Russian Hide-and-Seek

20

The land was darkening under a sky that, though covered with a yellowish haze, still seemed bright. The buildings, the trees and bushes were drained of colour, differing only in their tones of what was no longer green, grey or brown; a patch of vague shadow surrounded each of them. Little tremors, too brief and shifting to be called breezes, stirred in the air and made the parched leaves rustle, but it was still intolerably hot and humid. At the horizon the thunder muttered and rolled, like an artillery barrage in a kind of war nobody remembered or would have taken the least interest in. For fractions of a second at a time, pale flashes showed there. So much vapour hung in the atmosphere that human voices out of doors sounded hollow, as if contained by more solid barriers. A sweetish, sickly odour drifted about, derived from hot grass bruised by the feet of men and animals, fallen flower-petals and some spice used in cooking, at one moment teasingly elusive, at the next almost too strong to bear. Minute seeds, singly or in clusters of four or five, floated to and fro, swinging abruptly aside as the currents caught them.

To Trooper Lomov, walking briskly up the gentle slope towards the main house in the park where his regiment was quartered, it all had an unreal quality, though it would not have occurred to him to describe it in any such way. The rough material of his collar, damp with sweat, chafed at his skin and the horses’ harness jingled and creaked. All five of them were shaking their heads and lashing their tails against the small brightly-coloured insects that darted about them. Lomov’s pack-horse whinnied sharply at no perceptible stimulus and he reached across and stroked the animal’s forehead. Nobody spoke.

The party reached a level space about the size of a tennis-court near the corner of the house. Here, in some degree hidden from view by a rough line of straggling laurels, they halted. Lomov stayed with the horses while the other two went into the house by a side entrance.

With Corporal Lyubimov at his side, Alexander reached the hall, the basement door and the sentry and Security NCO, the latter a dumpy Muscovite with stupid, calculating brown eyes. Good, thought Alexander, watching the man’s parade of conscientiousness in checking the photograph on the proffered identity-card against its owner’s appearance, with which he was perfectly familiar. Miming satisfaction for all he was worth, he waited for the next move, the handing-over of some document of authorisation. When this failed to follow, his expression became first puzzled, then worried. Alexander waited ten seconds, then said briskly but pleasantly,

‘Open up, please.’

Now the sergeant’s expression was one of acute discomfort. ‘Sir, with the most profound respect, your honour, my standing instructions are not to let anyone past that door who hasn’t produced-’

‘My mission takes priority over that regulation,’ said Alexander as before. ‘Temporary removal of stores for the purpose of emergency training. In a real emergency there would almost certainly be no written orders. I had mine directly from the commanding officer, by word of mouth. Now.’

The sergeant had been slowly and wretchedly shaking his head. ‘I just daren’t risk it, your grace,’ he said hoarsely.

Alexander was prepared for this. He stared grimly at the man with his eyes dilated; he had practised this many a time in front of a mirror and knew it made him look alarming, even a little mad. Without averting his gaze he picked up the handset of the intercom on the table between them and stabbed his finger in the direction of the row of call-buttons. Then he waited.

‘Valentine, it’s Alexander. Is the Colonel still there?’ He looked fixedly at the ceiling fifteen metres above them while he listened, or appeared to listen. After half a minute he spoke a single word of thanks, hung up, glanced at his wrist-dial and stared at the sergeant again, this time with the corners of his mouth slightly down-turned. Another pause followed. At last he said, in a heavy, dismal tone, ‘Two hours. They think,’ and slowly put his hands on his hips. ‘What do you suppose will happen to you then?’

If the sergeant had been brighter, if Alexander had done the expected and raved at him, if he could have counted on his own officer to support him, if anything to justify the security procedures, anything in the least out of the way had ever happened to him or even been heard of since before he was born, above all perhaps if he had been trained as thoroughly to insist on the strictest observance of standing orders in all circumstances as he had been trained to do what officers told him to do, he might have held out. As it was, he hesitated for only a moment or two before saying,

‘Very well, your honour – about turn, if you please. You too, corporal.’

So at least the intruders never learned the secret combination they now had no need of.

A quarter of an hour later they were trundling a loaded handcart back the way they had come. These eighty metres or so were the most dangerous of all their journey: their cargo was covered with a waterproof sheet, but a cart meant stores, and hereabouts they could only have been security stores, and security stores on the move were seen rarely enough and never without a heavy escort. One piece of inquisitiveness would have been too much, but there was none; they emerged safely into the gloomy daylight and made their way towards the horses, the metal wheels clattering over the grassy irregularities in the ground.

