White Blood

by James Fleming

  I was in the middle of the glade, exposed on all sides. But I stood my ground. This was the path he'd have to take. Hands on hips I waited for my enemy amidst the falling snow.

  Forty-eight

  It was not one man but two. They were fifty yards away, not thirty. White storm capes, the pelts of their ponies dark beneath the mottling snow, their sly, cautious movements—it was hard to pick them out. It was only by a plummet of snow knocked from a branch that they gave themselves away. Once it had fallen and no bird had flown out of the tree, I was able to piece together the mosaic.

  Two of them, small men judging by the height of their ponies. Rough fur hats or shapkas, one of them black and one white, dark scarves, the capes spread over their ponies' quarters. Rifles slung over their shoulders—clumsy Nagants, the wood going to within a few inches of the end of the barrel, just enough room to screw a bayonet on. Black stubble, days of it, running with the grain of their jaws, heavy round their mouths. Troglodytes, driven out of the forest by the weather to gather food.

  Or for some different purpose.

  My Luger was in our bedroom.

  It was Shubrin who came first out of the trees. The second man, Glebov, was riding in his tracks. It was Glebov who'd spat. He did it again as I watched. Raised his head, looked directly at me, and spat.

  I didn't budge. I held my hands behind my back. They should come to me.

  They were bundled against the cold. Hunched, dirty, unslept, defeated. Riding anxiously, not at ease with their ponies. I thought, they're new to these animals—or infantrymen. There were only two ways for the ponies—to turn right around or to continue the way they were going, towards me: the rhododendrons were like a high green wall on either side. These men shouldn't be having to push at them and snag their mouths. Horses aren't fools. No creature with a man sitting on his spine can afford to be a fool.

  So who were they? Raiders from the forest would have come in a gang.

  But there were just two of them, two small dark men.

  Glebov pulled out and drew abreast of Shubrin as they reached me. Leaning forward, one shoulder huddled against the snow, he rested his forearms on the pommel of his saddle and studied me. Insolently, blue eyes narrowed beneath their slanting lids. He was wearing black skin gloves. His was the white shapka, on its left side the scarlet cockade of his regiment.

  The ponies kept blinking the snowflakes out of their eyes. After a bit they dropped their heads, sadly, an action that included some expectation of a blow. They were undipped. Their winter wool was curly, like astrakhan. Beneath their bellies it hung in hairballs clotted with ice and mud.

  Glebov went on staring at me. The other, Shubrin, was acting as the leader. A younger man, possibly soft: pudgy cheeks, teeth too white, his bearing too agreeable.

  It was Shubrin who told me their names and their regiment— a cavalry one with a middling reputation. Their colonel had been Prince Balachovsky. That was how he said it, in the decidedly past tense.

  "What happened?" I asked.

  "They got him," Glebov said. "What else do you think could have happened?"

  He needn't have said it like that. "How?"

  "Some of the men were having a meeting in camp. Balachovsky marched over and told them to get on with their work—which was to do with watering the horses. The ringleader, a man called Stolz, said they wouldn't listen to him until he'd reduced himself to the ranks—become their equal. He said, Never: what would you do without officers? They caught him and sliced the epaulettes off his uniform. 'Well, how do you answer now?' said Stolz. Balachovsky said they could cut his throat before he'd do what they wanted. And they did. They looted the chaplain's quarters and drained the Prince's blood into a silver chalice. Then they gave it back to the chaplain saying, 'There you are, the blood of the lord.'"

  I said, "That's the sort of story one reads about savages in anthropology books. Were you there? How did Balachovsky's throat look?" I was remembering Hpung.

  Glebov replied, "I was out on patrol, trying to find a way to outflank the Germans. The regiment had buried him when I got in. I never saw his corpse ... It was chaos. The Germans were pressing us hard."

  I said to Shoubrin: "Did you see any of this? Is it true about the Prince?"

