The Road of Bones (6 page)

‘Yuri!'

This time I jumped to it. I held out my arms, and Big Karl lifted me, as if I were a child, onto the parapet. I jammed my foot in the bucket so hard it felt as if I'd cracked half the small bones. Karl fed me a short length of rope and closed my hands round it with his own iron grip. He tipped the bucket. It slid off the parapet with a scraping noise I felt must alert the whole world to what was happening on our side of the half-built block.

Almost at once the bucket fell away, with me swaying dangerously, out in thin air.

I clung, sick with fright, as Karl began to lower me. The bucket rocked. I shut my eyes in terror. Surely I must weigh more than a bucket of mortar. Surely the rope would snap and, like Alyosha, I'd go hurtling to the ground.

The bucket fell in sickening jerks. Desperate to know how fast we were descending, I forced myself to open my eyes. Karl must have been letting me down hand over hand, controlled and steady at his end, jerk and sway at mine. My hands were slick with sweat, but somehow I kept my fingers round the rope even through desperate cramps. Each time the rope caught, a juddering pain ran through the foot jammed in the bucket.

Down and down I went. Karl was lowering me at one of the places along the building's shell where there were no gaps for windows so I had no fear of being seen. Behind me were the bushes and trees we'd scoured for firewood on days too cold to get the mortar, unfrozen, to the men. At least I knew the paths. And now the trees were in leaf, I might at least stand a chance of getting away without being spotted.

From the top of the building I heard an angry
shout. Karl's voice. ‘Yuri! Damn you, boy! Yuri! Where are you? Get up here with those bricks! I'm waiting!'

If he was trying to fool the guards, they must be close now.

Just at that moment the bucket started sliding at such a rate, it was like falling. Were the guards at the top of the ladders? Now I knew Karl must be letting the last of the rope run through his palms, burning his skin.

I hit the ground.

‘Bricks here! Bricks, I say!' I heard Karl roar to cover the noise my bucket made as it rolled down the slope to the bushes. The rope slithered down to land in a heap at my side. Clearly Karl thought it less risky to throw the last of it over in case they pulled up the bucket and guessed how he'd helped me.

Praying for his sake that neither of the guards knew enough about building work to think it strange Karl had only the smallest heap of mortar at his side for all the bricks he was shouting for, I gathered up as much of an armful of the rope as I could carry, and ran for cover.

Once I was hidden, I snaked the rope end towards me, keeping my eye on the parapet for fear that either of the men hunting me should take it into his head to peer over. As soon as I'd hauled the last of it
out of sight, I crept a little further down the bushy slope, and left the bucket lying on its side, the rope trailing after, so even if Karl didn't get to it first, he would at least be able to argue it had fallen off the parapet and rolled away.

‘That's why I sent him down again out of turn,' he would be able to tell them when they questioned him. ‘To fetch back the bucket the young fool knocked off my wall.'

I stumbled off between the bushes and trees, desperate to convince myself Karl wouldn't find himself in the worst trouble. And only then, as terror from the dreadful, swaying descent began to fade, did I remember that things could go as badly for me if I were found.

Or even worse.

I speeded up till I'd outrun the furthest paths we'd ever searched for firewood. It was getting dark. More out of breath than I had ever been, I finally slowed my pace, telling myself that going more slowly was sensible. Suppose someone who'd been working in the wood suddenly appeared on the path? Surely they'd think a panting, rasping boy far more suspicious than one who was simply strolling along and whistling idly.

I pursed my lips. I'd no intention of making any
noise at all unless I met a stranger. But even without trying I knew that any attempt to whistle would end in failure. My mouth was parched from fright. I hurried on. And it was only as the relentless thumping of my own heartbeat in my chest and ears gradually calmed that the realization came to me.

I was in even deeper trouble than I feared.

How could I go forward? I had nothing with me. No food, no money, no identification papers. Nothing except the rough and ready work clothes in which I stood.

