The People's Act of Love (8 page)

The Convict

O
ne of the rooms in the shtab had been made into a cell. Several times Matula’s enforcers had brought Czech soldiers there to hurt them when they complained too often about not going home. Every once in a while, as now, the forest and the railway, a single track spur off the main Trans-Siberian one hundred miles to the south, threw up the scraps and peelings of war’s kitchen. A Cossack deserter from Omsk had been in, purging himself of alcohol and tearfully repenting his rapes and burnings. They let him go after a few weeks and he walked back into the forest. Perhaps he was still there. Perhaps he had walked out in a different place, with a different name and a different history. It was a good time for that. There was a Hungarian who claimed to be an ex-prisoner of war trying, like the Czechs, he said in broken German, to go home. Matula judged him a spy and shot him personally. There was socialist revolutionary Putov, who claimed he was visiting relatives. Eager young fellow, pleasant company, with big eyes and sleeves over his knuckles. He had wandered off somewhere. And the fur-buyer from Perm. They had no excuse to lock him up. He was as Russian as black bread and vodka, and he had papers. But there was no way Matula could persuade him to stay otherwise, and Matula wanted to talk to him about the mysteries and wealth of the taiga. So he put him in the cell for a week, then sent him on his way with a
sack of salt red fish and an ugly birch bark nativity scene by way of an apology.

Mutz carried a lantern down the unlit corridor leading to the cell. It was dank and chilly in the night cold after the rain. The light from the lantern raced up and down the corridor as the lantern swung. It flashed on eyes and belt buckles ahead. The voices of Racansky and Bublik, the captors, rumbled. At night in these bare corridors, with parquet floors long since worn clean of varnish, with whitewashed walls and high damp ceilings, any two people talking together sounded like a conspiracy.

‘Look, Racansky,’ said Bublik as Mutz approached. ‘Illumination is for the officers. Now, there’s a metaphor for the class struggle.’

‘You’re right,’ said Mutz. ‘But I’m not going to give you the lantern.’

‘Even the prisoner has a candle,’ said Racansky.

‘We gave him ours,’ said Bublik. ‘Rightly.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I believe we’re in the presence of greatness, comrade Jew-lieutenant, sir. His name is Samarin. A political prisoner. Escaped from a place up north. I think he may be a Bolshevik. A revolutionary!’

‘And you like that.’

‘What good honest man doesn’t? The alliance of soldiers, peasants and workers –’

‘Then why did you lock him up?’

There was silence. Bublik cleared his throat and fidgeted with the safety catch of his rifle.

‘Matula,’ said Racansky.

‘I know,’ said Mutz. ‘When are you going to make a revolution against
him
?’

‘A revolution without lanterns?’ shouted Bublik. He gave
Mutz the thumb-between-the-fingers. ‘You’d be next against the wall, comrade bourgeois.’

‘He’s all right, Tomik,’ muttered Racansky.

‘In the revolution, nobody is all right,’ said Bublik to the floor.

Mutz opened his mouth, then closed it. He desired some form of address for these men. To that extent he was still hiding under the ruins of the empire that he had lived in, and which had died. He had a weakness for categories. Most people did. He was the comrade-jew-lieutenant-sir. He knew what a risk it was to hug old categories to you in days of revolution and civil war and new countries, yet could not resist. He opened his mouth again. ‘My …’ Bublik looked up. ‘… co-functionaries.’ Bublik’s eyes narrowed and his whiskers seemed to twist back, like a cat’s ears. He was contemptuous, but he couldn’t help liking the phrase. ‘Did you search him?’

‘He has the dirt of a man on him,’ said Bublik.

‘He stinks,’ said Racansky. ‘And he’s got lice.’

‘We’ll get him cleaned up,’ said Mutz. ‘What did you find?’

The lantern was guided to a foul rag laid on the floor. On it was a length of metal fashioned into a rough knife, a rolled-up scroll of bark, some lengths of string made from the guts of an animal, and a cardboard wallet.

‘Not much, is it,’ said Racansky.

Mutz opened the wallet and took out the photograph. His guts lurched. ‘This was in his possession? Does he know Anna Petrovna?’

Bublik and Racansky crowded into the light to see the photograph. ‘We didn’t realise it was her,’ said Racansky. ‘He said he’d found it in the street.’

Mutz picked up the scroll and unrolled it. On it was scrawled, in slovenly capitals, ‘I AM DYING HERE. K.’ He put the scroll
and wallet in his pocket and asked if Samarin had said anything else.

