The Hunter From the Woods Page 2

  As the saying goes: A stranger’s soul is like a dark forest.

  And Devora is very certain the strange boy carries within him an unknown wilderness. But it is not one that any other woman in this circus will share, and for sure it will not be the simpering and smiling and oh-so-pretty Zolli.

  The trailer’s door is open. Wide open. There is only blackness within.

  Devora goes up the steps and then inside. She speaks softly, calling for her husband. She hears breathing in the dark. It is a harsh rushing of breath. She smells the caged wolf on her skin. She spends a few seconds fumbling for matches and the candle on the table near the door, as she continues to call for her husband. He should be right there, the bed is right in front of her. The match flares and the candle’s wick is lighted and she holds the flame out and then she sees the blood.

  Well, she thinks, justice has been delivered. Perhaps too harshly, but still…

  And she smiles a little, not thinking yet of what she’s going to say to her husband to explain where she’s been, except out walking in the moonlight as she sometimes tells him when he is contrite and weeps like a little child after he awakens.

  Then by the candlelight she sees the red mass on the floor at her feet and in it is something that might be a beefy arm torn from its socket, and there a leg with a massive thigh clawed to the crimson muscle and white bone.

  On the floor are blood-spattered clothes. She has seen those clothes tonight. She has removed those clothes tonight.

  She calls in a weak and trembling whisper for Octavius Zloy, her husband and her protector, the tyrant of her heart.

  The candlelight finds a head upon the bloody planks. It has a slab of a chin and small eyes and bears an expression of open-mouthed wonder and horror. On the end of an arm that has an elbow but no shoulder is a clenched fist, the scarred knuckles already turning blue.

  Devora is about to scream when something shifts just beyond the range of the light.

  He speaks from the dark. What he says she can’t understand, because it sounds like a growl. It sounds like an animal’s rage put to nearly-human voice. Then he speaks again and this time his voice is almost his own.

  “You’re free,” he says.

  And he repeats it: “You’re free.”

  Devora shakes her head and spittle drools from her mouth. Because she doesn’t want to be free. She doesn’t know how to be free. She knows only that he beats her because he loves loves loves her so very much. He wants her to be the perfect wife for a great man like himself. And the film that is to be based on his life…she was to star in it also, and they would be stars together on the cinema screen, and both of them so uncommon the dolts and whores in her village couldn’t stand to look upon the savage sun of their faces. He had promised about the film. Just as soon as he raised enough money.

  Then all life would be pleasure, and so many people would be jealous. But now…now…

  A hand moves into the light, reaching for her. It is not quite human, and seems alive with moving, shifting bands of hair.

  “I love you,” the boy whispers.

  A word comes from Devora’s bruised lips.

  That word is Murder.

  She speaks it again, louder: Murder.

  And now her eyes widen into terrified circles and she lets the scream go that will awaken the entire village of the circus and have the first of them here within seconds: Murder.

  A figure leaps from the darkness. It is strangely-shaped, glimpsed from a nightmare. As Devora staggers backward, the figure throws itself into the bolted window shutter and crashes through. Devora screams Murder again but now she is alone in the trailer with the torn meat, broken bones and smeared guts of a wrestler.

  They take her away to a place to sleep, but she cannot sleep and they cannot get the extinguished candle out of her hand. She lies in the bed with her eyes open and stares at the ceiling, and she doesn’t respond when Lady Tatiana and her daughter Zolli, both of them so kind to everyone, come to sit at her bedside. It is soon clear to all that Devora has embarked on a journey that has no destination.

  The hunt for a murderer goes out across the countryside, but the boy has vanished. How the boy did what he did, to a formidable man like Octavius Zloy, is a mystery with no solution. Why did the boy take off his clothes? And another very odd thing: why did the boy leave a puddle of piss on the trailer’s floor? It would be talked about in the village of the circus, and under the glowing bulbs of the Great White Way, for the rest of this dwindling season and surely into the next, as well.

  But, as with everything, life—and the show—must go on.

  Over several bottles of vodka and with men sitting around a table in the last twilight of August, old white-bearded Gromelko sums it up best.

  Beware the quiet ones, he says. Beware the ones who would rather live with animals than in the company of humans.

  For as the saying goes: Make a friend of the wolf, but better keep your axe ready.

  The Man From London

  The man from London, who today had journeyed by horse-drawn sleigh from a small Russian town called Pruzhany, wore dark glasses. Without them, the glare of the afternoon sun on the great wide landscape of snow was blinding. The man from London was careful with his eyes. Covered up with coarse blankets, he sat in the back of the sleigh while his driver cracked the whip on the struggling horses. He wore a brown mink cap with ear flaps. The man from London today went by the name of William Bartlett. Yesterday, in Minsk, his name had been Keith Suddings, and it was while wearing that name that he’d shot his target through the right temple in room 53 of the Hotel Fortitude.

