Fiction >> Mark Sashine  

SEVEN PINS ON THE BOARD

By Mark Sashine 

"There are no humans in that Devil's home."

                                                                  R. L. Stevenson  "Olalla"

                                                                           1

            Dogs were wet.   Rotten leaves overwhelmed the dirty passages between our apartment buildings. That strong liquor of autumn made the worn women’s shoes shine like pearls and drew the kids away from the cast iron rails, swing sets and rocking chairs of the playgrounds. That's when the stray dogs took over. Even the novices among them knew the way down the tiny hallway to the kitchen where my friend’s mother or sister always kept bowls of food and water. The dogs could count on meeting someone on the couch in the living room to express their gratitude.  I could feel their jealousy in the way they used their heads to push me off.  Sometimes I respected their wishes and sat on the floor.  My friend picked me up on the street corner the same way he picked them up.  It was a warm and cozy place with TV.  After a bowl of hot soup his sister looked attractive if you didn’t notice her spiked hair. I contemplated dating her once. If   I had done that I would’ve remembered her name. But the dating never took place and the questions I wanted to ask before the growing sense of discontent became unbearable, remained unanswered. That's how it started: through not asking.

2 

  Our college hallways resembled the nave of Notre-Dame where a regiment could be placed easily without disturbing the Mass. Echoes from the voices of thirty thousand students hovered under the pseudo-Gothic ceilings, covered with frescoes,  all picturing men in  black robes making scientific discoveries. Outside it was a day of free labor. We were shoveling the gravel for the soul improvement and arguing.

            "This shoveling is meaningless.  How come you always drag me into it?"

            "Free social labor is our future. It’s just not properly organized.  Next time it'll be better."

            "It'll never be better because it is insane. There is no such thing as free labor. They took other people's lives and now it is our turn."

            “This is for my father. He suffered for this.”

           On the old photo of us together that shovel dominates the entire foreground.  Maybe his father suffered for the oak handle polished by at least five generations of the free laborers. Or maybe it was the nail, that  thick piece of rusty steel curved on the outside and hammered backwards flush into the surface, so that never through a lifetime could you disconnect the shovel  blade from its handle. The nail says to you that the free labor days would never go away and there always would be rain, the loudspeakers and the everlasting acidy dust. Through the years that dust covered our faces until we were no more.                                                                    

3

             We were drinking in the People’s Police precinct.  All joints were open and the city drunks and junkies sat among us. It was the funeral music on the radio. Chairman Mao died that night.

            "Another bloodsucker is dead. Here is to all of them ending in the same place!"

            The police sergeant made a big gulp, untied my citizen's patrol sign and poured me a glass. "Sorry, man, your friend was so proud to pick up that junkie and now we will let him go. Big day, special day.  What’s with your friend, anyway?"

            "What do you mean?"

            "He has Plumbum brains. You know what I mean."

             I knew that all too well. Plumbum means lead in Latin.   He was a movie character, a teenage boy, obsessed with law enforcement. He volunteered in helping the police hunt down drunks and other unsuitable characters. The kid was a natural snitch and everyone in the department hated him.  At the end of the movie the madman turned in his own father to the police for some minor violation.

            "You mean he is out of control?" I asked.

            "He is nuts. We do our job but there’s nothing to like or admire. We bust those poor bastards for money. Most of them need a warm place, loving care and a good listener, not a night on a cement floor. Your friend, he likes it. He radiated pride when he brought the guy here. And he doesn't drink anything."

            "Is that so bad?"

            "One odd thing by itself is OK. But the clueless abstinent with a Plumbum wish is someone to watch closely. If I have learned anything here is to sniff out freaks, pardon my French. You have your hands full. Here's to you."

            "Thank you.  He says his father suffered for the idea and he wants to make up for it."

            "Father, eh? The name doesn't ring a bell. Children of those who really suffered wouldn’t engage in the manhunt. You didn’t hear that from me."
            "You have my word."

He joined the police officers singing an obscene song.  My friend never sang anything. Neither did Plumbum, as I recall.  He read the youth movement magazines. What did my friend read? Wasn't his father some kind of a children's writer?

4

            He was published in those magazines, all right. I read some of his writings in the library. Highly patriotic, big deal, very boring. He was a perfect zombie, a nomenclature "social realist" on the state retainer. I checked the records and found that he was a member of all government-sponsored literary unions. How come he lived in such a dump? How come his children were not studying foreign affairs in an elite university? The name suggested a Jewish origin. Could that be the reason?  But there were quite a few ReichsJude, the loyal servants of the authorities. Lack of literary talent should only help in his career. Of course, he didn’t look like a spiritual leader.  That frog's mouth, those narrow, bleakly grayish eyes. The children’s magazines shouldn’t publish his photos to spare the young readers.  I was not spared. Here he is, looking at me from the page I tore out. My friend didn’t look like this face. Whom did he look like? I don't remember.

