The Journeys of Socrates Page 8

  Vasiliy Aleksandrovich Artemov

  Field Commander

  Jewish duty. The words chilled Sergei. As one of the elite group, he would be expected to harass innocent people—people like his grandfather, like the Abramovich family. Once again, the charred remains of their cabin appeared, and the air stank of death…

  He would not do it. Not for his uncle; not for the tsar himself.

  Sergei had come to a crossroads and his choice was clear. The time had come for him to disappear in the night. He would go to St. Petersburg to find the gift that his grandfather had left for him. This buried treasure might enable Sergei to purchase a ticket on a great steamship. Then he would go to America, where they did not send soldiers to kill people because they were Jews.

  As this decision penetrated him, he reflected on what would surely follow: They would conduct a search, so he would have to travel fast and far. And he could never return. Sergei felt a pang of guilt as he reflected upon his father’s decision to send him here and his uncle’s willingness to take him in and provide a home and a way of life. He would be turning his back on them. But it was a life he could no longer abide. He was not only his father’s son; he was also his mother’s. And it was her blood calling to him now.

  Sergei felt as if he were about to leap from that tree onto that wild buck once again. He couldn’t know what the future might hold, but it would at least be a future he would choose for himself.

  Having made this decision he knew that he must depart soon—that very night. But not without leaving a letter for his uncle. He owed him that. Sergei snatched up a blank piece of paper from his uncle’s desk and a fountain pen and wrote:

  Dear Chief Instructor Ivanov,

  I offer my apologies for leaving in this manner. I go to find another life. I have taken a map, a compass, and some supplies I will need for my journeys.

  Under your care, I have become stronger, and I have learned much. Someday I hope to make you proud. I believe that you have a good and kind heart. I wish that I could have known you better.

  I will remember you always and hold a place for you in my prayers.

  Sergei signed the letter, folded it, and put it in his pocket. Before he left the office, he searched hurriedly and found what he was looking for: a map that might prove useful, and from a file drawer he quickly grabbed the few documents in his folder.

  THAT NIGHT Sergei slipped into bed with his clothes still on. His knapsack was packed with whatever essentials he could gather, including the documents, which he had wrapped in oilcloth for protection. He had packed dried food pilfered from the kitchen, along with a survival knife and the small and versatile military shovel, as well as fishing line, map, and compass.

  During the evening meal Sergei looked around the hall and said a silent farewell to Andrei and his fellow cadets. Before bed he walked to the barrack window and gazed out across the central compound, where he saw his boyhood self, clinging fiercely to the mane of that horse on his first ride.

  After curfew he feigned sleep until he heard the familiar sounds of slumber; then he slipped the letter to his uncle under his pillow. Someone would find it soon enough, and his uncle would send the best cadet trackers, maybe even one of the instructors. But they would not find him; they had trained him far too well.

  Once again he reviewed his escape plans. First he had to slip past the sentries—he knew their routines well enough. And during their last cold-water immersion, he had seen a log floating in the shallows…

  SERGEI AWOKE with a start. What time is it? he thought. Have I overslept? He slipped out of bed and peered through the narrow window to see the moon still rising, nearly overhead. The time had come. He lifted his pack and padded soundlessly out of the room, barefoot, carrying his boots, moving like a shadow along the wall to avoid any creaking sounds on the stairwell, then down a long corridor, where he saw a crack of light under the door of his uncle’s office. He passed through the old oak doorway and down the stone steps. After lacing his boots he hurried down the tunnel’s full length—a hundred meters, slanting downward under the main building and grounds as it followed the curve of the gentle slope.

  His heart pounding with excitement, Sergei finally stepped out into the moonlight on the shores of the lake. He slowly shut the great iron door. The lapping sounds at the water’s edge seemed unnaturally loud with all else quiet, except for a distant loon singing across the water. As he stood there, a young man alone in the night, the bird’s melancholy song pulled at his chest.

  Taking a deep breath, Sergei walked toward the place where he had spied the floating log. It was gone. His boots made slushy sounds as he moved downwind, searching for the log through reeds and waist-high grasses.

