Russian Hide-and-Seek

14

‘God save the Queen!’

‘Long live the gracious Queen!’

‘Hip hip hurray!’

The sitting-room with the hanging plants, with the conservatory at its further end, resounded with cheers, laughter and general loud talk. It was getting late at one of Ensign Petrovsky’s soirees in Dr Joseph Wright’s house. The vodka had long since begun to circulate and everyone was sweating in the late-summer humidity. The fattish young officer called Leo, the one with the flabby mouth, said heavily to Wright,

‘I could not see -I don’t think I saw you drinking that toast, doctor.

‘I have an early call in the morning.’

‘No doubt. I meant you deliberately and formally put your glass aside. It wasn’t just that you didn’t drink – you refrained from drinking of set purpose.

‘All right, but please don’t let’s discuss the matter.’ When the other assumed a look of theatrical puzzlement he hurried on, ‘Because I know from experience that it’s quite impossible to explain to a Russian how we feel about that. After what happened… there’s no point.’

Leo’s expression changed to theatrical surprise. ‘She poisoned herself. Is that so mysterious?’

‘Please. Please have another drink.’

‘Oh, very well,’ said Leo, all ruffled feelings now, ‘I won’t pester you any more. I just thought the more our people understand the English the better. I was only trying to be helpful.’

‘Your best way of being that is to shut up. Please.’

‘I will. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

Left blessedly alone for a moment, Wright thrust his line of thought away from him and surveyed the main group of three Russians and four Englishmen – no women; this was a serious-drinking night, not a screwing night, and that was an end of the matter. All seven faces shone with goodwill as well as drink; any number of them might be running with tears or blood before the next round was even poured, but for the moment the balance held. The three regarded the four much as the four the three, with tolerance, shallow affection, limited trust and that faint contempt likely to persist between parties of different nationalities even when long known to each other. And such were their fixed attitudes; at other times their feelings would be less whole-hearted but not essentially different. Wright could not have spoken for the Russians, nor did he particularly want to, but he was sure the English view of them would never change much. Peter Bailey, builder, hard-working, talkative, generous; Jim Hough, water engineer, not very bright, close with his money; Terry Hazel-wood, farm engineer, fattish, reliable, well dressed, knowledgeable about the local fauna; Frank Simpson, draughts-man, a great teller of stories, a great one for the women; all under forty. If the units of supervision were to be withdrawn (as one day they were presumably bound to be) in their lifetime, they would be sorry. For them, things worked well enough as they were. English is a language, thought Wright to himself; England is a place.

The person primarily responsible for the festivities had so far taken very little part in them and now sat apart looking as black as thunder. Wright went over in the hope of a chance to elicit vexation. He said as bracingly as he could,

‘You’re not looking too pleased with life, Ensign Petrovsky.’

‘It’s not life, it’s myself. I did something the other day that made me very ashamed and I can’t seem to get it out of my mind.’

‘How annoying. Perhaps telling me about it would give some relief.’

Wright had been looking forward to turning down an unexpressed invitation from Alexander to coax the story out of him, and was quite surprised when he shook his head decisively. ‘It probably would, but I’d have to tell you everything for it to mean much, and I can’t do that because there are confidences in it. Still, thank you for asking. Even these few words have helped a bit. But this is boring. How’s Kitty?’

Kitty’s part in these sessions was traditionally limited to preparing sandwiches and other cold foods beforehand. By the time the guests arrived she was not only out of the way but out of the house, to spend the night with a neighbour. So went Alexander’s own decree; he could not be responsible, he said, for what his brother-officers might get up to when drunk. Wright considered this to be eyewash. The chance of even an attempted rape, given the hefty opposition it would arouse, was surely negligible. No, what the fellow wanted to do was prevent his mates from getting so much as the most distant glimpse of his girl, not to have to use up the smallest part of his drinking-time guarding her against invitations to badminton-parties. But (Wright reflected) many young men were less confident than they usually appeared. He said,

‘Kitty’s in very good form. She sends you her love.’

‘Thank you for relaying it. Please give her mine, for what it’s worth.’

