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‘I can hear – I can – ’
Illya’s voice sounds thick and slurred. But it’s Illya’s voice, thank god. He’s still talking. Napoleon has such a powerful urge to try to move, so strong it’s like ants in his bones, but he knows he has to try to stay still. Movement might unsettle all of this rubble above them. Movement might kill them both. Illya sounds so close, but he might as well be miles away.
‘What do you hear, honey?’ he asks.
Every time he breathes he feels as though he were being stabbed. There’s something wet under him and he’s not sure if it’s piss or blood, or both. He knows he’s badly hurt, but he’s afraid Illya is worse. If he could put himself in Illya’s body for a moment he would, just so he could know something of how bad it is.
‘What do you hear?’ he asks again. One of his ears is jammed against something rough and spiking, a mix of concrete probably, and everything on that side is muffled.
‘Listen,’ Illya says. ‘Listen. Can you hear them?’
He strains to hear something. Rescuers, dogs, cars. Anything that might suggest human help.
‘What can you hear?’ he asks again.
There’s silence, then Illya says, ‘Birds.’
His voice is wondering, as if the sound of birds were the most incredible thing.
‘Don’t you hear them, Napoleon? The birds…’
The birds had all been quiet, Napoleon is sure. He can’t remember that sound before this happened. But, he remembers muzzily, it had been night. Everything had been dark. He and Illya had been creeping, as silent as it is possible to be, clad in black clothes, black knit hats, trying to find the right room.
What was it that had happened? They must have tripped something. He wasn’t aware of anything, a trip wire or anything. Maybe they’d crossed a laser beam. There’s no way of knowing. But suddenly all of the darkness was ripped apart with flashing light that was there and then gone, and then there had been the grinding, screaming, slamming sounds of destruction, and for a while he hadn’t been conscious of anything at all.
‘You hear birds?’ he asks, straining to hear them himself. One ear full of dust and rubble, and the other straining to hear. ‘Illya – ’
‘It means it’s dawn,’ Illya says.
Dawn. God. What time had it been when the explosion happened? He should have had a sharp awareness of the time because in their business timing is everything, but he’s finding it hard to remember. They’ve been lying here all night.
‘What – time was – ’ he asks, and feels as if he’s being stabbed in the chest again. He can taste blood in his mouth.
‘It must be dawn,’ Illya says, and Napoleon knows he hasn’t understood, but he doesn’t feel he has the energy to elaborate. It doesn’t really matter when the building came down. What matters is that they’re still here, and still alive.
Suddenly he hears it. A bright, liquid sound, something beyond human music. A trilling up and down, and then a series of cheeps.
‘Birds,’ he says, and he feels that same sense of wonder that he had heard in Illya’s voice.
It seems so incredible, so bizarre, that in this horrendous situation there is something as normal as bird song.
‘People,’ Illya says.
‘You hear someone?’
Oof. That little jolt of excitement is too much. He must have tried to move, and suddenly he’s choking, spitting blood, riven with pain.
‘’Poleon?’ Illya asks, voice rising in concern. ‘Napoleon?’
‘’m all right,’ he replies when he can. ‘Sorry. Sorry, Illya.’
‘No. You. I’m worried about you.’
‘Did you hear people?’ Napoleon asks, because he doesn’t have the time or capacity to be worried about himself.
‘No. Dawn, birds. Means people will be up soon. Maybe someone – ’
It’s not too vain a hope, after all. This building wasn’t in a built up area, but it’s visible from the road. Perhaps soon someone will see. Perhaps, soon, someone will come.
He’s lying there, just listening to those far off sounds. Sometimes they come closer. Maybe there are birds pecking over the ruins, looking for food. It’s too long before he realises that Illya hasn’t spoken in a while, and he catches in breath, suddenly afraid.
‘Illya?’ he asks sharply.
‘Yes,’ Illya responds. He sounds very tired. ‘Yes, ’Poleon, I’m all right.’
He breathes out. Everything tastes of dust. There’s grit in his mouth with the blood. His legs are pinned and he thinks the lower parts are numb, but his thighs hurt with a pain that swells and levels and fades and swells again. He tries opening his eyes and feels the scratch and irritation of grit in them. There’s no point in opening them because it’s totally dark under all of this. He thinks it’s dark, anyway. A sudden panic rises.
