Requiem for a Soldier

by Oleg Pavlov

  ‘Ah, so you’re back…’ Alyosha said, feeling forgiven. She heard this and gazed at him with the same piercingly tender look – then laughed, pleased with herself, thinking that this clumsy, kind-hearted man must be taken with her beauty. At last reassured that he had not gone anywhere, she grabbed the soldier’s greatcoat sleeve as though she wanted to climb up Alyosha’s arm like a monkey.

  Alyosha endured all this. The girl started laughing again, because he was puffing and straining to support her weight, and she marvelled at herself: ‘Huh, see how heavy I am!’ Then she tugged his arm forcefully towards her, so that Kholmogorov had to surrender, and then, probably hoping for admiration, she said, ‘Look how strong I am!’ Feeling good, the girl whispered, ‘Can I say a swear word, only to you, really quietly?’ Sitting on the soldier’s lap, she pressed against him to get even closer and whispered it, proud of doing something grown-ups do. He could not see her face, merely feeling a warm and even breathing somewhere on his temple. He listened meekly. And she became bored, as though she were playing all on her own. She immediately forgot everything and started babbling away: ‘I know lots of soldiers! It was soldiers that brought us here. The soldiers gave us food and drink, and my padded jacket, and tablets… Have you got a gun? All soldiers have guns, I’ve seen them. Where’s your gun? Where is it?’

  As though he were required to come up with a fairy tale, Kholmogorov invented: ‘I have an assault rifle, but I forgot to bring it with me.’

  ‘You can kill!’ said the girl in delight.

  Alyosha mumbled, ‘It’s very bad when they shoot at people with assault rifles. Why don’t you sit down and eat – you wanted to eat, didn’t you?’

  ‘Then why do you have a gun?’ the little beggar girl stubbornly probed. He said nothing and the girl frowned but, in spite of her anger, she wriggled back into her soldier’s lap for her treats. Once again she crammed all the booty into the pockets of her padded jacket, as though feeding their ravenous mouths with chocolate and hunks of bread.

  This time she was hoarding almost without zeal, although she left the funeral table with her pockets bulging like bellies. She did not believe Kholmogorov: she thought that he had shot at people, and now he was lying. Wearily getting ready to head off somewhere again, she said, ‘I’ll come back to you, and we’ll drink tea. This train isn’t leaving, I know that; you can just come and go.’

  In the dim light, they sipped hot tea served by the conductor. Everybody was speaking lifelessly about their own matters, and some places at the table already lay empty. Mukhin’s father had nodded off in the same pose he’d adopted for his grieving: snuggled against the table, which he was hugging with arms that had stiffened over the hours and were arranged like a woodpile, atop of which lay, as though on the executioner’s block, his dirty greying head. Somebody else, though, was rousing those around him with reckless gaiety, pestering and hectoring them one and all: his bodyguard Pavel Pavlovich, also known as Rafael. He left no one in peace – he was having fun, so everybody had to have fun, whether they liked it or not, especially the poor drunken lady whom he kept by his side, laughing and calling her Helen of Troy, making her eat out of his hands, giving her squeezes under the table. She brushed him away petulantly, but was not in a fit state to summon up any intelligible phrases. The conductor was walking about the carriage all alone, bearing glasses of tea, and, in the intervals as he waited patiently for people to request a glass, he sat down by the dozing and equally lonely nuclear engineer, as though silently conversing with him. He was as buoyant as though he were at work, yet filled with such serenity that he was willing to serve his tea for free, never flagging nor losing his cheer. He enjoyed sitting next to Mukhin’s father, who may have been asleep, yet even so, it felt as though he were serving that amazing man, one of a kind. He liked carrying the glasses through the sleepless night-time carriage. He loved being surrounded by trusted and reliable persons. And he enjoyed the densely steaming hot water filling the glasses, and the juice released in the swirling brew, the price of which he didn’t know. He would usually take whatever he was offered for a glass of tea; for some reason this was the only way he could work. Tea had vanished from the shop shelves a year ago. He had heard on the radio that the whole country had run out of tea. Stolen by somebody from somewhere, those tightly-filled packets of tea had been bartered for the conductor’s freebie coal, which in effect was pilfered too, as he was heating the carriage-hotel more frugally. In this way he cared for the boarders, believing that for them hot tea always came first, just as it did for passengers on a journey.