5

            We rented a banquet hall for my friend's wedding.  As a best man I was preoccupied with the seating and other details. When dances reached culmination I went out to the gallery for some fresh air. Lo and behold, the children’s writer was there, smoking.

            "Good wedding," he said. "My son told me about you."

            "He didn’t say much about you, sir."

            "Really?  He isn’t exactly like me, you know.  Straightforward but secretive he is. I was very straightforward once. Paid for that dearly. Maybe he learned a lesson."

            "Didn't he follow your example?"

            "He just doesn’t know. You both don't know.  Engineers, eh?" He turned to whisper, "They called us engineers of human souls. Ever heard of us? I was a columnist, a famous one. They brought us in to weed the garden. Boy, we did a good job. Now my son doesn’t want to know. Neither do you, I presume. Your mother should know. Women, they never forget. Want to know more? I can tell you."

            "He said you suffered a great injustice for your loyalty to the idea."

            The man chuckled, "That's how he puts it. Let it be if it makes him feel better. He thinks that if he doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, serves the purpose and follows the rules, he’ll have a better destiny. But everything is relative, you know. Loyalty, justice . . . “He yawned.

            I excused myself and headed for the door. In the mirror I noticed someone watching me. It was my friend's mother. The fear in her eyes was so overwhelming that I nearly fainted. It was more like horror, as if she was desperately afraid of me and for me. Never again was I invited to their home. The last I heard of my friend was that he joined the military.

6

            Newspapers are time bombs. The old country did not adopt the Orwellian approach of rewriting the columns. People were called all kinds of names: dogs, prostitutes and beasts of evil. It was the medieval language: hysterical, erratic, full of fear and malice. Families were accused of conspiring with the enemy. Children were branded bad seeds, even the infants. Every column called for blood. You could physically feel those pages soaked with blood. And blood it was: rivers of blood, millions dead, generations of people slaughtered. I sat in the calm library halls and sometimes looked around, afraid of the monsters resurrected by the evil I had touched. Many of those articles were anonymous. Quite a few had proud authors. The loudest name was the one I knew.

             That columnist contributed to every campaign. Year after year he spilled venom on the pages with enough hatred to burn the paper. It was not even a style, just senseless barking. More materials came: documentaries, court reports, cross-references, photos, lots of photos. Those were the distorted faces of the wrongly accused, faces of their wives, mothers, children. There were also photos of the interrogators. They willingly came out into the open, gave interviews, praised themselves, referred to all those articles in the newspapers and used the same words. It was not barking anymore but howling of the berserk werewolves.

            And death was everywhere; death from starvation, shooting, firing squads, suicides, family murders, mass executions, death on the roads of mass deportations, death from torture.  The carnage lasted for nearly twenty years.

            His last column was called Weeding the Garden. It started the campaign against the cosmopolites, the people accused of unpatriotic thinking. Jewish people were the primary target because of their “foreign" origin.   Bounty hunters were unleashed to find the hidden bad thinkers, among those who adopted aliases or pseudonyms. Looks like the dog got its fleas: an article in the same paper of about a month later accused him of hiding his Jewish identity and his connections to the Jews abroad. He was called all the necessary names, fired from his job and stripped of all privileges. The Mangler sucked him in.

            I can assume that when the campaign subsided the man tried desperately to get back on the roll but he was in double jeopardy: a lucky criminal from any point of view.  New rulers pushed him into oblivion. He couldn’t handle that. Rage and horror contributed to a progressive mental disorder.

            Did my friend know? His mother knew, no doubt. To protect the family she concocted a story about their father being a victim, a sufferer for the idea. Maybe she told her children that he was persecuted as a Jew. She was not Jewish but the excuse was good. That man was a witness. That’s why she was so afraid. I could tell someone about him and that could reach the ears of those who were still in power. She knew very well how easy it would be for them to eliminate the family.

                                                                        7

            Remember your Shakespeare? I loved my friend. He went away from me. There is nothing more to say… I don't know where my friend is now. I hope he is alive and cured. He felt the disease creeping in and those dogs were his form of protection.  There were no priests to confess to or shrinks to take his pain away; maybe that’s how he kept his checks and balances. Under different circumstances he could become a recluse monk tending for animals.  As it wasn’t possible he ended up as a soldier. I am sure that he has no children of his own.

            As for his father, I wish him dead. It would be good for all of us if this shadow disappears from the face of the Earth.  Those other faces, they are on my board forever. The pins protrude from the inside out. It hurts to touch. I loved my friend.

© Mark Sashine, 2003. All Rights Reserved.

Mark Sashine was born in Russia in 1956. His family immigrated to the US in 1989, and they now live in Connecticut. Mark holds a PhD, Professional Engineering license, and works as an engineer. In 2002 he graduated from the Breaking  Into Print Course of study in the Long Ridge Writer's Group in Connecticut. You can reach him at spockovich@att.net
 

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