A Thorn for Miss R.: Book I: The Night Watchman

by Sakiv Koch

  Like its three dead siblings—the last of which had been stillborn—this baby had also announced tonight its intentions to try and force its entry into the world many weeks before it was due to do so.

  Dmitry became aware that the jarring crescendo of Irina's labor throes had given place to a low, faltering squeal. The sound stopped suddenly and the silence became a jab of sharp pain in his chest. And then the newborn’s crying started again, gaining both volume and surety within seconds.

  He willed it to continue with all the power of his being as the minutes ticked by.

  "You can come in now, Dmitry," Akilina called out in her shrill voice.

  "Hold on, my child," he whispered as he reeled toward the birth chamber, his body drained of all strength, as though he had lent it to his baby, "hold on to your life for me, for your mother."

  Akilina stood bent over the bed when he entered the room. In his mind, he saw her mouth stretched in a bitter line of failure, as he had seen it on three nightmarish nights in the past.

  With his eyes, he saw her grin broadly, giving him more relief and happiness than the tsar’s grant of a fiefdom to him could have. Dmitry’s gaze darted from Akilina’s face to Irina’s, and from hers, it floated gently to the little form lying beside her. He was afraid to see the infant with an abrupt movement of his eyes, as though even the hardness of a look could hurt it.

  "It’s a girl," Irina said.

  A warm, violent volcano of joy erupted inside Dmitry when he looked at the small face. Some weight that had lain on his shoulders, a weight that he had not even been aware of, left him suddenly so that he felt more alive and more vital than ever before.

  He saw Akilina’s hands as they expertly knotted the severed umbilical cord over his daughter’s stomach and then scooped her up in her arms.

  "Careful," Dmitry snarled, jerking forward, feeling the heat of panic and anger spread over his face.

  Akilina laughed. "Who do you think gave you your first bath, boy? Now, don’t stop breathing or we will have someone die here tonight. Step out of my way. You don’t want the water to get overly hot and scald your little precious, do you?" Dmitry’s heart thudded, but he let her pass, watching her steps intently.

  Irina lay on the bed with her eyes closed. Her hands quivered with weakness and her face was pallid, but her mouth lifted in a smile of contentment and she called his name.

  "This one will not leave us," she said, "I just know it, in my soul, that she won’t." Dmitry lifted her hand and kissed it tenderly. They watched Akilina bathe their daughter and bundle her up in a white cloth.

  She brought the wailing baby to her mother’s side and stepped back, bringing out her flask in the same motion. Dmitry noticed, with mild curiosity, that the alertness seeped out of the old woman’s attitude as abruptly as it had set in earlier, now that her business there was finished.

  "Now make me a nice bed here and hand me my five rubles," she said. "I should charge more because this girl is sure to keep me up all night."

  "I’ve only three rubles—"

  "Ah, no haggling in businesses of birth and death," Akilina returned. "Five rubles, and not a kopek less! Else take me back, as you promised."

  "But the river—"

  "The river was fine for bringing me here when the storm raged, eh, but not for taking me back when the danger has passed?"

  She stopped all the potential arguing by raising one hand in the air in front of his face.

  "If I must accept the risk of a loan, you will have to give me three rubles now and four later. Take the deal or leave it."

  Dmitry nodded his assent to this sharkish arrangement. Akilina raised the flask to her mouth and made the exaggerated sound of slurping liquid when there was only air in her flask.

  Her eyes grew fierce and she shook the flask vigorously, as though accusing the container itself of the theft of her vodka. She scowled, screwed one eye shut, and gazed down the neck of the flask with the other.

  "I must go back," she declared petulantly, lowering the flask. "Right now."

  "But seven rubles—," Dmitry began.

  "Damn your rubles," Akilina cut in, "when they won’t buy an old woman a drop to quench her thirst. There’s nothing but wilderness twenty miles this side of the river. Besides, you don’t have a sled, do you, to get to the town?" she asked contemptuously.

