The Librarian (30 page)

Dzyuba was caught from the side of his swollen eye and hoisted up on a pitchfork. He jerked his legs about as if he was struggling with all his might to do chin-ups on a bar. Slingsmen stoned Garshenin to death from a distance, and a few warriors from the second brigade were also caught in the murderous hail—they collapsed with the backs of their heads smashed in, never knowing from where death had struck them.

Anna knocked the helmet off the head of the advancing shrill-voiced eunuch with her flail. For a moment a flabby woman’s face was revealed, with peroxided hair and thick purple lipstick smeared on the lips. The second blow of the flail crushed a dyed tress into the temple bone with a soft, bloody crunch. The next moment a spiked gaff bit into Anna’s neck. She fell, still clutching her trusty flail, and an animal-headed warrior in shaggy fur boots jumped onto her prostrate body and started stabbing her furiously with his lance. Ievlev’s massive hammer smashed his howling face to smithereens.

Kruchina forced his way into a crowd of careless slingsmen. Working deftly with his bayonet and a captured hatchet, he struck rapid blows that were fatal to these lightly equipped soldiers, unskilled in the subtleties of hand-to-hand combat. The death-dealing ladles and bags full of stone balls were useless against the swift blades. The slingsmen fled from this overwhelming rampage of stabbing and slashing in a disorderly gaggle, and they would have suffered even worse as they fled if the warriors of the ambush brigade hadn’t covered them.

I kept trying to break out of my phantom cordon of invulnerability, but lunging lances drove me back again. I saw Marat Andreyevich backing towards the village soviet, strewing his path with enemies hewn down by his sabre. A horned head went tumbling onto the reddish sand. A warrior in a padded helmet with round metal plates fell and sprawled across the ground. A slim harpoon thrown by someone scraped across Marat Andreyevich’s cheek, striking out scarlet sparks. One of the lancemen besieging
me shuddered, his backbone crushed. Ievlev’s hammer flung a second one aside. The third lanceman swung round and ran for it. But Ievlev and his fatal hammer were not the reason for his fright.

The picture that unfolded before me finally hurled me out of reality. Like some fantastic, monstrous vision, a gigantic woman appeared in the breach of the stockade. She was wearing a dirty orange waistcoat over a vast, outsize knitted jumper that looked like smoked fibreglass, and blue trousers tucked into boots. Her swollen rhinoceros shoulders were covered by a flowery shawl. The woman’s face was puffy and red, and there were curly, chemical-yellow tresses that looked like matted sheep’s wool dangling from under her helmet. She was dragging an immense hook on a rusty, creaking wire cable, and with a few flourishes of her mighty hand she set the gigantic mace twirling so fast that the cable merged into the rippling, flickering air and the hook became transparent.

With my clouded mind I didn’t realize immediately that in these fateful minutes a legendary warrior of the Mokhova clan and awesome mythological relic of the Gromov world, Olga Dankevich, had appeared before my very eyes. Trampling the bodies with her elephantine legs, she walked within the impregnable three-metre radius of her mace as it looped the loop and whistled through figures of eight.

I saw the pale terror that suddenly swept over the faces of the stormtroopers. They pressed their backs hard against the stockade in order not to be taken for enemies by mistake.

Marat Andreyevich weighed a heavy pitchfork in his hands and flung it at Dankevich. But even before his throw the humming propeller had tilted. The hook swung a metre above the ground, sand swirled up into the air, and the invisible cable, better than any shield, knocked the seemingly weightless pitchfork aside, flinging it over the stockade. The hook’s next revolution grabbed up Dezhnev, swung him round like a sputnik in orbit and smashed
him into the log corner of the remote dwelling with a crunch of breaking bones. Blood gushed out of Marat Andreyevich’s mouth and his eyes froze, still open.

With two minutely precise swirls of her mace Dankevich first knocked away Kruchina’s bayonet, reducing the hand that had been gripping the weapon to ragged tatters, then flattened the fireman’s helmet. The hook buried Kruchina’s fallen body in the sandy ground, leaving it in a deep crater.

Ievlev cried out in fury and pain. The tip of a bear spear that had been thrust through him from behind crept out of his chest, as long and broad as a sword. He fell to his knees, thrusting his hands and the spear tip into the sand.

Alone, shackled by black despair, I saw my dead comrades and the dozens of enemies they had killed. The reading room had bled to death and, like a true librarian, I was leaving it last.

