Watching from that distance, one would have seen the taller of the figures approach the youth called Vasily and push him to the ground and the shorter man bend slowly down to whisper to him. A Russian soldier walked over at their bidding and took the youth into custody and tied his hands behind his back. He jerked the boy called Vasily to his feet and marched him, tripping and slipping, across a small patch of hard-packed snow toward the wall where the captured guards were lined up, standing blindfolded, shivering with cold and fear.
From the distance, one would have seen the two leaders approach the guards, and the youth near the soldier would have been placed beside the condemned men. One would have seen the taller of the figures, Vladimir, take out a pistol from a holster.
Vladimir moved slowly, methodically, walking down the line of shivering guards, placing a gun to the head of each. One by one, each condemned man, in turn, cried out for his life only to be cut off in mid-sentence by the harsh report of the gun in the crisp night air as it rang out across the town of Warwick, echoing in the valley and circling through the tops of the trees and then reaching up into the mountains before growing fainter as it faded into the nighttime sky.
From a distance, one would have seen the bodies slump to the ground, one by one, until there was only one left standing, and the two figures approached the shivering boy who was left standing in the midst of the bodies. They accosted him together.
The youth stood in silence, and the taller of the figures placed a gun to his temple and the youth felt his knees buckle and the world turned upside down like a snow globe.
That is when the world seemed strange and disjointed, that sublime and terrifying moment when it cracked open just a little beneath the feet of the shivering youth and then suddenly snapped back into place, and the familiar crept back into the sum of the parts.
Vladimir slapped Vasily on the shoulder. “You poor, dumb, boy. Why are you afraid? We know you didn’t do it on purpose. You’re too stupid to be complicit.”
CHAPTER 12
“You should know that if you keep scattering the dirt willy-nilly like that, it’ll only take us longer when we have to put it back in.”
Vasily was standing waist deep in one of a series of seven holes. In each of the holes stood a pair of youths, and to the side of each hole was a growing heap of earth. This digging of holes was no easy task just before the onset of winter in the State of New York, but the ground was still workable, if only barely so, and if they’d been forced to dig these graves later into the winter, they most likely would have failed at the task.
Vasily’s hole was shallower than the others and his heap less high, although it still came up to the level of his eyes and was made taller, in relation to his small frame, as all the heaps were, by the fact that the fresh dug earth was piled upon the several feet of snow that blanketed the open field.
Vasily pushed the point of his shovel into the earth and stepped onto the foot rest with all his weight, giving a little hop and landing on the shovel until he felt the blade sink into the as-yet unfrozen soil. The handle in his hands felt solid as he leaned back and used his leverage to carefully lift the soil out of the hole and up and over his head. He emptied the dirt onto the heap, more gently this time, making sure it didn’t slide back into the hole on top of him.
The young man talking to him—his work partner in digging this hole—was named Kolya. He was older than Vasily and had a reputation for being a quirky intellectual. Vasily had never spent much time around him, but standing now in the hole with him he glanced at the intellectual’s pudgy round face and angular glasses and noticed his soft fleshy hands, red from the cold in the thinning moonlight, and he wondered silently to himself what Kolya’s interest was in being here at this moment. He had, like the rest of the youths who were now digging, volunteered for this duty.
Vladimir had asked for volunteers to follow him behind the prison in the immediate aftermath of the execution of the guards. There is a way that revolutionaries request volunteers, especially after a particularly brutal display of violence, which insures an adequate level of participation from those who otherwise might just be caught up in the riptide of events. Some volunteer out of a desire to curry favor with violent and powerful men, some do so out of fear or panic, and still others pitch-in out of curiosity, or merely from a lack of any other plan for the moment.
Kolya, standing with a large group of boys around the gymnasium and feeling voluntold to work, quickly stepped out of the crowd to follow the brutish Vladimir to the open field. Vasily, too, had gone along, not really as a volunteer, but mainly because he felt internally compelled to do so in order to remain, as much as possible, under the radar. Now he found himself with Kolya and the others digging holes in the ground in the crisp night air.
Had they been digging for treasure, there might have been a celebratory feel to it all, everyone joking and cutting up as they checked their maps to make sure that the spot where they were digging was likely to lead them to the gold, but there was no celebration in the air, and there were no maps either, and the frigid night was filled with diligent grunting without a hint of laughter. They were simply youths—most in their late teens, but a few in their early twenties—in the middle of a field laboring away with cold solemnity. The dead didn’t mind or protest, and so this somehow seemed the only appropriate response since, from the moment they had been handed shovels, they’d realized their purpose. They were there to dig graves for those who had departed from this night’s horrible events.
Kolya had spoken to him in English. Vasily was careful not to look at him or to give any indication that he understood. Best to just let them think I’m an idiot, he thought. He was still shaking a bit from the fear he’d experienced at the hands of Vladimir and Mikail, and that fear now jumped into his chest once more as he looked up with his next shovel full and saw the barrel of a gun at the end of Vladimir’s arm.
