‘Well, you old wolf, can you still bite? Haven’t the screws broken all your teeth?’ Hedgehog asked, as if it were my uncle who had just been released from jail, not him.
But I knew why he had said it. My uncle had had a very nasty experience during his last year in prison. He had attacked a guard over a question of honour, to defend an old criminal who had been beaten up by a cop, and the guards had taken their revenge with some cruel tortures: they had given him a long, severe beating, then drenched him with water and left him out in the open all night in the middle of winter. He had fallen ill. Fortunately he had survived, but his health had been permanently damaged – he had chronic asthma and one of his lungs was rotting away. My grandfather always used to joke that he had only retrieved half of his son from prison: the other half had stayed inside to rot forever.
‘You’re not so young yourself! What an ugly old sod you’ve turned out to be! Whatever happened to the best years of your life?’ my uncle had replied, looking at him affectionately. It was clear the two men were good friends.
‘Who’s this young rascal? He’s not Yuri’s son, is he?’ Hedgehog stared at me with a crooked smile.
‘Yes, this is my nephew. We called him Nikolay, according to the wishes of old Tayga, may the earth lie as light as a feather upon him…’
Hedgehog bent over me, his face in front of mine. He looked closely into my eyes, and I looked at him. His eyes were very pale, almost white, with a faint trace of blue; they didn’t seem human. They fascinated me, and I kept staring at them as if they might change colour at any moment.
Then Hedgehog put his hand on my head and ruffled my hair, and I smiled at him as if he were a member of my family.
‘He’s going to be a killer, this one. He’s a true member of our race, may the Lord help him.’
‘He’s a clever lad…’ said my uncle, with a strong note of pride in his voice. ‘Kolima, boy, recite the poem about the drowned man to Uncle Hedgehog and Uncle Stew!’
It was Uncle Vitaly’s favourite poem. Whenever he got drunk and wanted to go out and kill some cops, my grandparents, in order to stop him, would send me to recite that poem to him, as a kind of therapy. I would start to recite, and he would at once calm down, saying:
‘All right, never mind, I’ll kill those bastards tomorrow. Let’s hear it again…’ So I would recite the poem over and over again, till he fell asleep. Only then did my grandparents come into the room and take away his gun.
It was a poem by the legendary Pushkin. It’s about a poor fisherman who finds the body of a drowned man caught in his nets. For fear of the consequences he throws the body back into the water, but the ghost of the drowned man starts visiting him every night. Until his body is buried in the ground below a cross, his spirit will never be able to rest in peace.
It was a wonderful story, but also a terrifying one. I don’t know why my uncle liked it so much.
I wasn’t shy about reciting poems in front of others, in fact I enjoyed it; it made me feel important, the centre of attention. So I filled my lungs and began to speak, trying to sound as impressive as possible, varying my tone and emphasizing my words with gestures:
‘The children came into the house, and hurriedly called their father: “Father, Father! Our nets have caught a dead man!” “What are you talking about, you little devils?” replied the father. “Oh, these children! I’ll give you “dead man”… Wife, give me my coat, I’m going to see. Well, where is this dead man?” “There he is, Father!” And sure enough, there on the river bank, where the net had been laid out to dry, there was a corpse on the sand: a horrible, disfigured body, bluish and bloated…’
When I had finished, they applauded me. My uncle was the most delighted of all; he stroked my head, saying:
‘What did I tell you? He’s a genius.’
Old Stew asked us to sit down at the table under the pergola and went to fetch two glasses for us.
Hedgehog asked me:
‘Tell me, Kolima, have you got a pike?’
At the word ‘pike’ my eyes started shining and I became as attentive as a tiger out hunting – I had never owned a pike, nor had any of my friends. Boys usually get one later, when they’re ten or twelve years old.
The pike, as the traditional weapon of the Siberian criminals is called, is a flick-knife with a long, thin blade, and is connected with many old customs and ceremonies of our community.
A pike cannot be bought. It has to be earned.
Any young criminal can be given a pike by an adult criminal, as long as he is not a relative. Once it has been given, the pike becomes a kind of personal cult symbol, like the cross in the Christian community.
The pike also has magic powers, lots of them.
When someone is ill, and especially when he is suffering extreme pain, they put an open pike under his mattress, with the blade sticking out, so that, according to the beliefs, the blade cuts the pain and absorbs it like a sponge. What’s more, when an enemy is struck by that blade, the pain collected inside it flows out into the wound, making him suffer even more.
The umbilical cord of newborn babies is cut with a pike, which must first have been left open overnight in a place where cats sleep.
To seal important pacts between two people – truces, friendships or brotherhoods – both criminals cut their hands with the same pike, which is then kept by a third person, who is a kind of witness to their pact: if either of them betrays the agreement he will be killed with that knife.
When a criminal dies, his pike is broken by one of his friends. One part, the blade, is put in his grave, usually under the dead man’s head, while the haft is preserved by his closest relatives. When it is necessary to communicate with the dead man, to ask for advice or a miracle, the relatives take out the haft and put it in the red corner, below the icons. In this way the dead man becomes a kind of bridge between the living and God.
A pike keeps its powers only if it is in the hands of a Siberian criminal who uses it respecting the rules of the criminal community. If an unworthy person takes possession of a knife that does not belong to him, it will bring him bad luck – hence our idiom, ‘to ruin something as a pike ruins a bad master’.
When a criminal is in danger, his pike can warn him in many ways: the blade may suddenly open of its own accord, or become hot, or vibrate. Some think it can even emit a whistle.
If a pike is broken, it means that somewhere there is a dead person who cannot find peace, so offerings are made to the icon, or dead relatives and friends are remembered in prayers, visits are made to graveyards, and the dead are remembered by talking about them in the family and telling stories about them, especially to children.
For all these reasons, at the word ‘pike’ my eyes lit up. To possess one is to be rewarded by adults, to have something that will bind you to their world forever.
The question Hedgehog had asked me was a clear sign that something incredible was about to happen to me – to me, a six-year-old boy. A legendary criminal was going to give me a pike, my first pike. I had never hoped, never even imagined anything like this, and yet suddenly, there before me was the chance to possess that sacred symbol, which for people who have received the Siberian criminal education is a part of the soul.
I tried to hide my excitement and look indifferent, but I don’t think I was very successful, because all three of them were looking at me with smiles on their faces. No doubt they were thinking of their own first pike.
‘No, I haven’t,’ I said in a very hard voice.
‘Well, wait a minute and I’ll be right back…’ With these words Hedgehog went into the house. I was exploding with happiness; inside me a band was playing, fireworks were going off and billions of voices were shouting with joy.