Authors: Mikhail Elizarov
A
T FIRST I SQUEAMISHLY
wiped the metal corner of the casket on the grass for a long time. My former terror had disappeared and in its place a frozen, unnatural calm, verging on extreme fatigue, had swept over me.
The heavy, pine-tar smell of Vishnevsky ointment hung over the battlefield—Marat Andreyevich and Tanya were rendering first aid to the wounded.
Margarita Tikhonovna’s crushed eye was carefully washed and the fragments of glass were extracted from her eyebrow, but she spoke to me in a spirited voice: “Alexei, I’m proud of you, you’re a genuine hero!” The blood, mingling with peroxide, bubbled on her cheek. “How can you not believe in higher justice now? The fact that you were the one to crush Marchenko is a sign. I’m glad that I was not mistaken!” And these words settled in my head in a cold, ornate pattern, like hoar frost.
Sukharev’s shattered hand was bandaged up with parquet blocks from the dead Pal Palych’s armour. During this procedure Sasha kept exclaiming: “I don’t feel any pain at all.” But it seemed to me that he was simply in a state of shock.
It is true, though, that I didn’t hear a single groan or any of the sounds associated with torment of the flesh. Marat Stepanovich merely commented that you could take out an appendix under the influence of the Book of Endurance and carried on hastily applying stitches.
Timofei Stepanovich treated his comrades’ shallow cuts with iodine; Nikolai Tarasovich Ievlev gloomily sucked the blood out of his slashed arm and applied plantain leaves.
The Vozglyakov sisters, Svetlana and Veronika, leaned down over their mother’s body without a single tear; the eldest, Anna, was sewing up a deep, ragged wound in Garshenin’s shoulder with a stony expression on her face, and a Kolontaysk fighter was waiting his turn nearby, pressing a rag to his bleeding wound.
Four observers came towards us, including the deformed Kovrov. He limped on both legs, but walked without the help of crutches. A conversation was held with Margarita Tikhonovna. The fresh white bandage on her eye was already soaked with blood on the inside and her voice trembled slightly, but it was full of dignity. From Kovrov’s sparse words I understood that our debt to the Gorelov reading room had been annulled.
Then the observer started talking about the disposal of the bodies. The essence of the procedure, as Denis explained to me later, was as follows. The victors had the right to request an imitation of any everyday death for their dead—a road accident, an accident at a building site, a fire, suicide, but only such that it would not arouse the suspicion of doctors and the militia. This privilege provided an opportunity to give the fallen normal funerals.
The bodies from the defeated side were supposed either to disappear completely or to lie until they totally decomposed, and lost all the terrible marks of battle. Then, at the request of their nearest and dearest—if such people existed in the world of Gromov—the remains could be discovered by the official world, following a tip-off. Until that time the readers were simply considered to have gone missing.
Shulga’s library accepted all the bothersome responsibilities involved in the disposal—not, of course, as a free service, but in exchange for the Gorelov reading room’s Book.
“Well then, congratulations once again on your victory,” said Kovrov.
“The old school’s the best, Timur Gennadyevich,” Timofei Stepanovich said sadly, drawing himself erect. “We don’t have many novices, we pretty much go all the way back to the Battle of Neverbino.”
“Yes, Marchenko was inexperienced. He didn’t take into account how dangerous it was to go up against you,” Kovrov agreed. “You fight seriously…” he said, yawning, so that his jaw crunched. “Now, about this ambush of the purported killers of the librarian Vyazintsev and the missing reader Shapiro… Depending on the consequences, the council will reach a separate decision and then determine the letter of the penalty. I don’t think that will be soon. Carry on with your own business, you’ll be informed.”
Kovrov limped away majestically. But after a few steps he turned back, met my gaze, wagged his finger at me humorously and declared:
“Don’t run away any more!”
Naturally, I didn’t like this gesture and his derisive tone, but the ultimate meaning of it all only hit me several hours later, on the way home in our RAF.
My memory of events is blurred, as if I observed them through a polythene bag. The observers carried away our dead comrades. We ourselves loaded the stretcher cases into the bus—the others walked to it themselves—and took them to various hospitals, providing them with the cover stories needed to account for all these breaks, cuts, contusions, broken noses and lost teeth.
One of Burkin’s volunteers, one Kolontayskite and Grisha Vyrin went straight onto the operating table. The first two had suffered severe craniocerebral traumas and Vyrin had a serious spinal injury. Lutsis had apparently escaped with only a minor concussion. Sukharev was left in the same traumatological department with a rather complicated break of the wrist, together with Anna Vozglyakova, who had a crack in her collarbone.
Margarita Tikhonovna categorically refused to see any doctors, declaring that her injury might look bad, but it was actually trivial. It was impossible to argue with her.