Holding out my hammer, I stepped into the shadow of centrifugal death. The invisible cable sheared through the air, whistling just above my helmet. Dankevich suddenly smiled with her iron-toothed mouth and called to me in a vodka-hoarse voice: “Come here, I won’t touch you.” The skittish words sounded like the wind: “Come closer, my little one. Stand here by the fat woman. I’ll take you out…”

I waited for a shattering blow followed by darkness, but the cable whistled even higher above me…

A warrior’s duty and loyalty lifted dying Ievlev to his feet. In a few fleeting strides he was already beside Dankevich and he pressed himself against her like an ardent lover who had crept up furtively, so that the long tip of the spear that had doomed him sank right into the burly woman’s flesh.

Dankevich swayed, and her drunken smile was replaced by a mask of bewilderment. She retched up spittle with a slight purple tinge. The hand holding the hook’s cable remained raised, but the hook sank lower as the radius of the mace shortened with every turn. Dankevich breathed heavily, like a bulldog, and blood
flowed down her fat chin, dripping onto the worker’s waistcoat. The cable stopped moving and the hook buried itself in the sand. Fused together, the two bodies collapsed heavily to the ground. Nikolai had died before that moment, not knowing that he had defeated Dankevich.

I
SUDDENLY FELT
an attack of irrational fear, as if in some inconceivable fashion, in the heat of the battle, I had failed to notice that I was killed long ago. I didn’t understand what was happening. It wasn’t as if I had ceased to exist for my enemies, but simply that they looked at me without any predatory greed, as if they had already taken the coveted Book. Just to make sure, I touched the cold top of the case with my hand—the Book was still there. I was standing on both my feet, and I definitely wasn’t seriously hurt. No one tried to disarm me. I was removed from the action, an object of taboo. All of my recent adversaries’ behaviour had taken place outside the context of the fighting, and perhaps that was why I realized that the attack really was over and done with. Fury had degenerated into turbid weariness and indifference, and I merely contemplated the same bedlam of pain and blood that had lodged in my memory since my first satisfaction.

The yard was transformed into a genuine junk pile of the dead. The wounded groaned: there were many of them with hacked-off limbs or mutilated faces; some squirmed about on the ground, some who had lost their minds crept about on their knees, covering the back of their heads with their hands. The warriors who had survived attended to the wounded and maimed and sorted out the dead according to their fighting brigades. Blowing out smoke, the Niva rolled out from behind the stockade and dragged away the logs that had been knocked down.

Severe-looking women appeared, camouflaged as road and construction workers—blue padded work jackets, padded trousers, soldier’s tarpaulin boots. On their heads they wore headscarves or beaver-lamb caps with earflaps, the colour of tarnished bronze. Like Dankevich, every one of them wore an orange waistcoat.

The women were armed with hammers on long handles, crowbars and shovels. Soon they filled the yard. They didn‘t help with the clearing—they merely observed, or rather oversaw. The attackers’ actions betrayed their nervousness. They hurried, quarrelling quietly among themselves. I realized that everything was being done with wary, alarmed glances at the stony faces of the working women. Eventually they dragged the compressor into the yard, as heavy and bulky as an armoured car. They set out boxes on our home-made table—an amplifier and a portable record player.

People formed up in their brigades in front of the village soviet as if it was a military parade. The air was filled with a kind of mute solemnity. A woman in an orange waistcoat lowered the arm of the pickup onto a record and the speaker broadcast ‘The March of the Enthusiasts’ with an admixture of butter seething on a frying pan.

An old woman stepped into the yard through a breach cleared in the stockade. She was leaning on a cane, but it was clear that she only required this additional support as an attribute of her age. The old woman walked lightly, with the majestic nobility of an erect reptile, some ancient humanoid lizard. Her small head was framed by silvery fluff that had been painstakingly shaped into a hairstyle. Set in her wrinkled, lipless face, with a scaly covering of pigmentation, was a pair of prominent, lacklustre eyes, attentive but motionless, as if they had been drawn on an eggshell. The
pointed nose and chin created the impression of a tortoise’s open beak. The crop, as wrinkled and soft as an iguana’s, ran under the lacy snow-white collar of her blouse. All her other clothes were black—the severe tweed jacket, the long skirt, the shoes. Her elbow was pressing against her side an old-fashioned leather handbag with a large clasp in the form of two small spheres.

The old woman stopped beside me and gave an almost imperceptible sign—not with her hands, but with her ossified eyelids covered in blue veinlets; she simply moved them slightly—and the music stopped.

“Alyoshka…” the old woman said in an affectionate voice. “Don’t be afraid.” Suddenly she smiled.

The decrepit, cracked voice jumbled the feelings in my head.

