The Last Hiccup (12 page)

“Your friends are all dead,” she said. “We're alone now, you and I. There's no one left in the whole world.”

The ceiling lights quivered.

Her wrinkled hand rubbed his cheek.

“That's okay, Yuran. You'll be all right. Mother's here,” she said. “Eat your berries like a good boy.” She held the berries over Vladimir's mouth. His lips refused to part, and the look in the old woman's bloodshot eyes shifted from compassion to determination. Vladimir still hadn't moved when she shoved the berries hard against his mouth. The coarse branch scraped his chin and still he refused to open. Then, against his will, he hiccupped. His lips parted and two filthy morsels slipped in before he could close them.

Instantly the old woman's face changed. She shifted her hand from his cheek to his forehead. “Oh, my dear Yuran,” she said. “I'll nurse you back to health.”

Vladimir could feel the berries inside his mouth like two tiny, unbroken balloons. Up close this woman's eyes looked like they'd been pecked at by ravenous blackbirds. Her face contained a galaxy of pores, literally thousands of outlets for perspiration eclipsed only by a single round pimple on her cheek, a red sun orbited by a miniature white mole. The old woman stood up. Vladimir hiccupped again but he didn't expel the fruit.

Her voice was haunting. It skipped like a broken record player. “I'll check to see if you're still alive in the morning, my dear boy,” she said. The old woman kissed him on the forehead, a long, wet fastening of her lips to his skin. When she pulled away, there was a clicking sound like a tongue ungluing from the top of one's mouth.

She left the room and locked it behind her. Vladimir glanced around the darkened corners of this small cell. He was alone again. He spat the berries out onto the floor and stood up out of bed. He wouldn't sleep anymore tonight.

The next day, in a village named Listvyanka on the other side of Lake Baikal, Vladimir placed a single foot inside the public transport bus that would take him to the city of Irkutsk. Before he could enter all the way, Dmitri wrapped his short arms around Vladimir's shoulders. Tears streamed down the large man's face. Over the past seven and a half hours, Dmitri had poured his heart out to Vladimir, first on the drive to the passage vessel that would take them across lake and later on the ship itself. Dmitri hadn't intended on traversing the lake with his new hiccupping friend, but once he discovered he'd found a sympathetic ear, it seemed he couldn't help himself. The scandal was too great. Too long had his shoulders been weighed down by a planet of regret. Dmitri told Vladimir everything. About the bad business dealings, his brother Yuran's refusal to own up to his obligations. About the illegitimate child begotten to a syphilis-ridden prostitute. How he'd arranged to spook the mule with a flash of gunpowder just as his brother stood behind it. Now he, Dmitri, the good son, the pious one — morally impervious in every way — was a murderer. His brother Yuran was dead. His mother was overcome with grief. The prostitute had complained to the local magistrate and insisted the child was his. Still his family owed a fortune to the government bank and, worse, even more to unscrupulous moneylenders. How would he escape this deep blue anguish that clung to him like a shadow?

Vladimir looked at the large man, who was red-faced and weeping, then stepped into the bus. He struggled for something — anything — to say, words that would assuage Dmitri's guilt and stop his descent into ruin. Nothing came to him, nothing poignant at least. “You will be okay, my friend,” Vladimir said as the bus door closed between them. Off the bus went down the road. Vladimir took a single look back. Dmitri had fallen to his knees. He slumped forward, his hands dipped into the mud, and then the poor man, now purple in the face and sweating profusely, collapsed. Onlookers rushed to his aid. Vladimir couldn't quite believe it. All those months in the hospital, he'd never witnessed a heart attack. The bus was rounding a corner. No one aboard seemed to have noticed the large man's demise. Vladimir went to stand up, only to realize he had no resuscitation skills, no reason to think he'd be able to help. Already a crowd had formed around Dmitri. Vladimir put his head down. The other passengers had noticed his hiccups. One of them cleared his throat and waved his hand downward in an appeal to get Vladimir to cut it out. Vladimir slumped down in his seat. He wrapped his arms around his satchel, made himself as small as possible and leaned his head against the window. He hiccupped eleven times before finally falling asleep.

