The People's Act of Love

by James Meek

  Samarin laughed. ‘You won’t get down there. I almost killed myself climbing up. Well, you have me. All this time I’ve been gathering berries and the first man I meet when I come out of the forest is someone who cares more about the horses who went to war than the men who went with them. It’s like the Englishwoman who went to hell and saw millions of the damned being tormented by demons while they loaded burning hot coals onto donkey carts with their bare hands, and she said: “Oh, those poor donkeys!”’

  ‘Horses don’t go to war,’ said Balashov. ‘Men take them.’

  ‘There’s another dead horse up there,’ said Samarin, nodding towards the mouth of the tunnel.

  Balashov turned, drew in breath, and ran towards where the dead chestnut lay, about fifty metres away. Samarin watched him go and when he saw him bend over the animal and place his hand on its neck he squatted down by Balashov’s bag. A small, heavy, bound roll of canvas had spilled out of it. There was a loaf, a jar of pickled peppers with a Chinese label, and a pamphlet called Nine Secret Ways To End Sorrow. Looking over his shoulder to check on Balashov, Samarin opened the canvas roll. A set of surgical instruments was there, a whole crooked jaw of points and blades and scissors in cosy gums of cloth. Samarin rummaged comfortably inside the bag and found a litre bottle of raw spirit, which he sniffed at and took a swig from. He took out a large cloth, once white, now stiff with dried blood. He pushed it back in the bag together with the pamphlet and took out the last item, a dog-eared cardboard wallet the size of an envelope, fixed shut with a piece of elastic. He opened the wallet and pulled a photograph from a greaseproof paper pocket inside. It was the portrait of a young woman, not a stiff Sunday-best provincial studio shot but something intimate, real and close; she was resting her head on her hand and perhaps looking too intently into the camera lens – it was too dark to be sure, or make out details. The back of the picture was blank. He put wallet and photo inside his outer coat, set the bag upright, put the bottle, the roll and the cloth back in, and began cramming the bread and peppers into his mouth. He ate quickly, with his head bowed and his eyes lowered.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Samarin, chewing, when Balashov returned. ‘The food fell out of your bag. I was hungry. Here.’ He handed Balashov the remains of the loaf with one hand while draining the brine out of the pickle jar into his mouth with the other.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Balashov. He waved the crust away. ‘Your health. It’s only an hour’s walk to Yazyk.’

  ‘Can I get an express to Petersburg from there?’

  ‘You’ve been gathering berries a long time.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I have.’

  ‘I told you. There are no trains,’ said Balashov. He was looking inside the bag. His hands fluttered against the inner sides like a trapped bird, getting madder. ‘Did you see a cardboard wallet? It had a photograph inside.’

  ‘A wallet?’ said Samarin. ‘No, I don’t believe so. Who was the picture of?’

  ‘Anna Petrov-but you wouldn’t know her, of course.’

  ‘Anna Petrovna! Your wife?’

  ‘No, I have no wife.’ Balashov was on his hands and knees, searching the track bedding. It was almost completely dark by now. ‘An acquaintance, that’s all. She asked me to take it to Verkhny Luk in relation to some documents but … nobody is giving out documents now.’

  ‘What a pity you’ve lost it! And what a pity I can’t see it. Anna Petrovna. That’s the kind of name that allows you to imagine any kind of woman, doesn’t it, Gleb Alexeyevich? Blonde pigtails, short red hair, a young student, an old babushka, maybe with a limp, maybe without. On a name like that you can draw your own picture. It’s not like, I don’t know, Yevdokiya Filemonovna, who could only be a brunette, with warts and a big bosom. Anna Petrovna. A highly moral person, probably. Or is she a bit of a slut, I wonder?’

  ‘No!’ said Balashov. ‘She’s the widow of a cavalry officer, she has a young son, and she is of the highest possible moral character.’

  ‘Excellent. And how admirable that you make it your business to be her errand boy.’

  ‘I’m a storekeeper in Yazyk. And a barber, sometimes. I was going to Verkhny Luk on business. It’s two days’ walk back that way. I have a stall. I cut all their hair, I shave those who want it’ – Balashov was speaking faster and faster, opening and closing the bag.

