The Hired Man

20

I discovered the bodies at the ravine.

On the way down the hill my head and heart pound, there’s a metallic taste in my mouth, also bitter bile. I am suddenly cold. And thirsty, desperately thirsty. I find a stream and drink from it, the water tastes of rotten leaves, I gulp it down like a man who has been lost at sea. The stink of the corpses is in my nostrils, my clothes, my hair. When I begin to move again I don’t run, I drag myself through the woods. What slows my pace is the immensity of the crime and of what it required for those bodies to be there: dumped in the ravine and raked over. How many people did it take? Who else knows about this? How many people in Gost are part of it? At times I imagine I’m being followed or watched and that somebody will challenge me. Once or twice I stop and listen. The further I get the more the idea of the bodies being up there, carelessly buried, nobody to guard over them and left to the animals, seems impossible: the baker and his family and their Mongol daughter. Who else has been killed and discarded? I think of the others who have gone, the empty houses. I think of my father’s colleague from the post office, whose boss is Javor’s father — walking along with his pockets stuffed with envelopes. What was it he knew or imagined? He was a man in his sixties, who’d seen more than I ever had, who may even have fought a war. I wonder at the fate of Javor’s father. I walk on, my mind becomes clearer. First, Javor. Javor must get out of Gost. I start to think how this might happen, I don’t trust the roads: full of checkpoints, militiamen and soldiers. Maybe through the mountains. Javor is no outdoorsman but I could go with him. Winter, when the passes became snowbound, is still some way off. There is fighting further north, which is where it moved after it left Gost. To the coast then. Across the plains, by foot. The hardest thing would be to stay out of sight. My thoughts loop back to leaving by road, of what it would take to smuggle Javor. Who could I rely upon? Now and with this new knowledge, how do I know who to trust?

I pass nobody. The light is going. At this hour people are at home, especially these days when people spend a lot more time shuttered indoors. I think about them, huddled over their plates of food: cans of potatoes and meat taken from their neighbours’ larders, wearing their neighbours’ clothes, maybe even burning wood from their neighbours’ woodsheds in their stoves. No sight of the moon. A wind from the north brings more wind and with it a light rain, which as I walk begins to fall more heavily, gusting across the road. I wipe the water from my eyes and carry on. At the bend in the road I take the short cut which leads to the back of my parents’ property, behind my father’s shanty town. There, standing at the back door of the house, I see my mother. She isn’t wearing a coat or holding an umbrella, she’s just standing holding herself, allowing the rain to soak through her clothes, looking in the direction of the road. On the road, just pulling away, is the grey van. I recognise it immediately: the grey van with the old-fashioned shape, I last saw it parked outside the school. I’ve only had the knowledge for a short while and I’m already too late. Javor! Do I shout his name? I don’t know. I see my mother turn in my direction and raise both her hands, one in my direction and one in the direction of the van.

I thought I had seen the worst, but worse is to come. I have been wasting time.

Now I run. I cut back out to the road and follow the van. Like a delivery van which has collected a package it isn’t moving especially fast then after a short while it begins to gather speed. It’s headed downhill towards the blue house. I can think only: Anka. I keep running. Briefly I’m aware of my mother’s call. I run through the long field, slash through wheat ready for harvest, releasing clouds of insects. To my left I can see the headlights of the grey van sweeping away from and then back towards me as the van rounds the bend and even though I have been able to cut the corner, moving as fast as I can, I am being left behind. The van is gathering pace. This gives me hope and sure enough the van passes the blue house. I begin to slow down. Saliva floods my mouth, and again the aftertaste of copper. I have sprinted for almost a kilometre. A pain in my side makes me twist. I bend over, my knees crease and I go down. For a few seconds I remain on all fours; I smell flowers, wet soil.

I walk the rest of the way. I think they must be taking Javor to the school building. There may be time yet, something we can do. My mind races through possibilities, turns again to who might help, but no names come to mind. In the last few months everything and everybody has changed. People you thought you knew. There’s Danica and Luka, I trust them, of course. Anka and me. But what can any of us do? Fabjan is the only person I know who might have influence. Fabjan knows the militiamen, they drink in his bar, he buys them rounds. They supply him with black market whisky. I reach the blue house. Fabjan’s car is parked outside. For a fraction of a second I am relieved because Fabjan is already there, ahead of me, but before the whole thought is even formed I know I’m wrong.

