The Librarian

Vyrin, who had also taken off his jacket, put it back on again and hung the shoulder belt with the sapper’s entrenching tools over the top.

We tumbled out into the yard. One side of the gates was open and Dzyuba was standing beside it with his hammer-pick over his shoulder. He waved to us reassuringly.

I looked at the men approaching the village soviet. They had already noticed us. Our guests certainly did look like typical rural residents. They strode confidently onto the yard and took off their caps. Their leader, dressed in a long tarpaulin raincoat reaching down almost to the ground, stepped forward—a scrawny man who looked about forty years old, with straw-blond hair and eyebrows and a moustache weathered to grey.

“Good health to you,” he said, screwing up his eyes roguishly. “You know, this isn’t the first year we’ve been walking these parts, and there’s been no one living here for a long time, but now it seems there is…” He started and turned round at the bang Dzyuba made as he closed the other half of the gates, using Ogloblin’s heavy cross instead of a bolt.

This action clearly made an unfavourable impression on our visitors. They suddenly started shuffling their feet and glancing round rapidly in alarm.

The light-haired one smiled.

“My, my, why do you use a cross to lock yourself in? You must be serious folks. Not Baptists, are you, by any chance? No?”

Timofei Stepanovich, Sukharev, Tanya and the Vozglyakov sisters moved towards the gates. Nayda sat at Veronika’s feet, growling deep in her chest. Garshenin, Ozerov, Vyrin and Lutsis hemmed our visitors in from the sides. I stood there, surrounded by Ievlev, Kruchina and Dezhnev. I think we produced an intimidating impression.

“No, we’re not Baptists,” I said.

“A-a-ah,” their leader drawled, as if he was relieved. “That’s good… Although if truth be told, it’s all the same to us. What’s the difference who you are, as long as you’re a good man? Isn’t that right now?”

Inspired by his own words, he blathered about good people for half a minute, but I’d already spotted his avaricious glance, slipping out from under his pale eyebrows and across the case with the Book that was hanging on my chest. I had a bad feeling and my guts tensed up. Marat Andreyevich was standing beside me and I nudged him gently with my elbow. He turned towards me and said silently, with just his lips: “I see it…”

“So, who are you?” I asked the light-haired man. “What brings you to us?”

“That’s… We’re a building team. Do you need any repairs done?”

“So far we’re managing all right on our own…”

“I get you… But we could give you a hand… And for a good price…”

“Here’s a question for you,” I said. “Was it you who blocked the road?”

“The road? No, that wasn’t us…”

“It’s pointless lying!” I exclaimed to startle the stranger into confessing. “We saw you with our own eyes!”

“You did?” he asked, taken aback. “Well, yes, that’s right, we did it.” He shrugged. “It’s a forestry-section requirement. The trees are sick… I just didn’t realize what road you meant.”

“And why did you leave them lying about? No one can get through now.”

“Well, it’s not our job to clear them away. We were only told to cut them down…” The foreman glanced round at the gates. “And another thing,” he said with an obnoxious grin. “You wouldn’t happen to have any hooch to spare, would you?”

“No, we wouldn’t.”

“We’re not asking for it for free. We’d work for it. Don’t be shy now. Think about it. In principle, we can work for chow too, right lad?”

“I’m so hungry that I haven’t got anywhere to spend the night,” Timofei Stepanovich croaked comically.

Nayda suddenly started howling furiously and scrabbling at the stockade with her shaggy paw. I noticed the light-haired man and his companions draw themselves erect.

“Well, then, we’ll be going, since there’s nothing you need. Open the gates, please.”

We looked at Dzyuba. If he tried to pull out the cross acting as a bolt, it meant he was in league with the strangers. I saw Sukharev already preparing to strike with his chain. But Dzyuba completely ignored the request and didn’t budge; his heavy brows simply knitted together above his nose in a frown and his fingers tightened their grip on his hammer-pick.