‘Illya, is it dark?’ he asks.
‘Dawn,’ Illya says again.
‘No, no. In here. Is it dark?’
There’s a long silence, then Illya says, ‘Yes, Napoleon. It’s dark. Too much on us…’
A huge sense of relief. Probably, then, he’s not blind, unless they’re both blind, perhaps, or – There’s no sense in thinking about it. Of course it’s dark under here.
God, how he needs to move. It comes over him in waves, and suddenly the wave is so strong, drowning him, crushing him. He makes some kind of noise, some kind of whimper or cry that comes out of his mouth like vomit, long like a siren call.
‘Napoleon,’ Illya calls. ‘Napoleon?’
He tries to steady himself. He can’t. Panic won’t help anything, but it keeps coming over him. He keeps making that noise, an animal sound, and Illya keeps calling his name.
Then there’s something against his fingers. A miracle. His fingers feel cold and half-numb, and his hand hurts. He hadn’t been aware how much his hand hurt because of all the other pains, but now he can feel something, cold fingers touching his cold fingers, and a little noise of rubble moving and settling. Then Illya’s fingers are curled into his, the tips of his fingers hooking tight over the tips of Napoleon’s, and god, it hurts so much, but it’s the anchor he needed.
‘God, god, god.’ Instead of crying he’s making words again, and he says god, god, god, over and over, until those words turn into, ‘Illya, Illya. Thank god. Illya.’
He tries to tighten his grip on Illya’s hand. His fingers must be broken. It doesn’t matter. He would take this pain a thousand times if only he could be touching Illya’s hand.
‘It’s all right,’ Illya says, as if he’s soothing an injured animal. ‘All right. It’s all right, love. It’s all right.’
He feels ashamed of himself because he knows Illya is in just as terrible a situation, and maybe worse. He feels ashamed, lying here with tears chilling on his cheeks and trickling down into the dust, whimpering for himself, for Illya, for the terror of dying like this. He tries to breathe in deeply and he chokes again, and then the fear turns into a blazing anger, and he’s swearing at himself, inside his head, trying so hard to get control.
‘I’m all right,’ he says eventually. ‘All right, Illya. Don’t worry.’
‘I know,’ Illya says. ‘I know.’
He can feel the pulse of blood where their hands touch. He doesn’t know if it’s his or Illya’s or both, but it’s such a wonderful thing. They are both alive.
‘When we get home – ’ Napoleon begins, but he isn’t sure if he can imagine such a future, and as the anger fades the urge to cry is coming back again. It’s not for himself. It’s the fear of life carrying on and leaving Illya behind. Whether he himself dies or not is nothing, but he can’t bear the thought of a world without Illya.
‘We’ll get home,’ Illya promises him. ‘We will. We’re cats.’
He lies there until his brain parses that. Cats. Nine lives. How many of those lives have they already used?
It’s so quiet. There’s just the sound of the birds somewhere above, somewhere in a normal world. Maybe it’s a sunny day. It’s cold, but maybe it’s a clear day, no rain, and the birds are just living, calling, seeking food and mates. It seems absurd that there can be such a normal world out there.
‘Illya,’ he calls again after a while, because the fierce grip against his fingers has slackened.
There’s a delay, and he jerks his fingers, gasping at the pain.
‘Illya?’
‘Yeah,’ Illya replies after another delay. ‘Yes. Still here. Tired.’
‘Don’t go to sleep,’ he says. ‘Dawn. Remember? You can’t go to sleep. Illya?’
There’s silence. Illya’s fingers are still. They’re not pressing hard enough any more so he can’t tell if there’s that pulse of blood. It feels as though a great emptiness were widening inside him, a great fear. He’s pinned and he can’t move. He wants to be a superman, to rip apart this dreadful weight resting on them both. He wants to see Illya’s face, to kiss him, to lift him up in his arms. He can’t tell if he’s alive or dead.
‘Illya?’ he calls again, and there’s no reply.
