by Anne Fine
‘Yuri, you know as well as I do that the very next morning I would have made the mistake of looking too long at some important bridge. Or said “Good morning” to someone a neighbour had just been kicked into denouncing.’
Another fit of coughing choked him before he could finish up weakly, ‘What does it matter?’
But still, it ate at me. Such a sweet man, and so close to his grave. At least I’d brought disaster on myself with my own tongue. Through autumn winds so strong that you could lean on them, through all the blinding whorls of winter storms, I burned with frustration. These were my best years that were trickling away. The seasons when I should have lived, and loved, and felt my strongest, were one long suffering grind.
And those around me must have seen my restlessness and desperation. For one day, in the column for the count, someone called Vasim touched his arm to mine and whispered, ‘See who is watching you.’
I glanced the way Vasim twisted his rag-covered hand. Sure enough, in the next column, that towering man we were all in the habit of calling the Bear had turned his head into the bitter wind to look my way.
The call rang out. ‘Heads down! Your hands behind you! March!’
And we were off again. But that night was the same. As we stood stamping on the filthy snow, impatiently waiting our turn to get back through the gates and into the shelter of the huts, the Bear’s eyes were on me.
No one around me knew any more about him than I could see with my eyes. ‘The Bear? I’ll tell you this much. He has bigger thumbs than brains!’
‘Born with steel mittens, that one.’
‘The Sublime Strategist certainly missed a trick not offering a man like that a job in his prison cellars. He could tear the wings off an eagle.’
Still he looked my way. Gradually I came to notice he wasn’t the only one taking an interest. Time and again through the long second count, a man with a wild frizzy beard also kept turning to look me up and down.
‘He’s called Leon,’ Dov whispered, adding admiringly, ‘A smart one, that. He certainly knows how many beans in a bag make five.’
I heard my grandmother’s voice, ‘Curly hair, curly thoughts!’ and took to wondering for the millionth time if any of my family were still alive, and if so, how they managed. The man called Leon failed to look my way again – not that day, or the next – and so I gave him little thought until a few mornings later, when he was ordered from his place at the front of his column to clear a drift of snow that had banked up against the stockade, hemming us in.
When the great gates were finally hauled open, he failed to move away. Making great play of ramming the shaft of his shovel deeper down into the blade, he managed to linger long enough to bark out a word like a cough as I went past.
‘La-trine!’
I heard it clearly. Latrine.
I knew the message was for me. I had no doubt. And I was sure he meant that very night. All day I put the meeting out of my mind. Who was to say this wouldn’t be the morning some guard lost patience and shot him? Or perhaps he’d be standing in view when someone realized they were a few men short for the next convoy to the mines. ‘Here! You! You! And you!’
Three more lives over. And no one for me to meet over those heaps of shit once more too frozen to be moved till spring.
But he was there. When our hut was herded out, he was the only one of his group still to be squatting, feigning a running sickness.
I took a place beside him on the planks.
At once he spoke. ‘I hear your mind is on escape.’
‘Not mine,’ I told him promptly. ‘You must be mistaken.’
He’d have dismissed me for a fool if I’d said anything else. Brushing my caution aside, he told me, ‘You stand no chance alone. So come with us.’
‘Us?’
‘Me and the Bear.’
We’d had no more than a moment and he was still pretending to be busy with his business. But already a guard on the watchtower was turning his rifle our way. Quickly Leon rose from his squat and, fumbling with his clumsy home-made buttons, set off for his own hut.
I watched him go – a strong-looking man with a firm stride. That night, between my thin shivering dreams, the thought came back over and over.
Who better to travel with than him and the Bear?
And, by the morning, who else?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FROM THAT DAY on, I started to keep back scraps from each day’s ration: a lump of bread, a thread of gristle as strung out as my own nerves. I smuggled them out of the stockade hidden in the cloths round my face. That way, if there was a search, I could at least get their benefit. I’d plod along in utter misery, resisting the temptation to see each guard’s threatening glance as the excuse to swallow the precious mouthfuls to stave off my burning hunger. Once we reached the clearing, I’d wait for a quiet moment to ram the morsels, one by one, day by day, into the rag bag of other frozen pieces I’d hidden deep in the snow under a bush.