His dreams were unlike any he'd experienced before. Unconscious hallucinations inhabited his mind. Vladimir was a general in the army, standing at the edge of a bridge as the Germans advanced carrying torches, eyes blackened, marching in monotone rhythm to the sound of his hiccups. In the background, Mother Russia was ablaze. No amount of sleet or snow or rain could douse the two-meter-high flames. He alone as general was tasked with giving the order to blow up the bridge. The army would retreat to the north, back to Vladimir's home, where every memory was muted in silver dust. Vladimir raised his hand. The bridge exploded and collapsed, but the Germans — wearing the crimson uniforms of Mephistopheles — refused to halt their advance. Like Norwegian lemmings, they tumbled into the abyss, each step taken in time with Vladimir's internal pendulum.

The world had changed. Yet he knew nothing of the world that had existed before. Vladimir's sleepy village, the walls of the hospital, the jungles of Mongolia were all hiding places. He was reborn in the waterfall and now stood anew. Only the world was in flux; it was on fire, and Vladimir was an iceberg melting away, dripping, with the person he used to be licking at his liquefying carcass.

His dreams shifted and he was flying. Soldiers dropped liquid fire from planes. Vladimir's father flew the lead aircraft. He stared at his son from the cockpit of his bomber, a delirious, mesmerizing stare that Vladimir returned with confusion.

Vladimir fought against sleep. His conscious mind entered his dreams and tried to pull him out.

He was awoken by a sudden crash. The bus veered dangerously to the right. Vladimir felt himself slip. His eyes opened just as he slid the length of his seat and fell straight to the floor. The passengers toppled like dominos, shrieking and screaming, their scrambling limbs entangled as the bus lurched to a stop, its entire right side firmly entrenched in a ditch. An elderly woman's shoe was pressed against Vladimir's face. He hoisted himself up. Vladimir stood akilter with the others as they moved single file out through the emergency door at the back of the bus and into the ditch, then to the side of the road. The driver checked on his passengers. There were fourteen in all, three wounded, none severely, the worst injury a suspected broken ankle of a middle-aged Estonian woman. He surveyed the damage to the vehicle next. The front axle had disengaged and one of the tires had been torn to shreds. The driver stood in the center of the road, looked both ways and then scratched his head.

“What we need is a telephone,” he said to no one in particular.

Vladimir approached. “How far is it to Irkutsk?”

“We're almost there,” the man said. “Perhaps a thirty-minute drive away. Maybe less.”

Vladimir looked down the road in the direction the vehicle had been traveling and then back at his fellow travelers pulling their suitcases from the wreck. The injured woman was testing her ankle against the ground while her husband held her up by the shoulder.

“Do you have a plan?” Vladimir said.

The man scratched his head again. His eyebrows gathered together like those of a genetically challenged primate. “Another bus will come by before nightfall. We'll have to wait and see if they have room.”

“And if they don't?”

“Then I suppose we'll have to walk.”

Vladimir looked down the road again. He hefted his satchel over his shoulder. “I'm going to walk ahead,” he said to the group. “Does anyone want to come with me?”

The crowd in the road stared back at him, expressionless.

Vladimir shrugged his shoulders. “I'll send help if I find it,” he said and started walking away from the wreckage. He hadn't made it twenty paces before the driver came running up to him. He put his arm around Vladimir's shoulder.

“There's a quicker way.” The man pointed to the tall grass field with a walkway cut through its center a half kilometer down the road. “The road circles around and past two separate villages. But if you head directly through that field and stay on course due west, you'll reach your destination in a third of the time.”

Vladimir cast him an apprehensive glare. He'd spent weeks walking through barren fields on his way out of Mongolia. Nothing on this journey home, it seemed, would be easy.

