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A Novel of Dissimulation
by Robert Littell
"At any moment we are expecting Jesus to return to earth as a
Russian czar," the foreman called back lazily. "We don't want to
miss
it when he comes across the river." He lit a thick Turkish
cigarette
from the embers of an old one and strolled down to the edge of
the
river that ran parallel to the road for several kilometers. It
was called
the Lesnia, which was the name of the dense woods it meandered
through as it skirted Prigorodnaia. At 6:12 a cold sun edged
above the
trees and began to burn off the mustard-thick September haze
that
clung to the river, which was in flood, creating a margin of
shallow
marshes on either side; long blades of grass could be seen
undulating
in the current.
The fisherman's dinghy that materialized out of the haze
couldn't
make it as far as the shore and the three occupants were obliged
to climb
out and wade the rest of the way. The two men wearing
paratrooper
shirts pulled off their boots and socks and rolled their jeans
up to their
knees. The third occupant didn't have to. He was stark naked. A
crown
of thorns, with blood trickling where the skin had been torn,
sat on his
head. A large safety pin attached to a fragment of cardboard had
been
passed through the flesh between his shoulder blades; on the
cardboard
was printed: "The spy Kafkor." The prisoner, his wrists and
elbows
bound behind him with a length of electrical wire, had several
weeks
growth of matted beard on his face, and purple bruises and what
looked
like cigarette burns over his emaciated body. Stepping
cautiously through
the slime until he reached solid ground, looking disoriented, he
regarded
his image in the shallow water of the river while the
paratroopers dried
their feet with an old shirt, then pulled on their socks and
boots and
rolled down their pants.
The spy Kafkor didn't appear to recognize the figure gaping at
him from the surface of the river.
By now the two dozen crewmen, mesmerized by the arrival of the
three figures, had abandoned all interest in road work. Drivers
swung
out of their cabs, the men with rakes or shovels stood around
shifting
their weight from one foot to the other in discomfort. No one
doubted
that something dreadful was about to happen to the naked Christ,
who was being prodded up the incline by the paratroopers. Nor
did
they doubt that they were meant to witness it and spread the
story.
Such things happened all the time in Russia these days.
Back on the stretch of freshly paved road, the team's ironmonger
wiped his sweaty palms on his thick leather apron, then
retrieved a
lunch box from the bullock-cart piled with welding gear and
scrambled
up the slope to get a better view of the proceedings. The
ironmonger,
who was short and husky and wearing tinted steel-rimmed
eyeglasses, flicked open the lid of the lunch box and reached
into it to
activate the hidden camera set up to shoot through a puncture in
the
bottom of a thermos. Casually balancing the thermos on his
knees, he
began to rotate the cap and snap photographs.
Below, the prisoner, suddenly aware that every member of the
road crew was gazing at him, seemed more distressed by his
nakedness
than his plightuntil he caught sight of the crater. It was
roughly the
size of a large tractor tire. Thick planks were stacked on the
ground
next to it. He froze in his tracks and the paratroopers had to
grasp him
by the upper arms and drag him the last few meters. The prisoner
sank
to his knees at the lip of the crater and looked back at the
workers, his
eyes hollow with terror, his mouth open and gulping air with
rattling
gasps through a parched throat. He saw things he recognized but
his
brain, befuddled with chemicals released by fear, couldn't
locate the
words to describe them: the twin stacks spewing plumes of dirty
white
smoke, the abandoned custom's station with a faded red star
painted
above the door, the line of white-washed bee hives on a slope
near a
copse of stunted apple trees. This was all a terrible dream, he
thought.
Any moment now he would become too frightened to continue
dreaming; would force himself through the membrane that
separated
sleep from wakefulness and wipe the sweat from his brow and,
still
under the spell of the nightmare, have trouble falling back to
sleep.
But the ground felt damp and cold under his knees and a whiff of
sulfurous
air stung his lungs and the cold sun playing on his skin seemed
to stir the cigarette burns to pain, and the pain brought home
to him
that what had happened, and what was about to happen, were no
dream.
Excerpted from Legends by Robert Littell. Copyright 2005 by Robert Littell. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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