Sam Eastland - The Beast in the Red Forest

‘What happened?’ demanded Barabanschikov. ‘Did you commit a crime and have to leave?’

Maximov shook his head. ‘There was no crime.’

‘Problems with a woman, perhaps? A broken heart can send a man to the other end of the earth.’

Maximov smiled. ‘No broken heart.’

Barabanschikov shook his head in confusion. ‘Yet here you are. But why?’

‘I couldn’t just stand by and watch this country get destroyed,’ answered Maximov, staring at the faces which peered back at him from the shadows, their dark eyes wide with curiosity.

A murmur of approval rose from the gathered listeners.

‘Then, for as long as you wish, Maximov, you are welcome here with us,’ announced the partisan leader. ‘But first you must do what every stranger does when they come into my camp.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Empty your pockets!’

Maximov did as he was told, laying out his meagre possessions on the trampled ground.

Only one thing caught Barabanschikov’s attention. It was a little clockwork mouse, with a dented metal shell, a key sticking out of its side and three tiny wheels underneath.

Barabanschikov snapped his fingers at the toy. ‘Give me that.’

Maximov handed him the mouse.

‘You brought this from America?’

‘I did.’

‘Think of all the things you could have carried with you from America,’ Barabanschikov remarked incredulously. ‘A Colt revolver perhaps, or a Bowie knife, or a Hamilton pocket watch. But no. You have brought a clockwork mouse. What is it? A present for somebody?’

‘It is,’ admitted Maximov.

With a grunt of curiosity, Barabanschikov tried to wind it up, listening to the click of the cogs as if he were a safe cracker gauging the tumblers of the lock. But, having done this, he found that the wheels wouldn’t turn. ‘It’s broken! What kind of present is that?’ With a growl of disgust, Barabanschikov tossed the mouse over his shoulder into the dark.

‘Will that be all?’ asked Maximov.

‘Yes,’ Barabanschikov replied gruffly. ‘Now go and get some food and then we’ll find you a place where you can sleep.’

‘You are a soft touch,’ said Pekkala, after Maximov had been led away to eat.

In spite of Barabanschikov’s bluster, Pekkala had never known him to turn anyone away.

Barabanschikov’s reply to this was a long and wordless growl.

‘Perhaps this will cheer you up,’ said Pekkala as he handed over the trout he had caught that afternoon.

‘Ah!’ Barabanschikov took the fish in his outstretched hands. ‘Is there anything finer in the world?’

On the way back to his hut, which was a circular lean-to fashioned out of branches interwoven with vines, which the partisans referred to as a tchoom , Pekkala retrieved the broken clockwork mouse and put it in his pocket. The next morning, he returned the toy to Maximov.

By then, Maximov had bathed. His face was clean and he wore a different set of clothes. He took the mouse in his hand as if it was a living thing and slipped it into his pocket.

For several weeks, Maximov remained at the camp and it was during this time that Pekkala explained how he had come to be living among the Barabanschikovs. He found it easy to speak with Maximov. Even though the two men did not know each other well, the experiences they had shared in their days of service to the Tsar gave them a common outlook on the world. This strange communion with the past brought to their conversations a familiarity which would otherwise have taken years to cultivate.

‘I am only passing through,’ Pekkala explained to Maximov. ‘There is someone I must search for.’

‘Who?’ asked Maximov.

‘A woman to whom I was engaged,’ replied Pekkala. ‘She left for Paris, just before the Revolution. I was supposed to meet her there. It had all been arranged. But by the time the Tsar gave me permission to leave, the borders were already closing. I was arrested by Revolutionary Guards as I attempted to pass through into Finland. From there, they sent me to prison. And after that, the Gulag at Borodok.’

‘Does she even know you are alive?’ asked Maximov.

‘That is only one of many questions I must answer,’ replied Pekkala, ‘which is why, as soon as the snow melts, I will turn my back on Russia once and for all.’

‘Then you and I are bound in opposite directions, Inspector.’

‘It seems that way,’ agreed Pekkala.

Winter was ending. The snow began to melt. Often they were startled by the gunshot echo of ice cracking out on the lake. The time of the Rasputitsa was coming. Soon everything would turn to mud.

One morning, the camp awoke to find that Maximov had gone. There had been no warning. No goodbyes. He had simply disappeared.

Troubled by the man’s sudden departure, Pekkala tracked his movements through the half-melted snow to the edge of the lake, where Maximov’s footprints set out across the ice. There Pekkala stopped, knowing it was suicide to continue.

The surface was rotten and unstable. No one who knew anything about the conditions at this time of year would ever have set foot upon it, for fear of falling through into the freezing water beneath. And once beneath the ice, it was almost impossible to find your way back to the surface. Even if you could, it was extremely difficult to climb from the water and make your way from there to firmer ground.

Pekkala scanned the horizon, hoping for a glimpse of Maximov, but there was nothing. He knew that, even if this former soldier of the Tsar survived the crossing of the lake, the chances of him living through this war, with enemies on either side, were slim to none.

But maybe, thought Pekkala, those odds mean nothing to him.

In Siberia, Pekkala had seen men fall into a dream that blinded them to their true limitations, until both the wilderness and the freedom that lay beyond it became more symbol than reality. Out on those ragged edges of the planet, the false promise of how far a person could go upon the power of his dreams alone inevitably proved to be fatal.

Standing at the edge of that lake, Pekkala wondered whether Maximov’s dreams had led him to his death. He doubted if he’d ever know.

Returning to his cabin, Pekkala discovered Maximov’s clockwork mouse resting on a log which jutted from the wall of the hut. It had been left there as a gift.

Pekkala brought the little toy inside the hut, determined to restore it to working condition if he could. By the light of a lamp made from deer fat floating in an old tin can, with a scrap of old shoelace for a wick, he carefully removed the outer shell. It was only then that he realised why the mechanism had been jammed. Placed inside the humped back of the mouse was a diamond as large as a pea, beautifully cut into an octagon. As soon as he removed it from the toy, the tiny wheels began to buzz and spin and the key in the side of the mouse revolved, moving slower and slower, until it finally clattered to a stop. Pekkala held the diamond in his palm, tilting his hand one way and then another, studying the way each facet caught the lamplight. Then he wrapped it up in a dirty handkerchief and tucked it in his pocket.

‘The beast has come to keep me company!’ cried Barabanschikov, when he caught sight of Pekkala later that morning. The partisan leader was sitting on a tree stump beside the smouldering remains of the previous night’s fire.

Pekkala sat down beside his friend.

Barabanschikov picked up a stick and stirred it in the grey dust, turfing up embers still glowing like fragments of amber. ‘He’s gone, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ replied Pekkala.

‘And soon you, too, will be leaving on your journey to the west,’ said Barabanschikov. ‘I have not forgotten our agreement.’