Reign of Hell (26 page)

Throughout the rest of the night and the whole of the next day, we followed Ladislas and his sister through the forest towards the point where we should be able to cross the river. We travelled slowly, with frequent halts to allow enemy patrols to pass by. Kuls was constantly complaining that we were being led into a trap and would be sorry when it was all too late. It did cross my own mind that we seemed to be taking a somewhat roundabout route, but we had no reason for mistrusting our guide, and the Old Man appeared to be quite happy to follow him.

Towards midnight on the second day we reached the towering cliffs which overhung the river. There was a sheer drop into the gorge far below, where the waters roared and crashed and threw up an angry, white-flecked spray high into the air. I could see rocks sticking up like rows of needle-sharp teeth, and I moved hastily away from the crumbling edge of the cliff and scrambled back to join the others.

‘So what are we supposed to do?’ said Kuls, sourly. ‘Flap our wings and fly?’

The Old Man jerked his thumb upstream.

‘According to the Pole, there’s a bridge half a mile further on, but it’s too risky to attempt the crossing at night. We’ll kip down for a few hours and give it a go in the morning.’

‘Bridge!’ said Kuls. ‘A likely bloody story!’

I rather thought so myself. I could certainly see no signs of any bridge, and if there was one it was bound to be heavily guarded. However, our guide obviously knew the district. He led the way to an opening in the rocks, a crevice which widened into a fair-sized cavern, and there we installed ourselves for the night. We set up the machine-gun at the mouth of the crevice, camouflaging it with creepers and branches. We felt we were in comparative safety. The rocky cavern was like a luxury suite after the misery of the mud and
the marshes. It was dry and it was warm, and for the first time in days we had an adequate supply of food and drink. Even sleep was possible for those who had cultivated the happy knack of closing their ears to all external sounds. The Legionnaire curled into a ball and never moved a muscle all night long. For my own part I was unable to blot out the continuous drunken bickering of Heide and Porta, interspersed with the inane guffaws of Tiny and the general roaring and belching. I passed the hours until dawn in an irritable stupor somewhere between waking and sleeping, and I was thankful when the first light streaked across the sky and the Old Man called us to our feet.

We dismantled the machine-gun and set off behind the Pole and his sister along the cliff tops. The sky was grey, gold-tipped on the horizon with the waking of the sun, and a large black crow slowly beat its way across the river on undulating wing. I had an uncomfortable feeling that our own passage was not likely to be quite so free and easy.

‘There,’ said Ladislas; and he stood pointing upstream, to a point where a giant pine had come crashing down and now lay stretched across the chasm, its torn roots on one side and its branches on the other. ‘There is the way we must go.’

Even the Old Man betrayed a moment of doubt.

‘Is it safe?’ he said.

‘Safe?’ said Ladislas. He shrugged a careless shoulder. ‘Who can tell if it is safe or not? Maybe it fall – maybe we fall. Maybe it break. Maybe the wind blow. Maybe the Russians come.’ He spread out his hands. ‘Who cares?’ he said.

Not, apparently, Ladislas, or his sister. They walked on together, hand in hand, towards the fallen pine. After all they had been through, they probably felt they had nothing left to live for. So let them commit suicide if that was what they wanted; the rest of us were not so keen.

‘What did I tell you?’ said Kuls, savagely. ‘What did I bloody tell you?’

We hung back and watched as Ladislas first and then his sister took off their boots and stepped barefoot on to the improvised bridge.

‘Ever been across this way before?’ asked Barcelona, casually.

‘Never,’ said Ladislas.

‘Why should we?’ added his sister. ‘Always before there is a bridge to walk on.’