As they approached, Lomov peered at them and past them under lowered brows, blinking. ‘Sir, who was that with you just now, as you came out?’

‘With us? With me?’

‘With you, sir. That man.’

‘What man?’

‘After a few paces he turned round and went back into the house. I saw him.’

Lyubimov started to speak but Alexander shushed him. ‘What did he look like, Lomov? Was he one of us?’

‘No, sir. He was… He was a civilian.’

‘What else? How was he dressed? Was he an English servant? A gardener?’

‘He was a civilian, your honour. I only saw him for a moment.’

‘You saw nothing, you stupid rookie,’ said Lyubimov with good-natured contempt. ‘Where have you hidden the bottle?’

Lomov was still looking rather oddly at Alexander. ‘Are you all right, sir? Are you well?’

‘Fuck your mother!’ snarled Alexander, his considerate, protective manner vanished. ‘Don’t try and play games with me, you son of a whore, or I’ll break your back. Now shut your mouth and get this stuff loaded.’

It was soon done, a projectile-launcher and its mounting on the near side of each pack-saddle, the projectiles themselves with their red-painted nose-cones in bandoliers on the off. With Polly already ridden hard that day, Alexander had taken his orderly’s horse, in effect his own second mount, a big stallion (black, needless to say) with nothing of the mare’s kind temperament, but he was a good straight mover and had plenty of heart. Earlier, there had been an emotional farewell to Polly at the troop lines; not that Alexander had any settled expectation of not seeing her again, or of anything else, but one never knew, and it sounded good.

Down to the main gate they moved in file: Alexander, Lyubimov, Lomov. Little Lomov was possessed by excitement, also by fear, beyond that by a deeper, more unreasoning fear, by dread. Even considering the state of the light, he had been able to make out remarkably little about whoever it was had walked those half-dozen metres out of the house and then back again. He had had a brief impression of extreme thinness and a great many teeth. Perhaps the other two had failed to notice the stranger because he had not in fact drawn level with them, had followed them to tell them or ask them something, thought better of it and removed himself. Perhaps. Lomov tried to forget it.

Thunder, much nearer now, crackled round the sky behind them. They were going to get soaked to the skin very soon, he thought to himself; the light cape each man carried attached to the rear of his saddle would be poor protection against the kind of downpour that impended. As he glanced about him at the grazing horses, the hurrying or strolling groups of men and the assortment of buildings that housed them, he could not believe he was about to leave the place that was all he had known of home for the past three years, very likely never to return. No doubt that disbelief was the cause of his almost total lack of regret at the prospect. Or it might have been the excitement. That seemed real enough. He was riding off on an operation that had been only sketchily described to him, and even parts of that description he found obscure. Other parts, however, had been quite plain, plain enough to justify moderate fear in anyone of moderate prudence, and Lomov easily fitted into that class. On the other hand, he felt that until a moment ago the whole of his life (he was twenty-three) had been spent passing time, getting through the day, waiting for something to start. Well, something had started now. If he had felt any differently, he would not have been where he was at this moment. How Lyubimov felt was another matter altogether. He was unpredictable. A good soldier, Lyubimov, a good NCO and a good friend, but inclined to be unpredictable. Impulsive, too.

They clattered through the gateway, across the road and on to the broad verge, riding east. Alexander ordered a trot. Just afterwards, thunder came from almost overhead and with the utmost abruptness; the noise was like the ripping of an enormous sheet of canvas. All the horses started violently and Lyubimov’s pack-horse reared for a second or two; not having the reassuring presence of a man on his back, he could hardly be blamed. Still no rain fell, though the light was getting worse all the time. They had rounded a bend and gone about a kilometre when Alexander swung his right arm in an over-arm bowling motion – ‘Follow me’; a spoken order would not have been heard for the thunder, now continual. He put his horse into a gallop and easily cleared the low fence into a large field of pasture. As soon as the others had completed the jump he gave the signal to halt, then the one to dismount. Leading his horse he walked over to Lyubimov. For what was to follow, words would be preferable if they could be heard at all.

‘Put up One!’ he shouted.

‘Put up One, sir.’ Lyubimov turned away to his pack-saddle.

‘Direction west six!’

This time there was no acknowledgement.

‘Direction west six, you pig!’

Turning his head so that he spoke half over his shoulder, Lyubimov bawled, ‘The regiment’s thereabouts, sir. Is that the target?’

