The Inhabited Island Read online

  When Maxim opened his eyes, through the blinding light he could make out the gray bunker, a wide gap in the wire, and figures looking very small and isolated in the huge empty space around the tower—they were running as fast as they could toward the bunker, running silently, without speaking, stumbling and falling, jumping up again and running. Then Maxim heard a pitiful moan, and he saw Green, who wasn’t running anywhere but sitting on the ground just beyond the wire, swaying to and fro with his head clutched in his hands. Maxim dashed over to him, tore his hands away from his face, and saw his rolled-back eyes and bubbles of saliva on his lips . . . But there still weren’t any shots; an eternity had gone by, and the bunker still remained silent. Then suddenly the familiar battle march thundered out.

  Maxim flung the bungling blockhead onto his back and fumbled in his own pocket with one hand, feeling glad that General was so cagey, he had given Maxim some extra pain pills just to be on the safe side. He forced open Green’s mouth, which was locked shut by cramp, and thrust the pills deep into the black hole of his wheezing throat. Then he grabbed Green’s rifle and swung around, looking to see where the light was coming from and why there was so much of it—there shouldn’t be so much light . . .

  There still weren’t any shots, and the isolated figures were still running. One of them was already very close to the bunker, another was a little way behind, and a third, running from the right, suddenly fell, moving at full speed, and went tumbling head over heels. “When Guards appear upon the battle scene . . .” they roared in the bunker, while the light continued to beat down from a height of about ten yards—probably from the tower, which was impossible to make out now. Maxim could see five or six blinding blue-white disks; he flung up the automatic rifle and squeezed the trigger, and the homemade weapon, small, awkward, and unfamiliar, jerked hard in his hands. As if in reply, red flashes glinted in the embrasure of the bunker, and the rifle was suddenly torn out of his hands. Maxim still hadn’t hit a single one of the blinding disks, and now Green had grabbed the rifle; he set off, rushing forward, and immediately fell, stumbling on level ground.

  Then Maxim lay down and crawled back to his bag. Behind him automatics frantically crackled, a machine gun roared with a terrifying, hollow sound, and then—at long last!—a grenade burst, then another, and then two together, and the machine gun fell silent. Now there were only automatics chattering, and then came the bursts of more explosions, and then someone shrieked in an inhuman voice and it went quiet. Maxim grabbed the bag and ran. Smoke was rising in a column above the bunker; the air smelled of burning and gunpowder. And everything all around it was bright and empty, with only a black, hunched-over figure groping his way along right beside the bunker, clinging to the wall. The figure reached the embrasure, tossed something into it, and dropped to the ground. The embrasure suddenly lit up with red light, Maxim heard a popping sound, and everything went quiet again . . .

  Maxim stumbled and almost fell. A few steps farther on he stumbled again, and then he noticed that there were little stakes jutting up out of the ground—short, thick stakes hidden in the grass. So that’s it . . . That how things are here . . . If General had sent me in alone, I’d have immediately smashed both my legs, and now I’d be lying there, stretched out dead on these repulsive little stakes . . . You boaster . . . You stupid ignoramus . . . The tower was really close now. He ran, looking down at his feet; he was alone, and he didn’t want to think about the others.

  He ran up to a huge iron support and dropped the bag. He badly wanted to slap a heavy, rough pancake onto the wet iron immediately, but there was still the bunker . . . The iron door was ajar, with lazy tongues of flames flicking out of it, and a guardsman was lying on the steps—it was all over there. Maxim set off around the bunker and found General, who was sitting slumped against the concrete wall. His eyes were blank, and Maxim realized that the tablets had already stopped working. He looked around, picked General up in his arms, and carried him away from the tower. About twenty paces away Ordi was lying in the grass with a grenade in her hand. She was lying facedown, but Maxim immediately realized that she was dead. He started looking farther and found Forester, also dead. And Green had been killed too—there was no one for him to leave General with.

