The razzia began by order of the powers that be — vagrants were picked up all over town. The basement cells were packed. Fights broke out. One detainee was stabbed in the neck with a pen that the guards had overlooked. Almost every transient in town was swept off the streets, but the ones they were looking for weren’t among them. They seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth. The sightings that were reported were too diverse to all be true.
Maybe, Beg and Koller reasoned during a meeting, they had moved on and were trying to cross the border.
‘Then we’ll be hearing from them again,’ Koller said.
The border was locked down tight. Every car, every truck, and every train was searched twice — first on this side, then on the other. The technology on the other side belonged to the domain of science fiction. They had heartbeat detectors, carbon-dioxide sensors that betrayed people’s presence by their own breath, infra-red cameras, and night-vision equipment — all their technological ingenuity was applied to catching illegal migrants. Visas were awarded only very rarely; anyone headed for the other side took refuge in illegality. Countless of them became stranded at the border. Michailopol was home to many of those who had been picked up and sent back. They often remained drifting, and never returned home.
He had a predilection for problems that solved themselves, but Beg still felt regret at the idea that he might never know who the emaciated transients were. Budnik’s report had made him curious.
‘Like they were standing beside their mother’s grave, that’s the way they were crying,’ the patrolman had said.
Beg asked what they were crying about.
‘About nothing. I racked my brains trying to figure it out, but I couldn’t see any reason.’
‘No pain, no visible injuries?’
‘Pain, yeah. But not like someone who’s just got a beating. It was different.’
‘Could you describe what they looked like?’ Beg rested his chin on his clasped hands and closed his eyes, so he wouldn’t have to see how the patrolman swayed back and forth in his chair.
‘Like the Jews in the camps, sir. That’s what they looked like. I don’t know how else to put it.’
Beg opened his eyes. ‘And what did they look like, in your view?’
He saw the man — in fact, still only a big boy — searching for words to match the pictures in his head.
‘You know, terrible,’ he said then.
‘Where are you from, officer?’
‘Barsan, sir.’
‘That’s Oblast Grünewald, isn’t it, unless I’m mistaken?’
The constable laughed shyly. ‘Yes, um hum, Grünewald, that’s right. Twenty kilometres from Brstice. You know it?’
Beg withdrew the hand he’d held out and told him he was dismissed. The young man saluted and went. In fact, Beg had been meaning to upbraid him for his negligence on the street that night, but his heart was softened by the dialect of his native region.
He would have Koller do it. Frightened patrolmen were no good to anyone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The undead
Grey wood smoke was coming from the shed close to the old train station. A metal pipe had been stuck through the window, so the smoke rose straight up to the rooftop before it blew away. Lev Krasnik, a scrap-metal dealer, leaned his motor scooter and its trailer against a wall and walked over to the storage depot. He pressed his nose against the windowpane. The glass was dirty; something had been put in front of it on the inside — he couldn’t see a thing. Krasnik went to the door and gave it a little shove. He pushed harder, and something behind the door gave a bit. The crack was wide enough to look through now. It was a dim, deep space, and it stank inside.
‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Anybody there?’
He leaned against the door with his full weight, and then he was inside. The dank smell of rotting, faeces, and smoke took his breath away. Beside the window was a makeshift woodstove; the flickering glow from its belly illuminated the coffins someone had stored here. In front of it lay two long bundles. He strained his eyes to make them out — people, those were people lying there. In two lidless coffins on the floor, he saw human forms as well. He wanted to run, but was frozen to the spot in the semi-darkness. Then he saw the eyes looking at him from beside the stove: they belonged to a man sitting on the floor. He was wrapped in blankets, looking at Krasnik motionlessly. ‘Holy Mother of God,’ the scrap dealer whispered, and made the sign of the cross.
The man leaned forward and swept together some splinters from the floor. He tossed them in the fire, and it flared up. Krasnik saw splintered wood all over the floor; they had chopped coffins to pieces for firewood.
The mouth of the man by the fire formed words that Krasnik couldn’t make out. It was an old voice, like cracked dinnerware. Krasnik swallowed a lump of saliva and said: ‘Sorry, I didn’t get that.’
‘Close the door,’ the man said. ‘It’s cold.’
‘Yes, of course, yes. Sorry.’
He took advantage of the moment to hurry out of the shed. His hands shaking, he tried to pull the door shut from the outside, but the lock had been forced and the door wouldn’t close completely. Krasnik stepped inside and took a wedge of wood from the floor.
‘Sorry,’ he said, bent over and peering into the darkness, ‘but it won’t stay closed.’
Then he was outside again, where he jammed the splinter between door and threshold. Now it remained shut.
On his scooter, decked with frozen autumnal mud, he drove to police headquarters as fast as he could. On the way there, he tried to figure out why he had said ‘sorry’ so often. Apparently you couldn’t help but be apologetic when you stood face to face with creatures of the twilight.
Five patrol cars pulled up to the old train station — not all at the same time, but still, five in total, giving their occupants a rare feeling of urgency. Sergeant Koller was in charge. He had gone to work that morning with a nagging pain in his lower back; he had been planning to consult a physical therapist about it later in the day. But before he could leave the building, the unpleasant news came in that someone had apparently found the drifters.
