The Road of Bones Read online

  Then you would have to work for three whole days without wages to pay for a new hod. ‘Unfair! It wasn’t me who broke it. It was rotten to the core. Why should I pay for it?’

  The buckets in which the mortar was raised were in no better state. But still it seemed a rule that in the Land of Freedom all equipment was perfect. Breakages or collapses must be due either to carelessness or to deliberate sabotage. So I soon learned to hold my tongue and, at the end of the day, lay any good hod or bucket I’d come across on the side furthest from the stove. Next morning, when we stumbled in, the softest boys would rush for a place near the stove’s open doors, and make great play of sorting through whatever lay on the floor around them while they soaked up warmth. I trained myself to be sterner, and spent the time rooting for whichever hod and bucket I’d taken care to hide the night before under some frozen rags in some dark corner.

  In any case, what could a few minutes within sight of two or three short lengths of burning wood do to set up a body that faced whole hours in the biting wind? Some days it was too cold for even the brickies to work. The mortar we raised up to them on the frayed ropes froze in the buckets before they could reach over the sections of wall they were building to haul it in. On days like these we might be sent scouring for wood. We’d wander off down unpaved tracks into the straggling fringe of forest still waiting to be cleared, and think ourselves in heaven because we were gathering sticks like feeble old men.

  The spring drew on so slowly. Then summer came at last. At noon they fed us well. Sometimes the soup even had a few stringy threads of meat in it, and I grew taller.

  ‘See, Yuri? Hard work suits you,’ my mother teased, though she was as disappointed as me that, before I was even thirteen years old, my life had drifted into this long hard street that had no end. Sometimes she’d reach across the table and turn my hands over, weeping on the scars and callouses. ‘And you still a boy!’ was all she dared murmur, even to me. But I could see the words behind her eyes. Shame! Waste! Disgrace!

  Then came the day of the accident. As usual I had forced my way to the front of the rush to the storeroom, snatched up my halfway reasonable hod, and set off to the stacks of bricks beside the wall. The brickies didn’t thank you for bringing them the chipped and broken ones, so even here there was another jostling for the best.

  At last I set off with my load: sixteen bricks firmly settled on my shoulder, packed in the hod four by four. The workman I was fetching for that day was called Big Karl. He came from the east, and hardly ever spoke. If you were ahead with the stacking, he might nod as if to say, ‘Well done.’ If you fell behind, you’d find him waiting, fists on hips, scowling. The look on his face alone would be enough to make you tip your bricks out in a rush and scurry down the ladders for more without taking even a moment to catch your breath.

  That morning I was on the highest ladder when I heard – a floor or so beneath – that soft cracking sound that meant a hod was collapsing, followed at once by the sound of bricks sliding and the usual yell.

  ‘Watch out below! Watch out!’

  Did the unlucky boy make the mistake of trying to hold his bricks back by twisting the hod round? In any case, it was too late. All that he managed to do was point his falling load even more truly at the boy climbing the ladder below him.

  Beneath me, I heard a desperate scuffling noise. The ladder groaned. There was a scream cut off by a pitiful thud.

  Did Karl see the blood drain from my face? Instantly he dropped his trowel to lean over and lift the hod from my shoulder as easily as if I’d been carrying feathers.

  Free of the weight, I dared look down.

  ‘Alyosha!’

  I was back down the ladders in no time at all. But he was dead. Spread on his broken back, staring up wide-eyed, a look of shock still on his face.

  ‘Alyosha!’ I buried my face in the grit on his jacket. ‘Alyosha! Alyosha!’

  The foreman pulled me off, but not roughly. Now I was crying my eyes out. ‘Alyosha! Alyosha!’

  Somebody led me away, back to the storeroom, and left me to weep for a while. Then, at a word, I had to dry my tears and pick up my hod. Alyosha’s body had vanished. Though people were making detours round the place where he’d been lying, everyone was working again. I filled my hod and lugged it up the ladders. When I reached the top, Big Karl stopped trowelling for a moment to turn and speak.

  ‘A friend?’

