Apricot Jam: And Other Stories Read online

  But could she have reached the end of her rope?

  Yet, this might also be his chance: Let me meet with her! Let me talk to her myself!

  Libin gave a hesitant “No”: “You have to earn a meeting, first of all by your repentance.”

  Two or three days passed in this way, Ektov insisting on a meeting, Libin insisting first on complete repentance.

  But Ektov could not trample into the mud all the things he had seen with his own eyes and absolutely knew to be true. And he was incapable of pretending.

  Libin, however, was also unwilling to give an inch. (And his stubbornness proved that what he had said about Polina was untrue! That was not her at all!)

  Then Libin abruptly ended the duel, and in a way that took Ektov’s breath away: To hell with you, don’t repent! To hell with you, you can keep your brainless populism! But if you don’t cooperate with us, I’ll hand over your Polina to the Hungarians in the special forces and make you watch. And we’ll put your little brat in an orphanage. And after you’ve seen the show, you’ll get a bullet in the back of the neck. That’s less than you deserve, and we should have done it sooner.

  Icy fingers seemed to grip his chest. These people certainly were capable of doing all that Libin had said. Such things had happened more than once. Their power rested on such things, in fact.

  Polina . . . !

  They gave Ektov a day and then another day to think.

  And how could one think inside this torture chamber where you’re surrounded by threats and have no way out? His thoughts simply passed through his head, disconnected, as if he were only half awake.

  How could he do it—sacrifice his wife and Marinka and simply step over them? Was there anyone else on earth, anything else on earth, to which he felt more responsible? Everything that made his life meaningful lay in these two people.

  And was he to be the one to give them up? What kind of person could do such a thing . . . ? And afterwards they would shoot Polina. And they wouldn’t spare Marinka either. He knew these people.

  What if he could save some peasants by doing that? But the rebels had already lost, that was clear. They’ve lost in any case.

  As for his cooperation, what did that mean these days? How could it tip the scales of an uprising that has already been put down? The only question was the sacrifice of his family. Nothing else could be changed.

  How he hated that swarthy face of Libin with its insolent, triumphant expression and those eyes with their predatory gleam! Giving up would bring a kind of relief. It was probably the same feeling a woman has when she ceases to struggle. All right, you’re stronger than I am. I’ll throw myself on your mercy. It’s a way to make dying a little easier.

  What use could he now be to the Reds, though?

  He gave in. But there was a condition: he wanted a meeting with Polina.

  Libin confidently accepted his surrender. As for the meeting with his wife, that will only happen when you carry out our assignment. Then, of course—we’ll simply let you go back to your family.

  What else could he do?

  You would have to have an incredibly stony heart to trample in the mud all that was dearest to you. And now, for what cause?

  Oboyansky’s melodious incantations also left their trace on him. He was right, they were a powerful generation! The new Huns, but armed with a socialist ideology. A strange mixture . . .

  And perhaps it was also true that we, the old school intelligentsia, had failed to understand something. The paths to the future don’t easily reveal themselves to the human eye.

  ~ * ~

  Ektov’s assignment was this: He was to be a guide for the cavalry brigade of the famous Grigory Kotovsky, the Civil War hero. (The brigade had just moved through the rebellious Pakhotny Ugol and slaughtered 500 rebels.) Ektov was not to invent any new identity for himself, he was to go as the famous Ego from Antonov’s staff. (Antonov’s forces had been utterly routed and his army had ceased to exist. He had fled and was still in hiding. But Antonov was not their concern.)

  And what was his job to be?

  That would be explained on the way.

  (Still, somehow, he might be able to wriggle out of it.)

  It was a short trip from Tambov to Kobylinka, a place that bordered on one of the areas the partisans favored.

  They went on horseback. (And the Chekists, in civilian clothes, rode beside him, never leaving him for a minute. They had half a squadron of Red Army troops with them.)

  Once again he was in the open air, under the open sky. It was early June, and the lindens were in blossom. Just fill your lungs with that air!

  So many of our poets and writers had told us the same thing: How beautiful the world is, and how people debase and poison it with their endless antagonisms. Will this strife never end? Will people ever be able to create a life freed from such afflictions, a splendid, sensible life of abundance? That was the dream of generations.

  A few versts before Kobylinka, they met Kotovsky himself. He was a huge, powerful man with a shaven head and the savage face of a convict. Kotovsky’s squadron was in peasant garb, not Red Army uniforms, though they all wore riding boots and sheepskin hats or astrakhans. A few of them had the red Cossack stripe on their trousers. Were they supposed to be Cossacks?

  Indeed, they were. They had been told to call each other “neighbor,” in Cossack fashion, and not “comrade.”

  The senior Chekist accompanying Ektov now explained his task: This night they were to meet with the representative of a band of some 500 rebels. Ego was to confirm that we were Cossacks from the Kuban and Don insurgent army and had broken through Voronezh Province to link up with Antonov.

