The Death of Achilles

THREE

Achimas arrived at the Skyrovsk Convent Orphanage dressed as a little girl — he had stolen a cotton-print dress and a shawl from a washing line. He told the mother superior, who had to be addressed as ‘Mother Pelagia,’ that he was Lia Welde, a refugee from the village of Neueswelt, which had been devastated by mountain bandits. Welde was his real surname, and Lia was the name of his second cousin, another Welde, a horrid little girl with freckles and a squeaky voice. The last time Achimas has seen her she was lying flat on her back with her face split in two.

Mother Pelagia stroked the little German girl’s cropped white hair and asked: “Will you take the Orthodox faith?”

And so Achimas became Russian, because now he knew for certain that God did not exist and prayers were nonsense, which meant that the Russian faith was no worse than his father’s.

He liked it at the orphanage. They were fed twice a day and they slept in real beds. Only they prayed a lot and his feet kept getting tangled in the hem of his skirt.

On the second day a girl with a thin face and big green eyes came up to Achimas. Her name was Evgenia and her parents had also been killed by bandits, only a long time ago, last autumn. “What clear eyes you have, Lia. Like water,” she said. Achimas was surprised — people usually found his excessively pale eyes unpleasant. When the sergeant was beating him, he kept repeating over and over again, “White-eyed Finnish scum.”

The girl Evgenia followed Achimas everywhere. Wherever he went, she went. On the fourth day, she caught Achimas with the hem of his dress pulled up, urinating behind the shed.

So now he would have to run away again, only he didn’t know where to go. He decided to wait until they threw him out, but they didn’t throw him out. Evgenia had not told anyone.

On the sixth day, a Saturday, they had to go to the bathhouse. In the morning Evgenia came up to him and whispered: “Don’t go, say you’ve got your colors.” Achimas didn’t understand. “What colors?” he asked. “It’s when you can’t go to the bathhouse because you’re bleeding and it’s unclean. Some of our girls already have them. Katya and Sonya have,” she explained, naming the two oldest wards of the orphanage. “Mother Pelagia won’t check; she’s too prudish.” Achimas did as she said. The nuns were surprised that it had started so early, but they allowed him not to go to the bathhouse. That evening he told Evgenia: “Next Saturday I’ll go away.” Tears began running down her cheeks. She said: “You’ll need some bread for the road.”

But Achimas did not have to run way, because the following Friday evening, on the day before the next bath day, his uncle Chasan came to the orphanage. He went to Mother Pelagia and asked if there was a little girl here from the German village that had been burned down by the Abrek Magoma. Chasan said that he wanted to talk to the girl and find out how his sister and his nephew had died. Mother Pelagia summoned Lia Welde to her cell and left them there in order not to hear talk of evil.

Chasan was nothing at all like Achimas had imagined him. He was fat-cheeked and red-nosed, with a thick black beard and cunning little eyes. Achimas looked at him with hatred, because he looked exactly like the Chechens who had burned down the village of Neueswelt.

The conversation went badly. The orphan either would not answer questions or answered them in monosyllables and the look in the eyes under those white lashes was stubborn and hostile.

“They did not find my nephew Achimas,” Chasan said in Russian punctuated with a glottal stutter. “Perhaps Magoma took him away with him?” The little girl shrugged.

Then Chasan thought for a moment and took a silver coin necklace out of his bag. “A present for you,” he said, holding it up. “Beautiful, all the way from Shemakha. You play with it while I go and ask the mother superior for a night’s lodging. I’ve traveled a long way, I’m tired. I can’t sleep out in the open…”

He went out, leaving his weapon on the chair. The moment the door closed behind his uncle, Achimas threw the coin necklace aside and pounced on the heavy sword in the black scabbard with silver inlay work. He tugged on the hilt and out slid the bright strip of steel, glinting icily in the light of the lamp. A genuine Gurda sword, thought Achimas, running his finger along the Arabic script.

There was a quiet creak. Achimas started violently and saw Chasan’s laughing black eyes watching him through the crack of the door.

“Our blood,” his uncle said in Chechen, baring his white teeth in a smile, “it’s stronger than the German blood. Let us leave this place, Achimas. We’ll spend the night in the mountains. Sleep is sweeter under the open sky.”

Later, when Skyrovsk was left behind them, beyond the mountain pass, Chasan put his hand on Achimas’s shoulder. “I’ll put you in school to learn, but first I’ll make a man of you. You have to take vengeance on Magoma for your father and mother. This you must do, it is the law.”

Achimas realized that this was the true law.