“We’ll sort out the people…” She walked round the intertwined bodies of Dankevich and Ievlev.

“Olka,” the old woman continued, “has been killed too…” Her serpent’s glance paralysed my eyes. “That’s bad…”

She spoke curtly, packing the meaning into the minimum number of words, strained through her teeth, as if she didn’t have enough air for long phrases. The trembling, guttural bleating and the note of hoarseness had disappeared, or become insignificant. A colossal imperious power shone through every gesture she made and every turn of that little head. This grand, noble lady, bearing the signs of the elect on her proud, superb visage, deigned to notice me. I realized joyfully that she was not angry, but was scolding me, like an imperious progenitrix scolding her mischievous grandson. I gave heed to her, entranced.

“Ah,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I’m not sorry! I was sick of Olka… She thought too much of herself.”

Then the grand lady surveyed Ievlev and said respectfully:

“A gallant knight…”

She looked at me again with surprised indulgence.

“But you’re weak… You succumb easily…” Then she took pity and bestowed a radiant smile on me. “Let’s introduce
ourselves. Polina Vasilyevna. My surname’s Gorn. Have you heard of me?”

I nodded.

“Ritka spoke highly of you… Give it to me,” she said, sticking the cane in the ground and holding out her free hand.

I meekly took off the case.

“How does it open? With a key. Or is there a mechanism? You open it,” Gorn told me.

I hastily pulled the key out of my pocket and unlocked the case.

Gorn turned to the stormtroopers

“A hitch… I was wrong! What can you expect from an old woman?… This is the Book of Memory!”

A sigh of disappointment rustled through the ranks. The commander of the ambush brigade stepped forward.

“How could that happen, Polina Vasilyevna?” The croaking, cracked tone of his voice stung my ears, pampered by the velvet speech of Gorn. “You promised us a Book of Endurance! What have we spilled our blood for?”

“Still not content?” was all that Gorn said. “One step forward… Briskly, now… Briskly…” she said, urging him on.

“Polina Vasilyevna! I implore you!” the commander said, shaking his head and clenching his jaw muscles. “Stop these jester’s tricks. The Book of Power won’t affect me in any case! Comrades!” he exclaimed, addressing his men. “You wake up too! Don’t allow yourselves to be swindled! We demand a Book of Endurance!”

Most of the soldiers in the ambush brigade seemed to wake from a hypnotic trance. After a moment’s hesitation, ten soldiers followed their commander. Four remained unpersuaded and carried on standing in the assembled ranks along with eleven soldiers from the first storm brigade. There were also seven soldiers from the second storm brigade and ten slingsmen standing there.

Encourage by this support, the rebel added:

“Polina Vasilyevna, we carried out your orders. Now we expect you to keep your promise…”

“Look… Now he talks…” Gorn rasped unexpectedly. “He demands… Who is he?…”

The enchantment of her voice had evaporated. Her appearance was also transformed. I looked at Gorn, but didn’t see that proud turn of the head—only a birthmark with blue warts peeping through the thin covering of hair on the gaunt crown of her head. This birthmark really did look quite repulsive. Blinking away my mirage, for a brief moment I saw in front of me a decrepit old woman with pink bald patches on her trembling, desiccated head.

Gorn evidently realized that her spell had faded.

“Wait a moment, Alyoshka… I’ll sort out… The problem… With this egotist…” The tone of her voice gathered charm and strength again. The ugly birthmark was not so much inconspicuous as visually insignificant. “It’s a shame,” Gorn said in a loud voice, addressing the brigades, “that there is no Book of Justice… The one-hander forgot to write it… It would be a good idea… for some… to read it…” She jabbed her handbag in the direction of the group of conspirators. “Do you all want to grab the prize? They’re demanding it for themselves!” Gorn exclaimed with exceptional inspiration. “And what about them?” The handbag pointed to the surly ranks. “Didn’t they fight? Haven’t they lost friends?”

For me, and probably for the weary, dismal majority, the meaning wasn’t particularly important. I was conquered by the confident voice, the facial expressions, the nervous impulse, the gesticulations. Gorn persuaded, explained, commanded. I felt a thrill of joy at seeing the miraculous effect produced on the gathering by Gorn’s speech. The ambush brigade really hadn’t played a decisive role in the battle. They were the last to become involved and more of them had survived. But that didn’t give them any special right to claim the trophy won in battle by the entire army!

It was as if the Shironin reading room had not perished half an hour ago, as if people dear to my heart had not accepted a martyr’s death! Once again I forgot that I was being shamelessly duped by
the Book of Power. The moment in which a mental effort could have halted the enchantment had been missed.

