A Simple Scale Read online

  Every so often, even in these remote places, they come across evidence that there were people here once; the brick shells of buildings, roofless and without windows. Impossible to say how old they are; they look like ancient ruins, but could have been abandoned only a few years ago. Always far apart, no two buildings in close proximity. On a previous jaunt Sergey saw an old Orthodox chapel, hours away from anywhere, and when it began to rain he and his partner for the day took shelter inside it. It was so remote, it hadn’t even been ransacked, but there were bullet holes in its outer stonework. The interior, though soiled with bat droppings and crawling with bugs, was more or less intact, even the icons. The people who lived in this region must have thought the rest of the world would leave them alone. They were wrong.

  Sergey and Orlov are two hours’ trek from the basecamp when it begins to snow. Only a few small, bitty flakes at first, becoming gradually heavier, until the blizzard fills even the denser parts of the forest and they can see barely ten metres ahead. There is no provision for men who get lost in snowstorms. If they don’t return to basecamp this evening, no-one will come looking for them. The tools they have are ancient and cheap, easily replaceable, and there’s no chance of escape, nowhere for them to escape to. There’s little point in walking any further, and so Sergey suggests they stop and rest for a while. The snow looks as if it will eventually pass.

  It is one o’clock in the afternoon and already dark by the time they – or rather, Sergey – begins building a fire. Orlov watches him with mild curiosity.

  “It needs more kindling,” he says. “Smaller twigs at the bottom. That’s what my uncle used to tell me. I’d help you, but I have no feeling in my hands. Not the cold. It’s a condition. No sensitivity at all. I could seriously burn myself and I wouldn’t know.”

  When the fire is lit he and Orlov sit by it and toast some of their bread.

  “If we had butter,” says Orlov. “If they gave us butter! Oh, think of that, Grekov! Hot buttered toast.”

  Sergey says nothing. He looks at Orlov with an expression that says: Don’t talk about the things we don’t have. Don’t tell me about hot buttered toast or the meals your babushka made you when you were a boy. Just don’t.

  “These rations they give us are getting smaller,” Orlov says. “I swear, they’re getting smaller.”

  “I’ve told you before, everyone gets the same.”

  “We’ll starve to death on these rations.”

  “You won’t.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean fat men never starve to death. Not quickly, anyway.”

  “How dare you, Grekov? How fucking dare you?”

  Orlov lifts his toast away from the fire and takes it from the end of his fork, sniffing at it like a pig.

  “Mmm, toast,” he says. “I wonder why toast doesn’t smell anything like bread.”

  Sergey could bash his head in. He could take his mallet from the canvas bag still strapped to his back, and smash the fucker’s head right in.

  Instead, he says, “Because it’s toast. It is different.”

  “But it’s still bread, though.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Sergey says through clenched teeth.

  “Don’t you tell me to shut the fuck up,” says Orlov. “Tell me to shut up once more and I’ll cut your fucking throat. And don’t think I wouldn’t.”

  Orlov has made plenty of threats before – “I’ll give you a black eye”, “I’ll break your arm” – but everyone laughs at him. He’s a clown. He’s that boy you went to school with who lied about everything and anything. How his father was a decorated war hero. How he once flew in a biplane. How he’s related, on his mother’s side, to Lenin. But this time his tone, his expression… it’s as if he hears himself saying he could cut Sergey’s throat and realises he might do it.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Sergey says.

  “No?” says Orlov. “Two hours from basecamp. I go back there, tell everyone you fell into a ravine…”

  “There are no fucking ravines.”

  “A hill, then. Or into a stream. ‘He fell into an icy stream… I did everything I could to rescue him, but the water was too fast. He went under the ice and I couldn’t get him out.’ You think they’d come all the way out here, looking for you? Just to find out if I was telling the truth?”

