mutz went to see who was there. He took out his pistol. Anna heard him cock the gun as went down, the warning of industrial death against the bootsoles on the wood. She heard the door opening. Instead of voices, there was a moment of silence, and what might have been a word. Then the door closed and she heard feet coming up the stairs. It wasn’t Mutz.

‘Hello Gleb,’ said Anna to Balashov. He looked different. His serenity was broken. He didn’t look as if he’d been on a good trip to Heaven for a while.

‘I heard about Alyosha,’ said Balashov. ‘I’m sorry I came, but I wanted to see him.’

‘It’s good that you came,’ said Anna. ‘He’s your son, in spite of everything.’

‘Mutz left,’ said Balashov. ‘He looked at me and shook my hand. He just said “Matula”, shook my hand and left.’

‘Alyosha’s sleeping. He was hurt in the shoulder. It went right through. The damage isn’t so terrible, it didn’t touch the bone, but it’ll hurt, poor one, and I’m worried about infection. He was feverish.’

Balashov went over to the bed and knelt down beside it. He was about to touch Alyosha’s head when he stopped and went to wash his hands in the bowl on the dresser. Anna watched
him. There was something about the way he moved that was more careless than before. He looked like something that Anna had not seen him look since she arrived in Yazyk: alone. Well, she was all cried out, empty now. Balashov returned to his post on the floor by the bed. One of Alyosha’s hands was outside the covers and Balashov put it between his own. Anna wondered whether, if Alyosha woke up, he would be frightened, or if, in some deep place he would never find, he would recognise his father as his own flesh and blood.

‘Do you mind?’ said Balashov.

‘No. But if he wakes up, don’t tell him you’re his father.’

‘No. Do you mind if I pray? Without speaking.’

‘No.’

Minutes passed in complete silence. Balashov got up and came over to Anna.

‘You’ve changed,’ said Anna.

‘What we do … there are changes to our bodies …’ said Balashov, blushing. ‘The skin is smoother, we are heavier.’

‘No. Since yesterday.’

‘Do you see something?’

‘Is there trouble in your fellowship?’

‘I can’t lead them anymore. I’ve begun to lie to them about my visions. I’ve lied to you as well, and I always meant to tell the truth to you, and to keep my promises, after I broke so many to you before. I promised you that I wouldn’t help any others to purification, and a few nights ago I broke that promise.’

‘You took the knife to a man?’

‘Yes. He was nineteen.’

‘Oh, Gleb.’

‘I met the convict on the road back from Verkhny Luk and he found out what I’d done. He said he’d say nothing if I said nothing about him taking a litre of spirit from me. I knew
Samarin killed the shaman, Anna. I could have warned you all. This is my doing. I was too proud to tell you. I was too proud to let you know that I’d broken a new promise to you. So I became a liar. A liar can’t be an angel in the house of God. What it means is that I care more about what you think than what God thinks.’

‘That pleases me.’

‘It doesn’t please God.’

‘Gleb, I invited Samarin to spend the night with me. We slept together. We made love.’

‘I know.’

‘I was the fool who itched for him and couldn’t do without him, and trusted him. I let him steal our son.’

‘Our son!’ Balashov smiled. ‘It sounds strange.’

‘Whatever you do to yourself you can’t make it that he isn’t.’

‘Why did you come to Yazyk? I never imagined you would. When I saw you at the station with Alyosha for the first time, four, five years ago? For a moment I was glad. Then it was like the knife again. I hated you. I wondered if the Devil had taken your shape, to torment me. That was easy. I prayed, I fasted, I spun. Later it was harder, when I saw it was really you. At first, I still hated you. I felt like a small child playing some wonderful game on a summer evening that never ends, who notices that an older child is watching from a distance, and though the small child still believes in the game, he can’t help feeling the eyes of the older child, who thinks their castle is just a pile of sticks, and their magic robes are just sheets borrowed from the big house. Then I stopped hating you. I tried to help you. You remember that was the hardest of all. I’d left the world, I’d boarded the castrate ship, I’d burned the Devil’s keys, and still you had some hold on me that was nothing to do with passion. As if you and I had once shared a great
secret, and now I’d forgotten it, and I knew you had it, but I couldn’t get back to you any more to find out what it was.’

