‘I’m not a man of spirit, is that it?’
Swaying slightly, Victor patted Boris on the shoulder. ‘You’ve got lots of other very fine qualities, old chap.’
‘I’ll show you who’s a man of spirit,’ said Boris, who had flushed deeply. ‘Can any of you lend me a revolver?’
‘Don’t go, Boris,’ said Alexander; ‘don’t be a fool.’
‘Kindly be quiet, young man, this is no affair of yours. -Yes, Boris, I can and gladly will supply your requirement. We’ll be down directly.’
As soon as they were alone, Alexander said with real urgency, ‘Change your mind. You can still get out of it. Who cares what they think, those idiots?’
‘I do. I can’t get out of it without tremendous loss of face.’
‘Better lose face than… All right, but now listen. The only reason that lot are still alive is that they all break the rules. Listen, Boris. You’re supposed not to move after you’ve called out. But you must. Move like hell. Run, call out and keep going. Or dodge into cover. Have you got that? If you stand still you’ll die.’
‘Don’t worry, Alexander, I can take care of myself.’
‘I’m not sure you can, not in a thing like this.’
‘Whereas I’m absolutely invulnerable when it comes to wielding a pen. Thank you very much.’
‘Oh, merciful Heaven, I wasn’t-’
‘I’m only joking. Keep on the move, I got that. Now don’t worry. Honestly, I promise you I’ll be quite all right.’
‘See you stick to that.’
When his four brother-officers had gone off together, Alexander stood listening till they were out of earshot. Then he strolled to the bar, poured himself a vodka and downed it in one (he had not drunk as much as he had affected to at Wright’s), poured another, took a cigarette from the imitation-sandalwood box on the counter and lit it from the large metamatch that also stood there. After marking up the chit he had signed a little earlier he settled down to wait in a chair by the window. The lights on the ante-room dial showed twenty-two minutes past midnight; not really late at all, and he felt wide awake now, just incredibly tired. He reached across for the newspaper Boris had laid aside.
All at once terrible screams began to be heard, coming from a point some hundreds of metres away but evidently so loud at their source that none of their overtones was impaired by the distance. No identification was possible; indeed, no one could have told by the sound alone whether they came from a man or a woman or even a large animal. They had a grinding, perhaps a tearing quality, as if the throat that uttered them would soon have destroyed itself.
Within five seconds Alexander was out of the ante-room door and running at top speed down a grassy slope in the eventual direction of the lodge. The screams continued unabated but other voices were being raised too, murmurs and shouts of inquiry, puzzlement, horror. The sky was clear and there was a quarter moon, and this was quickly supplemented by lights being turned on in buildings and by the beams of torches. Figures in ones and twos were converging on what, as Alexander drew nearer, he saw to be one of the pillared structures of which there were several in the park and in another of which, weeks ago now, Theodore and he had sat and plotted. He caught a glimpse of a shallow flight of stone steps and a grey-uniformed man lying on them, but by the time he was ten metres off his view was blocked by dozens of excited soldiers, many of them half-naked in the heat. Somebody was shouting and shoving at them from the far side, trying to keep them off: Victor. Beyond him the man on the steps, still screaming, was being lifted into a carrying position by two others. The nearer of these looked up and saw Alexander as soon as he broke through the chattering circle.
‘It’s Leo,’ said Boris. He had to speak at the top of his voice. ‘But Boris, I was sure it was you,’ said Alexander, though no one could have heard him. Someone who had might have thought he sounded disappointed.
‘Get back there, you pigs.’ Victor was striking out with his fists. He appeared perfectly sober. ‘Sergeant, move these men along. Let’s have a little discipline. – Alexander,’ he called, catching sight of him, ‘fetch Major Yakir.’
Major Yakir, as it proved, was already on his way, in shirt, undress trousers and slippers, hatless, hurrying down the slope on his short legs.
‘Well?’
‘Leo’s been shot, sir.’
‘Shot? By whom?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘How bad is it?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
Officers and NCOs had begun to drive the protesting troopers back to their quarters. Leo’s screams came now from the small one-storeyed building next to the place where he had been struck, a store-house full of tents, flags and festive decorations. He lay writhing about on a roll of bunting, not perhaps much better off than where he had been before. A blanket, already soaked with blood, had been thrown over him and a grimy pillow put under his head. He seemed altogether unaware of the others’ presence and indeed of anything in his surroundings. Regularly, he drew in his breath with a lugubrious moaning noise and let it out again at what must have been the loudest pitch of which he was capable. Now and then he put his hands over his mouth and muffled his cries somewhat, but each time after a few seconds moved them down again and pressed them against his middle; the lower part of his face was smeared with blood he had brought there from his wound. During one of these intervals Major Yakir drew back the blanket. From a point just below the breast-bone to the lower part of the belly the front of the light-grey uniform was soaked with blood – with other fluids too, Alexander was to say when he told the story. Blood was still flowing – Alexander could see it flowing – out of a hole in the material. The major restored the blanket, moved to a point where Leo could not have seen him without altering his whole position, and beckoned and then held out his hand to Victor; without delay Victor put his revolver in it. After the briefest of glances the major held the revolver a few centimetres from the top of Leo’s head and fired. There were two sounds, one a kind of percussive sigh, the other that of the smashing of bone, and Leo just stopped.
Major Yakir’s rather fine dark-brown eyes were usually most expressive, but at the moment they offered no clue to what he was feeling or thinking. He gave Victor his revolver back; he pulled the blanket up over Leo’s face. Then he went to the intercom that stood on a packing-case in the corner and made three short calls. Finally he gave the other three a look that was also an order and led the way out of the room. He had said nothing to them, nor they anything to him, since entering it.
There was no great flood of talk back in the ante-room either. It was soon clear that the major would not be the one to start. Boris looked too stunned to speak, Dmitri (curly-haired, smooth-cheeked) too frightened. Victor’s head was bowed so that his face could not be seen. Alexander said in a shaky voice,
‘Those screams. Think of the pain he must have been suffering.’
‘He was in pain all right,’ said the major, his voice and manner perfectly prosaic, ‘but that wasn’t why he was screaming. If it had just been the pain he’d have been moaning, not screaming. No, he knew exactly what had hit him and where and what that would mean. He was screaming with fear.’
‘But that’s no better.’
‘No,’ agreed the major, and added curtly, ‘come on, one of you.’
Still not looking up, Victor said, ‘Leo suggested it – the others will confirm that. He always did.’
‘Always?’
‘Yes, sir. We’ve played this… we’ve done this I suppose twenty times.’
‘This being…?’
‘We take it in turns to call out and be shot at by the others. They fire at the voice. Leo invented it.’
The major laughed through his nose. ‘It’s a hundred and fifty years old at least, in our army anyway. Have any of you any idea whose bullet hit him?’
No one had. Alexander, who had been included in the question, said with great meekness,
‘It couldn’t have been mine, sir, because I took no part. I was in here. The others will-’
‘Why didn’t you inform me of what was going on, tonight or on a previous occasion?’
‘I was on my honour to say nothing.’
‘Military necessity take precedence over private arrangement, as you know. However. Your powers of recall
