Mortal Happiness: Chapter Ten

For the first time since he was ten years old Jones didn’t know, except in the most general sense, where he was. Surprisingly, the frisson of anxiety and uncertainty this produced felt pleasurable and disorientating. Watching the men around him as they unselfconsciously marked the forest with their voices and fluids, he realised that he envied their automatic functioning. Not for the first time he wondered if other men had some secret ability, some off/on switch that he’d lost, or maybe had never had. Now, not knowing felt almost relaxing; as if he’d handed over a part of his brain.

By late afternoon the forest was darker and silence was starting to settle around the men as they went about their chores. The bivouac had a form and shape familiar to Jones from years as a reporter and photographer of war, though most of the conflicts he’d covered just happened to be in open space - violence with a view. He reminded himself that this was not war; this was something new that required a different attitude.

He thought back to his last conversation with Never about his lack of journalistic interest. It was true of course. The man had a good eye, he’d make a great reporter. What he couldn’t explain to Never, and didn’t entirely understand himself, was that he was deeply interested in everything happening around him, wanted to feel and taste it. He just had no interest in writing about it yet.

Something about the surroundings was preventing him shaking off the last of his sleep. The tall, stiff pines encroached so that he felt encased in wood; the scent of amber sap and bruised needles reminded him of incense, ritual and preserved things. In order to lose the prickling sense of discomfort that had been with him since jolting awake in the truck hours earlier he walked away from the clearing, conscious of Never’s eyes on his back. And not only Never’s.

Standing alone among the soaring trees he still felt observed, which he knew was ridiculous. Looking through the great nave of vertical trunks that led into deeper and deeper darkness he thought again of monsters and ghosts. What if Ivan was right? What if he really had seen Heriot standing in a Baghdad street? It was ridiculous and impossible and yet the image Ivan had conjured up refused to leave. He knew he could conjure up Heriot’s face, maybe even his voice, if he wanted to. But he didn’t want to, not here.

Krasin’s voice cracked distantly through the trees and Jones remembered that Ivan would be in Moscow by tomorrow, would probably already have his message explaining the absence of future communication. He wondered what Marshall Kossov would do without his reports, but his concern was muted. Few people were as politically astute as the Kossovs; if anyone survived a crisis it would be them. He smiled. Christ, if Ivan saw him now - pretending to be something he wasn’t, in a uniform a size too small - he would never live it down.

Mostly he found himself wondering why he’d ever wanted to be here in this place with these men. Was it boredom that had made him first mention peacekeepers in the Caucasus to Ivan? Was it, he wondered, simply a lack of options? His fingers traced patterns on tree bark as he attempted to unravel what it meant to have no choice. He’d chosen to come here, he felt sure of that. And now, if he could choose to be away from here, would he leave? He didn’t know the answer to that question and wondered if that was what it meant to have no choice.

For the first time in years he thought of Northern Ireland and his job as a news researcher at the very beginning of his career. He’d been twenty-three when he walked down the Shankill Road resenting the traffic and elderly women with shopping trolleys. He’d wanted the 70’s: paratroopers darting from doorway to doorway, rocks smashing windscreens and petrol bombs exploding in sheets of imagined colour. Even at the time he’d known he was being was ridiculous, but the contrast between his black and white TV memories and the reality of Belfast in the late eighties had been more than a disappointment.

His mind swerved from thought to random thought and Jones wondered if he needed to eat. He leant back against a tree, feeling the soft, dry bark under his fingers. This whole Russian thing was starting to feel like a surreal drama, like Chekov on low-grade acid. His performance was being eyed by Krasin and his bullies, but mostly by Never, the critic, who seemed to actually be enjoying the show. Once he’d have taken pleasure in the drama, possibly played to it, but recently he’d found it hard to be interested even in another’s interest, as if he was winding down. That’s what this peacekeeper thing had been about of course; a new interest, something that would stimulate him to see the world and himself in a fresh way. Something not about bloated corpses and blood.

He didn’t remember exactly when death and destruction became his thing or why, except there was never any shortage of work. Despite disappointment, the grey wet line of the Shankill had become an unexpected pointer on his road to Damascus. His piece had turned into a three-page spread in the Observer Magazine: two thousand of his own words and eight of his own photographs. For a while after that he’d been something of a sensation with editors who’d loved the violence of his prose and his images. He’d deliberately sought risks that older, more sensible journalists wouldn’t consider. But most important of all – and he’d known and traded on it right from the start – he’d always been that rare and money-saving commodity, a photographer who could really write, a writer who could capture great images.