And I could definitely not go back.

So I went on. What I had taken to be the silence of the woods turned into almost a comfort of rustlings and flutterings and strange short screeches in the night. What would my mother be thinking? Would the guards think that she and my father were lying when she assured them I had not come home? I felt a sickening in my gut. Perhaps they'd even arrest my parents in my place – we knew it happened – and keep them down in their slimy basement cells in the hope that I'd present myself at their gatehouse the same way young Victor went in search of his brother in Grandmother's story.

Grandmother! Surely the soldiers wouldn't drag
her away! She was a wily old bird, well capable of making herself look even older than she was, and acting half-witted. Perhaps she'd have the sense to whimper and drool, and leave them thinking her brain so full of holes and worms she might as well be left.

At heart, though, I knew that neither my grandmother's age nor my parents' innocence would be any protection. If they chose to, the guards would beat them. We knew they'd thrashed confessions out of peasants accused of hiding grain, and wreckers and saboteurs. For years my parents had struggled to convince themselves, ‘They must have been guilty of
something.
No one's arrested for no reason at all.' But after the day my mother came home with the news that Simple Talia down the street had been taken away in one of their Black Marias, even that small fraying effort at self-comfort was snatched away. (‘If they're accusing dafties like her, soon they'll be coming after planks of wood.')

The only words ringing in my ears now as I tramped along the forest paths were those from Father Trofim's endless speeches: ‘There will be sacrifices. In the interests of the greater good, small mistakes may even be made. But better one or two innocents are temporarily troubled than that the guilty escape.'

I'd listened. I even recall the scorn that ran through me when I heard the bland words ‘temporarily troubled'. (By then we all knew very well what sort of ‘trouble' his guards would offer with their steel-capped boots.) I'd even thought back to Nikolai in Pioneer camp, and paid more attention to the Black Marias passing in the street and the scraps of torn posters in the gutters. But I'd still pushed it all from my mind, thinking it had no bearing on my family. In any case, work was so punishing I no longer had the energy to care about anything over and above my own next meal and the next chance to sleep.

Now, for the very first time, I realized truly what his words could mean. It was the job of the guards to make sure nothing and no one stood in the way of the Revolution. It didn't matter how old or frail you were, or how unlikely it was that you were hiding something or weren't telling the truth. If there was any chance at all you might be lying, it had become their ‘duty' to beat truth out of you. After all, hadn't Father Trofim said it often enough? ‘A stick of any sort can stop a wheel. All must be broken.'

I pushed my way on and on. In places the undergrowth was now so thick I had to kick and beat the branches away. In others, the rutted path was wide enough for two. My poor, poor parents! What had I
done? How could it be that the stupid outspokenness of one person in a family could lead to the punishment of others? How could they drag my mother away by the hair because her boy had said a few unguarded words? What sort of person could pile such terror onto someone who'd just lost her only son without the chance to hand him his one warm coat, or say goodbye?

Up came the moon at last. Now I was cold, and hungrier than ever, but I could at least make faster progress and have more confidence I wasn't wasting time by wandering round in circles. It struck me suddenly how very strange it seemed to be by myself. All of my life I'd either been with my family, or in a class or a squad, a march or a parade, a team or a troop. Always in groups. Always herded, with people watching every move and listening to every word. It seemed so odd to be, for the first time in my life, striking out alone. I was just thinking how, in other circumstances, walking between these whispering trees would be a great adventure, when suddenly the moonlight that had been filtering meanly through the branches above washed over me in a flood.

The trees had given way to bushes. Within a step or two even the bushes opened up in front of me, and I was tripping over metal track.

The railway line.

Here, at least, was a choice. So far as I could tell, this had to be the track between our town and Xhosa, half a day along the line. Should I make for the city?

Or would I be safer hiding in the forest? I'd heard of others who had managed to stay alive through the summer months, living off any small animals they could snare, and nuts and berries.