((O))
There’s something, some kind of sound. No bird song now. He can still feel Illya’s fingers against his, but they’re not moving. They feel too cold, and when he pokes at them there’s no response.
But there’s a sound. There’s something up there. He lies there, half numb, aware of something that might be voices. It’s muffled. It seems far away, but it’s getting closer, until he would be able to make out words if he could understand the language they’re speaking. He can understand the emotions well enough. Shock. Excitement. Quick words passed back and forth.
He tries to take in enough of a breath to make a noise, and his chest sears. He can hear movement above now, the scraping and clattering of someone walking on the ruins, and he’s suddenly deadly afraid. One wrong move could send something crashing down.
He breathes in again, ignoring that awful skewer in his chest, and tries to call out.
‘Hi! Hey! Hey!’
His voice is croaking and dry, but it’s enough. For a moment there’s utter silence. No one moving. Nothing shifting or falling. His chest hurts badly enough that it’s making his ears ring, but he tries again.
‘Hi! Here!’
He fumbles in the rubble, closes his fingers around a hard chunk of concrete, and lifts it to tap, tap, tap against something else hard. It’s hard to move his arm. It’s hard to grasp at words, but maybe he’s done enough. He can hear more movement, the voices rising and jabbering fast in words that mean nothing to him. There’s a sound of clattering again, creaking, rubble falling. He pokes his fingers again at Illya’s hand. It hurts so much, but he tries to pinch that rubbery, cold flesh. He has to rouse him. He has to know he’s alive.
((O))
It’s taking so long. He lies there listening to endless noise from above. More people have arrived and there's constant shouting and calling and talking. Endless shifting and banging. Dust keeps falling on his face and crusting on his lips and peppering into his eyes. He feels so tired. The spike of adrenalin that had come with the sound of voices is dying away, leaving him exhausted, and hope is turning to despair. What use is their knowing he’s here if they can’t get to him? He’s so tired and so thirsty and they won’t reach him in time.
He can feel something coming over him. Maybe it’s sleepiness, but he’s so deathly afraid of sinking away and never waking up. He keeps fading out, ceasing to hear what’s going on above, then coming back with a jolt. There’s an engine running up there, he thinks. The squealing of a winch. Dust keeps falling, and then something hard drops onto the side of his pelvis and he cries out, sobbing in pain. There’s too much pain already. He can’t take any more.
For a moment the work above him stills. He can hear them talking again, discussing. Then it resumes, and the dust starts to fall. It must have been hours lying like this, trapped, with people working like ants above him trying to get him out. The chill of the night has been replaced with something like warmth, and he can imagine the sun creeping across the sky, all while he lies under here, waiting for them to reach him.
He realises with a terrible coldness that he’s stopped thinking of getting Illya out. He’s stopped imagining he could be alive. That feeling expands through him until it fills his body all through, and he can feel tears on his face again. He jerks his fingers against Illya’s hand again, and still there’s no response. His hand is like dead meat.
It takes time for him to realise there’s light on the other side of his eyelids. He can feel dust and grit all over his face, and he knows if he tries to open his eyes he’ll be blinded by the dirt, but he can see light up there. More than anything, that gives him hope.
When at last a hand reaches down to touch him there isn’t anything he can do to stop the sobs. It’s a hand on his neck, feeling his pulse, and it’s warm and human and alive. Whoever this is, a man, is talking to him, but he can’t understand. He knows Illya would be able to have a stab at understanding, and he remembers all over again that Illya must be gone.
‘My friend,’ he says. It’s important that they know he’s there. They have to know. ‘Another man. He’s just here. Right here next to me.’
He closes his fingers around Illya’s again. They must find Illya. His body can’t be left in the rubble like that. He doesn’t know if his hand will be visible in all the chaos.
The man above him presses a hand on his shoulder, speaking soothingly, trying to calm him.
‘My friend,’ he says again. He has to be heard. ‘Do you understand? I’m not alone. My friend is right by me.’
The man speaks again, calling up to someone else, and there’s a clattering of someone moving closer.
‘My friend is here,’ Napoleon says again. ‘You have to understand. My friend is right here.’
They speak to each other in that incomprehensible language, and then a woman says in a thick accent, ‘Yes, I see man. I – we – get.’
