The Death of Achilles (26 page)

There were fellow believers living in Prussia. They had come there long, long before, also fleeing from the Antichrist. The king had granted hem the possession of land in perpetuity and exempted them from military service on condition that they would drain the boundless Prussian marshes. For two generations the Brothers had struggled with the impassable quagmire until finally the third generation conquered it and then they had lived a life free of care and hunger on fertile lands rich in loam. They greeted their fellow believers from Moravia warmly, shared with them everything that they had, and they all lived a fine, peaceful life together.

Having attained the age of twenty-one years, Pelef married. The Lord gave him a good wife, and at the appointed time she bore him a son. But then the Most High chose to subject His faithful servants to grievous trials. First there was a plague, and many people died, including Pelef’s wife and son. He did not complain, even though the color of life had changed from white to black. But the Most High wanted more than this, and He chose to reveal His love to His favored ones in the full measure of its rigor and intransigence. A new, enlightened king decreed that in his realm all were equal and annulled the law granted by that other king who had lived so long ago. Now even the Jews and the Mennonites and the Brothers of Christ were all obliged to serve in the army and defend their homeland with weapons in their hands. But the Brothers’ true homeland did not lie among the drained marshes of Prussia, but rather in the heavens above, and therefore the Convention of Spiritual Elders consulted and decided that they must travel to the east, to the lands of the Russian tsar. There was a community there also, and from that place there sometimes came letters, which traveled for a long time, with trustworthy people, because the state post service was the handiwork of the Evil One. In their letters the fellow believers wrote that the land in those parts was rich, while the authorities were tolerant and content with relatively small bribes.

They gathered together their goods and chattels, sold what they could, and abandoned the rest. Riding in carts for seven times seven days, they arrived in a country with the difficult name of Melitopolst-schina. The land there was indeed rich, but twelve young families and the widower Pelef decided that they wanted to travel farther, because they had never seen mountains, but only read about them in holy books. They could not even imagine how it was possible for the earth to rise up into the firmament of heaven for a distance of many thousand cubits, right up to God’s clouds. The young believers wished to see this, and Pelef did not care where he went. He liked to ride through forests and open fields on a cart harnessed to bulls, because this distracted him from thoughts of Rachel and little Ahav, who had remained behind forever in the damp Prussian soil.

The mountains proved to be exactly as they were described in the books. They were called the Caucasus, and they stretched out along the horizon in both directions as far as the eye could see. Pelef forgot about Rachel and Ahav, because here everything was different, and they even had to walk differently, not like before, but down from above or up from below. In the very first year he married.

This was how it came about: The Brothers of Christ were cutting timber on the only shallow slope, clearing a field for plow land. The local girls watched as the foreign men in the long, funny coats deftly chopped down the centuries-old pines and rooted out the stubborn stumps. The girls laughed and giggled and ate nuts. One of them, fifteen-year-old Fatima, was taken by the looks of the giant with white hair and a white beard. He was big and strong, but calm and kind, not like the men from her
aul
, who were quick-tempered and rapid in their movements.

Fatima had to be christened and wear different clothes — a black dress and white cap. She had to change her name — instead of Fatima she became Sarah. She had to work in the house and on the farm from dawn till dusk, learn a foreign language, and on Sunday she had to pray and sing all day long in the prayer house, which had been built before the dwelling houses. But Fatima was not dismayed by all this, because she was happy with white-haired Pelef and because Allah had not promised woman an easy life.

The following summer, as Sarah-Fatima lay in the torment of childbirth, wild Chechens came down from the mountains, burned the crop of wheat, and drove away the cattle. Pelef watched as they led away the horse, two bulls, and three cows and prayed that the Lord would not abandon him and allow his rage to erupt. And therefore the father gave his son, whose first cry rang out at the very moment when the greedy tongues of flame began licking at the smoothly planed walls of the prayer house, the name of Achimas, which means ‘brother of rage’.

The next year the Abreks came back for more booty, but they left with nothing, because a blockhouse now stood on the outskirts of the rebuilt village, and in it there lived a sergeant major and ten soldiers. For this the Brothers had paid the military commander five hundred rubles.

