‘Siberian bastards! Go back to your fucking woods! We’ll kill you all!’
Mel turned round and quick as a flash hurled his broken knife at him. It flew in a strange trajectory and landed smack in the face of a boy standing next to the one who had shouted. More blood, and they all scattered again, leaving another wounded comrade on the snow.
‘Holy Christ, what a massacre…’ said Geka.
We walked fast. When we came out into wide open spaces we almost ran. We tried to avoid yards and narrow passageways.
We passed the last row of houses before the food warehouses and hid among the illegally built garages and lockups. I suggested we should explore the area carefully before crossing the road in a group: I sensed that there were surprises in store for us.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I’m going to take off my jacket so I can run faster. I’ll cross the road further down, where it bends round and goes into the trees, then I’ll go on to the warehouses and see what the situation’s like. If there are a lot of them waiting for us, we’ll go another way. If there are only a few of them we’ll attack them from behind, and rub them in the shit… It’ll take me a quarter of an hour, no more; in the meantime, have a look in the garages, maybe there’s something handy we could use as a weapon, but be careful not to attract attention…’
Everyone agreed. Only Mel didn’t want to let me go on his own: he was worried.
‘Kolima, I’ll come with you: anything might happen…’
I couldn’t tell him he was a burden; I had to find a kinder way.
‘I need you here. If they discover where you guys are, it’ll be your job to defend the group. I can get away from any shit on my own, but do you think they can?’
At these words Mel became serious, and his face took on the same expression the Japanese kamikazes might have worn before boarding their aircraft.
I took off my jacket and was about to leave, but Mel stopped me, putting the iron bar in my hand, and in a trembling voice he said:
‘You might need it…’
I looked at him in wonder: what a fool that human being was, and how he loved me!
The fewer things I carried in my hands the better it was. But to avoid pointless explanations I took the bar and ran off. I threw it away as soon as I disappeared behind the garages. I was moving fast; the air was cold and breathing was easy.
I got to the bend, crossed the road and headed toward the stores. From a distance I saw a dozen boys sitting around an iron bin, where they had lit a fire to warm themselves. I counted the sticks and bars leaning against the wall. I waited a moment, to make sure there wasn’t anyone else there, then I turned back.
When I reached them, my friends had already opened five garages. Mel had turned out a cupboard full of gardening equipment and armed himself with a small hoe which had on one side an iron blade for hoeing and on the other a little fork, which I think was for picking things up: I don’t know the first thing about gardening – in our district gardens were only used for hiding weapons.
Mel had also filled his pockets with some spare cutters for a circular saw; they were round and had large sharp teeth.
‘What are you going to do with those things? Do you think you can slice people up?’
‘No, I’ll use them as missiles,’ he replied proudly, and I saw his eye gleam as it always did when he was about to do something really stupid.
‘Mel, this isn’t a game. Be careful you don’t hit any of us, or I’ll be forced to shove all those missiles up your arse.’
He looked offended, and sloped out of the garage hanging his head.
Fima was walking around with an enormous axe, which worried me a lot, so I persuaded him to abandon it in favour of a nice length of stainless steel piping.
‘Look how shiny it is,’ I said to him. ‘It looks like a sword, doesn’t it?’
He seized the pipe without comment, his eyes suddenly full of the desire to fight.
Ivan had got himself a long hatchet, the kind that’s used for lopping off branches. I took it out of his hands, replacing it with an iron bar. They were too violent, those two. They would have carried out a full-blown massacre; their armaments needed scaling down.
Finger had found a long, stout axe-handle, Geka a big skiving knife and a heavy wooden stick.
Perfect.
I searched one of the garages and found a crate of empty bottles. I’d had an idea: I wanted to do something horrible, but very useful in our situation. I looked in the other garages; in one I found some sand for preserving apples in winter. So I called Geka and we got a little tube and siphoned the petrol out of the cars’ tanks. We filled all the bottles with a mixture of petrol and sand, and made the stoppers out of some old rags we found lying around.
The molotovs were ready.
We had a quick meeting, at which I outlined my elementary plan:
‘We’ll cross the road directly from here and get to the wall of the warehouse, then we’ll creep towards them, getting as close as possible. They’re expecting us to appear from the other direction; we’ll take them by surprise, attacking them with the molotovs, and then close in and beat them up. That’s our only chance of getting out of the district on our own legs.’
They all agreed.
We ran across the road all together, very fast. When we reached the wall we slowed down. Geka and I were carrying the crate full of molotovs.
Suddenly we started to hear their voices: they were just around the corner. We stopped. I stuck my head out a little and took a peek at them: their position was a perfect target. They were all close to the wall, sitting round the fire in the bin.
One of them I knew, he was a thug about four years older than me, a born imbecile, called Crumb. He’d killed three cats that belonged to an old woman, a neighbour of his, and then gone on boasting to everyone about this heroic deed for a long time. He was a real sadist.
One day we’d all got together for a swim on a beach by the river, and one of the boys of our district, Stas, nicknamed ‘Beast’ – a really nasty type, a guy who was angry with the whole world – heard him boasting about his exploit with the cats. Beast didn’t waste any words: he went over to him, grabbed hold of his hands and crushed them so hard you could heard the sound of the breaking bones. Crumb went white in the face and passed out; his hands became swollen and purple, like two balloons. His family carried him away. Later I heard they’d fixed his hands in hospital, and that he’d resumed his life as a hooligan, telling everyone that he was going to take his revenge one day. But he never had time to, because Beast died soon afterwards, killed in a shoot-out with the cops. So Crumb swore vengeance on our whole district, and made a pact with the Vulture, vowing to destroy us. There was a rumour that they had held a black mass in the town cemetery, during which all of us Low River boys had been cursed.
I took two molotovs and gave another two to Geka and Finger. I didn’t give any to Mel, because when he was small he’d thrown one too high and it had come apart and spilt part of its contents over us. Since then he had always been given the job of holding the match or cigarette lighter at the ready.
I shook the bottles well, raising the sand from the bottom, set fire to the two rags, jumped out from behind the wall and threw two molotovs simultaneously at the group. A moment later I already had two more in my hands, lit them and threw them, in rapid succession.
The enemy were in a panic – boys with burnt faces threw themselves in the snow; there was fire everywhere; someone ran off so fast he vanished from our sight in a flash.
The three of us emptied the crate in less than a minute. Before Mel had even had time to put out his match, we had finished.
I pulled out my knives and rushed towards a guy who had just got up off the ground and was about to pick up a stick. He had no burns: the fire had only reached his jacket and he’d had time to roll in the snow. He was very angry, and kept whooping like a warrior. He tried to hit me a couple of times, always keeping me at a distance. Suddenly I dived towards his feet, avoiding a swipe from the stick, and plunged my knife into his leg. He kicked me in the face with the other leg and split my lip; I tasted blood in my mouth. But in the meantime I had managed to give him several stabs in the thigh and to cut the ligament behind his knee.