“Now, you listen.” Kuznets’s voice is stern and clipped. “I have no obligation to relieve you of your poor goners.”
“Huh?” Ignatov has trouble lifting his eyelids. Kuznets flickers, warps, and doubles. There are already four, not just two, mean, unblinking eyes driving into Ignatov.
“I’ll drop off everybody that’s left at the location.”
“Wh-where?”
“Somewhere! We’ll find a suitable place.”
“Erm…”
Ignatov’s looking through dirty window glass. Out there, on a distant shore, the pointed tops of endless spruce trees extend beyond the horizon and rock in the wind.
“Hold on a minute…” Ignatov turns back to Kuznets. He can’t manage to catch his gaze at all – he has too many eyes, the angry devil. “In the taiga? Without equip… equipment?”
“It’s an order,” Kuznets say flintily.
The burlap nearly slips from Ignatov’s chest and he catches at it, wrapping himself up again.
“They’ll croak,” he says quietly.
Now they can hear the loud rattling of the boat’s motor.
“You have to understand that we need that settlement!” Kuznets, who’d divided in two, finally merges into one.
“You want to put a dot on the map?” Ignatov takes the bottle by its narrow neck to splash something into the empty mug for himself. “Conquering the shores of the great Angara? And the people? The hell with them? New ones will be born?”
Kuznets grabs the bottle’s thick middle but Ignatov won’t give it back.
“Quiet!” Kuznets pulls it toward himself. “Who sank the barge?”
“It was a leaky barge! Leaky, as leaky as a rotten old stump!”
“Were your railroad cars leaky, too? Half the people scattered along the way, half escaped… Or maybe it’s your hands that are leaky, Ignatov? Or your head?”
“But I brought them all the way across the country!” Ignatov groans and attempts to pull Kuznets’s tenacious fingers from the slippery glass. “I dragged them along the rails for half a year to deliver them to you, you ass. And now you want to send them right off to the taiga? To feed the wolves?”
“No, my dear man, you’re going to feed the wolves,” Kuznets hisses right into his ear, his hot breath enveloping Ignatov. “Because you’re staying with them. As the commandant.”
The bottle slides away, remaining in Kuznets’s big paws. Kuznets sputters, steadies his breathing, and wipes his drenched forehead.
“Temporarily, of course,” he says, not looking at Ignatov as he pours home brew into the mug for him with evil generosity. “What, you want me to fuss around with your invalids? A couple dozen old people? Who shoved them in the hold? Me? Wasn’t that you? If you’d brought them in the open, on the deck, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. But you cooked up this mess so you’re going to eat it. You’ll sit with them a week and guard them until I bring a new batch and a permanent commandant.”
After a loud thud, the bottle’s standing back on the table. “What’re you doing, Kuznets?” Ignatov’s voice is husky, as if he has a cold.
The burlap falls to the floor and Ignatov is left in his birthday suit. Kuznets casts him a stern gaze:
“That’s an order, special assignments employee Ignatov.”
He hurls the familiar gray “Case” folder on the table and leaves. Ignatov grabs the mug with both hands and pours home brew into himself. Its coolness streams down his chin, neck, and bare chest.
“Matches. Salt. Fishing tackle.”
Kuznets crouches as he opens each of the sacks and parcels that lie on the rocks, poking a firm finger into them. Ignatov’s standing alongside him, teetering slightly. He’s wearing a uniform that’s still half-damp and wrinkled (it’s clear they’ve wrung it out hard and flapped it in the wind), and his holster is attached crookedly, but he doesn’t notice. Kuznets’s voice reaches him from a distance, as if from the other shore. Green sparks are still floating before his eyes, blocking out a distant horizon of boundless hills jagged with spruce trees, the dark gray Angara water, the launch rocking in it, and the wooden rowboat by the shore, where a couple of soldiers are waiting.
“Saws. Knives. Kettles.” Kuznets looks at Ignatov’s sleepy face with its drooping eyelids. “I’m telling you, you’re going to boil up fish soup.”
Some sort of recollection weakly stirs in his memory.
“And grouse!” Ignatov raises a shaking finger. “And grouse in champagne sauce, is that possible?”
“It’s possible.” Kuznets stands up and brushes off his knees. “Sorry, but I’m not leaving provisions. You’ll somehow take care of that yourselves. There’s ammunition” – he kicks a small, taut sack and something clinks heavily inside – “enough for all the wild beasts in the taiga. Well, and your wretched people, too, if they don’t obey. And this” – he takes a heavy, nearly full bottle from one soldier’s hands – “is for you. So you’re not sad at night.”
Ignatov recognizes it right away. He smiles, takes it, and embraces the cool glass; the liquid splashes promisingly inside: Thank you, brother. Kuznets slides the gray “Case” folder between Ignatov and the bottle.
“Well, commandant,” he says, “stay strong. I’ll send assistance soon.”
Ignatov stoops and neatly, slowly, places the bottle on the rocks, so as not to spill the treasure. The folder falls next to it.
“W-wait…” His tongue is tied, as if it’s not his own. “I wanted to ask you about, to ask…”
He straightens up and looks around, but Kuznets is gone. There are just two oars gleaming in the distance. The rowboat is headed toward the launch.
“Where are you going?” Ignatov whispers in surprise. “Kuznets, where are you going?”
They’re already lifting the boat onto the launch. Ignatov takes an unsteady step and his foot clangs against something: long, thin one-handed saws lying on wet burlap. Are these really saws? They’re going to saw lumber with these flimsy things?
“Where are you going, Kuznets?” Ignatov raises a hand, waves, and takes a couple of steps along the shore.
The launch lets out a high, sustained whistle in parting. The motor sneezes and barks, then chugs evenly, and the launch turns around.
“Where are you going?” Ignatov yells, continuing to run in pursuit. “Where? Wait!”
The launch leaves, shrinking.
“Wait!” Ignatov runs into the water. “Where?”
His fingers grope wildly for the holster and tear out the revolver. A cold wave splashes into his boots. Ignatov is trudging in water up to his knees, then to his waist.
“Where’ve you taken us, you son of a bitch? Where?”
“Air… air… air…” responds the echo, flying along the Angara in pursuit of the dark blue dot of the launch. But it’s already dissolving on the horizon.
“Where? WHERE? WHERE?”
Ignatov squeezes the trigger. The shot crashes, loud and booming.
Someone behind him is sobbing, frightened. The exiles are standing on the shore, huddled together and clutching lean bundles with their things, their faces gaunt, dark. Ignatov can feel their fearful eyes boring into him – the huge eyes of pregnant Zuleikha, the peasants’ gloomy stare, the lost gaze of the Leningrad remainders, and Gorelov’s crazed glare.
He helplessly slaps the water with his revolver and looks up at the sky. Something small and white is floating toward him from a black cloud. Snow.