  He walked across the open space, casting multiple black shadows, stunned by all these deaths even though a minute earlier he had thought he was prepared for them, feeling an impatient urge to go back and blow up the tower in order to finish what they had begun, but first he had to see how Hoof was. He found Memo right beside the wire. He was wounded, and had probably tried to crawl away toward the wire before he collapsed, unconscious. Maxim put General beside him and started running toward the tower again. It was strange to think that now he could cross these miserable two hundred yards without being afraid of anything.

  He started attaching the mines to the supports, two on each one to make sure. He hurried, although there was plenty of time—but General was losing blood, and Memo was losing blood, and somewhere trucks carrying Battle Guards were already hurtling along the highway, and Gai had been roused from his bed by the alarm, and now he was jarring over the cobblestones beside Pandi, and in the nearby villages the people had already woken up; the men were grabbing guns and axes, the children were crying, and the women were cursing the bloodthirsty spies who robbed them of their sleep and their peace. Maxim could feel the drizzly darkness all around him with every pore of his skin, sense it slowly stirring, coming to life, becoming menacing and dangerous . . .

  The detonators were set for five minutes’ delay; he activated them all, one by one, and ran back, toward General and Memo. Something was bothering him; he stopped, looked around, and realized what it was: Ordi. He ran back to her, looking down at his feet in order not to stumble, lifted the light body up onto his shoulder, and started running again, looking down at his feet—toward the wire, toward the gray gap where General and Memo were suffering agony, but they wouldn’t have to suffer much longer now. He stopped beside them and turned back toward the tower.

  And then the underground terrorists’ nonsensical dream came true. Rapidly, one after another, the mines detonated, the base of the tower was enveloped in smoke, and then the blinding lights went out, everything went pitch black, and the darkness was filled with scraping and rumbling, the earth shook and bounced with a metallic clang, and then it shook again.

  Maxim looked at his watch. It was seventeen minutes past ten. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he could see the ripped-apart wire again, and he could see the tower. It was lying to one side of the bunker, in which everything was still burning, and its supports, mangled and twisted by the explosions, were haphazardly jutting out.

  “Who’s there?” wheezed General, starting to stir.

  “It’s me,” said Maxim. He leaned down. ‘”It’s time to leave. Where are you hit? Can you walk?”

  “Wait,” said General. “What about the tower?”

  “The tower’s finished,” said Maxim. Ordi was lying over his shoulder, and he didn’t know how to tell General about her.

  “I can’t believe it,” said General, sitting up. “Massaraksh! Is it really true?” he laughed and lay down again. “Listen, Mak, I can’t gather my wits . . . What time is it?”

  “Ten twenty.”

  “So everything was right! We took it out . . . Well done, Mak. Wait, who’s this here beside me?”

  “Hoof,” said Mak.

  “He’s breathing,” said General. “Wait, who else is still alive? Who’s that you have there?”

  “It’s Ordi,” said Maxim, struggling to force the words out.

  General said nothing for a few seconds. “Ordi,” he hesitantly repeated, and got up, staggering on his feet. “Ordi,” he repeated again, and laid his palm on her cheek.

  They both said nothing for a while. Then Memo asked in a hoarse voice, “What time is it?”

  “Ten twenty-two,” said Maxim.

  “Where are we?” Memo asked.

  �
�We have to go,” said Maxim.

  General turned around and set off through the gap in the wire, staggering very badly. Then Maxim leaned down, threw corpulent Memo across his other shoulder, and set off after General. He caught up with him, and General stopped.

  “Only the wounded,” he said.

  “I can get her there,” said Maxim.

  “Follow orders,” said General. “Only the wounded.”

  He reached out his hands and, groaning with pain, lifted Ordi’s body off Maxim’s shoulder. He couldn’t hold her up and immediately put her down on the ground.

  “Only the wounded,” he said in a strange voice. “On the double . . . march!”

  “Where are we?” asked Memo. “Who’s here? Where are we?”

  “Hold on to my belt,” Maxim told General, and started running.

