This is the final chapter, or rather the epilogue, from my "lost novel".
Chapter 28
“The Scythians, as I said, take some of this hemp-seed, and, creeping under the felt coverings, throw it upon the red-hot stones; immediately it smokes, and gives out such a vapour as no Grecian vapour-bath can exceed; the Scyths, delighted, shout for joy.”
Herodotus, Histories.
After what seemed like a long trip away, Igor Nastanovich was coming down through a beautiful blue morning, but slowly, as though through a mass of water, a warm blue sea, and he could sense on his descent, as the outlines of the town were approaching—the house shapes, the streets, the statues, as though zooming in on a living urban map—that one or two of his organs were packing up, and he knew, without panic or self-pity—and in fact with a touch of relief—that he would probably be gone before he hit the ground.
He’d been squatting for months now in one of the derelict apartments along Industry Street. He and a couple of acquaintances had been living off what they could lift from the market, though one of their number had recently been given a pasting in the cells down at the militia station, and so Igor had been keeping a low profile. Of course, he’d thought about returning to his mother’s, who lived only a few streets away. The argument between them seemed so stupid now. What could she have done about the baby, anyway? But, in the end, an attempt at reconciliation was beyond the sum of his strength—it would have involved an obscure defeat which he could not stomach, even if he’d been conscious of it. He hadn’t been to see her in three years, and now it would stay that way.
Slumped up against a stunted lime tree outside a padlocked mechanic’s workshop, he leaned into a pile of food wrappers, washing powder cartons, plastic beer bottles, a crumpled pink packet of New Superlims, becoming one with the rubbish around him. In the cold of the early morning, under a huge open sky, a stray mongrel had curled up silently beside him, making the most of his dissipating warmth. Thinking over his life for the little that remained of it, Igor conceived of it—yes, that was it, he was sure of it now—as a falling sensation, queasiness, a lifelong feeling of unease. Then he turned to face his fate with fortitude—and at least he wasn’t alone.
Fading in an out of consciousness, in front of him appeared the fuzzy outlines of animated human shapes across a liquid border, a window into another world, the figures coming more into focus the longer he stared, as after a knock on the head. Soldiers—he could now make them out—in great coats and puttees stood about, strapped into their round tin hats. One of them, with stooped shoulders and spindly legs, was repeating in Italian (which Igor could understand) the punch line of a joke, approaching it each time with the same circumlocutions, the same dramatic pauses. Each time, the others in the group would laugh uncontrollably, rubbing the tears from their eyes, fresh each time, as if caught in a video loop.
"So we go in there and I said to the waitress…'Get the tinnies in!' Yeah, yeah, really, that's what I said."
Past and behind them, an emaciated peasant woman crept. Agitated and jittery, she sniffed this way and that. She kept asking if anyone had seen her baby, though she was holding it in her arms. From the opposite direction, rode a cavalryman of one of the steppe’s ancient nomad tribes, wearing a brown padded jacket and a black-spotted red cape. His keen, bird-like eyes flashed erratically. He was looking about desperately for something he’d lost. Mila too walked past, and Arkady, his famous curly locks singed and on end absurdly, as after a comic electric shock, the absence of eyebrows giving him a look or permanent surprise; with his hands planted firmly behind his back and locked together, studiedly informal, as if he was preparing to launch into speech, as if the two of them were out on an invigorating holiday stroll in the municipal park. Sherbakov was hanging about there, still wearing the noose that they’d dressed him in after 1905, although the tail of the noose was turned around so it hung down his shirt like a tie. He peered about warily, as if someone might still be after him, as if he had no intention of becoming a monument. Nearest the kerb, a pair of short legs, shod in expensive foreign shoes, were sticking out of an uncovered manhole, flailing incessantly. “Why can’t I feel it? Why can’t I feel it?” the owner of the legs was saying, over and over, his voice echoing inside the manhole but still audible, and Igor, becoming accustomed to the new reality, answered, as if it were the most natural thing in the world: “Because you no longer have a head.”
Igor was floating now, rising gradually above the town where he had lived, mostly uselessly, and died for no purpose—as if he had simply bounced off the world, leaving no impression on it—and he could see laid out below him the lucid, pulsating map of the shrinking town as he tried to follow intently the meandering journey of the fretful Scythian soldier as he led his pony to water in the nearby crystal stream.
Dismounting, the cavalryman knelt beside the little clear stream, breaking up the ice at the edges with the small dagger he kept in his belt, hacking a hole, so that his companion, his horse, might be able to nose her way, after the day's long ride, to a well-earned drink. The warrior too was thirsty, weary, so that he had to lean with a palm on the horse’s neck to steady himself as he got up, his head beginning to throb a little, become heavy.