  Dmitry lowered and shook his head. The baby wailed on with all its inconsequential might, but the new mother, lulled by the end of her ordeal and by the warmth of the rekindled fire, appeared to have fallen into a deep sleep.

  "Now!" Akilina hissed, "or I’ll curse the—"

  "No! Please don’t," Dmitry begged. "I’ll take you back."

  The midwife hesitated for a moment, as though, at some level hidden from her own consciousness, she had wanted Dmitry not to give in to her demand. She glanced guiltily toward Irina’s room once, but then her attention refocused on the emptiness of the flask in her hand.

  She clutched it to her chest and walked toward the main door. "They will be fine," she said as she exited the small hallway, "and if they won’t be, what could I do anyway, huh?"

  The thought of closing the door upon Akilina and shutting her out did begin to form in Dmitry’s mind as he stood hesitant at his threshold.

  But he was too simple and too honest a man to allow death to catch an old woman at his doorstep, a woman whom he had brought to his home with the responsibility to take her back, too. He shuddered to think what would have happened had she refused to come.

  Besides, the same influence—that of liquor—which was now dragging her back had prepared her to come with him in the first place. She wouldn’t have dared step into his boat on such a night if she had been sober. Most people in those parts had known Akilina all their lives, but nobody had ever seen her without her flask.

  Suddenly, out of the darkness, Akilina thrust her face into his. Her eye glinted with slyness. "You are thinking of shutting me out," she said, as though the embryo of his aborted intention had fallen before her eyes. "With one word to the good Count, I can have your pantry emptied of its last grain of food, you know that?"

  Dmitry didn’t answer her. He came out, locked his door, and started walking toward the wharf. The rain had stopped, but the clouds continued to flash streaks of lightning followed by terrifying, roaring rumbles coming deep from their torn bellies.

  The wind whooshed in Dmitry’s ears, stung his cheeks, and half-froze his hands through his worn-out gloves. The trees on the shore were bent over the river, as though preparing to dive in.

  He strode toward the boat with long steps; Akilina huffed behind him, trying to catch up. He untied the boat with expert, economic motions and stood by the bow to wait for the midwife.

  Dmitry picked her up bodily and put her in the boat as soon as she reached him. He sensed the seizure of fear in her body when she looked at the river, but he chose not to say anything about it. His jaw was taut and his mouth clamped shut inexorably.

  He pushed the boat into the water, jumped in, and put the oars in their locks. The boat spun and raced toward the midstream as soon as it hit the water, as though a gigantic hand had lifted and tossed it in the boiling, deafening flow.

  Dmitry fought to point the bow upstream and to keep the boat parallel to the shore.

  "Stop, stop," Akilina cried, diving under the stern bench and covering herself with the oilskin. "Maybe it’s not a good idea to cross over right now." Dmitry ignored her and bent forward in concentration.

  "Are you just deaf or totally mad?" she shouted over the din of the river.

  "You would begin wanting to go home the moment I take you back to shore," Dmitry answered. "Please stay quiet and let me work in peace," he added and shut out her whining from his consciousness. He had always ferried across the river the way he was going to do now: he would move upstream and let the counter-flow of an eddy in the middle of the stream ride him across. He had crossed it under similar, even worse, conditions on numberless nights in th
e past. Tonight, he needed extra focus and endurance to time each stroke of his oar with the precision of a duck to drop Akilina on the opposite shore and get back to his own home as quickly as possible.

  He drew the bow into the main current and rowed forward with all his might. Just as the bow began to jerk away from him into the current, Dmitry drew the stern out and straightened the boat again.

  With a quick, expert draw, he angled the bow acutely off the current, toward the opposite bank, putting his soul into rapid, powerful strokes to keep from being swept downstream.

  A large rock jutted out of the middle of the stream. Dmitry aimed the boat toward the eddy formed by the rock. The current caught the boat and shoved it broadside toward the eddy.

  Water began to pour from the skies just as the boat approached the eddy-line. Dmitry rowed vigorously to cross the line, leaning the boat into the turn to avoid being flipped over by the reverse flow. The current slackened perceptibly inside the broad swath of water cut by the rock. They were now in an oasis of relative calm. Dmitry straightened his back and relaxed his muscles.

