The Industry of Souls (24 page)

At one end, where the path turned towards the bridge, a lantern hung from a pole. It was square with a frame fashioned of rosewood and, in place of glass, it had tissue-thin rice paper stretched between the sides, stiffened with dope and brushed with lacquer. When the candle within was lit, the paper glowed with an ethereal translucence. It reminded me of light shining through flayed skin.

All along the bank, wherever the lawns did not come down to end in a flagstoned edging, willows draped out to weep over the water in which a wide variety of lilies grew, their pads spreading across the surface. In places, they were so large and strong as to afford small birds a platform from which to dip their beaks when drinking. Emerald green frogs the size of field mice could often be spied squatting on them, their throats ballooning out as they bloarted for a mate in the dusk or declared ownership of their part of the pond. Overhead and even by moonlight, if the moon was already up as the sun went down, huge dragonflies darted or hovered, their thoraxes polished brown as mahogany, their long abdomens a deep vermilion with their grotesque compound eyes as pink as the flesh of an over-ripe grapefruit. As they turned, the orbs changed colour like a rainbow of oil on a puddle.

Close to the bank at the farthest end of the pool, where the water ran off over a stone sill into a narrow stream overhung by mosses and ferns, there was an area of rushes and sedges which trailed their black feathery roots into the depths. There koi carp, many of them weighing well over a kilo, drifted aimlessly by. One was as pure white as milk, its individual scales edged as if with amber, but most were off-white with scarlet, damask and pale yellow patches. Where the water was shallow, shoals of golden orfe scudded here and there, disturbing the crested newts which hung in the water as if dead then wriggled with alarm for the cover of the lily pads, twisting in their flight to show their tan bellies decorated with black spots.

Over the gulag years, I frequently visited this garden. Sometimes, I went there in the early morning when the dawn mist drifted over the surface like the breath of the spirits of my departed enemies. It was then, if I was lucky, I caught a glimpse of the cerulean kingfisher with amaranth wings mottled with jade. It patrolled the shallows, returning always to the same branch from which it surveyed the water. Later in the day, mandarin ducks paddled about the lilies or waddled along the banks, their heads nodding as sedately as a dowager’s at agreeable prayer. From time to time, if I stood quite still, a grey heron glided in, its stilt legs lowering in the last few moments before it alighted on the bank to step gingerly into the water, like a man testing the temperature with his toes. It tended, I noticed, to prefer to feed on frogs to fish or newts.

All around, there were the sounds of a glorious orchestra of bird song. Often, I lingered on the bridge oblivious of the pool and its inhabitants, swept away by the grandiose symphony reverberating in the air. After a while, I started to differentiate between the birds just as one does the instruments at a concert. A warbler in the reeds played on its liquid flute whilst a robin, saucily balanced on the bridge rail not a metre from my hand, piped its penny whistle. Standing alert at the water’s edge, a blackbird in its sombre priest’s suit, with a beak like an orange flame from hell, trilled its piccolo to a bird which I never succeeded in identifying, hiding in one of the willows, blowing a mournful tune on a Japanese
shakahachi.
Far off, a woodpecker added percussion as it drilled into one of the elms in a distant copse.

At night, the pond took on a different character. It was dark, almost foreboding and vaguely threatening, yet in a familiar way. The water, which in daylight reflected the sun and the clouds, and my own face should I lean over the rail of the bridge to stare downwards at myself, became as black and still as primeval sin. In the day, the surface was rippled by fry, tadpoles, diving beetles, water boatmen, aquatic spiders or mayfly hatching off the surface: at night, nothing moved it except the down-draft of a bat’s wing as it flittered across the lilies, picking off midges on the wing. The fish seemed to hide, the dragonfly squadron disappeared to disguise itself amongst the stalks of the reeds.

When I came to the pond at night, I never disturbed its nocturnal peace with a torch. Only the moon, or the stars, or the lantern by the bridge illuminated my way.