Fabjan has known about this all along. He is part of it.

The door of the blue house opens. There is Fabjan now. And there is Anka. He is holding her, fingers closed tight around her upper arm, hurrying her towards the car. Holding the back door open is a man in uniform, one of the new arrivals. Next to him is the young man I spoke to at the school; he wipes his nose with his fingers, his head low while he watches Fabjan with Anka. There is something feral about his posture, that stare. Anka is tying a scarf around her head, she is hurrying. What is she thinking? That Fabjan has come to help her, take her somewhere safe, or maybe somewhere where she can talk to someone who might be persuaded to let Javor go? She has put her trust in him and there’s urgency in her movements, such that she doesn’t seem to notice the grip of Fabjan’s hand on her upper arm.

I’m running again. With two hundred metres between us, I call Anka’s name but the wind, the rain, the cloth of the scarf she is tying around her head blot out the sound. Fabjan, though, hears something. He raises his head sharply and peers into the gathering darkness. I can see him, but he can’t see me. He gestures to the two men, says something to Anka, pushes her along. Now they’re getting into the car. The doors slam. Fabjan guns the engine.

Time passes.

I stand in the rain outside the blue house and when I start moving again it’s at a steady jog. I am wet through, but I feel nothing, just a pulse in my forehead, the beat of my heart, the butt of my rifle hitting my shoulder. By the time I reach the school building it is dark. No lights, no grey van, no sign of Fabjan’s car either. I walk back the way I have come. I have only one idea, which is that they might at some point take Javor or Anka or both up to the ravine and that if I can do nothing else I will go to the ravine and wait. Kos is still with me, keeping pace, the run has scarcely put her out of breath. I have a growing sense now of what I must do.

The door of the blue house is locked. I find the key and let myself in. All is darkness, the smell of cooking and pottery glaze, on the table a pair of freshly glazed dishes. I pick up a cloth lying there, one I’ve seen Anka use to wipe her hands. On the back of the door are scarves, jackets and coats. I take a scarf belonging to Javor. On the counter in the kitchen is the heel of a loaf of bread and a couple of apples, which I stuff into my pockets. I find a piece of salami and take that too. I fill my water bottle from the tin jug of well water in the corner.

On the way back up the hill I run to a slow rhythm, one I maintain until I reach the lower tree line. Only there do I stop for breath. No sign of either the grey van or of Fabjan’s car. I can hear nothing beyond the rain and the wind. I stop and crouch down next to Kos, I talk to her until she is still. One after the other I offer her the things I have taken from the blue house: first the cloth, then the scarf. Again, the cloth and then the scarf. I give her a small piece of salami and shove the rest back in my pocket. I stand, sling my rifle over my shoulder again and we press on, Kos with her nose to the ground. The woods are dark; the only separation between the trees and the air is a difference in the density of the darkness. The trees are a solid black. The air shimmers, is speckled black and grey.

Kos sweeps her head from left to right across the ground and occasionally lifts her head and tilts her nose to the sky. The rain, though heavier now, for the most part fails to break the canopy. The sound of drops hitting the branches creates a white noise that absorbs everything else. We head steadily uphill. All the time I am listening for sounds, of men’s voices or a truck engine, looking for the light of torches between the trees. Although the temperature has dropped and my clothes are soaking I feel neither cold nor hungry, nor thirsty as I had before, instead I feel alert, alive. I have slipped the rifle from my shoulder and now carry it in one hand, my fingers grip the stock. I try to work through events and possible outcomes in my mind, but I can only think of one. The way seems longer than it ever has and when finally I reach the edge of the ravine all is silent. The sky is dark. The moon, in its last quarter, has not yet risen. A scattering of stars and the lights of Gost. There is nothing and nobody. I think about what to do next. I sink to my knees and press my forehead against the barrel of my rifle. Impossible they could have got there before me, without me seeing or hearing them. Kos had picked up no scent. She stands next to me patiently waiting to be told what to do. But I have no other plan.

I have no other plan.

This is it.