“You're sure of this?” he said.

The man nodded.

“If I stay on the road, perhaps I can send some help your way,” Vladimir said.

“Who are you going to send?” the driver said. “I doubt there's a stray team of mechanics wandering the countryside. Even if you found one, we need a hoist to lift the bus out of the ditch. We're best off waiting here for the next bus to pick us up. You're best off waiting as well.”

“I have to get home,” Vladimir said.

The driver took a step back. Their eyes locked and then he turned and walked back to the group, who had already fashioned a makeshift circle out of their suitcases. A game of cards started up.

Vladimir marched down the road. A half kilometer later, when he came to the walkway through the tall grass, he took one last look back. The people on the road were indistinct; he couldn't have picked their faces out of a lineup if he'd tried. Vladimir looked back farther. Lake Baikal was hidden behind a series of hills. Beyond that was the township of Kyakhta with its crooked law enforcement, beggars and thieves, its murderous brothers and at least one infant stricken with a congenital disease affecting mucous membranes, the aorta and all manner of other important bones and organs. Gone was Usurpet and his lascivious brood. Also Gog and the waterfall, the lands in which Vladimir used to hunt.

Vladimir stepped into the path and left his past behind.

Night had long settled into the marbled sky when Vladimir arrived on the outskirts of the city. He crossed through yet another field, the eighteenth he'd traversed in the past two hours. Just an hour ago he waved to a farmer herding goats. Then dark fell. Vladimir kept his eyes glued to his compass. He never veered from the direction of due west.

Slowly the city of Irkutsk appeared to him as a warm orange glow in the distance. Vladimir smiled. Soon he would be sitting inside a railway car, drinking tea with lemon and eating some kind of pastry — something fancy with cinnamon baked right into the bread and layers of white sugar on top. He smacked his lips and ran to the edge of a small cliff. Vladimir stood at the top and looked at Irkutsk in all its glory. It wasn't Moscow by any stretch of the imagination. But it was civilization — teeming, brilliant civilization with lights and theater houses, women and girls, life and vitality.

Vladimir leapt over the edge and glided along one foot to the bottom, smiling all the while from ear to ear. He stepped out from behind a chaparral of prickly bushes and stopped dead in his tracks. There in front of him was a man sitting in a small cage on the back of a green pickup truck. The truck, in turn, was hidden behind a collection of tall pine trees. The cage was barely a meter tall and the man's face was bruised and beaten, his one eye swollen to the extent of closure. His clothing was covered in dried blood and soot. He flashed Vladimir a desperate look.

“Help me,” he whispered.

Vladimir looked left and then right; he looked back up the incline he'd just descended.

“Help me,” the man said again. “I'm a soldier. I've been taken captive.”

Vladimir leaned in close. He hiccupped in the man's face.

The soldier's eyes grew wide like he was about to launch into cardiac arrest. “Shhh!” he whispered. “You'll wake them up.”

“Who?” Vladimir said.

The man gestured toward the front of the vehicle.

Vladimir peered to his left without moving his feet. “What kind of soldier are you?” he said.

“I'm an airman in the Red Army.” The man pointed to the blue insignia on his shoulder.

“Is that the Russian or German army?”

“Russian!” he said in a hard whisper. “Now get me out of here.”

Vladimir angled his body to the left again. He took a single cautious step toward the front of the car. There were indeed two men sitting in the front. Across their laps were large guns, weapons the likes of which Vladimir had never seen. He stepped back and leaned in close to talk to the man. “Are they Germans?”

“They're Japanese!” he said. “Look at their skin and their eyes.”

Vladimir glanced back again. Their skin was a light brown color. Their eyes were distinctly foreign as well. “So they're kamikazes.”

“No, you idiot. They're soldiers, not pilots.”

“I fail to see the difference,” Vladimir said.