  “Fuck you, Orlov.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Orlov looks at him from the other side of the fire. His eyes narrow. That big, red-cheeked face of his seems to sag. The emotion draining out of him. A dead look falls across his eyes. Orlov was never violent, was he? Never gets into fights. Tried telling the men in his barrack, before Sergey’s time, that he’d been a prize-fighter back in Novgorod. It became a recurring joke and he never mentioned it again. But then, he’s never threatened to cut anyone’s throat.

  His chubby hand moves towards his belt and his pick axe; the only tool he ever carries.

  “What’re you doing?” Sergey asks.

  “I don’t know you,” says Orlov. “You’re nothing to me.”

  Never could Orlov have moved so quickly. He launches himself across the fire, kicking up a storm of orange sparks, and swings the axe, missing Sergey and jamming it into the trunk of a nearby tree.

  Sergey scrambles to his feet and with his arms outstretched he begins clawing his way blindly through the forest. He hears the axe being wrenched from the tree and the crunch of snow beneath heavy feet.

  “Don’t run,” Orlov yells. “I’ll make it quick, I promise.”

  This is absurd. Like a cartoon or a puppet show. He can hear his own heartbeat thudding in his ears. His foot catches on something – a rock or an exposed root – and the cold, dark ground rushes up to meet him. Snow and dirt in his mouth. His hands grazed and tingling. The wind knocked right out of him.

  Get up. For God’s sake, get up.

  Orlov lunges and Sergey kicks out, his boot connecting heavily with Orlov’s crotch. The fat man doubles over and Sergey kicks again, this time hitting him squarely in the face with a hollow crack. Orlov’s hand moves to his face. Even in this light, Sergey can see the blood pouring from his nose.

  Sergey gets to his feet, his ankle sore beneath his weight, and he runs off into an even darker part of the forest. It’s still snowing, and away from the fire the cold is absolute, burning his lungs each time he breathes. He scans the area for a hiding place, but sees nothing. He feels his way around the nearest trees until he finds one that might hold his weight. He begins to climb. His limbs ache and his head spins and his breath tastes of copper. Frozen chunks of dead bark come away in his fingers, but still he climbs, his feet slipping against exposed wood before finding each new branch or stub that takes him further. He’s perhaps fifteen feet off the ground when Orlov reaches him.

  “You can’t stay up there forever,” Orlov says. “We may as well get this over and done with. Why are you drawing this out? It must be agony for you.”

  “I won’t come down,” says Sergey. “Not till you’ve gone.”

  “I’m going nowhere,” says Orlov. “Where would I go?”

  “Listen. Even if you tell them I slipped and fell or drowned, they’ll still punish you. Put you on pumping duty. Cut your rations in half.”

  “Rations?” says Orlov. “I’d have my own rations.”

  It takes a second for Sergey to understand. His stomach clenches. He puts one hand over his mouth. A sour mix of bile and half-digested toast spills up onto his tongue, burning his throat. He’s heard the stories. Escapees who take along an extra person for when their food supplies run out. Bones found in the woods.

  “Then I won’t come down,” he says. “You’ll have to wait until I fall or die of thirst.”

  Orlov begins pacing around the tree, stamping his feet and clapping his hands together to keep warm. He sits for a while, his head craned back, staring up at Sergey with an imbecilic grin, like some village idiot, occasionally laughing to himself. Something in him has snapped
, that much is clear. Perhaps he’s stuck like this; a murderous, overgrown child. Plenty of men go mad out here, but never like this.

  In the distance their fire grows dim, eventually dying out altogether. The grey smoke drifts across the forest through the falling snow. Orlov remains beneath the tree. Sergey could jump. Leap off the branch and onto Orlov, and while Orlov is dazed he could take away his axe and give him a swift blow to the top of the head. Dead in an instant. Does he have it in him to kill a man? Does he even have it in him to take the axe from him? And what if he missed Orlov altogether and hit the ground feet first? He’d break his legs. No running away then.

  Time passes. Holding on to the tree is hard work. The snow melts around his body, making the branches slippery. If Orlov could just fall asleep, if only for a moment, it might give him enough time to run. He can remember his way back to the path, he’s certain of it.