That morning, before leaving camp on patrol—which they did almost daily now, ever since the strangers had been spotted—their troop leader had called all the soldiers into his tent, throwing a few stones into the pot over the log fire, along with a handful of the precious seeds, which, burning, produced the sweet, thick smoke that was good to inhale on a freezing day, as it helped to sustain morale. This offering for their dead leaders, they believed, would make certain that the spirits were with them, and they’d left there purified and reassured.
Now, as he stood almost motionless in front of the icy stream, drinking from a cupped hand, he stared over towards the opposite bank, out into the snowy, featureless landscape. Strange things he perceived there: a giant snake, very angry, rattling across the plain; tall stone buildings of a fortress city such as men had never seen—great power and great misery he perceived there. And all this time, though he was unaware of it, he must have been fiddling with the stag-shaped silver brooch that fastened his cloak at the neck; giving it a quick tug clumsily, the pin must have broken, and something had hit his hand, but only the dull plop of the object dropping into the stream brought him out of his reverie.
He was horrified—even petrified—because the brooch had been dear to him since he’d won it on a raid some years before. Its antlers curled freely, as in a dream where he'd once encountered the spirits of the other world wrapping around one another, as in a dance-like fight, in flight, or as in the reports of the shaman when he returned from a trance. Had he really lost the stag’s power for good?
As much as he dare without also losing his balance, the horseman dipped his ankle boot delicately into the slow-flowing water beyond the ice-edged riverbank. How deep was it there? He feared the tricks of the water spirits—who might easily pull him in—and he withdrew his boot, got back into the pony saddle, gripping tightly with his knees to hold himself in place. Slinging his cloak over his shoulder, he made for the shortest route back to camp, which was just over a small hill. On the hill’s top, he stopped for a while to consider the meaning of what had just happened, its enormity: no good could come of it, that much was certain. But what could he do? The implications of the incident scuttled away from him and off into the brush. He looked east: there was the vast emptiness of the plains. To the west, down to the pure flowing river, he could see his people, small as ants at that distance as they went about their work. How long could their happiness last? He felt woozy—as if the stag’s power were draining from him. He had a headache and began to feel afraid. He dug his heels into his mount and sped home.
Chapter 28
“The Scythians, as I said, take some of this hemp-seed, and, creeping under the felt coverings, throw it upon the red-hot stones; immediately it smokes, and gives out such a vapour as no Grecian vapour-bath can exceed; the Scyths, delighted, shout for joy.”
Herodotus, Histories.
After what seemed like a long trip away, Igor Nastanovich was coming down through a beautiful blue morning, but slowly, as though through a mass of water, a warm blue sea, and he could sense on his descent, as the outlines of the town were approaching—the house shapes, the streets, the statues, as though zooming in on a living urban map—that one or two of his organs were packing up, and he knew, without panic or self-pity—and in fact with a touch of relief—that he would probably be gone before he hit the ground.
He’d been squatting for months now in one of the derelict apartments along Industry Street. He and a couple of acquaintances had been living off what they could lift from the market, though one of their number had recently been given a pasting in the cells down at the militia station, and so Igor had been keeping a low profile. Of course, he’d thought about returning to his mother’s, who lived only a few streets away. The argument between them seemed so stupid now. What could she have done about the baby, anyway? But, in the end, an attempt at reconciliation was beyond the sum of his strength—it would have involved an obscure defeat which he could not stomach, even if he’d been conscious of it. He hadn’t been to see her in three years, and now it would stay that way.
Slumped up against a stunted lime tree outside a padlocked mechanic’s workshop, he leaned into a pile of food wrappers, washing powder cartons, plastic beer bottles, a crumpled pink packet of New Superlims, becoming one with the rubbish around him. In the cold of the early morning, under a huge open sky, a stray mongrel had curled up silently beside him, making the most of his dissipating warmth. Thinking over his life for the little that remained of it, Igor conceived of it—yes, that was it, he was sure of it now—as a falling sensation, queasiness, a lifelong feeling of unease. Then he turned to face his fate with fortitude—and at least he wasn’t alone.
Fading in an out of consciousness, in front of him appeared the fuzzy outlines of animated human shapes across a liquid border, a window into another world, the figures coming more into focus the longer he stared, as after a knock on the head. Soldiers—he could now make them out—in great coats and puttees stood about, strapped into their round tin hats. One of them, with stooped shoulders and spindly legs, was repeating in Italian (which Igor could understand) the punch line of a joke, approaching it each time with the same circumlocutions, the same dramatic pauses. Each time, the others in the group would laugh uncontrollably, rubbing the tears from their eyes, fresh each time, as if caught in a video loop.