“He can’t understand English, you fool,” Vladimir barked at Kolya. “And get back to work. Morning will come before you know it and we have other work to do! Where did you learn to speak like that anyway? Where did you learn this phrase ‘willy-nilly’?” When Vladimir spoke the word it sounded like “will-he, nill-he.”
“I read… That's how I know that phrase. Maybe I saw it in Shakespeare,” Kolya said.
Vladimir looked at Kolya through narrowed eyes.
“What?!” Kolya feigned surprise. “You think no one in our little hamlet reads Shakespeare?” He smiled at the corners of his mouth, waiting for some flash of recognition from Vladimir, but if the brute saw anything clever in what Kolya had said, he didn’t show it.
Vladimir switched to Russian. “I don’t know and I don’t care. Perhaps you should spend some time reading Marx. And before that, perhaps you should spend some time digging this grave or maybe I’ll decide to have you dig your own.”
“How very bourgeois of you,” Kolya answered in Russian. “Or is it me being bourgeois? Standing here and talking to you while I am possibly digging my own grave… and you there, shaking your spear at me!”
Vasily glanced up at him, to see whether Kolya was being insolent or clever. The young intellectual seemed to be doing neither and both. More so, it seemed that he was merely in love with the sound of the words. He waited again for a response from Vladimir, but only got a threatening snap of the gun against the brute’s side in response. Then the gun and the brute walked away and made their way down the line of graves, stepping gingerly around the series of body bags laid out near the holes.
Kolya bent his nose down to look at Vasily over his glasses and winked. He gave a faint little whistle and then took his shovel in hand and slowly began to press himself into service. As he did, Vasily looked up at the black bag in front of him and noticed the hastily scribbled name on the surface of the bag, shimmering in white against the black of the bag in the light of the moon and the snow.
Volkhov.
He felt a grip of grief and looked over quickly at his mate
to see if the older youth had noticed, only to give a short dumb smile before he went back to his digging. He heard a grunt from the hole next to him and the plop of earth land at the top of that heap, followed by the shushing of the tiny aggregate as it separated and began to roll slowly down the small hill, willy-nilly.
****
There is a feeling of finality, mixed liberally with the morose recognition of the vibrancy and vitality of still being alive, when one is digging a grave for another human. Eyes peer into other eyes and declare firmly to one another that “we are still alive,” and answer back to one another without words the old question, “Why is there existence, rather than the lack of it?”
I dig and therefore I am.
Digging graves is an effective antidote to the most foolish of philosophies. Denying existence is for men who’ve never dug a grave for a friend.
They finished the digging part as the night settled into the a.m., and wearily climbed out of the graves and stood around waiting for whatever was to come next. They assumed the un-digging part would come next—the burying of the dead—but that part would have to wait.
What came next was the figure of Mikail, walking quickly across the snow, calling out to Vladimir who met him halfway along his path. The group could faintly hear what seemed to be an argument emanating from the two men as they approached. Vasily stood near the back of the group, farthest away from the two men, and watched as Mikail waved his hands at Vladimir’s head-shaking. Not from any words he could hear, but from the image of the two arguing, Vasily got the word picture of violent reason butting heads with reasonless violence.
As they drew closer, the argument ceased, and Vladimir commanded the youths to follow him. “We have to go to the church to address a disturbance,” he said, as if that statement fully briefed the group to his satisfaction.
Vasily began walking in the direction of St. Olaf’s, only to feel a hand grab his arm, his sleeve riding up on his shoulder, and when he turned, he found Mikail standing behind him.
“Stay with me a while,” said the stocky young man, pleasantly, and in Russian. “They’ll be back in a moment. I have no doubt that Vladimir will be persuasive.”
He led Vasily to one of the graves and indicated with a wave that they should have a seat on the pile of earth next to it. Vasily sat down, and Mikail sat beside him in an almost friendly way, as if they were old friends just relaxing on a break from their labors.
They watched the group of youths in the distance, trudging across the snow with Vladimir at the head, and Vasily reflexively inhaled the night air, waiting for whatever Mikail had planned for him. There has to be a plan. Mikail wasn’t here sitting with him next to an open grave just to chit-chat. Idle conversation was not the bulldog’s forte. Since they’d been boys, Vasily had come to expect that, while he could almost never predict what it was, Mikail always had a reason or a plan for whatever he chose to do. So when he finally spoke, Vasily was surprised.
“Did you know that I had a brother?” Mikail said, matter-of-factly, reaching down into the cold dirt with his bare hand and letting the soil sift through his fingers.
Vasily looked at him, his eyes indicating that this was new information, and puzzling at the sudden weariness in Mikail’s voice. He waited for him to go on, and in time, he did.
“Yes, comrade,” the bulldog said, nodding his head. “You and I, we have something in common… we’ve both lost loved ones. You, with your father when you were young… and me, with my brother when I was younger still.”
Vasily didn’t answer. The subject of his own father’s death to disease was common knowledge in Warwick, as was the fact that he’d been raised by a single mother until she, too, had died, but he didn’t even think about it much anymore, and he certainly didn’t speak of it.