The police station buzzed like a hive, stories large and small zooming around constantly. Koller knew he was about to play a leading role in one of the big stories of the day — one told with the relish of sensation but also with a superstitious sort of concern.
Still sitting in the car, he watched the smoke rising from the chimney pipe. Action, he thought, but the word only made him feel abysmally tired. For a moment he considered firing a teargas canister into the shed, but there was nothing to justify such overkill.
Minutes later, six men stormed into the shed. The beams from their heavy police flashlights swept around the half-darkened space. Koller was the last to enter. He flipped the switch beside the door. A fluorescent tube popped on overhead.
One policeman stood waving his gun and screaming in mad fear at a woman in a coffin. ‘Get out of there, goddamn it!’
There were five of them in all. The men were handcuffed; the woman and a boy were dragged out of their coffins and pinned to the floor. They had lined their beds with straw and rags.
‘Man, does it stink in here,’ another policeman said. Koller nodded. The room gave off a deadly stench.
The boy’s wrists were as thick as sticks. A wolf boy — he struggled so hard they could barely restrain him. He spat and cursed.
‘Tape him,’ Koller said.
The boy’s mouth disappeared behind a strip of duct tape.
The others submitted calmly to their arrest. None of them spoke a word. The only sounds were the guttural noises coming from the boy’s taped mouth. Koller shook his head. What was the world coming to when children behaved like that?
That afternoon, the hive buzzed even louder than usual. Everyone
wanted to see them; the cell block was a popular attraction. It wasn’t the state of neglect that shocked them — after all, human flotsam washed up here all the time. No, it was the face of starvation.
After they’d all had their turn, Beg went down to the basement. His footsteps echoed in the stairwell. Pieces of the concrete steps had broken off, so you had to watch your footing. Beside the cells was the shooting range. You could hear the shots through the walls. The red warning-light above the door, which was supposed to be lit when the range was in use, was still broken.
He rang, and the door to the cell complex opened with a click.
‘Okay, show me what we’ve got,’ he said to the guard.
The man removed his earplugs. ‘What?’
‘The transients.’
The guard walked out in front of him. He turned to Beg. ‘I have two of them in here. Well, see for yourself.’
The door swung open.
‘Holy Christ, what a stench,’ Beg mumbled.
‘Koller said I shouldn’t hose them down. Not till you’d seen them, that’s what he said.’
Patrolman Budnik’s comparison with Jews in the camps had been accurate. The men were alive, and that was all you could say. When they came in, one of them lifted his head from the cot and looked at him, his eyelids red and inflamed. The other one remained motionless. Death’s heads. Cheekbones jutting sharply from beneath their beards.
‘And what about him?’ Beg asked.
‘Him? He just lies there.’
‘Have they had anything to eat?’
‘They’re lying here just the way they were brought in. Nothing different.’
‘They haven’t eaten anything?’
The guard glanced at his watch. ‘They only came in a couple of hours ago.’
Beg looked them over. Multiple pairs of trousers tied with cords around their skinny loins. Around their emaciated necks he saw the collars of numerous T-shirts and sweaters — all frayed ends, rips, worn patches. But they had survived the cold.
They gave off a bitter stench.
An automatic pistol rattled on the shooting range. Beg turned in annoyance. ‘Tell them to cut out that noise.’
His gaze wandered over the rags, the filthy hands and faces, the sight of their shoes. The shoes, lashed together with bits of wire and rope, had almost rotted away on their feet. The shoes told him that they had undergone deprivations that were different from those of the city’s homeless — deprivations in the wilderness. Had the cold forced them into town? Were they a family? What did they have in common?
‘Who are you people?’ he said under his breath.
The automatic fire stopped. The men were sick, febrile; he could hear their laboured breathing.
When the guard came back, Beg left the cell. He looked through the peephole in the door of the next cell. ‘You’re kidding me,’ he said.
The guard looked up.
‘I thought he’d gone home already,’ Beg said.
‘Him? No, the gentleman’s still keeping us company.’
Beg looked again at the man in the cell. He was lying on his cot, his hands folded under his head.
‘That’s too damn bad,’ Beg said.
‘Were we supposed to let him go? I didn’t see any release papers.’
‘He can go,’ Beg said. ‘Then he’ll be home for Christmas.’
‘Barefooted. They took his shoes.’
‘Who?’
‘The drifters. They stuck him in the neck with a pen, and stole his shoes.’
To his own amazement, Beg remembered those shoes — fancy white sneakers. A wild surge of annoyance almost made him change his mind about sending the man home. He took a deep breath. ‘He can go,’ he said. ‘Make sure he has enough money for a bus ticket home.’
In the next cell, a boy was sitting on a cot. His cellmate, a man, was asleep.
‘Well, young man?’ Beg said.
The filthy boy’s eyes spat fire. There was more life in him than in the others; no doubt about that. His hair stood straight up on his head, like an emaciated lion cub’s.
