Red Holocaust

Her eyes narrowed and she slapped him brutally across the face, nearly knocking him unconscious. He could taste his own blood from a cut lip.

''Please,'' she mocked. 'I use you. That's all, you little shit. Honor, for him, isn't it, brothers?' Her appeal brought a chorus of agreement from the men. 'If there's time after Uchitel's done with you, grandfather, I might come again and use you some more.'

When the leader returned to the hut, the others crept out like beaten curs. Ivan Ivanovich looked up from eyes made puffy with weeping, seeing the great fire from the ruby on Uchitel's silver headband seeming to fill the room. Now that the others were gone, the fear was greater.

'Is there silver in this dung heap, old man?' His voice was courteous, not rough like the rest of the raiders'. 'I see you've been hurt.' He touched the cuts across Ivan's chest and thighs where the blood had dried. 'Tell me about any gold or silver. Or guns. Or more food. Tell me, old man. Come, sing me a song that will make me smile, and you can go free and live.'

Ivan's mouth opened and a single word crept out. 'Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.'

'I am not a common bandit. I have the art of reading and writing, old man. I have books. Books from before the great winter. I have books that show where the towns stood, with pictures of the clothes that men and women wore. Do you hear me? Open your eyes.'

The voice snapped at Ivan Ivanovich. It touched the dark places of his mind with a shudder.

Past and present ebbed and flowed.

It was a dream and soon he'd wake. He'd be warm against the rutting body of the little Yevgenia. Despite the cleft palate and the skin ailment that made her face like the scaly back of a fish, she could come closest to stirring him. The memory of the pain was only a shade of the blackness. He'd wake and it would all be done. Even the man Uchitel who...

'Wake up and look at me. Use your eyes.' To Ivan, the words were senseless, as was the laugh that followed them. 'I tell you I have books and I can read them. Even a book that tells me how to speak with the Americans across the ice river east of here. Think of that. But I talk and you listen. Now you must talk and Uchitel will listen.'

'What?'

'The gold and the silver you have hidden. A book of old times, far before the long winter, tells that peasants — filth like you — hoard riches. You pretend to be poor. But you are not. What of that?'

Ivan Ivanovich was delirious, hardly knowing how he forced out a reply. Everything was blurred and shimmering, like objects seen through the glowing beat above a stove.

'Nothing.'

'No?'

'Nyet,nyet, nyet.'

Uchitel smiled then and stood up. 'You will meet Pechal.'

'Sorrow?'

'Yes, sorrow. He is well named, grandfather. He takes his only pleasure from torture. You will speak with him.'

'But I swear, I know nothing, sir. Please, my lord. Nothing. By Saint Gregory I swear it.'

'Swear by all the saints you want. Only the truth about your secret stores will spare your life.'

Uchitel didn't truly believe that such a stinking hamlet as Ozhbarchik could possibly have anything worth hiding. But his men liked to dream. Sometimes they had actually discovered little caches of arms or a few antique coins of worthless copper.

The voice at Ivan's elbow was gentle, like the voice of a clerk politely requesting information. 'Shall I ask him for his secrets, Uchitel?'

'Yes, Pechal. I'll wait and watch.'

Pechal's appearance fitted his voice. He wore gray furs, with matching gauntlets and hood. Most of the band were bearded; he was as clean shaven as Uchitel himself. Pechal, the Sorrow, had pale soft cheeks and a rosebud of a mouth that was permanently pursed in disapproval of the world and its evil. He resembled a priest who had spent all his life in a closed seminary, speaking only of good works and following the pathways of the Lord.

Ivan stared up at him, seeing all of this. Pechal leaned over him, and the old man saw the eyes.

They were like chips of wind-washed agate frozen in the eternal ice of the farthest north.

'Tell me now and all will be well.'

'Nyet. There is nothing. Please. On my wife's grave, I swear, nothing.'

It began.

Gradually Ivan Ivanovich disappeared within the pain of the probing and cutting and rending of his body.

Pechal crooned to him constantly, like a father keeping a baby amused while he bathed it in warm water. At first Ivan's pain had been a light, fluttering thing, like touching a hot iron momentarily or feeling the prick of a needle that hurt a moment, then ceased.

'Tell Pechal of your hoard, grandfather. This is nothing to you. Ah, that made you start, didn't it?'

With a slow delicacy, Pechal forced the point of a knife down beneath a toenail, down to the quick, slowly thrusting and scraping until it seemed to Ivan Ivanovich that the marrow of his bones was being rubbed raw.

'You have your hearing, your sight, your voice. Even this.' He touched Ivan's limp penis with the cold edge of a dagger. 'You can keep them all, old man. Tell Pechal everything and live.'

Nothing.

Pechal lit a tallow candle with a match. Then Ivan felt scorching heat on the inside of his elbows, then behind his knees in the soft crinkled flesh. Ivan smelled his own flesh burning. His body tensing upward, he pulled at the cords so hard that they cut into his bloodied, swollen skin.

From outside came the smell of roasting meat and loud, bellowing laughter. Pechal stopped for a moment and stood, stretching his arms. 'It is tiring, this asking of questions, is it not?' he asked the old man, 'Spare us both and answer me.'

Uchitel was drinking from an earthenware mug of ryabinovka, a fiery vodka flavored with ashberries. Muttering something to Pechal, he rose and walked out, leaving the door open so that light from the fires outside the hut capered across the walls.

'I believe you, grandfather,' whispered the torturer. 'But if I relent, then Uchitel will flay the skin from my living body. I have seen him do it.'

Ivan Ivanovich slipped painfully into madness. The agony deepened until he lost touch with it. Pechal pressed hard against Ivan's eyes with the balls of his thumbs, making the old man scream.

'Your eyes pain you. I can stop them hurting. Here.'

From a shelf on the far side of the stove, he took a carved box of black powder that Ivanovich used for his ancient musket. Holding the lids open, he piled a neat little heap on each eye. The powder felt gritty, like having specks of sand in his eyes.

'Now?'

'Mercy,' sobbed Ivan Ivanovich. He might as well have begged the north wind or the layers of ice that were forming over the corpses of his friends.

He heard, actually heardthe sizzle of his own eyes burning when the guerrilla touched the candle flame to the black powder. His nostrils were filled with the stench.

When Pechal burst his eardrums, Ivan felt only the stabbing pain. The lack of sound was somehow a relief, as though it was the start of a complete sensory withdrawal from the pain. Cutting the tendons in his jaw, burning his nipples, slicing his genitals from his body, leaving only the weeping, raw wound — none of that registered with the poor creature that had been Ivan Ivanovich. Day and night, hot and cold were gone. After that, it was over.

He still breathed. His heart still pounded desperately. But his mind was dead. His head rocked from side to side and a toneless, faint whimpering sound was all that came from his peeled lips. Uchitel returned and stood alongside Pechal, looking down emotionlessly at the old man's naked, ravaged body. His cold yellow eyes registered the blood, the raised blisters, the scorched eye sockets, the dreadful mute evidence of the castration.

'You have taken him too far, too fast, Pechal,' he said, quietly. 'Now he will tell us nothing.'

'Da, I fear that's true.'