Slowly and carefully, one foot after another, they shuffled out into space. Ladislas had his hands on his hips to give him better balance. The girl had her arms stretched out at shoulder level. Both held their heads high and stared straight across at the opposite bank. They moved like sleepwalkers in slow motion. As they passed the half-way mark the trunk began to tremble. The girl caught her breath, and stood poised for a moment on one foot. Ladislas braced himself firmly, legs apart, and held out a hand towards her. The girl tilted slightly backwards. Ladislas bent forward from the waist. It seemed impossible they could maintain their equilibrium, but inch by inch they straightened up, the girl managed to regain her footing and they continued calmly on their way along the swaying trunk. About six feet before it reached the far bank it narrowed considerably. It was scarcely the width of a man’s shoe. We could see it sagging beneath the weight of the two people. It must have been a temptation for Ladislas to take a flying leap on to the bank, but had he done so the girl would almost certainly have been flung into the air by the springboard reaction of the slender tree trunk. He pursued his course grimly to the end, and when at last he reached the opposite side, he turned and held out a hand. The girl snatched at it, and together they clambered to safety.

‘Where one can go,’ said the Old Man, with a faint smile at the Legionnaire, ‘the rest can surely follow . . . Who’s next?’

There was silence. Not even Porta opened his mouth. Ladislas and his sister stood on the opposite bank and waved and shouted to us, but all I could see was the swaying tree trunk and all I could hear was the angry rushing of the waters far below. The Old Man made an impatient noise in the back of his throat.

‘Well, come on!’ he said. ‘We can’t hang about all day.
There’s only one way to go, and that’s across the river . . . And there’s only one way to cross the river, and that’s the way we’re going.’

‘Like hell!’ snarled Kuls. He drew his lips back over his teeth, showing his gums like an angry dog. ‘I’m staying right here, and no one’s going to budge me!’

The Old Man took a step towards him. Kuls backed away. He pointed his rifle at the Old Man.

‘You come another step and I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you, so help me God.’

The Old Man took another step. With one hand he slapped Kuls hard across the face. With the other he snatched his rifle away from him. Coldly and contemptuously, he slung it over the edge of the cliff.

‘And that’s exactly where you’ll end up yourself if I have any more trouble with you,’ he said, grimly. He turned back to the rest of us. ‘So who’s next for the high wire?’

‘Not me,’ I said.

It made me dizzy just looking at the thing. For once I was in full sympathy with Kuls. Wild horses weren’t going to drag me across that tree trunk.

‘Do I have to drive you all at gun point?’ demanded the Old Man.

There was a general muttering, and an uneasy shuffling of feet, and then Tiny suddenly gave a great roar of anger and plunged forward. He ripped off his boots and slung them round his neck. He pulled out his one remaining bottle of raspberry wine and emptied it down his throat. The bottle flew over the edge of the cliff in the wake of Kuls’s rifle, and for one moment I thought that Tiny was going to follow it. He charged forward, head down, like a tank out of control, and he was half-way across to the opposite bank when he lost his balance and slipped. Someone screamed. The tree trunk was twanging up and down like a rubber band, and Tiny was hanging on with both hands, suspended in space with his legs dangling. All the blood in my body turned to water, and I was chewing on my bottom lip as if it were a piece of particularly tough rump steak. However much I
wanted to turn my eyes the other way, I found myself compelled to watch.

‘He’ll never make it,’ said Barcelona. His fingers closed over my arm and bit deep into the flesh. ‘He’ll never make it—’

Tiny swung himself up and hooked his legs round the tree trunk. Slowly and carefully, hanging upside down like a koala bear, he inched his way along. Hand over hand, foot over foot. He reached the last couple of yards. There was an ominous creaking sound. Ladislas and the girl grabbed hold of the branches, as if their combined weight would be any sort of counterbalance to Tiny’s vast bulk.

‘Christ almighty,’ said Gregor, his face like a stale mushroom drained of all colour. ‘Sweet Christ almighty . . .’

Tiny had reached the edge of the trunk. He stretched out a hand and caught hold of a stunted tree growing from the side of the cliff. With one foot he felt round for a ledge or a crevice, and at last he found one and was able to haul himself somewhat ponderously to safety. From his pocket he pulled out the filthy bloodstained rag which had once been his handkerchief and mopped his brow with it.

‘Come on over!’ he yelled. ‘There’s nothing to it!’

‘Next one,’ said the Old Man, curtly.