Bublik put his face close to Mutz’s and grinned. ‘Somebody tried to eat him,’ he said.

Mutz took the key to the cell and turned it in the lock. ‘I’ll leave it open,’ he said to the soldiers. ‘Watch for trouble.’

‘If you lay a hand on him, you’ll have us to answer to,’ said Racansky.

Mutz entered the cell and closed the door behind him. He looked down at the prisoner, who had fixed the candle to the end of the iron cot and was sitting cross-legged under its light, on the floor, reading an old copy of
Czechoslovakian Daily
. They were all old by the time they reached Yazyk.

‘Do you read Czech?’ asked Mutz, in Russian.

Samarin looked up. ‘Do you have any cigarettes?’ he said.

‘No.’

Mutz put his hands in his pockets and regarded the prisoner. Samarin’s thin, used face brandished disdain and an impatient, turning mind. His eyes reached out; they could touch, stroke, poke or claw at what they saw.

‘I’m sorry we have to lock you up,’ said Mutz. ‘Strange as it may seem to you, we have the jurisdiction here, and since you have no papers, we have to look more closely into your story.’

‘It’d be easier to put me on the next train to St Petersburg,’ said Samarin.

‘It’s two thousand miles to Petrograd, and they’re shelling the Omsk suburbs,’ said Mutz. ‘You know that, don’t you?’ He crossed the room and sat on the cot. By the light of the candle he saw a tiny movement in Samarin’s hair and he shifted further up the mattress. The straw stuffing wheezed under his weight.

‘When I was arrested, it was still called Petersburg,’ said Samarin.

‘When was that?’

‘In 1914. I was tried and reached the labour camp at the White Garden in 1915. I broke out in January. Nine months ago. I’ve been walking for nine months.’

‘There’ll be a hearing of your story tomorrow,’ said Mutz. ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions now.’

‘Well?’ said Samarin. He coughed, hawked and spat into the corner, put his forearm on his knee, and rested his head on it. Mutz saw that he was not just tired. He had been crushed in five years among convicts, and in the wilderness. The life of his old bright, quick mind had flickered up, deceiving Mutz when he first saw him, but now the emptiness was slipping back; he had seen the hollowing out of convicts before, when the emptiness is not an absence of vitality, but vitality is a occasional desperate trick to hide the emptiness.

‘How did you cut your hand?’

‘It’s full of sharp edges out there. A jagged branch.’

‘Do you know anything about a Tungus shaman with a deformed forehead?’ said Mutz.

Samarin shrugged. ‘I met one like that in the forest a few months ago. The circumstances were difficult.’

‘How so?’

‘Another convict was trying to butcher me.’

‘Yes. The attempt at cannibalism. And not since then? Did you bring any alcohol into town this evening?’

Samarin lifted up his head and laughed. Mutz half-stood in surprise. It was as if he had been standing in the hallway of a cold, dark house, having a shouted conversation with a half-asleep, muttering voice upstairs, when suddenly the owner had thrown open the door, put on the lights and lit the stove.
It was not that he had misjudged Samarin but that he had not been talking to him until now.

‘Lieutenant Mutz,’ said Samarin, getting up and looking down at his interrogator with one hand in his pocket and the other stroking his bearded chin. ‘Before you ask, they told me your name, the comrades. Don’t you think this is all rather topsy-turvy? Here I am, a student in my own country, a convict only by definition of a tyranny which has now been overthrown, along with the laws under which I was arrested. Yet I am being incarcerated by you. Who are you? A Jewish officer, commissioned by the army of an empire which no longer exists, now serving a country which you’ve never visited, because it’s only a year old, and it’s three thousand miles away. It seems to me that I should be locking you up, and asking
you
what
you
are doing here.’

Mutz looked up at Samarin, who stood over him with arms folded and eyebrows raised. He was tall, and looked cleaner, somehow. Clapping came from the corridor outside and Bublik cried ‘Bravo!’ Mutz felt himself falling into a well of sadness. He studied his boots, pursed his lips, and said: ‘Well. I intend to go to Prague when I can, of course. What’s the significance of this scroll?’

He took the scrap of bark out of his pocket. Samarin snatched it away from him and held it into the flame of the candle. It burned so fast he dropped it and trod it out.

‘That was nothing,’ he said quickly. ‘In the White Garden the convicts would throw these out of the punishment block. I don’t need to be reminded of that. I didn’t know I had it in my pocket.’

‘For eight months?’

‘K … who was K? Kabanchik, I believe it was. A good thief, if it comes to getting in and out through a small, high window.’