Gorn baited the doubting readers, eroding their will.

“Do you want to cheat your comrades?” she rebuked the rebels menacingly. “To rob them?”

Poisoned by this venomous eloquence the warriors in the first three rows whispered furiously among themselves. No one remembered the broken promise and the Book of Endurance any longer. Why would they? A handful of villains were planning to take away their hard-won reward.

“Don’t listen to her!” the commander of the ambush brigade droned in a pitiful voice. “She’s trying to set you on us!”

He spoke in vain; they didn’t believe him. The female guard closed round Gorn in a tight ring. From behind their backs she shouted: “They are traitors, thieves and saboteurs! Kill the saboteurs!”

A massacre began. The renegades resisted desperately, but the odds were uneven. For a few minutes the small plot of land in front of the village soviet was once again transformed into an arena of death.

Gorn contemplated the carnage with a smile.

“That’s it… Serves them right… What an idea… ‘Jester’s tricks’…” The men’s resistance to the bookish spell had stung Gorn to the quick.

“All done, Polina Vasilyevna!” a beast-headed warrior announced, shaking his harpoon over the fresh corpses. “There are no more saboteurs!”

“I congratulate you on your victory!” Gorn shouted and gave me a cunning wink. “Hurrah!”

The brigades didn’t sense the note of mockery and guilelessly took up the cry. They were genuinely happy and they gazed at Gorn with devotion in their eyes.

The women in padded jackets parted, allowing Gorn to step forward. She surveyed the battered army that had shrunk to twenty-five men in a day.

“Comrades,” said Gorn, “we are united by the bond of blood and the Book… What could be stronger? Nothing! Remain as one reading room… My advice… Who is your leader? All right, you’ll work that out yourselves. But now… I keep my word… Here!” She flung the Book of Memory, as if she were tossing a bone from the dinner table. The Book soared through the air, fluttering its pages, and fell. Several men threw themselves on it straight away.

Gorn spoke in a confidential whisper.

“I bet you that by evening there’ll only be half of them left… Who gives a damn? Right, Alyoshka? Let’s go into the house. We’ll have a chat, there’s something I want to talk about… Where are you going?”—that question was for the mercenaries. “Not so fast! What about cleaning up after yourselves? Get some spades… And dig graves…”

Gorn pulled her cane out of the ground. I saw that it didn’t end in a rubber tip, but in a point, like an alpenstock. The old woman swung round and strode towards the village soviet. I obediently followed her.

A fierce-looking middle-aged woman with a scorched cheek tagged on after us. Gorn called her Masha. This creature was apparently the old woman’s orderly. She was carrying a tightly stuffed travelling bag with the metal cap of a thermos flask jutting out through the parted zip.

The guards remained outside—two large female workers with hammers froze by the door. Only the orderly Masha went into the room with us. After assessing the modest decor, she immediately selected for her mistress the only chair with a high back and armrests, and solicitously placed a small cushion, as flat as a pancake, on the hard plywood seat. She set a shaggy pouffe under Gorn’s feet. Then Masha took a telescopic stand out of the bag and on the round surface set out the thermos flask, a steaming cup of an infusion with a minty smell, a small sugar bowl and a spoon.

My hammer, my armour and my helmet had been taken from me at the entrance by the guards, but even so, the vigilant Masha
searched me again. The Solingen cut-throat razor was found in the pocket of my trousers. The orderly continued the search with especial zeal, shamelessly rummaging in my crotch and between my buttocks with her tenacious fingers. After the search Masha wrapped Gorn in a rug—the old woman accepted her attentions without letting go of her handbag and rested her dangerous cane against the arm of the chair. Masha lit the stove and left.

Gorn was in no hurry to start the promised conversation. At first she stirred sugar in her drink for a long time. Suddenly she asked:

“Perhaps you’d like some tea? It’s healthy, mint…” Without waiting for my agreement, she took the cap of the thermos flask, splashed a generous amount of hot liquid into it, dropped in two lumps of sugar and stirred it. “Take it…”

The thin metal had heated up in a second. As if deliberately, Gorn had filled it with tea right up to the brim. I almost dropped the scorching hot cup, but managed to set it on the floor, scalding my palm in the process, and sat down on the low bench. The tips of my fingers swelled up in red blisters.

Gorn gave a crooked smile.

“As they say in Ukraine… If it’s hot, blow on it, you fool. Burned yourself? No? Want to ask something?”

“Yes, Polina Vasilyevna. Why wasn’t I killed?”