Anna realised she had never for a moment thought that her husband was insane. How much easier it would have been if she’d been able to do that. He sounded as if he was asking her to stay. It made Anna understand that if they survived she would have to leave.

Alyosha called for his mother and she went and sat on the bed and fussed over him. His eyes were open and he was half-lucid. His temperature was high and his shoulder ached. He asked after Samarin and Anna told him Mr Samarin was fine and that he, Lyosh, was a brave boy. Anna looked over to the doorway where Balashov was waiting.

‘Gleb,’ she said. He walked over and resumed his position on the floor, his face level with Alyosha’s.

‘This is Gleb Alexeyevich, our good friend from the village,’ said Anna. ‘He’s come to see what brave people – I mean, he’s come to see how you are.’

‘Hello, Alyosha,’ said Balashov.

‘Hello,’ said Alyosha.

‘You’re going to have a fine scar. Your friends’ll be jealous.’

‘I’m going to be a hussar, like my father,’ said Alyosha. ‘He had a lot of scars.’

‘Yes,’ said Balashov. ‘I heard that he had scars.’

‘He died in the war.’

‘Did he? You know I’m sure that he can see you, all the same, when you’re in trouble, and put in a good word.’

Alyosha winced and drew in breath. ‘Will it still hurt like this when I’m grown up, in the army?’

‘The pain goes away, unless something reminds you of the wound. But that doesn’t happen very often.’

From outside, they heard shouting, glass breaking, and shots.
A single explosion a few hundred yards away made the glass in the window shudder. Anna flinched and saw her husband duck and cover his head with his arms for a second.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ said Alyosha to Balashov. ‘The hussars’ll come.’

Balashov let his arms fall. ‘Goodbye, Alyosha,’ he said. ‘I’ll pray for you. Get well, grow tall, be wise, love your mother.’ He kissed his son on the forehead and stood up.

‘What should we do?’ said Anna. ‘Take him downstairs? Would that be safer?’ Outside the shooting intensified.

‘Stay away from the window,’ said Balashov. He went to the door. Anna asked him where he was going.

‘If an angel falls so as to save someone, it must please God, though never so greatly that God can save the angel,’ said Balashov.

‘Wait,’ said Anna. ‘Where are you going? Let’s kiss goodbye, at least.’

Balashov was gone downstairs, shouting mad words she could only half understand, of farewell, of affection, perhaps, though she wasn’t sure. Develchen arrived with a fistful of moss and frostblackened leaves.

‘They’re shooting,’ he said. ‘The man coming downstairs says he’s going to hell. I say to him Our Man knows how to get by in the Lower World. Take a weighted rope, he says. The big demons are easy to trip when they’re running towards you.’

The Gift Horse

B
y mid-morning Mutz and the others on the roof could see that the Reds had begun to attack the town to the north-west. Plumes of dirty grey smoke would erupt like djinns from the houses near the railway, the crack of the blast arriving a few seconds later. Two of the houses were on fire. Machine guns pecked at the air on either side. Towards noon, single shots began to be aimed at Mutz’s position. Jagged points of wood would jerk erect to invisible blows. They saw Czechs running from house corner to house corner towards the bridge, to the west, and down the station road, to the north. Dezort and his two left the roof to cover the bridge from the ground. Nekovar gave all his rifle ammunition to Broucek. Broucek let off a few rounds into the corners of houses, trying not to hit anyone, but to let them know that they were there. There was no sign of Matula.

‘I thought we’d be going home before we had to fight again,’ said Broucek. ‘I feel like a farmer getting a drought for the fifth year straight.’

The attackers brought a small mortar to bear on the barn. A shell landed not far away, shattering windows in Anna’s house.

