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Close the door after me … I’m going
.”
Everyone at school would have known the song. It was by a rock singer
called Viktor Tsoi and it had been the rage throughout the summer.
Perhaps Leo didn’t even want to live – not without his family, not
without the village. He got to the end of the line and he died. And the
truth is that, apart from the silence, there wasn’t a great deal of
difference between Leo alive and Leo dead. He simply stopped. I closed
his eyes. I drew the covers over his face. And then I began to cry. Is it
shocking that I felt Leo’s death even more than that of my own parents?
Maybe it was because they had been snatched from me so suddenly.
I hadn’t even been given a chance to react. But it had taken Leo the
whole of that long night to die and I was sitting with him even now,
remembering everything he had been to me. I had been close to my
parents but much closer to Leo. And he was so young … the same age as
me.
In a way, I think I am writing this for Leo.
I have decided to keep a record of my life because I suspect my life
will be short. I do not particularly want to be remembered. Being
unknown has been essential to my work. But I sometimes think of him
and I would like him to understand what it was that made me what I
am. After all, living as a boy of fourteen in a Russian village, it had
never been my intention to become a contract killer.
Leo’s death may have been one step on my journey. It was not a major
step. It did not change me. That happened much later.
I set fire to the hut with Leo still inside it. I remembered the
helicopters and knew that the flames might attract their attention, but it
was the only way I could think of to prevent the disease spreading. And
if the soldiers were drawn here, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing. They
had their gas masks and protective suits. They would know how to
decontaminate the area.
But that didn’t mean I was going to hang around waiting for them to
come. With the smoke billowing behind me, carrying Leo out of this
world, I hurried away, along the road to Kirsk.
КИРСК
KIRSK
I entered Kirsk on legs that were tired and feet that were sore and
remembered that the last time I had been there, it had been on a school
trip to the museum.
Lenin had once visited Kirsk. The great Soviet leader had stopped
briefly in the town on his way to somewhere more important because
there was a problem with his train. He made a short speech on the
station platform, then went to the local café for a cup of tea and,
happening to glance in the mirror, decided that his beard and moustache
needed a trim. Not surprisingly, the local barber almost had a heart
attack when the most powerful man in the Soviet Union walked into his
shop. The cup that he drank from and the clippings of black hair were
still on display in the History and Folklore Museum of Kirsk.
It was a large, reddish-brown building with rooms that were filled with
objects and after only an hour my head had already been pounding.
From the outside, it looked like a railway station. Curiously, Kirsk
railway station looked quite like a museum, with wide stairs, pillars and
huge bronze doors that should have opened onto something more
important than ticket offices, platforms and waiting rooms. I had seen it
on that last trip but I couldn’t remember where it was. When you’ve
been taken to a place in a coach and marched around shoulder to
shoulder in a long line with no talking allowed, you don’t really look
where you’re going. That hadn’t been my only visit. My father had taken
me to the cinema here once. And then there had been my visit to the
hospital. But all these places could have been on different planets. I had
no idea where they were in relation to one another.
After Estrov, the place felt enormous. I had forgotten how many
buildings there were, how many shops, how many cars and buses racing
up and down the wide, cobbled streets. Everywhere seemed to have
electricity. There were wires zigzagging from pole to pole, crossing each
other like a disastrous cat’s cradle. But I’m not suggesting that Kirsk was
anything special. I’d spent my whole life in a tiny village so I was easily
impressed. I didn’t notice the crumbling plaster on the buildings, the
empty construction sites, the pits in the road and the dirty water running
through the gutters.
It was late afternoon when I arrived and the light was already fading.
My mother had said there were two trains a day to Moscow and I hoped
I was in time to catch the evening one. I had never spent a night in a
hotel before and even though I had money in my pocket, the idea of
finding one and booking a room filled me with fear. How much would I
have to pay? Would they even give a room to a boy on his own? I had
been walking non-stop, leaving the forest behind me just after midday. I
was starving hungry. Since I had left the shed, all I’d had to eat were the
lingonberries I’d collected. I still had a handful of them in my pocket but
I couldn’t eat any more because they were giving me stomach cramps.
My feet were aching and soaking wet. I was wearing my leather boots,
which had suddenly decided to leak. I felt filthy and wondered if they
would let me onto the train. And what if they didn’t? I had only one plan
– to get to Moscow – and even that seemed daunting. I had seen pictures
of the city at school, of course, but I had no real idea what it would be
like.
Finding the station wasn’t so difficult in the end. Somehow I stumbled
across the centre of the town … I suppose every road led there if you
walked enough. It was a spacious area with an empty fountain and a
Second World War monument, a slab of granite shaped like a slice of
cake with the inscription: WE SALUTE THE GLORIOUS DEAD OF KIRSK.
I had always been brought up to respect all those who had lost their
lives in the war, but I know now that there is nothing glorious about
being dead. The monument was surrounded by statues of generals and
soldiers, many of them on horseback. Was that how they had set off to
face the German tanks?
The station was right in front of me, at the end of a wide, very straight
boulevard with trees on both sides. I recognized it at once. It was
surrounded by stalls selling everything from suitcases, blankets and
cushions to all sorts of food and drink. I could smell
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