Requiem for a Soldier

by Oleg Pavlov

  ‘Get some sleep, Abdulla Ibrahimovich,’ mumbled Alyosha. ‘You just need to fall asleep, and life will pass by.’

  But Abdulka didn’t sleep a wink; he was waiting for something and he listened anxiously to the silence. There was no war though. On the third day, his disgruntled wife came for him from the village. She was a rather greedy, buxom woman who helped manage the stock with him. She remonstrated and wept, she hectored and shouted, she even raised her fists – and finally she made the fugitive commander come back home.

  On the day the order came through saying that Aleksei Kholmogorov had completed his service, fatherly old Abdulka went and climbed into the trench himself and offered his place in the tower to Alyosha. In all those years living in the tower, Alyosha had never once gone upstairs to see where the iron staircase led: only the deaf man was entitled to do so, and he jealously guarded that right, forbidding Alyosha even to peep, always slipping a padlock on the iron door of the hatch.

  Alyosha found himself inside a transparent carapace made up of chunky glass panels: he felt like a giant fish in an aquarium. His body had become feather-light, and his feet glided lazily across the resonant concrete floor. From his thick-glassed aquarium he gazed out in wonder, as though discovering an alien new world: chains of humans were uncoiling; massive armoured vehicles were crawling along like woodlice; an anthill of little soldiers was swarming, they were falling out of formation, and the dry seriousness of the drill kept comically slipping from the marching men like loose trousers. Now and then the air would fill with milky puffs blossoming momentarily from assault rifle barrels like tiny parachutes – yet the men doing the shooting sensed them only as an acrid stench.

  Alyosha put on his dress uniform and bid the steppe farewell, Abdulka seated him in the motorcycle car and they headed off straight for Karaganda, where Kholmogorov had been promised his eternal steel tooth. The deaf man gasped in shock at the sudden realisation: ‘It’s all over!’

  ‌A NEW DAY IN THE OLD STYLE

  Alyosha did not feel as though he had been pressed into service. His new assignment was far more agreeable than he had come to expect from the head of the infirmary, who’d been setting him a steady stream of dreary, repetitive tasks. On this occasion, though, he had been charged with tending to a patient, waiting upon his needs – and this time his assistance did not feel like drudgery. But they wouldn’t tell him what was wrong with the strange lieutenant. He seemed sturdy enough on his feet, he could wash on his own, he would slip out into the garden to smoke, from afar it even looked as though he had come to the infirmary not to be cured of his ailment but, quite the reverse, to dwell alone with it, receiving no relief at all. It occurred to Alyosha that perhaps this man was being eaten up by some mysterious disease. Mysterious not only to the patient but to the entire medical profession. This illness allowed him to carry on moving about, eating and smoking, but it caused him distress, which the lieutenant endured in abject solitude, although it was bearable and he could function more or less like a well man.

  In the morning, when they brought the canisters of food into the infirmary, Alyosha kept his thoughts on the lieutenant and jostled with the others to get him a nice thick helping of solyanka. With his mind firmly on the patient – as though the beef soup had medicinal powers – he reverently carried his gains from the gluttonous scrum at the pot towards the officers’ ward. But his eagerness to enter cooled as he knocked on the door and heard an imperious voice say, ‘It’s open.’ Kholmogorov pushed the door gently and stood stock still in the doorway: there he was, at the window in the corner, semi-reclining on the bed in a wide-open gown and slumped against the wall. The man, who gave an impression of profound apathy, did not even look like a soldier. In the vast chilly ward – there was one solitary made-up bed by the window while the rest were unoccupied, abandoned to the whims of fate – a shambolic atmosphere prevailed. The unclothed, flesh-pink mattresses on the empty beds reeked of medicine; there was an almost cadaverous stench. Clean white light poured in through the window, while the window framed a painterly panorama: emblazoned on a canvas of cold and wind were the summer barracks, an oily-green plywood building with fresh timber crosses in its little windows.