“Listen, guys, come on now,” the light-haired man said loudly. “We’ve really got to go!”

At that very moment our enemies’ heads and bodies appeared over the stockade. Before the first one could even throw his leg over the logs he was impaled on the blade of Garshenin’s scythe. Dzyuba sank his hammer-pick into the side of the nearest enemy with a crunch.

The light-haired man threw open the flaps of his raincoat and pulled two blunt-nosed butcher’s cleavers. His three comrades took out the hatchets and knives that were hidden under their work jackets and threw themselves into the skirmish. However, they lacked the skill to back up their fervour. An abrupt bayonet thrust from Kruchina pierced the belly of one attacker, who collapsed, howling, with his legs pulled up. Nayda growled and clamped her jaws on the fallen man’s throat. Dezhnev’s sabre flashed and a hand holding an axe dropped onto the sand; the stump flung out a long spray of blood, as if someone had tossed the leftover tea out of a glass. The wounded man was immediately run through by Tanya’s rapier and Ozerov’s pike.

More and more fighters kept tumbling over the wall. Dzyuba crushed fingers that clung to the top of the stockade with his hammer-pick and the enemies dropped away, howling, on the other side. Two hung there on top of the logs, lifeless, with their arms flung out like shirts on a washing line, and a third, whose trunk had toppled inside, had slipped almost to the ground, but the tops of his boot had got caught on the stockade’s points. Nikolai had already run up and was finishing someone off with swings of his sledgehammer.

I had to fight two opponents at once. I swung the hammer, trying not to let the dangerous hatchets get too close. In the heat of the moment it seemed as if the two of them were only parrying my blows. This cowardly tactic maddened me completely, dispelling the final remnants of caution. Eventually my hammer struck an enemy’s head with a dull ceramic sound. His contorted face was instantly covered in blood. But the euphoria of the third killing in my life was short-lived. The other man immediately swarmed into me and knocked me off my feet, but instead of hacking me to death, he started trying to pull the Book off me. He panted hoarse obscenities, strangling me with the chain of the steel case. I sank my teeth into his arm and tried to crush his prickly Adam’s apple, but the slippy cartilage wouldn’t break. My mouth was flooded with blood, as salty as old brine from pickled cucumbers, and I choked on it. Everything went hazy. My enemy suddenly jerked his hand free and hit me in the face several times so hard that I almost lost consciousness. The Book was dragged off me, tearing out a bunch of hair on its way, and I was released. Choking, I pushed a soft piece of flesh out of my mouth and wave of terror swept over me at the thought that I had bitten of my own tongue. I shouted, but instead of words there were only pink bubbles.

The man who had taken the Book from me was lying on the ground, with Sukharev raising his chain with the bunches of padlocks dangling from it and crashing it down on the body that was shuddering in agony.

Down on my hands and knees, I feverishly ran my fingers round my mouth, trying to feel my tongue. My numb, insensitive fingers were immediately smeared with blood and I couldn’t understand a thing. Horrified, I wiped the bitten-off piece of flesh on my sleeve. It looked as if it wasn’t a tongue after all, but a bite taken out of a wrist. I was racked by a nauseous, retching cough and spat up blood—either my own or someone else’s—for a minute. Then Garshenin and Dzyuba ran over to me and lifted me up. Sukharev handed me the box with the Book in it, and I hung it round my neck again.

No more new fighters were climbing in, and the final enemy succumbed in uneven battle on two fronts with Anna and Marat Andreyevich, taking a blow from the head of the flail.

From the side where the yard was enclosed by a brick wall, fresh forces suddenly broke in. The only one left alive at the gates was the light-haired leader himself. He was no longer trying to break through to bolt, but skilfully dodging the Vozglyakovs’ spades and Kruchina’s bayonet as he retreated along the stockade. “Fuck it, will get you get a move on!” he called hoarsely to his accomplices.

Lutsis, Vyrin and Ozerov dashed to intercept the reinforcements, with Timofei Stepanovich struggling to keep up with them.

