by James Meek
At Mutz’s Execution
From the way the railway workers arranged themselves in the snow Mutz could tell that Bondarenko himself would shoot them and that less than a minute was given to him to live. The sound of his feet in the snow was dear to him; it seemed to him that he owned it, that every particle of ice belonged to him. He was stricken with the urge to taste it.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Before you shoot.’
‘We don’t do that,’ said Bondarenko, stopping and turning round. ‘We don’t do last requests.’
Mutz foresaw his quickness. It was a man who’d shoot immediately once he’d drawn his pistol. There’d be no words. Brisk.
‘I’m thirsty,’ said Mutz. ‘Let me put some snow on my tongue.’ Bondarenko didn’t say anything and his hand didn’t move towards his gun and Mutz kneeled down and cupped a light heap of snow in his palm. He stood up and put his tongue into the cold powder. The ice crystals hurt and their taste went deep. Mutz the boy and Mutz the man recognised each other and for an instant he was engulfed by a joy so intense that he could hardly stand.
He heard Nekovar speak. Nekovar was questioning the age of the telegram. Nekovar was right. Nekovar would bring them back to the cold darkness of war and a railway and to the possibilities of living further. And Mutz knew it was right but he’d seen on the threshold for a moment a way to take the certainty of death and the great wonder of life and hold them in balance, neither denying the other and each casting light on the other, death and life as both the rim and the core. Death gave life the beauty of finity, the beauty of the edge line, and life, even a second of it, made death small. And Mutz knew that while he could see this only in this moment, later, he would bat at it clumsily and either not believe it or not remember what it was, and though Anna and Balashov and Samarin would never see it, they lived on that threshold already.
‘Why not wire for new orders?’ said Nekovar to Bondarenko. The sergeant looked uneasily at Mutz for support.
‘The telegraph’s broken,’ said Bondarenko.
‘What make is it?’
‘Siemens.’
Nekovar shook his head, struck his thigh and turned from Bondarenko to Mutz and back. ‘I could fix that in half an hour.’
‘He could, comrade Commissar,’ said Mutz.
‘For what?’ said Bondarenko. It was not that he wanted to kill them, Mutz saw, but he was tired and wanted to sleep and them being alive was keeping him awake. Besides, he didn’t want to hesitate in front of the collective.
‘Comrade Bondarenko,’ said Mutz. ‘Your revolution needs bullets and shells. Some of your men are wounded. Of course if you attack Yazyk you will beat the Czechs, but more of the collective will be hurt, peaceful citizens will be killed, there will be destruction and you will spend munitions. We only want to be allowed to leave Russia through Vladivostok and see our new homeland. I understand a wicked act was committed at Staraya Krepost. The orders were given by our commander, Captain Matula. He is a tyrant, a murderer, and a madman. If we can bring him to you as a prisoner, you must let us go west through the east in peace. My comrade Nekovar will mend your telegraph, and you can ask your commanders.’
Bondarenko raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, and scratched the back of his head with the butt of his pistol. He waved the gun at Mutz, looking at Nekovar. ‘I could shoot the lieutenant, and you could still fix the telegraph.’
‘I could, but I wouldn’t,’ said Nekovar.
‘Ladno,’ said Bondarenko abruptly, putting his gun away and clapping his hands together, waking himself up with a suffusion of decisiveness. ‘We’ll have a meeting of the organisational committee.’ He walked some distance away and came to be at the centre of a semicircle of communists who spoke in turn. Nekovar and Mutz were guarded meantime by short, bearded men in badly-fitting coats who did not say anything, but stared them out. After a while Bondarenko came back, the other members of the committee straggling behind.
‘We have discussed your case and reached a conclusion,’ said Bondarenko. All the members of the committee had seen the Red Cinema film Savagery, depicting the massacres at Staraya Krepost. Comrade Stepanov argued that, on the basis of their behaviour in the film, all the Czechs must be executed, without mercy. Comrade Zhemchuzhin said that some of the Czechs, and the Jewish lieutenant, Mutz, had tried to stop the massacre. Comrade Stepanov had said that the film was an artistic work, and that the actor’s portrayal of the lieutenant was a false representation of reality, in that it was not possible a Jewish officer could be so different from his men, and set himself against them, without them trying to kill him. Comrade Zhemchuzhin had said that if the portrayal of the lieutenant was false, perhaps the actors playing the other parts could not be relied on to tell the truth about what the Czechs had done. Comrade Stepanov had said that Comrade Zhemchuzhin was a counter-revolutionary and that it was a slander against Red Cinema. Comrade Titov had wondered about Captain Matula; did he not seem like a character in a cheap melodrama, with his mad cruelty? Why had the Czechs not rebelled against him? Comrade Bondarenko had said that the point was, the telegraph was broken, and it would be useful to have it working again. If it couldn’t be repaired, they could just as easily shoot the prisoners in the morning, before they attacked Yazyk. His motion was carried.
