“An old soldier coming down,
Coming down to town.
All young soldier boys
Salute and stand your ground.”
“The Ballad of the Old Soldier”, author unknown, ca. 15th century, trans. Jordan Bauman
30 June, 7:15 AM, Czernograd, King Nicholas Bridge
Like a dog returning to his vomit, he thought. Was that from the Bible? Or from somewhere else? He didn’t know. He didn’t know either why he had come back. What was there left to discover all this time later, after the whole area has been swept clean by the police probably twice over?
It looked so banal – so forgettable - without the yellow crime scene tape, police cars, the cops milling around, the transient onlookers. Without the body, face down in the dirt, the tip of a stake protruding through the back, just off the left shoulder blade.
It was almost four days – it would be exactly four days in a few minutes’ time to the moment when he parked his car and walked towards the bridge, where all the action was. He could see a pair of joggers running along the river not very far from where they’d found Maciar. As if nothing had happened. The warehouse and workshops along the street were still shut, too early to start the working day. Many would remain padlocked today too, the victims of an economic slow-down. Nowe Miasto, the New Town, they called it. It has never been the most prosperous or the most inviting part of Czernograd. The only thing that was ever new about it was the burning need – necessity, some would say - to banish to the other side of the river the unsightly spill-over of growth, out of sight for the more delicate eyes of the old capital.
What a shit place to live and work. What a shit place to die.
As he suspected, walking around in the shadow of the bridge, around the pylons, between the street and the river’s edge and then back again, did not enlighten him or bring any new revelations. There were no answers in the geometry of the killing ground, no vibes bouncing endlessly between the concrete, steel and the tarmac, waiting to be picked up by his sensitive journalistic antennae.
Igor slowly made his way back to his car. He was just about to open the door when a rasping voice, like sandpaper on the wall, jolted him out of his thought.
“Son, can you spare a tallar for an old soldier?”
He turned around and looked into a limbo.
The laneway between two buildings was narrow, no more than two metres wide, and despite the early morning sunshine the light seemed to penetrate only a few feet into the dusky canyon.
Igor took a step closer. He has heard from his grandmother of talking caves in the thickly forested mountains down south – some of them were still supposed to converse with a lucky few cross-country walkers – but he has never heard of a talking laneway in Czernograd.
“Or maybe two tallers, eh?” the voice again, and a chortle.
In the twilight zone where the light of the sunshine and the darkness of the alley met and fought inconclusively, Igor saw a mound of rubbish piled up in overflowing plastic bags. Then the mound turned to him, and he saw a face, dark and creased, forty or a hundred years old, the whites of eyes burning amid suntan and grime and a toothless mouth stretched open in a grin.
Igor walked over closer and hit the wall of stench; an unwashed body, piss, rotting garbage, raw alcohol. He squatted down, maybe two metres from the man. His early breakfast of coffee and nicotine was stirring uneasily in his gut.
“Hello, father,” he said.
“Hello, son,” replied the mound.
“Do you live here, father?” Igor asked.
The man laughed, or at least Igor thought it was laughter. “I live here, I live everywhere. All this-“ a gloved hand emerged from the tangle and drew a shaky arch in the air, “-is my kingdom. My magic kingdom.”
“Have you been here long?” Igor asked. He was trying to resist the urge to cover his nose and mouth with his arm.
“A tallar for the truth?” said the man.
And two tallars for an even better truth? Igor thought. It would not be the first time he was paying for a story, except this one was not going to get written. Yet. Or maybe never. Which maybe made it all more ethical in the end.
He reached for his wallet and took out a coin. He flicked it around in his fingers for a moment and then tossed it toward the bottom of the mound. It landed on something soft, rebounded and fell onto the laneway’s concrete with a loud cling.
“I’m an old soldier,” the man said. “I’ve been here long. Longer than Czernograd.”
And crazier than bat shit, Igor thought.
“And what about the last few days?” he asked. “Do you remember when all the cars and people – police - were here?”
The man laughed again, then coughed and spat. Igor thought he was lucky he could only hear it.
“Ah, cars, people, plenty of cars, plenty of people.”
“Did anyone talk to you?”
“I’m an old soldier,” the man said. “Sometimes I let them see me, sometimes they think I’m not here.”
“And the night, before the cars and the people, were you here?”
The man’s mouth twisted, and he pursed his lips with a smack. “A tallar for the truth,” he said.
With resignation Igor slowly reached inside his wallet again.
“And two tallars for an even better truth.”
Jesus. Igor quickly steadied himself on the balls of his feet. Did the old man really say that, or did he just imagine it?
The eyes stared back at him, but he couldn’t see any answers there.
He took out two coins and tossed them at the old man’s feet.
“That night,” the man said. “Quiet. Then three cars come. Three cars stop. The lights go out. They walk with flashlights. To the river. Then they come back. The lights go on. Two cars go away. One car stays. Quiet.”
Three cars. Maciar’s last ride, in style, his car, plus an escort of two. To make sure everything was done properly.
“What cars? Makes? Colours?”
“Cars,” the man repeated. “Night cars.”
God knows what that meant. Night cars? Black cars?
“No sounds? No screams?” Igor asked.
“Quiet.”
It shouldn’t have been quiet. They scream when they die, don’t they? At least that’s what people used to say. That to hear a vampire die could drive a man insane. People used to say many things. But the screaming part was true. He was pretty sure of it. When he just started on the newspaper, an old hand who was about to retire had told him of the day when he witnessed a vamp being executed for a string of murders. And he screamed, dear God, he screamed. Wouldn’t you when a stake was driven into your warm beating heart for goodness’ sakes? A stupid piece of wood taking away your gift of eternal life. The pain and the anger. But Maciar did not scream. What did they do to make him die in silence?
Igor snapped back from his thoughts. The old man was still staring at him.
He reached inside his wallet and took a twenty tallar note. Then he took a deep breath and crawled towards the man. He deposited the banknote at the bottom of the mound, at the man’s feet, like an offering to an old god. The man did not look down at the gift. His toothless mouth kept smiling.
Only when he was back to where he started, Igor allowed himself to take another breath.
“Thank you, father,” he said, standing up.
The man was silent. Igor waited for him to say something, but after a moment when no words passed, he turned around and walked back to his car.
He was about to open the door – again – when the old man spoke again.
“Find the night men, young soldier boy,” he said. “You have to find the night men. All of them. Before they do harm to the old soldier’s kingdom.”
He drove off, speeding through the yet quiet streets of Nowe Miasto, desperate to get as far away as he could.