  ‘Give us two glasses of tea without sugar,’ the girl said importantly upon her return, and the sturdy man happily came to life. ‘It shall be done, mistress. Two glasses of tea with sugar!’ he commanded himself, and ran off for it.

  Kholmogorov was not overjoyed at the beggar girl’s return. He even took fright as she clambered onto his lap, wanting to sit just so at the table. He could not have done anything to hurt her, but already he was pining and wilting at the closeness of this strange little street girl who was old beyond her years, sensing a certain shame that had arrived along with her. Seeing that the table was empty in front of the girl, Pavel Pavlovich flew into a rage and shouted, ‘What bastards, you couldn’t spare some grub for her! Hey, little sister, we’ll take it all away from them – you’ve got to eat, you still need to grow, unlike them. They’ll kick the bucket tomorrow. See? All of it’s for you! Eat up and don’t let anyone else have any.’ He swept everything edible on the table into the corner where the girl was sitting on Kholmogorov’s lap and said menacingly, ‘Listen, don’t do anything to upset my little sister, or I’ll bite off your noses! She’s the only one here who can tell me what to do. You all got it? Tuck in, little sister, eat your fill, I said! Anyone touches her – I’ll kill them!’

  The girl stayed silent – this soldier frightened her, and he seemed even stupider and greedier than all the people whose food he had taken for her. When he had turned and left them alone, she moved the plate away – back towards the guests from whom he’d taken it. She kept just a few pieces for herself – and put aside the same amount again for Alyosha. Afterwards she was quiet for a while and then gave voice to what must have been troubling her: ‘He’s a very bad man. Why did you let him yell at you? I’ll kill him myself if I can find a gun.’

  Kholmogorov did not know what to say in response. He asked, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Aidym.’

  ‘Aidym?’ Kholmogorov asked in order to have something to talk about. ‘It’s like our word for smoke.’

  ‘And you’re like a camel!’ she said gruffly and scornfully. ‘Is that what you’re called? We have to drink tea. I love tea. At home we all drank lots and lots of tea. Do you have your own home?’

  ‘Yes… Tomorrow I’m catching the train and going home.’

  The girl frowned.

  ‘Will your train go far away?’ she asked faintly, as though for some reason she was ashamed of asking. Alyosha became pleasantly lost in thought, reminiscing about home, and he spent a long time speaking as though he were already sitting in the train carriage, travelling blissfully for days and nights on his way home. Aidym listened carefully, gazing at the troubled face disfigured by its squirmy smile as though by a scar, for a long while unable to tear away her understanding, inquisitive eyes, and then suddenly she stopped the soldier short by saying, ‘I’m going to be your wife.’

  ‘What’s this? Do it, Lyosha, get married! At least I’ll get to party one last time! My soul is all shook up, how can you not see that?’ Pavel Pavlovich’s words rang over the table in a joyous tormented howl. ‘You won’t find a better bride than my sister, don’t even think of it. We orphans know how to love! Oooh! Heart nailed to heart, that’s what it’s like, our love. Or maybe you think she’s not good enough for you? Forget the fact that she’s dressed like a scarecrow… She’s pure gold, this little girl, with a diamond inside her, I’m telling you. Oh marry her, you fool, for God
’s sake I beg you! Ugh, the devil with this, I’m all out of patience… Right, once and for all, in the name of all powers, the Devil and God, death and life, I pronounce you, little sister and little brother, husband and wife! What are you gawping at, you bastards? Don’t you like it? You were guests at a wake – and now it’s a celebration; you’re all wedding guests, got it? So rejoice, or I’ll kill you!’ And he yelled at the top of his voice: ‘Kiss the bride! Kiss the bride!’ With the same energy pumping through his soul, Pavel Pavlovich suddenly grabbed his own lady, already dishevelled from his courtship, pulled her into an embrace and planted a kiss on her lips, which were clenched with fear. It was a defiantly long kiss. The guests were petrified, but they managed to come up with some smiles and giggles. A minute later, Yelena had come back to life. Her wooden little arms and legs that had protruded from her boa-constricted female body began twitching again. Plaintive moans became audible through her closed lips. But this first kiss taken from her merely stirred his desire for more. Tormenting her breezily and deliberately, he bellowed into her groaning mouth, feigning wild passion. Again she went limp in his arms – magnanimously he stopped the torture. When he let go of her, she tumbled out of his arms like a corpse, her face a mask with a hole cut out for the mouth, which was hot and plump, with crimson petal lips. The lips were moving: ‘Let me go… Help…’

  ‘It’s too late to make out you’re a non-smoker,’ her tormentor grinned, pleased with himself. ‘We’ll just smoke one little ciggie each and you can run home to Mummy and Daddy… I’ll give you an entire sea of love and flowers – you did say that was what you wanted!’