I asked how we could inform the families of Pal Palych, Larionov and Provotorov about the death of their dear ones. Margarita
Tikhonovna’s reply shed some light on the membership of the reading rooms, in which individuals with families were the exception rather than the rule. Pal Palych and Larionov had lived as solitary bachelors, Provotorov grown up without any parents and had been raised by his grandmother. It turned out that there was no one to grieve for the dead apart from their fellow readers.
The Kolontaysk comrades prepared to go back home, and we moved from the bus into our RAF, after thanking them once again for their help. Margarita Tikhonovna spoke, and we all nodded in unison. Their leader replied morosely: “One good turn deserves another.”
The expression on Veronika and Svetlana’s faces was calm, I would even say exalted. I thought of offering them words of consolation, but I couldn’t find the right ones. The Vozglyakov sisters said goodbye and drove off on the motorcycle after the Kolontayskites.
Big-nosed Garshenin looked at the stumps of his fresh plaster casts, repeating over and over again: “I’ll be all healed up in no time…”
He was temporarily installed in Margarita Tikhonovna’s apartment. Then we drove Ievlev and Kruchina home, and the remaining six of us went to my place.
The same conversation continued. Marat Andreyevich declared:
“It could well be that we took out two or three of Shulga’s aces.”
“Precisely!” Timofei Stepanovich agreed. “I came across some really stubborn lads, and they fought stoutly. For sure Kovrov stopped the satisfaction because only his fighters were left.”
“And that means only one thing,” Marat Andreyevich concluded. “We’ve earned ourselves some serious enemies…”
I was concerned that the Shironinites would regard me as indirectly responsible for Vyrin’s injury. Margarita Tikhonovna’s passionate words made it clear how greatly mistaken I was: “Alexei, don’t even think about that! How could you ever get such an idea into your head?”
They showered me with a chorus of praise for a long time, although I think they all realized that my “heroic feat” was not the result of courage, but a fluke.
“I was so frightened for you,” Margarita Tikhonovna said agitatedly. “When I saw Marchenko break through and run at you… My heart sank, I couldn’t have borne it if anything had happened to you!”
“Ah, come off it!” Ogloblin responded. “Our Alexei’s a hero! Just look at the way he clouted him with the Book!”
“Yes, he’s got real spirit,” Tanya chimed in.
“It’s like I told you—blood’s thicker than water!” Timofei Stepanovich exclaimed joyfully.
“I’m glad things turned out that way and you didn’t lose your head,” said Marat Andreyevich, nodding.
Then the rapture faded and we drove on in silence. An overcast Monday was beginning, fine rain was sprinkling onto the windscreen, and the squeaking wipers smeared the drops like twin metronomes.
And that was when I remembered the observer Kovrov’s finger, as inexorable as a pendulum, in a completely different light. Overwhelmed by sudden despair, I realized that rhythmically swaying finger was the most terrible part of everything that had happened to me in the last few days. It was the beginning of the new rhythm of a different world, and all the indications were that escape from that world was only possible to the world beyond, and only through an extremely painful doorway. In one night I had been transformed from a witness into a fully-fledged accomplice in a massacre. I had been bound by blood. And in time there would be a reckoning for it. “There’s nowhere you can run to…” That was the warning, that was what the moving finger pointed to…
Behind me, Tanya Miroshnikova suddenly started crying. Timofei Stepanovich blew his nose loudly and Fyodor Ogloblin, who had lost his friend and “reverse namesake” Larionov, heaved a sigh. Margarita Tikhonovna furtively raised her handkerchief to her single eye.
Marat Andreyevich rubbed his temples with the palms of his hands, making his hair stand on end.
“The effect of the Book of Endurance has worn off now,” he explained with a bitter smile. “The live human emotions have begun. There’s nothing to be done. Now we’ll grieve…”
Thank God no one guessed that I was mourning for myself, not the fallen.
T
HAT EVENING BROUGHT
yet another unpleasant conversation with Margarita Tikhonovna. Towards the end I worked myself up to a screaming whisper yet again. My nerves were shattered after the events of recent days. For half a day I had been running through past events time and time again in my memory, polishing them to a perfect, rounded state of terror. An entire appalling, hostile world was reflected in this convex, distorted perspective.
I kept asking Margarita Tikhonovna to let me go, but she patiently reminded me of our previous agreement, of which I had fulfilled only half: the Book of Memory had not yet been read.
I tried to persuade her that no Book would ever change my decision. Margarita Tikhonovna smiled meekly and assured me that destiny itself had appointed me a librarian.
