by Oleg Pavlov
It lasted a long time, and the air in this third-class bay became charged with a sour fustiness, like a squat little button battery filling with electricity, from the breathing of this one person.
Pavel Pavlovich’s voice trembled, grew quieter and then broke off when, growing nearer and louder as though through the depths of non-existence, forcing its way towards the people in the third-class carriage, there came a knocking. Right up close, just below the train windows, a muffled, dull drumming of feet was advancing in bounds along the earth. A solitary yell rang out, harsh and distinct; it must have been some command, followed by a sinister baying of dogs rushing to maul the air. Everybody listened in shock. A furious thudding of boots burst into the emptiness of the carriage. A wild clamouring shout came rushing towards them: ‘Police!’ But in the scrum raging in the narrow neck of the carriage, figures cocooned in army greatcoats became discernible. The ray of an angry torch, perhaps of many, with pupils like headlamps, was blinding and scouring the faces in full beam. They scorched the eyes even more harshly. The powerful united wave of the raid crashed down on the funeral-table barricade. The boards went flying: some lodging in sheets or jabbing like spikes into people; others snapping with a gunshot crack under their own pressure. Crockery rained down, screeching in the crush underfoot. Suddenly a jubilant cry rang out – perhaps it was ‘Collar ’em, my friends,’ or it could have been ‘Collar my friends’. A few moments later, out of the roaring, crashing and shrieking rose a deathly howl. There was a pause, and then the call was relayed through the carriage: ‘Somebody’s been knifed!’ – ‘Help!’ – ‘Give us some frigging light here!’ – ‘He’s alive!’
The wounded man – for he was still alive – was carried out of the carriage like a sack of potatoes. People were hurrying as if a fire had broken out. For the first ten minutes or so, while everyone was wailing in the chaos of the raid, panic reigned. Perhaps in the hope of saving him, perhaps of saving themselves, they dragged away the man’s limp, heavy body, its clothing erupting before their eyes in a blaze of red. They ended up with him in the dark on a bare, dank patch outside the carriage. Not knowing where to run or what to do, they were carrying him suspended by his arms and legs, because they would have had to hunt around even to find a stretcher. The two military policemen were losing their grip. The body was beginning to slip from their hands, drooping and falling as though into a hole. The man was moaning in pain and humiliation, feeling forgotten. Then he mustered the strength to snivel, for he wanted to live: ‘Where’s the ambulance? My friends! Do something… What are you doing? I’m in pain… For crying out loud, I’m dying!’ The senior in the patrol grew fed up of this whining and said angrily, as though cursing, ‘Oh put him down, I’m sick of this!’
The bleeding man didn’t know what this all meant, but he was soothed to feel that he was lying stretched out on his back, impervious to the cold ground onto which he’d been lowered. The military policemen urgently sought help at the scene, but in vain. They were searching for cotton wool and bandages. To plug the wound, which was leaking blood, they would at least need to pull out the murder weapon. Still sticking in the man’s chest was the fatal sharpened iron spike that had been plunged to an unknown depth with uncertain danger, but it was in to the hilt. Seeing all this, the senior soldier became afraid to shoulder the responsibility. Awoken and afraid, people began pouring out of the carriages. There was no medical worker of any description to be found in the crowd of onlookers. It soon became clear that this dosshouse-on-wheels was utterly disconnected from the world. A runner was sent to the station to phone for an ambulance. The soldier ran for help as fast as his legs could carry him, or perhaps he dawdled, but on his return they again waited in vain. The ambulance that was called out could not find the entrance to the right dead end. Or maybe they had got lost somewhere else. Maybe they had turned back ages ago.
The crowd at the scene of the incident straggled into the carriages to go back to bed. The senior in the patrol was warming himself in the very carriage where they had caught the two young soldiers who had gone AWOL from their commanding officer. One of those soldiers had by that time been identified as the commanding officer’s killer. They were now waiting for the police to get there and register the deserters. The runner had been sent back to the station, this time to fetch the police.