The relief runs through him. He feels like sinking into the ground. There’s nothing else he can do now. Suddenly he’s so dizzy that everything is spinning around him, and he just lies there, and lets them work.
((O))
Everything has felt blurred for so long. He knows that they got him out, that they pulled aside the last beams and chunks of rubble, and eased him onto a rigid board. He remembers a needle in his arm and a mask over his face, and the rumbling of a vehicle sending pain through all of his bones. Particularly he remembers a soft cloth of warm water wiping grit and blood from his face, and bright lights above him, but it’s all muddled up, churned with the sensations of being pulled out of the rubble and put in an ambulance and brought to hospital. He remembers parts of those things in no particular order. He sinks in and out, half aware of people around him, coming and going, the distinctive scents and sounds of a hospital that are the same no matter where you are.
He’s lying very still in his soft bed, his eyes closed. He’s learnt to stay still because it all hurts a little less. As long as he’s still the numbing softness of the painkillers are there, but when he moves he can’t bear the sudden stabs of pain.
He can hear a bird somewhere, a long trill moving up and down. It’s like a river in the way it rises and falls and slips along. There must be a window open somewhere, because he can hear the bird so clearly, and he can feel a spring breeze. He lies there, listening, making do with this as his only entertainment. He’s aware that his body is very broken. He knows that there are casts on various limbs. He knows that there is a chest drain in, probably because of a punctured lung, and he must have broken ribs. He’s been told very clearly, albeit in gestures and only a few words of English, that he should try not to move too much because of his fractured pelvis.
He doesn’t even know how long he’s been here. He knows it hasn’t been weeks, but it’s hard to know how many days. His sleeping is so disordered, coming over him in spells and then slipping away. Sometimes it’s light and sometimes it’s dark, and he can’t grasp the routine that he knows must have closed around him as soon as he was put in this bed. He can’t manage to communicate with them about U.N.C.L.E., can’t get them to understand how to contact anyone. Neither he nor Illya had carried any identification when they had entered that building.
The thought of Illya washes in and out of his mind like a strange dream, like something he tries to grasp at, and keeps slipping away. He’s tried to ask them but no one seems to understand. So few people speak English here. But he needs to know. He needs to know where they took him, what happened. He must be lying in a morgue somewhere, or already buried, and he needs to know.
He needs to know. He doesn’t want to know. Whenever he thinks about it it hurts worse than the physical pain. It makes him want to sink back into the half-oblivion of painkillers and pain and pretend that nothing else exists. Nothing else has ever existed. This is all his life is. Just lying in bed and blinking sleepily at the real world, and being talked to by doctors and nurses that he can’t understand. Sometimes he eats something that’s brought in to him, holding the cutlery awkwardly in one hand, his left still splinted and bandaged because of the breaks. It always feels like eating mud. Nothing has any taste, and he doesn’t know if it’s because of the drugs or because of how awful it is that Illya is gone.
‘Listen,’ he tries again one day, as a nurse is fussing around his bed.
He should have been aroused by the sponge bath she’s just given him, with the curtains drawn around his bed, cutting off the rest of the ward. She’s a very pretty woman. He can’t think of anything like that, though. It’s as if it’s all died in him. He’s just grateful to have the staleness of bed rest washed from his skin.
‘Listen, my friend,’ he says. ‘Illya. Illya Kuryakin.’
His name feels hard to say. It feels like it’s sticking in his throat.
‘I just need to know,’ he says. ‘I need to know where he is. I need to know what happened to him. To his – ’
He can’t word it.
‘My friend,’ he says again. ‘He was called Illya. Illya Kuryakin.’
She’s listening now, but he can’t understand a word that she’s saying. It’s some kind of odd mix, some bastardised dialect related perhaps to Russian or Polish, and none of it makes sense. But she smiles at him and pats his cheek softly, and then leaves him alone.
He sinks back into the white pillow, staring at the ceiling above. He can feel tears in his eyes. He doesn’t want to cry, lying here with a bed opposite him and beds either side of him, and men in each one. None of them speak his language either, and he doesn’t understand them, and he hasn’t felt like trying to communicate. He feels so utterly helpless, bound to this bed, having his meals brought to him, the bed pan brought to him, subject to the whims of the medical staff.
