The People's Act of Love by James Meek

and he’s chained, so he can’t get out.’
    ‘What if someone wanted to get in?’ said Mutz.
    They ran out into the dark corridor, past Balashov, who called something after them. Mutz’s boots and Broucek’s beat the floor in the silence of the corridors and on the threshold the soldier’s gunbolt rattled in and out. Outside it had turned colder and begun to rain.
    The two men ran through the archway and approached the shaman’s kennel, a smudge against the wall by the light from Mutz’s window. Mutz’s boot kicked against glass. He squatted down and picked up an empty litre bottle. Remnant raw spirit danced out and stabbed his sinuses. He dropped the bottle into the new mud, coughed and wiped his eyes. It was getting easier to see. The shaman was sitting in the mud with his back against the side of the kennel, his drum over his stomach, and his hands folded over the drum. Mutz shook him by the shoulder. The corroded iron animals and coins and folded tin can lids adorning the shaman’s coat beat their cat’s alleytune. Mutz took a lighter out of his tunic and held the flame to the shaman’s face. The rain was washing bile and blood out of his scraggly beard where they had trickled from his mouth. The shaman coughed and there was a smell of stomach acid and alcohol. His good eye fluttered. It did not open.
    Mutz put his hand on the shaman’s shoulder and shook. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Who gave you the drink?’
    ‘Too far south,’ said the shaman. The words were faint. He spoke good Russian through a strong Tungus accent and a throat roughened by age, illness and alcohol. In his whisper was the bare trace of a voice, like the last redness in the ashes of a fire. The words were not slurred: he sounded more exhausted than drunk.
    ‘Did someone hit you?’ said Mutz. There was a cut in the shaman’s lip.
    ‘I told him I couldn’t see his brother in the other worlds,’ said the shaman. ‘I could only hear him, down there, where it stinks. I heard the brother crying that he wanted his body back.’
    ‘Whose brother?’ Mutz turned to Broucek. ‘Have you any idea what he’s talking about?’
    Broucek shrugged. ‘My father used to get drunk and scream nonsense for hours and nobody asked him what he was talking about.’
    The shaman’s head lolled over to one side and he began coughing and vomiting. Mutz shook his shoulder again.
    ‘We have to get you inside,’ he said.
    Broucek said: ‘You have the key.’
    Mutz felt shame. He began looking in his pockets for the key to the padlock which fastened the shaman to the kennel. The shaman retched into the mud. The reflex seemed to jolt a mild current of life into him and he inhaled and opened his eye.
    ‘Damn,’ said Mutz. ‘Broucek, run back to my room. The key’s on the hook beside my bed. Shaman. Tell me who hit you. Who gave you the spirit?’
    ‘When I had three good eyes, I was a brave warrior,’ said the shaman. ‘In the singers’ stories I was a warrior. They called me Our Man.’
    ‘Please,’ said Mutz. ‘Try to understand what I’m asking you. You must tell me who did this to you.’
    ‘No,’ said the shaman. ‘He’ll pursue Our Man to the Upper World. He is a cruel demon. He is an avakhi.’ The shaman’s hand darted into his pouch, pulled out a dry dark fragment, slipped it between his lips and began to chew. ‘Our Man’ll die soon. He’s leaving.’
    ‘Wait,’ said Mutz. ‘We’ll take care of you inside. Wait a little while, just until we fetch the key.’
    ‘Our Man can’t see where he’s going now, but he can smell larches, and hear a branch creaking where a rope’s pulling on it, and smell a birch bark coffin swinging in the wind on the end of the rope.’
    ‘Wait,’ said Mutz. ‘Live! Heal yourself. You’ve lived through worse nights than this. What did he say to you, the demon?’
    The shaman’s voice changed; it had the same barely voiced whisper, but without the accent, and a harsh sneer added, as if he had