Sankya

CHAPTER ONE-3

Nearby stood a young man holding a briefcase and a set of keys.

That is his car, Sasha guessed.

Venka stopped.

“Hey, mate.” He called out to the young man, whose face twitched nervously.

He turned around. “Turn off” the noise. It’s irritating,” Venka said, grinning, and gestured as if pressing a button.

They ran into a courtyard and accelerated, jumping over benches, rounding the kiosks and the playground slides. In midflight Sasha bumped the rusty skeleton of a swing set and for several seconds could still hear the swings’ rhythmic creaking behind him.

Three policemen pursued them, stomping menacingly and demanding that they stop. The first one, as Sasha could see when he glanced back, strained to hold onto the leash of a German Shepherd.

Will they release the dog or not? thought Sasha in a detached kind of way, as if it had nothing to do with him.

He decided not to look back anymore.

Leaving the courtyard, they came to a tram stop with hardly any people, when all they wanted was to find a crowd and get lost in it.

A tram departed.

They ran after it, and in thirty metres they caught up with its metal carcass.

Venka ran ahead, flailing his arms joyfully, shouting something unbelievable and gesticulating frantically to the driver, whose displeased face flickered in the rearview mirror.

The tram stopped, the middle door opened, the boys jumped in, and Lyosha Rogov ran up to the conductor’s cabin. Sasha noticed that he slipped her a banknote while apologizing to her, and the door closed. The tram began to move.

The policemen appeared from the courtyard; it was clear by their movements that they immediately guessed where the fugitives had gone.

Venka was giving them the middle finger with both hands as they furiously stamped around in place, and suddenly the tram stopped.

The front door opened, and five or six OMON entered.

Venka pressed the emergency exit button, and the door began to slide open, slowly and with a dissatisfied hiss — but the brutes were already upon them, and the first thing they did was slam Venka’s head into a railing.

Sasha immediately covered his head with his hands. With the help of a few vigorous knee kicks, they dragged him outside.

A strong hand grabbed him by the collar and smashed his head against the side of the tram. He saw a weak red flash. It was not too bad…

The boys were forced to assume the position — hands behind their heads, their foreheads on the iron siding of the tram, legs spread as widely as possible.

They hit them on the insides of their legs a few times to make their stances wider.

The OMON, of course, wanted more. They’d apprehended the escapees with such flair — their pumping adrenaline demanded that they immediately tear their prey apart. But the faces of several curious passengers glued to the tram windows prevented them from really letting loose.

They milled about on the spot nervously, clutching their batons, their faces contorting.

Turning his head slightly, Sasha saw Venka and Rogov next to him, their legs spread, same as his own.

The engine of the OMON bus, which was blocking the tram rails, started, and it rolled back.

“Shall we get a move on, then?” a voice said. “We should show these bastards what revolution means.”

“So, you son of a b***h! You wanted a revolution?” a voice near Sasha, but probably directed at Venka, said. “In half an hour, you’ll be pissing red revolutionary blood!”

There was a punch, then another. One of them couldn’t hold back, exploded…

Sasha turned towards Venka and immediately caught a heavy blow to the back of the head, as if someone had been standing behind his back this whole time, just waiting to strike.

“Didn’t we tell you, keep your hands behind your head, and don’t move.”

This was when the dog arrived, and with it, Sasha guessed by the crescendo of incessant profanities, the cops.

Judging by the barking and shuffling, the dog was chomping at the bit. Sasha shrunk back, expecting to have a bite taken out of his leg any second.

“You should see what these animals…did!” one of the cops said, trying to catch his breath. “Tore up the whole street…the shops…the cars…they’re animals…We should shoot these animals right here!”

“What are you doing, you little s**t?” he said to Venka, whose head was against the tram. “Huh? I asked you a question, punk! What are you doing?”

“I’m holding up the tram,” Venka said in a collected voice, a voice so collected it was unbearably cocky.