Now that our paths had crossed, I seemed to see the man who’d approached me time and again – now standing in line for a headcount, now with his arms protectively round his bowl in the food hall. But, from a host of casual questions to those around me, I learned no more about Leon than that no one knew any harm of him, and some admired his wits. Clearly he had the skill of fending off attention – always a good thing in the camp. And, like me, he must have had good luck, or he’d already have been down the mines.
Twice, in the weeks we waited, I risked trying to cross his path in the compound. The moment he saw me, he’d move aside, or, if that was difficult, murmur no more than, ‘Be patient!’
But as the black winter days crawled towards spring, I worried more and more. What did I know of whatever plan they were hatching? Not a thing. How was it possible to steel myself for an escape when I had no idea whether we’d all be breaking out together from inside the stockade, or if I’d be going on the run from my workplace, and joining the two of them later on the run from their own.
One morning I saw Leon and the Bear working together to repair one of the struts on a watchtower. The snow was falling thickly and, with their backs turned, I hoped to take them by surprise and demand some answers – perhaps even threaten to bail out unless they trusted me with at least the bare bones of the plan.
As I came close, the Bear looked up. I heard him murmuring, ‘Here comes our little beam of hope.’
His sniggering tone annoyed me. I couldn’t help but show my irritation. ‘You tell me nothing! What are you planning? And when?’
Without a word, the Bear walked off as if to fetch another length of wood from the nearby pile. ‘Soon, soon,’ Leon soothed me. ‘You know as well as I do, the less we tell you, the safer you are. But everything’s falling in place.’ He grinned. ‘And it will work. Believe me, we’ll get clear away.’
‘But how will we travel?’ I persisted. ‘And what about provisions? I can’t get far on the few scraps I’ve managed to keep back. So tell me how—’
Already he was striding out of hearing. I thought of going after him, but came to my senses. Leon was right. The less I knew, the fewer ways I could let slip a secret and the less could be kicked out of me afterwards if I did. These two were careful men, and I should be grateful that, hearing how desperate I was, they had agreed to take me as a companion. I must watch my step in case they thought better of their decision, and left without me.
One night I found a scrap of paper tucked into the bundle on my bunk. ‘Tomorrow.’
Tomorrow?
Instantly terror tore into me, disguised as reason. Forgetting the fact that, as the spring melt advanced, the guard on us tightened, I let the cowardly excuses for inaction breed in my brain. Why now, before the thaw had set in fully? At least if we waited till spring was further advanced we could perhaps help ourselves by lashing logs into a raft and, with the river flowing freely again, be far from the camp in hours.
But then, one small mistake and we’d be in the water, paral
ysed within moments from cold. Or, rounding a bend, we might find ourselves shot at from the watchtowers of other camps we hadn’t known about that were along the way.
Just as I tried to fortify myself against one real fear by inventing others, Gregory coughed beneath me – weakly, almost apologetically.
By the time I noticed the silence, he was gone.
What shameful cunning desperation teaches us. Knowing how firmly I’d be pushed aside by tougher inmates, I clambered down and, shielding Gregory’s body with my own, kept talking as if he could hear me – even interrupted myself with coughs as harsh as I could manage – while I tugged off his precious quilted jacket, stiff with dirt.
I didn’t dare announce the death till I had safely wriggled into it.
‘Gregory’s gone.’
There was the usual rush to strip his body and bundle of all things useful. Dressing him in our cast-off rags, we carried him over to the chilliest bunk, knowing that if we said nothing to the guard and milled about enough to cause confusion, we would at least get one extra ration to share between us before the next count.