Bondarenko led them back to his staff wagon. Mutz became aware that Nekovar continually turned to stare at him as they walked. It was uncomfortable. Mutz had received respect and solidarity from Nekovar before, never awe.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘Thank you for saving my life. Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘They put you in a film!’
‘Not me,’ said Mutz. ‘I never tried to stop the killing.’
‘The film shows you did, brother, and that’s good for us.’
On board the train, Nekovar was sent, with an armed guard of two, into the telegraph room, through the door marked NO ENTRY, with the warning that if he so much as touched any of the code books, he would be shot.
‘Good luck, brother,’ said Mutz, the last word pungent in his mouth, like untried medicine.
‘Half an hour, brother!’ said Nekovar, as he passed through into the dim light beyond. Bondarenko brought Mutz a chair and placed it some yards from his desk, up against a far window. A railwayman came in with two glasses of tea, and left them. Mutz wrapped his chilled hands around the embossed metal of the glassholder. What would Balashov be doing now? Were eunuchs potent in their dreams? Bondarenko was bent over the desk, mouth reaching for the glass, as if he was too tired to raise it. The tea bubbled between his lips. He looked not only weary as he leaned back in the chair, but deprived of fulfilment. To Mutz’s surprise, he spoke: and curiosity emerged from the commissar, although he seemed ashamed of it.
‘Czechs,’ he said. ‘Always ready to kill each other. Why? You’re not a Czech, of course.’
‘I’m a citizen of the Czechoslovakian republic.’
‘I couldn’t understand why your soldier Racansky killed your comrade, the officer. He was very excited, and your sergeant, Bublik, was even more excited, and kept interrupting him. They didn’t expect us to shoot them.’
‘They were communists, like you.’
‘So they kept pointing out. Some of what they said sounded sensible. But they were Czechs, and we had this order. And with their accents, it was so hard to understand what they were saying.’
‘Did you bury them?’
‘They’re on a flat car down the train.’
‘They have families in Bohemia.’
‘We all have families.’
‘I have to write to them.’
‘We all have to write those letters. The soldier, Racansky, he kept talking about killing the officer. It seemed to me he expected a commendation from us, or a post of some kind. And he kept talking about a great revolutionary in Yazyk. The blade of the will of the people, he called him. Elegant speech for a private soldier, a foreigner. Like he was quoting. Do you have a great revolutionary there
in Yazyk?’
‘There’s an escaped prisoner, an intelligent, a student. That’s who he meant.’
‘An exile?’
‘He says he escaped from a prison camp in the Arctic called the White Garden. His name is Samarin.’
Bondarenko did not seem to find this interesting. He leaned his chair back on two legs, clasped his hands behind his head, and yawned, staring ahead of him unfocused. Through the door they could hear the sound of tools on metal.
‘Why prison camp?’ said Bondarenko, not looking at Mutz. ‘That’s grandly put. There was just one prisoner there, and she’s dead. It’s all in Red Banner.’ He picked up a newspaper from the floor beside his chair, waved it at Mutz, and laid it on the desk. Mutz felt a weight drop inside his chest and a terrible, proximate menace, incomprehensible, tiny as a needle and heavy as a mountain.
‘Perhaps he lied to you,’ said Bondarenko. ‘Our scientist, Academic Frolov, visited the White Garden in his airship a few months ago. You must know about the Frolov expedition. No?’ Bondarenko leaned forward, more awake. ‘It’s a marvellous journey around the Arctic by air, dedicated to the October Revolution and carried out in the name of the people. The whole world has been following it. Academic Frolov was always one of us. Not like that dog at the White Garden, Apraksin-Aprakov. Prince Apraksin-Aprakov, the geologist. The White Garden was his camp, his expedition to the Taimyr Peninsula. He believed there was gold there, and nickel. He had huts up there, and servants from his household, and other geologists.’
‘Who was the prisoner?’
‘A young revolutionary, a bomber. The Tsar’s people gave her to Apraksin-Aprakov to use.’
‘To use?’
‘Yes, to use. Those were their morals. Anyway, it seems their supplies never arrived, with the revolution, and they starved. That was how Academic Frolov found them. Starved, frozen, dead, dried, like mummies there.’
Mutz asked what the prisoner’s name was. He heard Bondarenko lift the paper, then, after a moment, turn a page.
‘Orlova,’ said Bondarenko. ‘Yekaterina Mikhailovna.’
‘Comrade,’ said the guard. ‘He’s fixed it.’
Mutz got up as Bondarenko moved towards the telegraph room. Over shoulders he caught a glimpse of Nekovar’s face, staring into the apparatus with joy and affection. It began to click and he heard the Russians murmuring and laughing. Bondarenko came back with a strip of printed paper tape in his hands and waved it at Mutz. He came over. Mutz flinched and Bondarenko embraced him.