The boy was big when he was born. Sarah-Fatima almost died when he was coming out of her. She could not give birth again, but she did not wish to, because she could not forgive her husband for standing and watching as the brigands led away the horse, the bulls, and the cows.

In his childhood Achimas had two gods and three languages. His father’s God, strict and unforgiving, taught that if someone smote you on the right cheek, then you must offer them the left; that if a man rejoiced in this life, he would weep his fill in the next; that grief and suffering were not to be feared, for they were a boon and a blessing, a sign of the special love of the Most High. His mother’s God, whose name was not to be spoken out loud, was kind: He allowed you to feel happy and play games and did not demand that you forgive those who offended you. He could only speak of the kind God in a whisper, when no one but his mother was near, and this meant that his father’s God was more important. He spoke in a language that was called ‘
die Sprdche
,’ which was a mixture of Dutch and German. His mother’s God spoke Chechen. Achimas’s other language was Russian, which he was taught by the soldiers from the blockhouse. The boy was fascinated by their swords and rifles, but that was forbidden, absolutely forbidden, because the more important God forbade his people even to touch weapons. But his mother whispered: Never mind, you can if you want. She took her son into the forest to tell him stories about the bold warriors from his clan, taught him how to trip people up and punch them with his fist.

When Achimas was seven years old, nine-year-old Melhisedek, the blacksmith’s son, deliberately splashed ink on his schoolbook. Achimas tripped him up and punched him on the ear. Melhisedek ran off, crying, to complain.

The conversation with his father was long and painful. Pelef’s eyes, as pale and bright as his son’s, became angry and sad. Then Achimas had to spend the whole evening on his knees, reading psalms. But his thoughts were directed to his mother’s God, not his father’s. The boy prayed for his white eyes to be made black like his mother’s and her half brother Chasan’s. Achimas had never seen his uncle Chasan, but he knew that he was strong, brave, and lucky and he never forgave his enemies. His uncle traveled the secret mountain paths, bringing shaggy carpets from Persia and bales of tobacco from Turkey, and ferrying weapons in the opposite direction, out across the border. Achimas often thought about Chasan. He imagined him sitting in the saddle, surveying the slope of a ravine with his sharp eyes to see if border guards were waiting in hiding to ambush him. Chasan was wearing a tall shaggy fur hat and a felt cloak, and behind his shoulder he had a rifle with an ornamental stock.

Achimas spent the day when he reached the age of ten locked in the woodshed from early in the morning. It was his own fault — his mother had secretly given him a small but genuine dagger with a polished blade and a horn handle and told him to hide it, but Achimas had been too impatient; he had run into the yard to try the keenness of the blade and was discovered by his father. Pelef asked where the weapon had come from, and when he realized that there would be no answer, he decreed that his son must be punished.

Achimas spent half the day in the shed. He felt wretched because his dagger had been taken away and, on top of it all, he was bored. But after midday, when he had also begun to feel very hungry, he suddenly heard shooting and screaming.

The Abrek Magoma and four of his friends had attacked the soldiers, who were washing their shirts in the stream, because it was their day for washing. The bandits fired a volley from the bushes, killing two soldiers and wounding two more. The other soldiers tried to run to the blockhouse, but the Abreks mounted their steeds and cut them all down with their swords. The sergeant major, who had not gone to the stream, locked himself in the strong log house with the small, narrow windows and fired out with his rifle. Taking aim in advance, Magoma waited for the Russian to reload and show himself at the loophole again and shot a heavy, round bullet straight into the sergeant major’s forehead.

Achimas did not see any of this. But with his eyes pressed to a crack between the boards of the shed, he did see a man with a beard and one eye walk into the yard, wearing a shaggy white fur hat and carrying a long rifle in his hand (it was Magoma himself). The one-eyed man stopped in front of Achimas’s parents, who had come running out into the yard, and said something to them — Achimas could not make out what it was. Then the man put one hand on his mother’s shoulder and the other under her chin and lifted her face up. Pelef stood there with his lion’s head lowered, moving his lips. Achimas realized that he was praying. Sarah-Fatima did not pray, she bared her teeth and scratched the one- eyed man’s face.

