Page 85 of The Half Life of Valery K

The women still wouldn’t play.

‘We’ll play when you stop scratching,’ someone said crossly. Valery could hear the glass in her voice too.

Two or three men had been scratching at the plywood barrier now – not, Valery thought, with any purpose, but in the compulsive way of anyone with absolutely nothing else to do. ‘You b—’

‘Oi,’ an ex-navy captain snapped, hard. ‘Shut up.’

Four pairs of eyes gleamed crystalline and mutinous in his direction, and Valery felt cold despite the pounding heat.

In the morning, the navy captain was dead. He was in his sixties, and perhaps it was dehydration. But Valery didn’t think so. He seemed to be unofficial medical examiner now, and when he looked the man over, he didn’t seem in a bad enough way to have died only a few hours after being wholly lucid. He said nothing, though, aware that people were watching him with a wariness that made him think of hyenas. Instead, he sat back on his knees.

‘Well. Are the rest of you okay?’ he asked the men he was pretty sure had killed the sailor.

A hesitation, then sullen nods. He nodded with them. Sometimes a photon of kindness went a long way.

‘Can I have a quick look at you?’

‘Okay,’ the original scratcher said quietly.

So Valery made a show of looking into their eyes, listening to their hearts, moving their arms gently.

‘Good news,’ he said. ‘You all look good to go for a little while yet. We’ll be there soon. Another six days, the guards say. You’re all doing beautifully, actually.’

Again like children, they looked pleased with that. ‘Thanks, doctor.’

‘But you’ll tell me, won’t you, if you start to feel really bad? One of the signs of dangerous dehydration is sudden anger.’ It was a complete lie, but he couldn’t think of any other way to make them watch themselves. ‘If you feel any sudden rage, that isn’t you, that’s thirst. You tell me, okay? You’re all good boys, we’ll get you through.’

‘You won’t be able to do anything about it, though,’ one of them said bleakly.

‘We’ll be able to talk you down,’ Valery said with a confidence he didn’t feel at all. ‘The worst thing now would be to lose it in a crowded room, right? We’d start World War Three in here and I feel that would be undignified.’

Weak smiles. ‘Okay, doctor.’

He smiled back and left them, and felt excruciated, because they were good boys. They were good boys turning into something else, though, and when the train stopped next, and the guards helped take out the navy captain’s body, Valery touched one of them on the arm and drew him aside.

‘I think those boys are going to kill someone,’ he said softly. ‘If they haven’t already.’

The guard sighed. He looked nearly as exhausted as everyone else. ‘We’re packed full. There’s nowhere to put them. Unless you want me to shoot them, you’ll have to deal with them.’

Valery looked him over quietly. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked, not because he was worried, but because in his experience it was a far more powerful thing than getting angry.

In this instance, though, it was the wrong thing. For a terrible second, the man’s eyes welled with tears. He caught them before they fell, made himself furious to cover it, and smacked Valery’s arm with his truncheon. Valery went down on to the ground hard.

‘Shut up. Get back in the compartment.’

Shukov hurried over to scoop him up. ‘Come on, up you get. No trouble, okay?’ he said quickly to the guard.

‘Okay,’ said the guard, stony and humiliated still.

The following day, Valery woke to the now-familiar nightmare of suffocating, and to the sound of scratching. There was a wooden squeak as someone pulled a long splinter from the wall. He sat up in time to see Shukov tug the trapped scarf through. Hopelessly, Shukov sank his face into it and breathed. His arm aching, Valery edged across other people’s legs to get near enough to speak.

‘Morning,’ he said softly.

‘Look,’ whispered Shukov.

Through the gap in the wall, about fist-sized now, the other side of the compartment was brighter than theirs. Across the floor, the women were still asleep. On average, they were young; perhaps the old ladies hadn’t managed to survive the Lubyanka. Valery’s heart constricted. Despite the dirt and the stifling heat, they looked inhumanly all right, as though the guards had managed to confuse human beings with a clutch of strange things from the woods. So that no one was trodden on too badly if people had to move around, they had all, in perfect order, lined up their shoes along the nearer wall.

‘What do you think it’s like, not to … to get angry when you’re unhappy?’ Shukov asked.