Requiem for a Soldier

by Oleg Pavlov

  ‘This one got walloped for sure. Caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ Pavel Pavlovich stubbornly returned to his theme. ‘Now we’ll seal him in your crate and it will all be hushed up and buried.’

  The old man hugged the coffin lid and laid it over the corpse decked out in dress uniform, ensconcing it in darkness.

  Once the lid was in place, Pavel Pavlovich’s face broke into a grin: on the side of the lid, stitched to the cloth and resembling a stamp, shone a yellow hammer and sickle. ‘What times we live in, greybeard! I get it that the coffin is made of old fencing, but what’s this symbol of the radiant future doing on its cover?’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ the coffin maker rounded on him heatedly. ‘People gleefully stole all the fabric we had from the factory, but someone brought along two whole boxes of red flags from the club. The colour’s gone and they’re as tattered as rags; imagine how many years they spent flapping about in the wind on every holiday. So I didn’t notice and ended up covering the coffin in a rag, and now this is showing… Oh, why did this have to happen? It’s so embarrassing it makes you want to weep.’

  ‘Come on, nail it down quick,’ said Pavel Pavlovich. ‘Citizen Boss has been trembling the whole journey, hanging his head, trying to carry out his orders… He’s in a state, the old toothpuller.’

  The head of the infirmary turned up when the zinc box was already partly sealed. He came running into the barn, scouring it as though searching for a mislaid cap. His hands were full: each held an unpleasant-looking puffy boiled sausage. ‘You can eat now, boys,’ the head of the infirmary said in a wavering voice, but the sombre face that he had prepared in advance did not harbour a shadow of doubt.

  Bumping foreheads with the old man, Alyosha was pressing down the edge of the clean zinc sheet with a wooden block. Every so often a sigh of smoke would escape as the metal was tortured by the soldering iron. Pavel Pavlovich was also busy at work with the craftsman – he stood by, ready to bring in the soldering iron that was glowing away on the coals to replace the exhausted one. So the mention of food turned the air unpleasantly sour, as did the boiled sausages that Institutov was holding. It was only the two guards standing about idly, who must have been getting hungry as the day drew to an end, who shifted their gaze to the sausages that Institutov was dangling more and more impatiently – until finally he tired of his burden and carefully placed the sausages on a clean and free corner of the now tranquil workbench that held the unfinished coffin.

  All that could be heard in the barn was the gentle rumble of work. Institutov wandered along the finished products, casting a knowing eye over their senselessly yawning voids. His gaze naturally fell upon the feeble old man sitting on his stool in the corner of the barn. The head of the infirmary could not imagine that this man might just sit there in silence without any tangible purpose, and so he was careful to approach him generously: ‘My dear man, why aren’t you working along with everyone else?’ The man who went by the name of Amadei Domianovich promptly announced from the corner: ‘Disgusting.’

  A change passed over Institutov’s face. ‘What can this mean, my dear man, may I ask?’

  ‘Disgraceful,’ the man echoed placidly in the corner.

  ‘Now you’re going too far, Comrade! Whatever do you mean?’

  The answer rang out with a lusty finality: ‘Lackey!’

  The head of the infirmary called out hysterically: ‘Guards, silence this prisoner!’ The guards’ eyes shot up from the workbench where the two unclaimed sausages were resting – but the two Central Asians sullenly failed to take in what had been said.

  ‘He’s my worker, we work as a pair… I do the coffins and he keeps an eye on the quality. It’s always easier when there are two of you! Go and get some fresh air, Citizen Boss,’ the coffin maker thoughtfully suggested.

  With unnatural prudence, as though he were a circus horse taking a bow, Institutov butted his head against the empty air a few times and retreated backwards into the yard, but suddenly jumped and shrieked as though he were dying, pointing at the floor ahead of him where wood shavings were wriggling and hid something alive: ‘Solder them in! Solder them in! Somebody do it!’ Everyone froze, stunned by the screaming. But they did not find anything ghastly, or indeed anything new at all. Paler than a corpse, the head of the infirmary stood feebly, eyes bulging and mutely gulping like a fish with his gluttonous mouth. ‘It’s mice: he’s scared to death of them,’ Pavel Pavlovich said, grinning.