  As night fell, Ego was given an unloaded Nagan pistol to strap on his hip and a puny nag to ride. (The four Chekists in civilian clothes stuck close to him, playing the role of the new staff he had collected after the defeat of Antonov’s forces. Their Nagans were fully loaded, and it was clear they would shoot him at his first wrong move.)

  Kotovsky and his squadron had arranged the meeting in a forester’s cabin on the edge of a clearing. Misha Matyukhin, brother of Ivan Matyukhin, the commander of a rebel detachment that was still active, was coming from the other direction with a few dozen horsemen. (Several brothers would often join the Tambov rebels. Aleksandr Antonov’s younger brother Mitka, a village poet, always went into battle by his side. The two of them had also escaped together.)

  The riders stopped at the clearing. The main negotiators entered the forester’s hut, where two candles burned on the table. Their faces could just be made out.

  Misha Matyukhin had never seen Ego’s face, but his brother Ivan had. “He’ll vouch for me,” said Ektov, who could barely recognize his own voice and believe that he was serving such brazen falsehood to the peasants. But once he had taken his first steps across this shaky little bridge, there was no stopping. Looking at Kotovsky, he said: “Here’s the head of their detachment, Lieutenant Colonel Frolov.” (So as not to overdo it, Kotovsky had not donned a Cossack colonel’s insignia, though he could easily have done so.)

  Matyukhin insisted that Ego come with him to a place a few versts away to meet his elder brother, who could confirm his identity. This was no problem for the Chekists, and they never hesitated; they had good cavalry horses and a stock of ammunition for their Nagans.

  They rode first along a cutting through the forest, then across a field, under a starry sky. In the darkness and moving at a brisk trot, no one wondered why Ego’s horse was so wretched in comparison with those of his aides.

  As he jolted along in his saddle, Pavel Vasilyevich kept thinking, desperately thinking, that soon he would tell Matyukhin the truth; he would be killed, but these four Chekists would be slaughtered along with him! And Matyukhin’s 500 troops would be saved. They were an elite force!

  But still—and how many times he had gone through this, forming logical arguments in his head, while his heart overflowed with pain. Not pain for himself, of course—there was none o
f that. But they would take it out on Polina, as they had threatened, and perhaps on his little daughter as well. For a long time now he had known what the Chekists were capable of, and after those months in the Lubyanka and those days traveling here, he knew it even better. So how could he save his family? How could he do it himself, with only his own hands?

  Antonov’s military campaign had failed, after all. If you took a broader view and put it in a larger context, the whole province might be better off if peace at last did come. The merciless requisitions of food had now been stopped and would be replaced by a fair tax on food. Perhaps it would be better, then, to end the fighting as soon as possible. The wounds would heal gradually. It would simply take time. And life, an entirely new way of life, would somehow come to rights, would it not?

  We’ve been through enough pain, every one of us.

  They came to a new hut, much better lit up.

  Ivan Matyukhin, a sturdy, powerful man with a thick moustache the color of ripe wheat, a tireless warrior, strode up to meet them, recognized Ego, and swung his arm forward to clasp his hand.

  Ektov felt the ache of a Judas in his hand! Who could understand his pain unless he himself had experienced it? But he had to carry on, confidently and without hesitation, looking like a commander.

  The honest and straightforward Matyukhin, with plump, rosy cheeks and a thick, fair forelock slanting across his forehead, had a powerful grip—a warrior from head to toe.

  He trusted Ektov, and he was overjoyed: Our ranks have filled out! A new chance to thrash the Bolsheviks! He grinned like a man who knew his strength.

  They talked of their plans. Tomorrow evening both detachments would assemble in one of the large villages, and the next day they would begin an offensive.

  Now was the moment! Like a lightning flash, Ektov thought: No! I tell you, no! Shoot me, torture my family, but I can’t betray these honest men!

  But at the same moment, his throat seized as if it had been scalded.

  As he swallowed, someone interrupted to put in his word. And then someone else. (The Chekists were playing their roles well, and each one of them had his own story about why no one had seen him in the uprising before. All of them had the bearing of soldiers or sailors.)

  And now this moment of decisiveness had flown past and dissolved into impotence.

  At this, the two groups parted.

  ~ * ~

  Then he spent an endless and agonizing day with Kotovsky’s detachment.

  He despised himself. His treachery had plunged him into a nightmare of darkness. One could not go on living in such darkness, one could no longer be a man. (The Chekists were watching every movement of his brows and every blink of his eyes.) Once I’ve done what they’ve asked, most likely they’ll just shoot me. (And then they’ll leave Polina alone!)

  Toward evening the whole cavalry brigade mounted their horses. Many of them were dressed as Cossacks.

  They moved off in formation. Ego was there with his retinue of Chekists. Kotovsky’s feral gaze could be seen from under his shaggy Kuban papakha.

  Was it Kotovsky or Katovsky (from the word kat, executioner)? He’d been in prison for murder, and not just one murder. He was a horrifying man, and just looking at him was enough to turn your stomach to jelly.