Most of the reply was drowned in thunder, but its drift was clear: the order was to be obeyed and no questions asked. There was a short pause. Lightning flashed ceaselessly over the surrounding fields. Then Lyubimov swung round holding his pistol pointed at Alexander’s middle. Next he depressed a stud in front of the trigger-guard, thus switching from single-shot fire to automatic and by the action threatening not to kill or maim but to rend apart; Alexander understood that well enough. Finally Lyubimov shouted,

‘I’m sorry, sir, but I won’t do it, and I won’t let you do it either. Are you with me, Lomov?’

‘Yes!’

‘Do as you’re told!’ screamed Alexander.

‘I’m sorry, your honour. We’ll blow up Vanag and his men for you and welcome, but we won’t see our own lads harmed. Make up your mind to that.’

Alexander raved for nearly five minutes. His main theme was that the two were behaving in this way, not out of comradeship or humanitarianism, but as an expression of the envy and malice which vile creatures like them must naturally feel for anyone of his exalted state. Much of his tirade could not be heard, and much of what could be heard was unintelligible to Lomov, who even so decided that some turns of phrase would not have been disowned by the regimental farrier-major. He felt embarrassment too, and at one point acute alarm, when it seemed that the officer would strike the corporal and be blown in half for his pains (there were limits to Lyubimov’s unpredictability). But the moment passed.

Suddenly it was all over, and Lomov found himself looking at the back view of a man on a horse moving away from him at full gallop.

‘Come on!’ yelled Lyubimov. ‘There’s no knowing what he might get up to in that state.’

It had sounded rather like an excuse, but Lomov ran for his mount as fast as he could.

Now, as the early-autumn evening closed in, a long chase began. One after the other Lyubimov and Lomov jumped the fence into the next field, and the next, and the next, then into a lane which they crossed into a patch of thin woodland. The thunder receded, returned and once more receded without bringing a drop of rain. In his grey uniform and on his black horse, Alexander was not an easy figure to spot among the shadows, and twice they almost lost him in the woods, but he had not had much more than a hundred metres’ start and the more intensive training of his men had made it possible for them to narrow the gap. On the flat, things were more equal; even so, when the woods were behind them and they entered on a wide expanse of level grass with patches of scrub, the pursuers had the advantage of being able to traverse the chord of any arc traced by the pursued. Here Lyubimov gained slightly on Lomov. Strands of lightning came into view and were gone so fast that the reactions of the retina could not keep pace and vision became fogged.

It may have been this impairment which prevented Lomov from seeing the man on the grey horse until he was almost level with him. The horse was grey only in the language of horsemen; other people would have called it white, or rather not exactly white, nor any shade of grey; there was no naming its colour satisfactorily. Lomov thought he had never seen a horse stand so still. Its rider, a tall man in black, wore a hat that shaded his face, though his posture indicated that he was watching the chase, more particularly the one being chased, with intense interest. He did not return Lomov’s wave.

The going became less even. A boy and a dog were moving a flock of sheep with predictable difficulty; the thunder had returned for the second time. Soon a road came up on the right. The three men and five horses, by now almost a single party again, tore along it at top speed until they reached a small church standing back from it. Here Alexander reined in cruelly hard, causing his mount to stagger, and proceeded to dismount. Lyubimov did the same, then Lomov.

‘Are we to consider ourselves back under your command, sir?’ asked Lyubimov.

‘You can consider yourselves what you please.’ The strenuous ride had done nothing to cool Alexander’s rage; he was still moving his lips about and glaring. When he went on he tried to control the way he spoke. ‘I have an errand here that will take two minutes. If you decide to come with me after that I can hardly stop you.’

‘Where are we, sir?’ asked Lomov curiously. ‘What’s in the church?’

A short man in a dark suit had been standing near the church door, as if waiting for someone, when they first rode up. He had not looked at them then. Now, whether at Lomov’s question or by chance, he turned his head. Alexander saw the face of a man of fifty, rather heavy in the jowl and baggy under the eyes, with an expression of mild curiosity, nothing more, not the slightest hint of menace. But Lomov screamed.

Alexander turned on him savagely. ‘What is the matter with you, you dolt, you imbecile? What did you see this time, you madman, Hitler’s ghost?’

‘I didn’t see it, your honour. I didn’t see anything.’

‘Of course you didn’t,’ said Lyubimov gently. ‘We all know that. You just thought you saw something, that’s all.’

‘Yes, I made a mistake. I… made a mistake.’

‘Of course you did, but saying so once is enough.’

‘Forgive me.’