Who lit the lantern was a mystery but not one that concerned me. It was sufficient that it was always lit should I arrive as twilight fell or in the middle of the night. There was never anyone else present. No groundsmen mowed the lawns, killed the moss encroaching upon it from the pond or tugged dandelions from its carpet. There were no bailiffs to patrol the pond or scoop autumn leaves from the surface, no gardeners to prune the bushes or tie back the ramblers. Over the many visits I made to the garden, I did not once encounter a single human being. Only animals, from every nook and cranny of the tree of creation, inhabited the place: and, no matter whether I came upon an hamadryad or a hungry lion, a tarantula or a Tasmanian Devil, I was never harmed. The cobra never struck, the lion never charged.

Such safety in my solitude never surprised me for this was my garden, exclusive to my use. There was no gateway in the long, high wall which encompassed it, no way in nor any way out. Not once did I ever invite a guest there. Not even Kirill. It did not matter. He never knew of my exclusion and, besides, there was no entrance he might come in by save a tiny door hidden in the far, dark caverns of my mind well beyond his or anybody else’s reach.

9

Some way along the footpath, there is a fallen tree, brought down in a blizzard eleven years ago. The villagers have long since sawn off the trunk and branches for fuel or planks but they have left the tangled wizard’s hands of the exposed roots. Over the years, these have been washed free of soil, the finer ends nibbled at by deer or robbed by birds hunting for twigs. The result is a sort of basket of gnarled roots which I have, with the aid of a sharp knife, trimmed and pruned into a passable resting place on my walks.

On reaching it in the early afternoon, I settled myself into my rustic seat which faces into the forest and away from the village. Beneath the trees, there is comparatively little undergrowth and I could see for several hundred metres. The ground was strewn with last year’s dead leaves and, with the summer well into its last quarter, fungi were beginning to appear. When there was no breeze, the air was laden with their scent, the delicate aroma of decay. Every so often, a bird briefly dropped from the forest canopy to kick the leaves about, pecking at grubs or ants: jays hopped and squirrels skirred here and there, burying nuts for the winter.

Whenever I rest here on my constitutional, I have the vague yet distinct feeling that I am not alone. Seldom do I ever see anyone here: perhaps once or twice a year, someone passes by on the path and nods a greeting to me. They may stop and briefly pass the time of day, temporarily disencumbering themselves of a load of firewood, half a dozen birds or rabbits shot in the woods, leaning their axe or gun against the roots, but otherwise the woods are devoid of humanity. The path is a highway for deer, not men.

Were I to believe in ghosts, satyrs and the like, I could be convinced that the roots were one of their secret parliaments. Maybe a hidden door exists at the base of the bole, a secret entrance to their underworld.

It is not a malign presence. I never feel I am threatened by it, that it wants to do me ill: it is more a matter that it is somehow in sympathy with me and would, if it could, befriend me, talk to me of my life and share my trials, tribulations and occasional nightmares.

I leaned back against the roots and closed my eyes for I had some serious thinking to do. The afternoon was progressing and it would not be long now before the dust in the lane would be disturbed by unfamiliar wheels and an unfamiliar knock sound on Frosya’s door, chilling her heart and setting mine racing.

Since I slit open the envelope and read the letter, four lines of verse have drummed themselves through my consciousness. Try as I have to ignore them, they have refused to go away and have lingered like a hated tune. I could not place their origin and may have invented them, although I think not for I am not given to versifying: for all I know, I may have been misquoting them:

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

How they have taunted me with their blunt, cruel and ineluctable truth.

For so much of my life, decisions have been made for me.

In the gulag, we all knew where we stood. The lights went on: we left the camp: we marched to and descended the mine: we dug coal: we came up and returned to camp: we ate: we slept. No decisions were made with my involvement. We
zeks
lacked for none of the basic demands of a living organism, given the parameters of our situation, save our freedom. We were fed, after a fashion, clothed and sheltered. When we fell ill, we were provided with the most basic of medicinal care: if it failed well, so what! Some other poor sod would be dragged off the street, or out of his bed, accused, tried and thrown into the system to make up the shortfall in manpower.