In the dim light he braced his back against the trunk and looked up to where the tree’s crown merged into the remote, green-black canopy. Without looking at what he was doing he pulled at the bark under his right hand. A piece came away like the icing off a Christmas cake. Delicate white filaments lined the scented shape, nursery perhaps of some insect life he’d just annihilated.

He heard the soft creaking of crushed pine needles.

‘What are you looking at?’ Shy Russian words. Not Never then, which made a change.

‘Ants.’

The voice moved closer and Jones recognised Grigory Grishov, a young lad from the truck.

‘Why are you looking at them in the dark?’

‘It was lighter when I started.’ Jones took out a cigarette, offering one to the boy who accepted, smiling. Jones lit the cigarettes then held the flame near the bark in his hand. Shocked by the light and heat tiny ants ran in panic, or maybe they’d been running before and he couldn’t see it.

The boy looked at him with the sort of wonder that suggested an unremarkable IQ and asked,

‘Are ants interesting?’

‘Sometimes. They remind me of people, the way they run around as though they have important things to do but can’t remember what.’ He drew hard on his cigarette, considered blowing the smoke over the insects then changed his mind.

Grishov laughed, his expression stating clearly that he thought Jones a lunatic, but a harmless one.

Jones said, ‘Have you ever been in a plane?’

Grishov shook his head. ‘No, but I want to. Airborne training is in a few months and then I will go in many planes.’

‘When you look down from the air this is what people look like.’ Jones said, indicating the ants. He carefully fitted the bark back onto the tree, knowing it would never re-adhere. He remembered how an infant cousin had pulled earthworms to pieces then wept bitterly when they wouldn’t stick together again.

Seeing the boy looking at his name-patch Jones said, ‘Did you know Lepov, Grigory?’

Grishov nodded. ‘We were friends, though he was older than me. I liked him.’

‘I thought he was eighteen,’ Jones said.

‘No, he was twenty-three. I remember.’

‘Were you sad when he died?’ Jones knew it was a shit question but suddenly every journalistic instinct was twitching.

Grishov paused as if considering his answer. ‘At first I was sad. Then the Sergeant told us Lepov was a spy and that no-one should be sad. So I stopped.’

Before Jones could ask about spies, Grishov said brightly, ‘There’s food cooking, I can smell it. We should go back or it will all be gone.’

Mind racing, Jones followed Grishov out of the trees to where the men sat round the fire, many of them flushed with heat and vodka from unlabelled plastic bottles.

The food when it came was the worst he’d eaten for a long time and he wished he’d brought vodka to kill his own taste buds. With Krasin present, no one offered him any and Never apparently didn’t drink. One of his first reports from Chechnya had been on dysentery and hepatitis among the Russian troops stationed there. Recalling his own print he ate little, avoiding the matted, grey meat. The bread was hard, the potatoes slush and he thought of the cafes of war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan with real feeling.

Food was not something Jones found important in itself, he’d never feared hunger. But the fusion of taste and smell was something magical, the harmony of these particular senses a thing he took real pleasure in. In Kabul he’d visited his favourite café almost daily, risking snipers and car bombs for the lamb stewed with almonds and saffron and the tiny cups of coffee, thick with cardamom and sugar. One day he’d arrived to find the place overflowing with foreign correspondents tucking into lunch. He’d walked away and never gone back.

‘You don’t like our food?’ Krasin’s mouth was half-filled with flesh, his wide mouth shiny with grease.

Jones felt Never tense beside him. ‘I don’t eat meat,’ he lied.

Krasin barked, a strange choking sound and some of the men laughed at the idea of choosing not to eat meat.

‘Why not eat meat?’

Jones paused, a piece of lumpen bread halfway to his mouth. ‘Science suggests it makes people aggressive and shortens life.’

Krasin wiped his chin with the back of his hand. ‘Lots of people have short lives.’

‘All the more reason to make ones own as long and as healthy as possible.’

‘What do you want with us, English?’

It was starting just as Never said it would.

‘What you want Sergeant – the success of this enterprise, peace in the Caucasus, the glory of Russia.’

Krasin sneered. ‘You’re a bad liar, English.’

‘On the contrary,’ Jones said, smiling at Krasin and feeling the adrenaline inch its way up his spine. Any second the cold-hot blast would hit the back of his head. ‘I’m a very good liar. It’s my job.’

Never sighed loudly. Some of the men laughed and were silenced by Krasin’s growl.

‘Why are you here?’ There was more menace now. ‘To tell the world what Russian soldiers are like, what they eat, how they piss? Yes, I saw your photography when we stopped at the roadside. You are watching us, Mr. English. Why?’

‘I think it’s the other way around.’ Jones said, ‘And I feel I should tell you - I’m not English.’