With a great effort, Lomov unclenched his hands and straightened up to his full small height. No good would come of trying to puzzle out what he had seen or could not have seen in the last hour; the images, never clear, had already started to fade, and whatever was to come, he felt sure, would call for all his attention and capability. Sighing deeply and swallowing, he took off his cap, smoothed his hair and put the cap back on. His officer was just going on foot round the corner of the church. The man in the dark suit was nowhere to be seen. For the time being the skies were quiet and had even grown a little lighter over to the west. After a careful look at his companion, Lyubimov said,

‘I could do with a beer, I don’t mind telling you. Still, I can use up some of the time making room for it, can’t I?’

He handed Lomov the reins of the three riding-horses, went into the churchyard and set about urinating; it was against regulations to do so in the open Street.

‘Lyubimov, what is this place?’

‘Search me. No, wait a bit, it’s probably his dad’s house behind this, if we’re anywhere near where I think we are. You know he’s a big noise in the government side of things round here.’

‘Of course,’ said Lomov thoughtfully. ‘I expect he’s got a-’

Afterwards he always swore he actually heard the great bare pillar of lightning come into being over and beyond the church, but varied on whether it did so with a click or a fizz. At the time he shut his eyes automatically and after no apparent interval flinched at the tremendous detonation that seemed to reach right down to him and be everywhere about him. Neighing loudly, the horses stamped and plunged and pulled him from side to side. Lyubimov, doing up his trousers, hurried over to help.

‘That was close,’ he said.

It had been closer still for Alexander. who had just passed the miniature temple when, with stupefying suddenness, the flash touched the lightning-conductor system of the house. Enormous sparks flew outwards and the air shifted and shook and tossed him to the ground. His fall, on to a patch of coarse grass, left him undamaged, but he lay there for a couple of minutes in a torpor, shocked and half-blinded, deafened too for the moment, inhaling the pungent refreshing odour of ozone. At last he got laboriously to his feet.

The lights were on in the drawing-room, but the curtains had been pulled and in any case the windows were too high off the ground for him to see inside. This business must be finished with as soon as possible; even as it was he had underestimated times and would be late at the rendezvous with Theodore and the others. If they came. As quietly as he could without loitering, he mounted the steps, went indoors and reached the little lobby. With his eyes on the engraved pane he wondered, not for the first time, how that other Alexander would have regarded the enterprise that this one was about to take in hand, and at once saw quite clearly, so clearly that he could not understand never having so much as glimpsed it before, that all his feelings in this matter were fabrications, that he and the dead Englishman were separated not only by time but also by another barrier just as impenetrable, a mental one, a moral one, and that their shared name was the product of a dreary, puny coincidence. How could he have supposed anything else?

Sergei Petrovsky sat in his high-backed Karelian armchair, looking very elegant in West of England tweed trousers, yellow cashmere sweater and light-green suede boots. He was feeling rather lowered in spirits, having that morning received from London the official redraft of his proposals for the reform of land tenure in the district. The first eight clauses, outlining the new system of labourers’ co-operatives, the structure of these, their degree of autonomy, the procedure whereby their applications for possession were to be drawn up and considered by authority – all these items followed the very wording of his original memorandum. Clause 9, however, sanctioning the transfer of the specified properties to duly qualified claimants, was missing in its entirety. In other language, the English were entitled to ask for land but not to be given it. Those proposals of his had been toned down all right. Well, he tried to tell himself, it was a start. And it was certainly not the chief of his worries.

When Alexander came briskly into the room and shut the door behind him, he jumped to his feet with a delighted smile. ‘Alexander, my dear…’ Then his whole bearing changed and he said in the grimmest tone, ‘So it’s today, not Sunday, eh?’

‘Not Sunday?’

‘Don’t trifle with me, Alexander. I know. I haven’t really had time to take it in yet, but I know. How much I know doesn’t matter at this stage.’

‘You’ve got it wrong as usual, father. How much you know might matter a great deal to me, though admittedly I shan’t have time to test your knowledge.’

‘Well, I know enough, that’s the point. Not everything, of course. But THEY do. Need I say whom I’m referring to? They know everything. Everything and everybody.’

‘Not true. I proved the contrary less than an hour ago. A somewhat major particular has escaped them.’

‘Believe me,’ said Petrovsky earnestly, ‘they know every name, every move, every item on the time-table, every-’

‘Wrong again. I’ve changed the time-table. And why should I believe you, of all people? I never have in the past, and I can’t think how many mistakes it’s saved me from making. And you’re begging for your life now, so naturally you’d lie. Who wouldn’t?’