“But Margarita Tikhonovna, you know I’m simply not ready to take my uncle’s place here with you. I’m a perfectly ordinary person. I don’t possess any special strength or courage. You have a mature collective; choose a new librarian for yourselves…” I appealed to logic and flattery. “Why shouldn’t you take the Shironin reading room into your own hands, Margarita Tikhonovna? You’re an excellent leader; everyone respects you. You are the most appropriate candidate for my uncle’s position,” I said falteringly, rubbing my sticky palms together. “If my Uncle Maxim could express his opinion, he would definitely prefer you.”
“That won’t work, my boy. I shall die soon…” said Margarita Tikhonovna, shattering my hopes. “Breast cancer—and don’t look
at me with that clumsy expression of sympathy on your face. I’ve got six months left. A year at most. The most optimistic prognoses…”
I almost said that she could be the librarian for six months, and then the Shironinites could choose another one, that foundry worker Kruchina or the traumatologist Dezhnev, but I suddenly felt that would sound too cynical. So I said nothing and stared drearily out of the window, watching the white scar that a plane had scraped across the sky, as if with a fingernail.
“My heart aches for the Shironin reading room,” Margarita Tikhonovna continued meanwhile. “As long as Maxim Danilovich was alive, the problem didn’t exist. And my own position was perfectly clear too—I would have served the reading room right to the end, and departed when my time came. I wanted very badly to find a worthy replacement. Something told me that you would be a genuine librarian, like your uncle. Please, first read the Book…”
After all the beating around the bush, we had come back to where we started. Margarita Tikhonovna cut short my whinging by saying that at the moment it wasn’t safe for me to travel to Ukraine; there were many forces interested in getting even for the Gorelov librarian Marchenko, and from every point of view it would be better if I stayed here, under the protection of the reading room’s members.
She certainly knew the right point to apply pressure to. I immediately fell silent, remembering that Marchenko was not merely some mythical librarian, but also a murderer.
“And I would recommend you not to leave the apartment in general,” Margarita Tikhonovna concluded in an pitilessly formal tone, and at the top of her voice, so that everyone heard.
The readers started coming into the room from the kitchen— Tanya, Fyodor Ogloblin, Marat Andreyevich and Timofei Stepanovich.
“Not even to go to the shop?” I asked cautiously.
“Of course not,” Margarita Tikhonovna confirmed. “Especially since our reading room has been weakened. And to be quite honest,
it will be much easier for us and we will feel less anxious if you are at home, with the Book.”
“But how long will this go on?”
Margarita Tikhonovna shrugged.
“About three weeks. Perhaps a month. One of us will be on duty round the clock, but in order to venture outside one bodyguard is not enough. It would be preferable for you to be accompanied by three people at least.”
“Alexei Vladimirovich, I don’t understand: why do you need to go out anywhere?” Tanya suddenly asked. “We’ll buy everything you need, I’ll cook for you… I’m a good cook. And I’ll tidy up the apartment!”
“Don’t worry about money!” Margarita Tikhonovna added. “We take responsibility for your financial problems.”
This suggestion met with a positive response.
“That’s how we do things here,” said Timofei Stepanovich. “Come what may, we won’t let our librarian go hungry! So you don’t need to worry about that, Alexei!”
“We don’t guarantee black caviar every day, but we can manage a perfectly respectable standard,” Ogloblin promised.
Margarita Tikhonovna was pleased by the general support.
“Really, Alexei, it will be more convenient for you, and when you need it our girls will come and cook and tidy up.”
Apparently what they had in store for me was indefinite house arrest with full board.
In the corridor I checked the phone just for luck and heard the long-awaited dial tone, which set my heart fluttering, although it was too late to call the militia.
“Have they connected it?” Margarita Tikhonovna asked. “That’s excellent. I was thinking we’d have to camp here like gypsies to guard you, but if the phone’s working then Timofei Stepanovich will be enough for today. You have a stout door here; you couldn’t break it down with a canon. I don’t believe they are likely to launch a frontal attack, but it’s best to take precautions. Let me
write down our phone numbers for you. God forbid that anything should happen, but if it does—we’ll be here in ten minutes,” she laughed. “We’ll beat off any assailant…”
I saw that the Shironinites, despite their sorrow, were always trying to lift my spirits.
“Well, Margarita Tikhonovna… Don’t forget now,” Timofei Stepanovich drawled. “Alexei has shown what he’s capable of. The two of us together will see off anyone you like without any help. Isn’t that right, Alexei? We’ll see them off? Come on, answer me!”
“Yes, Timofei Stepanovich,” I said, reluctantly supporting this bravado.
Everyone prepared to go. The warmness with which the Shironinites took their leave both astounded and horrified me, although I tried not to show it. It was clear that these people really did need me.