A woman must not touch a man’s face, and therefore Magoma wiped the blood from his cheek and killed the infidel woman with a blow of his fist to her temple. Then he killed her husband, too, because after this he could not leave him alive. He had to kill all the other inhabitants of the village as well — evidently that was what fate had intended for this day.

The Abreks drove away the cattle, heaped all the useful and valuable items into two carts, set fire to the four corners of the village, and rode away.

While the Chechens were killing the villagers, Achimas sat quietly in the shed. He did not want them to kill him as well. But when the hammering of hooves and squeaking of wheels had disappeared in the direction of the Karamyk Pass, the boy broke out a board with his shoulder and climbed out into the yard. It was impossible to stay in the shed in any case — the back wall had begun to burn, and gray smoke was already creeping in through the cracks.

His mother was lying on her back. Achimas squatted down and touched the blue spot between her eye and her ear. His mother looked as if she were alive, but instead of looking at Achimas, she was looking at the sky — it had become more important for Sarah-Fatima than her son. But of course — that was where her God lived. Achimas leaned down over his father, but his father’s eyes were closed and his white beard had turned completely red. The boy ran his fingers over it, and they were stained red, too.

Achimas went into all the farmyards in the village. There were dead men, women, and children lying everywhere. Achimas knew them very well, but they no longer recognized him. The people he had known were not really there anymore. He was alone now. Achimas asked first one God and then the other what he should do. But although he waited, he heard no answer.

Everything was burning. The prayer house, which was also the school, gave a rumble and shot a cloud of smoke up into the air — the roof had collapsed.

Achimas looked around him. Mountains, sky, burning earth, and not a single living soul. And at that moment he realized that this was the way things would always be from now on. He was alone and he had to decide for himself whether to stay or to go, live or die.

He listened carefully to his heart, breathed in the smell of burning, and ran to the road that led first upward, into the mountain plateau, and then downward, into the large valley.

Achimas walked for the rest of the day and the whole night. At dawn he collapsed at the side of the road. He felt very hungry, but even more sleepy, and he fell asleep. He was awakened by hunger. The sun was hanging in the very center of the sky. He walked on and in the early evening came to a large Cossack village.

At the edge of the village there were long beds of cucumbers. Before this Achimas would never even have thought of taking someone else’s property, because his father’s God had said, “Thou shalt not steal,” but now he had no father and no God, either, and he sank down onto his hands and knees and began greedily devouring the plump, pimply green fruits. The earth crunched in his teeth and he did not hear the owner, a massive Cossack in soft boots, come stealing up behind him. He grabbed Achimas by the scruff of the neck and lashed him several times with his whip, repeating: “Don’t steal, don’t steal.” The boy did not cry and he did not beg for mercy; he just looked up with his white wolf’s eyes. This drove the owner into a fury and he set about thrashing the wolf cub as hard as he could — until the boy puked up a green mess of cucumbers. Then the Cossack took Achimas by the ear, dragged him out into the road, and gave him a kick to start him on his way.

As he walked along Achimas thought that although his father was dead, his God was still alive, and his God’s laws were still alive, too. His back and shoulders were on fire, but the fire consuming everything inside him was worse.

By a narrow, fast-running stream Achimas came across a big boy about fourteen years old. The young Cossack was carrying a loaf of brown bread and a crock of milk.

“Give me that,” said Achimas and grabbed the bread out of his hand.

The big boy put his crock down on the ground and punched him in the nose. Stars appeared in front of Achimas’s eyes and he fell down, then the big boy — he was stronger — sat on top of him and began punching him on the head. Achimas picked up a stone from the ground and hit the young Cossack above his eye. The older boy rolled away, covered his face with his hands, and began whimpering. Achimas lifted up the stone to hit him again, but then he remembered that God’s law said: “Thou shalt not kill” — and he stopped himself. The crock had been knocked over during the fight and the milk had been spilled, but Achimas was left with the bread, and that was enough. He walked on along the road and ate and ate and ate, until he had eaten it all to the very last crumb.