  The work was done. The head of the infirmary hid in the ambulance unwilling to get out and fetch his order from the craftsman. Pavel Pavlovich backed the vehicle up to the shed entrance. One disgruntled glance from him was all it took to attract the assistance of the guards who were loafing about.

  Just as they were about to grapple with the deathly load, the craftsman fell quiet and elicited silence. Then he turned to Pavel Pavlovich with an ingratiating look: ‘Give us some parting words. Go on, my heart’s longing to hear them.’

  ‘Why bother with all that, greybeard? Let’s get going.’

  ‘Oh, you’re all in such an eternal hurry… Amadei Domianovich! You say something at least. Dignify this death with your fine intellect.’

  ‘Disgraceful!’ cawed the mysteriously offended old man.

  Then, disappointed, the coffin maker quietly intoned: ‘Farewell, vast country, you unfortunate man.’

  ‌THE LONG FAREWELL

  At Karaganda goods station, behind the solid wall around the railway warehouses, a funeral party of two – a clodhopping elderly warrant officer and a bashful young private – was awaiting its fate. Their meeting place was already submerged in twilight. They were as cold and hungry as prisoners of war. The jitters were teeming and biting them under the collar like lice. A sense of uncertainty brought together the ill-assorted strangers and from a distance, in the dark, they appeared like two stray dogs of some monstrous breed befriending one another: as tall as humans, tailless, with long grey pelts and duffle-bag bundles humped on their backs. The young soldier was still in service mode: poised in readiness and waiting at attention. Or perhaps for want of another superior, he was trying to be of service to the only senior present, listening to him as obediently as a son while the latter was busily scouring the area within two or three paces of them – spinning around, at times freezing to the spot as though he had heard a shout.

  ‘Ivan Petrovich, tell me what Moscow’s like.’

  ‘Ah, they’ve got everything in Moscow, that’s what it’s like. You ever seen a banana? Nah, didn’t think you had, but they’ve got them in Moscow. It’s like they grow on trees there… How people live in the place I have no idea. See they’ve already got it all, there’s no need to do anything, just keep picking up your wages and going on shopping sprees.’

  ‘Ivan Petrovich, are we going to be there long?’

  ‘We’ll stay as long as we can; the funds allocated won’t stretch that far. The funeral will take a day or two; they bury them awful quick. We’ll be staying with the relatives – it was really lucky that I managed to sort that out. Would be good if they could feed us too, though I’m not sure they will. If our money and rations hold out, we could be there a week. We’ll pluck up the courage and make out that we couldn’t get hold of any train tickets back. We’ll get it in the neck, of course, for each extra day – just so you’re prepared!’

  ‘But Ivan Petrovich, what will I be doing in Moscow?’

  ‘Your job is easy enough: you just go wherever I go. And my job is straightforward too: not to do anything much, apart from carry out orders. Just be sure to keep your head, be quick but don’t rush, otherwise things will get said later… They always come up with something to tick you off for. You’ll be the whipping boy, and your whole life will be screwed up. You need to follow the middle path, then you’ll be protected by the angels. Leave it to fools to do what they want, we’ll do what we’re told.’

  The yawning moon appeared as a hazy luminous recess in the sky, gaping hungrily towards
a number of tiny stars that were dangling like bait impaled on the points of fish hooks. But suddenly an impression of something belly-like arose in the night, as though everything had been swallowed up. All that remained near the buildings with their empty black windows, abandoned at this late hour, were some round desert islands of light, emerging from each of which was a stark tall palm of a lamp-post topped by a solitary glowing nut. Devoured in mist, the surroundings were constantly filling with animal sounds, with African roars and groans, as though ravening beasts were roaming, happy in their turn to gobble someone up. It was the nocturnal feast of the goods yard: eerily audible with its behemothic belly digesting all that was perpetually set in motion, powered by inhuman mechanisms under the command of human will. There was no hint of the station itself or its forecourt – there were only the prison walls of the left luggage office, the locked, deserted warehouses and the concrete carcasses of the locomotive sheds, reeking a fumy sweat of diesel.