  ‘We started school together.’

  He nodded. ‘Bad luck. Bad luck indeed.’

  Then he went back to his work.

  Again that word. Luck. As if there were nothing that couldn’t have been predicted about ladders set too close together and hods so rotten they were bound to spill bricks. Hours later, as we sat round, dispirited and silent, eating our soup, I heard myself saying it.

  ‘There should be rules about such things. The state of the hods and the buckets. The jammed pulleys and the fraying ropes. The safety of the ladders. There shouldn’t be such careless accidents. Someone should see to it, and straight away.’

  ‘A brilliant idea!’ scoffed Vasily. ‘We could make fine rules for ourselves. No more than four bricks in a hod, I say.’

  ‘No more than eight hours’ work a day!’ said someone else, raising another laugh among those to whom Alyosha was no more than a face that had vanished.

  ‘Why stop there?’ Anton said. ‘Why not a rule that we can’t work at all when it’s too cold?’

  ‘You’d only need inspectors to go round checking.’

  ‘Inspectors! Yes!’

  They fell about laughing. I knew I was doing what Grandmother always called ‘talking my head off my body’. But I couldn’t leave it. Somewhere, a few streets away, the boy who’d made a thousand ice slides with me, laughed at my jokes and whispered answers when I was stuck in class was lying dead on some slab.

  ‘What’s so crazy about the idea?’ I persisted. ‘Don’t they make rules for us already? Rules about everything. A rule that we can’t take our tools home at night, not even to repair them or keep them safe. A rule that you have to wait for the whistle outside in the freezing cold, not in the warm storeroom. A rule that we have to stay after hours whenever the foreman demands it.’ I spread my hands. ‘So what would be so odd about a rule to keep the ladders further apart, to stop an accident even an idiot could have foreseen?’

  I’d gone too far. Nobody spoke. They stared uneasily down into their bowls of soup. Finally Caspar said boldly, ‘Father Trofim said each of us was to think of ourselves as a small spoke in one of the wheels carrying the Great Revolution as far and as fast as it can go. He warned us the path will run through rough ground and some of the wheels may get damaged. He says the only important thing is that the Revolution keeps rolling on.’

  I had a vision of lanky blond Nikolai back at Pioneer camp. He hadn’t said one word that could be proved to smack of rebellion; but with one beatific smile he had managed to make it clear exactly what he thought of sending volunteers to battle without boots or guns.

  With poor dead Alyosha in mind, I wanted to speak up as well. But I am not so clever. The smile I tried to summon must have appeared no more than a cold sneer. The only words I managed to spit out were, Ah, yes! Of course! The Revolution! Rolling on towards our Glorious Future!’ And any fool listening would have been able to hear the disbelief in my voice.

  The whistle blew to get us back to work. I scrambled to my feet and was the first to pack my hod with bricks and get to the ladders. All afternoon I worked like a fury, hauling the bricks up to the top floor at such a rate that I was soon piling them higher than the strip of wall Big Karl was working on.

  At the end of the day he clapped a hand on my shoulder. ‘You’ve lost a friend, Yuri. Still, there’s no need to work for two.’

  It was the first time he’d touched me – or even called me by name. I felt the tears rise. Shyly I glanced up to catch him looking at me in the way my mother looked at my hands – as if to say, How can this be happen
ing to someone before they’ve even had the time to grow into a man?

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘ALYOSHA?’ MY MOTHER gripped the cloth wrapped across her chest. ‘Little Alyosha?’ She sank onto the stool. ‘Oh, the black grief of it! His poor, poor mother!’

  Grandmother merely shrugged. I turned away. When I looked back, I caught her eyeing my torn boots and guessed she was already wondering if she dared go round and, under the pretence of offering our family’s condolences, beg for the use of Alyosha’s for herself or me.

  But no one dared answer their door now – not even at the saddest times. And Alyosha’s sister would need the boots soon enough. So, clearly shaking off the thought, she muttered only, ‘One poor soul lifted from the road of bones,’ and settled back to scraping the last of the crust out of the bread pan.