  Memo shrieked and went limp. His head dangled, his arms dangled, and his legs pounded against Maxim’s back. General ran close on Maxim’s heels, breathing loudly and hoarsely and holding on to his belt.

  They ran into the forest and wet branches lashed at Maxim’s face. He dodged away from trees that came dashing toward him and jumped over tree stumps that leaped up in front of him. It was harder than he had expected—he was no longer the same man, and the air here wasn’t right, and in general nothing here was right, everything was wrong and nonsensical.

  They left broken bushes and a trail of blood behind them, and the roads had been cordoned off long ago, the dogs were straining at their leashes, and Cornet Chachu, with his pistol in his hand, was croaking commands as he ran pigeon-toed across the asphalt, soared over the roadside ditch, and was the first to dive into the forest. They left the idiotic toppled tower and the burned battle guards behind them, together with three dead comrades, already stiff. And here he had two badly wounded, half-dead men with almost no chance of making it—and all for the sake of one tower, one idiotic, pointless, dirty, rusty tower, one of thousands exactly the same . . . I’ll never let anyone do anything so stupid again. No, I’ll say. I’ve already seen that. All that blood, and all for a heap of useless, rusty iron; one young, stupid life for rusty iron; and one old, stupid life for the pitiful hope of living like other people at least for a few days; and one love shot down, not even for iron, and not even for hope. If you simply want to survive, I’ll say, then why do you die, die so cheaply? Massaraksh, I won’t allow them to die, I’ll get them to live, they’ll learn how to live! What a blockhead—how could I do it, how could I let them do it?

  He darted out headlong onto the country road, holding Memo on his shoulder and dragging General along under his arm. Tiny Tot, soaking wet and smelling of sweat and fear, was already running toward him from the boundary marker.

  “Is this everyone?” he asked in horror, and Maxim felt grateful to him for that horror.

  They dragged the wounded men to the motorcycle, squeezed Memo into the sidecar, and sat General on the rear saddle; Tiny Tot lashed General to him with his belt. The forest was still quiet, but Maxim knew that didn’t mean anything.

  “Get going,” he said. “Don’t stop, just break through.”

  “I know,” said Tiny Tot. “What about you?”

  “I’ll try to distract them. Don’t worry, I’ll get away.”

  “Some chance . . .” Tiny Tot said in an anguished voice, and jerked the starter; the motorcycle sputtered to life. “Did you blow up the tower at least?” he shouted.

  “Yes,” Maxim said, and Tiny Tot went racing away.

  Left alone, Maxim stood there without moving for a few seconds, then dashed back into the forest. At the first clearing he came across, he tore off his jacket and flung it into the bushes. Then he ran back to the road and ran along it for a while as fast as he could go in the direction of the town, stopped, unclipped the grenades off his belt, scattered them across the road, and started scrambling through the bushes on the other side, trying to break as many branches as possible. He dropped his handkerchief behind the bushes, and only then ran off through the forest, shifting into the smooth, rhythmical hunting stride in which he would have to cover five or ten miles.

  He ran without thinking about anything, except for making sure that he didn’t deviate too much from a southwesterly direction, and carefully choosing where he set down his feet. He crossed roads twice—the first was a deserted country road, and the second was the Resort Highway, which was also empty, but he heard dogs there for the first time. He couldn’t tell what kind of dogs they were, but to be on the safe side he gave them a very wide berth, and an hour and a half later found himself among the freight sheds of the city’s rail yard.

  Here there were lights shining, steam locomotives mournfully whistling, and people darting about. Here probably nobody knew anything, but he couldn’t run any more—he might be taken for a thief. He switched to a walk, and when a heavy freight train ponderously rumbled by on its way into the city, he leaped up onto the first flatcar carrying a load of sand, lay down, and rode like that all the way to the concrete plant, where he jumped down, dusted off the sand, lightly smeared his hands with heavy fuel oil, and started thinking about what to do next.