  Last night the train had brought him to Pruzhany, and today the sleigh would take him to another place. He was a relaxed man. He was a cool, collected and calm Englisher. But there were times today he had looked back over his shoulder across the sea of snow, his pale blue eyes slightly worried behind the dark lenses. He knew there were always trains running from Minsk to Pruzhany, and if he had not undertaken to visit this drear little hamlet he was approaching he would already be in Warsaw by now, having a cup of what the Poles called tea and sending a coded telegram through the proper channels. But he was the chosen boy for this job, so that was that. And anyway, all the loose ends were tied up. Weren’t they? He tapped the fingers of a gloved hand on the knee of his gray corduroy trousers. He was wearing several layers of clothing beneath a fleece-lined overcoat, because even the bright sun in a Russian winter felt frigid. Or maybe, he considered, it was just him.

  Revenge, of course, was a dish best eaten cold. He hadn’t really known the man he’d executed in room 53 of the Hotel Fortitude, but he was the boy chosen for the job, chosen to carry out the revenge that some unknown other man desired, and now the desire for revenge would probably flip to the other side, and that was that.

  The man from London was a thirty-six-year-old boy, Oxford-educated and wise to the ways of the dirty little world in which he found himself on this sunny Russian afternoon. It was the eleventh of February, 1928. In Germany the pain of the Great Depression was cracking the old order of things, and an ambitious man named Hitler had imposed himself as leader of a secret society with the trappings of medieval militarism.

  In Russia the equally ambitious Stalin had just inaugurated his first Five-Year-Plan to advance industry while underhandedly manipulating the peasants and the military. In Britain, cannabis had just become a controlled substance.

  But the British lions were awake. In fact, they never slept. In the backrooms under the small intense lights directed to the tables of maps and radio signal transcripts, the hale and hearty fellows from such stellar universities as Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham made their deductions and decisions, and perhaps over time they would lose their hale and hearty demeanors and become more solitary and sallow, but that was the job.

  Someone had to do it.

  The man from London looked back once more over his shoulder, at all the snow and sky behind him. He was tryin
g to summon up a Russian proverb. What was it? Oh, yes.

  The past is a different country.

  “How far now?” he asked the driver, in his meticulous and careful use of the Russian tongue. His answer was a shrug; you couldn’t rush these oxen-like people.

  It was very interesting, the man from London thought, how the merry sound of sleighbells could over time drive a man nearly mad.

  But at last the driver said, “We are here,” around his cigarette, though the cluster of wooden houses were still a thousand meters away across the flat white plain. As the sleigh closed the distance with its horrendously-jingling bells, the man from London could see stone ruins atop a small hill overlooking the village.

  That was the point of his interest.

  A few people emerged from their houses to watch the sleigh approach. They were bundled up in the tattered and patched coats of poverty. They stood like scarecrows in the wind. One of them, a small child, lifted a hand in greeting and the man from London cheerfully waved back because he knew it was important to make a good first impression.

  Then he shifted a little in his seat, because the compact one-shot assassin’s pistol under his coat and three sweaters was pressing into his side.

  A large bull of a man emerged from one of the houses and approached the sleigh as if he owned this particular piece of snow-covered earth, which he probably did.

  The sleigh’s driver recognized authority and put his muscles into the reins; the two horses stopped walking and blew gouts of steam. The bull-man, wearing brown britches and a heavy red sweater, came forward like a force of nature and was flanked by two other men who matched his stride but not his size. The bull-man had a bald head, a thick gray mustache and beard, huge gray eyebrows and gold rings in both ears. His boots crunched through the snow until he reached the sleigh’s side.

  “Hello,” said the man from London in the native language, his cheerful smile wide and his square white teeth ablaze with good intentions.

  “Who the fuck are you and what are you wanting here?” came back like a cannon’s blast.

  Obviously the village chief, thought the man from London. Which was saying that maybe this gentleman owned more cattle or pigs than the others, or maybe he had the biggest gun or the biggest dick.

  “My name is William Bartlett. I’m—”

  “English?” It was spoken with incredulity. Other people were pressing forward now. The houses were emptying their peasant owners. The Russian-spoken English went around like a hushed echo.

  “Yes, I am,” said the man from London. “May I step out?” He decided to add, “I’ve come a very long way.”

  The chief only glared. A small wizened woman who had eased up beside the bull-man gave him an elbow shot to the ribs. “Step out,” came the reply, with a small wince of pain.

  “Ah, thank you.” The man from London put his boots into the snow and hauled himself free from the treacherous seat and smelly blankets. He stood six feet three inches tall and towered over the Russian heads. He was lean and broad-shouldered and gave the sensation of coiled power, for in his youth he’d been a champion boxer and such hard training and arduous experience never fully faded. Further evidence was his many-times broken and craggy nose, but he’d always given worse than he got. “May we go into your house, sir?” he politely asked the chief.

  “I asked what you wanted here.”

  “Yes, so you did.” The man from London removed his sunglasses to reveal the blue eyes that were as pale and sharp and cutting, if need be, as Imperial daggers. He paused to let them scratch the bull-man’s surface. “But I didn’t answer, did I?”

  The moment hung between jeopardy and violence.

  But the man from London knew the Russian mind. Perhaps bull-like, yes, but also holding the curiosity of a child. And very respectful of courage, that was certainly true.

  The chief’s mouth seemed to tilt to one side. His eyes narrowed.