Soon afterwards Alexander said it was dull of him to sit about with a long face, poured himself a drink and joined in the singing that had started up. Wright had been on the point of thinking that for once something other than the incomplete fulfilment of his wishes was troubling the young man; now he suspended judgement. Ten minutes later, with the complete transformation of Alexander into a breezy, simple, honest Russian officer who had taken a drop too much (having more than once in the past appeared as a melancholy, troubled, bitter Russian officer who was killing himself with drink), Wright discarded his new ideas. At the sight and sound of the red sweaty faces and their stylised expressions, the arms punctiliously flung round shoulders, a boredom edged with hopelessness filled him. This was warmth, high spirits, good fellowship. What else was it? If this was not it, what was it like? Where was it to be found? Then a new song began and he felt hatred, less keenly than when Leo had proposed his toast but in the same direction.

‘And the waters as they flow

Seem to murmur soft and low,

“You’re my heart’s desire, I love you…”’

Somehow or other the evening was brought to an end without anybody actually punching anybody or being sick or falling down, though Victor said he needed physical support to get him to and into the transport. This, one of the eight motor-vehicles possessed by the regiment, was the ‘B’ Squadron stand-by waggon, a 500-kilogram Borzoi truck. It was of course forbidden under the direst penalties to remove it from quarters except on Major Yakir’s personal order but, since its use was just as strictly confined to emergencies and there never were any emergencies, it was in practice removed quite often. Victor was shoved into the back along with Dmitri, the fourth member of the party, Leo went behind the wheel and Alexander sat next to him. When it started up, the engine sounded very loud. Pinking horribly on the inferior fuel, the waggon lurched down into the village high street, past the grocer, the barber, the saddler, the dozens of houses. All were in darkness, as was the street itself; only the central parts of the larger towns were lit. Holding to the centre of the carriageway, Leo increased speed.

‘That was a splendid party,’ said Victor’s voice from behind.

Leo made a scornful noise. ‘How would you know? You’re too drunk to remember it.’

‘That’s how I know it was splendid – great bits of it are missing already. That shows I must have had enough vodka. Did we sing?’

‘Why do you get so drunk?’ said Dmitri.

‘What else is there to be’?’

‘For you, not very much, perhaps,’ said Leo.

‘Well, tonight at least it was a very sensible thing to be. That’s what we went there for, isn’t it? We went there to get drunk, not to talk or sing. Did we sing? Anyway, if we did it was in course of getting drunk, not for its own sake. I can’t think why you went there, unless it was to sneer at the English.’

‘The alternative was sitting in the mess with George and the major.’

‘You’d have missed a marvellous party if you’d done that. Do you know how I know it was marvellous? Because already I can’t remember much about the later bits. Did we sing?’

‘We sang,’ said Dmitri. ‘Now shut up and go to sleep. The Borzoi followed its headlights along stretches of straight road, round wide curves, up and down gentle slopes. Now and then Alexander was visited by the illusion that, instead of the car following the road, the road moved about to suit the car, that it was wherever the car went. He had had the same fancy a couple of times before, he remembered, but only when very tired. Was he very tired now? Certainly he had not slept well the last night or two, whether because thoughts of Mrs Korotchenko had actually kept him awake he had no way of knowing, but he had thought the thoughts all right. Some of them had been fruitless self-questionings about why he found them so disagreeable, even what precisely he found them. He shut his eyes now and tried to imagine he was riding Polly.

He was just beginning to doze when he was jolted back into wakefulness by a momentary uncharacteristic movement of the car. ‘What was that?’

‘I think we hit something,’ said Leo, driving on as before. ‘There was nothing to see.

‘We’d better stop. Go back, in fact.’

‘Why, for Jesus’ sake?’

‘Because our number-plates are illuminated. Have you forgotten what happened to that corporal in 3 Troop who knocked a child down and didn’t report it? And he was riding his horse and carrying out an officer’s order.’

‘I agree with him,’ said Dmitri.

‘Fuck all,’ said Leo violently, and trod on the brake. Some minutes later Alexander said, ‘Here. Just at the start of the bend. It was on my side, wasn’t it?’