I stood at the side of the track. Part of me longed to turn round and creep home, hoping against hope there were no traps around our flat, no men with silver badges on their caps waiting inside, lounging against the shutters and smoking their cigarettes as they watched the street and waited for the stupid boy they guessed would soon run out of courage and come crawling back to his mother.

But to leave our province entirely! That was too much of a decision. I wasn't ready. Perhaps I'd be bold enough to think about it the next day. But not right then.

And then it struck me. Within an hour or two, they would be after me with dogs. No use to tell myself that I was small fry – some silly boy not worth their time and effort. They already knew how little I'd said, and still they'd bothered to come after me.

Now I'd defied them, they'd come after me again.

I was just wondering how fast the news of a runaway boy without papers could pass from one telegraph post to the next when, under my foot, the rail stirred into life.

It was my only chance.

I had to take it. So I jumped the train.

JUMPING WAS SCARCELY
the word. The goods train that steamed into view a few seconds after I stepped back into the shadow of the bushes was going so slowly that I could all but step onto one of the footplates. I knew it wouldn't be long before the track ran past some woodsman's cottage, or over a crossing where, in the moonlight, I might be clearly seen. So I inched my way, spreadeagled, along the train's side, clinging to every hook and handle, until I reached the wide expanse of a sliding door.

I listened for a moment. No sound came from inside, so I tugged at the handle. The door glided open easily enough. Apart from a couple of broken crates, there was nothing on the floor. But on a rack along one edge lay heaps of empty grain sacks.

Perfect covering! Swinging myself onto the rack, I pulled a sack up to my waist and tugged another down over my head. Worming my way into the heap, I stretched out to wait. Twenty minutes was all I needed. Half an hour at most. Any dogs they sent
after me would lose the scent at the trackside. The guards might wire their warnings up and down the line, but just so long as I kept clear of stations, I had a chance of staying ahead.

I lay, half-choked with grain chaff. The gritty feel of it bit into my skin. Stifling sneezes, I counted the minutes in my head. I wanted the train to carry me a good few miles further from the city, but it was important not to risk falling asleep and being found on board at the next halt.

Was it the rhythm of the counting or the clack of wheels over the joints in the rail that dulled my sense of purpose? In any event I woke to the sound of a bored shout. ‘Xhosa! Xhosa Junction!'

I'd slept for hours. Daylight was speckling through the sacking. Cautiously I peered through its coarse weave. My heart thumped fit to burst, but apart from the shaft of light streaming in, nothing had changed, and there was nothing to be done except hope no one outside had noticed that one of the truck doors was no longer shut.

It seemed an age before, with a great jolt, the train moved again. I let out the breath I'd been holding, and almost at once heard the sound of boots and voices. Startled, I turned my head to see that what I'd taken in the dark to be a truck cut off
from all the rest had narrow sliding doors at either end.

Every last muscle tensed again as I listened. First came a laugh. Then: ‘Mischa! What a story!'

‘Oh, I could tell you a score.'

‘Finish this one, if you please.'

‘Where was I? Oh, yes. So this brand new little heroine of the Motherland turns out to be no more than eight years old, with the braids in her hair pulled back so tightly that her face is all but scraped back into them.'

I heard a fiddling with the latch as the man kept on with his story. ‘The winsome little thing comes up to the Leader and curtseys. And he smiles down at her, and even gets out of his chair to take her hand and walk her round the statue of herself. Of course, she's far too over-awed even to speak, so he tries to put her at her ease. “Don't it look just like you?” he says to her. “Down to the Medal of Honour!”'

The voice broke off. I heard a series of grunts. Then, as I watched through the sacking, the door finally juddered along its warped runnel just enough to let a grizzled man in soldier's uniform wriggle through into the truck.

The other man followed. ‘He's good with kids, you have to give him that.'

His uniform might have been different, but their lined faces were so similar, each might have been the other's reflection. The two of them glanced around the truck before the taller one called Mischa went on with his story.