Read Day for Free Online Page B

are you doing?’
    And the mother runs. She takes her chance, pulls at the child and makes this kind of high, whining scream and runs for the trees and Vasyl is going to chase her. He stares at you as if you are insane and then starts forward – this picture from another time – and he is giggling on one low, solid note, delighted with the way that he must look, the way that she must see him, her fear. And you are extremely, extremely – you are upset until you find that you are on the grass and cannot quite breathe and you have stopped him.
    You are numb in places and twisting the weight of your hips and your arms operate without you, very smooth and calm, while you wrestle this man who has a gun and you are sure you are going to die and do not want to.
    But you’ve forgotten about what you learned, all that while ago, what your body knows, and here is your foot on his wrist and also your opposite knee is pressing at his throat. Your position is unstable – you do need to make yourself secure – but you have smothered his struggling and he seems almost docile now. And underneath you both there may be some small part of Himmler, but more likely just a depth of earth in a heath where he’d once decreed there should be excavations to uncover an Aryan past, where he’d tried to prove his future – and this what you’re mostly aware of, these strange and calming facts – before Vasyl jerks, unseats you, and the pistol is lifting towards you, but you have already caught him, because your arms are free and clever and you hold his wrist and you press your shin across his neck as hard as you can and watch him choke, feel his grip falter until you can take the Luger away and slap him.
    You slap him again.
    You decide not to mind how many times you slap him. Don’t hit him, slap him, let him feel small.
    This makes you smile.
    You softly wonder if you only want to hit him and why not shoot him. Where would be the harm?
    No one might come across a body here for weeks, buried or not.
    One of Vasyl’s cheeks is ticking, he is slippery with sweat, but he tries to keep his eyes open and to show you he is pathetic, wounded. He intends you to be more sorry for him than you might be for the woman or the girl and this annoys you.
    But mainly you notice how carefree you feel, how glossy.
    â€˜If I let you loose, you’d better not try that again. You know I can beat you.’ This is probably not true. But you do have his gun now and so you sigh, lean back, and sit on Vasyl’s chest, but otherwise let him be. He is heaving in air, wheezing, and your pressure doesn’t help him.
    You watch a breeze going over the far grass, wave scrolling after wave and dropping to stillness. You wriggle your shoulders, exhale. You angle your face to the sun, to the joy of it. You stroke your new moustache.
    â€˜You can’t tell I won’t shoot you?’ Vasyl hoarse. ‘I just frighten some Deutsch cunts. It’s a joke. You can’t tell I’m a good person who loves England? I am a good person.’ He might almost be about to cry. ‘You make me afraid.’ He is perfectly convincing. ‘Please.’
    The labouring of Vasyl’s ribcage very noticeable underneath you as you sit and understand that you would like it if he were really afraid and if that was to do with you.
    â€˜Please. You must let me breathe.’
    But your hating him fades quickly – you haven’t the space for it. You are shut in a kind of private uproar which prevents you from thinking anything except that you are so surprised, because it’s back: whatever it is that stops you dying has come back. You hadn’t wanted to be killed.
    You didn’t know you’d feel that way again.

drop
    The following morning he fainted which was daft – if you have someone pointing a gun at your face, you’d expect to go down there and then, or maybe when the danger’s over and