But, coming back from the food hut, I couldn’t help glancing, over and again, at that dark heap. Was this what death made of us? Suddenly all hope that my escape might follow the pattern of my idle daydreams drained away. I saw that all that lay ahead was certain death. I knew at once I must seek out my co-conspirators in the dawn headcount and shake my head – make it quite clear to them that I’d withdrawn from their venture.
Better to suffer anything, year after year, than end up like Gregory – a stick of cold flesh wrapped in filthy rags.
I was determined. But even before the hammer had struck the fence post the next morning to summon us for the first count, Sly Joe stepped into our hut.
He looked around carefully, then picked me out. ‘You, boy! A burial detail.’
I took it the guards had somehow picked up the fact that one of our men had died. Knowing Sly Joe was not a man to cross, I hastily pulled on the last of my face-wraps and moved towards the bunk on which Gregory’s body lay.
Sly Joe stepped in front of me. ‘Stop dallying! Obey the order! Get out there! Now!’
Baffled, I stumbled to the door. Winter, it seemed, had come back in force overnight to take one last fierce bow. Outside, the cold hit like a wall.
Sly Joe pushed me towards two shadows waiting beside the hut. My fellow conspirators! The Bear eyed me warily. Leon’s face was blank. I wondered by what strange sort of cunning he’d managed to fix things so that a guard – even one as self-serving and dishonest as Sly Joe – would round us up together. None of the prisoners had any money. There were no women in our camp who might have been persuaded to barter favours. Clever as Leon might be, what could he possibly have found to offer to make Sly Joe willing to rise out of turn before the dawn, and escort the three of us over the compound together?
Falling in step, we followed each barked order. Against the guards’ hut on the furthest side, two bodies lay slumped – both, from the look of them, the victims of a savage beating. Leon and I took hold of the first and staggered across the compound, out of step. The Bear threw the other across his shoulder and walked as easily as if the dead man weighed little more than a shawl.
Snow fell so fast, the bodies were blanketed even before we reached the stockade gates. After a shout from Sly Joe, a shovel landed at my feet.
I dropped my end of the body. The eyes flew open.
‘Get those gates open! Hurry and dig!’
I went at it with a will, desperate to be done with the job and away from the empty stare of those dead eyes. Soon I had cleared enough for one of the gates to be opened a crack, to let our small work party out.
There, on the other side, the outside guard stood stamping his feet, waiting for the end of his shift. I didn’t recognize his face, and knew he must be fresh to the camp. After a week or so, the only concern of most of the guards on overnight duty was to stay in the shelter of the watchtower.
Sly Joe called out to him, ‘Two bodies for the stack.’
The new guard looked our way. Recognizing our escort, he shouted, ‘Hey, Joe! A word with you, if you please!’
But with a snarl to the three of us – ‘Keep walking!’ – Sly Joe headed back to the gates.
The new guard shrugged. Calling us to order, he followed as we slipped and staggered down the track with our unwieldy burdens. Blinded by snow, we almost missed the narrow path down to where all the frozen corpses lay stacked, waiting for the thaw. By now, Leon and I no longer had the strength to carry our body and took to hauling it over the snow as if it were a sled.
Halfway down the steepest slope, it started sliding from its own sheer weight. I took the chance to ease my aching back and, as I drew myself up, I saw a shadow in the woods behind.
Someone was following.
Before I could murmur to Leon, the guard took a threatening step towards us. ‘Stop your slacking!’
With him so close, his gun already in his hand, I left off all thoughts of whispering. In any case, the man behind us might be part of Leon’s plan. What did I know? He’d kept the day of the breakout from me until the last minute. Wasn’t it possible that there were four of us, not just three, in this escape?
With one last scramble down the snowy track, we reached the river’s crust. To the side lay the great winter pile of bodies, square and still, peacefully shrouded in white.
Single-handed, the Bear heaved up the load he’d been carrying. As the body landed, the gathered snow flew off in giant puffs, to leave a streak of dark rags sprawled over humps of white.
Leon and I rolled our own burden up against the edge of the stack.
‘On the top!’ shouted the guard.
A tiny moment of spite. No one would come down here, except to dump more corpses. What did it matter how the pile was stacked?