  But he belonged to a different company from Glebov and Stolz. He'd heard about such an incident—and then—it was true, the Germans had attacked and he made a run for it just as the regiment broke. His voice was tired.

  Impatiently Glebov said, "Let's get to the point. It was half dark when the Germans attacked. Stolz was yelling at his group of conspirators to desert with him. One of our men had got hold of a machine gun. He was threading a new belt of ammunition. I said to him, 'Do you believe in our Little Father and the holiness of Russia?' He said, 'Yes, who else is there?' I said, 'Then turn your gun on Stolz.' He said, 'Why?' It was too much to explain in a short time so I kicked him out and did it myself. Shot him and Stolz. They came after me, my own men, but it was easy to escape because the Germans were in among us and everything was in confusion. That's the point, our escape. That's how we come to be here, damned hungry."

  Shoubrin took over. "The bolsheviks are like the worst slanderers with their lies. What they call the truth is the complete opposite to what any reasonable man knows it to be. But they put it so cunningly that people who are illiterate are immediately persuaded—as if they've had a vision. The 'sweet lepers' was what our adjutant called them . . . Anyway, I got out at the same time as Prokhor Fyodorovich,"—he jerked his thumb at Glebov—"we met in the forest. I almost shot him, thinking he was coming after me. We joined forces . . . Headquarters said, 'You two are invaluable because you really know what people like Stolz are capable of.'"

  "They've sent us out to recruit," Glebov said. "We can tell the peasants the truth of how it actually is, and the danger we're in from these revolutionaries."

  "Why Popovka?" I asked.

  "We picked it on a map. 'You're to recruit in the sector east of Smolensk,' they told us." Glebov threw back the corner of his cape to get at a makhorka cigarette. "They're going to pay us a bounty. Ten roubles for every man we bring in."

  His blue eyes looked me over. "You're worth ten roubles."

  "That's not the way to beg a meal," protested Shoubrin. To me he said with an engaging look, "I don't really know anything about this fellow. We just found ourselves in the same mess. Two heads are better than one—you know. Pay him no attention. That was a silly thing to say, about recruiting you. Besides the innkeeper told us that you travel on Imperial papers. You're an important explorer, he said."

  "And that your wife is your cousin, which according to geneticists—" Glebov drew heavily on his cigarette, which he had cupped within his palm to keep it from the snow. He appeared to be sucking his knuckles when he inhaled. He expelled the smoke lazily—like a monarch, another snub in my direction, "—is improper, not to say harmful to future generations. That's the way you get lunatics."

  I said to him evenly, "Do you want a meal or don't you, cunt?"

  "Rocking lunatics in the cradle, that's what you'll be doing," he said, rolling his eyes and looping his tongue into a grotesque imitation of a cretin. "But that's your lookout ... I could have shot you as you stood here. From the wood."

  I thanked him for letting me know.

  "Perhaps you don't hear about the war that's going on. Perhaps you don't much care for fighting."

  "Why would you have wanted to shoot me?"

  "Because your gloves are better than mine. Because Pm hungry. Because I want your woman. Because I want to sleep in a soft bed. Could be anything."

  "You call those good enough reasons for shooting me?"

  "Who said anything about good?"

  "What we call civilisation."

  "Listen. You asked why and I said why. I might have said, Because I don't like the look of you. It's a reason."

  "What else did the man say to you in the tavern?"

  "Only one word that was interesting—
food. We'd been riding through the forest all night. Stopped for a couple of hours in a woodman's shelter. As cold as being on a planet. Had to pick the ice out of my horse's nostrils or it'd have suffocated. Not even a morning turd on the go when we reached Popovka. I pulled the innkeeper from his bed and said I'd shoot him if he didn't have a meal ready in fifteen minutes. That was when he said it—food."

  "He was just an innkeeper, your usual coward," put in Shubrin.

  "I said to him, I can't eat words. He said, Of course not your worship but if you rode on down our street you'd end up at the Pink House where you'd find the bits of a wedding feast still on the table. So here I am, Doig, dirty, tired and hungry." He produced my name with an ironical flourish.

