by James Meek
‘I feel sorry for you all, now that we know he is among us,’ said Samarin.
‘Adjourn! You ridiculous man,’ said Matula to Mutz, getting up. ‘Everyone can see we should have adjourned this before it started.’
Mutz hurried out of the room after Matula and Dezort. As he passed Anna Petrovna, she heard him ordering Nekovar to take Samarin back to the cells.
‘Wait!’ she shouted after them, but the striding cacophony of important boots was already out of hearing. Hanak and Balashov were following the officers. Nekovar was prodding Samarin out of the room with his rifle. Anna grabbed his elbow and asked him what he was doing. Nekovar shook her off and told her she had to leave the building.
‘But he’s not guilty of anything,’ said Anna. ‘This isn’t your country.’
‘Russia isn’t our country, correct, Anna Petrovna,’ said Nekovar politely, grabbing his prisoner by the collar and halting for a moment. ‘But you’ve got to remember we’ve only just made one of our own. It hasn’t been trimmed down yet.’
‘I won’t allow you to keep him another night in that cell,’ said Anna Petrovna. Nekovar ignored her and marched Samarin forward. Anna heard Samarin call over his shoulder, thanking her by name.
The Fields
The group of men, Mutz, Matula, Dezort, Hanak and Balashov, followed Racansky down the southern road that led to the grazing land of the castrates’ herd. The forest fell away and there were only stands of birches breaking the flatness. With the slaughter of the cattle by the occupiers the pastures had grown scraggy and neglected. Crow calls measured the emptiness under a thickening sky. A dank wind moved the yellow grass by the roadside. The men’s boots sounded unnaturally loud on the road, as if, despite the great space of clear wide land, the splash, scrabble and grind of their soles on the dirt was being reflected against invisible walls moving in around them.
Racansky set a troubled pace, spurting forward at a run for a few yards, then slowing down to a hesitant walk. He began to talk over his shoulder as he moved. Mutz was glad someone had broken the wordlessness of their progress.
‘He said one of the farmers told him about an outsider, a great savage man with his skin shrunken down over a big skull, that he’d seen running through the fields. Like a wolf after an elk, he said.’
‘Who said? Kliment?’ said Mutz.
‘Kliment, yes, of course,’ said Racansky. ‘He told me this morning. We left the shtab at the same time, I was coming off duty after guarding the prisoner overnight, Kliment was on his way to the station to see if the telegraph was working, and I told him about the killer the prisoner said was coming. The Mohican. Here. He’s here.’
A cart track led off the road into a ploughed field. Kliment’s body lay face up on the crest of a deep rut, one arm trailed in water to the elbow. A blood stain spread across his chest, black at the edges and still sticky and crimson in the centre.
‘I turned him over,’ said Racansky, hanging back. ‘I have some of his blood on my coat.’ His voice has become a whisper. Balashov fell to his knees, clasped his hands, closed his eyes and began to pray out loud.
‘My God, what’s that on his forehead?’ said Dezort.
Mutz, Matula and Hanak leaned over Kliment’s face, which looked more lovable in its dreamless, breathless serenity than it ever had in life or sleep. Four quick shallow cuts had been made in his forehead to make a letter M.
‘The Mohican!’ said Dezort.
‘Or Marx, or Madman, or Murder, or Mother,’ said Mutz.
‘Or Matula, eh Mutz?’ said Matula. ‘Poor Klim. Get his arm out of the water, Hanak. Still warm, is he? He wasn’t already dead when he died, was he? A hot breakfast, a fuck, a toot of snow, and a knife in the ribs. He had a full morning, I’d say. D’you remember when he stopped in the middle of no-man’sland to light a cigarette, with the men falling around him, bash, bash, bash? I swear if I catch this Mohican, I’ll flay him.’
‘For Thine is the Kingdom,’ intoned Balashov.
Mutz saw how Matula was looking round, distracted, already impatient with the uselessness of the dead. He was irritated by the shrinking of his tiny army, and offended to be reminded of his own mortality. Mutz had seen before how Matula cared little for the dead but hated to lose an officer. It shrank the empire of his mind; he cast around for new men to commission. It was how Mutz had become a lieutenant.