‘What about the photograph?’

‘As I explained to the young Czechs out there, I came into the town from the north, along a stream, and after I passed the first farm, when the path becomes a road, I found the wallet lying on the ground.’

‘In the dark.’

‘I have good eyesight.’

‘Do you know the woman in the photograph?’

‘Should I?’

‘Well, do you know her?’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes,’ said Mutz. ‘I do.’ He rubbed his forehead with the fingers of his right hand. ‘I’m not a policeman. I’m not a detective.’

‘It’s fine. Don’t worry,’ said Samarin. ‘And the truth is that I didn’t have light to see the picture by, before your men took it from me. May I see it now?’

Mutz took the photograph out and gave it to Samarin, who sat down on the cot and held it in the candlelight by the thumb and first finger of each hand, pincering the white border with his black, broken nails to avoid smudging the print. It was the same Anna Petrovna as Mutz’s engraving on the Czechs’ one-crown bill, the same mass of kinked hair tied at the back and the same hungry eyes, but a few years younger, and happier: Anna before the war. The dark dress with the high collar would have looked old-fashioned now but by the apparently careless unfastening of the top two buttons, and by the way Anna’s head leaning on her hand made a thin pale jagged line of throat visible, it moved outside fashion. Where the studio photographers would have made a smooth white complexion under flat light, this picture was divided into extremes of light and shade. The harsh contrast between the darkened and the lit
planes of Anna’s face was echoed by the contrast between the severity of the chiarascuro itself and the happiness of her smile. The light – it was hard to tell whether it was sunlight or some theatrical contrivance of electricity – picked out the tiny wrinkles and blemishes even on her young skin, and this against the stark simple way her cheekbones and slightly upturned nose were outlined made her seem youthful and wise at the same time.

‘Beauty,’ said Samarin. If he’d said it any other way, Mutz would have become angry, and regretted showing him the picture. As it was, he said it matter of factly, as if being beautiful were a profession like carpenter or drayman, and every little town would have its beauty, as a matter of course.

‘Not everyone thinks so,’ said Mutz. ‘Do you recognise her?’

‘No. I wonder when this picture was taken. Whoever took it, he’s good.’

‘It’s a self-portrait,’ said Mutz. He took the photograph back and put it away. ‘Do you have any reason to think she might be in danger?’

‘I don’t even know her name. I can tell you that everyone in this town is in danger. The second convict has been pursuing me. The Mohican by alias. I don’t know his birth name. He’s very businesslike when it comes to killing. A few dozen Czech soldiers aren’t going to trouble him.’

‘Do you know a man named Balashov?’

‘No. Tell me, what is that woman’s name?’

‘It’s not necessary for you to know.’

‘Is it Anna Petrovna? It is! I can tell from your expression. My guards here were telling me about her. Do pass on my compliments on her photography. That picture will last longer than we will.’

There was a moment’s quiet. Mutz sensed Samarin was
watching him. He turned and the prisoner was gazing at him with an expression of natural friendliness. Sure enough, when he spoke, it was with the most delicate, intimate concern, as if the two men had been close for years. For an instant Mutz found himself running back through his acquaintances. Did he know this man? Ridiculous. And yet could men exist with the power, by tone of voice, expression and an ability to read others, to make it seem as if they were every man’s friend? To make it
seem
that a second of affection was of no less value than years – that time made no difference? Did memory have so little meaning when it came to putting a value on the present?

‘You’re fond of Anna Petrovna, aren’t you, Jacob?’ said Samarin.

‘Is – it’s not Jacob,’ said Mutz. A cheap trap.

‘Abraham?’

‘My name is Josef. I’d rather keep it formal. Did you know the shaman was dead?’

Samarin shook his head. Then he snapped his fingers and pointed at Mutz. ‘Alcohol poisoning!’ he said. ‘You gave your suspicion away already. Why would I – listen.’ He lowered his voice, licked his lips and glanced towards the tiny window in the cell. He was serious and frightened. ‘What if the Mohican was already here? The shaman knew what he tried to do to me! This is hard to understand, but while a great robber can boast to other thieves about eating a man, he can’t allow the shame of the common herd knowing. And I know he was carrying spirits with him. Please, lieutenant. You can see how tired I am, and this tribunal tomorrow – if one of your sentries isn’t on duty under the window through the night, I’ll not sleep. Every one I tell about what happened in the taiga is in particular danger. You, now. But tomorrow I tell so many people even he can’t kill them all.’