  The lieutenant eyed the full, steaming bowl. ‘Hello, good morning. Here’s breakfast,’ Alyosha managed to say. The officer did not stir. He had high cheekbones and deeply tanned skin. His entire being was swallowed up by his round, impenetrably dark eyes, which had almost no whites, like an animal’s. Alyosha trod heavily across the room, holding the bowl in one outstretched hand and a mug of tea and a spoon in the other. He set everything down on the bedside table. The lieutenant became lost in thought, his eyes taking in only the food. He reached for the spoon, but his hand was trembling as though silently doing something distressing and loathsome. It must have been that annoying tremor which snapped the diner out of his trance. He looked up and fixed a pitilessly greedy gaze on the man standing before him empty-handed. Then, smirking, he suddenly said, ‘That’s how he was standing.’ His voice was commanding, but for some reason he was putting on a hushed tone. Alyosha froze; the lieutenant, though, was apparently waiting for an answer, despite the lack of a question in his utterance about this unknown man.

  ‘Enjoy your meal!’ The words slipped out of their own accord.

  ‘That’s just what he said…’ the patient replied.

  Alyosha felt ill at ease. The sweetish aroma of solyanka soup was drifting through the officers’ ward in an insatiable melancholy cloud. In an instant, he came to and left the dying man in peace – he fancied the patient was preparing to meet his end and that was why he was angry with the whole world. But, having made his escape, Alyosha became plagued by an ominous sense of his own doom.

  He sat down to breakfast – but the food tasted bad. It was as though something had caused the solyanka to turn bitter while he’d been serving the lieutenant. The tea was just as horrible: like dishwater. A malaise crept into his soul. Alyosha sat at the table waiting for something to happen, and he began feeling down. Then he snapped out of it and remembered the lieutenant: he must have finished his food and the dirty dishes would be ready – time to go and fetch them, if the man was still alive.

  The sated lieutenant lay sprawled upon his bed as though waiting for his valet. The bowl was empty, the tea had been drunk. Suddenly his calm, measured voice lazily filled the tomb-like ward: ‘It all stinks of diesel. Never eaten so much bacon fat in my life. And they call this puke solyanka! They make it for breakfast, lunch and dinner… Come autumn, summer, spring, winter… They serve it all year round. Well, you pillock, don’t you feel like heaving yet? Or is it all fine by you? Wow, the way you’re looking at me – if looks could kill, now I like that! What’s up? You’re not happy? What should I call you? Eh? Well, come on, pour your heart out if you like – you can turn the air blue, only say something, Comrade Unknown Soldier.’

  Kholmogorov began speaking: ‘You can call me by my name, like everyone else.’

  ‘And that name is what?’

  ‘Just a plain old ordinary name.’

  ‘Yes, but what is it?’ The lieutenant bristled, lifting himself up onto his elbows.

  ‘You need to stay calm. It doesn’t hurt to try.’

  ‘Doesn’t hurt? And what would you know about hurting?’ shouted the lieutenant.

  ‘I know plenty,’ Alyosha said under his breath, trying to control his emotion.

  ‘Idiot!’ the lieutenant suddenly said coldly, doubling up as if he’d been jabbed in the stomach. Hissing his words with malice and sulkiness, he went on: ‘There’s nothing worse than us humans. It’s time they shut down the entire madhouse. We shouldn’t go on any longer. They ought to wipe the lot of us out. And not one by one, so that someone could slip through the net. They should finish us off all in one go; just press that old button of theirs and solve the problem once and for all. Why are you staring at me with those big round eyes of yours? Come on, man, hop it. Get that solyanka down you while they’re
still doling it out. Well, you won’t die from bacon fat – you can’t kill a person with bacon fat. But did the pig know whose fat we were eating?’ The lieutenant’s voice had grown louder and he was sneering arrogantly. He declared: ‘Dead men always walk in twos.’ And fell silent.

  The conversation had begun with a smirk and now it ended with the same formidable emptiness arising out of nowhere. The only thing Alyosha managed to discern in this void was that the stranger had been talking to him as though he knew all about him.

  He walked out, feeling he had to be either the deceived party or the deceiver in all this, and trudged down the corridor, with every step conjuring memories of the officers who had passed before him over the years. The firing ground was a place where everyone who handled weapons showed up at least once a year, as if it were some compulsory service. Not all of them stuck in his mind. Alyosha may not have known much about the men, but he would have seen every one of them, at least from a distance. In the procession of faces from the past – all faded and blurry, as though disillusioned with life – the face of the man in the officers’ ward made no appearance, or if it did pop up, it was unrecognisable to the point of having nothing in common with the original.