Three bodies now lay prostrate outside the carriage, under guard of the soldiers on military police duty, also left out in the wind and cold, surrounded by darkness. The two live ones were face down, their legs and arms splayed as if on a cross-frame. The dead one, whose arms and legs had been calmly folded, was facing skywards. They could see from his eyes that the Head of the Infirmary for the Karaganda Regiment had gone to meet his maker: they had completely glassed over – frosted like November mud at night, and glinting with the same surprised and icy shine. ‘So I’m dead now?’ those eyes seemed to be saying. ‘How lousy this life is… What a lousy sky…’ From the trench coat which the corpse was wearing, unnoticed by anyone, crawled out a teensy little grey creature – not a mouse even, but a mouse pup that had remained for some unknown time hidden in the lining at the bottom of the coat. It crawled out – and quivered like a little heart, staring at the face of the man in front of it. The mouse pup didn’t know anything and couldn’t do anything, and it carried out the only meaningful movement of which it was capable, imprinted into its mind for the sake of hygiene, although now it seemed as though it were grieving and washing in tears, and then it became calm and scurried under the smelly carriage to freedom.
‘Is this night ever going to end?’ grumbled the chilly soldier who was on guard.
‘Oh but it’s morning already. And the afternoon is going to look like morning. And we’ve still got to lug the stiff about, no doubt… While those guys are lying there having a ball. Hey listen, you bastards, you’re going to get the works! You’ll be bathing in blood soon enough, you’ll see,’ the same guard said, letting off steam. But it clearly didn’t help him feel better. He took a run of three or four steps and stuck his boot into one of the men on the ground.
THE LIVING TO THE LIVING
Opening his eyes, he thought he had ceased to exist. His consciousness was reeling from the blows, and his body had ceased heeding its own pain. He must have been lying on the side where his rib was broken but coming to from the pain, he could not in any case move a muscle, not even to roll onto his back to ease the agony. Outside the railway carriage, fate had been kind to him: the punches had landed on the first man they found. Then the guards had puffed their chests out and led them as though into the future. The foreign little beggar girl in the soldier’s padded jacket had traipsed after them in silence. The military police could not work out what she wanted. Needing to get rid of her little outsider’s eyes, they chased her away. Then at a remote spot, a senior officer suddenly gave the command to stop: their fellow soldiers began beating them up again. Each tried to get in a strike; they were fired up and pummelling randomly with their fists. He endured it all meekly. The other man incurred their wrath by hitting a guard back. But he only managed to swing his fist into the guard once. They immediately knocked him down, encircled him and mired him in mud – not only was every inch of him now black and blue, but there wasn’t a patch left clean. The officer had been smoking to one side, waiting: his simple, honest-looking face remained calm.
Seemingly absolved, Alyosha was now standing alongside the officer and began weeping as he watched the other man suffer. The officer found his tongue: ‘That one won’t cry. Be a hero if he went into intelligence.’ He finished the cigarette and shouted, ‘Right then, champions, break it up, he’s had enough!’ They left the doubled-up body on the ground and retreated; he was ordered to lift the body and haul it along. He happily clutched at his load, grappling to cope with it – and the other man clung to him as though for dear life, still muttering profanities through his pain, groans alternating with growled-out curses.
The journey of these two men, bound to
gether by their respective convulsions, was brief. The soldiers handed the arrested men over to the guards: now they were prisoners. All the cells seemed to be empty, such was the silence. And this silence was quietly augmented by the two new arrivals, who were now separated.
Before entering the cell, he was searched. They ordered him to surrender his greatcoat and belt. He graciously carried this out, imagining that he was handing them his outer layer as a guest might when visiting. His hosts smiled cordially. He was left in the dead man’s short tunic. Warmed by the welcome, he asked with a thoughtful and understanding look: ‘Should I take my boots off?’ They answered him with matching gravity: ‘That’s up to you; some do, some don’t.’ Then, of his own volition, he removed his footwear. Shielding their eyes and barely containing their laughter, they quickly appropriated the pair of lacquered orchestral boots. Nothing was left for them to covet. They opened up the cell and let their barefoot prisoner in as though he were a child, without telling him what would come next.
