Alan Furst: Night Soldiers

“The murder was their alternative, a second scheme to try in case their first one failed.”

Khristo squinted with concentration. The world Antipin was describing seemed obscure and alien, a place to be explained by an astrologer or a magician. Violence he knew, but this was a spider web.

“You see,” he continued, “they meant for all of us to die in that house. An accident, they would say. Those pigs were swilling brandy and some lout knocked over an oil lamp and whoosh, there it went and too bad. But you see, Khristo Nicolaievich, I repeat only their words. And words may be spoken in different ways. Their fine faces would tell a much different story. The wink, the sly look, the flick of a finger that chases a fly, would give those words quite another meaning. We burnt them up , they would say, with pride in their eyes. That’s how it is, boys. We take care of our own problems around here. We don’t go crying to the politsiya . We see something wrong-we go ahead and fix it.”

Khristo nodded silently. Veiko, the others, were like that.

“So, you can see how it works? They had the policeman ready in case we got out of the house. Sent him down to arrest me. Knew very well he was too stupid to manage it. A simple provocation. Right?”

“Right.”

“You are a thinker, that I can tell. You turn the world over in your mind to see if it is truly round.”

Khristo was both flattered and a little uncomfortable to be addressed in this way. One didn’t hear compliments. He took a drag at his cigarette, feeling very much the man. There was something so admirable about Antipin. The local toughs were blowhards, dangerous only in a group. Antipin was strong in another way entirely, he had an assurance, carried himself like a man who owned the ground wherever he stood. The notion that he, son of a fisherman in a little town at the end of the world, could win the respect of such a man was definitely something to be thought about.

“I try to understand things,” he answered cautiously. “It is important that people understand”-here he got lost-“things,” he finished, feeling like a bird with one wing.

“Naturally,” Antipin said. “So you see their intention. Get rid of a problem, let everybody here and about know you got rid of it, and perhaps others will not be so quick to cause problems. Bravery is a quirky thing at best-you know the old saying about brave men?”

“All brave men are in prison?”

“Just so. We have it a little differently-all brave men have seen heaven through bars-but the thought is almost the same.” He was quiet for a time. Somewhere out on the river, in the distance, was the sound of a foghorn. When he spoke again, his voice was sad and quiet. “We Slavs have suffered. God knows how we have suffered. In the West, they say we cannot be bothered to count our dead. But we have learned about human nature. We paid a terrible price to learn it, because you must see desperation before you can understand how humans truly are. Then you know. Lessons learned in that way are not forgotten. Do you see this?”

He paused a moment, then continued. “I will tell you a story. When Catherine was empress of Russia-you’ll remember, she was the one who fucked horses-she chanced to be wandering one day in a wood some distance from St. Petersburg and found a beautiful wildflower. She was enraptured by it, such a tiny, perfect thing, and so she decreed right then and there that a soldier be assigned to guard the spot just in case, in future days, it should bloom again. Eighteen years later, someone chanced to find that order in a file and went out there, and there was a soldier guarding a spot in the forest, in case a wildflower might bloom, in case, if it did bloom, some shitfoot of a peasant might come along and stomp on it-as if he had nothing better to do.”

Khristo was properly silent for a moment; he loved and respected a story like little else. Antipin bent to the sand, put his cigarette out, slipped the remnant in his pocket.

“Was the flower grown? When they went there the second time?”

“The story does not say. I like to think it wasn’t. But the point has to do with being ruled. Being someone else’s property. Fifty years ago the landlords owned their serfs, hundreds of them, to do with as they pleased. They would marry them off, one to another, to please their wives’ romantic fantasies. We love dolls in Russia, Khristo Nicolaievich, it helps us remember our past.”

“Perhaps it was like that here too,” Khristo said. “When the Turks ruled us.”

“The Turk still rules you, my friend, except that he has taken off the fez and put on a crown. Czar Boris, your king calls himself. Czar! And he is the toy of the army and the fascist officers’ clique that calls itself Zveno , the chain link. You are young, and have lived a natural life on this river, perhaps you don’t yet understand how these bastards work. You see Veiko and his little army, and you know them for what they are-bullies, drunken piss-bags out for a good time. But when there is fertile political soil, your Veiko will soon be a towering tree. As things stand now, he is the future of this country.”

He paused a moment, cleared his throat. “Forgive me, there is a demon in me that demands to make speeches. Let me tell you, instead, what will happen here. Your brother died at the hands of swine, and nothing was done. Nothing will be done.”

Khristo’s heart sank. A thousand times he had wished that that night could be lived over again, that he could take Nikko by the scruff of the neck, as a wise older brother should have, and haul him away from the ridiculous parade. He had loved his brother well enough, his death was a piece torn away from his own life, but there was more than that. The sorrow of the family had lodged in his father, and he suspected, no, he knew, that his father blamed him for it.

“Do not feel shame,” Antipin said quietly, reading his mood. “It was not your fault, no matter what you think. You should not blame yourself. I do not grant absolution, I am not a priest. But it is history that I understand, and this thing had to happen. It was meant to happen. That it happened to you, to your brother, is sorrowful but you will someday see that it was inevitable. The important thing is this: what will you do now?”

“I don’t know.” His voice sounded small. They had reached the end of the beach and stood for a time, the Turkish fortress looming above them, the river running quietly along the sand, white foam visible in the darkness.

“I will presume,” Antipin said, “to jump history a pace and I will tell you what to do. Do not waste your time with grief. It is a great flaw in our character, our Slavic nature, to do that. We are afflicted with a darkness of the soul and fall in love with our pain.”

“What then?”

“Come with me. East.” Antipin nodded his head downriver.

His eyes followed Antipin’s gesture into the darkness, toward the East. His stomach fluttered at the idea of such a journey, as though he had been invited to step off the edge of the world.

“Me?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Why?” In wonder.

“Here, in this town, it will go on. You will not survive it. They murdered your brother; they must now presume you to be their mortal enemy, very troubling to keep an eye on. As the eldest brother, responsibility to even the score rests with you. With me or without me, Khristo Nicolaievich, you must go away. You may very well save your family’s life, you will certainly save your own.”

Khristo had not meant why go . He had meant why me . But Antipin had answered the wrong question the right way. It would happen like the old feuds-one of mine, one of yours, until only one stood. Since Nikko’s death he had hidden this from himself but it festered within him. Now it had been said aloud and a weight fell away.