  Shubrin said, "We beg a day of rest, nothing longer. In the name of the Little Father, our Tsar Nicholas, for the future and greatness of Russia, we supplicate thee."

  It was the traditional entreaty.

  Glebov ignored him. He said to me, "You never answered about why you're not fighting."

  He looked me in the eye: in a straight line, as straight as it comes. He was still leaning on his pommel, a gloved hand swinging from the wrist. Staring into my skull, as I was into his. We were like criminals competing for the same patch; agreeing on nothing except, in this one long concentrated glare, upon our hatred of each other. At the same time probing for hints as to technique and indications of character defects. I thought, He must have hated me as instantaneously as I hated him.

  Why? I had a reason: to protect my woman. But what reason could he possibly have?

  Shubrin said, "Finished with each other?"

  Glebov said, "He hasn't answered me. Ten roubles would buy me a whore."

  I went up to his pony standing so dumbly and jerked at its bridle. "You know why. I carry Imperial papers. Also typhus. Now go to the kitchen and get them to heat the bathhouse.

  Hand over your clothes to the women to be powdered. One louse is enough," and I shot him between the eyes with my look. "Walk your horses."

  They dismounted, both of them. Glebov was about five four, five five: up to my chin without his shapka on.

  Glebov said, "You still haven't answered. I'm odd, I like answers."

  "I'll slice your lips off if you want."

  Shubrin made pacifying gestures with his hands. Glebov, nodding and sneering at me, kept his mouth shut. They started to lead their horses up the glade to the Pink House.

  It was snowing much harder now. The fires were going in the house. I couldn't see the smoke in the snow but I could smell it. The wind was rising. As we came into the stable yard, tongues of snow were already reaching out from the pillars. It was where it always drifted first. Styopka was at work on them with a heavy wooden shovel.

  Glebov brushed past him, not speaking, not even looking at him. He went straight to the wall by the mounting block. He threaded his reins through the first in a row of rings, tied a hitch and put his saddlebags over his shoulder. He said to Pashka, the older of the two stable boys, "Check the oats for rats' shite." Then he marched off stumpily towards the house, looking foolish in his storm cape. It had a long swallowtail shaped to lie easily on a horse's back. It trailed along the ground like a ballgown and left a ripple upon the fresh snow.

  "You'll have to carry your train when we waltz," I shouted after him.

  Shubrin said, "I don't understand why he behaved like that. He's really a very clever man."

  Pashka spat. He was untying Glebov's clumsily knotted reins with numb fingers. "Couldn't even tie a pig up."

  Forty-nine

  Nicholas was in his office when I got in, being buttered by Fyodor Fyodorovich and another peasant for his generosity last night. The latter had his beard bent into his mouth and was chewing on the end of it, his eyes fixed on Nicholas.

  "You always exaggerate," Nicholas said to Fyodor. I thought there was a bilious greenish tinge to his cheeks. Or perhaps it was the combination of the paraffin lamp on his desk and the dim morning light. "Just saying thank you is sufficient among friends."

  I said, "When people have had a good time they like to exaggerate. It puts a polish on what they enjoyed most."

  "I suppose so," Nicholas said.

  "If only we had the likes of Thunder again," Fyodor said, "you know how cows love to have a good-looking bull rubbing against their flanks—they become quite placid and would give such milk that your honour's calves would be worth a hundred roubles at six months. We could hire him out, as we did Thunder—"

  "You never told me about that," Nicholas said sharply.

  "Barin ..."

  "No, you never did. Do you think I'd forget it? What happened to the money?"

  "Here, in this very place, I myself counted the golden roubles onto your desk. Two piles of five, ten golden coins. How pleased we both were! Surely, your honour—"

  Nicholas waved them away and put his blond head in his hands. From the wall behind his shoulder a photograph of the Tsar regarded his discomfort with bearded sympathy.