The door slammed behind him like a gunshot. The floor, walls and ceiling, all covered in the same bare concrete tiles, were frosted with white. He just stood there, unsure where to go. His eyes were wearily seeking some kind of warmth. The heat produced by his body was instantly spent on the air, which was so bitingly cold that breathing was painful. Just below the ceiling a small wolfish window was howling; through the aperture, laced with a web of bars, a meagre light from the sky filtered in. His gaze was drawn towards the light. The narrow, elongated cell was a little deeper than a grave. He shivered, his strength painfully ebbing away as though he were a dying ember, and stared in amazement at the light, just as near as it was far, offering him no help, not even warmth.
Here too they had their own justice. He would be beaten periodically by the guards coming on duty. The guards were rotated every two hours. They would enter the cell all smiles and kindness, and somewhat tiddly. To protect their hands, they’d wind a belt around their fists. When he caught on that they would use their fists while you were still standing, and once you’d fallen they’d set in with their boots, he started dropping to the ground. That way it would be over faster. At one point he called out, already half-senseless from the drubbings: ‘Where am I?’ And he heard the reply: ‘Where are you? Karaganda or Timbuktu?’ Then, forgetting himself, he implored, ‘What have I ever done to you?’ They merely laughed in reply. They were aware that the newcomers had been picked up for murder. Until they dispatched such men to the prison camps, they would dutifully inflict torment on them here. And this torture continued the whole time, and he lost track of time, no longer sure whether he’d been there for a day or for days and nights on end.
His soul seemed either to be seeking the path to salvation or, perhaps, it was making some final farewell round. He saw everything that had happened over the many years, but not the way it had really been: good and bad, the faces of his loved ones – and all he had done in secret from them. Everything combined beyond time, in separate sequences, each in turn. And it was this sudden realisation that terrified him: everything was flashing past, never to be repeated. His soul desperately clung to the higgledy-piggledy images and sensations from his past life, from a time when he had simply been free, and he wept not from fear or pain but from envy for the person he had been, as though it were a different man who had been given his life and even his face. And that man was to live in his place, breathing and drinking. That man would go as a son to his father and mother’s house, and they’d love him until their dying day. And he began babbling, as he had in childhood, unable to stay mute any longer, sensing only the icy concrete tiles beneath him: ‘I won’t do it again. I’m sorry, please, forgive me… I’ll be good as gold.’ He would sink from exhaustion into some black space, but he had merely to wake and again he’d start mumbling, unable to believe that he would never find forgiveness.
‘Hey, still not got it?’ a shout rang out again. ‘You were told to leave the cell, you bastard. You can play stupid once you’re in the investigator’s office.’ The guard stood aloof at the door. He closed his eyes and opened them: the guard had not moved. Nearby stood some boots. They were army boots, a knackered old pair, to replace the ones that had vanished.
‘Hello, son, take a seat,’ said a woman in a neat, humble uniform. She was sitting behind a steel table sunk into the floor, diligently continuing to write, and for a long while she paid him no further attention. She was in her early forties. Her face was softly encircled with a pleasant firm plumpness. Her hair was tied back simply with a clip. Her eyes jealously followed the words that were issuing from her hand and then roving, as if guilty of something, to the edge of the white sheet. Writing did not come easily to this woman, but she enjoyed making all those words obey her and line up in rows. When she pressed down firmly on the pen, her face also pulsed with stress, adopting an intently cruel look. For no other reason than to help the man brought for interview shorten the time spent in her office – which was like a cell in appearance, though tangibly filled with her womanly calm, warmth and quiet – the boss spoke gruffly and with a sternness befitting the questions. ‘Tell me how you fell into the company of a man like Nazeikin. Who fatally stabbed the head of the infirmary? Whose idea was it? Who did the bladed instrument belong to?’ When no answer was forthcoming, she sighed: ‘Fine. Don’t say anything. But I know anyway.’ His head was aching with every word. He did not speak because he could not recall anyone in his life with that name. The boss began writing as though taking dictation from herself, without lifting her gaze from the table, ‘The fingerprints found on the bladed instrument entirely match those of Nazeikin. The witness statements taken from the patrol group say that the attack was delivered by Nazeikin. Being in a state of severe alcoholic intoxication, Nazeikin pulled out the bladed instrument and dealt a single blow to the heart; the outcome was fatal. And where were you when all this happened? What were you doing to stop it? Both of you refused to carry out your commanding officer’s orders. Both of you walked off without authorisation. Both of you consumed alcohol on that fateful night. The patrol group claimed you and Nazeikin both resisted arrest together. So evil was committed. And evil must be punished.’