  Under cover of a gathering mist, Sergei knelt down among the reeds. Finally he spotted the old timber, but it now appeared too waterlogged to float…

  Just then Sergei heard nearby footsteps. Still squatting, he froze and peered through the high grass. What he saw made the bile rise in his throat. It was Zakolyev, the bully, the tyrant, the thief. Had he followed Sergei? Or was this just some bizarre coincidence?

  ZAKOLYEV, ALSO CARRYING A PACK, stared straight ahead, peering through the mist as if searching for something…nr someone. Sergei had only a moment to decide whether to remain hidden and let him pass or stand and confront him. The first choice seemed far wiser; he could avoid a confrontation and remain undetected. But then he would never learn Zakolyev’s purpose. As Sergei weighed caution against curiosity, Zakolyev drew close, and Sergei spied the faint glint of moonlight upon a chain around Zakolyev’s neck. His decision made, he stood and hissed, “Dmitri Zakolyev!” just loud enough for the older youth to hear.

  Zakolyev jerked his head around but didn’t seem surprised. “So,” he said. “Out enjoying the evening air?”

  Sergei stared into that ghostly face as he closed the space between them. “Give me the locket, then go where you wish—to hell for all I care.” He had spoken louder than he had intended, but his voice would not likely carry far through the mist.

  Zakolyev shook his head, as if disappointed. “Good Sergei…wasn’t one beating enough for you?”

  They both knew that a fight might attract the sentries’ attention—so they had reached a stalemate. Several thoughts flashed through Sergei’s mind: What would the others think about two cadets disappearing on the same night? Would his uncle assume they had gone together? Not likely. They might conjecture any number of things…

  Then he remembered the letter to his uncle. Yes—at least the Chief Instructor would know—

  As if reading Sergei’s thoughts, Zakolyev pulled a sheet of folded paper from his shirt. “Such a nice farewell letter to your uncle Ivanov,” he said smugly, flashing that hateful smile again. The blood pulsed in Sergei’s temples as Zakolyev slowly tore the letter to bits and threw it into the water lapping at their boots.

  Feeding on Sergei’s expression, Zakolyev said, “You should know I have spies everywhere, Ivanov. How could you be so stupid?”

  The locket, Sergei told himself. Concentrate on that—the rest can’t be helped. “Give me the locket, and I won’t yell out an alarm,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” Zakolyev replied. “Scream like a stuck pig for all I care.”

  “Are you so sure I won’t?”

  “Like I said—go ahead.”

  Sergei’s mind searched for a solution. “Then keep the locket. I only want the photograph of my parents, Dmitri. Give me back this one thing, and we will not part enemies.”

  In the silence that followed, Sergei knew his answer. He lashed out with a front kick to Zakolyev’s midsection. The kick caught the older boy square in the solar plexus; Sergei heard the air whooshing out of him as he doubled over. Sergei followed up with a knee toward his head, but Zakolyev managed to redirect the kick and Sergei found himself spinning off balance. Then Zakolyev had his arms around Sergei’s neck, and his every instinct told him that Zakolyev intended to kill him this time.


  A moment of panic washed over him, followed by a cold clarity. His first impulse was to lock Zakolyev’s arm with his chin, bend quickly forward at the waist, and throw his adversary—but the placement of Zakolyev’s weight told Sergei that his opponent was prepared for that. So he did the unexpected and turned his head toward the crook of Zakolyev’s elbow. It was a mistake, and Zakolyev knew it and took full advantage. But he didn’t know that having his air cut off did not concern Sergei, who could now hold his breath for more than two minutes. As long as Sergei relaxed, he might buy some time…

  He felt the familiar pressure building and saw the first of the black spots. He feigned a frantic struggle for a few moments, waiting as long as he could, then he went completely limp, as if unconscious. Now Zakolyev either had to release him or hold his dead weight up off the ground. Playing dead bought Sergei a few more precious seconds. More black spots appeared. If Zakolyev did not release him soon—

  All at once Zakolyev let go, and Sergei felt his back thud to the muddy ground. Lying still, his eyes closed, he sensed his opponent standing directly over him, one boot on either side of his head. He stayed dead for one second…two…three. With explosive speed, Sergei simultaneously grabbed the backs of his opponent’s ankles. At the same time, Sergei lifted both his knees to his chest and thrust one leg up and back, directly into Zakolyev’s groin. It was a solid shot. Zakolyev made a noise between a grunt and a deep groan and went down, unable to move.

