The Death of Achilles

TWO

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.

He ought not to have listened to God; he ought to have killed the boy. Achimas realized this later, when it was twilight, and he was overtaken by two riders on a horse. One was wearing a peaked cap with a blue band and the young Cossack was sitting behind him, with his face bruised and swollen.

“There he is, Uncle Kondrat!” the young Cossack shouted. “There he is, the murderer!”

That night Achimas sat in a cold cell and listened to the Cossack sergeant Kondrat and the police constable Kovalchuk deciding his fate. Achimas had not said a word to them, although they had tried to find out who he was and where he came from by twisting his ear and slapping his cheeks. Eventually they had decided the boy must be a deaf-mute and left him in peace.

“What can we do with him, Kondrat Panteleich?” asked the constable. He was sitting with his back to Achimas and eating something, washing it down with some liquid from a jug. “We can’t take him into town, surely? Perhaps we should just keep him here until morning and throw him out on his ear?”

“I’ll throw you out on your ear,” replied the sergeant, who was sitting facing him and writing in a book with a goose-quill pen. “He almost broke the ataman’s son’s head open. Kizlyar’s the place for him, the animal, in prison.”

“But it’s a shame to put him in prison, the way they treat little lads in there! You know yourself, Kondrat Panteleich.”

“There’s nowhere else to put him,” the sergeant replied sternly. “We don’t have any orphanages around here.”

“I heard that the nuns in Skyrovsk take in orphans.”

“Only girl orphans. Put him in prison, Kovalchuk, put him in prison. You can take him away first thing in the morning. I’ll just sort out the papers.”

But when morning came Achimas was already far away. After the sergeant left and the constable lay down to sleep and began snoring, Achimas pulled himself up to the window, squeezed between two thick bars, and jumped down onto the soft earth.

He had heard about Skyrovsk before — it was forty versts away in the direction of the sunset.

It turned out that God did not exist after all.