The way he said it, you’d have thought we were queueing up for the dentist. He looked anxiously over his shoulder in the direction from which we had come. Somewhere deep in the forest we could hear gunshots. It could mean only one thing: the NKVD were on our trail.

‘Get a move on for God’s sake!’

The Old Man snatched at the person nearest to him and gave him a shove towards the edge of the cliff. Had it been me, I would have taken to my heels and galloped off to seek help and comfort from the advancing Russians rather than follow Tiny and his display of acrobatics across the yawning chasm. As it was Barcelona, he merely swore terribly and sat down to take his boots off.

Half-way across the trunk, he suddenly stopped. Until that point he had been moving forward with all the assurance of
a circus tight-rope walker, using his rifle as a balancing rod. He never once stumbled or slipped. What happened to upset him, I never knew. Perhaps he made the mistake of looking down at the torrent below. Or perhaps, because it was at that same half-way mark that Tiny had come to grief it was purely psychological. But whatever it was, Barcelona was at a full stop and neither the Old Man’s threats, nor Tiny’s cries of encouragement, could persuade him to go on.

‘So now what do we do?’ said Gregor, and I thought I detected a faint note of relief in his voice. As if to say, well, that was that, we might as well call it a day and go home. No one could be expected to cross to the other side with Barcelona cluttering up the middle of the gangplank . . . ‘What happens now?’ he said.

The Legionnaire pursed his lips together.

‘Someone has to go and shift the stupid cunt,’ he said, savagely.

He slung his boots round his neck and set off to the rescue. Small and lithe, and sure-footed as any cat, he never looked as if he were in the least danger. But he had the terrified Barcelona to cope with, and Barcelona was by now beginning to lose control. His rifle fell from his hands and went spinning into the abyss. Barcelona swayed and would have fallen straight after it had the Legionnaire not reached him in time and clamped a firm hand on his shoulder. For a moment they crouched there together, frozen like statues, perilously perched on the extreme edge of nowhere. And then slowly, very slowly, Barcelona began to crawl forward.

The combined weight of the two men was about as much as the trunk could stand. When Tiny suddenly bounded out from the far side with the intention of extending a helping hand, there was a protesting groan and the whole thing began to sag.

‘Get back!’ yelled the Old Man. ‘Back, for God’s sake!’

Tiny fortunately realised the danger just in time to avert a triple catastrophe. He edged his way back to the cliff top and contented himself with plucking Barcelona to safety the minute he came within reach. The Legionnaire finished the
journey without difficulty and stood calmly smoking a cigarette while he waited for the rest of us. The Old Man turned to Porta and jerked his head.

‘Off you go.’

‘What, me?’ said Porta.

‘Yes, you,’ said the Old Man.

There was a pause.

‘Do I have to?’ said Porta.

‘I think it would be advisable. I shouldn’t like to have to make an example of you.’

‘No,’ said Porta. ‘No, I can see that. I can see you wouldn’t like to have to make an example of me . . .’ He pulled a wry face and slung his rifle over his shoulder. ‘OK, then. Here goes.’

‘What about your boots?’ objected the Old Man. ‘You’ll never get across there with your boots on.’

‘Fuck the boots,’ said Porta, cheerfully. He turned and blew us a kiss. ‘God bless you, my children!’

Porta, of course, no more than Tiny had, could make the crossing in a conventional manner. Porta chose to sit astride and play ride-a-cock horse all the way over. Half-way across he felt the need of a little refreshment, so he pulled a flask from his pocket and had a drink. It must have been something a great deal stronger than raspberry wine, because from then on he sang lustily at the top of his voice and only interrupted himself from time to time to crack an imaginary whip against his meagre backside and shout, ‘Giddyap, there!’ before going on his way at a pace which appalled me.

‘Sergeant, what is wrong with that man?’ said the Colonel. ‘Is he simple-minded?’

Gregor was the next to go. He was sweating profusely and was obviously scared to death, but Gregor was not one for histrionics. He seated himself astride the trunk as Porta had done, and he dragged himself very slowly and carefully, from one side to the other, where he was dragged to safety by several willing pairs of hands. He passed out the moment he got there, but it had been an impressive display nevertheless.