The light-haired man launched a desperate counterattack. Svetlana’s spade broke under a crushing blow from a cleaver and it was a miracle that she wasn’t killed herself. The second cleaver caught Kruchina. I heard Igor Valeryevich give a wild roar, pressing his hand to the spot on his temple where only a second ago he had an ear. Veronika’s spade sank into the enemy leader’s breastbone with a crunch. He roared. Veronika leaned on the handle with her full weight, pinning her adversary to the stockade. The light-haired man went limp and dangled on the spade like a puppet whose strings have all snapped at once.

Their leader’s death did nothing to stiffen the attackers’ courage. One of the six immediately fell victim to Vyrin’s entrenching tool and Timofei Stepanovich’s mace crushed another one’s skull. Ozerov’s pike transfixed the ribs of a third. A ball bearing precisely flung by Lutsis hit a fleeing enemy on the back of the neck. The man howled, clutched his head and fell, and Nikolai Tarasovich stamped his boot down on the man’s shattered neck vertebrae.

One of the fighters who was still alive flung his axe at Ozerov, but luckily it was only the handle that caught him on the chin. Ozerov toppled over and didn’t see Marat Andreyevich reach his foe and dispatch him. The sixth hero didn’t waste any precious time; he just hopped back over the wall.

“Out there… Only four of them…” Garshenin whispered, pointing over the stockade. “We have to make a sortie to finish them off…”

Ievlev, Kruchina, Sukharev, the Vozglyakov sisters, Tanya and Dzyuba split up and stood at both sides of the gate. Garshenin pulled out the cross, and Kruchina and Ievlev pulled the heavy, creaking gates inward.

Four men immediately dashed into the opening. They ran a couple of steps and then halted. Their astonishment was replaced by confusion. They backed away and took to their heels without thinking twice. The long point of Garshenin’s scythe caught the slowest enemy, whose inertia pulled him off the blade, but after running a couple of steps, he ran out of steam and collapsed. Anna flung her spade just above the ground, spinning it through the air like a windmill. A second runner collapsed into the grass with his legs broken and Ievlev was on him in two swift bounds.

Their comrade’s dying shriek lent the other two invaders strength. Breaking away from the panting pursuit, they reached the forest and hid behind the trees. They were not pursued any farther. The battle was over.

I was shuddering in an icy fever. There was a deafening pulse beating in the nape of my neck and my eardrums. The adrenalin rush subsided. The spot where my hair had been pulled out started burning again. My black eye swelled up, the eyebrow and eyelid stung. A nagging pain, like toothache, was twisting my swollen cheek. I stood in the middle of the yard and watched Ievlev throw the body of a fallen enemy over his shoulder, while Sukharev and Ozerov dragged another by the legs. The other Shironinites were also coming back.

Garshenin stopped beside me, dishevelled and dirty.

“Victory! Congratulations!” he exclaimed, his eyes glowing in exultation.

“Looks like we squeezed through without any losses,” said Dzyuba. “May God be praised…”

“Oh, no, we’ve got losses!” Kruchina hissed. He was holding his hand to the wound on his head, with blood seeping between his fingers. “I’ve lost half my ear, dammit! Now I’ll have to walk around like a convict!”

“You can cover it with your hair. No one will even notice,” Tanya reassured him as she poured peroxide onto cotton wool from a little bottle.

Kruchina took his hand away from his temple, revealing for a moment a crimson stump that looked like a tulip, and applied the lump of cotton wool.

Ozerov got up off the ground unsteadily, his beard covered in blood; Timofei Stepanovich, sitting with his back against the wall, clutched his handkerchief, wearily wiping his face, as purple as a new-born baby’s.

There were about a dozen enemy bodies lying around in the yard. Five of them had met their death beside the brick wall. Three were still dangling on the stockade and four storm troopers were lying by the gates, with their light-haired leader squirming nearby.

