The Benefactor Index: Epilogue - New-forgotten old
Throughout November, I will be participating in National Novel Writing Month, where the aim is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.
As I am treating this as a writing exercise, anything that I produce will be posted on this blog, one chapter a time. The text will have been edited for spelling and coherence but is otherwise a rough first draft, written at speed. There will be no second draft.
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The Benefactor Index
By Sam Redlark
Prologue - A Sin of Gold
Chapter One - Pochka
Chapter Two - An arrow made of eagle feathers
Chapter Three - The milking of chickens
Chapter Four - Street without drums
Chapter Five - Swans to the snow
Chapter Six - Further from the eye
Chapter Seven - The nephew of vodka
Chapter Eight - The mayor of sidings
Chapter Nine - The enemy of the good
Chapter Ten - If even just one is absent
Chapter Eleven - The friend of an unlucky man
Chapter Twelve - The riches that are in the heart
Chapter Thirteen - What fell off the cart
Epilogue - New-forgotten old
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Epilogue – New-forgotten old
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| image generated by Craiyon |
The chessboard was resting on a bench. One side of it had been anchored in a half-centimetre gap between the planking at the bottom of the reclining backrest. The other side overhung the scrolling edge of the seat. The two players were sitting at a slant at opposite ends of the board, each man supporting himself with a bent elbow draped over the shoulder rail.
They gazed down thoughtfully over the scattered pieces, like a pair of gods who were at loggerheads over the future direction of a shared creation.
“It does not matter,” said Orlov. “Every piece on the board is a pawn. The board that you can see is only part of the board.”
“Go away. You are disturbing my focus,” said the man who considering his next move.
“You are clearly drunk,” said the man's opponent.
“I have clear vision,” said Orlov.
“Take your theories of life away from here,” said the second man.
Orlov ambled over to a corner of the park where a pair of long benches had been pushed into an L-shape against a tree-lined verge. In the distance, the slope of Galaxy Hill was speckled white with daisies.
“The only way to win is not play,” he grumbled.
He lowered himself onto the bench seat but did not lean back.
A young, curly-haired man, who was dressed for the opera, rose tidily to his feet.
“Get you life in order,” he said, as he walked past.
“My affairs are complete,” shouted Orlov.
He brushed his long chestnut fringe out of his eyes.
On the opposite side of the broad walkway, men and women, dressed in bathing suits, were disappearing and reappearing over the banks of the swimming lake. Now that it was Spring, bunting had been strung up on the poles, around the edges of the pontoons that divided the surface into different pools. In the centre of the lake, where the water was deeper, the diving towers had been rebuilt. A man or a woman – he could not tell – somersaulted off one of the high boards. Their entry into the water was screened off by the bobbing pontoons that crowded the foreground.
His fingers fished around for a pair of glasses in the breast pocket of his shirt.
As he put them on, he felt the sensation of being watched.
Off to the side, a few feet away, a pair of jug-earred young boys were staring at him with their mouths half-open. Both wore glasses that magnified their wide eyes to an excessive degree. Their hair was combed down neatly over their foreheads. The boy on the left was wearing a knotted cape that had been fashioned from a Soviet flag. A trio of smaller flags, mounted on wooden sticks, poked out from the trouser pocket of the other boy. Both were holding large compact cameras in front of them, the hard-bodied leather cases still partially attached, dangling like the husks of seed pods.
“I look funny with these on, like a professor, eh?” said Orlov. “You look funny too.”
The two boys said nothing.
“You have come from the parade,” he said. “I was asked to attend but I refused...
“...A parade for the heroes who saved Chairman Sherstov,” he continued, warming to his subject.
“The man of the hour: The patriot Yemelin, who was thought to be dead by all, who returned in a moment of national crisis to prevent an assassination and a coup by enemies of the State.
“The men who assisted him, now richly rewarded with positions reflecting their individual contributions.
“And the martyrs. Those who fell. The man who played the violin as they lined up to shoot him along the border How sweetly he played...”
He placed his left cheek against his shoulder and began to mime playing the violin.
“...The men who fired those fatal shots cannot remove the music from their heads. It haunts them like a sweet ghost. They can no longer perform their common duties.”
The imaginary violin dispersed. He glanced over towards the two boys who continued to stare at him, holding their large cameras in both hands.
“What if I told you it is all chicken shit,” he said, lowering his head. “Everything, from the foundations to the rooftops. Sherstov is not recovering in the countryside. His body is hidden in a morgue somewhere. A year from now, his death will be announced. Behind the scenes they are already preparing the story.
“I was asked to play a role, but I have seen how that turns out. You think it is all over. Decades later, when you are no longer young, the past comes back at you.
“'What do you want out of this?' they asked me. 'You must take something or we will not be able to trust you.'
“'Only small things,' I said: My mother should be given the salvage rights over the whale carcass that washed up near her village. Men should be sent to help her to process the body. Furthermore, I should like her to meet the singer, Vesna Parshin.
“As for me, I am already declared dead. Let me stay that way.
“Now, no-one bothers me. There is money waiting for me in an account when I go there at the beginning of the month. One day things will change at the top and the money will stop coming...”
The flash of a camera caught him in freeze frame.
“I killed a friend,” he confessed. “It was an accident. I feel that it could have been avoided with better judgement. When I fired the gun the sound was everywhere at once, as if the bullet was God. The gunshot can be heard in heaven, even now...
“...One thing I have learned from the experience with Yemelin: History repeats itself within the span of a single lifetime. If you are prepared to wait long enough and watch closely, it comes back around. If you are clever you will catch hold of it inside your cameras.
“I come here to wait for the great circle to complete its revolution, so that I can make the necessary corrections.”
He lifted his head. The space that had been occupied by the two boys was empty.
Rising to his feet, he strode across the avenue towards the lake.
“No city smells like Moscow in Spring. I mean that as a compliment,” he said.
On the bank he stripped down to his underwear.
Slipping into the water, he began to swim towards the pinpoint glare of the cold afternoon sun.
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| image generated by Craiyon |
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