The Road of Bones (14 page)

Autumn would come. Each time I was alone for even a moment in the clearing, I'd cram as many berries into my mouth as I could, knowing that soon I'd feel the stinging spittle of sleet and, only a day or so later, see the first sift of snowflakes. Within a week these berries would be hidden under unbroken
humps of snow. The flanks of the hills would merge into a hard white veil that hung all around us, hemming us in place. And we'd be staggering once again through the dark days in the bone-chilling cold, our eyelids crusted with rime.

Another winter to dread, already on its way.

One night, after over half the men in our hut had failed to return, we inched our way closer to their bundles and waited, sunk in the deepest shame at what we were hoping to hear.

Word came soon enough.

‘Another pit fall. They're all dead.'

Like the good scavengers we had become, we fell to fighting over the last few pitiful goods of other men's lives. Here was a pillow stuffed with something softer than wood shavings. There was a woollen face mask. Didn't Vasily have spare footcloths? And where was the wooden bowl of that Ukrainian who never spoke? It looked no larger than the others, but held a whole spoonful more.

Suddenly Dov lifted his shaven and disfigured head from his rooting to ask, ‘How do they do it?'

I broke off from spreading my fingers around inside Ira's mattress, looking for hidden crusts.

‘Do what?'

Dov waved an arm as if to pick out all the spaces
on the bunks now filled with ghosts of the dead. ‘How can they suck the lives from so many men and not change their ways?'

Someone behind me muttered, ‘The world is full of ravens. It always has been.'

‘No,' Dov insisted. ‘Even the famous killers in the past counted their victims only in dozens. And, leaving wars aside, I'll bet you could only lay the deaths of a few thousands at the door of the worst Czar.'

Between one fit of coughing and the next, Gregory asked irritably, ‘So what's bothering you?'

Dov himself looked confused. But, keeping his hands on the two small bundles he'd fought for and won, he tried to explain things again. ‘I'm saying that even a
rumour
of the sorts of numbers we know are passing through this camp would have made all the evil-doers of the past stop and take breath.'

I waited, but no one spoke.

‘So what has changed,' said Dov, ‘that Our Great Leader and his henchmen can have even an inkling of what they've set in train, and still keep on their bloody path?'

Most of the men still ignored him. But suddenly Jan Gobrek spoke up from his place in the corner. ‘I understand your question. What does it take to kill
in such numbers without human pity? Is that what you're asking?'

‘Yes.' Dov's face cleared. ‘That's what I want to know.'

‘The answer's simple. All it takes is faith.'

‘Faith?'

‘Nothing more.' Jan gave the grin that showed the thorough way in which a guard had kicked his mouth to pulp for slowing a march. ‘Faith has a dozen names. When I was in the university we called it
ideology.
In party lectures it's called
social theory.
If you burn people at the stake, you tend to call it
belief.
But, whatever its name, that's the ingredient missing in those who only go halfway.' He made a grimace of contempt. ‘This pack of murderers has it in plenty.'

Dov's mouth had fallen open. ‘
Faith?
Are you
serious
?'

‘It's all you need,' Jan told him firmly. ‘A theory behind you, giving wind to your sails. What else would give them the determination to wade on through torrents of blood? What else could stop them hearing the cries of the orphans they've created, and the curses of their victims – even the reproaches of those they respect? It's faith. They're blinded by it. Fortified by it. So fortified that what
they do seems good and worthy even if, done for any other purpose, those very same things would seem shocking, even to them.'

The silence that fell was broken by the usual warning ring of a hammer against a metal post. We gathered for the count. That night I had a whole bunk to myself for the first time, and wasted the hours fighting the fleas that wouldn't settle till the hammer swung again.

Another day. As we were shuffling towards the gates, two open trucks stuffed tight with men rattled to a halt outside.

I heard a voice behind me. ‘They've wasted no time in filling dead men's boots!'