  As Zakolyev vomited onto the muddy ground, Sergei rolled to his feet. Grasping a short, club like log heavy with moisture, he swung with a burst of strength and smashed Zakolyev along the side of his skull, knocking him unconscious. He lifted the log again, high over his head, ready to crush the bastard’s skull, when something stopped him.

  At war with his own impulses, Sergei willed himself to drop the log. And in a fit of unspent rage, flung it as far as he could into the lake. The muffled splash made no more sound than a duck landing on the quiet waters.

  Zakolyev may awaken soon, Sergei thought. So he knelt down and quickly removed the locket from his neck. Sergei fastened the clasp behind his own neck and picked up his knapsack to hurry off. He glanced back one last time at Zakolyev—he lay askew and absolutely still. Sergei couldn’t see any rise or fall of his chest. That’s when the question arose: Could I have have killed him?

  Sergei had hit him hard—maybe too hard. Even in the pale, fog-shrouded moonlight, he could make out the dark wetness on Zakolyev’s scalp, and his eyes, half open and staring, sightless. Sergei put his hand to the older cadet’s throat. No pulse.

  With a shudder, he backed away from the body. Away, away, away, said his mind. He slipped back down among the reeds, and with a strength born of desperation, he managed to pull the large timber out into the water. It still floated. With his pack fastened tightly to his back, Sergei lay on his belly, with his legs straddling the log, and pushed off. The numbing chill on his arms and legs cleansed his mind of thought for the moment. Balancing precariously, he heard only a gentle slosh of water as he began to paddle away from the shore. A moment’s distraction would roll him, rucksack and all, into the lake.

  He paddled out into a thick cover of fog. No sentry could spot him now; neither would he be able to see the shore. If he paddled too far out, he could lose himself forever in the expanse of icy water. Even this brief exposure left him shivering uncontrollably from the cold, and from the shock of what he had done.

  I’ve killed Zakolyev. I’m no longer a runaway but a fugitive, he thought. Never mind that it was an accident. It will not look that way. Everyone knew I held a grudge against Zakolyev over my locket.

  He thought of going back, of explaining—explaining what? That he had been running away and so had Zakolyev? The letter was gone. There was no evidence, no excuse that would satisfy his uncle. What was done was done. Zakolyev was dead, and Sergei would have to live with it for the rest of his life.

  .11.

  A NEAR SPILL into the icy water pulled Sergei back to his senses. The past is behind me, he thought. Focus on this moment. He paddled away from the Nevskiy Military School, pulling through the water with all his strength to fight off the chill now creeping into his bones. His chest heaved with the effort, as the full import of his circumstances bore down on him.

  Another few minutes, then to the shore…

  Sergei’s destination was the mouth of a stream that emptied into Lake Krugloye about six hundred meters east of the school. Estimating that he had traveled nearly that distance, he paddled into the shallows, abandoned the log, and walked through waist-deep water, mud, and reeds up onto the shore. Shivering, his teeth chattering, glad to be back on solid ground, he took careful, measured strides over the rocky soil.

  After he had hiked briskly for another hundred meters east along the shore, Sergei’s blood began to warm. But he worried that he had passed the stream. He stopped and listened intently—there it was, a rushing sound ahead. Dropping on all fours, he crawled through the thick foliage until he found it.

  Sergei sloshed up the shallow streambed, then headed south another hundred meters. After reaching a rocky area where his tracks disappeared, he walked backward in the same tracks he had left and returned to the stream, leaving this false trail behind him, just in case. He continued upstream before finally turning east. His pursuers could only guess at his direction.