  ‘Gleb Alexeyevich!’ said Samarin, putting his hand on Balashov’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. You don’t have anything to explain. You’re a peaceful, law-abiding citizen, going about your business. Look at me, now. Am I not the wild one? Should I not be the one explaining myself?’

  Balashov laughed nervously. ‘It’s dark,’ he said.

  ‘Not as dark as it’ll be in the tunnel,’ said Samarin.

  ‘Oh,’ said Balashov. ‘Are you going to Yazyk too?’

  ‘It’s the nearest town?’

  ‘By far.’

  ‘Then I have to warn them about the man who’s following me.’

  The two men walked along between the tracks, just visible in the starless night. As they passed the dead horse at the tunnel mouth, Balashov crossed himself and murmured a prayer.

  ‘Usually when there are two of us walking through the tunnel at night, we hold hands,’ said Balashov.

  ‘Well, we are in Asia,’ said Samarin. Balashov took Samarin’s hand and led him forward into the tunnel. Their feet began to sound mighty in the gravel and the blackness fizzed infinite around them. Samarin coughed and the cough took off, alive, along the invisible brickwork. After a few hundred metres Samarin stopped. Balashov tried to walk on but Samarin tightened his grip on his hand and, rather than struggling, Balashov waited.

  ‘Are you afraid?’ asked Samarin’s voice.

  ‘No.’ Balashov’s voice wavered.

  ‘Why not? I am.’

  ‘God is here.’

  ‘No,’ said Samarin. ‘There isn’t one of them. This darkness is what there is to be afraid of. To go to sleep here, to wake up in darkness and silence.’ He let go of Balashov’s hand. ‘Alone. And with no way of determining who you are. You can listen to the sound of your voice. But is it really you?’ He seemed to be speaking from far away, as if the being behind the words was attending to many things at once.

  ‘I am not alone!’ shouted Balashov. His voice rolled back and forward down the tunnel, sizing it to the heightened perception of their ears. It was no longer infinite. Samarin grabbed Balashov and embraced him. Hesitantly, Balashov put his arms around Samarin and gave a weak hug in return.

  ‘I’m sorry, my friend,’ said Samarin. ‘Of course you’re not alone. I’m here. Here’s my hand. I’ve been away for too long.’

  They walked on. ‘Once I was lost in the forest for a week,’ said Balashov. ‘It was this time of year. At night I was terrified of the wild beasts but I didn’t dare light a fire in case outlaws saw it. I lay in a blanket in the dark after walking all day, trying not to fall asleep till I thought my eyes were about to bleed from the pain of it. Sometimes I heard wolves. The silence was worse. You would long to hear frogs, or an owl, even though they sound like souls begging to be allowed to move on, and instead an hour would pass in silence and then there was a rustling nearby and you would think of the teeth of the beast snatching at your leg and jerking you out of the stillness and you screaming and pleading but knowing the animal couldn’t understand you and had no good or evil in it to reason with. Even in the midst of the fear and the pain of staying awake I began to see that the horror in the beast when it came would be all within me. I would feel cruelty and the pain of a death alone in the wilderness but it wouldn’t be of the wolf’s making, the wolf is only part of God’s workings, and God is good; all the horror of it I was carrying with me, as fear, and the wolf would take that from me and there would be nothing between me and God any longer.’

  ‘What if it wasn’t a wild beast? What if it was another man?’ said Samarin quietly.

  ‘That couldn’t have been so terrible. Up to the very moment of death
you’d hope they would save you from the horror in themselves, that they’d change their minds. You’d believe they were mistaken. But the beasts didn’t come that time, nobody came in the night. In the end I fell asleep, and instead of nightmares, the dreams I had were beautiful, of paradise and the memory of an eternity of joy. When I woke up, when I realised I’d woken up, I was miserable, as if the one I loved the most had died. I walked through the day and the memory of the dream would fade until by night I was terrified again. One evening I saw the lights of a village and I knew I was safe. But a new terror came up in me, stronger than the old one. I was afraid that all the nightmares I hadn’t dreamed in my time in the wilderness would come to me at once in the first night of sanctuary.’

  Samarin stopped and came close to Balashov. His breath touched Balashov’s face. ‘Did they?’ he whispered. ‘Did that happen?’