“They're Japanese soldiers. That's all you need to know.”

“Whatever their nationality,” Vladimir said, “they have guns. If I try to free you, they'll shoot me dead. I was just shot at the other day by an enraged farmer. It was not a pleasant experience. I don't want to be shot at again.”

The Russian soldier grabbed Vladimir by the collar. He pulled him in close. “You listen to me, you
oslayob
! If you don't get me out of here, those men will torture me and burn me alive. Then they'll do the same to any other Russian — soldier or civilian — they might meet. Their army left them behind to do one thing — kill poor bastards like me. And if you don't stop hiccupping, if you don't get the keys and let me out of here, I'll never see my son again. I'll never see my wife. I'll end up dead on the side of the road and so will a hundred other Russians before they're through with us.”

Vladimir didn't blink. He didn't even move as the man breathed against his nose. For the first time since the Waterfall of Ion, he fashioned that familiar vacuous stare.

The soldier looked deep into Vladimir's eyes. “Help me,” he said again.

“Release me,” Vladimir said slowly.

The man increased his grip.

Vladimir didn't move. He didn't try to remove the man's hands. He just stared straight ahead, waiting, hiccupping, his brown eyes resolute. Eventually the soldier's hands softened. He loosened his grip on Vladimir's collar and then released him altogether. Vladimir took two steps back. He looked around. The truck was shielded by the trees, with no chance a random passerby would stumble upon them. Night had fully overtaken the day. From where he stood, Vladimir could no longer see the bright lights of Irkutsk. Above, the moon hung like a broken coin in the sky.

“Where are the keys?” Vladimir said.

The soldier edged to the front of his cage and pointed into the car. “In the ignition,” he said.

Vladimir stepped softly and looked inside. He could see the keys inside the ignition, resting against the driver's long black gun.

“Reach inside and get them,” the soldier said.

“The door's locked,” Vladimir whispered.

The soldier scrambled inside his cage. He motioned Vladimir over to the passenger's side. “It's unlocked over here,” he said.

Vladimir cast him a dubious look.

The soldier flashed back his pleading eyes.

Following a moment's hesitation, Vladimir set his satchel on the ground. As delicately as possible, he placed his hand on the door handle and pressed his fingers down. The door pried open. Vladimir pulled it toward him carefully, a few centimeters at a time. The resulting creak was so loud it sent shockwaves through Vladimir's heart. He turned and glared at his fellow Russian. The soldier nodded eagerly and motioned for Vladimir to continue. Vladimir pulled the door even more ajar until his torso fit through and then he leaned inside the car. He could smell the enemy soldiers, feel their breath against his cheek. Vladimir stood on his toes and grasped the keys in his hand. Gently, he pulled them out of the ignition and backed out the way he'd come. As he exited the car, Vladimir hiccupped once, loudly and with his mouth open. The blood froze in his veins. He shut his mouth and shifted his eyes. The driver shuffled in his seat, exhaled a snore in stages out through his nose and then turned his head to the side and went back to sleep. He never even opened his eyes.

Vladimir exhaled a long, deep breath.

He walked around to the back of the pickup and handed the keys to the soldier. Madly, and making more noise than Vladimir could have imagined possible, the soldier flipped through the keys until he spotted one that might fit the lock on the cage. He inserted the key and the cage door flew open. The soldier climbed out, landed softly on his feet and brushed past Vladimir. He walked around to the passenger's side, opened the door and grabbed the gun from the enemy soldier's lap. The man inside sat up in a start but it was too late. Without hesitation, the soldier fired two quick bursts with the machine gun. The dying man screamed. A third and fourth round of gunfire sounded. In aimless streaks of crimson, the driver's blood splattered all over the back window. Then the gunfire ceased. Suddenly Vladimir felt an unparalleled intensification of all his senses. Every minute aperture on his face distended fully. His eyelids opened and closed like the batting of two enormous fans. A dense layer of sound blanketed the trees — the echo of the gunfire reverberating against the hill; the Russian soldier's guttural scream; the last gasps of air from the Japanese. The world slowed down and all that Vladimir could hear, all he could see and taste and feel, was death.

