The People's Act of Love (7 page)

Broucek smiled and nodded.

‘Do you like her?’ asked Mutz, feeling a sudden churning in his guts. Broucek grinned and shrugged. ‘She’s nice,’ he said.

‘Don’t talk to her,’ said Mutz. He wondered if Broucek could see his face changing colour by the light of the lamp. ‘I’m ordering you, understand? See she’s all right, wait for me outside her door, and leave her alone.’

Broucek looked hurt and embarrassed. He nodded again and trotted up the stairs.

Balashov

M
utz stood on the threshold of the shtab. There was no light in any window and the sound of the rain on the roof had risen to a roar. He put on his cap and an English poncho and went outside. The square was hidden in the rain and the dark; the derelict church, Balashov’s store, the abandoned offices of the pelt broker and the dairy cooperative, the houses, the statue of Alexander III, the kiosks where the Russians sold smoked fish, sunflower seeds, tracts and journals and month-old newspapers, and, lately, personal effects, watches and jewellery and ornaments. Mutz stepped forward, off the little patch of cobbles, into the mud, a layer of liquid, a hard layer below, and between them a layer as lubricious as grease. The ground gave off a thick smell of liberated dust and he felt the weight of water striking his shoulders. His boot went deep into the edge of a rut as he crossed the square and he tugged to pull it out. It came with a snap of air audible over the rain. It took several minutes to reach the other side. Mutz stopped at the corner of a barn-sized log building raised on piles, with a sign across the gable. It was too dark to read it, but he knew what it said: G. A. Balashov – Goods – Groceries. The store, with windows on either side of the door, was shuttered up. Mutz climbed the steps to the door and knocked on it gently. He put his ear to the door, listened for a while, and walked back down to the square.

To the right of Balashov’s store was a narrow gap between it and the next building. Mutz walked through the gap, through soaking clumps of dandelion, nettles and chickweed. The store was bigger than it seemed from the square. After a couple of small windows the wall stretched back, blank, for some thirty five or forty metres. The rain had stopped and halfway along, from inside the building, Mutz heard a faint beating, a sound between a drum and a pulse, and something else so indistinct and subtle he took it at first for a tinnitus in his own ears. He’d been to the seashore, near Trieste, when he was twenty. The sound was like that.

A steam whistle cried three times from the forest and the searchlight on Captain Matula’s train beat at the darkness beyond the roofs of Yazyk. In the back yards neighbouring Balashov’s, roped curs raised their heads and barked back. Mutz reached the far end of Balashov’s store. At the back of the building was a compound surrounded by a high, solid wooden fence. Sergeant Nekovar stood against the fence, stubby and thwarted as a shrub, the last of the rain dripping off the ends of his moustache.

‘Humbly report, brother, they’re all in there,’ whispered Nekovar. ‘Rotating and pronouncing and prophesying. Three hundred and forty nine individuals, two hundred and ninety one males, fifty eight females.’

‘Can I go up?’

Nekovar knelt down and brought up a retractable ladder which he extended and set up against the side of the building. Its components moved with greased silence and the metal rungs were solidly joined in place. Mutz shook his head.

‘When you get to the top,’ whispered Nekovar, ‘lean forward and you find a handle. Pull it very gently towards you and a trap opens in the roof. Push the door upwards. It swivels. Climb in and you’ll see a small slit of light where I’ve cut a
port for you to look through. The floor of the roof space is strong but move quietly or they might hear you.’ He sounded bored with his skill.

‘How did you do all this without anyone noticing?’ whispered Mutz, angry for some reason he didn’t understand.

‘I’m a practical man,’ whispered Nekovar. Oh he was bored. Give him something difficult to do.

Mutz began climbing the ladder. Nekovar held the foot. As Mutz reached the top the ladder swayed and bent with his weight but did not seem about to topple. Gripping the ladder with one hand, Mutz reached forward blindly, expecting to touch the wet planking of the roof. His fingers found cold, rain-smeared metal. The handle was in his fist. He pulled, pushed, the hatch opened, and warmth and dryness puffed out, and the smell of Balashov’s store, salt fish, cheap tea, dill and vinegar, sawdust, kerosene, mothballs and freshly cut wood. Mutz stepped off the ladder and into the roof space.