  Akilina took the oilskin away from over her head and crept out from under the bench.

  "Damn this devil of a need," she moaned, lifting her flask in the air, "which made me force a father to leave his newborn alone. Da-damn thi-this," she was openly weeping now. "You know why my Fedot is a hopeless drunkard? When I couldn’t afford to get milk or food for him—because I had spent all my money on liquor—I would put my flask to his mouth to make him stop crying and fall asleep."

  Dmitry sat with his head slumped over his chest. He turned to look at the tiny point of light burning in his window but said nothing in answer. It was time to move on. The landing on the opposite shore lay downstream from the rock.

  With the boat facing upriver, Dmitry rowed toward the eddy-line and out into the main current. As he intended, the river caught him and whirled him around so that the bow began to point downstream, his boat tilting as it swiveled.

  But, at the same time, the river also did something he did not intend it to do. It slammed a tree-trunk it was carrying just under the surface into the boat’s stern. The impact came on the port-side of the boat while it was still leaning in on the starboard side.

  As the torpedo hit the boat, several things, condensed into one second of disaster, happened simultaneously. The impact jarred the oars out of Dmitry’s hands. It happened at the critical moment when he needed a series of powerful strokes to clear out of the backward pull of the eddy. The eddy-line caught the stern and flipped the boat over, throwing Akilina and Dmitry into the churning water.

  One end of the tree-trunk got into the counter-flow of the eddy and swung around with a jerk. Dmitry came out from under the boat and broke the surface at the same time.

  The trunk’s forward end hammered into his skull, knocking him out instantaneously. The current took Dmitry’s body into its cold embrace and bore him down, out of human sight, out of human knowledge.

  Akilina thrashed her arms and legs madly in the swirling current under the surface and, after an interminable minute of choking, spluttering, and screaming, found herself in the lee of the rock. She was clinging to the very trunk that had capsized them.

  On the shore, the lone flame of light in Dmitry’s window gasped for the last drops of its fuel, fluttered, and died out, leaving a wisp of acrid smoke behind. The infant cried on desolately, but her mother lay uncaring, motionless beside her.

  A stream flowed on the sloping floor of the room, too. Scarlet, dense, and slow-moving, it started at the foot of the bed and disappeared out of view under the door, carrying away the life of the wife in its course as the larger river outside had swept away that of the husband.

  "This one will not leave us," Irina had said. The baby had indeed not left them.

  Akilina was rescued the next morning by the inhabitants of a fishing village a mile upriver. She threw her flask into the Volga as soon as they brought her ashore. She begged them to take her across to the boatman’s house. When they reached there, she saw Irina’s corpse. There was no sign anywhere of the newborn.

  From that moment, the old woman developed an obsession with the family she had destroyed. She began to live in their house and became intimate with their world as it had been before she "wiped it clean" (that’s the phrase she used in telling her story).

  In time, she taught herself to row a boat and began ferrying people across, asking them to hear the tale of her sin, in all its terrible detail, in lieu of paying money.

  She had long since stopped buying any liquor for Fedot. One morning she crossed the river to her own house and found him lying motionless in a puddle of his own vomit. She came out, got in her boat, and rowed down the body of Volga.

  Chapter 7: A Million Little Nights

  The nightwatchman lay dead before my eyes and I had to go look for my father. I rose to my feet wearily, like an old man, leaning on my club for support. With the verticality of my posture came a surge of raw, compulsive energy. It didn't end my exhaustion but mixed with it in streaks of power, driving me like a dead engine hurtling down a steep slope.

  I bent down with the speed of a hawk swooping on its prey and picked up the watchman’s dented flashlight. I turned away from the body of the watchman and, before either Ma or I knew what was happening, bolted out of the room and banged into a wall in the dark courtyard. I fell with a white explosion of pain in my face, but leaped to my feet in the same motion and ran hobbling out of the house.