  Movement below. Orlov getting to his feet, still chuckling to himself. He holds up his axe for Sergey to see.

  “Idiot!” he says. “I’ve been an idiot.”

  His first blow makes barely a dent in the tree, but the second is powerful enough for Sergey to feel it.

  “Please,” he says. “Orlov. You don’t have to do this.”

  Orlov swings again, taking another sliver from the trunk, and Sergey closes his eyes and clings on more tightly than before. What a ridiculous way to die. Hacked to death by the camp clown, the butt of everyone’s jokes. And they would even joke about this, the other prisoners. Orlov would come back alone and they would say to him, “What happened to Grekov? Did you eat him?”

  The shadows of the forest floor play tricks with him; myriad colours dancing in the dark till the blackness seems to swirl and move of its own accord. Orlov takes another swing and something splinters.

  If the tree falls, let it fall on Orlov. Even if it kills me too. Let us both die out here.

  Orlov is readying himself to strike the tree again when something heavy crunches down into the snow behind him. He pauses, each silvery breath drifting towards something massive and dark only a few feet away. Another powdery whump as the immense dark form takes another lumbering step towards him.

  “Oh God,” Orlov mutters, almost too quietly for Sergey to hear.

  The bear moves slowly – it should be hibernating – but is still too fast for Orlov. In two short bounds it has him, charging into him and slamming him into the snow. The tree shakes and Orlov screams – unguarded, shrill – silenced only when the bear bites down and tears away his head. Blood splashes against the tree, and the snow around it turns black. Orlov’s body flails about beneath the bear; the flesh stripped from its arms and legs, a steaming cavity opened up in the torso. Sergey wants to look away, but he can’t. Orlov’s head remains almost unscathed, and his dead eyes glare skyward as the rest of him gets eaten. Nearby, sharp teeth connect with hollow-sounding bones. The bear grunts and paws at something wet. It heaves its massive bulk around and licks the blood from Orlov’s face before dissolving almost silently into the night.

  For three more hours Sergey waits in the tree. The bear may have had its fill, but it could still be lurking nearby. His hands burn with the cold. He’s straddling a branch, his chest and stomach flat against the tree, and he wraps his arms around the trunk, stuffing each hand into the opposite sleeve to warm them and to form a kind of clasp. He can just about reach. It wouldn’t have taken very long for Orlov to cut it down. Melting snow has begun to seep in through his trousers, freezing again in shards of ice that are moulded around his legs. He rests his head against the damp bark. If he were to doze off, even for a second, there’s a chance he would fall, hitting every branch on the way down. His feet are beginning to tingle and his arms are beginning to ache. He can’t stay here all night.

  Above the trees, the sky grows darker still. The snow stops falling and the clouds part to reveal a dense spray of stars. Out of nowhere, a thin green ribbon of light trails across the sky, widening and pulsing with life till it resembles a vast, flowing curtain, suspended over the taiga. Presently it lights up the whole forest, and the shadows of the trees wheel giddily on the forest floor, like compass needles.

  He never imagined he would see this with his own eyes. There is something miraculous in those lights, transcending this cold, dark forest, and Orlov’s butchered corpse, and the knapsack of tools and grubby soup tins now buried in the snow. The material things of this world no longer matter to him, and he hardly dares to make a sound, afraid that by doing so he could break the spell and stop the coloured lights from happening.

  This is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

  Mahler’s Urlicht. That’s what he can hear. A piece he hasn’t listened to in so long, yet he remembers it entirely. Every note. Every nuance. Kept pristine, complete, in a place the camp guards can’t get to it. Perhaps there will be a life after this.

  The walk back to the base camp takes him three hours. In places, the snow is two feet deeper than it was this morning. His body feels raw; his lips and knuckles are beginning to crack. He wonders what on Earth he is going back to, and whether it could possibly be worth it. The instinct to survive was never rational.