‘There’s nothing there,’ said Leo.

‘Wait.’

Taking the torch from its clip under the dashboard,

Alexander got out, walked across the road and at once saw a roughly circular pool of blood a dozen centimetres in diameter. A trail of button-sized drops led into the verge, where it virtually disappeared among the grass, so that even if he had wanted to he would not have been able to follow it. Without thought he raised his head and listened, and at the same moment, as if in response, Leo switched off the engine. In the huge stillness and darkness Alexander heard a cry, very faint or distant. He could not identify it, but then, as he realised, he could not have done so if it had come from five metres off. It was not repeated. He went back to the car.

‘You were quite right,’ he told Leo. ‘There’s nothing there.’

The rest of the journey back to quarters passed in complete silence. The presence of a light in the squadron ante-room turned out to indicate that Boris the commissary, unusually for him, was neither working nor sleeping but instead drinking a glass of beer and glancing through an out-of-date newspaper. He had unfastened his collar to be comfortable and on the entry of the others went hastily to hook it up again before deciding that it was best left as it was. Smiling and nodding his head to them, he got to his feet.

‘What on earth are you doing here, Boris?’ asked Leo. ‘At this time.’

‘He’s been bringing the accounts up to date, haven’t you, Boris?’ said Victor.

‘He might tell us if we give him a chance,’ said Dmitri.

Boris gave an amused laugh. ‘I can’t see what you fellows find so extraordinary. There’s an audit next week and naturally I need to clear my desk. George was playing billiards at the regiment and the major wanted an early night. So I worked late and dropped in for a final beer. Is that so strange?’

‘Not a bit, Boris, not a bit,’ said Leo. ‘You make it sound as natural as breathing.’

There was a short pause. Then Boris said, ‘I suppose you four have been out raising hell somewhere.’

‘We had a tremendous party,’ said Victor. ‘Really tremendous. I think there was singing but I can’t remember for certain. That’s how I know it was a tremendous party. And now what I need is another drink.’

‘Not long ago you were going on about having had enough,’ said Leo.

‘Was I? Well, that was not long ago, you see. Not long ago isn’t the same thing. As now. What I need now is another drink. Where’s that confounded Ochotnitscha?’ Victor began to root clumsily in a cupboard behind the little bar. ‘That thieving peasant of a mess waiter must have taken it to bed with him. Oh, I beg his pardon.’ He poured himself a drink and held up the bottle. ‘Anybody else? You are a miserable lot. I say, Alexander, would you mind signing the chit? I’ll give you the cash in the morning.’

‘Well, gentlemen,’ said Leo loudly, ‘there’s obviously only one way for men of spirit to round off the evening, eh, Victor?’

‘A morsel of Russian hide-and-seek?’

‘Correct. Who’ll join us? Dmitri? Alexander?’

Dmitri agreed; Alexander declined. They all knew him here, had what was by now a settled view of his attributes. And the presence of even the highest grade of visitor (that most worth impressing, in other words) would hardly have got him out into the dark to be shot at. Appearing reckless was one thing, being it very much another. The other three were about to fetch their weapons from upstairs when Boris said indignantly,

‘Isn’t anyone going to ask me?’

‘I’m sorry, Boris,’ said Leo, sounding quite unrepentant, ‘but I’ve rather got out of the habit of thinking of you in this connection.’

‘I’m not a man of spirit, is that it?’

Swaying slightly, Victor patted Boris on the shoulder. ‘You’ve got lots of other very fine qualities, old chap.’

‘I’ll show you who’s a man of spirit,’ said Boris, who had flushed deeply. ‘Can any of you lend me a revolver?’

‘Don’t go, Boris,’ said Alexander; ‘don’t be a fool.’

‘Kindly be quiet, young man, this is no affair of yours. -Yes, Boris, I can and gladly will supply your requirement. We’ll be down directly.’

As soon as they were alone, Alexander said with real urgency, ‘Change your mind. You can still get out of it. Who cares what they think, those idiots?’