The beating sound was clearer. It was the stroke of a foot stamping on timber. Mutz heard the shudder and the rasp and the pain and the many lungs now in the sound of the sea. It was a gathering of people, breathing together. He saw the light where Nekovar had cut his spyhole. He moved towards it as softly as he could in his boots, lay down, and looked through it into the warehouse at the back of Balashov’s store. A form turned in space. On either side of the warehouse were lamps and men and women swaying and breathing through their mouths, heads held back, eyes closed, hands knotted together in prayer, but there was a space around the form that spun, a ring of awe and dimness between the breathing circle and the white cloth turning. It would be a man, only a man altered to become a silent turbine, just the beat of his right foot on the floor and the hiss of the edge of his smock cutting the air. The arms were
stretched out, the left heel pivoted on the floor as if fixed and oiled, the smock billowed up, and he spun, too fast to see his face, though Mutz believed it was Balashov. The smock and breeches were eyeburning white, turning so fast it seemed like a shimmer standing still, a spinning seed caught between the tree and the ground, held there whirling in a meeting of winds.

A woman fell to the floor, crying out words in a language Mutz didn’t know, and lay there twitching and shaking her head from side to side. A man Mutz recognised from the street stepped forward and began to turn like Balashov. The breathing began to fall into time with the beat of Balashov’s foot as he spun. The assembly breathed louder, filling and emptying lungs to their limit in a second. Two more people fainted and a man screamed about the spirit. The second spinner collapsed on the floor, shook his head, got to his feet, staggered like a drunk, and prepared to spin again. Balashov whirled on, then he fell, and was caught by two worshippers. He lay in their arms. His eyes were open, but very far away.

Gradually the breathing and the talking in tongues lessened and, without speaking, the celebrants walked to and fro across the warehouse, embracing and kissing each other on the cheek. Some drank tea. The movement began again. One after another, like Balashov, they began to spin, and the whisper of the hems in the air and their breathing and the gentle beat of their moving feet were like a crowd of children running through a wheatfield, trying not to be heard. Balashov rose and spun again, drifting to the middle of the room. An eagle-like woman, with a heavy brow, hooked nose and broad shoulders, was beside him and one by one the others fell or fainted or stopped spinning and stumbled back to the edges. After a time only Balashov and the eagle-like one were left, their faces and bodies half transparent, fogged with speed, spinning with the hands
of their outstretched arms crossing, like wheels of a marvellous engine, joined but not touching, in unity and harmony. A sharp sound came from the eagle-like one, arcing out into the roofbeams, and she spun away from Balashov and began to slow down until she stopped and stood still, upright, bright with sweat, hair slicked and wild like a egret, dress sticking to her flat, smooth chest. Was she a woman?

‘Brothers and sisters, Christ that you are,’ said the eagle. ‘I have flown to a high place, in an emerald aeroplane, to the eyes of God. Angels dressed me in a coat of leather, white as snow, and diamond pilot’s goggles, and a leather helmet, like pilots wear, only white. I flew for many hours through the darkness until I could see, far away, the great, bright eyes of God burning, like two Londons in the night. As I grew closer I could see the million electric lamps of heaven, millions upon millions of shining lights, and the sound of angels singing from a hundred thousand gramophones. God’s words pass to earth through telephone wires as thin as spiders’ silk, my friends, as numerous as all the hairs on all the heads in Russia, and the angels most favoured of the Lord drive golden cars, with tyres of pearl, and horns of silver. I flew my emerald aeroplane across the face of God, and far below, on a green hill, by a river of electricity, I saw Jesus Christ our Saviour talking to our Christ, our angel, our brother Balashov. I see him returning now, brothers and sisters, I see Gleb Alexeyevich returning from heaven, with his news, with his messages from God. He is coming back! He is here!’

The cryback came from the wall shadows: ‘He is here!’

‘Brothers and sisters,’ said Balashov. Sweat dripped from his chin. He was swaying and blinking and slurring his words. He inhaled slowly, a long, deep breath, and let it out. He steadied and smiled. The smile turned to an inlooking
blankness, as if his spirit was too leaky a vessel to hold happiness for long.

