Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

The bear might have wished to end the hunter’s life because it was in perpetual pain and savage tempered, could have done it without difficulty. Jasha might have wanted to kill Zhukov out of pity, out of boredom and the need for splurged excitement, and had a rifle in his hands, cocked, the safety on and a bullet in place.

But both, in their differing ways, held the other in respect. He accepted the bear wandering close to his cabin, and the bear tolerated the old man intruding on its space in the tundra wilderness of the Kola peninsula. For a full half-hour, under light rain, they had eyed each other. Jasha was usually the first to break off and to go home, and he assumed that Zhukov would feel an honour satisfied and would resume the search for berries, the staple of its diet. A year before, Jasha had gone into Murmansk and had taken himself to a veterinary surgeon and had slapped down a wad of notes and had asked for a tranquilliser dose. For how big a creature? Big. Big enough for a cow? Big enough for a moose. To pacify it or to knock it out? To shut it down, at least a fifteen-minute dose. Money talked and a dart came with the dose and was loaded into the Dragunov marksman’s rifle. He had shot it, the same range as he was now, a good hit in the left shoulder, and the animal had reeled around, had staggered and snarled, had shown teeth and one claw set, but only one. The other front leg, just above the pads, was coiled in a tight knot of barbed wire that had pushed aside the fur and punctured the skin, and had made a wound that was infected and coated in rust. He could have shot it with the wire still attached, could have ended its misery, instead had gone to Murmansk and flashed the money at the veterinary surgeon and had told him the requirement was to sedate a full-grown male moose. He had approached the prone creature with apprehension and had noted the malevolence in the eyes and sensed it wrestled with the power of the drug coursing through it. He had taken a deep breath and had knelt on the ground and used pliers to pull away the wire and blood had flowed. He was not a sentimental man and was familiar with pain, and they were the same pliers with which he had taken out one of his own back teeth, but tears had flowed while he had performed this crude surgery. Five loops of wire had come free and the wound was open and the summer flies swarmed and he had seen then that the bear had already chewed away half of its paw and half of its claws, chewed and worried at them. He had laced it in disinfectant and had realised that the bear’s breathing quickened and had seen the first twitch of a back leg and the first movement of the tongue across massive yellowed teeth. He had given the animal the name of the most distinguished of Stalin’s generals, a man of iron will… Zhukov. He had gone back to his cabin, his refuge, that he had found as a wreck, had insulated and made dry, and had barricaded the door and the windows. The bear had come the next day, and the evening of the following day, had sat on its haunches outside the door and Jasha had peeped through a spyhole and realised that the rest of its foot was now eaten off. A stump had been left at the height of the wire wound. His intervention might have achieved nothing. But the flesh seemed clean and the bear snorted regularly with a hiss of breath to drive away the congregation of flies, and it had watched Jasha’s home, then had seemed satisfied that it had located a benefactor, and it had gone. He had seen the bear many time since, had noted the limping gait and the curve of the wounded leg as it put less weight on the ground, and the way it sucked and spat to remove dirt: the pink flesh had disappeared, replaced by a coarse leathery cover. The hunter was familiar with the single paw print with the pads and the claws, and in front of them the smooth mark of the self-inflicted stump. It was a fine animal… It might stalk him, it might be his friend. But he would kill it if that was the requirement, if the pain ever became unbearable. The wire would have come from the work of the border troops. The border troops had brought up wire when they had reinforced the fence that separated the Murmansk district on the Kola peninsula from Norwegian territory. They’d have dumped it. He hated them.

The hunter, Jasha, had no woman in the city down the E105 highway. Nor did he have a drinking friend there. His business contact was an agent who sold the pelts that he brought in from the wild animals inhabiting the tundra of wild grasses and dwarf birch and cloudberry. He killed his animals for the trophy heads that could be mounted on walls in lodges and hotels and which were popular in St Petersburg and Moscow. He lived amongst the shy, cautious lynx and Arctic foxes and the elusive wolverine, and there were moose and reindeer and the one bear, Zhukov, that fascinated him.

The bear never acknowledged him. Often, when out with his rifle and going in silence and using dead ground, he sensed he was being followed. He thought the beast dominated him and often, in his refuge home, he would talk softly to it, call it by the name he had awarded it, have a conversation, and be convinced of his own insanity. It had watched, it had shuffled round, shown him its back, and turned away to feed off a branch of berries and he was losing sight of it.

“Heh, Zhukov, heh. Friend, I will see you. I hope to. I have no other friend. Stay close and stay safe.”

Down at the main rail station, near to the harbour and the docks – with the rain heavier – Timofey had come to trade.

The arrival of a train from the south always lifted his spirits and was as good a place for him to make money as any in Murmansk. Twenty-four hours from St Petersburg to the Murmansk station, and thirty-six if the train had come from Moscow. Best was when young naval recruits were on their way to Severomorsk up the coast. They would buy. Timofey wore a thin windcheater that barely kept out the fine rain, faded jeans, and trainers that were scuffed and stained. His hair was fair and cut haphazardly and followed no style, but he had a strong face and high cheek-bones and a jaw that jutted and his eyes had that detached look as if his attention was far away as he hustled to get among the mass of the young military guys who stretched and coughed and smoked and would be allowed a few minutes to go and relieve themselves before the final part of their journey, to their ships and their barracks. In better times he would have had Natacha beside him, using her smile to attract the guys in uniform who yearned for the comfort of a wrap or a pill. He worked among them, dealt only in cash, had no time for change, and stuffed the money into his hip pocket; in his jacket’s right-side pocket were the pills and in the left-side pocket were the scraps of paper with the twisted ends. It was not easy for him because not only did he have to do business, but he had to avoid arguments with the smart-arse kids who wanted to bargain, and had also to be aware that the military police would be looking for him, or others like him, and would come piling in with their batons and their handcuffs if he were too prominent.

His phone rang. He let it ring at first. Too busy trading. He let it ring as long as he dared because if it went off for too long then he’d attract attention. He pocketed cash, handed out pills, and that day they went better than the wraps. He moved fast and could hear the NCOs bawling at the kids to get on the buses. A queue had formed near him and he was circled by purchasers. He sold well, but Natacha would have done better. She would have been in there with her smile and the float of her eyebrows, the pout of her lips, and every kid would mentally have stripped her and would be groping for money and she would have given a tiny wiggle of her hips. They would all be submarine boys if they were in transit for Severomorsk where the hunter-killers were docked… and she talked heavy on submarines and had cause… and his phone kept ringing deep in a pocket and he had no time to answer, and a few of the NCOs were pushing in among the kids and heaving them towards the buses and the rain slopped off his hair. He had sold all of his pills, and only a palm full of wraps was left. A petty officer was in front of him. Eye contact made. The man thought Timofey was scum. His eyes and his sneer seemed to pose a question and he fingered the top of a truncheon fastened to his belt. Which would he prefer? Would he prefer a crack of the truncheon on his shoulder-bone and then his shin-bone, or would he prefer to back a discreetly palmed percentage of his takings? Timofey despised the sort of man who wore a uniform, held power because of the baubles on his chest. He was a free spirit: he slipped away, and the phone still trilled in a pocket.