188

p Concerning the inconvenience of travelling through
the deserts of Central Asia without camels, with a
reference to the sensation experienced by Columbus’
sailors

p Lieutenant Govorukha-Otrok ought to have been Maryutka’s forty-first. But for some reason— perhaps because her hands were cold, or perhaps because she was excited—she missed.

p And so the lieutenant remained alive, an extra number on the list of the living.

p Yevsukov gave orders that he be searched, and the search revealed a secret pocket sewed into the back of his smart suede jacket.

p The lieutenant reared like a wild stallion when the fingers of the Red Army man felt out the pocket. But he was held firmly, and only the trembling of his lips and the pallor of his face betrayed his agitation.

p Yevsukov carefully unwound the linen wrapping of the packet and his eyes fairly devoured the document it contained. He read it, shook his head, and did some hard thinking.

p The document stated that the bearer, Lieutenant Govorukha-Otrok, Vadim Nikolayevich, had been entrusted by the government of Admiral Kolchak, Supreme Ruler of Russia, to represent his person in the Trans-Caspian state headed by General Denikin. A letter attached to the document stated that the bearer was in possession of secret information that was to be conveyed orally to General Dratsenko.

p Yevsukov refolded the packet and tucked it safely away in an inner pocket of his jacket.

p “Just what is that secret information, Mister Officer? You’d better come out with it and not hold anything back, seeing as you’re in the hands of Red 189 Army men and me being in command: Commissar Arsenty Yevsukov.”

p The lieutenant turned his ultramarine orbs on Yevsukov, smiled, and snapped his heels together.

p “Monsieur Yevsukov? Cha-armed. Unfortunately, I have not been commissioned by my government to carry on diplomatic negotiations with anyone in so exalted a position.”

p Even Yevsukov’s freckles went white. The man was laughing at him in front of the whole detachment.

p The commissar snapped out his revolver.

p “Look here, you White bastard! None of your lip! Either you spill your information or you swallow some lead.”

p The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders.

p “If you kill me I won’t spill anything.”

p The commissar lowered his gun with a curse.

p “You’ll sing another tune before I’m through with you,” he said.

p The lieutenant went on smiling with one corner of his mouth.

p Yevsukov spat and walked away.

p “Are we to give him a round or two, Comrade Commissar?" asked one of the Red Army men.

p The commissar scratched his peeling nose with a finger-nail.

p “Won’t do,” said he. “He’s a big cheese, he is. We’ve got to deliver him to Kazalinsk. They’ll get his secret out of him there all right.”

p “You mean, drag him along with us? Lucky if we make it ourselves.”

p “So we’re recruiting White officers now!”

p Yevsukov snapped erect.

p “Mind your own business,” he shouted. “I’m taking him, and I answer for it. Shut up.”

p As he turned round, his eyes lighted on Maryutka.

p “You’re the one in charge of His Highness, 190 Maryutka. Keep your eyes peeled. I’ll skin you alive if you let him get away.”

p Without comment Maryutka slung her rifle over her shoulder and went up to the prisoner.

p “Come here, handsome,” she said. “You’re in my charge, but don’t think because I’m a woman you can run away. I’ll get you on the run at three hundred paces. I missed once—a fish-pox on you— but don’t think it’ll happen again.”

p The lieutenant glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, then made an elaborate bow, his shoulders shaking with laughter.

p “I count it an honour to be taken captive by such a charming Amazon,” he said.

p “What’s that you’re jabbering?" asked Maryutka, throwing him a withering glance. "A bourjui. Most likely you can’t do nothing but dance the mazurka. Well, shut your face and get going.”

p They spent that night on the shore of a little lake. An odour of iodine and decay came from the salt water under the ice.

p Wrapping themselves up in the carpets and felt blankets they had pulled off the Kirghiz camels, they slept like the dead.

p Maryutka tied the hands and feet of the Lieutenant of the Guards tightly with a camel cord for the night, winding the other end of the cord round her waist and clutching it in her hand.

p The men guffawed.

p “Hey, boys,” cried bulging-eyed Semyanny, "Maryutka’s wove a spell round her true love. She give him a love-potion of hemp.”

p Maryutka turned a scornful look on the hilarious men.

p “A fish-pox on the lot of you! You can joke, but what if he runs away?”

p “Simpleton! Where’ll he run to in the desert?”