After a while I stand and go to wait inside the trees, squatting with my back against a trunk. I’m not hungry; I eat an apple for the energy I may need. I eat it all including the core. Then I kick over the sodden pine needles at my feet and make a place for myself and Kos among the dry ones. I sit and listen to the rain. I tell myself nobody can get past me to the ravine. I wait. From time to time I stand up to stretch my legs. The moon rises. The rain eases off. Perhaps I doze; I am not aware of dreaming and yet it seems as though I am, as if everything that is happening is taking place in a dream. I pray for it to be so. I wait, adrift in time and space.

The hours pass and nobody comes. It’s well past midnight when I head back down the hill with Kos at my side. We go back down through the woods, cutting across the hillside. The thoughts fly, of what I will do next, I don’t yet know but I am no longer in the same state as when I found the bodies, ran through the long field to the blue house. Then the fear had been at my heels. Now it is curled around my heart, my heartbeat has slowed and my mind is sharp and cold.

We have almost reached the bottom tree line when I become aware of a shift in Kos, a new tension. She trots ahead and begins to loop, running in circles and swinging her head from side to side. She is breathing heavily. I go to her and offer the cloth and the scarf one more time. She sets off, running in circles and figures of eight, and then she stops, sniffs the ground and heads unhesitatingly in the opposite direction from the one we have come in, uphill away from the ravine. Her pace gathers, her nose is close to the ground. I run behind her. It’s hard going, my legs are heavy, my boots soaked. Kos never stops, except once when she loses the scent and doubles back on herself a short way to make sure, then follows the same line. She leads me straight uphill towards the old concrete bunker. A few hundred metres from the top tree line I see the beam of torchlight stitched through the trees. I slow down and stop and put out a hand to touch Kos, who slows too. I make her wait as I go forward.

A group of people. I count four. There is Fabjan and the two men I saw with him earlier. And Anka. The first thing I notice is that she no longer has the scarf she was wearing when she climbed into his car and I wonder what happened to it. Another thing, she is barefoot. Why is she barefoot? Where have they been all this time? What has Fabjan done to her? The thought fills me with rage, I come close to rushing at him. Was Anka Fabjan’s reward for a job well done? It cannot be, and yet what else could account for the missing hours?

Anka. What has he done to you?

I look to the left and to the right. Nothing. I move forward until I am level with the last line of the trees. I can hear them talking. I can’t catch the words, but they are spoken in an ordinary tone as though they are trying to decide on something. Nothing from Anka. Then an exclamation from Fabjan: ‘Jesus!’ He covers his nose with his hand. A gust of wind brings with it the stench of the pit latrines. They start to move further on, away from the smell. The youth moves Anka on by pushing her in the back with his elbow. How full of swagger he is now. I follow them, moving parallel to them, soundlessly, behind the line of the trees.

Another hundred metres on they stop. The rain has started again and is growing heavier, the moon risen to its full, faint strength and the light catches the slanting lines of rain. Now that there is a little more light I can see the two men carry rifles; the youth’s is an old hunting rifle with a wooden stock, the uniformed man is carrying a military-issue rifle and has a pistol in his belt. Fabjan appears unarmed, instead he stands before Anka revealed in all his true nature. And Anka stares at him through the rain. It’s hard for me to see her expression. There’s fear, yes. But it seems to me, as far away as I am and as little as I can see, there’s puzzlement too. People who find themselves about to be killed, for no real reason, must wonder how it came to this, when they have hurt nobody, done nothing to deserve it. She must have thought Fabjan hated her and wondered why. But what Fabjan has for her isn’t hatred, Fabjan doesn’t hate, he doesn’t need to hate to do the things he does. This is what you have to understand: for him, people like him, it’s not difficult.

He simply wants what he wants.

‘Go on,’ said Grace.

I must kill them first, before they kill Anka. But they are three and I am one. Though Fabjan appears unarmed, he might easily be concealing a pistol. It’s a risk I have to take. But before I kill Fabjan I must kill the men who are clearly armed. Which one first? I can try for them both in quick succession, the group is so tight, but of course with the first shot everything will change. These are the split-second calculations I’m making as I hide in the line of trees. A fresh thought comes to me: Anka’s arms aren’t bound. Because she’s an unarmed woman, they don’t see her as a physical threat. When the shooting begins they probably won’t concern themselves too much with her in the first instance, they’ll save themselves. Perhaps I can lead them away, give her the chance to escape. It’s now almost completely dark. I look at the curled strip of the moon: there’s a wisp of cloud across it which will clear in a moment and the small amount of extra light will help me with the shot. I raise my rifle. I decide to take the uniformed man, reckoning the youth probably is the lesser shot.

