Inside the flat it was so cold we could see his breath condense into white vapour. He looked at us calmly; he seemed a normal kind of guy. He waited.
Mel stared at him speechless, and the man raised his hand and scratched his neck, as if to indicate that our silence was making him feel ill at ease.
I gave Mel a gentle kick and he started off straight away, spraying out words as a machine gun does bullets. He did everything according to the rules, and after the introductions he said he was carrying a letter.
Finger immediately changed his expression, smiled and invited us in. He led us to a table on which stood a saucepan full of freshly made chifir.
‘Go ahead, boys, help yourselves. I’m sorry, but I haven’t got anything else, only this. I’ve only just got out – the day before yesterday… What a terrible thing, this freedom! So much space! I’m still feeling dizzy…’
I liked his sense of humour; I realized I could relax.
We sat down, saying he shouldn’t worry about us. While we were passing the cup of chifir round between the three of us, Finger opened the letter from our Guardian. After a few moments he said:
‘I have to go back to your district with you; it says here that they want me to speak…’
Mel and I looked at each other. We would have to tell him about our adventure; it would be treacherous to take a person with you without telling him you were in trouble.
I decided to do the talking; letting Mel talk would only complicate things. I filled my lungs with air and blurted it all out: my war with the Vulture, the trap set by Beard and his gang of young junkies, the school…
Finger listened attentively, following every little detail as prisoners do. Stories are the criminals’ only entertainment in jaiclass="underline" they take turns at telling each other the story of their life, one piece at a time, in episodes, and when they’ve finished they go on to somebody else’s life.
At the end I told him that if he didn’t want to run a risk by coming with us, he could put off his visit to the next day.
He opposed this:
‘Don’t worry, if anything happens I’ll be with you.’
I wasn’t happy, because I knew that in Railway the young didn’t respect the old. Often they would lie in ambush for them outside their houses, when the old men came home drunk, and beat them up to get something they were carrying, and afterwards show it off to the others as a trophy. Moreover, Finger wasn’t an Authority; from what could be read in his tattoos he was a guy who had for some reason joined up with the Siberians in jaiclass="underline" he had a Siberian signature on his neck, which meant that the community protected him, perhaps because he had done something important for us.
While I was thinking about all this, Finger had got dressed, in a jacket covered with sewn-up tears, battered shoes, and a green scarf that almost touched the ground.
Along the way we got talking. Finger told us he had been in prison since the age of sixteen. He had been sent there because of a stupid incident: he had been drunk, and without realizing it had clubbed a cop a little too hard, killing him stone dead. In juvenile prison he had joined up with the Siberian family, because, he said, they were the only ones who stuck together and didn’t beat people up; they did everything together and didn’t take orders from anyone else. He had arrived in the adult prison as a member of the Siberian family, and the others had welcomed him. He had served twenty years in prison, and when he was about to be released an old man had suggested he go and live in the apartment we had seen.
Now he wanted to move closer to the people of our district: they, he said, were his family. So he had asked the old Siberian Authorities in prison to contact the Guardian of Low River.
He felt part of our community, and this pleased me.
While we were walking, I had an idea. Since we needed reinforcements, I had decided to drop in at the house of a friend who lived nearby. He was a boy called ‘Geka’, which is a diminutive of Evgeny. He and I had known each other since childhood; he was the son of an excellent paediatrician called Aunt Lora.
Geka was a well-read, intelligent, polite boy; he didn’t belong to any gang and preferred a quiet life. He had many interests and I liked him for this; I had been at his house several times and had been fascinated by his collection of model warplanes, which he assembled and painted himself. His mother allowed me to borrow some books from her library; that’s how I got to know Dickens and Conan Doyle, and above all the only literary upholder of justice I had ever found congeniaclass="underline" Sherlock Holmes.
Geka would spend the whole summer with us on the river; we taught him to swim, to wrestle and to use a knife in a fight. But he wore glasses, so my grandfather felt desperately sorry for him: to Siberians wearing glasses is like voluntarily sitting in a wheelchair – it’s a sign of weakness, a personal defeat. Even if you don’t have good eyesight you must never wear glasses, in order to preserve your dignity and your healthy appearance. So whenever Geka came to our house, Grandfather Boris would take him into the red corner, kneel down with him in front of the icon of the Siberian Madonna and that of the Siberian Saviour, and then, crossing himself over and over again, say his prayer, which Geka was obliged to repeat word for word:
‘O Mother of God, Holy Virgin, patron of all Siberia and protectress of all us sinners! Witness the miracle of Our Lord! O Lord, Our Saviour and Companion in life and death, You who bless our weapons and our miserable efforts to bring Your law into the world of sin, You who make us strong before the fire of hell, do not abandon us in our moments of weakness! Not from a lack of faith, but in love and respect for Your creatures, I beseech You, perform a miracle! Help Your miserable slave Evgeny to find Your road and live in peace and health, so that he can sing Your glory! In the names of the Mothers, Fathers and Sons and of those members of our families who have been resurrected in Your arms, hear our prayer and bring Your light and Your warmth into our hearts! Amen!’
When he had finished the prayer, Grandfather Boris would get up off his knees and turn towards Geka. Then, making solemn, spectacular gestures, like those of an actor on the stage, he would touch Geka’s glasses with his fingers and, saying the following sentence, slowly remove them:
‘Just as many times You have put Your strength into my hands to grip my knife against the cops, and have directed my pistol to hit them with bullets blessed by You, give me Your power to defeat the sickness of Your humble slave Evgeny!’
As soon as he had taken off the glasses, he would ask Geka:
‘Tell me, my angel, can you see well now?’
Out of respect for him, Geka couldn’t bring himself to say no.
Grandfather Boris would turn towards the icons and thank the Lord with the traditional formulas:
‘May Your will be done, Our Lord! As long as we are alive and protected by You, the blood of the cops, the contemptible devils and the servants of evil will flow in abundance! We are grateful to You for Your love.’
Then he would call the whole family and announce that a miracle had just occurred. Finally he would return Geka’s glasses to him in front of everyone, saying:
‘And now, my angel, now that you can see, break these useless glasses!’
Geka would put them in his pocket, mumbling:
‘Don’t be angry, Grandfather Boris: I’ll break them later.’
My grandfather would stroke his head and tell him in a gentle, joyful voice:
‘Break them whenever you like, my son; the important thing is that you never wear them again.’
The next time, so that he wouldn’t be angry, Geka would turn up at our house without his glasses; he would take them off outside the door before coming in. Grandfather Boris, when he saw him, would be overcome with joy.