  There was no point in making his way to Forester’s place, and that was the only safe house in the vicinity. He could try spending the night in Utki Village, but that was dangerous—that address was known to Cornet Chachu—and apart from that, Maxim was afraid even to think of showing up at old Illy’s house and telling her that her daughter was dead. He had nowhere to go.

  He went into a decrepit little night tavern for workers, ate a few sausages, drank some beer, and dozed for a while, slumped against the wall. Everybody here was as dirty and tired as he was; they were workers who had finished their shift and missed the last streetcar. He dreamed about Rada, and in his dream he thought that Gai was probably in the dragnet right now, and that was good. But Rada loved him and she would take him in, let him change his clothes and get washed; his civilian suit should still be there, the same one that Fank had given him . . . and in the morning he could leave and go east, to where the second safe house he knew was located . . . He woke up, paid his bill, and walked out.

  It was only a short walk and not dangerous. There was nobody on the streets, and the only person he encountered was the janitor right there at the house. He was sitting on his stool in the entrance passage and sleeping. Maxim cautiously walked past him, went up the stairs, and rang the way he always used to ring. At first it was quiet on the other side of the door, then something scraped, he heard steps, and the door slightly opened. He saw Rada.

  The only reason she didn’t cry out was that she choked and squeezed her mouth shut with her hand. Maxim took her in his arms and kissed her on the forehead; he felt as if he had come back home, to a place where they had long ago stopped expecting him. He closed the door behind him, they quietly walked through into the room, and Rada suddenly started crying. Everything in the room was still the same as before, except that his camp cot was gone, and Gai was sitting up on the sofa bed in his nightshirt, gaping wide-eyed at Maxim with an expression of wild amazement. Several seconds went by like that, with Maxim and Gai looking at each other, and Rada crying.

  “Massaraksh,” Gai eventually said in a helpless voice. “You’re alive? You’re not dead?”

  “Hello, old buddy,” said Maxim. “It’s a pity you’re home. I didn’t want to land you in trouble. If you tell me to, I’ll leave straightaway.”

  At that Rada took a tight grip on his arm. “You’re not going anywhere!” she said in a throttled voice. “Not for anything! You’re not going . . . Just let him try . . . Then I’ll go too . . . I won’t care . . .”

  Gai flung off his blanket, lowered his feet down off the sofa-bed, and walked up to Maxim. He touched Maxim on the shoulders and the arms, getting engine oil smeared on his hands, then rubbed his forehead and smeared that too. “I don’t understand a thing,” he said in a plaintive voice. “You’re alive . . . Where have you come from? Rada, stop bawling . . . You’re not wo
unded? You look terrible . . . And there’s blood here . . .”

  “It’s not mine,” said Maxim.

  “I don’t understand a thing,” Gai repeated. “Listen, you’re alive! Rada, heat up some water. Wake up that old fogy, tell him to give us some vodka—”

  “Quiet,” said Maxim. “Don’t make a noise, they’re hunting me!”

  “Who? What for? What nonsense . . . Rada, let him get changed! . . . Mak, sit down, sit down . . . or maybe you want to lie down? How did this happen? Why are you still alive?”

  Maxim cautiously sat down on the edge of the bed, put his hands on his knees to avoid smearing oil on anything, and looked at these two people. Looking at them for the last time as his friends, and even feeling a strange kind of curiosity about what would happen next, he said, “I’m a state criminal now, folks. I’ve just blown up a tower.”

  He wasn’t surprised that they immediately understood him and instantly realized what kind of tower he meant, without having to ask. Rada only clenched her hands together, without taking her eyes off him. Gai grunted and scratched his head with both hands in the ancestral family gesture, looked away, and said in an irked voice, “You blockhead. So you decided to take revenge . . . Take revenge on whom? Ah, you, you’re the same crazy weirdo you always were. A little kid . . . OK, you didn’t say anything, and we didn’t hear anything . . . I don’t want to hear anything. Rada, go and heat up some water. And don’t make any noise in there, don’t wake people up . . . Take your clothes off,” he told Maxim in a severe voice. “You’re as filthy as hell, where on earth did you get to?”