But guards are guards. So, to protect ourselves from meeting the same brutal end as the man we’d been carrying, Leon and I began to swing his body to and fro, trying to muster the energy to hurl it upwards.
A sharp sound rang out from between the trees.
Curious, the guard moved round to the other side. Leon and I took the chance to ram the body back where we’d put it at the start. While Leon heaped fresh snow over to disguise it, I clambered up to brush snow off one of the bodies on the top.
‘There!’ Leon said, satisfied. ‘Now let the bastard tell one corpse from another.’
The guard was still peering cautiously between the trees. I slid back down, using the frozen elbows and feet of dead men as footholds. The guard came back, still glancing over his shoulder, and signalled us to start the trek back to the camp.
I moved obediently onto the path, but Leon and the Bear stood firm, staring between the trees.
To my astonishment, out stepped Sly Joe, whom we’d last seen heading so determinedly back to the stockade gates. His gun was drawn. Before I even had time to wonder which of our lives he’d snuff out first merely for cheating a fellow guard on where we put the body in a heap, the shot rang out.
The sharp sound bounced off the river’s crust and echoed around the forest.
So. Not me. I might be next, but curiosity can last as long as the heart beats. I heard the echo of my grandmother’s voice – ‘Must you be wise as a tree full of owls?’ – as I opened my eyes to see which of the others lay sprawled in the snow.
It was the guard – spreadeagled backwards with a look of astonishment on his face and a neat red stain in the middle of his forehead.
The guard?
In utter bafflement, I turned. But Sly Joe was already vanishing between the trees.
And then at last it came to me. What better plan than one that did away with a man to whom he owed money? Three prisoners disappear, leaving a guard shot dead – no doubt with a bullet from his very own gun. No more thought needed!
I turned to Leon with a new respect. Even if he had known about a new gambling debt, how had he managed to brok
er such a deal between himself and Sly Joe? How did—?
‘Yuri!’ Already Leon and the Bear were stripping the guard of his uniform. There was a bit of cursing, a few grunts, and yet another corpse lay on the top of the pile.
The Bear pulled out the body Leon and I had wedged along the side. As if another man’s soft shell were no more to him than an old tarpaulin, he tossed it upwards.
‘Yuri! Get up there again. Lay this man over the guard to hide his body.’
Within the hour these bodies would be frozen in the stack like all the others. It would be that long – longer, if we were lucky – before the alarm was even raised.
A brilliant plan! I could have fallen at Leon’s feet. And kissed the Bear’s hands! His brute strength. His cool indifference. Masterly!
We turned our backs on the path back to the stockade. From the lie of the river, I knew that we were setting off towards the west.
It was still early morning. Snow was still falling as we strode away.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WHAT CAN I tell about my fellow travellers? Less than you’d think since, with our frostbitten faces bound with cloths from crown to chin, we kept our mouths shut as we struggled over the snowy wastes day and night like three shadows. Even when it was my turn to wear the guard’s thick greatcoat, my lungs and ears were filled with the force of the cold. But we were on our way. And such is the difference between senseless suffering, and suffering to a purpose, that what would have been unbearable was almost gladly borne.
I learned the Bear’s name was Oskar. I learned he’d been a railwayman. I learned he had a wife and son whom he’d not heard from in years, since his arrest. And, on the day I slid into the ravine, I learned how fast he could move. Before I’d even fallen past the first overhang, he’d shot out a hand and pulled me out with no effort.
‘Up you get, Yuri. Don’t want you dead yet.’
About Leon I learned nothing. While we were on the move he rarely spoke, except to order me to pay attention to the track. And that made sense. With drifts so high, a man could tumble and suffocate before his friends could scramble halfway down to him. Before this last unexpected blizzard, the thaw had been well on its way. It was impossible to be certain what lay beneath the mounds of snow. Safer by far to stick to the roadway. And since at any moment you might raise your ice-encrusted eyes to see a truck approaching, silence was wise.