  “Come on, Bartlett,” he said, speaking the name as if he’d spat it, and he led the path to his house a short distance away.

  A fire was crackling. The window shutters kept out much of the cold. The furniture was table, chairs, and foot-stool in the front room. Before the man from London had removed his coat, he had a brown mug of tea in his hand from the wizened old woman. He drank it down steaming hot to warm his innards, then he took off his coat and hat and let them see the silvery-blonde hair and chiselled profile of an Englishman with Viking blood in his veins. His jaw was square, his forehead high enough to house a brain full of facts these people could never comprehend, and across his cheeks and the crooked bridge of his battered nose lay a scatter of freckles that made him appear perpetually boyish and drove women absolutely nutsy.

  “Fine tea,” he commented, though it was not so much tea as it was tree bark.

  “You’re a fine shit thrower,” said the chief, who sat down in the best chair and hooked the foot-stool toward him with a haughty boot.

  “I am that,” agreed the man from London, with a placid smile. “But you have to know why I’m here. You’re not stupid, are you?”

  “Not stupid.”

  “All right, then. I understand he lives in the ruins.”

  “The church,” said the chief. “It is our village church.”

  “The ruins of a church,” the man from London corrected. “He lives there, yes?”

  “Maybe.”

  “He lives there. Yes,” said the man from London, with a firm nod. He thought of sitting down, but the other chairs looked none-too-steady and to fall on his bum before the chief and the watchful old woman would do nothing for the balance of power in this room.

  The chief stared up at him with something near pleading in his small black eyes.

  “What do you want with him? Huh? What does an Englishman want with him, to come so far?”

  “I want to speak with him. I understand he speaks English.”

  The chief peered steadily into the fire.

  “I know he’s wanted for murder. I know it’s just a matter of time before they find him.”

  “They won’t find him. We hide him.”

  “Not very well,” said the man from London. And added: “Obviously.”

  “Don’t make airs with big words,” the chief warned, his face clouding over. “That last Englishman who came…he made airs with big words, too. Him with his camera and all his little geegaws. Oh.” The chief’s mouth hung open for a few seconds, and then it slowly closed. He smiled thinly. “I see. That Englishman…the newspaper writer…he told someone, is that it?”

  “He told the man who told the man who sent me. So…you’re correct.”

  “And us trying to help a poor English newspaper writer fix his broken-down wagon,” the chief said, with a fearsome scowl that turned into a sad half-smile. “We said we’d do the work for a few coins and he could stay the night. Then he saw something, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he did.” That had been back in October. The English journalist was in actuality a member of the British secret service on a piddling errand involving the movement across the Polish border of a few document photographs. Minor, busy-work stuff…but then the tale he’d brought back from this village on the raw and windswept frontier…much more interesting than armored-car blueprints. Therefore, while the man from London was in Minsk killing a Russian double-agent he did not know, and was so close to this little village, it might be worth the extra small trip.

  The bald-headed bull-man said nothing for awhile. Then, spoken quietly: “He catches food for us. He feeds the whole village. He’s a very good young man. But…troubled.”

  “Yes, being wanted for murder is troublesome.” The field agent had brought back that information as well, gleaned from a young girl in the village who had heard it from the murderer himself. Such girls gave up quite a lot of information for a pair of silk stockings or a box of chocolates.

  “Not just that. Troubled. Here.” A hand pressed against a Russian heart. “Deep.”

  “
Hm,” said the man from London: an emotionless comment. “The story I’ve heard is a little bit difficult to believe, you know.”

  “Believe or not.” This was delivered with a shrug. “What does it matter to you, anyway? I’m telling you he catches food for us, even in the snow. The rabbits have no thought of getting away. He brings down caribou…the wild boar…the stag…everything that moves in that forest over the hill. So believe or not, what does it matter to you?”

  “It matters. Or, that is to say, it might matter. I’d like to speak with him.”

  “He doesn’t accept visitors.”

  “I’d like to find that out for myself.”

  The chief abruptly stood up and advanced on the man from London, who held his ground as if rooted to the boards. A bulbous nose pressed up close to an Adam’s apple. “This is my village. You don’t come in here and tell me, I tell you. Now… I don’t know what he is, and I have never seen what some people think he is…but I am telling you, Mr. Englishman, that he belongs to us and he will not be leaving here with the likes of you.”

  “And I can’t leave here without speaking to him.” The voice was calm, collected, cool. But the icy blue daggers were very sharp. “I won’t leave without speaking to him.” He offered a boyish smile, his specialty. “Let’s don’t be unpleasant, when it’s so terribly unnecessary. All right?”

  “Show him,” croaked the wizened old woman. “He talks a storm of manure.”

  “Well put, madam. I think this whole tale is a storm of manure.” He daggered into the bull-man’s eyes. “Show me.”

  On the way through the village toward the ruins on the hill, a group of people got around them and followed. It was evident where the Englishman was headed. Suddenly a girl of about sixteen with warm brown eyes and curly golden hair beneath her woolen cap plucked at the man from London’s coat sleeve.

  “Tell him Nena forgives him,” she implored. “He won’t speak to me anymore, but won’t you tell him?”