  ‘No!’ said Balashov, trying to pull his face back from Samarin’s hot breath. ‘They never came.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Samarin. ‘Of course not. Good. On.’

  The two men walked out of the tunnel into the smell of the larches on either side of a cutting. A clouded night had come and there was nothing to be seen but a sheen where the rails were and the faint black serration of the trees against the sky. A flock of geese flew overhead, crying like a shutterhinge in the wind. Samarin’s broken boots made a slithering, flapping sound on the track bedding.

  ‘What year is it?’ said Samarin.

  ‘1919.’

  ‘There’s still a war, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s a different kind of war. One where you can’t understand who is on which side. In the old war, the one against the Germans and the Austrians, it was ours against theirs. Now it’s more ours against ours. There are Whites and there are Reds. The Whites are for the Tsar – he’s dead now, the Reds killed him – and the Reds are for everybody being equal.’

  ‘What are you for, Gleb Alexeyevich?’

  Balashov was silent for a long time. Eventually he said, in a stretched voice: ‘Everybody is equal before God.’

  ‘But how do you live that?’

  ‘What kind of a convict are you?’

  Samarin, who was in front, stopped and turned round. The moon had risen behind the clouds and a bare ration of light daubed the men’s faces in infant shadows. Samarin’s face had lost its animation and settled into an empty stillness.

  ‘I thought in Siberia people referred to us as “unfortunates,”’ he said.

  Balashov took a pace back. ‘So we do, but … you don’t talk like a convict.’

  ‘That’s good after five years among them.’ Samarin’s features began to unfreeze, and once his face animated, it was as if the dead emptiness that had come across it could not have truly happened. He snapped off a piece of fern and began picking off the fronds. He sang a few lines of a song too faintly for Balashov to make out the words, except for the phrase among the worlds.

  ‘I did break the law, and I have escaped from a labour camp,’ Samarin said. ‘But I’m not a criminal.’

  ‘A political.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re an intellectual. A socialist.’

  Samarin laughed and looked into Balashov’s eyes, knowing and familiar. ‘Something of that breed,’ he said. ‘I ran from the White Garden. Have you heard of it? It’s a thousand miles to the north of here.’

  ‘Was there gold there?’ said Balashov vaguely. ‘I didn’t know there was a labour camp at the White Garden.’

  ‘There was labour, but there was no gold,’ said Samarin. ‘I suppose you’d like to know why I was a prisoner there.’

  ‘I don’t need to know,’ said Balashov. ‘It seems to me that curiosity about strangers is a kind of sin, in a way.’

  ‘Heh! That’s a very congenial way of thinking. Are you sure you’ve never done time yourself?’

  ‘No. I was never a prisoner. Except in the way all our souls are prisoners of our bodies. Kyrill Ivanovich.’

  ‘Oh yes, the soul body thing. Yes. Well. If you believe in that, I suppose.’

  ‘In Yazyk we do. We believe in salvation. Most of us have been saved.’

  ‘Salvation,’ laughed Samarin. He began walking on and Balashov followed a few paces behind. Neither man spoke for a time. Occasionally Samarin stumbled or coughed. Balashov moved quietly, stepping from sleeper to sleeper as if he knew each one even in the dark. He broke the silence.

  ‘Of course, Kyrill Ivanovich, if you want to tell me why you were a prisoner, it would be a sin to prevent you,’ he said.

  ‘No, you were right,’ said Samarin curtly.

  ‘Only I remember you spoke earlier about a warning. About a man who was following you.’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps it would be better if I turned back. Did you hear the story about the monk who arrived in a small town in Poland one time, rang the bell in the marketplace, gathered all the citizens and told them that he had come to warn them of a terrible plague which would soon afflict them? Somebody asked him who was carrying the plague. The monk said: “I am.”’

  ‘I see,’ said Balashov.

  ‘I was an engineering student in a town near Penza. There was a girl, another student. Katya. Well, the name doesn’t matter. We were friends. She got mixed up with the wrong sort of people. So did I. Katya went further than me. This was back when the Tsar was still in charge. She ended up carrying a bomb. I liked her, and didn’t want her to be arrested, so I stole the bomb from her. Then I was arrested. They sentenced me to ten years’ hard in the White Garden.’

  ‘So far north,’ said Balashov. ‘It must have been difficult there.’