  The restless pair were illumined in the dark by distant headlights. The man and the young lad froze ignominiously against the wall, as if they had been mugged and stripped naked, and their two headless shadows reared and darted like cats in the gloom. A man dropped out of an ambulance as though springing from a cuckoo clock – and they recognised him: it was the head of the infirmary. He cried frantically: ‘Comrades, time waits for no man! We’ll show you the way! Follow me!’ And he flew off. The vehicle pulled away, riding the bumps of the rocky wasteland. The soldiers jogged after it like a couple of tramps, until finally they had to break into a sprint.

  At the concrete entrance ramp – an incline that was hardly steep but riddled with potholes – the clapped-out rattletrap ambulance faltered and the little men who were dutifully running after it shot ahead. Entirely hidden by a long tin awning, from which the huge sullen fortresses of identical storage sheds peered out as though scowling, the platform of the railway yard seemed distant and impenetrable. At the near end of the platform, some coupled wooden flour wagons were being loaded in complete silence: about ten taciturn labourers were carrying over sacks that coughed out dust on their shoulders. Burdened with the sacks, they remained just as reticent when parting to make way for the unusual procession; waiting sturdily, they watched as two panting soldiers ran from an austere coffin-like vehicle resembling a police van, while the correctional-olive-hued van drove on a few metres behind. ‘They’re chasing deserters,’ the men said, sighing, and went back to work, their consciences clear.

  Running ahead of the field ambulance, the warrant officer was chasing after the private. The procession flew past the next goods wagon being loaded alongside the platform. The young lad and the man following him were running so furiously in fear of getting mangled under the wheels that, when the vehicle stopped at its intended warehouse, they vanished at full pelt. For a long time the warrant officer heard shouts of ‘To the top… To the top…’ from behind him, so he fled onwards, thinking they were racing to somewhere further on – while in fact, the head of the infirmary was yelling at the fleeing funeral team in vain: ‘Stop! Stop!’ The runners disappeared into the dark, and all that returned to Institutov was the echo of his own surprised yells. Two coupled wagons, a mail coach and a luggage van, were already standing at the platform. They looked as though they were taking a nap. The shunter that had hauled them over for loading exhaled the commotion of its labours, suffusing itself in fumy sweat – now it left for the next job; it was meant to return later to pull away with those same cars from the goods platform, in order to couple them to the long-haul passenger coaches and lead the train to its departure track.

  ‘I mean really, this is outrageous…’ the head of the infirmary grumbled, feebly clapping his feet down on the resonant platform. ‘Go after them and bring them back! Come on, quick!’

  It was Kholmogorov who obeyed Institutov’s order and took off down the platform. He disappeared so swiftly that Institutov shuddered, feeling engulfed by the almighty darkness. ‘Look, you go. Quick, follow him.’ He impatiently shoved Pavel Pavlovich into the gloom and when its black depths had swallowed the last person whom he might have bossed around, he was left utterly alone.

  ‘I want to see my son,’ the deserted Institutov suddenly heard from behind. He spun around in horror. The darkness expelled a small sullen figure with a briefcase and a hat, rather the way a man might officially turn up to collect his children from their mother’s custody.

  ‘What is it you want now? Have you been tailing me? Is this some sort of set-up? I’ll call the police,’ the head of the infirmary squeaked.

  ‘My son Gennady might not be able to speak up, but he has me, his father. I’ve come to this town for the truth. I’m a nuclear engineer. I worked on the construction of the Obninsk nuclear power plant. I’ve done forty-five years of service. I took part in the emergency –’

  ‘The Chernobyl disaster, haha!’ Institutov livened up nervously, hoping only to muzzle the little man. ‘Well, of course, these days we have every last tramp cleaning up some emergency or other. And I expect you, too, have suffered for the sake of humanity? You extinguished a nuclear fire? I can see you got well and truly irradiated; your coat and shirt have a nasty case of radiation sickness. Now, listen here. You are hideously drunk. No, my friend, you are mentally ill. Stop this blackmail at once and shove off or I’ll put you in an asylum!’

