“You’re not mad?”
He shook his head slowly. “No. I been’t angry. I think I understand. I couldn’t keep you. I thought I could, but I be a foolish old man.”
For some reason, I started crying and couldn’t stop. The tears ran down my face. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“You see,” he said, “you even talk as you did before.”
The front door signal, a knocker, sounded then and Mr. Kutsov got up and moved to answer the door. A green-uniformed policeman stood there in the doorway, his face yellowish in the light of the single candle in the front room.
“Daniel Kutsov?” he asked.
Instinctively, I shrank back. I swiped at my face with my sleeve.
The policeman moved one step inside the house and said in a flat voice, “I have a warrant for your arrest.”
I watched them both in fear. Mr. Kutsov seemed to have forgotten that I was there. The policeman had a hard, young face, nothing like Sgt. Robards in any way except for the uniform. Sgt. Robards was a kind man, but there was no kindness at all in this one.
“To jail again? For my book?” Mr. Kutsov shook his head. “No.”
“It be nothing to do with any book, Kutsov. This be a roundup of all dissidents, ordered by Governor Moray. It be known that you be an Anti-Redemptionist. Come along.” He reached out and grasped Mr. Kutsov by the arm.
Mr. Kutsov shook loose. “No. I won’t go to jail again. It be no crime to be against stupidity. I won’t go.”
The policeman said, “You be coming whether you like or not. You be under arrest.”
I had known that Mr. Kutsov was old, for all that my father had lived several years longer than he had, and I had suspected that his mind was no longer completely firm, but now at last his age seemed to catch up with him. He backed away and said in a voice that shook, “Get out of my house!”
The policeman took another step inside. I was fascinated and frozen. Why exactly, I cannot say, but I couldn’t speak or move. I could only watch. It is the only time in my life that this has ever happened and since then I have felt I understood the episode on the ladder with Zena Andrus a little better. But in my case, it wasn’t just fear. Events got out of control and rushed past me, something like watching a moving merry-go-round and wanting to jump on, but never quite being able to decide to go.
The policeman lifted his gun from its holster and said, “You be coming if I have to shoot.”
Mr. Kutsov hit the policeman and in retaliation the policeman clubbed Mr. Kutsov to death while I watched. The policeman hit Mr. Kutsov once and if he had fallen that would have been the end of it, but he didn’t and the policeman hit him again and again until he did fall.
I must have screamed, though I have no memory of it. Jimmy says I did and that’s what brought him. In any case, the policeman looked up from Mr. Kutsov and stared right at me. I remember his eyes. He raised the gun he’d hit Mr. Kutsov with so many times and pointed it at me.
Then there were three reports at my elbow, one on the heels of the next. The policeman stood for a moment, balanced, and then the force of life keeping him upright was gone, and he fell to the floor. He never fired his gun. In one instant my life was his to take, and in the next he was dead.
I passed him by without even looking and bent over Mr. Kutsov. As I bent down beside him, his eyes opened and he looked at me.
I was crying again. I held him and cried. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
He smiled and said faintly, but clearly, “It be all right, Natasha.” After a minute, he closed his eyes as though he were terribly tired. Then he died.
After another minute, Jimmy touched my arm. I looked up at him. His face was pale and he didn’t look at all well.
“There’s nothing we can do. Let’s leave now, Mia, while we can.”
He blew out the candle. As we mounted our horses, it continued to rain.
18
We rode north through the night rain for hours. At first we stuck to the road, but when the ground started to rise and the country to roughen we cut off the road and followed a slow route of our own into the hills and forest. It was a tiring, unpleasant journey. The rain came down steadily until we were wet inside our coats. When we left the road, there were many times when we had to dismount and lead our horses through wet, rough brush that scratched and slapped. The noise of the cold wind was shrill as it blew through the trees and tossed branches. The only satisfaction that we had was knowing that with the rain as it was, following us would be close to impossible. Considering the route we took, following us would have been difficult at the best of times.
At last we decided to stop, feeling ourselves beyond pursuit and knowing ourselves within another day’s ride of the military camp where Jimmy’s gear might be. We were both tired and bruised by our experience. Jimmy had had no practice in killing people and no stomach for it. The books I used to read made killing seem fun and bodies just a way of keeping score, but death is not like that, not to any normal person. It may seem neat to point a gun, and keen to pull a trigger, but the result is irrevocable. That policeman couldn’t get back up again to play the next game, and neither could Mr. Kutsov. They were both dead for now and always. That fact was preying on both Jimmy and me.
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a spear carrier in somebody else’s story. A spear carrier is somebody who stands in the hall when Caesar passes, comes to attention and thumps his spear. A spear carrier is the anonymous character cut down by the hero as he advances to save the menaced heroine. A spear carrier is a character put in a story to be used like a piece of disposable tissue. In a story, spear carriers never suddenly assert themselves by throwing their spears aside and saying, “I resign. I don’t want to be used.” They are there to be used, either for atmosphere or as minor obstacles in the path of the hero. The trouble is that each of us is his own hero, existing in a world of spear carriers. We take no joy in being used and discarded. I was finding then, that wet, chilly, unhappy night, that I took no joy in seeing other people used and discarded. Mr. Kutsov was a spear carrier to the policeman, a spear carrier who asserted himself at the wrong moment, and then was eliminated. Then the policeman suddenly found himself demoted from hero to spear carrier and his story finished. I didn’t blame Jimmy at all. If I had been able to act, I would have done as he had, simply in order to stay alive. And Jimmy didn’t see the policeman as a spear carrier. Jimmy was always a more humane, open, warmer person than I, and it cost him greatly to shoot the man. I admit that the man was still a spear carrier to me, but nonetheless both deaths bothered me.
If I had the opportunity, I would make the proposal that no man should be killed except by somebody who knows him well enough for the act to have impact. No death should be like nose blowing. Death is important enough that it should affect the person who causes it.
We made our camp at last. We attended to the horses as best we could, sheltering them under the lee of some trees. Then we set up the bubble tent, pitching it on a level spot. Jimmy went after the saddle bags, bedroll and saddles while I finished with the tent. We stowed things away in all the corners and that left just enough room to stretch out the bedroll.
We were soaking wet. The rain made a steady pitter on the bubble and we could hear the rising and falling shrill of the wind outside. We left the light on until we had taken off all our clothes. Undressing was difficult because of the lack of room and a cold saddle is an unpleasant place to put your bare bottom. Jimmy was more hairy than I had ever suspected. Finally we spread our clothes out to dry, turned out the light and got into bed.