  The man outside had crawled from our doorstep to the other side of the lane, where he lay hugging a cold boulder. His knees were bent as though in supplication for life. But he appeared no more alive than the rock beneath him.

  I was convinced that I should feel a guilt-tinged horror at seeing the second man who had died by my hand that night. While my heart struggled to accept the verdict I was forcing upon it, my head lifted with the pride of a soldier who has fought to defend the borders of his motherland against murderous intruders.

  I had protected my mother against these murderers, and I now felt no fear for her safety as I left her alone in that triangle of dead men. But an unnamable dread for my father weighed my stomach so palpably it was like a fist hitting me from inside.

  I heard the door open behind me and began running faster, knowing Ma would call out and stop me. She called my name but it was easy to block her voice out with a vision of Father's face.

  I reached the end of the lane leading out of the valley and ran up a grass-covered slope toward two clump of trees.

  They stood like gateposts to the forest beyond, stopping the entry of the weak starlight into that realm of tall, ruthless trees.

  The feel of cold metal against my skin reminded me of what I held in my hand–the watchman’s flashlight, a promise of light. I stopped, fumbled to locate the switch, and slid it on, but no shaft of light appeared to relieve my blindness.

  There was a footpath somewhere in the jungle. I knew that if I managed to locate it, I could creep along to the other side, even if I had to do it on my hands and knees.

  My head pounded with pain from the collision I had had with the wall earlier. I was careful not to run into any trees, but it was impossible not to get battered by their branches and trunks as I reeled around like a sightless drunkard.

  It had been a mistake to get into the jungle, and now I could no more tell the way I had come from the way I had to go.

  I placed my club and flashlight at the base of a tree and climbed to its top to get a bearing on the direction of the town. I could see its lights from that height and it seemed that I just had to walk straight in the direction of my nose to reach it.

  But when I climbed down, all directions melded once again into one circular blank. I closed my eyes—a superficial thing to do—and leaned against the tree, trying to control a sob that was beginning to swell in my chest.

  And then a lone ray of light came shining out of the black void, giving shape to the drooping le
aves sleeping above and around me. Their forms began to attain color as more light seeped into the jungle. I crept behind a tree and peered out.

  A lantern, hanging midair, was moving toward me. Held up before the face of the person who carried it, the lantern threw a white veil of light beyond which I couldn’t see.

  Fear had solidified into a jagged lump inside me by now. As I saw the unknown person come straight toward me, I fought an overwhelming urge to run away, as much to save myself from him as to save him from me. The lathi, solid and tall, felt alive in my hands.

  “Just as I did earlier, I’ll stand between you and harm again," it kind of whispered to me without really whispering anything.

  The light kept coming nearer, holding me paralyzed as though I were a hare caught in the beams of a motorcar rushing toward me. Now it shone almost directly in my eyes, blinding me with its intensity just as its antithesis—the darkness—had blinded me. I took a step back in the shadows, certain that I had already been seen. The man stopped barely two feet from me and lowered his lantern to hang by the side of his leg.

  I saw the glint of the knife clasped at his waist, the gleam of the rifle slung over his shoulder, and the sheen of the black cloth that masked his face.

  He stood facing me, peering into the vast column of gloom that enveloped me. With a heart that ached with both terror and the pain of what I was being driven to do again, I slowly raised my lathi in the air, knowing that I stood no chance against the man even if I managed to strike him first.

  Just as my club reached the apex of its arc, the man suddenly turned his back to me. He raised his lantern and looked behind the tree next to the one that hid me. It became apparent to me that he was looking for someone or something, and that he had not seen or sensed me after all.

  "Here it is," he said to himself and vanished out of the narrow range of my sight. I wanted to put as much distance between him and myself as I could, and yet I couldn’t let him carry away that small sun, couldn’t let him leave me in that stifling blackness again.

  Besides, I wanted to see what he had just found. So I came out from behind the tree and followed him. In the soft glow that trailed behind the masked man, I saw the track that I’d been searching for so frantically all this time, while it lay imprinted on the earth—like a giant snake uncoiled in the underbrush—just a few feet from me.