  The man in the hat’s voice trembled, but he did not back down: ‘Call the police. I demand to see my son’s body!’

  Institutov took a step back, but with an arrogant snicker. ‘This is preposterous. This is unadulterated schizophrenia resulting from radiation poisoning, alcohol and, no doubt, your devastating paternal grief. I was ready to help you as the father. I offered to find you a hotel, provide you with a free ticket home. Look, I even shared your grief when you spent two days in a row barging into my office and maliciously obstructing me in the performance of my duties, but this – this is just too much! Please be so good as to explain whom and what you think we’re hiding from you. The moment it happened, we straightaway telegraphed you the tragic news. Look, right here and now I am not entitled to hand you so much as the death certificate, but once the consignment arrives in that Moscow of yours, you’ll get everything from our escorting soldiers, have no fear. What, we’re hiding the body from you? Well it’s hardly hidden if we ourselves are sending it to the funeral in the best possible shape! We don’t have any incorruptible dead saints here, let alone refrigeration units for every corpse. A dead body in the medical sense is a perishable product. It has to travel all the way to its place of burial. You do realise we need to maintain basic hygiene, and a coffin involving zinc, you know, is not some sort of open house. What else do you have a problem with? Ah yes, you want us to dish up some guilty party… Just desperate for some kind of lurid sensationalism, right? Some action-packed detective story – with you starring in the lead role.’

  ‘I want to know the truth about how my son died,’ the uninvited father answered in a muffled voice.

  ‘Only let’s not have any crocodile tears – I have my own ideas of objectivity, see. You want to know the truth? You’ve thought it through? You’re absolutely sure? Well, as you’re in such moral torment, I’ll break the rules. My friend, your son died by his own hand. How much deeper do you need to dig? No further if it’s the truth you wanted to reach. That’s right, now what are you gawping at? There you have it, your truth.’

  Silence broke out. Institutov was meekly waiting for the moment he could go about comforting the finally devastated father. But the man crawled out from the wreckage and began groaning, unable to take any more pain: ‘Gennady should have lived.’

  ‘Well, you know, you should have told him that when he illegally acquired the guard commander’s weapon, and no one knew whether his plans involved dying or killing.’ Institutov wanted to prick this unfeeling noxious person with his words. ‘You’re an engineer, a nuclear scientist no less, and you’re acting like a halfwit. You need to change your think
ing, take a broader look, as a man of science. You want facts? You want food for thought? Your son died of his own free will. Now, by not raising a stink about it, we’ve ensured your right to material assistance and sympathy. But we’re making all these funeral arrangements for your son, giving you the right to his pension, and you’re insulting us! Yes, we deceived you, we wrote that he died in the line of duty, not out of pity for you, of course, but to keep our reputation clean. Well, there you have it. And we had reason to leave other facts out of the records too: we wanted to keep things amicable with you, none of this detective nonsense. You want to find some guilty party – now don’t go making a mistake, citizen, or you might stumble upon things best left untouched, like the fact that your son was the dregs of society. Will that make you feel any better?’

  ‘I’m a nuclear engineer –’

  ‘I know, I know… You think it’s a hygienic matter to open up your darling son’s coffin? To hell with your soul – let’s just fight to the bitter end and gut the poor fellow, disembowel him? Rip him open! Find your facts! Eviscerate him! And then live with your precious truth until you yourself rot alive, in torment… So either you get permission from the Health Inspectorate for this vile unsanitary procedure or else make room for us to work. Get out, you nasty drunken idiot! Don’t disgrace your son! Don’t stain the last chapter of his biography, not that it could get much worse. Well I guess you’d better go and sire another one, before it’s too late, a new one. Love him, pamper and mollycoddle him, name him Gennady too, build another nuclear power plant somewhere, perhaps it will all work out in the end. But right now things have not worked out – it means they were crossed by the stars. Don’t you get it yet? It hasn’t sunk in? You were just born unlucky, so what are you moaning about? What’s this guilty party you’re searching for? It’s you, you’re the one who’s guilty, you drunken bastard. Guilty for being born, for living… It’s you who drove your son to the grave the day you brought him into the world and started up your endless moaning…’