Never said, ‘Mr. Jones is British.’

Krasin gestured violently with one hand as if brushing away the distinction. ‘English, British, you’re the same to me. Someone who watches, but does nothing himself. You have your camera, but can you use a gun? If there is trouble ahead it is we who will help you, we who will save you from enemies, even though your think you are better than us.’ He nodded at the men around the fire anticipating their support. ‘But perhaps when enemies come we will be looking the other way and forget about Mr. English.’

Jones spoke directly to Krasin. ‘I have worked on the front-line in at least twenty different wars and I have never needed a gun. I understand this is not a front-line situation so I should have no need for a weapon, nor need anyone to protect me.’ He looked at the faces, red in the fire light, then back to Krasin. ‘I have spent almost half my life around soldiers, men like you and I have great respect for warriors.’ He looked at the faces again, this time catching each man’s eye. ‘I am not watching you.’ He looked back at Krasin. ‘I’m here because your government invited me.’ Not strictly true, he thought, but near enough. ‘I wish no offence when I say you do not interest me. If I wanted to watch soldiers there are many places I could be right now, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Congo. I’m not here to watch you – what could you show me that I haven’t seen before? You’re just soldiers doing your job and I’m just another reporter doing his. We are more alike than you might think.’

Krasin was on his feet, face aflame under light, cropped hair, finger stabbing the air. ‘No!’ he shouted, ‘you are not like us. We …’ he gestured at the men around him, ‘are as old as the first men. We have always been here.’

Jones gazed at him with mild astonishment. The man seemed genuinely enraged.

‘You are what? A journalist?’ Krasin bellowed, scorn vying with volume. ‘What is that? Without me and these men here you have no life, no work - you have said as much yourself. So what are you to me, what use have you, you watcher? You are nothing!’ He laughed, suddenly calm. ‘But I’ll find a use for you. You’ll earn your bread and potatoes.’ He walked away from the fire, stopping to light a cigarette, his cupped hands red behind the flame.

Never turned on Jones, whispering, ‘You’re a fool, he could kill you and no one would ever find your body. Remember that the next time you decide to amuse yourself.’

‘What the fuck did you want me to say?’ Jones whispered back, ‘That was one of my more moderate and truthful efforts.’

Before Never could reply Grishov spoke, shy in front of the older men. ‘You were in Chechnya?’

Jones glanced at Never who returned the look with scorn.

‘Don’t believe what this man tells you,’ Never said to Grishov, his eyes still on Jones, ‘he’s already admitted that lying is his job.’

‘But if that was a lie, shouldn’t we believe him?’ Grishov looked earnestly at Never, who laughed with the rest.

‘Believe what you like Grigory, I suspect Mr. Jones isn’t so sure of the truth himself.’

Jones looked at his fingers, at the bark under his nails. ‘I was in Chechnya, in ’96 and ’99. Were any of you there?’ Looking round the circle of men he grinned. ’I don’t recognise anyone.’

A small, thin man with a bandana tied around his head said, ‘Some of us were there. Both times.’

‘Tell us about it then,’ Grishov said eagerly to Jones, ‘tell us about the fighting - I can never get these to talk about it.’ He jerked his thumb at the small man and his companions.

Jones looked at the boy’s excited face and thought of other Russian kids, burned, blinded, mutilated, force-marched near naked through the frozen streets of Grozny. Blue-white corpses with words from the Koran carved into their flesh. He thought of naked Chechen men, every bone in every limb shattered by Russian conscripts wielding metal bars. He shook his head.

‘Your comrades here are right. It wasn’t a good place. Maybe it’s better not to remember it.’

Grishov looked disappointed. ‘Tell us about other places then? Everywhere else you’ve been. We have time. Don’t we, sir?’ He turned to Never, who smiled and just shook his head. The other men laughed at Grishov’s enthusiasm, at the way he always made the truth sound simple.

Jones wondered where to start. At twenty-five editors had considered him too inexperienced for the first Gulf War so he went as a freelancer and saw things other reporters did not. He’d witnessed the death of Yugoslavia in Sarajevo and Priština as a freelancer working for the London Times and Magnum. He was in Congo when Kabile took over. That had been his first sight of red blood against black skin, which even now always seemed worse than on white. Algeria had been bad, though by then he’d got used to seeing pieces of women, babies skewered from genitals to fontanelle like limbed kebabs and men bifurcated in ways that stretched the imagination. In a mediaeval, town south of Oran he’d been less than a hundred metres behind a detachment of government soldiers when they walked into a narrow alleyway and an IAA ambush. By the time he’d caught up the ground was littered with offal, the whitewashed walls plastered with hair and fat. His film had been all used up before he noticed the smell. And he remembered Grozny too, though he wouldn’t talk about it now. In ninety six he’d been holed up in the ruined city with Maskhadov and his rebels for weeks at a time, writing in thin, school notebooks when his digital recorder got crushed during a raid. He’d learnt a lot about Russians then, things Ivan Kossov could never have taught him. What made them break; how they looked on a ten-day empty stomach, too weak to flinch from the gun at their head. During the second war in ninety nine he’d watched the Russians take a bloody revenge for that earlier humiliation he’d recorded so meticulously.

