The Scar by Marina Dyachenko, Sergey Dyachenko Page A

flippantly, but somewhere near the middle, he missed a step and, nervously throwing his arms out to the side, finished his passage. The former Egert Soll would not have let this opportunity to whistle condescendingly at his friend’s back pass, but this Egert, who was now expected to step out onto the log, could only take a deep breath.
    All the guards were drawn up on the opposite bank, and all, to a man, were watching Egert inquisitively.
    He forced himself to step forward. Dear Heaven, why are my knees shaking so!
    His boot was planted unsteadily on the very edge of the beam. It was impossible to cross over to the opposite side. The beam was smooth; his legs would certainly slip off it; in the best-case scenario, Egert would falter, but in the worst case …
    They were all waiting. The beginning of Egert’s stunt was already quite unusual.
    Licking his dry lips, he took a step and staggered, waving his hands in the air. On the far side, they laughed, assuming that he was adroitly feigning clumsiness.
    He took yet another half step and caught a clear glimpse of the floor of the ravine and of the sharp rocks at its bottom, and of his own mutilated body, dashed upon the rocks.
    And then, raising melancholy eyes to the path laid out before him over the abyss, he made a decision.
    He decided, and he jumped backwards quickly, grasping at his chest with a few theatrical gestures. He jerked as if he were having a convulsion, staggering and deftly jumping down off the log; then he fell to the ground as though dead.
    Twitching in a heap of last year’s leaves, Egert feverishly tried to remember the symptoms of the horrible illnesses about which he had once heard: falling sickness, seizures. It would be good if he could froth at the mouth, but his mouth was as dry as an abandoned well. He was just going to have to make up for the lack of symptoms with inconceivably violent convulsions of his body.
    The astonishment and laughter on the other side of the ravine changed into cries of horror; the first to reach him was that adolescent to whom Egert had entrusted his stallion. Glorious Heaven! Egert’s ears burned from shame and mortification, but there was no choice, so he flopped like a fish out of water; he wheezed and gasped while the captain, Karver, and Dron surrounded him on all sides. For about ten minutes, they tried to bring him to his senses, but it was all in vain; clenching his teeth and rolling his eyes back into his skull, Egert assiduously portrayed a dying man, except that a man who was really dying in this situation would have gone cold and turned blue, whereas Egert was hot and red from the unparalleled, fiery shame.
    Alarmed by the unexpected illness of Lieutenant Soll, the captain sent him back to town straightaway. He would have accompanied him, but Egert managed to refuse. The captain thought to himself that even in this grave illness, Egert displayed an uncommon bravery.
    *   *   *
     
    Egert’s father worked himself up into a lather no less intense than the captain’s. No sooner had Egert pulled off his boots and collapsed into his couch than a knock, polite yet adamant, came at his door. The elder Soll and a short, hollow-seeming man in a smock that extended down to his ankles, a doctor, appeared on the threshold.
    Egert had no other option but to force out a report of his indisposition and to hand himself over for examination.
    The doctor tapped him thoroughly with a hammer; he probed, listened, and nearly sniffed Egert all over, and then he peered inquisitively into Egert’s eyes for a long moment, extending his lower eyelid for this purpose. Still gritting his teeth, Egert gave answers to extremely detailed questions, a few of which forced him to blush: No, not ill. No. No. Clear. Every morning. Wounds? Perhaps a few trifling scratches. The gash on your cheek? An unfortunate incident; nothing to worry about.
    The elder Soll was nervous; he rubbed his hands together so torturously that they