‘I see it,’ said Nekovar. ‘Behind that alder tree.’ He picked up a length of plank roughly fashioned into the shape of a tennis racquet, pulled the pin out of a grenade, tossed the
grenade in the air, swung and whacked it with the bat. The grenade landed in a ditch outside Anna’s neighbour’s house and did not go off.

‘Don’t do that again,’ said Mutz.

‘Just to scare them off, brother,’ said Nekovar. ‘It isn’t my game. I prefer football, as you know. But I used to watch the aristos and bosses play when I worked as a groundsman at the All-Bohemian Lawn Tennis Association. That was how they would usually hit the ball, but sometimes a good player would hit it from above, with great force. It was more accurate. Like this.’ He stood up, balancing awkwardly against the rope, took another grenade, depinned it, put it in the air, leaned back and smashed it downwards. It landed short of the alder tree and exploded, littering the snow with yellow leaves and twigs and sending the mortar crew running.

‘That would be fifteen-love,’ said Nekovar. He grinned, lost his footing, slid down the roof and fell to the ground. When they reached him he was bleeding from a long gash at the back of his skull and hardly breathing. They ran the gauntlet of fire to carry him across the street to Anna’s house. Anna and Develchen had brought Alyosha downstairs to the divan in the parlour and they laid Nekovar out on the kitchen table. With difficulty, Mutz persuaded Broucek to return to the roof. Anna and Develchen were left to tend Nekovar. There was nothing they could do. Anna stood looking down at him, wondering where to begin bandaging his head, when Nekovar opened his eyes. They were surprisingly bright. He stared at Anna for a while. The sight seemed to please him. He spoke, in a quiet but clear voice.

‘Pane,’ he said. ‘Sister, please tell me. You don’t have to hide it from me now. Just tell me, what is the secret? What is the secret of the mechanism that arouses women?’

‘Hm,’ said Anna. ‘If you promise not to tell anybody.’

‘I promise,’ whispered Nekovar.

Anna bent down and said quietly in Nekovar’s ear: ‘There’s a tiny, tiny, tiny bone women have inside their vaginas, two inches in, on the left. It’s very hard to find, really very hard, but if you do find it, and pinch it ever so lightly, while stroking her right ear lobe as if you were stroking the ear of a baby mouse, that woman is set in motion to love you forever. That’s how we work.’

‘Ah!’ said Nekovar. ‘I knew Broucek was hiding it from me. Thank you.’ He sighed, smiled a smile of bliss and closed his eyes. Noon came. The late autumn sun had a little warmth left at its height. It flashed off meltwater across Yazyk. Mutz and Broucek felt it on their backs. More houses were burning now. They could smell the smoke. The shooting had slackened but not stopped. They did not know Nekovar was dead. They could see their former comrades setting up the mortar again. Down by the bridge, Dezort shouted up. He was shaking his head at them and making a thumbs-down sign.

‘Is that singing?’ said Broucek.

‘I can’t hear it,’ said Mutz. ‘Perhaps I should give myself up to Matula.’

‘I wouldn’t let you, brother. Besides, would it save us?’

‘We could make a run for the forest.’

‘I can hear singing.’

Mutz could hear it, too. A chorus of unskilled but strong voices, singing Russian words in music that sounded like the hymns the English and American missionaries sang. Broucek pointed to the procession. It was coming from the square towards the bridge. Balashov was at the head, carrying a white cloth on a pole in one hand and leading a black horse with the other. Behind him walked dozens of villagers, dressed in white and pale grey and cream under black coats and cloaks.
They were all singing, and as they walked, more villagers, mainly men but with a few women, came out of their houses to join them. They crossed the bridge and turned the corner into the station road, passing Anna’s house and passing beneath Mutz and Broucek.

‘What should I do?’ said Broucek.

‘I don’t know,’ said Mutz. ‘Cover Balashov as far as you can see him.’

The procession had some eighty souls in it now, all singing, drowning out the sound of small arms fire continuing to the north west. Balashov sang out the loudest.