«I–I-I,» Savage stammered and nodded. «I–I-I did…»
His wife looked at him sceptically.
«So you lied?»
«Yes,» Savage nodded. All he wanted was for her to go away as quickly as possible.
Mrs Savage leapt up as though scalded and rushed out of the room.
«I hate you so much!» she yelled at the door and Savage thought it was time he went back to the forest.
The bus bounced over the bumps like a bucking bronco. The forest flashed by the window, once again wild and alien, as if the months he'd spent wandering the dank swamps of the taiga had never happened. The last stop was the abandoned mine. It was only a few miles from there to the tip. Bottles tinkled in his bag and the scissors he had in his pocket for weapon jabbed into his side. He recalled how the tramps buried him alive under a pile of rubbish.
Fallen leaves lay on the ground like crude brushstrokes on canvas. Savage went through his memories of his days of wandering as if telling beads and it seemed it was just his sick imagination or a film he had seen before he went back to a real life as dull and grey as the rubbish tip.
Savage found the tramps by the smoke from their fire. It was cold and the tramps were clustered around it, scorching themselves as they held out their red, frost-bitten hands. Savage wanted to sit down next to them as he had in the past but they grew wary when they spotted him. Two men stood up and went towards him.
«It's me!» said Savage, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. «I'm back.»
The tramps looked at him maliciously, shaggy eyebrows drawn, and their compressed lips augured nothing good.
«I've brought something…» Savely held out his bag, rattling the bottles. «Help yourselves!»
The tramps didn't so much as twitch. He took out his gifts and placed them on the ground. A dirty, soot-smeared little boy grabbed the food and carried it closer to the fire. The tramps crowded round and began to share it out. Savage, the scissors hidden in his sleeve, squatted by the fire.
«The woman with the red hair,» he said, leaning towards one of the women. «Red hair, wearing a hat…»
The woman deftly patted his pockets then jumped away to hide behind the men. One of them produced a knotty stick and drawing himself up to his full height Savage showed them the scissors. They stepped back, chewing the sandwiches he'd provided.
«I'm a friend,» said Savage, putting up his hands. «I'm one of you. Do you remember I was with you? I've just brought some food…»
«And money?» A vagrant's mouth stretched into a smile that showed the gaps in his teeth. «Have you brought any money?»
Savage nodded and pulled some rolled up notes out from his shirt.
«I'm looking for a woman with red hair,» he reiterated. «She was with you. I would see her here a lot.»
«These are all our women,» the tramp said with a gesture. «Pick any of them.»
Savage ran his glance over the homeless women but the one he was looking for wasn't among them.
«I'm looking for a woman with red hair,» he stressed. «She vanished after the fire…»
The tramps shrugged and an old man with bushy hair went over to Savage and snatched up the money. An open bottle was passed around. Smacking their lips, the tramps took a slug then passed it on but when it was Savage's turn, the old man drank for two and tossed him the empty bottle.
«Get out while you're still alive,» he rasped, showing him a crooked finger.
Savage backed away, keeping hold of the scissors. He tripped over bits of iron and wood sticking out of a pile of rubbish. The tramps watched him go, leaning shoulder to shoulder, then went back to the fire and got started on another bottle.
«What did he want?» one asked, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
«A woman!»
«Hasn't he got enough of his own?»
«You try and understand them…»
Savage looked round one last time at the tramps. Suddenly he envied them as he imagined himself going home to his lonely little room where he could talk to the television or to his reflection in the mirror but couldn't lean on anyone's shoulder. He thought of moving in with the vagrants, loving their women, drinking vodka, bedding down in the rubbish to sleep and feeling life sticking into his back like a broken bottle. Savage calculated how much money it would take to provide food and drink for the whole tribe of tramps and decided to put money aside from his very first pay check. So that he'd have nowhere to go back to, he would slap a divorce on his wife together with the keys to the flat, and throw away his passport to be a real homeless person — no home, no family, no name.
When he got home, however, he put his dirty clothes in the washing machine and spent a whole hour in the shower, washing off the smell of the tip, the vicious looks of the tramps and his foolish dreams of a vagrant life.
Lapin lay in wait for him by the entrance, loitering beneath the windows. Savage would look round the corner and wait for him to leave. If he saw him in town, he would dive into an alley-way or the nearest shop. Lapin wandered around unkempt, in a dirty crumpled coat, his nervous shadow getting under people's feet. Sometimes he would jump out from behind a passer-by and shake Savage by the shoulder, watching every movement of his lips:
«Just wink at me if it's you. I won't tell anyone!»
«L-l-leave me al-l-lone. I'm tired,» Savage said. He hurried away but Lapin was right behind him.
«Just wink at me. I need to know or I'll go out of my mind!»
People turned to look at them and, pretending they were friends, Savely would put an arm round Lapin's shoulders, muttering some nonsense into his ear. The investigator would try to find a secret sign in his gibberish and to work out as he roamed the streets just what might be hidden behind the «ba-ba-ba» or «la-la-la» Savage used to imitate conversation.
Savage hung around outside the police station but couldn't bring himself to go in. The door was forever bumping against him like a cocky little boy and the snub-nosed sergeant, smoking on the bench, looked at him apprehensively.
Savage sat on the steps and looking at his shadow, curled up at his feet like a cat, he thought that a man is attached to the town he lives in like a button to a jacket and it is no more possible to escape fate than your own shadow.
The sergeant, stamping out his cigarette butt, crossed his arms.
«Who are you waiting for?» he called to Savage.
«I'm just waiting,» Savely replied, pulling down his old-fashioned hat with its upturned brim.
The duty officer had long since spotted Savage from the window and, hiding behind a forlorn fig-tree in a tub, had watched his hunched figure and wondered why he was there. He mixed some mint and valerian into a glass, pulled a face and drank it down in one gulp like vodka. Then he cautiously opened the window.
«What do you want?» asked the duty officer cautiously. He had long since persuaded himself that he had imagined Savage that evening.
Savage didn't answer, looking at his watch as if he was waiting for someone and, embarrassed, the officer shut the window.
«Who are you waiting for?» the sergeant asked again, tearing himself off his bench and Savage shook his head and hurried away.
«Name?» shouted the Chief, popping up from around a corner.
«Ivanov!» Savage lied on impulse.
He remembered Trebenko, lying in a pool of blood on the garage floor and the sharp black smoke that rose above the trees as he fled into the forest, clutching his gun and the rubber boots, wrapped in a reindeer skin. «Judas!» Savage spat out.
Two beggars were digging in a dustbin, standing on tiptoe and raking through the rubbish with a gnarled stick. The taste of mouldy bread filled Savage's mouth. His nose tickled as if the tousled hair of the red-headed woman had tickled his face and, bent down by the weight of his memories, he went on by. «What makes us any different to tramps? Having somewhere to spend the night?» he thought, recalling the burrow in the congealed rubbish he'd slept in at the tip.