‘I do. I can’t get out of it without tremendous loss of face.’

‘Better lose face than… All right, but now listen. The only reason that lot are still alive is that they all break the rules. Listen, Boris. You’re supposed not to move after you’ve called out. But you must. Move like hell. Run, call out and keep going. Or dodge into cover. Have you got that? If you stand still you’ll die.’

‘Don’t worry, Alexander, I can take care of myself.’

‘I’m not sure you can, not in a thing like this.’

‘Whereas I’m absolutely invulnerable when it comes to wielding a pen. Thank you very much.’

‘Oh, merciful Heaven, I wasn’t-’

‘I’m only joking. Keep on the move, I got that. Now don’t worry. Honestly, I promise you I’ll be quite all right.’

‘See you stick to that.’

When his four brother-officers had gone off together, Alexander stood listening till they were out of earshot. Then he strolled to the bar, poured himself a vodka and downed it in one (he had not drunk as much as he had affected to at Wright’s), poured another, took a cigarette from the imitation-sandalwood box on the counter and lit it from the large metamatch that also stood there. After marking up the chit he had signed a little earlier he settled down to wait in a chair by the window. The lights on the ante-room dial showed twenty-two minutes past midnight; not really late at all, and he felt wide awake now, just incredibly tired. He reached across for the newspaper Boris had laid aside.

All at once terrible screams began to be heard, coming from a point some hundreds of metres away but evidently so loud at their source that none of their overtones was impaired by the distance. No identification was possible; indeed, no one could have told by the sound alone whether they came from a man or a woman or even a large animal. They had a grinding, perhaps a tearing quality, as if the throat that uttered them would soon have destroyed itself.

Within five seconds Alexander was out of the ante-room door and running at top speed down a grassy slope in the eventual direction of the lodge. The screams continued unabated but other voices were being raised too, murmurs and shouts of inquiry, puzzlement, horror. The sky was clear and there was a quarter moon, and this was quickly supplemented by lights being turned on in buildings and by the beams of torches. Figures in ones and twos were converging on what, as Alexander drew nearer, he saw to be one of the pillared structures of which there were several in the park and in another of which, weeks ago now, Theodore and he had sat and plotted. He caught a glimpse of a shallow flight of stone steps and a grey-uniformed man lying on them, but by the time he was ten metres off his view was blocked by dozens of excited soldiers, many of them half-naked in the heat. Somebody was shouting and shoving at them from the far side, trying to keep them off: Victor. Beyond him the man on the steps, still screaming, was being lifted into a carrying position by two others. The nearer of these looked up and saw Alexander as soon as he broke through the chattering circle.

‘It’s Leo,’ said Boris. He had to speak at the top of his voice. ‘But Boris, I was sure it was you,’ said Alexander, though no one could have heard him. Someone who had might have thought he sounded disappointed.

‘Get back there, you pigs.’ Victor was striking out with his fists. He appeared perfectly sober. ‘Sergeant, move these men along. Let’s have a little discipline. – Alexander,’ he called, catching sight of him, ‘fetch Major Yakir.’

Major Yakir, as it proved, was already on his way, in shirt, undress trousers and slippers, hatless, hurrying down the slope on his short legs.

‘Well?’

‘Leo’s been shot, sir.’

‘Shot? By whom?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘How bad is it?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

Officers and NCOs had begun to drive the protesting troopers back to their quarters. Leo’s screams came now from the small one-storeyed building next to the place where he had been struck, a store-house full of tents, flags and festive decorations. He lay writhing about on a roll of bunting, not perhaps much better off than where he had been before. A blanket, already soaked with blood, had been thrown over him and a grimy pillow put under his head. He seemed altogether unaware of the others’ presence and indeed of anything in his surroundings. Regularly, he drew in his breath with a lugubrious moaning noise and let it out again at what must have been the loudest pitch of which he was capable. Now and then he put his hands over his mouth and muffled his cries somewhat, but each time after a few seconds moved them down again and pressed them against his middle; the lower part of his face was smeared with blood he had brought there from his wound. During one of these intervals Major Yakir drew back the blanket. From a point just below the breast-bone to the lower part of the belly the front of the light-grey uniform was soaked with blood – with other fluids too, Alexander was to say when he told the story. Blood was still flowing – Alexander could see it flowing – out of a hole in the material. The major restored the blanket, moved to a point where Leo could not have seen him without altering his whole position, and beckoned and then held out his hand to Victor; without delay Victor put his revolver in it. After the briefest of glances the major held the revolver a few centimetres from the top of Leo’s head and fired. There were two sounds, one a kind of percussive sigh, the other that of the smashing of bone, and Leo just stopped.