But we were so far from any transit camp that the new prisoners on the trucks must have been well on their way to us before the pit roof fell. We waited to see if we'd be marched out first, or if the guards would get the dogs to force us back, to march the newcomers in.

A chill and clinging mist hung over us. I stood and shivered. Which would it be? Us out? Them in? They'd spent the whole night in an open truck and it was obvious that more than a few were only held on their feet by the press of bodies around them.

But we were off to work.

And so, of course, we had our orders first. ‘In your lines! Hands clasped behind you. March!'

We'd learned from the bitter experience of others never to call attention to ourselves by standing out from the crowd. Safer by far always to plod along as close as you could to the centre of any group, with eyes downcast. Still, it was easy enough to steal a glance as we trudged past. One of the men on the first truck was wrinkling his nose at the stink, and staring in astonishment at the vast hummocks of excrement behind the latrines.

Something about the way he stood, the way he moved, gave me a jolt.

Could it be? Could it?

Nikolai! The young daredevil who'd teased Sergei so well at Pioneer camp? Here? In our camp? My heart leaped. At last! A real friend. Someone my own age!

‘Heads down! March faster!'

I bowed my head and splashed through the sea of mud around the stockade. To those stumbling along at my side, I must have looked as dismal as before. Inside I was singing. Already the daydreams had begun. Nikolai would escape the roll call for the mines. Like me, he'd end up on the forest detail. We'd work together day by day. We'd share our
stories, and he would tell me how he'd guessed, even all that long time ago, that I was ‘one of them' at heart. Yellow and black.

My excitement grew. This time, I knew, things would work out more evenly between us. After all, I'd be the one who knew more. I'd teach him all the tricks. In summer I'd be the one to show him how to protect himself against the burning sun and the vicious mosquitoes. In winter I'd warn him not to panic the first time he woke and found himself unable to lift his head. ‘You won't be paralysed. It'll just be your hair frozen fast to the bedding.'

Perhaps he'd laugh, not quite believing me. I'd show him how to sleep with feet jammed into a jacket sleeve for extra warmth, and how to thicken his overcoat with rags, and wrap his face with more rags against the stinging winds.

At work too. When we were in the forest I'd show him how to cheat. Why fell a whole new tree when, in some nearby clearing, you're bound to find one cut down some other winter by someone too weak to drag it back. ‘Cut off its ends to make it look fresh. We call it “making a sandwich”.'

In short, I'd teach him the only wisdom I'd picked up: ‘Scrape through today in any way you can, and hope for better tomorrow.'

All day I dreamed as I worked. Slowly the pale sun lifted, then all too soon set again. On came the blinding arc lights, and hours crawled by. At last the work shift ended. Back we all trudged, a herd of coughing, spitting, cursing shadows – all except one of them counting the heartbeats to the end of the day.

All except me.

THERE HE WAS,
in one of the lines of men waiting to take the place of others in the food hut. I watched him shuffling towards the door, clutching his bowl, and wondered what he'd think of our rotten bread and spoiled cod – if we were lucky. I tried to guess if he'd be one of those who bolted down his daily ration the moment it was given him, or if he was a hoarder.

I'd tried it both ways. If you gobbled, not just your gruel, but the bread too while you were in the food hut, then work next day was even more of a misery. But save your bread till morning and you lay awake all night – and not just from hunger. From under the bundle you used as a pillow it tempted you.
Eat me! I might get stolen. Anything might happen. It would be better to eat me now.
That tiny lump of bread called to you through dreams of food you hadn't seen since your arrest: tomatoes, apples, cucumber, butter . . .
Don't wait another moment Eat me now!

So in the food hut I took my place on the bench with the rest of my work team. At the end of a day in the forest food came before anything, even renewing what I was already thinking of as an old friendship. To peel my attention away for a moment from the division of our group's ration was to risk losing my share.

And then I heard the voice I remembered so well, clear as a bell. ‘How can you
speak
like that? Clearly some things have gone wrong, but only because of the devilish tricks of those who oppose Our Leader. They keep on trying to lead the Revolution off its path.'