He can hear the slight rumbling of wheels on the floor before he turns his neck, stiffly, to see it. The nurse is back, with a male orderly in a white tunic, pushing a gurney before him. They’re heading towards him, and he watches them with some apprehension, because he hasn’t enjoyed the occasional trips to x-ray.
It hurts, getting onto the gurney, even with all their help. He doesn’t want to go anywhere. He feels peevish and warm, and too tired for this pain.
‘Look, can’t it wait until another day?’ he asks, even though he knows he might as well be speaking gibberish. ‘I’m tired. Do you have any idea how tiring a bed bath is when you’re in so much pain?’
But they get him on the gurney anyway. He doesn’t have the energy to fight. He lies there, feeling a little woozy, feeling the strangeness as the orderly pushes him and the beds move smoothly past on either side. He tries not to catch the other patients’ eyes. He’s usually more gregarious, but he doesn’t have it in him.
They take him to the right, along a scruffy corridor, and into an elevator. This place is efficient, but he doesn’t get the sense that there is money to spare. The elevator hums and jolts a little, and then moves up, and he’s on another corridor, almost the same, being pushed along to a set of double doors. This isn’t x-ray. He knows that route. He feels an odd apprehension build, and his pelvis aches and burns as the gurney bumps a little when they push him through the doors.
This is a darker room than the one he’s used to, but it’s efficiently lit. It’s another ward, but a quieter one, a more serious one, it seems. There are only four beds in here, and as they roll him towards the one nearest the window he feels an electric jolt in his chest. It’s an incredible, impossible thing.
Illya .
‘Oh my god, Illya,’ he says.
The figure in the bed looks fragile and pale, his head bandaged so almost none of the straw-blond hair can be seen. There’s a drip running into his arm, and he’s lying dead flat, and monitors are beeping. But it’s Illya.
It’s like a sunrise bursting up through the world. Very slowly the head on the thin pillow turns, and Illya’s blue eyes lock with his.
‘It’s about time,’ Illya says in a broken voice. Normally those words would have been dry as a desert, but now, apparently, he can’t keep the emotion away.
The orderly wheels the gurney up to the bed and Napoleon reaches out to take Illya’s hand. He’s lost all consciousness of anyone around him, of the nurse and orderly who brought him here. There’s just Illya.
The fingers curl round his, and he remembers how they had felt in that demolished building, so cold, so empty of life.
‘I thought you were dead,’ he almost whispers.
Just in time he remembers they’re being overlooked. Just in time he remembers not to lift that hand to his mouth to kiss it. God how he wants to kiss it. The window is so near, with spring outside , and all he can hear is birds singing, their song rising and falling and twirling like water in a stream.
‘Briefly, in the ambulance,’ Illya replies. ‘Blood loss. But – I’m not now, Napoleon. I’m not dead now.’
He can’t stop it. The tears are coming. They well up, coursing down his face. He rubs his forearm across his eyes , shaking his head, trying to process all of this.
‘You’re going to be all right?’ he asks at last.
How can Illya’s face look so pale, so young? He looks like a different man, but still all Illya.
‘If I can grasp what they’re saying, yes, I think so,’ he replies.
‘You have a better chance than me. I haven’t even gotten past good morning.’
He presses the back of Illya’s hand against his cheek. He can’t kiss him, but he can do this.
‘God, Illya. I was so sure you were dead. I kept asking about you, asking about you…’
‘I only woke up this morning. They didn’t know my name. There were other people in that collapse, you know, other foreigners too. Thrush personnel. I suppose they didn’t know we were connected.’
He feels exhausted. The relief that Illya is alive is so great it feels like it’s hollowed him out and left him a shell. He hardly even knows what to think.
Outside the window that bird keeps singing, up and down, the perfect sign of a spring day. Illya turns his head to the sound and says in a wondering voice, ‘Listen to that birdsong, Napoleon. Isn’t it beautiful?’
It is beautiful. Napoleon rests his broken and bandaged hand over the top of their clasped ones. The pain doesn’t matter. All that matters is that this is Illya’s hand, and he is alive.