  My father was last home. I watched him shiver when he heard. An evil day!’ Each time he passed behind, I felt his hand on my shoulder, as if he needed to assure himself that this boy hunched over the table, still trying to stem his tears, was at least warm to the touch, not lying cold and still like his poor friend.

  It was a comfort. Next day I felt calmer. The sun shone silver through the breaks in the cloud and I fell into the rhythm of work almost with pleasure. At noon we sat eating our soup as usual and, though no one mentioned Alyosha, I felt that I was being looked at with sympathy by my companions. When I dropped my crust of black bread into the gap between us, Georgio even passed it back instead of snatching it up and stuffing it into his own mouth.

  So I had nothing in mind when, just as dusk was beginning to fall, I heard shouts and a rattling. I reached the top of the highest and shakiest ladder before I dared turn. But once I was safely over the parapet of bricks Karl had been laying, and onto the firm concrete base, I took the chance to peer down.

  The noise was coming from the gates. Two men were shaking the chain, and shouting at the foreman to let them in.

  He’d seen their uniforms. He hurried over faster than he’d run to Alyosha on the ground. He tried to undo the padlock in such haste he twice dropped the key and had to scrabble for it in the little heaps of spilled cement around his boots. The minute the chain ends fell apart, the men stepped into the workyard.

  Just for a moment the three of them stood talking, the sunlight glinting on the silver badges on the guards’ caps. Then, as the foreman turned with a finger stretched to point, I felt Karl’s hand on me for the second time within twenty-four hours. He was pushing me down behind his freshly laidbricks.

  ‘It’s you they’re after.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Aren’t you the one who opened his mouth too wide over his soup?’

  ‘All I said was—’

  He cut me off. ‘Whatever you said, it was more than enough.’ Still holding my head down, he was pulling me over the rough cement floor to the other side of the building, alongside the trees.

  ‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Get your foot in the bucket.’

  ‘In the bucket?’ I peered over the edge. What was he thinking? To lower me over like a load of mortar being sent back down?

  I thought he was mad and my face must have shown it.

  ‘Use your wits, Yuri. Either you risk a fall now, or you wait for those men to make even more of a mess of you later, here or in their cells.’

  ‘Cells?’

  ‘Yuri, wake up! You’ve seen the colour of their uniforms. You know who’s coming for you.’

  And if I was pale before, now I was grey with fright. I knew the men must already be striding across the yard towards our block, kicking aside anything that lay in their path, as they’d soon be kicking me. Suddenly I felt I could smell, even from so far up, the leather of their holsters and the oil in their guns. I would be dragged away without a chance. I’d heard enough about the Leader’s guards to know that either I’d never be seen again or, if I did come back, people would take one look at what was left of me and think the men in grey would have been kinder to finish the job properly while they still had me.

  ‘Yuri!’

  This time I jumped to it. I held out my arms, and Big Karl lifted me, as if I were a child, onto the parapet. I jammed my foot in the bucket so hard it felt as if I’d cracked half the small bones. Karl fed me a short length of rope and closed my hands round it with his own iron grip. He tipped the bucket. It slid off the parapet with a scraping noise I felt must alert the whole world to what was happening on our side of the half-built block.

  Almost at once the bucket fell away, with me swaying dangerously, out in thin air.

  I clung, sick with fright, as Karl began to lower me. The bucket rocked. I shut my eyes in terror. Surely I must weigh more than a bucket of mortar. Surely the rope would snap and, like Alyosha, I’d go hurtling to the ground.

  The bucket fell in sickening jerks. Desperate to know how fast we were descending, I forced myself to open my eyes. Karl must have been letting me down hand over hand, controlled and steady at his end, jerk and sway at mine. My hands were slick with sweat, but somehow I kept my fingers round the rope even through desperate cramps. Each time the rope caught, a juddering pain ran through the foot jammed in the bucket.