‘Racansky,’ said Mutz. ‘How did you know he was here?’
‘I told you. We walked away from the shtab together. When I told him about the Mohican, he told me about this stranger someone had seen down here, and he said he was going to look. I woke up an hour ago and I realised I shouldn’t have let him go by himself, and I came down the road to look. I saw him lying on his face with a wound in his back.’
Mutz nodded. He remembered Kliment shying pebbles at Bublik and Racansky a few weeks earlier after they had organised a political meeting, and calling them ‘the guard’s van of the revolution.’ One of the stones had hit Racansky just above the eye. ‘Here,’ said Mutz to Racansky. ‘Help me turn him over.’
Racansky shook his head and took a step backwards. Dezort was staring at the corpse with his arms hanging by his sides, chewing the corner of his mouth. Balashov had reached the beginning of the third recital of the Lord’s Prayer. ‘Thy kingdom come,’ he said.
‘Hey! You! Local man!’ said Matula. ‘That’s enough of that. We’ve got our own chaplain.’
‘He died of typhus last year, sir,’ said Mutz.
‘Hanak! Turn Kliment over,’ said Matula. ‘There you are. Big nasty stab wound. Autopsy over. Hanak, you’re a Lutheran, aren’t you?’
‘Used to drink with them all the time, sir.’
‘If you can get Kliment’s stars off him, you’re a lieutenant, and acting chaplain. Come on, you and Racansky carry him out of here. Dezort, go with them. See about a box. And a flag! We have flags. Local man, clear off. Me and Mr Mutz have some matters to discuss.’
‘Balashov,’ said Balashov. ‘Gleb Alexeyevich.’ He bowed to Matula. In that moment, Mutz saw and understood the previous Balashov, the horseman and swordsman who was proud before all men and an abject slave before God, and saw that this could have been more terrible in war than Matula’s humility to no-one. It was no more than a moment. Balashov went meekly away, Hanak and Racansky shouldered the not yet stiff bag of flesh that had contained Kliment, Hanak starting to work the lieutenant’s stars loose with one hand, and Mutz and Matula were left alone.
‘Look at this, Josef,’ said Matula. ‘All this fine land going to waste. Think what Czech farmers could do here.’ He only called Mutz by his first name when they were alone together and when he was about to bully him with special viciousness.
‘It wasn’t going to waste before the wars, sir,’ said Mutz. ‘They were sending butter to England.’
‘You think you’re a fair man, but fairness is just your way of getting what you want,’ said Matula. He stuck his hands in his pockets and kicked a clod of earth with the toe of his boot. Mutz knew that if the clod flew like a stone, serenity might prevail. If it shattered into dust, it would mean a change of state.
The clod crumbled into lumps of mud, staining the toe of Matula’s boots, which had been cleaned overnight by Pelageya Fedotovna. Matula looked down at his feet and tapped his toes gently together. ‘Why are you such a hopeless failure, Mutz?’ he said. ‘Eh? I told you to arrange transport of the horses. You were in charge last night when the shaman drank himself to death. You interrogated Samarin, he warned you about the Mohican, and instead of having our boys sweep the town, you had us in a courtroom all morning listening to convict Gothic. You’re supposed to be clever. I don’t think it’s clever to get a stablehand, an aboriginal and one of your brother officers killed in the space of less than twenty four hours. Damn you, Jew boy, no wonder the Austrian empire fell apart, taking your kind into its army. The only thing I can’t understand is whether your filthy tribe is mentally defective or whether this is part of your
conspiracy, like that bunch of Yids waving the red banner in Petrograd. Which is it? Eh?’ He marched over to Mutz, took his chin in his hand, and roughly moved it from side to side to study his profile. He pushed the head away. ‘You’re degenerate,’ he said, and spat on the ground. ‘It’s as if some other man promoted you. I can barely believe it, but I’m going to let you try to clean this up.’
Matula’s fingers had pressed hard into Mutz’s jaw. There were three Matula-worlds here, nested inside each other, the innermost the most secret, and so far Matula had spoken only of the outer. Now he had opened a door through which Mutz could descend to the second, more dangerous level, if he dared.