Vasily never suspected that Mikail was anything but an only child—raised by a man with a love of drink and a woman without even the most basic of motherly instincts. He’d always thought this to be the root cause of Mikail’s aggression. Even as a boy, Mikail was known to lash out at everyone around him, probably because he’d never truly felt love at home, but maybe that was just more of the world’s philosophy that would disintegrate in the presence of an open grave. It just seemed to make sense to Vasily that, being treated like a bastard child by his parents, Mikail had inevitably become a bastard.
“Yes. It’s true. I had a brother. A twin. Not identical, but a twin nonetheless. My brother was born dead, after me, with the umbilical cord tight around his neck.” Mikail took a handful of dirt, and stared closely at it as he let it tip from the side of his hand. It shushed down the incline of the pile.
“I don’t think my parents ever forgave me.” He sighed. “They treated me as if I strangled him myself…” Mikail grabbed another fistful of dirt before continuing. “… And maybe I did. I don’t have the luxury of any memories of the time.”
Vasily looked over at Mikail and suddenly realized how small this bulldog was in stature, despite his obvious attempts to build himself up. He was heavier than Vasily, muscular and fit, but about the same height, and both were much smaller than almost every other youth in their circle. He had a tiny red scar at the base of his forehead, just above his left eye.
“My brother’s death was the reason my father began to drink,” Mikail declared with certainty. “Did you know that at one time my father was one of the most promising candidates here at the charm school?” Mikail lifted his eyebrows as if the thought of it was surprising. The dirt slid from his hands yet again. “Oh yes! Such potential lost to empty bottles. And my mother… well… I’m told she was lovely. Not loving, perhaps, but lovely. But that was back before the bottles began to fly.” Mikail scooped up two handfuls of the cold, cold dirt and rubbed them together in his hands.
“Then I came along, and then my brother did not, and somehow my parent’s whole world fell apart, and mine did as well. It was a shame, you know? To be born in amongst the pall and aroma of death, and to have life cut down in front of you before it’d even begun. Surely you know something of that.”
Mikail fidgeted with his hands, which were now empty of dirt, and contradictorily he now began picking at a string that had come loose on his shirt.
“It’s the reason I have to be so tough, you know. Being small, like you, like me, one has to fight all the time. Just to get people to pay attention, you have to throw a fit and raise hell.” Mikail punctuated this statement with a fist, clasped tight and brought up before his face.
“But not that damned Vladimir. All he has to do is walk into a room and everyone pays attention. I suppose it has its benefits, all this fussing. It makes you find other ways of bringing focus. Vladimir just won’t listen to reason. He just wants to shoot people. It’s all he knows, the use of force. But I don’t want to shoot people, Vasily. I would rather reason with them.”
Mikail kicked some dirt toward the graves, in the direction of the body bag with the name Volkhov. “Lev, there. Take him, for example. Do you think it was necessary that he died? Or this man Clay? Could they not have been reasoned with?”
Vasily looked at the bag in front of him, and then at the bag in the next grave over, and thought of the traveler he’d met in the cell with Volkhov. He remembered the light in the two men’s eyes as they had discussed plans for their escape; the clarity they’d had in that moment; a crystalline notion of who they were and what they were about. He’d not often been in the presence of men who seemed to their purpose so clearly. He remembered the way they’d taken him into their conversation and plans, and how they had treated him as an equal… or something close to an equal. And then he felt the grip of regret that they’d not been successful in their escape.
Mikail didn’t seem to notice that Vasily’s mind was elsewhere. “Todd… now he was another matter altogether. Do you remember how close he’d been getting with the outside guards? That was not a coincidence, Vasily Romanovich. He was dealing black market goods, having them bring drugs in from outside, givin
g our food and perhaps more to our captors. He was evil, Vasily. Believe me. I didn’t shoot him without cause. In reality, it was an act of mercy. You weren’t there when I discussed Todd’s crimes with Vladimir. He wanted… no…” Mikail paused. “There is no way he would have been so merciful. If I’d left the decision to him, Todd’s whole family would be dead right now. Believe me, executing Todd was a merciful act. Sometimes…” Mikail paused for another moment, choosing his words.
“Sometimes you have to manage events and men in a way that serves everyone in the best way possible.” His voice trailed off for a moment, and Vasily wondered why he was telling him this. He was just about to ask that question, almost feeling as if the young man was reaching out to him for understanding, when Mikail interrupted his thoughts.
“Where is the backpack, Vasily?”
Vasily swallowed, and tried not to show on his face that he was going pale. He wondered whether, in the limited light, the nervousness in his features could be detected. He remembered something Volkhov once told him in one of their long afternoons together back when the old man was teaching him English. That was when Lev had slowly taken him under his wing, showing him kindness that few others in the town ever seemed to. He’d said, “Never answer an open question with anything but a question when there is danger at hand.” Solid advice that seemed to apply to the current situation. He turned his head slightly towards Mikail, attempting a blank, dull expression on his face.
“What backpack?”
Wick - The Omnibus Edition Page 22