In short, we were treated in a manner no better and no worse than that with which a negligent farmer might regard his herd, or a lazy zoo keeper his cages of wild beasts.

It was all a part of the process of rehabilitation, of making us come to appreciate that Mother Communism, that buxom, grinning, snag-toothed wench dressed in a pair of dark blue overalls, with a scarf around her head and biceps like Popeye the Sailorman, would provide for us. She was our succour and our saviour as well as our slave-mistress and superintendent.

The whole idea was that, when we finally left the gulag, we would accept our lot, be grateful for the protecting arm of the Politburo, knuckle under to the socialist way and believe the improbable promises of the next five-year plan. We would work for the common good and receive our due share of the common profit. If there was one. And if we lived to see it.

Yet the gulag failed. We came out grateful enough for our freedom, but many of us had had our spirits as well as our health and strength dashed and, when we reached the village we had tried never to dream about, or the block of flaking concrete in the suburbs of an industrial town which we called home, and we found our parents dead, our wives old and sag-breasted or our sweethearts married off, we meekly acquiesced, asking no questions and making no waves.

No one was inclined to complain and not from fear of another stretch in a Siberian slammer. The decision had been made. Our fate was sealed without recourse or discussion and we accepted it for this was how we had been trained to see the world. As ants to the queen were we to the Kremlin.

So we went to the labour office and collected our allotted jobs in the grand scheme of things, travelled daily to the office or the factory, the railway marshalling yard or the power station and pretended to work whilst the Party pretended to pay us.

Thus it always was until politicians grew bored with playing their games and men grew tired of keeping the score.

There was, I knew, no avoiding the fact. As that damned poem stated repeatedly in the back of my mind, I was in command, the captain of my soul. Where I voyaged from that moment on was entirely up to me. My hand, and no one else’s, was on the tiller. I had the maps and, although I may have been ignorant of where the reefs and shallows were, I had at least stars to steer by and a compass: and those stars were not Polaris and Cassiopeia, Alderamin and Capella in the constellation of Auriga but Frosya and Trofim turning through their orbits around Myshkino.

When I came out of my reverie, the sun was slanting at a greater angle through the trunks. I must have been there for over an hour, must have dozed off in my chair of roots. The jays were still at work hunting and gathering, but the other birds were nowhere to be seen. They would, I knew, be down by the river, slaking their thirst and taking their last drink before it was time to return to the trees to start staking out a claim to a perch for the night.

It was time to move on, time to come to a decision, time to set my course and hold my hand firm on the rudder, regardless of the tides and the currents of destiny. It was time to count as profit each day fortune allowed me.

For, after all, I was the master of my fate. It was a responsibility which came with liberty, and it scared me. It always has, deep down. Yet what is fate but nothing more than a melody of time, drawn from an instrument I can neither tune nor play, but only listen to from day to day.

*   *   *

For a hundred metres or so, where the path starts to turn back towards the village, the forest is bordered by a wooden post and rail fence demarcating the end of the trees and the start of a wide meadow in which a large and ancient horse grazes all the day through. The animal is owned by Yuri, the schoolmaster under whom I taught in the last few years of my academic metamorphosis. In places, the fence has been recently repaired with sawn planks and nails but for some stretches the timbers, whole boughs merely trimmed of twigs, are ancient and attached to the posts with oak pegs. It is in one of these ancient lengths that the stile was constructed last year, by Yelyutin the carpenter, for my express convenience.

As I reached the style, and put my foot upon the step-board, the fence creaked. The horse heard the sound, raised its head from the short grass and pricked its ears. When I swung my leg over the stile the horse, going somewhat short-sighted in old age, caught a vague movement and, with the curiosity of the elderly, came shambling towards me.

‘Good day, Bratan,’ I greeted the animal. The name is colloquial and refers to a brother of whom one is fond. As throughout the world, everyone in Myshkino loves an old horse.

It recognised my voice and relaxed its ears. I was no longer an object of equine curiosity or a threat come out of the forest. Once it was by my side, it thrust its broad head out to be rubbed and I obliged the animal by running my hand down its long, bony nose.