‘Yes,’ said Balashov faintly. ‘Yes, I have been there and spoken with our friend, our brother, the son of God, he who cares for the white doves.’

‘He cares for us,’ came the murmur back from the wall shadows. ‘Not for the dead ones, the crows.’

‘He told me that heaven’s time is different and that the years should be counted as hours. We’ve been living in Yazyk through the hours of night, but the dawn is about to break.’

‘Amen!’

The responses from the wall shadows brought Balashov further in from where he had been. His voice strengthened. ‘In the first hour,’ he said, ‘the Tsar’s commissioners came to our village and tried to conscript those among the white doves who had been men. By the grace and love of God, we made them understand we did not fight, and they left.’

‘A season on earth is but an hour in heaven,’ came the mutterback.

‘In the second hour, the ones calling themselves socialist revolutionaries came, praised our virtue, admired our life in common, and took our chickens.’

The wall shadows laughed.

‘In the third hour, the Tsar’s men came drunk and called us traitors, unbelievers, they beat the brothers and sisters, they made us kiss icons and drink vodka, and took our horses and left. The Land Captain and his household went with them.’

‘Wolves! To steal from the angels!’

‘In the fourth hour, the influenza came to the village while we were weak from labouring without horses, and twelve of us moved to live with Christ always.’

‘He knows his own!’

‘In the fifth hour, the ones calling themselves Bolsheviks came, with their red banner, told us to rejoice that the Tsar, our enemy, was dead, and that now we were free to live as we chose under communism. We told them that we had always lived a life in common. They laughed, took all the food and cutlery they could carry, and left.’

‘Crows!’

‘In the sixth hour, the Czechs and a Jew came. They searched our homes, took our food, and began to kill and eat our cattle. They shot the teacher. The Land Captain returned. The Czechs promised to leave. They stayed.’

Silence in the wall shadows.

‘The seventh hour is coming. The seventh hour is winter, and we are hungry, even though we share.’

‘The angels share!’

‘But the seventh hour is the dawn. He told me. The Czechs and the Jew will leave, and no more will come, and we will have milk and bread again, and send butter to market. The sun will rise on Yazyk, and the train will come weekly without soldiers. This will be next, brothers and sisters, and we must pray and be patient. No more Tsar’s men, no more revolutionaries, no more red banners, no more westerners. We shall live our life in common for all eternity, here on earth as in heaven, without sin, restored to that state of Adam and Eve before the fall.’

‘We have mounted the white horse!’

‘Yes, sister. We must pray and be patient. Last night in Verkhny Luk I helped a young man mount the white horse and find salvation. He wept and held my shoulders while he bled, praying and thanking God for the strength to find salvation. Look, on my shoulder, the marks of his fingers! Afterwards he stood and threw the keys to hell into the fire alone. You see, even without sin, even without children, our numbers are
growing. Patience, it will be soon, by the first hard frosts, they will all be gone.’

‘The widow too,’ said a woman’s voice from the wall shadow. It was not a response, or a question. It was the eagle. She spoke as to weave her prophecy in with Balashov’s.

‘The widow,’ said Balashov, looking down at the floor and wiping his palms on his smock. ‘Christ said nothing to me about the widow. She lives here. In heaven, their names weren’t mentioned, sister. Friends! It’s late. A psalm, then let the needy make their petitions, and our closing prayer.’

Balashov opened his mouth and sang:

My wonderful Eden

How bright was my day

My soul and my comfort

In paradise lay

I lived there with God

Immortal, as one;

He loved me as closely

As his own true son.

‘Amen!’ came the cryback from the wall shadows. And: ‘Immortal!’

Mutz heard footsteps behind him and squirmed round, flailing his boots and arms like an overturned beetle in the darkness. His wet poncho became hopeless batwings in his panic, and he bit his lips together to stop himself crying out. His right foot connected with something mobile in space which, horror, took hold of the bootsole and would not let go.

‘Brother!’ whispered Nekovar. ‘You must go back to the shtab. They’ve caught a doubtful character sneaking about. Outsider, brother. Knife on him the size of a sabre.’