“Interrogate him, Alexei. Interrogate him immediately,” Timofei Stepanovich hissed. “Find out who sent them.” The old man could barely even draw breath, as if he had been running hard.

The light-haired man was in a really bad way, and I had to hurry if I was going to get anything out of him.

I walked up to the dying man.

“Listen, we’ll try to ease your suffering, as far we’re able…” I swung round. “Marat Andreyevich, bring some Analgin quickly!”

The enemy leader’s eyes shuddered murkily, like a fish’s.

“Where’s the Book?”

“Here,” I said tapping on the steel casket. “And now tell me who set you on us.”

“Show me the Book…” he wheezed painfully.

“All right,” I said and set the case on my knee.

He waited patiently for me to find the key and open the lock, even raising himself up slightly. The broad red patch on his caved-in chest glittered as fresh blood flowed into it, as dull and greasy as crude oil.

“There you are…” I showed him the Book lying on the velvet. “And now tell me how you found out about us.”

“The wrong one!” he slumped back feebly and looked at me with desolate, weary hatred. “It’s a different one!”

“What did you expect to see?”

“The Book of Endurance!” the light-haired man barked out in a fury, and rivulets of beetroot-red blood spurted from his nostrils.

“And who told you we had a Book of Endurance?”

“The old woman…”

“What old woman?”

“A clever old woman! We drew the lot to try first… Three years we’d been waiting for our turn, and then this chance came up… It didn’t work…” He stirred feebly. “It hurts… The Book of Endurance…”

“We only have a Book of Memory.”

“You’re lying,” the light-haired man whispered indifferently.

“No, it’s true…”

The wounded man laughed, with a gurgling sound in his throat.

“So, the old woman tricked us… I told you she was clever. But you’re going to die anyway. No one will get away. The old woman’s decided…”

“Has that shed any light on things? Who are they?” asked Dezhnev, squatting down beside us. He was holding a syringe with an analgesic mixture that looked like spittle.

“I can’t tell… It doesn’t sound like the council. He talked about some old woman. Tried to frighten me with her.”

Marat Andreyevich slid the needle into one of the light-haired man’s veins.

The man watched the movement of the plunger indifferently and asked:

“Did you kill all my men?”

“Three of them escaped.”

“They were lucky…”

He didn’t say another word. Soon he closed his eyes. The rustle of his departing breath struggled out through his clenched teeth, like a little moth fluttering its wings in a fragile porcelain throat. His blood-choked nostrils flared like gills and then froze.

“Alexei! Marat Andreyevich!” Tanya suddenly called in a piercing voice that broke into a shriek.

I shuddered and looked round. Startled by the heart-rending cry, the Shironinites were already hurrying towards the stockade. When we reached the site of the commotion, we saw Timofei Stepanovich. The old man was still sitting there, leaning back against the logs. His shaggy head had slumped forward into his chest, as if it had been severed. His right leg was drawn up, but his left one was extended, so we could see the worn-down heel of his dusty boot.

Sukharev and Vyrin laid Timofei Stepanovich out on the ground, and Marat Andreyevich clutched the old man’s wrist with its black veins, listening intently for any life that might tremble under the skin, and then, unable to believe his own inconceivable diagnosis, he said:

“Nine satisfactions, Neverbino—he went through them all without a scratch. And now his heart’s given out…”

“What kind of crap’s that?” Ievlev roared. “What do you mean, his heart?” He pressed his hands down on the bony ribcage. “Breathe, old man, breathe!” he said, buffeting the lifeless body.

Some secret fermentation stirred inside Timofei Stepanovich, and a spate of thick lymph and bodily fluids gushed out through his blue, half-open mouth and splashed onto Ievlev, who cried out and staggered back, hastily wiping the death slime off his face and clothes. Then it was finally clear to me that Timofei Stepanovich was no longer with us, and one more name had been added to the doleful list of the Shironin reading room’s losses.