Sasha smiled into the red iron siding, which was cooling his sweaty forehead.

“Sod you!”

Sasha heard the policeman’s voice, understood that he was about to hit Venka, and snuck another sideways look at him. A club as thick as a fire hose hit his friend’s back with a deep thud.

“So?” shouted the policeman, still breathing heavily. “More? Hmm? No, answer me! You want some more?”

“Check it out,” Venka replied loudly, and it didn’t sound like “Yes, more,” but rather like “Keep going, old boy, he who laughs last laughs longest…”

At this point, one of the camouflaged demons decided to weigh in: “Is this how you talk to an officer of the law, kid?”

As if wielding a scythe, he swung his huge, boot-heavy foot, hitting Venka behind the knee and Venka fell, surprised, with a hoarse whimper. Another heavy boot forcefully stepped on his face.

“Hey, that’s enough!” Sasha suddenly cried, to his own surprise.

Probably he would have caught a few heavy ones as well, but the tram conductor diverted their attention: “Gentlemen! Please, lead these young people away from the tram. There are children in the car. We must be going!”

“Semenyich, should we load them up or not?” someone asked again.

“No. The cops will escort them back to the plaza. We’re going to patrol the courtyards some more.”

The OMON got into their bus and left.

The cops lifted Venka up by the collar. They asked Sasha and Lyosha to take a step back. “One more step back.” The tram creaked and began to move.

Sasha looked up at the sky and felt slightly dizzy.

Handcuffs snapped closed behind Venka’s and Lyosha’s backs.

“Hands behind your back!”

Cold squeezed his wrists and made his hands go limp.

They were led down the street, hurried along by the policemen’s prodding and cursing while the German Shepherd periodically barked in unison.

Venka lifted his head, sucking air in through his nose with a moist hiss, trying to stop the blood.

Sasha surveyed the fruit of his and his friends’ labour with interest.

The street had been torn into like a bag of toys.

Several tricoloured flags lay on the tarmac, ripped and trampled.

Broken glass, litter from the overturned bins, and flowers thickly littered the street, giving the impression that it had rained glass, rubbish, and flower petals.

Here and there lay chairs, a piece of chain.

All the street lamps were broken.

“They got Yana,” Sasha said, noticing a torn, fur-lined hood on the tarmac, its threading loose. “Yana’s hood. They captured her by her hood.”

Sometimes people passing in the opposite direction surveyed the apprehended with interest, sometimes with anger.

I’ve been taken prisoner, Sasha thought wryly. I am a prisoner of war.

He finished his thought, this time with seriousness: And I might do some time in jail…

The burnt-out car could be seen from a distance. Firefighters were already busy extinguishing it. Water pumped from the hoses; the car emitted viscous smoke.

“What the f**k did you do this for?” One of the policemen, the fat one with emphysema, still couldn’t calm down. “Bloody hell! Did you build any of this? What right do you have to destroy it?”

No one was in a hurry to answer his question.

Lyosha gazed calmly ahead, and you could read on his face that he didn’t feel the need to answer anyone’s questions.

Sasha could have answered, but his busted lip stung, and he kept licking the blood.

Not even a broken nose would deter Venka, who asked, sniffling:

“Did we build any of what?”

“Did you build any of this — this, all of this?”

“Who built it?” Venka asked as if he really wanted to know.

At precisely this moment someone stuck a camera directly in Venka’s face, and the policeman shoved the journalists away, cursing vigorously.

“Hey, can you uncuff me? Let me at least wipe the blood off,” Venka said, taking advantage of the situation. “Or you’ll get an earful for beating up a teenager. My nose is broken. I’m going to file a formal complaint.”

“File your formal complaint. I couldn’t give a damn, understand?” the policeman said. “Go ahead, write it, I don’t care. I’ll give you another good hiding back at the police station.”

Venka sniffed loudly, spat some blood on the pavement, and said nothing more.

