The black man was murmuring a prayer with his eyes closed. In his hand he held the cross that hung on a cord around his neck. The boy began pulling away the plastic at the tall man’s feet, cautiously, ready to leap aside. The trouser legs were pulled up a bit, and he saw his skinny blue shins, bitten to pieces by fleas. The others were coming; he had to work fast. They were filthy old gym shoes and they stank like the plague, but they were still whole. He had the left one already, but it was the right one he needed most urgently. The shoe wouldn’t budge; it was lashed tightly to the foot. The boy was in too much of a hurry to untie the laces, so he pulled hard on the heel. The tall man’s body shook beneath his efforts.
Almaty, oh Almaty! This is what has become of the world! Oh woe is me!
When the shoe shot loose, the boy fell on his back. The others were almost there; he quickly grabbed the left shoe as well and ran off. He wasn’t strong, but he could outrun them all.
From a safe distance, he looked back. They were standing around the body. The black man, still kneeling, was looking up at them. The boy pulled off his own shoes and put on the tall man’s. They were much too big for him, but sturdy enough, if he pulled the laces tight.
Shoes were vital. Without shoes, you were lost. Within their little economy, shoes represented great wealth — more than trousers or a coat. Water came first, then shoes. He was proud of his catch. He had been smarter than the others, faster. Above all, it was a victory over Vitaly, the slyest of them all. He had beaten him hands down.
Once he had shared a pair of shoes with his brother. The son with shoes could go to school. He wore them one day; his brother, the next. When he left, they had given him the shoes. Now his brother couldn’t go to school anymore.
These were his third pair since he’d left. In the distance, he sees the man from Ashkhabad lash out at Africa with the tall man’s stick. Did he hit him? The black man rolls over, leaps to his feet, and picks up his satchel on the run.
The boy follows him with his eyes — the running that seems almost like fluttering, an awkward bird that can’t get off the ground.
Vitaly and the man from Ashkhabad pull the plastic off the tall man and search his body with practised movements. They apply force to bend the stiff arms away from the man’s chest. The body doesn’t give; it shudders beneath their brusqueness. It looks as though they’ve found nothing of value. The man from Ashkhabad takes only the stick. You could use it to poke up a fire, or to swing at Africa.
The boy waits till they’re out of sight, then starts moving. In passing, he glances at the violated corpse: the shirt is torn open, the trousers pulled down to its knees. Bones. Nails and hair. There isn’t much left for the other predators. The pale genitals against the grey pubic hair make the tall man more a thing than the boy likes to see.
The thing lies there helplessly, an invitation to be torn apart. The boy realises how much his own life has come to rely on defence — the clenched position with regard to everything that could happen to him. Comfort does not exist. Everything has danger as its shadow. He is a nervous animaclass="underline" he has to cross the open field in search of food, but flight is built into all his movements. It has become second nature to him. That is what the road has taught him.
The boy looks back from time to time, and sees Africa pop up amid the tall grass. He is a dog in the caravan’s wake. No matter how much they beat him, he keeps coming back, begging for attention and mercy. They will hit him even harder, and keep on until he finally understands that he doesn’t belong with them. That he is a stranger, the bearer of enigma. There is no place for him in the group any longer; he will have to complete the journey alone. Especially now that the tall man is dead. He needs to understand that it is more dangerous for him to be with the group than to wander lonely across the flats. He needs to finally understand that his time is almost up.
The boy admires and despises his stubbornness. Why does he go looking to be humiliated? Why doesn’t he realise that they want to hurt him? He turns around and shouts: ‘Go away! Go away, would you!’ The black man waves to him. He approaches. The boy hisses, ‘Ksst! ksst!’ , the way you would at an annoying herd of goats. The man nods and smiles.
The boy turns his back on him again. Well then, it’s up to you, he thinks bitterly. I warned you. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.
He looks at his new shoes — the shoes of a grown man. There are almost no holes in them; the soles are unbroken. Who did the tall man steal them from? He racks his brains, but has almost no memory of those who remained behind. Whatever the case, he’s wearing them now. He rescued them from the heat of the battle. His mother would be proud of him.
Don’t think about Mother now. Better not.
Her hands were often hard, but sometimes soft, too, like when she used them to cradle his head.
Bad thoughts. Stupid thoughts. He hates his tears.
It was important to keep getting closer to them, unobtrusively, to make it seem as though you’d always been there. If you popped up all of a sudden, they would remember why you’d lagged behind; someone might say: ‘Give us those shoes, you little thief!’ and take them away from him. But they didn’t even look up, didn’t notice the little spurts with which the boy kept getting closer. He tried to read the expressions on their dark backs: were they tense and aggressive, or simply resigned?
If Vitaly tried to take them off him, he would hit him on the wound, bite into it. Yes, biting him would be the best thing — right through the sleeve of his sweater, sinking his teeth into that filthy wound. The shrieks would be deafening. Revenge for the blows, the insults, the times that he ate the boy’s portion — Vitaly, the lowest of the low. That’s right, let him try to take his shoes away. The screams would be music to his ears.
Against the other men he was defenceless, although he had little to fear from the poacher, who was neutral as a corpse. The boy couldn’t count on the man from Ashkhabad, who had his moods. He didn’t give a damn about anything most of the time, and then suddenly things went haywire. He was strong; his wrists were thick. When they left, he’d been overweight — he’d had a round belly. He would sigh all the time, the way fat people do. But the steppes had taken away his belly. Now he was as skinny as the rest. His skin lay draped in folds against his bones, like a carpet.
Once again, they had no fire. The snares remained empty; they rooted around in the earth without finding a thing. It had been so many days since they’d eaten, they envied the dead who had no share in their concerns.
The woman, her face in the shadows, said: ‘He was just hunched down there, bent over him. It was hideous, as though he wanted to drink his blood.’
‘That’s what they do. Defile our bodies,’ said the man from Ashkhabad.
‘Hell is the last thing he saw,’ said Vitaly.
‘Terrible,’ the woman sighed.
The poacher appeared from the twilight. He had found rabbit warrens. And he had seen Africa, he said. He was lying not far from here.
The woman moaned softly.
‘Where?’ the man from Ashkhabad asked.
The poacher pointed. ‘He saw me. I just kept walking.’
‘Did he try anything?’ Vitaly asked.
‘What are you talking about, man?’
But they all knew. How he had fed on the dead, and with a single touch turned Vitaly’s arm into a withered stem. For them, everything was getting worse and worse. For him, everything was getting better. They saw it clearly, the sorcerer’s circle. The black man was slowly drawing it closed, like a net.