‘Clean it up, sir?’ He swallowed and passed in. ‘Do you mean clean it up as in bury everything and cover it with earth? Or do you mean clean it up as in find out who is responsible?’
‘What’s the matter?’ said Matula. His breathing was audible. ‘Decided you don’t mind if I kill you?’
Anna Petrovna’s coldness at the hearing, where she hadn’t looked at him, and had made eyes at the convict, made Mutz more careless. But he doubted Matula would be happy losing two officers in a single day. Matula could try to mash his face to pulp, it was true.
‘We still don’t know who Samarin is,’ Mutz said. ‘We don’t know who killed Kliment, or the shaman, or what happened to the horses.’
‘You greasy viper,’ said Matula. ‘I know your Israelite wet dreams, I see them before you do, you leading my Czech boys home out of the wilderness with me buried here.’
‘There’s nothing to keep us here, except you.’
‘I’ve got orders from Prague.’
‘No-one’s seen them. It’s pleasant to be king of Siberia, sir, I understand, even a small part of it. No-one’s surprised you don’t want to go back to being a sales representative for a light bulb manufacturer in southern Bohemia. You’re a much larger man here. It’s wonderful for you to be able to imagine you rule the forests, to imagine you’re the Czech Pizarro, making a new empire with a handful of soldiers, to be chaining up women, gold and land. But sir, here the Aztecs have artillery of their own, and machine guns, more than we do, and better missionaries than us. I can take out my pistol as quickly as you, sir.’
Matula had begun to move his hand towards his holster. He opened his mouth, bared his teeth, gave a shrill cry, part bellow, part shriek, and charged towards Mutz. Mutz began to run backwards, tripped and fell over into the mud. As he scrambled to get up and take out his pistol Matula stopped.
‘Like two cowboys. Some time it’ll be real,’ he said. He reached out his hand and helped Mutz up. ‘I was going to kill you, but one more time for giving me my life back on the ice. Listen, people die. We’ll find this Mohican. Only do one thing for me, will you? Go out there, to the bridge, and bury my horse, and the Czech fellow who snuffed it. Put some crosses up, get a Christian to say some words for them. I want it to be a place I can visit, put a monument up later. Just do that.’
‘Sir,’ said Mutz. He felt the damp seeping through the clothes to his skin. ‘Can I ask, sir, you will keep Samarin locked up until I get back? Of course he couldn’t have killed Kliment, but his testimony had inconsistencies.’
‘“Inconsistencies.” “Inconsistencies.” That’s a real Mutz word, isn’t it? Whatever you want. You’re a hard man after what he’s been through. Come out into the road with me.’ Mutz followed Matula out onto the deserted road. Matula stood facing him a few yards away. ‘Now,’ said Matula. ‘We both take out our pistols, very slowly.’ The two men took out their guns. Matula began walking backwards. ‘Just so there won’t be any inconsistencies,’ said Matula. ‘You see, Josef? I can walk backwards without any in-con-sis-ten-cies. Follow me when you can’t see me any more.’
Mutz watched Matula walk backwards for two hundred yards, stumbling twice, before turning about. Mutz put his gun away. The mud was caking on his clothes and he could brush most of it off. He went to sit on a fallen tree-trunk close to where Kliment’s body had lain. Kliment had left no mark there distinguishable from the effect of cartwheels, hooves, feet and rain. The clouds on the horizon had a gregarious look. It wasn’t too early for snow. This was what civil war must always look like, the untended fields, uncropped grass and weeds hiding old furrows, lumps in the distance where folk had made a bit of hay for their yard-cows. Neglect, rather than wounds; a country gone bald, wrinkled, lame and unwashed. Mutz had a flash of taste memory and ached for a glass of dark red wine. He took a sheaf of papers out of his shirt pocket and read through a draft report of the actions of Captain Matula’s company in the town of Staraya Krepost six months earlier, the inmost fear which neither man had dared mention, although that was what they had been talking about. The greatest number of crossings-out and insertions in the draft were in the same places as in previous drafts, where Mutz attempted to explain, or rather justify, or rather excuse, or, yes, account for, the killing of civilians, with reference to prior incidents in which Czech prisoners had been executed; where he attempted to characterise the political views of the townspeople – a broad range of Red and White sympathisers, sympathisers changed to activists – and where he described what he had been doing. Attempted to restrain, restrain crossed out and replaced with reason with, the whole phrase crossed out and fearing for my own safety, I made no significant attempt to intervene written in. Significant crossed out.