She seemed to add a full stop – and she was done. She pushed the report aside. Somewhat awkwardly she pulled out from under the table a bottle of kefir and a bun flecked with raisins, all tucked up in a clean white cloth. The distraught appearance of the detainee, who could easily have passed for a victim of crime, did not disconcert her in the slightest. She began chewing intently and moodily, as though performing yet another laborious duty. She swallowed a mouthful and washed it down with some kefir from the bottle, whitening her lips with the nourishing milky liquid. Suddenly her face brightened with surprise and she said in a clear voice, ‘Here, have some.’ But then she frowned, wiped her lips with the cloth, took a bite of the bun and asked indifferently, ‘Maybe you’d like some? Ok, then, don’t say anything. Hey, guards, come on guys! Who’s there? Artur, sweetheart, come here.’ The guard who had brought him in for questioning arrived in the office. In a businesslike tone, though with her mouth full, she mumbled, ‘Now bring me Anatoli Nazeikin. Huh, it won’t be for the first time. And have this one washed, shaved and fed, find him something decent to eat and return all his things to him. I want him all cleaned up and shipshape. Then bring him back here and call me out into the corridor.’
‘Yes ma’am, Svetlana Ivanovna!’ the guard responded promptly, gazing at her in admiration.
‘Good, I’m glad it’s all good…’ she answered, into emptiness. Now alone in the office, she sat placidly and chewed on her bun, which had such a paucity of raisins that she had to wait a long time for each burst of sweetness in her mouth, like waiting for wishes to be fulfilled. ‘Eat from your bowl, don’t listen to a soul,’ she said to someone who wasn’t there, unless it was to herself – and she suddenly seemed an old woman.
When she had filled her belly, she got up from the table, carefully pulling her swollen
stomach out from under it before rising. She stretched her arms out wide, and from her unbuttoned jacket protruded the entire life-giving orb of her own flesh and blood. She gave a yawn and waddled over to the wall where you could see the sky through the muzzle of bars. Gazing wistfully at the dim light of the sky, she stroked her stomach a few times. She sighed patiently, thinking of her due date. Then she carried her stomach back to her workplace, already thinking of the murder case, for which she still had to extract a confession out of the perpetrator. And she retreated within her four prison walls.
The guard had seen a lot, but this was the first time he had taken a prisoner straight from interrogation to have a shower. It was oppressive to think about, somehow. To lend your razor – let alone to shave – a man whom you had beaten and robbed: it was so repulsive that his hands rebelled. But half an hour later the newborn man, his shining wet hair slicked into a middle parting and smooth face already dry, was sitting in the guardroom as though he were one of them, waiting to be taken and fed. He suddenly spotted two soldiers pushing a man shackled in handcuffs down the corridor. The man was refusing to budge and cursing greedily, craning over his shoulder to see their faces.
His gaze must have been piercing. The guards were ill at ease. They couldn’t manage a swipe at him nor shout him into submission even though there were two of them. They laboured in silence, sweating and puffing. They were shoving him along with jabs, but it felt as though he were pushing them back and looked almost as if it were he who was shoving them. There was everything in him: a furious sensation of his own strength, a hunger for power over these people, which at that moment could only have been assuaged by their blood. The only thing missing was any hope of escape. But freedom shot through him like lightning and shrieked in his throat when, beside himself with joy at the sight of the man who sat waiting, he yelled: ‘Alyosha!’ Thinking he saw his friend rushing to his aid from the far end of the corridor, he surged forward – not towards him, but ramming his shackled body into the stunned guards. But as soon as they realised what was happening, brought to their senses by the yell, which had vanished into nothingness, they acted swiftly: one of them grabbed him by the hair and immediately bent him backwards with relish as though turning him inside out, the other punched him in the stomach, making him buckle and collapse to his knees.
