Our Game

Nonetheless with each new arrival men entered by this doorway, and once inside, they greeted other men, shook hands, embraced and faced each other and prayed, then sat and talked and came and left with the gravity of centuries, and like Magomed and Issa, they had dressed themselves for ceremony: men in tall sheepskin hats and 1920s breeches, men in broad Caucasian belts and knee boots and gold watchchains, men in skullcaps with white or green bands, men with their kinjals at their sides, holy men with beards, and one old man resplendent in his bourka—the great felt cape more like a tent than a coat, where by tradition his children can hide themselves from storms or danger. But look as I might, I saw no tall Englishman with an errant forelock and an easy grace and a taste for other people's hats.

Checheyev had dismounted. Behind me, Magomed and Issa leapt lightly to the ground, but Cramer after too many years on foot was welded to his saddle. I tried to wrestle free, but my feet were locked in the stirrups—until Magomed, once more coming to my aid, first lifted me in the air, then tipped me into his arms and set me on my feet, then righted me again before I fell. Young boys took our horses.

We entered the courtyard, Checheyev leading and Issa at my side, and as we entered I heard them offer a salaam in Arabic and saw the men who were sitting before us rise, and those who were already standing brace themselves as if called to order, until all stood before us in a half circle, the oldest to the right of us; and of those before us, it was the man on our left, a giant of a man in a tunic jacket and knee breeches, who took upon himself the responsibility of all of them. And I knew he was the chief mourner and the most afflicted, though his face was set in a grim rejection of grief that reminded me of Zorin with his dying mistress. And I knew that just as there were no greetings here, so there were to be no demonstrations of unmanliness, or unseemly grief, and that it was a time for stoicism and bearing and mystical communion and vengeance, not women's tears.

Checheyev had spoken again, and this time I knew that he had called a prayer, for though no prayer was spoken, all the men around me cupped their hands together in a begging bowl and raised them in oblation and for a minute or so lowered their eyes and moved their lips and muttered occasional and simultaneous amens. After they had prayed they made the washing gesture that I was by now familiar with, as if rubbing the prayer into their faces and at the same time cleansing them in preparation for the next one. As I watched them, I realised I was suiting my own hands to their gestures, partly out of a kind of spiritual courtesy and partly because, just as the landscape had assumed me, so had these people, and I could no longer distinguish between gestures that were familiar to me and others that were not.

From my right an old man said something in Arabic, which was taken up by each man separately, not as words but as a patter of lips endorsed by amens. I heard Issa from close beside me, speaking clear English in his usual voice:

"They are blessing his martyrdom," he said.

"Whose?" I whispered—yet why did I speak so quietly when no one else was lowering his voice?

"Bashir Haji's," he replied. "They are asking God to forgive him and be merciful to him and bless his gazavat. They are swearing vengeance. Vengeance is our job, not God's."

Is Larry a martyr too? I was asking. But not aloud.

Checheyev was speaking to the giant, and through the giant to all of them.

"He is saying it is in God's hands that we live and die," Issa translated firmly in English.

There was another moment of muttered quiet, and another washing of the faces. Who lives? I begged. Who dies? But once more not aloud.

"What else is he saying?" I asked, for by then the word Larry had passed through me like a knife, spoken by Checheyev and taken up by everybody in the line, from the giant on the left to the oldest and most venerable on the right. And some were nodding at me and others were shaking their heads and tut-tutting and the giant was staring at me with pursed lips.

"He is telling them you are a friend of Larry the Englishman," said Issa.

"What else?" I implored him, for the giant had spoken some words to Checheyev, and I had heard more amens along the line.

"They are saying that God takes the dearest and the best," Issa replied. "Men and women equally."

"So has God taken Larry?" I shouted, though I was only speaking at their level.

Checheyev had swung round and was addressing me, and I saw both anger and a warning in his wracked face. And I knew that if I had not done Larry the favour of killing him before, I had done it here, in a place further from the earth than Priddy, and closer to the sky.

Checheyev's voice had acquired an operational urgency.