  ‘Kholmogorov! Come over here!’ As he carried the lieutenant’s dirty dishes along the corridor, still gleaming and quiet in the morning, he heard a shout. It sounded jealous and nervous, and it came from the office, where the door was flung open like a mousetrap.

  Whether in abhorrence or fear, Institutov stood hunched in the doorway of his room, holding open the door as he saw out a slight man of eye-catching appearance.

  This uninvited guest, who had not even removed his hat, seemed to be in distress. His face had something Tatar, something wolfish about it, and an irate grimace was frozen upon it. His attire had an air of old-fashioned grandeur. The hat, raincoat, shoes and briefcase had evidently been put together as an outfit, and their tobacco colour had no doubt once been in fashion. There was a shirt, presumably once white, and an orange tie with a gaudy flowery pattern, conspicuously exotic in its own right. It remained unclear what purpose lay behind this get-up so unsuited to travel and what had in fact befallen its proprietor. But evidently these items had been worn without change for many days in succession. The dirt built up on the shirt collar had hardened like grime under the fingernails. The coat hung awkwardly from the man’s shoulders; it was dull and scuffed, like an aluminium cooking pot.

  The troublesome citizen was prolonging his unwelcome presence in the office and, what’s more, he was glaring at Institutov as if demanding that he immediately vacate it. The head of the infirmary lost his cool and started to shout. ‘Look, I’m fed up with telling you: you’ll see him in that wonderful capital of yours! But not here and not now, end of story! You’ve wasted your time coming here and stirring up trouble, dear Comrade! He’ll be shipped out today. There won’t be any viewings or changing of clothes, you can do all that at home. You were supposed to meet your son at his registered address, not go wandering about Karaganda in a drunken state. You know, we all die of something or other in the end. I’ll die, and you will too – just you wait and see. But I personally don’t go running around crying about it, or kicking up a fuss. Now, trust me, what you’re doing is hurting your son in the worst possible way. I’m sorry, but you’re simply a disgrace to him. Look, what is it you’re after? You want us to call the police? You want to sober up in a police cell? Right, Kholmogorov, call the police… It’s the only way to get through to him.’

  The man bowed his head in silence. Then, with a sudden majestic movement he raised his head, throwing a hostile glance this time at Alyosha, but still he wouldn’t answer. He just tottered forward mechanically, as though someone had shoved him, then left the room to shuffle down the resonant empty corridor of the infirmary towards the exit.

  ‘Fancies himself the ghost of Hamlet’s father!’ Institutov said with a snort. ‘And in a hat, too…’ Then he turned buoyantly to face Alyosha and nodded at the dirty dishes he was holding. ‘Well, my friend, you can leave that for today: we have more important work to be done. Come along with me.’

  Alyosha did not respond, nor would he budge an inch. As before, Institutov repeated the same old refrain. ‘My friend… erm… erm…’ he stuttered. ‘The thing is that certain things have to be sorted out, that is to say things are not as they were… That’s right! Your case will have to be put on hold, it will have to wait, but in the meantime – well, it’s just we have some urgent business. It’s a matter of life and death. I couldn’t do it today, my friend, really, not even if I wanted to. Give it, say, three days, and I’ll get to work on your tooth. Nope! That’s enough chatter! We still have work to do. We have to – ugh, we have to muster all our strength, knuckle down to work, huff and puff and pull out all the stops. Now listen, you know how it goes, he who doesn’t work, neither shall he drink champagne. You’re a free agent, no one’s holding you prisoner. As they say, you know where the door is…’ Whereupon, taking Institutov’s advice, Kholmogorov upped and left. The head of the infirmary had a sudden change of heart and raced after Alyosha. ‘It was just a joke! I take it all back!’ Institutov called out as he ran, bouncing up and down like a ball behind Alyosha. ‘My promise still holds! You’ll have your eternal tooth tomorrow!’

  Institutov finally caught up with him and stopped him, but Alyosha just stood deaf and dumb, staring over Institutov’s bobbing head at some point in the distance. Institutov tried fumbling for the right words, seeking out the right note, probing for a chink in Alyosha’s armour. His voice was shrill. ‘Right, so it’s decided! A steel tooth, chrome-plated titanium alloy, all done in a day, without delay, everlasting, a hundred-year warranty! Now, my friend, come on, I’m asking for your help. What’ll I tell Comrade Abdullayev? Bail me out, save my good name in this hour of need! Allow me to honour my word!’