Where to start now? ‘A week ago I was in Baghdad and before that in Afghanistan,’ he began.

‘Sergeant Krasin was in Afghanistan from eighty three until the end,’ the man with the bandana said, pride in his voice. ‘None of the rest of us is old enough to remember that. Grigory here wasn’t even born. So, what’s it like there now?’

‘Sand!’ Grishov said looking eagerly at Jones, ‘and guys in long dresses?’

Avoiding Never’s eyes he started recounting his Kabul reports in suitably modified form.

Alone, Jones thought about Lepov and Grishov’s revelation. The boy had clearly believed what he was saying. Jones went over Grishov’s story, then compared it with Never’s. And something else was nagging at the back of his mind, something he’d noted at the time but then forgotten.

He was resting with his back to a tree when Never shook him hard.

‘Get up, quickly,’ Never reached a hand to pull him up. The sky was still light but the sun had gone.

‘What is it?’ Jones asked, then saw that Never’s face was black with camouflage.

‘Orders from base, “Make a reconnaissance over the border. Check possible terrorist positions.”’ Never grunted, ‘At least that’s what Krasin tells us the orders say … I haven’t been shown them of course. These mountains are so high the signals are coming through scrambled. It might have said, “Return to base”.’

Jones stared blankly, ‘You woke me to say the signals are fucked?’

‘I thought you’d be grateful,’ Never said sharply. ‘I’ve noticed you don’t like falling asleep.’

Jones was about to sit down again, but Never grabbed his arm.

‘Don’t be a prick. I woke you because Krasin’s already organised the recon. He’s taking six – and you.’ Never flapped his hands helplessly, ‘Christ what a mess! Why didn’t you just keep your mouth shut earlier? I warned you didn’t I?’

‘Are you worried he’ll try and kill me? Is that what you think this is about?’

‘Oh, I’m not a worried about you,’ Never interrupted. ‘I’m worried about the others he’s dragging with him, every one of them more innocent and more expendable than you.’

Jones said, ‘And I thought you were starting to like me.’

Never glared, ‘It’s not a fucking game, Jones.’ Then, ‘I expected something like this, just not yet.’ He looked at Jones with undisguised accusation. ‘Now I wonder even more about your role because I can’t believe we’re taking some foreigner, some reporter, on a recon. It makes no sense.’

Ignoring Never’s words Jones said, ‘Are you’re coming too?’

‘Krasin included me in the team, which is immediately suspect. Usually he wants me as far away from him as possible.’

‘Look,’ Jones said, ‘I never meant to make things difficult for you.’

Never pulled a small flat pot from a pocket and smeared blacking across Jones’s face in cross-hatched stripes. ‘I know you didn’t mean to, but you have. Remember that next time – if there is a next time. At least he’s not taking Grishov - he’s scared of the dark - and Yagin has night-blindness so he’s staying too.’ He pointed to where there was movement on the other side of the clearing. ‘We’d better get over there before he disturbs the whole camp. He’s half drunk by the way, so say nothing at all.’

Jones picked up his camera bag and followed Never to where Krasin waited, armed with a variety of weapons some of which Jones has never seen before.

‘So,’ Krasin grinned, his teeth strange monuments in the camouflaged darkness of his face. ‘Who knows the way?’ Stepping up to Jones he pulled off his camera bag. ‘Won’t be needing this.’ He flung the bag at Grishov who waited, shivering in his shirt, looking embarrassed and relieved to be left behind.

Jones said nothing.

They left the clearing and headed into the forest. Krasin led and Never brought up the rear. Jones noticed Krasin playing with an old-fashioned compass and humming Stenka Razin. Jones knew the song forward and backward, practiced during his vodka binges with Kossov; but he didn’t join in.

Excluding the possibility that the Sergeant might kill him deliberately, Jones felt safe enough. Krasin was a professional, albeit a juiced-up, drunken one. Feeling the tiny infrared camera hanging inside the striped vest he congratulated himself on finding an adventure at last. Overhead the sky was a darkening blue. If it stayed clear there’d be a moon later.