Away from the Dead by David Bergen

Author:David Bergen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781773103112
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Published: 2023-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

6.

The Executioner

There was a Ukrainian worker, Andriy, who cleaned the stables on the estate and helped with the horses. Originally from Gulyai-Polye, he now lived with his wife and one child in the village bordering the Martens estate. Since Inna had left, Andriy and Sablin had become closer. Perhaps Sablin now had more time to spend with another, or no one to tie him down anymore, or it might have been the loss he felt, an emptiness. Or perhaps it was their shared dislike of authority. Or their love of horses. Or their common plight — workers on an estate with little pay and no hope of ever owning their own horse, let alone tilling their own land. Andriy was a talker. And a reader. He gave Sablin tracts to read. Newspapers. Books. All about the rights of the worker, the peasant. Sablin tried to read what was offered, but he usually fell asleep and when Andriy asked him about it the next day, he lied and said that it was interesting.

“You never read it,” Andriy said.

Sablin agreed. Said that there was no point. “I, Sablin, am going to knock down a powerful man like Martens? Even if I could, I like him. He’s good to me.”

“Has he beaten you?”

“Not lately.”

“Does he pay you what you’re worth?”

“What am I worth?”

“Look at you. Strong. Big. The biggest on the estate. Doing all the heavy lifting. Training the horses. How would he replace you?”

“There are others like me. Certainly.”

Andriy said that there was no one else like him. He was unique. Did he not know that?

He didn’t. He smiled. They were in Sablin’s room beside the stable. It was after supper. Andriy wanted him to come to a meeting that evening, in a nearby village. They would take the two bicycles. Return them in the dark. No one would know.

“Martens knows everything,” Sablin said.

Andriy left and returned an hour later with the bicycles. “We have Martens’s blessing,” he said.

“Truly? Where did you say we were going?”

“To the river. To fish. Come.”

The air was warm, the sun was setting, grasshoppers jumped, and Andriy had shed his jacket and now his elbows were bare. Such a calmness. Even as Andriy shouted back at him to ride. Faster.

The meeting was a turmoil. Hundreds of people outside, women, men, children. They kept their bicycles close, so as not to lose them. Many spoke. One, whose voice excited the crowd immediately. One of Makhno’s people, Andriy said. Sablin did not know who Makhno was. This speaker, though, was interesting. A woman. She excited the crowd by talking about their right to houses, to land, to farms. “It is not theirs. It is yours. Hang the rich. Hang, hang without fail, so the people see, no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers. Publish their names. Take from them all the grain.”

The crowd cheered like a large animal, swaying, crying out. Sablin was part of the animal. Andriy raised his fist. Sablin imitated him. Andriy grinned and put his arm around Sablin’s neck and kissed him on the forehead.

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