  Down and down I went. Karl was lowering me at one of the places along the building’s shell where there were no gaps for windows so I had no fear of being seen. Behind me were the bushes and trees we’d scoured for firewood on days too cold to get the mortar, unfrozen, to the men. At least I knew the paths. And now the trees were in leaf, I might at least stand a chance of getting away without being spotted.

  From the top of the building I heard an angry shout. Karl’s voice. ‘Yuri! Damn you, boy! Yuri! Where are you? Get up here with those bricks! I’m waiting!’

  If he was trying to fool the guards, they must be close now.

  Just at that moment the bucket started sliding at such a rate, it was like falling. Were the guards at the top of the ladders? Now I knew Karl must be letting the last of the rope run through his palms, burning his skin.

  I hit the ground.

  ‘Bricks here! Bricks, I say!’ I heard Karl roar to cover the noise my bucket made as it rolled down the slope to the bushes. The rope slithered down to land in a heap at my side. Clearly Karl thought it less risky to throw the last of it over in case they pulled up the bucket and guessed how he’d helped me.

  Praying for his sake that neither of the guards knew enough about building work to think it strange Karl had only the smallest heap of mortar at his side for all the bricks he was shouting for, I gathered up as much of an armful of the rope as I could carry, and ran for cover.

  Once I was hidden, I snaked the rope end towards me, keeping my eye on the parapet for fear that either of the men hunting me should take it into his head to peer over. As soon as I’d hauled the last of it out of sight, I crept a little further down the bushy slope, and left the bucket lying on its side, the rope trailing after, so even if Karl didn’t get to it first, he would at least be able to argue it had fallen off the parapet and rolled away.

  ‘That’s why I sent him down again out of turn,’ he would be able to tell them when they questioned him. ‘To fetch back the bucket the young fool knocked off my wall.’

  I stumbled off between the bushes and trees, desperate to convince myself Karl wouldn’t find himself in the worst trouble. And only then, as terror from the dreadful, swaying descent began to fade, did I remember that things could go as badly for me if I were found.

  Or even worse.

  I speeded up till I’d outrun the furthest paths we’d ever searched for firewood. It was getting dark. More out of breath than I had ever been, I finally slowed my pace, telling myself that going more slowly was sensible. Suppose someone who’d been working in the wood suddenly appeared on the path? Surely they’d think a panting, rasping boy far more suspicious than one who was simply strolling along and whistling idly.

  I pursed my lips. I’d no intention of making any noise at all unless I met a stranger. But even without trying I knew t
hat any attempt to whistle would end in failure. My mouth was parched from fright. I hurried on. And it was only as the relentless thumping of my own heartbeat in my chest and ears gradually calmed that the realization came to me.

  I was in even deeper trouble than I feared.

  How could I go forward? I had nothing with me. No food, no money, no identification papers. Nothing except the rough and ready work clothes in which I stood.

  And I could definitely not go back.

  So I went on. What I had taken to be the silence of the woods turned into almost a comfort of rustlings and flutterings and strange short screeches in the night. What would my mother be thinking? Would the guards think that she and my father were lying when she assured them I had not come home? I felt a sickening in my gut. Perhaps they’d even arrest my parents in my place – we knew it happened – and keep them down in their slimy basement cells in the hope that I’d present myself at their gatehouse the same way young Victor went in search of his brother in Grandmother’s story.

  Grandmother! Surely the soldiers wouldn’t drag her away! She was a wily old bird, well capable of making herself look even older than she was, and acting half-witted. Perhaps she’d have the sense to whimper and drool, and leave them thinking her brain so full of holes and worms she might as well be left.

  At heart, though, I knew that neither my grandmother’s age nor my parents’ innocence would be any protection. If they chose to, the guards would beat them. We knew they’d thrashed confessions out of peasants accused of hiding grain, and wreckers and saboteurs. For years my parents had struggled to convince themselves, ‘They must have been guilty of something. No one’s arrested for no reason at all.’ But after the day my mother came home with the news that Simple Talia down the street had been taken away in one of their Black Marias, even that small fraying effort at self-comfort was snatched away. (‘If they’re accusing dafties like her, soon they’ll be coming after planks of wood.’)