‘My name’s Pontus. What’s yours?’
The boy sniffed loudly and stared at his toes.
‘I bet you’re kind of hungry,’ Beg said. ‘I’ll have them bring you something to eat. What do you feel like having?’
The boy’s eyes lit up. Then, right away, he hugged his knees in shame and bowed his head, hiding his wide-open, traitorous eyes.
His cellmate had razor-sharp features beneath his dingy beard. His teeth were chattering.
In the corridor, Beg said: ‘Bring them blankets and food. And where the hell is that doctor?’
‘Was the doctor supposed to come? I never heard anything about that.’
‘Where are your brains, man?’
Behind the last door was a woman. ‘Help me,’ she said.
She had her forearms wrapped around her belly. Beg was relieved to hear at least one of them speak a few words. ‘How can we be of assistance?’ he asked with exaggerated politeness.
She was sitting hunched over, tears cutting trails down her smudged cheeks. ‘Help me.’
Beg looked over his shoulder at the guard. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
The guard shrugged. ‘She says she’s pregnant. But I can’t really believe that. I mean, you tell me …’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Gushing and bursting,
everything comes to the fore
‘Now that’s good news, Pontus,’ Semjon Blok said on the phone. As he spoke he seemed to be doing something else — something that required effort, with the receiver clenched between shoulder and chin so that the rest of his body could go on with it. ‘That’s what I pay you for, for good news.’
Beg couldn’t tell him who they were or where they came from; they had barely spoken a word yet.
‘So they’re not talking? Is that what you’re saying, Pontus? Foreigners, man, they don’t understand you. That’s the problem with people like that. In their own language they might even be kind of useful, then you can at least tell them to do something, but otherwise … Picking bell peppers, that’s about as far as it goes.’
In the background, he heard a man laugh. When you’ve got power, Beg thought, you always make people laugh. Koller and Oksana often laughed at things he didn’t mean to be funny.
‘You’re not much of a talker either, are you, Pontus? Maybe we should go fly-fishing sometime, you and me, get to know each other better. What do you think?’
‘I’m not much of a fisherman.’
‘It’s not just about the fishing — it’s all the other things that go with it,’ the mayor said. ‘I know the best spots. Trout, man, you’ve never seen anything like it. You ought to see me, hooking one after the other. Those guys who go in for sport fishing, we make them look like amateurs, I’m telling you. Or are you more of a hunter? You go in for the heavier artillery? Then we’ll go shoot a bear. You ever shoot a bear, Pontus?’
Beg wondered what the mayor was up to the whole time. Was he chopping wood with his free hand?
‘I’ve never shot a bear,’ he said.
‘Aw, man, I’ve shot so many bears, I’ve lost count. I just might be the best bear-hunter you ever met. I can think like a bear, you know. You have to be patient. Waiting. Waiting. And then waiting a little more. You’ve only got one chance to squeeze off a shot. A bear’s a lot more dangerous when it’s wounded. Where do you think you have to hit him, in the heart or between the eyes?’
‘In the heart, I guess.’
‘Yeah, okay, but where do you have to hit him — you know that, too?’
‘I don’t know anything about bears.’
‘Okay, but where do you think you have to hit him?’
&nb
sp; Beg said nothing. He looked out the window, at the narrow alleyway between two buildings. One single step, that’s how long a passer-by lasted.
‘So, Pontus? Tell me the first thing that pops into your mind. Just say it.’
‘A man’s life between heaven and earth is like a ray of light falling through an opening in a wall: one moment, and then it is gone.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Gushing and bursting, everything comes to the fore; slipping and flowing, it all recedes. One change and he is alive; another change and he is dead.’
‘Have you been drinking, Pontus? I’m asking you where you have to hit a bear.’
Beg glanced at the receiver. ‘I’d hit him straight from the front. In the chest.’
‘Wrong!’ Blok crowed. ‘That’s what everyone says who’s never shot a bear before! From the front you’ve only got a 15-to-30 per cent chance of taking him out right away. Then you’re in trouble, buddy. Aim for the shoulder, above the front leg. Left or right, makes no difference. The chest cavity — heart, lungs, all at one go. Boom, bagged another one!’
Semjon Blok was his own standing ovation, Beg thought after they had hung up. He produced his own applause in deafening quantities. One ear to bellow his triumph into — that was all he needed to be happy. It was an extremely unpleasant thought, to go fishing or hunting with this man who ‘knew the best spots’. And what did he mean by ‘all the other things that go with it’? He sounded like a goddamn faggot.
It was snowing slightly: light, monotone grey. Oksana came in with his lunch — noodles and meat, and a glass of kvass. ‘No pork,’ she said. She had accepted this minor dietary law as one of his eccentricities. To show that he had heard, Beg looked up from the notepad on which he was drafting a letter.
To the mayor, the honourable Mr. Blok,
In response to our recent telephone conversation about bears and fly-fishing, I would like to ask you to leave my first name unmentioned no longer call me by my first name. It is an annoying habit good custom among friends and family members to call each other by their first names, but as far as I know we are neither of those but for friends we do not know each other well enough.
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