  The head of the infirmary was straining every sinew to feign helplessness, while endeavouring to ensnare Alyosha in his tooth-pulling grip. For some reason he needed him more than ever. Alyosha couldn’t bear to let even a cat suffer. It simply broke his heart to hear the head of the infirmary’s plaintive cries about Abdulka. ‘And what’ll Comrade Abdullayev say?’ kept echoing through his soul, as if fatherly old Abdulka himself were lodged inside him, keeping watch and prodding him on. If only Alyosha could have come up with an answer for him, an explanation, but as it was, it would look to Abdulka like he’d just thanklessly run off without the present.

  ‘You’ve been promising for weeks…’ Alyosha began to crack. The head of the infirmary briskly swooped in for the kill. ‘Tomorrow, my friend, we’ll do it tomorrow! Now what’s with all this nonsense, eh? It’s your anger talking. You need to know how to forgive. We’re all united by a common cause. Just give me one day! Everything’s been ready for ages, all that’s left is to fit the tooth. Help me today, and tomorrow you’ll be on your way home, looking smashing. See, you’ve insulted me, but I’m willing to forgive all that, and I’d urge you not to make a dreadful mistake. Look, I’m trying to help you, whereas I could have just left you to make that mistake! Oh, yes! Here I am, spending my valuable time and materials on a tooth for you, and you have the cheek to claim that I’m on the fiddle. If you’re alluding to the meat that Abdulla Ibrahimovich made me take as a present, then I’ll have you know there’s no gain in it for me. If I’d done nothing in return, then there would have been. But I gave you an examination, extracted your tooth, did all the preparations for the new one and I’m all set to finish the job off tomorrow. And for the sake of this fine new tooth that will last you for a hundred years, for Abdulla Ibrahimovich’s sake, I, a man with a university education, am now grovelling and begging some ungrateful young sod to be patient for just one little day!’

  With this drip, drip of words, finally everything went back to normal. Alyosha felt better the moment he yielded. He quietened down and returned to his former self. And it wasn’t that he’d been coerced or subdued by this man. No
, he was the one who had subdued himself, dropping all his feverish intentions to up and leave this very hour for a promise that he’d be free to go tomorrow. Kholmogorov got ready to depart with the head of the infirmary on this one last job that had been found for him. He put on his dress uniform – now that he’d been demobilised, he had no other outfit – and slipped into his beloved greatcoat which, over the period of his service, had faded to a tawny ochre. The coat had served out its term; now it was looking shabby and made Alyosha resume his scruffy appearance, although anyone catching sight of him might marvel at his seriousness and the earnest dignity that had set like wax upon his face. Beneath its rough, moulting skin, he could feel the unfamiliar coolness of the parade jacket lining, and Kholmogorov instinctively straightened up without realising that all people could see was the bedraggled, faded coat. The hospital waiting room was swarming with soldiers, all doomed to some disorder or other – some had furuncles, others had fresh wounds, others were quite clearly in pain. The whole throng was waiting for the head of the infirmary to appear – and Alyosha waited along with them. He could sense how, any minute now, all those men crowded into the room would have to swallow their disappointment, their despair, even. The head of the infirmary was off on business to an unknown destination, leaving them to wait until tomorrow.

  All Alyosha knew from Institutov was that they had a long journey ahead. Institutov had informed him of this with his usual confiding air of importance, intended, no doubt, to take the place of food for his workers. But Alyosha wasn’t bothered about where they were heading, how long they would stay or what they would do there. Whatever awaited them, he was shackled to his tomorrow, lost deep in thought, imagining ever more sweetly the remarkable new man he would become. Tomorrow he would be a stranger to everyone. He wouldn’t even recognise himself tomorrow. Kholmogorov thought it was what had been destined for all men on earth: to be forever waiting for the next day. The present would never arrive unless you knew how to wait patiently. And that was as it should be, for only tomorrow could be a birthday, not today; it was not ridding yourself of something old that took time, but giving birth to something new.