  Passing me by the door, the Popovka peasants bowed and made deft, humorous enquiries about my health and that of Liza. Had we slept well? Had we quarrelled already? Was that why I was astir?

  I asked if they'd seen two men ride through Popovka early. They'd stopped at the tavern and then taken the track through the wood and over the ford.

  They looked at each other. "We heard them go past," said Fyodor. "That was all. It was too soon for me. I did more living last night than I should have."

  I sat down opposite Nicholas and said jokingly, "You shouldn't have hung onto Andrej's grub for so long. Not as fresh as it was a fortnight ago. You should see yourself."

  He had a way of rifling you with his strong blue eyes until you looked away. Not saying anything, the stare doing the job by itself: the artifice of an idle or weak-minded man. I let him get on with it. If you gave way on the small things, you could do whatever you liked with him on the big ones.

  He suddenly said, "I think I have to vomit."

  "Stick your finger down your throat."

  He returned looking brighter. "You may have been right about the food—I shouldn't have skimped like that—do you know, Charlie, what just occurred to me? Whenever you ask two peasants a question and they look at each other before replying, it's because they're cooking up the answer. In just one glance they agree on every lie that has to be spoken. Remarkable . . . Now, these two soldiers who want to stay ..."

  I explained about Shoubrin and Glebov: what I'd said to them. For twenty-four hours and no more.

  "Oh—oh, let's think about it. Good families, would you say . . . ?"

  I was saved from having to answer by Louis's knock. Pashka was outside with the carriage to take Helene to the station. Nicholas leapt to his feet. "Thank God someone remembered—■ if she had to stay any longer—Charlie, you'll give support if she goes for me, won't you? Say I've been vomiting? Won't you, old chap Charlie?"

  Pashka had harnessed the high-wheeled winter coach, which didn't have rubber tyres. It was spartan inside as well, having a hard bench and no armrests. Helene started to protest, making all sorts of squawking noises, like one of Misha's chickens. But the more she yammered the more courageous Nicholas became. We bundled her in and told Pashka to get on with it.

  Louis said there hadn't been a sign of Liza yet. I looked up at our window. The shutters were still closed. I tossed up a bit of gravel, then another. She came to the window, my darling, white-robed and expectant, waving her lovely hands at us and beaming.

  We went in, Nicholas saying, "I hope to God Pashka doesn't get blocked by the snow and have to bring Helene back." In his office he started up about her again. "She's bleeding me dry and teaching my sons how to do it as well. They only care about my money—my own blood, Charlie! She's made them into strangers! What is life doing to me?"

  He rose from his chair and threw his arms round my neck, sobbing. "How have I gone wrong? Whatever I do, other people do the same things much better. If I'm a failure
at forty-two, what shall I be at seventy?"

  I said he shouldn't brood so much, alone in his office. It was at the back of the house, by the laundry room and the door that led out to the stable—without creature comforts—a sunless solitary hole. I took his arm. We walked past the domestic quarters towards the drawing room.

  The hall stove had been fired but its warmth had yet to spread. In one corner was a table and a couple of deep chairs for people putting on their slippers or waiting for the weather to clear. We sat down. Louis passing, I asked him to bring us some chocolate.

  "So, what's to be done about these men?" I asked.

  "Go upstairs to Liza. Make the most of her before you start collecting troubles like mine. We'll speak of the soldiers later— this evening."

  "Now. They're already in the kitchen."

  "Oh, Charlie, how should I know what's to be done? It's all too much—too much, too long, too endless. At least if you're poor the decisions are fewer . . . What's your opinion?"

  "Kick them out."

  "To Popovka?"

  "Farther."

  "I don't know . . . Anyone on Imperial service deserves a night's rest and some decent food. Just because one was cheeky to you . . . You should have slapped him down, right away, that's your fault. And we don't know that they're not of good family, do we? . . . We'll give them a couple of nights and then send them away. There! We'll have fresh company at dinner. It'll stop us getting melancholy shut up by ourselves."