The People's Act of Love by James Meek

Author:James Meek [Meek, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Thriller
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE FIELDS

The group of men, Mutz, Matula, Dezort, Hanak and Balashov, followed Racansky down the southern road that led to the grazing land of the castrates’ herd. The forest fell away and there were only stands of birches breaking the flatness. With the slaughter of the cattle by the occupiers the pastures had grown scraggy and neglected. Crow calls measured the emptiness under a thickening sky. A dank wind moved the yellow grass by the roadside. The men’s boots sounded unnaturally loud on the road, as if, despite the great space of clear wide land, the splash, scrabble and grind of their soles on the dirt was being reflected against invisible walls moving in around them.

Racansky set a troubled pace, spurting forward at a run for a few yards, then slowing down to a hesitant walk. He began to talk over his shoulder as he moved. Mutz was glad someone had broken the wordlessness of their progress.

‘He said one of the farmers told him about an outsider, a great savage man with his skin shrunken down over a big skull, that he’d seen running through the fields. Like a wolf after an elk, he said.’

‘Who said? Kliment?’ said Mutz.

‘Kliment, yes, of course,’ said Racansky. ‘He told me this morning. We left the shtab at the same time, I was coming off duty after guarding the prisoner overnight, Kliment was on his way to the station to see if the telegraph was working, and I told him about the killer the prisoner said was coming. The Mohican. Here. He’s here.’

A cart track led off the road into a ploughed field. Kliment’s body lay face up on the crest of a deep rut, one arm trailed in water to the elbow. A blood stain spread across his chest, black at the edges and still sticky and crimson in the centre.

‘I turned him over,’ said Racansky, hanging back. ‘I have some of his blood on my coat.’ His voice has become a whisper. Balashov fell to his knees, clasped his hands, closed his eyes and began to pray out loud.

‘My God, what’s that on his forehead?’ said Dezort.

Mutz, Matula and Hanak leaned over Kliment’s face, which looked more lovable in its dreamless, breathless serenity than it ever had in life or sleep. Four quick shallow cuts had been made in his forehead to make a letter M.

‘The Mohican!’ said Dezort.

‘Or Marx, or Madman, or Murder, or Mother,’ said Mutz.

‘Or Matula, eh Mutz?’ said Matula. ‘Poor Klim. Get his arm out of the water, Hanak. Still warm, is he? He wasn’t already dead when he died, was he? A hot breakfast, a fuck, a toot of snow, and a knife in the ribs. He had a full morning, I’d say. D’you remember when he stopped in the middle of no-man’s-land to light a cigarette, with the men falling around him, bash, bash, bash? I swear if I catch this Mohican, I’ll flay him.’

‘For Thine is the Kingdom,’ intoned Balashov.

Mutz saw how Matula was looking round, distracted, already impatient with the uselessness of the dead.

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