191

p “Desert or no desert, this is safer.” Then, turning to the prisoner: “Go to sleep, handsome.”

p Maryutka pushed the lieutenant under the carpet and went off to lie down herself.

p It is heaven to sleep under a felt cover or a felt mat. The felt smells of the steppe in July, of wormwood, of vast wastes of sand. The body goes all soft and warm as it sinks into blissful sleep.

p Yevsukov is snoring under his carpet, Maryutka lies with a dreamy smile on her face, Lieutenant of the Guards Govorukha-Otrok is sleeping stiffly on his back, his beautiful lips drawn into a fine line.

p Only the sentinel is awake. He is sitting on the edge of a mat with his rifle on his knees—his rifle, dearer than wife, dearer than life.

p He sits gazing out into the blur of snow where the camel bells are tinkling dully. They have forty-four camels now. Their way is clear. They’ll get there now, however hard the going. No more doubts and fears.

p The wind rushes past with a shriek, it rushes up the sentinel’s sleeve. He hunches his shoulders and pulls a mat up over his back. The icy knives stop stabbing him and a warmness seeps into his numb body.

p Snow, gloom, sand.

p A strange, Asian country.. . .

p “Where’s the camels? The camels, God rot you! Asleep! Asleep! What have you gone and done, you bastard! I’ll have your hide for this!”

p The sentry’s head swam from the kick of the foot. He gazed dazedly about him.

p Snow and gloom.

p Misty gloom, the gloom of the morning. And sand.

p The camels are gone.

p Where the camels had been, hobbled, they found the hoofprints of camels and the footprints of men, the footprints of sharp-toed Kirghiz ichigs.

192

p Three of the Kirghiz must have followed the detachment all night and taken the camels as soon as the sentry fell asleep.

p The Red Army men stood in silent groups. No camels. Where were they to look for them? They couldn’t overtake them, couldn’t find them in the des.ert.

p “Shooting would be too good for a son of a bitch like you,” Yevsukov said to the sentry.

p The sentry was silent; tears froze into crystal drops on his eyelashes.

p The lieutenant wriggled out from under his carpet. He glanced about and gave a little whistle.

p “That’s revolutionary discipline for you!" he said with a mocking laugh.

p “Keep your mouth shut!" roared Yevsukov in fury, adding in a hoarse, unrecognisable whisper: “Well, what’re you all standing here for? Get moving!”

p Now only eleven men dragged themselves in single file, ragged and reeling, up and down the sand-hills. Ten lay in eternal rest along the cruel way. Almost every morning one of them would open eyes glazed with exhaustion for the last time, stretch out swollen, log-stiff legs and emit hoarse, gasping sounds.

p The crimson Yevsukov would come up to the prostrate figure (the commissar’s face no longer matched his jacket; it was grey and pinched, and the freckles looked like old copper coins), stare at it and shake his head. Then the icy barrel of his revolver would burn a hole in the sunken temple, leaving a round, black, almost bloodless wound.

p They would sprinkle some sand over the body and ontinue on their way.

p The men’s jackets and trousers hung in shreds, their boots fell off, they wrapped their feet in strips 193 of carpet, they twisted rags round their frozen fingers.

p Now ten pushed on, stumbling ahead, swaying in the wind.

p One of them walked serenely erect: Lieutenant of the Guards Govorukha-Otrok.

p Frequently the Red Army men would complain to Yevsukov. “How long are we going to drag him with us, Comrade Commissar?" they would say. "Why should we feed him? And then there’s his clothes—good clothes. We could divide them up.”

p But Yevsukov forbade them to touch him.

p “I’ll hand him over if it’s the last thing I do,” he said. “There’s lots of things he can tell us. We can’t make mutton of a man like him. He’ll get what’s coming to him, have no fear.”

p The lieutenant’s arms were bound at the elbow with a camel cord, the other end of which was tied to Maryutka’s belt. Maryutka could hardly drag one foot after the other. The yellowish glitter of her cat-like eyes was particularly striking in her bloodless face. But the lieutenant was all right. He had just grown a little pale.

p One day Yevsukov went up to him and stared into his bright blue eyes.

p “Damn you!" he burst out hoarsely. “What the hell goes on inside you? Not much flesh on you, but the strength of two.”

p The lieutenant’s lips curved in his usual mocking smile.

p “You wouldn’t understand. It’s the cultural lag. With you the flesh conquers spirit, but my spirit is master of my body. I can order myself not to suffer.”

p “So that’s it,” the commissar said thoughtfully.

p On every hand rose the sand-hills—soft, shifting, undulating. The sand on the crests hissed and wriggled like snakes in the wind. There seemed to be no end to it.

194

p Now one, now another of the men would fall in the sand, gritting his teeth and groaning in despair: “I can’t go on. Leave me here to die in peace.”

p Yevsukov would curse him, lash him, tell him he was “deserting the Revolution”, and he would stagger to his feet and stumble on.

p One of the men crawled to the top of a high hill. He stopped, turned his skull-like head and shrieked: “Boys! The Aral Sea!”

p Then he fell on his face. With his last strength Yevsukov climbed to the top of the hill. A blinding blueness struck his inflamed eyes. He shut them and scraped at the sand with hooked fingers.

The commissar had never heard of Columbus, and he did not know that his Spanish sailors had scraped at the deck of their ship in the same way on hearing the cry “Land!”