The Death of Achilles

FOUR

They spent the nights wherever they could: in abandoned houses, in roadside inns, with his uncle’s friends, and sometimes out in the forest, wrapped up in their felt cloaks. “A man must know how to find food and water and a path through the mountains,” said Chasan, teaching his nephew his own law. “And he must be able to defend himself and the honor of his family.”

Achimas did not know what the honor of his family was. But he wanted very much to be able to defend himself and was willing to study from morning till night.

“Hold your breath and imagine a fine ray of light stretching out of the barrel. Feel for your target with that ray,” Chasan taught him, breathing down the back of his neck and adjusting the position of the boy’s fingers where they clutched the gun stock. “You don’t need strength. A rifle is like a woman or a horse — give it affection and understanding.” Achimas tried to understand his rifle, he listened to its high-strung iron voice, and the metal began droning into his ear: A little more to the right, more, and now fire. “Vai!” said his uncle, clicking his tongue and rolling up his eyes. “You have the eye of an eagle! To hit a bottle at a hundred paces! And that is how Magoma’s head will be shattered!”

Achimas did not want to fire at the one-eyed man from a hundred paces. He wanted to kill him in the same way he had killed Fatima — with a blow to the temple — or, even better, slit his throat, as Magoma had slit Pelef’s.

Shooting with a pistol was even easier. “Never take aim,” his uncle told him. “The barrel of the pistol is a continuation of your hand. When you point at something with your finger, you don’t take aim, do you, you just point where you need to. Think of the pistol as your sixth finger.” Achimas pointed the long iron finger at a walnut lying on a tree stump, and the nut shattered in a spray of fine crumbs.

Chasan did not give his nephew a sword, telling him that his arm and shoulder had to grow more first, but he gave him a dagger on the very first day and told him never to part with it, saying: “When you swim naked in the stream, hang it around your neck.” As time went by, the dagger became a part of Achimas’s body, like a wasp’s sting. He could cut dry twigs for the campfire with it, bleed a deer that he had shot, whittle a fine sliver of wood to pick his teeth after eating the deer meat. When they halted for a rest and he had nothing to do, Achimas would throw his dagger at a tree from a standing, sitting, or prone position. He never wearied of this pastime. At first he could only stick the knife into a pine tree, then into a young beech, then into any branch on the beech.

“A weapon is good,” said Chasan, “but a man must be able to deal with his enemy even without a weapon: with his fists, feet, teeth, it doesn’t matter what. The important thing is that your heart must be blazing with holy fury; it will protect you against pain, strike terror into your enemy, and bring you victory. Let the blood rush to your head so that the world is shrouded in red mist, and then nothing will matter to you. If you are wounded or killed — you will not even notice. That is what holy fury is.” Achimas did not argue with his uncle, but he did not agree with him. He did not want to be wounded or killed. In order to stay alive, you had to see everything, and fury and red mist were no use for that. The boy knew that he could manage without them.

One day, when it was already winter, his uncle returned from the tavern in a cheerful mood. A reliable man had informed him that Magoma had arrived with his loot from Georgia and was feasting at Chanakh. That was close, only two days’ journey.

At Chanakh, a large bandit village, they stayed with a friend of his uncle. Chasan went to find out how things stood and came back late, looking dejected. He said things were difficult. Magoma was strong and cunning. Three of the four men who had been with him in the German village had also come and were feasting with him. The fourth, bandylegged Musa, had been killed by Svans. Now his place had been taken by Djafar from Nazran. That meant there were five of them.

That evening his uncle ate well, prayed, and lay down to sleep. Before he fell asleep he said: “At dawn, when Magoma and his men are tired and drunk, we shall go to take our revenge. You will see Magoma die and dip your fingers in the blood of the one who killed your mother.”

Chasan turned his face to the wall and fell asleep immediately, and the boy cautiously removed a small green silk bag from around his neck. It contained the ground root of the poisonous irganchai mushroom. His uncle had told him that if the border guards caught you and put you in a windowless stone box where you could not see the mountains and the sky, you should sprinkle the powder on your tongue, muster up as much spit as you could, and swallow it. Before you could repeat the name of Allah five times, there would be nothing left in the cell except your worthless body.

Achimas took the baggy trousers, dress, and shawl of their host’s daughter. He also took a jug of wine from the cellar and sprinkled the contents of the little bag into it.

In the tavern there were men sitting and talking, drinking wine and playing backgammon, but Magoma and his comrades were not there. Achimas waited. Soon he saw the son of the tavern-keeper take some cheese and flat bread cakes into the next room and he realized that Magoma was in there.

When the tavern-keeper’s son went away, Achimas went in and set his jug on the table without raising his eyes or saying a word.

“Is the wine good, girl?” asked the one-eyed man with the black beard whom he remembered so well.

Achimas nodded, walked away, and squatted down in the corner. He did not know what to do about Djafar from Nazran. Djafar was still very young, only seventeen years old. Should he tell him that his horse was agitated and chewing on its tethering post — so that he would go out and check? But Achimas remembered the young Cossack and realized that he should not do that. Djafar owed him nothing, but he would die anyway, because that was his fate.

Djafar was the first to die. He drank from the jug with all the rest and almost instantly slumped forward, banging his head down on the table. A second Abrek started laughing, but his laughter turned into a hoarse croak. A third said: “There’s no air in here,” clutched at his chest and fell. “What’s wrong with me, Magoma?” asked the fourth Abrek, stumbling over his words; then he slid off the bench, curled up into a ball, and stopped moving. Magoma himself sat there without speaking, and his face was as scarlet as the wine spilled across the table.

The one-eyed man looked at his dying comrades, then stared at the patiently waiting Achimas. “Whose daughter are you, girl?” Magoma asked, forcing out the words with an effort. “Why do you have such white eyes?”

“I am not a girl,” replied Achimas, “I am Achimas, son of Fatima. And you are a dead man.” Magoma bared his yellow teeth, as if he were greatly pleased by these words, and began slowly pulling his sword with the gilded handle out of its scabbard, but he could not pull it out, he began wheezing and tumbled over onto the earthen floor. Achimas stood up, took his dagger out from under the girl’s dress, and, gazing into Magoma’s single unblinking eye, he slit his throat — in a rapid, gliding movement, as his uncle had taught him. Then he dipped his fingers in the hot, pulsing blood.