The boys of the Founding Fathers were being led out from the courtyards — at times in groups of three or four, at times by the dozen.

Almost all the captives were beaten, covered in red, bloody bruises, their eyes swelling, their noses smashed, and their lips split.

A kid of about fourteen, completely pale, his cheeks trembling, could barely stand — the thick, muddy-red clot on the back of his head was terrifying.

The others held him up by his arms.

Their clothes were torn. Their pale young bodies visible.

Sasha knew all of them — if not by name, then he knew their faces.

Some of them were trying to fool around, but the policemen shouted hysterically, demanding that they shut their mouths.

Soon a whole crowd of “prisoners of war” had gathered, maybe sixty or seventy in total.

The majority of them were not handcuffed.

“Let’s take the bracelets off of our guys,” said the policeman with emphysema to his cronies. He was the senior officer.

“What for?” asked one of them.

“Because.”

His partner shrugged his shoulders, confused — which forced his superior to explain:

“The cosmonauts beat them up, but we’re the ones who’ll take the heat. That one right there, maybe he has a broken nose — we’ll have to fill out the report. We don’t f*****g need this, get it? Let’s walk them to the plaza and then — goodbye.”

They pulled Sasha, Lyosha, and Venka from the crowd.

They struggled for a time, fiddling with the handcuff keys, cursing quietly.

Sasha licked his lip. Venka couldn’t stop the dripping from his. Some blood had dried in his beard, forming a black crust. Lyosha moved spasmodically, looking all around, making it even more difficult to remove his cuffs. He shuffled on the spot and jerked his hands away.

“Keep still, damn it!” they yelled.

Lyosha froze.

The order came: “Get out of here! Move!”

The guys began to lightly jog toward the others in front of them, about thirty or forty metres away. The detainees were tightly surrounded by people in army coats and caps.

“Time to skedaddle,” Lyosha said quietly as soon as there was some space between them and the cops, who were replacing the handcuffs on their belts.

“We can try,” Venka said.

“Let’s go,” Sasha said, and once they had distanced themselves from the formation, they lightly and freely ducked down the nearest side street as if going about their regular business.

As he gained speed, Sasha felt the rush of swinging high on a playground swing.

The grass flashed by, close (he almost fell, pushed himselfup with his arms like a monkey, scratching his palms on the gravel; where did the gravel come from?), then a window, another window (the house rushed past), a baby carriage, a woman pushing it (recoiling from Venka’s messy, bloody face), a police patrol car leaving the courtyard turned the corner (Did they see us? We could have run right smack into them…), a bench (sideways in the road, blocking it for some reason), a fence (can’t make the jump — too high)…

Every second, he was certain that soon, right now, the moving force behind the swing would reach its apex, and someone would grab him by the neck and yank him back.

Sasha jumped off” the fence and fell, rolling over.

Yes, it was seriously high, how did I get over it…?

Venka fell next to him on all fours, his chin black, cracked, bloody; only Rogov landed on his feet, squatting, then immediately straightening up.

Rogov grabbed Venka’s collar, and Venka pushed off with his feet and started running.

Wheezing and panting, long strands of bittersweet saliva flowing from their mouths, they flew through the courtyards until, exhausted and completely dazed, they hid in the entrance of a block of flats.

They squatted, eyes clouded, mouths open, desperately, unsuccessfully trying to breathe. Stuff hung from their mouths. Someone entered the building, but they felt no shame.

* * *

“Son, were you…in Moscow?” His mother’s voice was resigned and mournful in the receiver.

Hearing this voice made Sasha want to claw his own face.

“I was,” he answered dully, raising his busted lip, which made his “was” sound like “wah.”

“You are all wanted by the police,” Mum said, and there was just the faintest flicker of hope in her voice, hope that Sasha would dissuade her, tell her that none of it was true, and that he did nothing wrong.

“It’s all…nonsense,” he said.