  Hiding her face, Aidym was wheezing hoarsely into the soldier’s greatcoat, snuggling into its manly folds. Kholmogorov himself was staring at his workmate, completely lost. Alyosha had heard Pavel Pavlovich giving himself a new name, but he had been waiting meekly for him to start speaking like his old self again. The new hero, however, was blissfully happy. He was spread out on a bunk, one arm hung like a horse collar around the neck of his lady, who was still gasping for air, while with the other he was conducting the guests with a grin. Compliantly, they raised a few toasts. Then he felt like singing and began to drawl in a gravelly voice:

  The blue carriage is chugging along,

  Rolling along,

  The express train is picking up steam…

  When he heard no one joining in, he pulled a ferocious face that implied: ‘Sing it, or I’ll kill you.’ The guests warbled the chorus discordantly in forlorn and childish voices: ‘Oh, what a pity it will all end now.’ And he was soloing on, rapt, his eyes filling with tears and narrowing in languor.

  Alyosha joined in too, like everyone else. He was used to obeying his mysterious companion. He was pining for at least a little kindness. He could have not remembered the words or the tune: despite hearing the song often as a child, he didn’t think he’d heard it since, and it seemed long forgotten. But suddenly he began belting it out, cawing along with everyone else as though they were lined up in ranks, frightful for anyone with an ear for music but loud and in unison.

  When her soldier began singing, the girl went quiet, listening to the steady, deep, stove-like boom in his chest. She had been frightened and angry but now she became calm and happy. Kholmogorov felt the stifling heaviness present when Aidym was wheezing and crossly pushing against him had been lifted from his soul. His chest filled with a pleasant tingling warmth like cotton wool. In fact this must have come over Alyosha while he was joyously lost in singing as loud as he could. Meanwhile Aidym’s clingy nimble little hands were scrambling about the soldier’s coat like spiders, stealing into all the pockets in turn, rummaging about their unexpected emptiness… Not finding what she’d been thinking of, Aidym grew timid in sheer happiness: knowing that within the soldier’s greatcoat there had to be even more pockets than on the outside, the girl didn’t dare come too close to his body. She lost hope of weaving her web and withdrew her hands. And without knowing the words to the strange Russian song, she began to join in, crooning it gently:

  The journey’s unfurling like a tablecloth,

  Stretching away to the distant sun,

  Everyone, everyone… Is hoping for the best!

  The wedding was in full swing. To the strains of this happy sadness, in the dim light of the third-class carriage, Mukhin’s father revived.

  His dull, sleepy eyes were bulging like a fish’s; taking umbrage, he surveyed the goings-on. He sat gazing deafly at the singing mouths, unable to make out what time or place he had found himself in. The only thing he took in, with a disgust that was also somehow fishlike, was that he was among people. Landed on shore, dazed by the sensation of his own sobriety, Mukhin’s father was returning to life with sporadic breaths in and out and his eyes remained open. He was gulping in air, but it wasn’t quenching his thirst. Right before him in grieving silence stood the two tumblers of vodka that shone like lead. They were pinned down with the same two slices of black bread, which over the hours had become stale and turned blacker still.

  ‘Dad’s back,’ cordially noted Pavel Pavlovich, also known as Rafael, straightening up at the table. ‘Come on then, tell us where you’ve been, what exploits you got up to. I love a good fairy tale. You know what it’s like: so boring, nothing ever changes, makes you want to scream. But you want things to be the way they never are. Well it’s not like that’s a question. Do I know or don’t I? – Now that’s a question! And the thing is, I do know, I do… Ha! Now tell me, why is there no precision to life? Why won’t you say something? You thought up your fairy tale, but you can’t make head nor tail of your own life, or so you’d have us believe. Ah, but you will make sense of it; that’s what I’ve risked my hide for. I was watching and watching you, standing to attention there on the platform, and I thought to myself, It’s not right! See, I know who shot him, Dad; the driver always knows everything about everybody. Beginning to guess what a tale we’ve got here? And you too are about to find out what kind of death your son met. You might not want to, but you will. You’ll find it all out!’