But something happens first. Anka lunges at Fabjan. If she is to die, she wants to show him what she thinks of him: spit at him, hit him, anything. There is a struggle, the youth loses his grip on her arm, she manages to break free and runs a short way. Anka slips and falls into the mud and comes up more furious. Fabjan is hit in the mouth, perhaps by Anka, more likely by the butt or barrel of a rifle. He swears and I see his hand go to his mouth. He spits something out: saliva and a fragment of tooth. The struggle lasts a very short time and then it is over. The youth is holding onto Anka, like a dog waiting for the command from its master. I shoot him in the forehead. He stands for a moment, teetering, dead on his feet. Then he falls forward onto his face. The uniformed man is the first to react, he shouts and he and Fabjan run for the cover of the trees. I follow right behind them; more than anything I want to kill Fabjan.

They split up and head in different directions. I chase the one I am sure is Fabjan, I can still see well enough. Without his torch Fabjan blunders and crashes through the trees and more than once trips and falls. I’m gaining on him when the first shot comes. Two shots from the militiaman’s pistol, he doesn’t care much if he hits Fabjan. I go down, I keep still. I think of Anka up by the bunker, she will have run. I need to give her more time. I can’t let them have her. I have killed a man and I will kill again if that’s what it takes to keep them away, but now it’s too dark and I’ve lost track of them. So I fire once into the trees, so they know I’m still out here and to keep them on the move.

I wait for minutes, listening. No more shots come, no sound of boots; later I hear an engine. I leave my place and begin to make my way back up the hill. I call for Kos and a few minutes later she is by my side.

There is the dead youth. I turn him over: one eye is a bloody hole, the other sightless. Of Anka there is no sign, which is as I would have expected. My plan now is to follow her and to catch her up, to take her to safety. But the rain and the mud have made things difficult for Kos. During the scuffle the scent lines became tangled, now they cross and recross each other and Kos doubles back on herself trying to follow a single line. We branch out in several different directions before I give up, too dangerous. At any moment the militiaman could come back for me, could bring reinforcements. For Anka, too, who along with me is a witness to all that has happened. As I pass the dead youth I think of disposing of his body the way I disposed of others, over the ravine and into the swimming hole. I have my hands under his arms, I let them drop. What does it matter? Instead I look for his rifle. It is missing.

I stay away from the ravine and the woods for a week or more, two weeks. When I finally go back up there, the bodies have been moved, the earth turned over. Just a few scraps of singed denim.

‘I thought she would find a way to come back. To my house, to my mother’s house. To those people who loved her and would protect her. Or to send a message at least. But she never did. She decided to rely only on herself. She went. There was a moment, after I shot the youth. I remember how she stepped back, she never screamed, simply stepped backwards into the darkness, turned and fled. For a long time, as I waited for her to return, I believed she knew I was there behind the trees and that this was my doing. That she knew I would come. For who else could it have been?’

‘Do you think she will come back one day?’

‘If she survived, if maybe she headed south and not north. But they would have been on the lookout for her. She would have had to circle back on herself. Cross the ravine. And if she forgives us, if she ever forgives us.’

‘What about Javor?’

‘The authorities found Javor, his remains, long after the war, many kilometres away. The militias had begun to transport people to be killed. Then came more wars, so many wars, it took years to find them. We were just the beginning, you see.’

Together we looked at the houses of Gost down below. I said, ‘You can never tell anybody.’

‘Why don’t you go and live somewhere else?’

I shrugged. ‘Why should I? And anyway where would I go? When you’ve seen it and you know nothing is going to change that, you get used to it, like an aftertaste of something rotten. You get used to it, because you have to. Gost is my home. I live here because it’s what I want.’

‘But then you’re reminded, every day.’

‘Yes,’ I said simply. ‘But I like to remember. Not just the bad times, but the good ones too.’

‘And that horrible man, Fabjan?’

‘I like to be sure he remembers too.’