  At twilight the detachments entered the village where they had agreed to meet from opposite directions; the troops dispersed among the huts. (Kotovsky’s men, though, left their horses saddled, ready for the slaughter that would begin in another hour or two. Matyukhin’s men settled in and made themselves at home.)

  They met in a large house of a prosperous family that stood in the middle of the village, near the church and where the lines of houses met. The imposing woman of the house, not yet old, and her daughters and daughters-in-law had set up a row of tables to seat twenty. There was mutton, roast chickens, new cucumbers, and potatoes. Bottles of home-brewed vodka were set along the tables, together with some cut-glass tumblers. There were kerosene lamps on the tables and on the walls.

  The Matyukhin men were mostly on one side of the table, Kotovsky’s on the other. Ego, presiding over the dinner, had been seated at the end where he could be seen by both sides.

  What vital strength emanated from these rebel commanders! So many of them had gone through the German War as NCOs or private soldiers, but now they were serving as commanders.

  They were Tambov types, with high cheekbones, rough and hardened faces, and thick lips; a few had bulbous noses, others long and drooping ones. Some had forelocks as fair as flax, others as black as coal; and there was one man who looked like a gypsy, with a face so reddish black that it set off the whiteness of his teeth.

  Kotovsky’s men, to pass themselves off as Kuban peasants, were to speak in the dialect of that province and some of them in Ukrainian. There was not a single man from the Don region among them, but they counted on the Tambov people not recognizing the Don dialect.

  One of the Matyukhin men had a prominent chin and the suspicious face of a backwoodsman. He had bags under his eyes and a drooping moustache; clearly, he was exhausted. But another was a dashing and slender fellow with a twisted moustache and eyes darting about, alert but cheery. He sat at the corner where there was more room, turned sideways with one leg crossed over the other. He seemed not to be expecting any surprises, but was ready for them and for anything else.

  Ego could not refrain from nudging him with his foot, twice. But the fellow didn’t seem to understand.

  Glasses of vodka were poured, raising the mood and the fellowship of the meeting. Mutton and ham were sliced with long knives; smoke from the bracing homegrown tobacco rose here and there and spread across the ceiling. The hostess floated about the room while the younger women fussed, served, and cleared away the dishes.

  What if some miracle suddenly took place and saved everything? What if the Matyukhin men realized what was going on and saved themselves?

  The “Cossack” second lieutenant, “Borisov” (a commissar and Chekist), rose and began reading a fabricated “Resolution of the All-Russian Conference of Partisan Detachments” (that now must be convened). Soviets, but without communists! Soviets of the working peasants and Cossacks! Hands off the peasant harvest!

  One of the Matyukhin men, a younger fellow with a round, flowing beard, a fluffy moustache, and a face well tested by life, looked at the speaker with calm, intelligent eyes. His neighbor, who might have been cast from iron, cocked his head and squinted a bit.

  What fine fellows they are! And how unbearable this is!

  But now it’s too late to save anything, even if you shout out loud.

  Matyukhin, showing his support of the second lieutenant, pounded the table with his fist: “We’ll destroy their bloody communes!”

  From the far end of the table, a young fellow with a broad forehead and flaxen hair that looked as if it had been freshly curled, a village dandy, shouted out: “Hang the bastards!”

  Kotovsky returned to the business at hand: Where was Antonov? Without him we’re not likely to make it.

  “We still haven’t found him,” Matyukhin said. “I’ve heard he got shell shock in the last fight and is getting treatment. But we can raise all the Tambov people again on our own.”

  His next plan: attack the concentration camp near Rasskazovo where they put the families of the rebels and are killing them off. That’s our first job.

  Kotovsky agreed.

  Now—was that a signal from Kotovsky . . . ?

  All the Kotovsky men, in unison, whipped out their weapons—some of them huge Mausers, others Nagans—and began firing across the table at their “allies.”

  A thunderous roar filled the hut; there was smoke, fumes, and the desperate cries of the women. The Matyukhin men fell, one after the other, onto the table with their chests in the food, onto their neighbors, backwards off the bench.

  The lamp fell on the table, and a burning stream of kerosene ran along the oilcloth.

  The dashing, sharp-eyed fel
low in the corner managed to fire back twice and drop two Kotovsky men. Then a saber cut off that head with the twisted moustache, and it tumbled onto the floor; a crimson stream of blood spurted from the neck to the floor, forming a pool around his body.

  Ektov did not move; he was frozen. If only they would finish him off quickly—a Nagan, a saber, it made no difference.

  Kotovsky’s men ran out of the hut to seize the confused Matyukhin guards who still did not realize what was happening.

  Kotovsky’s horsemen were already rushing in from the other side of the village, shooting and cutting down the Matyukhin men in the yards, in the huts, and in beds, not letting them mount their horses.

  The few who were still able galloped toward the dark forest.

  1994

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