Major Yakir’s rather fine dark-brown eyes were usually most expressive, but at the moment they offered no clue to what he was feeling or thinking. He gave Victor his revolver back; he pulled the blanket up over Leo’s face. Then he went to the intercom that stood on a packing-case in the corner and made three short calls. Finally he gave the other three a look that was also an order and led the way out of the room. He had said nothing to them, nor they anything to him, since entering it.

There was no great flood of talk back in the ante-room either. It was soon clear that the major would not be the one to start. Boris looked too stunned to speak, Dmitri (curly-haired, smooth-cheeked) too frightened. Victor’s head was bowed so that his face could not be seen. Alexander said in a shaky voice,

‘Those screams. Think of the pain he must have been suffering.’

‘He was in pain all right,’ said the major, his voice and manner perfectly prosaic, ‘but that wasn’t why he was screaming. If it had just been the pain he’d have been moaning, not screaming. No, he knew exactly what had hit him and where and what that would mean. He was screaming with fear.’

‘But that’s no better.’

‘No,’ agreed the major, and added curtly, ‘come on, one of you.’

Still not looking up, Victor said, ‘Leo suggested it – the others will confirm that. He always did.’

‘Always?’

‘Yes, sir. We’ve played this… we’ve done this I suppose twenty times.’

‘This being…?’

‘We take it in turns to call out and be shot at by the others. They fire at the voice. Leo invented it.’

The major laughed through his nose. ‘It’s a hundred and fifty years old at least, in our army anyway. Have any of you any idea whose bullet hit him?’

No one had. Alexander, who had been included in the question, said with great meekness,

‘It couldn’t have been mine, sir, because I took no part. I was in here. The others will-’

‘Why didn’t you inform me of what was going on, tonight or on a previous occasion?’

‘I was on my honour to say nothing.’

‘Military necessity take precedence over private arrangement, as you know. However. Your powers of recall are deficient, like the others’. It must be the shock of losing your friend. Allow me to run over what has really taken place in the last half-hour. The victim had been drinking to excess and had become boastful and offensive. He laid claim to courage; the rest of you were spineless, cowardly, not men at all. That was his contention. You would not dare, he said, to undergo mortal danger voluntarily, for instance by submitting to being shot at in the course of a mere game, as it might be then and there in the park. In vain the four of you pointed out the illicit nature and indeed the foolishness of such a course of action; he would not desist from his taunts. At last, stung by the continuing assaults on your integrity, you took a collective decision you now bitterly regret and strongly deprecate but which you believe your judges will comprehend, each of you vowing to aim wide and to end matters after the first round. The victim had behaved aggressively before but never to anything approaching the same effect. You will throw yourselves upon the mercy of the court. Are there any questions?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Alexander. ‘You mentioned the four of us as having taken part in this affray.’

‘Well?’

‘Well… my revolver hasn’t been fired, sir. The investigators-’

‘Fire it. Anything else? So. Even stupid troops conduct themselves better when told something of the reasons for their orders. The amended version of these improper events, then, is likely to bring you less displeasure from authority than the tale I heard earlier, but be advised that that in itself interests me not at all. If my officers were seen to be at such a low level of training, morale and esprit de corps as to risk their lives habitually in a fatuous prank, or to think that a thing like that is too ordinary to be worth mentioning,’ – here Major Yakir stared grimly at Alexander – ‘I should rightly be charged with unfitness to be their leader. This I naturally mean to avoid. Good night, gentlemen. I hope by all the saints I never have to command you in war.’