  If he were only a runaway, they would soon give up the search. But now everything had changed: Zakolyev’s death meant he could no longer go north to St. Petersburg; they would notify authorities there. His search for his grandfather’s treasure would have to wait; so would the voyage to America. One year, or two, or longer…

  Now he must flee to the mountains far to the south, and put his pursuers, and the ghost of Dmitri Zakolyev, behind him.

  Sergei circled back within a thousand meters of the school before he turned east again, then south through the forest and into the wooded hills. He heard a distant wolf howl as he pushed on into the night, breaking into a run whenever moonlight and terrain allowed.

  He had once heard of men from Mongolia or Tibet who could run hundreds of kilometers, over rough terrain in the dark of night, while gazing straight up into the sky. But Sergei’s eyes were fixed not upon the heavens but peered ahead as he ran through the misty darkness.

  He hoped that the dawn would shed new light on his path through the forest, through his life. How did all this happen? he asked himself. Seven hours before, all was well; life was routine. I was an elite cadet, respected well enough by my instructors and fellow cadets. And now…Have I made the right decision or the worst mistake of my life? No, he decided. I did what I had to do.

  The alternative—Jewish duty—was unthinkable. Only he had not intended to leave a corpse behind.

  The manhunt would begin in a matter of hours. He would travel fast to the faraway mountains of Georgia, twelve hundred kilometers to the south.

  There he would find safety and sanctuary.

  THUS SERGEI’S JOURNEY BEGAN in the spring of 1888. It took him east and south, along the River Kiyazma.

  In those first days of flight he glanced back repeatedly, haunted by the sense he was being pursued. Each night he fought with shadows in his dreams; each morning he immersed himself in the river, washing away the last traces of the night. He made camp in the late afternoons, finding or building shelter, then hunting, fishing, or foraging as need arose.

  Several weeks later, when Sergei reached the great Volga, he found an abandoned skiff in some bushes on the shore. Its flat bottom had several small leaks, which he filled with tree sap. Soon he was rowing his way downriver.

  As time passed, Sergei measured his days by the rhythms of the circling oars. His life merged with the river and with a sense of the eternal. On warmer days he dove into the clear, deep water to bathe, with one end of a length of twine tied to his ankle and the other end to the skiff. After the river had washed the sweat from his body and soothed the heat from his blistered palms
, Sergei climbed back in and lay in the sun as the rowboat drifted down the widening waterway past ever-changing landscapes.

  The days lengthened, and his shoulders turned copper. Some days he ate little or nothing; on others he feasted. From bamboo cane growing along the river he made a primitive spear, then a bow, fashioned from the flexible limbs of a yew tree, and arrows made of thick reeds flocked with quail feathers, their tips weighted with stones sharp enough to pierce tough hides. He bow-hunted hares too far off to spear.

  In this manner, through the summer and early autumn, Sergei journeyed a thousand kilometers downriver until he reached the Caspian Sea, continuing south along the coastline. About a hundred kilometers south of Makhachkala, he reluctantly abandoned his little skiff and set out on foot, east toward the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia.

  As he hiked south and west toward the mountains, Sergei occasionally glimpsed a stanitsa, a fort where Cossacks were stationed. Sergei doubted that news of Zakolyev’s death had traveled this far, but he could not forget that he was a fugitive; he resolved to avoid contact with military men. He would bide his time in the high country for one or two full cycles of the seasons, maybe longer, until he could safely return to St. Petersburg, where he might find the gift of great value his grandfather had buried.

  Sergei broke his resolve only once, in the first chill days of autumn. Out of a loneliness that came with the season, he risked passing through a farming village of free Cossacks. As he gazed wistfully at smoke rising from warm hearths, his eyes drifted down to a young woman returning to her cabin. She glanced toward him and nodded and smiled, stirring a longing to become part of a community, to find a home. Sergei had never been with a woman, and he yearned for this too, wondering whether he might one day have a family of his own.