‘I’ll never beg, from you or anybody else,’ said Petrovsky firmly. ‘I just want you to know your cause is lost.’

‘Why? Why do you want me to realise that? Because it might save your life. And what if my cause is lost? I’ve never thought it was anything else, right from the beginning. With any luck, I’ll be able to achieve my object, do what I’ve always wanted to do as long as I can remember, the only thing I’ve ever really wanted. And that’s merely to inflict some damage, to smash something. To register a protest. Oh, the world will never change, but in a short time from now it’ll have evidence that at least one of its inhabitants hates it, hates it for its complacency, its ignorance, its lack of love, its selfishness, its sentimentality, its lack of any guiding principle, its callousness, its superficiality, its philistinism, its illiteracy…’

Alexander, whose voice had risen, could think of no further grounds on which somebody might hate the world, and time was passing, so he took his pistol out of its holster. The sight of this weapon, with its long butt-magazine, daunted his father extremely; perhaps until now he had not started to believe that he might be going to lose his life. His voice had lost nearly all its firmness when he said,

‘Not one of those bursts, please. At this range, one shot ought to be…’

‘We mustn’t inconvenience the servants. A liberal to the last. No, don’t yell for help, or you get a burst in the stomach straight away.

‘I swear to you… I don’t know what you’ve done in the past hour, but believe me it’s allowed for, it can’t make any difference.’

‘I don’t mind taking the gamble.’

‘Alexander, if you surrender now, lay down your arms and give yourself up, the civilian police would do, it needn’t be Vanag’s men…

‘Oh, so we’re doing deals, are we?’

‘I’ll never bargain with you. This is all so absurd. You and I should be on the same side. Why didn’t you approach me, why didn’t you try to recruit me?’

‘You weren’t worth having. As is now plain.’.

That seemed to go unheard. ‘It’s not too late. Let me join you now. I could be very valuable to you. There are all sorts of-’

‘You know, at first I wasn’t sure I could do this, but a touch of your style works wonders. Time well spent. Good-bye, Controller Petrovsky.’

Alexander’s glance had become remote when he pointed the pistol. There had been no more thunder since the mighty peal and everything was quiet. The Controller fell to his knees and lifted his clasped hands, saying loudly,

‘You can’t do it! Your own father! Who gave you life! You must be raving mad! You’ll never forgive yourself! What good will it do? They’ll shoot you for it! You can tell them you couldn’t find me!’ Petrovsky in his turn was running out of things to say, but he battled on. ‘Think of… think of your mother! Think what it would mean to her! To have her son murder her husband in cold blood! You may hate me, though I can’t think why, I’ve always done my best for you, but she in her goodness and…’

Suddenly Alexander remembered Leo writhing and screaming with pain and fear on the roll of bunting in the store-house that night. He had no intention of giving his father cause to behave in any such way, but the memory was so vivid and distracting that he had begun to wander from his aim when the door burst open to reveal Lomov. Before Alexander could finish turning and raising his pistol at him Lomov shot him through the temple – a single shot. He was dead at once, though the impact of the small low-velocity bullet was slight and it took a moment for his body to finish falling on to the tiger-skin rug that had come from the shore of the Aral Sea.

Cautiously, Lomov advanced into the room, keeping his pistol trained on Alexander until he was sure he was dead. Then he burst into tears.

‘Who are you?’ said Petrovsky, getting shakily to his feet.

‘He was my officer,’ Lomov managed to say.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘He brought us. He told us… Forgive me, your honour.’

Petrovsky put his arm round Lomov’s shoulders. ‘Don’t cry, my boy,’ he said kindly. ‘You did what had to be done. You saved the regiment’s honour. Colonel Tabidze will be proud of you. You’re an excellent soldier, quick-thinking and efficient.’

From somewhere very far away Lomov heard the deep note of a bell, but he was too distracted to take any notice. He dried his tears.

By then, others had come to the room, including the butler Anatol, the batman Brevda, Nina, Tatiana, Lyubimov. There was much talk and sound of lamentation. Anatol looked utterly bewildered, Brevda utterly discomposed. Nina went into a corner by herself. Tatiana knelt down and looked into Alexander’s face; someone had already closed his eyes and the wound was not so terrible. Lyubimov talked quietly to Lomov.

After a minute, Petrovsky drew his wife aside, sending her a look of diffident appeal.

‘What is it, Sergei?’

‘Don’t say…’ He stopped.

‘Say what? Why should it make any difference what I say now, rather than at any other time?’

When he made no reply, she turned away and went to Nina.

At last it began to rain.