The street was narrow and dark, but somewhere, a little way off, there was a lighted window, and thanks to that light it was possible to see something. There were shadows coming towards us.
‘Shit, what was that? Are you all right?’ Mel asked me.
‘I think so; somebody pushed me. It’s them, I’m sure of it…’
‘Holy Christ, I’ve already thrown away my stick,’ he looked at me despairingly.
‘Take one of my knives. What happened to those blades for the circular saw?’
Mel put his hand in his pocket and gave them to me.
‘Throw them at their faces, boy.’
I didn’t need telling twice. I hurled a blade at the nearest shadow, and a few seconds later there was a terrible scream.
I saw Fima jump forward with the iron bar, shouting:
‘You damned fascists, I’m going to tear you to pieces!’
He threw himself at a boy who by now was so close to us you could see his face; the boy tried to dodge the blow but the bar hit him full on the back of the head and he fell down without a moan.
Out of the darkness three of them charged at Fima; Ivan tried to hit them with his iron bar as best he could.
Geka was on the ground; he had a broken hand, he was getting beaten by a giant – another one – armed with a stick. In a second Finger threw himself at the giant with his shotgun lowered: he shot him at point-blank range, right in the chest. The giant collapsed in an unnatural way, as if pushed by an invisible force.
I set about helping Fima: I kept throwing blades, hitting two attackers full in the face. Another one I stabbed in the side; I felt the knife go deep into the flesh through a layer of cloth, then I realized they’d been so sure of taking us by surprise that they hadn’t even stuffed themselves with newspapers. I stabbed him twice more in the same place, in the region of the liver. I hoped to kill him. Immediately afterwards I felt a sensation of weakness in the hand that was holding the knife. It was as if I was losing control of the arm, a kind of paralysis.
‘That was all I needed…’ I thought.
I tried to pull myself together, to grip the knife more tightly, but my right hand wasn’t listening to me, wasn’t responding any more. So I grasped the knife with my left hand and at the same moment, from behind, Mel seized me by the neck and dragged me away. Meanwhile I heard a lot of footfalls in the dark: the sound of people running away.
I was winded, struggling to breathe. The blow on my left side hurt, but I didn’t think it was anything serious. I thought that at worst they’d broken a couple of my ribs, and indeed the pain increased when I breathed in.
The giant was on the ground, motionless, and groaning. There wasn’t a drop of blood. The bullets Finger had used to shoot him must have been those rubber ones with an iron ball inside them: specially made not to kill, but when fired from close range they can do serious damage.
We started walking again – or rather, without realizing it, we started running. We all ran; in front was Finger with Geka, who held his broken hand against his chest, supporting it with the other. Then Fima, shouting curses as he ran, and behind him Ivan, who was silent and focused. Although I was in pain I ran like mad too, I didn’t know why: maybe that sudden attack, just when we had been feeling as if we were out of harm’s way, had put a new fever into us.
Mel ran slowly behind me, he could have run faster, but he was worried because I couldn’t run as well as I usually did: the side where I’d been hit was hurting like hell.
At last we reached the border of our district. We slowed down to a halt in the middle of the road that led to the river. Three friends arrived, who were on guard at the time. We gave them a brief account of what had happened, and one of them went straight off to tell the Guardian.
We arrived at my home. My mother was in the kitchen with Aunt Irina, Mel’s mother, and when they saw us come in they froze on their chairs.
‘What happened to you?’ my mother stammered.
‘Nothing; we had bit of trouble, nothing much…’ I hurried into the bathroom to hide my torn jacket, and to wash my blood-stained hands. ‘Mama, call Uncle Vitaly,’ I said, going back into the kitchen. ‘We’ve got to get Geka to hospital, he’s broken his arm…’
‘Are you all crazy? What? He’s broken his arm? Have you been fighting with someone?’ My mother was trembling.
‘No, ma’am, I fell down, it was an accident… I should have been more careful.’ Poor Geka, in a voice that seemed to come from the other world, tried to save the situation.
‘If you fell down, why has Mel got a bruise on his face?’ My mother had her own special way of saying that we were a bunch of liars.
‘Aunt Lilya,’ said that genius Mel to my mother, ‘the fact is, we all fell down together.’
At that Aunt Irina gave his face a good slapping.
I went back into the bathroom and locked myself in. I turned on the light, and when I looked in the mirror my heart sank: the whole of my right leg was soaked in blood. I got undressed and turned towards the mirror. Yes, there it was: a very thin cut, only three centimetres wide, from which a piece of broken blade was sticking out.
I picked up the tweezers my mother used for her eyebrows, and at that moment she knocked.
‘Let me in, Nikolay.’
‘Just a second and I’ll be out, mama. I just want to wash my face!’
I gripped the broken piece of blade and gently pulled. As I watched the blade emerge and grow ever longer, I felt my head throb. I stopped halfway, turned on the tap and damped my brow. Then I pinched the blade again and pulled it right out. It was about ten centimetres long; I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was part of the blade of a saw for cutting metal, filed by hand till it was razor sharp on both edges, and with a thin, fragile tip. They’d chosen that weapon specially, so they could jab it in and then snap it off, so that it would stay in the wound and be more painful.
The wound was bleeding. I opened the wall cupboard and treated myself as best I could: I put a bit of cicatrizing ointment on the cut, and all around it a tight bandage, to stop the blood. I threw all my clothes and my shoes out of the bathroom window and put on some dirty clothes from the basket next to the washing machine. I washed and dried the knife and went back into the other room.
Mel and Aunt Irina had already left. Uncle Vitaly had arrived; he had his car keys in his hand, ready to take Geka to hospital.
Fima and Ivan were sitting at the kitchen table, and my mother was serving them soup with sour cream and meat stew with potatoes.
‘Well, bungler, what have you all been up to this time?’ asked Uncle Vitaly, who was in a cheerful mood, as always.
I was drained of strength; I didn’t feel much like joking.
‘I’ll tell you later, Uncle, it’s a nasty story.’
‘Did you have to go and get into trouble on your birthday, of all days? All your friends are already drunk, they’re waiting for you…’
‘No party for me, Uncle. I can hardly stand up, I just want to sleep.’
I spent two days in bed, only getting up to eat and go to the bathroom. On the second day Mel came to see me with the Guardian, Uncle Plank, who wanted to hear what had happened.
I told him the whole story, and he promised me he would sort it out in a matter of hours and prevent any reprisals being taken against Geka, Fima and Ivan in Railway. Finger, meanwhile, would be staying on in our district.
About a week later Plank called me round to his home to speak to a man from Railway. He was an adult criminal, an Authority of the Black Seed caste; his nickname was ‘Rope’, and he was one of the few criminals in Railway who was respected by our people.