‘Victory!’ said the commissar, and shook his hand. Over his shoulder he shouted: ‘Get the Czech out of there!’ Nekovar and his guards emerged. Nekovar was grinning and Mutz clapped him on the shoulder and shook his hand. Hugging was not his way.
‘You’re a genius,’ he said.
Nekovar shrugged and scratched his nose. ‘Siemens,’ he said.
‘Comrade Bondarenko,’ said Mutz. ‘Please send the message to your commanders.’
Bondarenko’s face took on the same expression of hope that they had seen on their first meeting, as if Nekovar’s triumph over German technology had reassured him that the movement of which he was part could not be defeated. Yet Mutz knew now how doom was the dark background which gave hope its shape.
‘Our telegraph operator is sick,’ said Bondarenko. ‘Raving.’
‘Sergeant Nekovar can transmit,’ said Mutz.
‘This message has to be encrypted,’ said Bondarenko. ‘I can’t let you see the code book. I’m the only one who can send it. It’ll be slower. The people of Russia are grateful to you for your work, but it’s most likely that we will have had to shoot you, and Yazyk will be taken, long before we get an answer. We only have until dawn to hear from them, and then we have to move.’
Mutz looked at the clock. It read 9.30. ‘That gives you at least nine hours,’ he said.
Bondarenko looked at him earnestly, willing him to understand. ‘We’re railwaymen,’ he said. ‘Our clocks are set to Petrograd time. Local time is four hours later. If I don’t hear from the people’s representatives in Trotsky’s shtab in five hours, you will have to be shot, and your comrades liquidated.’
‘Can it be so hard for you to encrypt and send one short telegram?’ said Mutz.
‘But then it has to find its destination. There are twenty telegraph circuits for the telegram to cross between here and the shtab, and they pass through all the shades of Red and White. What are the chances that each of those circuits is intact? Our partisans are supposed to cut the telegraph wires across the White retreat, and the Whites should be cutting them to their rear as they flee. Even if the wires are intact, how likely is it that each of those twenty telegraph stations is going to relay a message in our code? Most of the telegraph operators are for us in their hearts, even in the White areas, but not all. I know one telegraph centre on the Urals way where the day shift puts up a black, white and gold flag for the memory of Bloody Nicholas, and the night shift puts up the red banner in its place. And if the message arrives, in the small hours of the morning, somebody has to read it, and draft a reply. And then that has to make it all the way back.’
Mutz looked at Nekovar.
‘Don’t worry, brother,’ said Nekovar. That was all he could manage by way of reassurance, and Mutz could see he had known what Bondarenko was saying already, and had resigned himself to death. Fixing the telegraph was a gesture of defiance towards a process which even Nekovar could not reduce to mechanics and electricity.
Bondarenko pulled the chair closer to the desk and bent his body over a pad of telegram forms, awkward and boyish in composition. He began to scribble, speaking as he wrote: ‘I’m saying you’re offering to deliver Matula to us, dead or alive, by nightfall, in exchange for our delaying our attack, and the lives and safe passage east of the rest of the Czechs. It sounds generous.’ He tore off the page, got up and walked towards the telegraph room. Mutz thanked him and Bondarenko did not reply. He went into the telegraph room and closed the door behind him. After a time they heard clicking; a few clicks, then a long pause while Bondarenko looked up code words. Nekovar and Mutz were left in charge of two guards who stood watching them, rifles lowered, one at each door. The grime on their faces made their eyes look brighter. Nekovar asked the name of the near one. He was Comrade Filonov. He shifted his weight when he spoke as if he found the gun an awkward burden. Behind his beard his face worked anxiously. He gave the impression of one who was bullied.
‘Did you see the film about us, then, Filonov?’ said Nekovar, sitting on the floor next to Mutz.
‘Well?’
‘Do you remember if there was an actor who played a Czech sergeant? Was he handsome?’
‘You weren’t even there,’ said Mutz. ‘You were left at the station that day.’
‘I don’t remember,’ said Filonov.
Nekovar was disappointed. ‘They might have put me in there, brother,’ he said to Mutz. ‘Then I could have seen myself from the outside, and repaired myself.’
‘Repaired yourself?’
‘Yes, brother. A man who doesn’t please ladies is a machine that knows it’s broken, but it can’t fix itself, because it can’t see itself from the outside. I can fix anything, brother, any machine, any device you give me, but I need to look at it from the outside, turn it round in my hands, understand how it works by examining it. I can’t do that with myself. I’ve tried examining ladies, as Broucek said, tried to understand how they work, but I’ve come to think maybe it’s not the ladies that are broken, it’s me. And I know I could fix myself, me of all people, I could do it, but I’m the one thing I can’t fix.’
Mutz felt the obscure impatient anger rising in him again.