  After a while, Samarin said: ‘You can’t imagine how far, how cold, how forgotten. One night I went out with the intention of not going back. The darkness seemed twice as dark as this. The wind was so strong you felt like a piece of straw in it. I thought about what they’d say about me and understood it’d be nothing. I was part of no human movement and if all five hundred of us, the convicts, walked out of the barracks and lay down in the snow the snow would cover us and we wouldn’t have touched history. Do you understand? We would have left no mark. We were the history of the moon. We were the history of air and water. There were holes waiting for us in the ice, we’d be the colour of ice and fit the holes. I thought if I ran to the wire and hit it hard enough I wouldn’t feel anything, I’d sleep just the same, the wind’d shake me like an anchor in a storm and the cloth of the coat’d get caught in the barbs, and when they found the body and took it down they wouldn’t be able to pick all the threads off the wire, and the wire’d fall and rust but the threads’d be there, my outline, a sign that some man ran against the wire, some time, and it’d be some tiny atom of the future better world, the memory of a man running through the darkness to his death, not lying down to let the snow cover him.’

  ‘God was surely watching over you to bring you here,’ said Balashov.

  ‘God didn’t bring me here,’ said Samarin. ‘A man brought me here. The man who is following me now. The Mohican. Have you heard his name?’

  ‘No. I mean, I know the novel, of course.’

  ‘This Mohican is no older than you or me, and he has the respect of all the great thieves, from Odessa to Sakhalin. They’re afraid of him. The Mohican climbs over bodies to get where he wants to go just as lightly as you’re stepping on those sleepers there. Even in prison, he was the freest man I ever met. The ties that form at once between two people, whether they’re brothers or complete strangers like us, don’t exist for him. He doesn’t deal in honour, or duty, or obligation, or care.’

  ‘And yet he took you with him when he escaped.’

  ‘Yes. He took me for food. We ran in January, when there is nothing to eat in the taiga, let alone the tundra, and the deer herders are too far south. He took me with him intending to slaughter, butcher and eat me, like a pig.’

  ‘God have mercy on us.’

  ‘What could be better than food that walks alongside you, carries
your goods, and keeps you company until the day you eat it?’

  ‘Christ in Heaven, Kyrill Ivanovich, did he try?’

  ‘He tried. I ran. I’m a day ahead of him, I reckon.’

  ‘But if he made it this far, why would he need to … there’s not much food in Yazyk, but …’

  Samarin laughed and punched Balashov on the shoulder. ‘Gleb Alexeyevich, you should be in the music hall! You’re funny! Is that a train?’

  The tracks were singing. A grey stroke of light flickered across the sky to the east, from the direction the men were heading. Balashov and Samarin stepped off the tracks, which ran along an embankment. The tracks sang louder and hissed and trembled. The train had a searchlight mounted on a pintle on a flat car. It came round the curve in the track, heading west, with two white lamps shining from the locomotive, trailing red sparks, and the searchlight sweeping the trees, blinding the owls and driving the panic-stricken martens miles away from the line on either side. As it came past Samarin began to run. Balashov shouted at him to stop. There was a flash of light and a report. Samarin jumped, grabbed at a chain hanging from one of the wagons, lifted his feet off the ground, swung for a fraction of a second, then fell and slid down the embankment, rolling into a coil of limbs in bracken at the foot. Balashov came over and pulled him to his feet.

  ‘Your hand is cut,’ said Balashov.

  ‘Let me put some of that spirit on,’ said Samarin. Balashov hesitated. ‘I had a swig earlier.’

  ‘I know,’ said Balashov. ‘I smelled it on your breath.’ He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, soaked it in spirit and cleaned the cut. He asked Samarin if he had heard the gunshot. ‘I think the bullet broke a branch over there,’ he said, nodding at the trees. ‘You were lucky. As I said, you can’t understand who’s on which side now. The old war didn’t end cleanly. There were remnants everywhere in Russia, leftovers, like the Czechs. Russia took them prisoner in the old war, when they didn’t have a country of their own. Now they do, and they’re trying to get back to it, but they’ve got caught up in this new war. They’re White, officially. But half of them are Red. There are thousands of them all over Siberia. They’ve taken over the whole of the Trans-Siberian railway, can you imagine? None of it makes any sense.’