The soldier turned and pointed the gun at Vladimir, his eyes filled with bloodlust.

Instantly Vladimir realized how rash and stupid he'd been. Since the moment they'd met, he'd made no real allegiance with this man. He had found a prisoner locked in a cage, was tricked into believing the prisoner was a military man and then fell victim to a perennial tale of woe involving a bright-eyed young son and a soon-to-be-widowed bride. He'd risked his life for the sole purpose of handing the prisoner a gun. Vladimir cursed himself. The urge to run manifested in his chest and then was quickly dismissed. Taking flight would be undignified. He would stand his ground and meet his fate like a man.

“Do you want a turn?” the soldier said.

“What do you mean?”

He took his hand off the trigger and presented the gun to Vladimir. “Do you want to shoot them?”

A wave of relief flowed over Vladimir. “They're already dead, right?” he said.

The soldier looked inside the car. “Yes. They're dead.”

“Then it probably doesn't make much sense for me to shoot them again.”

The soldier shrugged his shoulders. He reached inside and grabbed a canister of water from the front seat. With one hand he opened it and took three long swigs. He held it in the air for Vladimir.

“No, thank you,” Vladimir said.

The soldier pulled the dead man from the passenger seat and dragged his body away from the car. Then he went around to the other side and pulled out the driver. He lined their bodies up side by side and then searched inside the car for something. A minute passed before he found a long rectangular wallet and produced a picture. “My wife and my son,” he said.

Vladimir nodded. It hadn't all been a lie.

When the soldier finished fishing around inside the truck, he set the gun down on the flatbed and reached out to shake Vladimir's hand. “You've done your country a great service today. Mother Russia is proud to have you as her son.”

Vladimir took the man's hand in his. It was cold and trembled slightly.

“If there's anything I can do for you,” he said, “anything at all, don't hesitate to ask.”

“There is one thing,” Vladimir said.

“What is it?”

“I have no papers. No documentation or anything to prove my identification.”

“Were they stolen?” he said.

“Something like that,” Vladimir said. “I believe I'll need some kind of identification to travel on the railway to Moscow.”

“Wait one second,” the soldier said. He reached inside the car and flipped through a stack of papers until he found what he was looking for. The man handed Vladimir a little booklet with three sheets of paper jutting out. “For travel purposes, your name is now officially Yevgeni Kaminski,” he said. “Soldier in the Russian army. Twenty-three years of age.”

Vladimir took the papers in his hand. “What happened to the real Yevgeni Kaminski?” he said.

The soldier pointed at the dead men on the ground. Their bloody corpses lay eerily still. Vladimir could hardly believe that just minutes ago they were people, men with families and hopes and fears and dreams. Now they littered the earth surrounding the trees.

“The Japanese must have killed him. They kept a pile of soldiers' papers in the car. There must be thirty or forty of these in here.” He walked around to the front of the car and stepped into the driver's seat. “Can I drive you into Irkutsk?” he said.

Vladimir looked at the dark red blood splattered across the windows. A machine gun was sitting in the passenger's seat, another in the back of the truck.

“Thank you,” he said. “But no. I'm going to walk.”

The soldier reached out the window and shook Vladimir's hand again. “I'm forever in your debt,” he said and fired up the engine.

The truck pulled out from behind the trees and onto a nearby road. Vladimir watched it drive away. He stood alone in the faint moonlight. Near him the dead bodies of the two Japanese soldiers lay motionless. Vladimir's hand was covered in tiny speckles of blood.

The next morning he presented the Russian soldier's papers at the Trans-Siberian railway station and climbed aboard a train heading toward Moscow. Sergei and Alexander, his doctors, awaited him.