The men around kept eating. You could see it on their faces: what does one fool matter in a country ruled by a madman?

But Thomas had, as usual, wiped his bowl so clean that he was licking at the shine. And no one left this warm hut till they were pushed out at rifle point. So out of mischief he asked my Nikolai, ‘Why are you here, then? Surely a loyal young man like you should still be out there, working towards the Glorious Future.'

‘It's a mistake,' said Nikolai. ‘Some accident of paperwork. A misunderstanding. I've every faith it will be sorted out. I won't be here for long.' He shook
his head. ‘No, I'm quite sure it won't be more than a month or two before word comes to release me.'

Even the steady eaters were pricking up their ears now. All thought of foolishness was left aside. Here was a gift indeed! A newcomer ready to remind them of old times around a table. After all, many of the men clung to old pastimes. All around, when work ended, there were gamblers, smokers and cardsharps to be seen – even men singing melancholy songs on home-made balalaikas.

But no one had yet preserved enough of his old self to play the buffoon.

‘So tell us, lad,' cried Dov, happy to take the bait now that all his food was safe inside his belly. ‘What else will be sorted out in a month or two? The fact that the only crops this Great Leader of ours has ever managed to harvest is “enemies of the people”? The problem that not all villages have traitors, but since every village must be terrorized, every village must be found to contain some? The fact that . . .'

I was distracted from my pride in watching Nikolai's success in entertaining the men. His colour was rising. How fine an actor could he be? Surely not skilled enough to raise those spots of anger on his cheeks, and set that tiny nerve trembling across his cheekbone?

Now he was interrupting Dov. ‘These are small matters! Mere misprints in the great unfolding of history!'

Something in the tone of his voice caused a sickening drop in my spirits. Surely no one – not even those who acted on the stage – could do so good a job of laying claim to false opinions. Could it be possible that Nikolai wasn't clowning to amuse us all, and what we heard was what he truly thought?

Could he
believe
this?

I thought back to what I'd heard him saying all those years ago about those men who fought without weapons or boots. Now, I knew well enough from talk around me that, far from being willing volunteers, those poor doomed souls had been from punishment battalions. It was at gunpoint that they'd been herded over the bloodsoaked earth towards the enemy tanks that rolled over their bodies. Could I have been mistaken, even back then, in thinking that Nikolai was taking a rise out of our old team leader? When he'd pushed back his helmet and stood with that seraphic smile, reminding me of the holy man in Grandmother's print, could he have been in as much ecstasy? Thrilled at the very idea of sacrifice? Ready and willing to
be a new sort of martyr – not for a God but for a Cause?

So had I been mistaken all this time? Could he have been
sincere
?

Certainly Dov no longer thought this newcomer was playing games and being comical.

‘Mere
misprints
?' He spread his hands. ‘That's what you call the countless hundreds and thousands of men like us?
Misprints?
'

‘The Leader knows what he's doing. The Leader knows that what he's aiming for is—'

Dov's hand slammed down. ‘The Leader's a
fanatic.
A man who, even as he loses sight of where he's going, works even harder to get there.'

They were all at it now, scorching Nikolai with their fury. ‘Killing more men!'

‘Filling more camps and prisons.'

‘The “Great Friend of Families” – conducting a war of blood against his own people!'

Dov thrust his face across the greasy boards. ‘The man's an oaf; His thinking is so primitive that he's indifferent to losses.'

‘Not true!' insisted Nikolai. ‘He simply knows that it's important to crush the enemy within before he moves on.'

‘The enemy within!' Dov turned to his neighbours
and scoffed. ‘Here is a boy who'll no doubt happily freeze to death rather than put on a jacket in the colours yellow and black.'

Nikolai spat. ‘Yellow and Black! Those traitors! But we will crush them. Crush them without mercy.'

Dov snarled, ‘You'd follow him even in that? You'd manage to convince yourself, just as he has, that pitilessness is a
virtue
?'