"So we go in there and I said to the waitress…'Get the tinnies in!' Yeah, yeah, really, that's what I said."
Past and behind them, an emaciated peasant woman crept. Agitated and jittery, she sniffed this way and that. She kept asking if anyone had seen her baby, though she was holding it in her arms. From the opposite direction, rode a cavalryman of one of the steppe’s ancient nomad tribes, wearing a brown padded jacket and a black-spotted red cape. His keen, bird-like eyes flashed erratically. He was looking about desperately for something he’d lost. Mila too walked past, and Arkady, his famous curly locks singed and on end absurdly, as after a comic electric shock, the absence of eyebrows giving him a look or permanent surprise; with his hands planted firmly behind his back and locked together, studiedly informal, as if he was preparing to launch into speech, as if the two of them were out on an invigorating holiday stroll in the municipal park. Sherbakov was hanging about there, still wearing the noose that they’d dressed him in after 1905, although the tail of the noose was turned around so it hung down his shirt like a tie. He peered about warily, as if someone might still be after him, as if he had no intention of becoming a monument. Nearest the kerb, a pair of short legs, shod in expensive foreign shoes, were sticking out of an uncovered manhole, flailing incessantly. “Why can’t I feel it? Why can’t I feel it?” the owner of the legs was saying, over and over, his voice echoing inside the manhole but still audible, and Igor, becoming accustomed to the new reality, answered, as if it were the most natural thing in the world: “Because you no longer have a head.”
Igor was floating now, rising gradually above the town where he had lived, mostly uselessly, and died for no purpose—as if he had simply bounced off the world, leaving no impression on it—and he could see laid out below him the lucid, pulsating map of the shrinking town as he tried to follow intently the meandering journey of the fretful Scythian soldier as he led his pony to water in the nearby crystal stream.
Dismounting, the cavalryman knelt beside the little clear stream, breaking up the ice at the edges with the small dagger he kept in his belt, hacking a hole, so that his companion, his horse, might be able to nose her way, after the day's long ride, to a well-earned drink. The warrior too was thirsty, weary, so that he had to lean with a palm on the horse’s neck to steady himself as he got up, his head beginning to throb a little, become heavy.
That morning, before leaving camp on patrol—which they did almost daily now, ever since the strangers had been spotted—their troop leader had called all the soldiers into his tent, throwing a few stones into the pot over the log fire, along with a handful of the precious seeds, which, burning, produced the sweet, thick smoke that was good to inhale on a freezing day, as it helped to sustain morale. This offering for their dead leaders, they believed, would make certain that the spirits were with them, and they’d left there purified and reassured.
Now, as he stood almost motionless in front of the icy stream, drinking from a cupped hand, he stared over towards the opposite bank, out into the snowy, featureless landscape. Strange things he perceived there: a giant snake, very angry, rattling across the plain; tall stone buildings of a fortress city such as men had never seen—great power and great misery he perceived there. And all this time, though he was unaware of it, he must have been fiddling with the stag-shaped silver brooch that fastened his cloak at the neck; giving it a quick tug clumsily, the pin must have broken, and something had hit his hand, but only the dull plop of the object dropping into the stream brought him out of his reverie.
He was horrified—even petrified—because the brooch had been dear to him since he’d won it on a raid some years before. Its antlers curled freely, as in a dream where he'd once encountered the spirits of the other world wrapping around one another, as in a dance-like fight, in flight, or as in the reports of the shaman when he returned from a trance. Had he really lost the stag’s power for good?
As much as he dare without also losing his balance, the horseman dipped his ankle boot delicately into the slow-flowing water beyond the ice-edged riverbank. How deep was it there? He feared the tricks of the water spirits—who might easily pull him in—and he withdrew his boot, got back into the pony saddle, gripping tightly with his knees to hold himself in place. Slinging his cloak over his shoulder, he made for the shortest route back to camp, which was just over a small hill. On the hill’s top, he stopped for a while to consider the meaning of what had just happened, its enormity: no good could come of it, that much was certain. But what could he do? The implications of the incident scuttled away from him and off into the brush. He looked east: there was the vast emptiness of the plains. To the west, down to the pure flowing river, he could see his people, small as ants at that distance as they went about their work. How long could their happiness last? He felt woozy—as if the stag’s power were draining from him. He had a headache and began to feel afraid. He dug his heels into his mount and sped home.
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