  He returns to the camp and his brigadier empty handed but for his tools. He tells him that Orlov was killed by a bear, and that he spent much of the day hiding in a tree. He doesn’t tell him the exact circumstances of Orlov’s death, or the green lights that he saw. The brigadier strikes Orlov’s name from his ledger, and tells Sergey he’ll receive only a half ration of bread tomorrow and the day after.

  It will be another fourteen months before they reach Vorkuta.

  Chapter 10:

  LOS ANGELES, SEPTEMBER 1950

  A bar on Larchmont Boulevard. Misty blue and grey with smoke. Empty but for the barman, two pool players, Angela, and you. The two of you sit together in a booth near the window. The jukebox is playing Dinah Shore.

  “I don’t even know why I’m still here.”

  “Not this again,” Angela sighs. She looks out through the window, past the skeleton of an unlit neon sign. Across the street, an ugly, squat apartment building with narrow balconies; a Latina housemaid hanging laundry from a washing line. The sky above the building is a dusty shade of pink.

  You didn’t get The Scarlet Letter. Walsh chose Steinman. Steinman who wasn’t interested, except suddenly he was, and now he’s the one getting sole credit on The Scarlet Letter.

  You hope it bombs.

  No reason was given. Only the bare details. You didn’t get it. Steinman did. When Henderson told you, it was like he thought you might leap up and sock him across the jaw. You almost did. It took a lot of willpower to stay where you were, and not go marching over to Walsh’s office to call him a Yekke son-of-a-bitch.

  You know why they didn’t choose you.

  “You’re always threatening to leave LA,” says Angela. “We all do it. But does anyone ever leave?”

  “I might.”

  “You won’t. I haven’t, and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve threatened to.”

  “You must love the place.”

  “Are you kidding? I hate it. I only came here to piss off my folks.”

  “How old are you, exactly?”

  “You know exactly how old I am.”

  She’s thirty-two, though she’ll never say it aloud in a bar, not even one this quiet.

  “Aren’t you a little old to be pissing off your parents?”

  “Cut me some slack. That was ten years ago.”

  You know the story. Rich parents, by your standards. Not Ronald Bernard rich, but wealthy. Dad sold real estate. The family lived in an upmarket Chicago suburb. Angela was an only child. Piano lessons paid for by cash or by cheque, unlike yours, which were paid for in veal cutlets and chicken livers. Her parents expected her to go into teaching, or to relegate music to a hobby. She got engaged to the son of her father’s business partner (“We’d known one another since kindergarten”), but broke it off when he came b
ack from the war with a leg in plaster and an unrelated case of the clap. After an unsuccessful pep talk from her mother – who used the phrase “Boys will be boys” – Angela boarded a Greyhound bus. She once told you that she came to LA only because she was ten minutes late for the bus to New York.

  “You know what you need?” she says.

  “Don’t tell me. Another pitcher of margarita.”

  “A girlfriend.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Of course I’m serious. You need someone in your life. At the very least, you need to go out and get laid.”

  “But a girlfriend?”

  “Why not? You need someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Anyone.”

  “I don’t want just ‘anyone’.”

  “Well, who do you want?”

  “Who says I want anyone, period?”

  “Everyone wants someone. It’s the way of the world.”

  “Not my world. Not right now.”

  You’ve seen that expression before. She’s waiting for you to say something, as if she’s given you enough cues to say whatever it is she wants to hear, but you won’t say it. Instead, you pour the last of the margarita into your glasses and light another cigarette. On the balcony across the street the Latina housemaid rests against the balustrade with folded arms, letting out a sigh so heavy you can feel it from here.

  **

  At night the city is limitless, a jewelled web that shimmers silently. The slightest breeze passing over the hillside mutes the drone of distant traffic.

  In these dark and secret places, away from the crowds, you remember a park on the Lower East Side. Heavy, autumn fog. Walking home alone. Couldn’t have been any older than fourteen, fifteen years old. You could barely see ten feet in front of you, but there were figures, shadows in the mist, all men. You walked with purpose, eyes fixed on the path, though a part of you wanted to stop. There was something intensely erotic about those half-hidden strangers.