Assassination of E. Hemingway

Prologue If you’re reading this, you may - perhaps - need a translation if your Russian isn’t up to the nuances. В течение длительного времени, мертвая точка. It means, for a long time, dead. They’re coming for me. It’s only a matter of time. I don’t even bother locking the doors at night. If they want me, well… Fate? Chance? Destiny? Please do not mourn for me or celebrate my life. I’m quietly living out my string. I made my choices and am at peace with them. Can many say the same? I’m too drained for philosophy, speculating, wondering if my life was the result of accident or fate, or perhaps both, if I think about it. Passing on a sidewalk, you might have noted my bushy eyebrows. Years ago, I gave up trying to tame them. That, along with my dark skin, might’ve suggested Slavic to you, and you wouldn’t have been far off the mark. I was too short to be called tall and too tall to be called short. My best attribute was looking like an everyman, someone you would pass without remembering. I’ve been known by many names, of course, but that was the nature of my profession. Maybe my beginnings will help you understand me better. There’s a saying when I was a young boy in my home village. “Ничего хорошего в Одильск никогда не приходит, Russian for nothing good ever comes to Odilsk. Born on 4 February 1899, what did anyone know about the whirlwinds of change that the next century would bring? The collective memory of those events is now swept into the dust-bin of history. My name is Slavsky Pavel. My Patronymic, Ivanovich. My Papa and friends called me Pasha. My home was on the other side of the mountains, our Russian version of what you Americans would call living on the wrong side of the tracks. My small village of Odilsk was perched on a dirt road, a motley collection of huts. None would be mistaken for a dacha. Looking east, I could see for what seemed like hundreds of miles stretching over a vast plain. To the west lies a forest so dense it was difficult to walk through. Giant trees and dense undergrowth made hiding places for our version of hide and seek. The village was there because of those woods. Men from my village hewed trees, cutting them to be shipped to the Tzar’s warehouse. The Tzar made lots of money from the wood. The woodcutters, not so much My first memory? From the beginning, I’ve lived with guilt, drawing from that wellspring of Ruskey entrenched melancholia. I was told I’d killed my mother. She died three days after I was born. I grew up hearing the whispers, blaming me. A heavy burden for a young boy to carry, eh? I remember another day. 15 January, a few days away from my sixteenth birthday. Maybe it started with a neighbor who coveted our backyard for a vegetable garden. It could have been someone with a grudge, angry at my father for some reason. My father could be an unpleasant man when he was drunk, which was most of the time. It didn’t matter, the who. What mattered was what. It may have been the Tzar having an itch he wanted to scratch with our tiny village. In any case, the Cossacks turned up one day. They couldn’t have been looking for Jews. The last pogrom sent them packing a long time ago. Well, there was one exception. The young man was a village secret, my close friend Mikhail was Jewish. His parents and brother weren’t so lucky. Their vanishing during the last pogrom remains a mystery. The Cossacks rode in, looking grand, sitting back-straight, sunlight flashing from their daggers. “Look at that pair,” Papa said in a low voice. Then my father turned strangely quiet as the event unfolded. He pointed with his chin towards two men on horseback, following the Cossacks. I still remember their eyes. They looked like marbles as they glanced in my direction. Hard piercing eyes, black as coal. “Okhrana,” Papa whispered, sounding exceedingly sober. “See the way they looked at us?” He moved to shield me from their view. “It will get dark soon. Then, you leave. Pack all you can carry.” I heard something in his voice. Fear? Papa was never afraid of anything or anyone. Now I heard and smelled his fear. I nodded my understanding. “Go through the forest. Keep walking west.” The sun reflected from the moisture forming in the corner of his eye. Is he crying? Yes, he is. “Remember the forked tree, the one divided by a lightning?” I nodded, “Turn left and follow that trail into the forest. Walk until you come to the mountains. After that, cross over and keep going west. Be careful who you ask for help.” We all knew the dreaded Okhrana. The Tsar’s secret police could arrest someone who looked at them in the wrong way. My father apparently did that. I looked to the west, seeing ominous-looking clouds flooding over jagged mountains, seeping through a pass formed by two peaks, snaking down a valley between trees, marching in a direct line towards Odilsk. A wall of threatening black clouds framed the storm heading our way. The sun went into hiding, and darkness came quickly that night. My father handed me a leather bag. “It’s all the coins I have,” he said. His voice was soft, unusual for him to appear sober. “They are coming for both of us, but you will be gone. Stay gone, my son.”