Excerpts from
The Gullible Russian
By Leif Davidsen
I have held my arm round her until the police arrived. They were two officers from the militia. They glanced at the soldiers from the Russian guard and the cossacks, and then went back to their patrol car. They got into the battered old Lada and radioed a message, staying there until help arrived.
The help consisted of a black Volga containing three plain clothes officers and Joe Kanitsky.
He came over to us. I had put both Svetlana and Andreas on a bench. Andreas had vomit in the corners of his mouth, and Svetlana was deathly white. She took hold of Andreas´ hand and rested her head on his shoulder. Poor man. In every way. It was the touch of a sister, not a lover. He said nothing, Smerlov was still lying in pain on the ground, but some of his men had laid him in a more comfortable position and covered him with a couple of uniform jackets. The two cossacks were sitting by themselves on the ground. The bloody sabre lay beside Igor´s dead body. Only a small group of inquisitive onlookers had stayed behind.
"Quite a mess, eh, Felix?" said Joe in English. "Quite a bloody mess!"
I merely nodded.
"But Joe´ll fix it," he said. "It´ll cost a bit. But Joe´ll fix it."
"Joe fixes everything," said Svetlena in a flat voice.
"You can bet your bottom dollar on that, baby. But it´s going to cost money. So now you owe me something, too, Felix." he said.
He went across to the three plain clothes officers, in our direction. I felt inwardly drained. Iraqis or no Iraqis, all I wanted was to get away, I wanted to go home. I´d had enough.
Joe came over to us.
"OK. This is the deal," he said in his slow, heavily accented Russian. "You go back to the hotel. I´m responsible for you. I shall need your passport, Felix. And Svetlana and Andreas will have to surrender their internal passes while investigations are taking place."
"Who are those people, Joe?" I said.
"Your passport, Felix."
I took out my reassuring Danish passport and stood uneasily with it in my hands. Now I was caught, stranded, locked up tight. Perhaps I ought to protest. Demand access to the Danish Embassy. I had done nothing, and now they were pointing fingers at me. But I knew the system. Everyone is guilty until the opposite is proved. Nevertheless I protested:
"I´ve not done anything. Why should I hand over my passport?"
"Do as I say. That´ll cause the least trouble," said Joe. "You´ll get it in a couple of days. Papers are important in this place. You know they believe you´re guilty of anything at all until the you or someone else can prove the opposite.
Come on now, give me your passport."
Andreas and Svetlana give him their internal Russian passes.
Svetlana looked frightened and angry. I handed mine over, too. Joe went back to the three men and gave one of them our papers. The ambulance arrived, and two men in white overalls wrapped Igor up in a coarse sheet, while the ambulance doctor examined Smerlov, who was lying on the ground moaning. They picked up Igor´s severed hand and put it in the sheet. It took three soldiers to help the ambulance men lift the huge body into the back of the red and the white ambulance. The ambulancemen had the expression on their faces which men acquire when they have seen so much human degradation that they have given up trying to understand. The cossack was handcuffed and put into the back seat of the black Volga. His face was stiff pale, and he kept on wiping his hands on his grey trousers.
Joe came back to us:
"Now get back to the hotel," he said.
"Who are those people?" I said.
"That´s no concern of yours, Felix. But they´re volunteers who don´t hide their hands in the sand. They want to fight for civilisation. Christian, white civilisation. Liberals like you think the future´s yours, but now we are beginning to wake up."
"I thought you were going to say nigger," I said.
He looked at me for a long time with a smile that made his coarse face look even more malicious, though at the same time fascinating like an ageing John Wayne.
"No, Felix. You aren´t. Half, perhaps."
"You´re pathetic," I said, breaking into English.
"You´re a coward," he said. "What do you do? Nothing. These people here are ready to risk their lives in Yugoslavia. Don´t you know what´s going on there? Don´t you know that there we´re fighting the first war against the rats waiting to take power in Europe and the States?"
"You bloody racist," I said.
He looked at me with scorn in his black eyes:
"What does a nigger like you know about that? The struggle´s begun. It´s going on here in Russia, too. It´s going on all over the world. One day I´ll tell you about it."
"Why are you helping me? Aren´t I one of your rats?
He smiled:
"No Felix. Not quite. You´re just a little too sunburned. Besides, Andreas trusts you. So I need you if the young fool doesn´t do as he´s told."
"You´re a shit," I said. "You´re playing with fire."
"Fire and steel make you strong," he said, as though quoting from some old nazi morale booster. He turned to Svetlana and took her the arm:
"Go to the hotel," he said brutally.
She took her arm free. Andreas was sitting still, apparently oblivious to all that was going on.
"Let go," said Svetlana, "I hate you."
He released her:
"But you need me, baby," he said.
"I don´t any longer," she said, avoiding his gaze.
He grasped her face in his right hand and forced her to look at him. She tried to wrest her head free, but I could see that Joe had a firm hold and that it was hurting her.
Translated by W. Glyn Jones
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