12

BY SUNRISE THE NEXT MORNING, THEY WERE ON THE MOVE AGAIN.

Their route intersected with a road known as the Moscow Highway which, in spite of its grand name, was only a two-lane strip of dirt laid out across the undulating steppe.

While turmeric-colored dust blew in through the open windows, Anton sat with the map, squinting at the thumbprint whorls of hills, the veins and arteries of roads, and the dense bone mass of forests.

By noon, they had reached the intersection Anton was looking for. Without any signposts, it resembled nothing more than a horizontal crucifix of mud. “Turn here, Kirov,” he ordered. “Turn here.” And then again. “Turn here.”

Their course took them away along the edge of a shallow stream and through a grove of white birch trees before the ground opened out into a field. The woods which ringed the field were dark and gloomy-looking. Kirov eased the car along an old wagon track which cut across the field, the Emka’s bumper swishing through the tall grass.

An old shack stood in the middle of this field, a tin chimney leaning drunkenly out of its roof.

Anton turned his map one way and then another, struggling to get his bearings. “It’s over by that house, I think.”

The car’s springs creaked as it lumbered over the bumpy ground. When they reached the far end of the field, the three men got out and started looking for the mine shaft.

It did not take them long to find it. The shaft was little more than a hole in the ground, about five paces wide, above which perched a rusted metal pulley. Clumps of luminous green grass hung over the edges of the hole. The first section of the mine shaft had been neatly bricked, like the sides of a well. Beneath that was bare rock and earth, from which tiny rivulets of water seeped down into the black. Bolted to the walls on either side were two rusted iron ladders. Most of the rungs were missing. The bolts which held the ladders to the wall were loose. There was no hope of using them to get down into the mine.

“Are you really going down there?” asked Kirov. “It’s pitch-black.”

“I have a flashlight,” said Anton. He removed it from the glove compartment of the car. The flashlight had a leather casing around its metal frame and a goggle-eyed crystal for its lens. He slung it from a cord around his neck.

Searching for a way to lower Pekkala into the shaft, Anton examined the pulley. The twisted threads of cable wound onto it were rusted together, beads of water resting in places where oil still clung to the metal. Sticking from the side of the drum was a large, two-man hand crank for raising and lowering the cable into the mine shaft. He took hold of the crank, pulled it, and the lever snapped off in his hands. “So much for that,” he muttered.

But Kirov was already removing a length of hemp rope from the trunk of the car, which had been placed there in case the vehicle broke down and needed to be towed. He looped one end around the Emka’s bumper, then walked to the edge of the pit and threw the rest of the coil down into the shaft.

The three men listened as the rope unraveled into the darkness. Then they heard a wet slap as it reached the ground.

Pekkala stood at the edge of the pit, the rope in his hand. He seemed to hesitate.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Anton asked.

“Give me the flashlight,” Pekkala said.

After Anton had handed it to him, Pekkala leaned back on the rope, testing its strength. The hemp creaked around the bumper but held firm. While Kirov lifted the rope, so that it would not drag at the edge of the mine shaft, Pekkala stepped to the edge, then leaned out backwards over the emptiness. With his hands white-knuckled around the line, he stepped down into the shaft. In a moment he was gone.

The two men on the surface watched the flashlight’s glow yawing back and forth across Pekkala’s chest, one moment illuminating his feet, then the rope, then the slippery sides of the mine shaft. The light grew smaller and smaller, and the sound of Pekkala’s breaths faded to a hollow echo.

“He looked afraid,” said Kirov.

“He is afraid,” replied Anton.

“Of the bodies?”

“The bodies don’t scare him. It’s being closed in that he can’t stand. And he’ll never forgive me for that.”

“Why is it your fault?”

“It was a game,” said Anton. “At least it started out that way. Once, when we were children, we went to a place our father had made us promise never to go. Deep in the woods behind our house, there was a crematory oven which he used for his funeral business. It had a tall chimney, as tall as the tops of the trees, and the oven itself was like a huge iron coffin built up on a pedestal of bricks. On those days when he used the oven, I would go to my bedroom window and see smoke rising above the tops of the trees. Our father had described the oven to us, but I had never seen it for myself. I wanted to, but I was far too scared to go alone. I persuaded my brother to come with me. He would never have gone otherwise. He was too obedient for his own good, but he is younger than me, and at that age I was able to convince him.

“It was an autumn day when we went to see the oven. We knew no one would miss us. We often disappeared for hours at a time.

“The ground was hard. The first snow had fallen, just a dusting of it, collecting in the shells of dried-out leaves. We kept looking back, expecting to see our father coming down the trail behind us, but after a while we realized we were alone.

“There was a bend in the trail and then the oven was suddenly in front of us. It was smaller than I’d thought it would be. And the area around it was very tidy. Wood for the fuel had been neatly cut and stacked. The ground was even swept, and my father had left a broom to prop open the oven door. Even though the sun was out, the oven stood beneath the trees and it seemed dark in there, and cold.

“I took the broom and opened the door to the oven. Inside, I saw a long tray, like the frame of a stretcher. The chamber was gray with dust, but it had been swept as clean as it could be.

“That sort of thing mattered to my father. Even though nobody else ever came to the oven, as far as he knew anyway, he needed the place to be orderly and dignified.

“Almost as soon as we arrived, my brother wanted to go back. He was sure our father would figure out that we’d been here.

“That was when I suggested that one of us should go inside the oven, just to see what it was like.

“At first my brother refused.

“I called him a coward. I said we would draw straws for it. I told him if I was willing to do it, he should be willing, too.

“Eventually, I got him to agree.”

“And Pekkala drew the short straw?” asked Kirov.

“He thought he did,” replied Anton. “The truth is, after I saw that he had drawn the long straw, I squeezed it so hard between my fingers that it broke in half, so what he drew was only half the proper length.

“I told him he couldn’t back down or else he’d spend the rest of his life knowing that he’d proved himself to be a coward.

“He crawled into the oven. I made him go headfirst. And then I closed the door on him.”

“You did what?”

“It was only going to be for a second. Just to give him a scare. But there was a spring lock on the door and I couldn’t get it open. I tried. I honestly did. But I wasn’t strong enough.

“I could hear him shouting and banging on the door. He was trying to get out. I panicked. I ran home. It was getting dark. I arrived home just as my mother was putting supper on the table.

“At the supper table, when my parents asked me where my brother was I said I didn’t know.

“My father was looking at me. He must have known I was hiding something.

“Hold out your hands, he said, and when I held them out he grasped them hard and stared at them. I remember he even lowered his face to my fingertips and smelled them. Then he ran out of the house.