Three heavy bumps sounded to the west, sharp blows on the hollow world. Artillery was being fired about fifteen miles away. Nobody had heard the sound here before. Mutz crumpled the papers he held in his hand into a ball, dropped the ball on the ground, lit a match, and squatted down to see that the papers burned through to black flakes which he trod into the mud.
Mutz began walking back to Yazyk, stupefied by the variety of menace and idiotism he had met since yesterday. In one quiet attic of his mind a man was trying to think while all around him the neighbours were jumping out of windows, setting themselves on fire and garrotting each other. He didn’t trust Matula; trust, with the captain, was something which only applied retrospectively. You trusted that he had not killed you, rather than that he would not.
Halfway down the road Mutz came across Balashov foraging on the border of a copse. Balashov stepped out to meet him and shook his hand.
‘I wanted to speak with you,’ he said. ‘I pretended to be looking for mushrooms. I was afraid of Matula. I’m sorry about your friend.’
‘Kliment? He wasn’t a friend, but thank you.’
‘What should I tell my congregation? A murder like this seems more terrible in the midst of a war. Did you hear the guns?’
‘Yes,’ said Mutz, looking into his face for echoes, sneaking a peek into his eyes, as if the key to his deed of harm was to be found floating there in formaldehyde. ‘The Reds must have taken Verkhny Luk and shunted up some heavy ordnance to frighten us.’ He paused. They were shy men. Mutz had found lust and fear of shrapnel were helpful against shyness, and he found them helpful now. He said: ‘You’ve heard the big guns before, Gleb Alexeyevich. Anna Petrovna told me.’
‘I know.’
‘She let me read your letter. Does that make you angry?’
‘No.’
‘Does anything make you angry?’
Balashov made the small laugh that some people do when they are remembering the worst things that have happened to them. ‘When you ask questions like that, I feel as if I’m on a stage in front of an audience of professors.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Do you have patronymics?’
‘Patronymics?’
‘Like I’m Gleb Alexeyevich, Gleb the son of Alexei. I feel more comfortable – you speak Russian very well, I’d like to be able to use your first name and patronymic. Your titles sound unholy. Pan this and lieutenant that.’
‘My father’s name is Josef.’
‘May I call you Josef Josefovich?’
‘If you like,’ said Mutz, feeling outmanoeuvred in a gentle way.
&nbs
p; ‘Josef Josefovich, I wanted to speak to you about promises. Hear me through. It is not a market, where promises are weighed and some are worth more than others, and the promise breaker can be taken to court. Not in this world, at least. You can only ask and hope. I broke a promise made before God to my wife, but we have made promises since. I promised her that I would not help others do what I was helped to do. I promised that I would not wield the knife. I promised that I would never go to her home without her invitation, and to do everything I could to prevent Alyosha finding out who I was. She promised that she would never tell anyone what I had done. I am hurt that she has broken this promise, whether or not you or she feel I have any right to be hurt. But I do not believe a promise broken once is useless. It becomes a promise in two parts, held by two people, and I do not see that either of you have any reason to break it further.’
Mutz blushed and felt a tenderness for Balashov in that, beyond his concern for his secret, there was a deeper fear that he would be laughed at.
‘Anna Petrovna made another promise, Josef Josefovich,’ said Balashov, folding his hands behind his back and looking Mutz in the eye. Mutz wished he had not told him his father’s name, at least not the real one. Regret made Balashov colder. ‘About men.’
‘She promised she would not see other men?’
‘She promised she would.’
‘Ah.’
‘There is nothing I can do about it. About you, or any other man. I do not want it to happen, I know it is happening, and there is nothing I can do.’