  Mukhin’s father remained silent, staring at a single point the whole time. It was as though he had been whacked on the back with a stick, which had merely made him stretch out jerkily to full height. ‘Oh, you’re back to standing to attention, are you… I ought to flatten you… I’m sick of this… Are you a worm or a man?’ This time the man’s eyes, piercing in their pain, darted right at their target, with the result that Pavel Pavlovich, also known as Rafael, came to his senses and went silent.

  Suddenly the little man found his tongue, saying glumly, ‘Where’s my hat?’

  ‘Dad, oh Dad… What kind of a man are you! Your hat’s gone. You left it and went for a stroll,’ the soldier said, softening.

  ‘Who are you?’ came the second question.

  ‘You can think of me as a hello from the land of the dead. I was sent by Gennady Mukhin to whisper something to you: ever heard of him? Your beloved son? Thing is, he wasn’t no hero… Seems he was shot by an officer, his own commander, because the guy felt like it. Had a pistol in his holster. Power’s too mild a word for it! You want to execute them? Just do it. Want to pardon them? Do it – like God Himself. Fingers get itchy, he freaks out – that’s when he went to fire, drew his pistol from the holster. Now he’s resting his nerves in the infirmary, because that’s how it has to be. And your son is going to feed the worms in a zinc jacket because that’s how it has to be. And all everybody cares about is hurrying things up, choosing the fastest train, just so life can carry on! So, their births are a mistake, their lives are a mistake – everything’s all a mistake. Now one mistake got corrected. And you’re correcting another one, you bastard, while you’re guzzling your vodka… And I am too; all of us are. Isn’t life sickening!’

  Silence opened again like a chasm, audible down to the teeniest creak, the slightest rustle. People began wriggling. On the upper berths they were all listening, but instantly pretended to be asleep. ‘Rafael… Rafael…
’ mumbled the lady in her stupor, then suddenly began snoring unpleasantly. Night entered the third-class carriage the way a strange wilderness and darkness must creep into a tightly sealed coffin deep below the ground. One of the guests sitting on the fringes jumped up and fled. Somebody giggled. It was stifling. ‘Anyone for tea?’ The conductor began to fuss. Mukhin’s father grabbed one of the glasses in front of him that still held vodka and quickly drained it.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Alyosha said in surprise, looking around, unable to make sense of it all.

  ‘Now keep calm, the train’s on schedule. Don’t you fuss, skin-and-bones, you can hop off at the right moment. It’s easy enough. Your ticket to life’s journey won’t expire. The important thing is you have nothing to do with it, now remember that. It’s me who has no stops, just a one-way ticket, and the road is as round as a wheel. I sometimes take pity on other people, but when it comes to myself, I’ll jump right into the fire. Maybe I just can’t feel pain, I’ve grown used to it. I can stub out cigarettes on my tongue, drive a nail into myself anywhere – it doesn’t hurt and I don’t feel sorry for myself. All well and good, I’ll just go along on my ride. Can’t you all sing me something, then? A farewell song? That would be nice! You don’t want to? Too proud? Then I’ll sing on my own… You don’t love me? Well I don’t love you either, but I’ll still sing you something, oh how I’ll sing, while you’ll just sit there pitying yourselves.’

  This time the guests in the third-class carriage did not even know the words or tune to the mournful orphan’s song that Pavel Pavlovich was singing in a drawl; he was as alien to them as a waif. No matter how much spirit he put into it, his solitary voice could not rise to the occasion. He was warbling slightly off-key, as if pretending to sing while in fact wishing to throw open his soul, to get closer to people, rather than being phoney and insincere yet again. But he mustered the courage, or some unexpected powers of humility, perhaps, to keep drawing out the boastful, syrupy sounds that were torturous, even for him. The guests were overcome with apathy and impotence. They listened unwillingly, motionless, shackled by this pause that had occurred in their lives.