Captain of the Steppe

by Oleg Pavlov

  ‘All right for who, though, Petr Valerianovich? Pobedov is hounding me. And then he will hound you. He’s such a little tyrant that soon his suspicions will fall on you, too.’

  ‘I can delay his order while Pobedov is away from the regiment. That’s all I can do for you.’

  Skripitsyn had not expected such decisiveness from the cautious Degtiar, and fell quiet, leaving Petr Valerianovich to his own thoughts.

  7

  The Whole Truth

  When the lorry turned off onto the frozen steppe road, it began to drizzle. The driver suddenly stopped; he had been seized by the need to piss. The big man had no desire to go outside. He twisted to one side and, hitching up his long-tailed greatcoat just like a skirt, sprayed out into the grey drizzle with a guffaw. ‘Captain, look, it’s pissing down!’

  ‘That means we’ve got caught out, then. Think about it,’ replied the captain. ‘That’s it, now, winter’s here. In December the road will be blocked, you can be sure.’

  ‘Lord, we’ve thrown the year away … Is this the last rain, captain?’

  ‘That’s your lot. Wait ’til spring for the next rain. You’re on a wild goose chase there.’

  ‘And will spring come around? What if, like they say, we get covered over in ice; we’re fucked?’

  ‘Quit talking rubbish … That can’t ever happen.’

  ‘Oh, I’m doomed!’ This ginger, pock-marked galoot turned gloomy, jumping down out of the warm cab, which had suddenly become too small for him. He called out: ‘This carriage won’t go any further. You can go on foot, and I’m not giving those three roubles back. What’s up, are you frightened?’

  ‘You’ll catch your death. What bollocks.’

  ‘We only live once! Ugh, it sends shivers through me. It stings … Captain, see, I’ve got pissed on, all over! Climb out, we’ll freshen up in this last autumn rain. See, it’s like eau-de-cologne!’

  ‘You’re a nutter!’

  ‘I’m a driver. Get your hands round a steering wheel, you’d find out, too. It’s a free shower, see, and you’ve got a bit of soap on you. What’s up, got lice?’ Finally, the lorry set off. The soldier was pleased with his little escapade. Beforehand, he and the captain had travelled in silence, while now they were talking to each other, which made it easier for each of them to cope with the gloom of the kilometres stretched out ahead. Khabarov asked how well the servicemen lived in the Dolinka camp, and the ginger lad lied. And the captain almost certainly knew that the big lad was lying. Life there couldn’t have been worse. However, Dolinka itself did not seem any closer thanks to these lies, but rather sped further and further away in his mind, to the edge of the earth.

  The lorry was travelling up a wide incline, which was growing steeper the closer they got to the top. The road gained height up this slope like a drowning man striving for air, but the road was choking on it. Then, on the plateau that opened out, the steppe settlement of Karabas emerged. There were so many people crowding in the barracks square that they could be seen clearly even at this distance.

  It seemed the whole settlement had turned out to greet the lorry, as if they had managed to get wind of the captain’s arrival. The square was divided: a dozen fractious soldiers stood alongside Ilya Peregud, and a living wall of Kazakhs stood, not a crowd but a friendly family: a grey-haired elder in a shaggy cap and sheepskin coat, and behind him his indistinguishable sons, of different ages, behind whom in turn his grandsons were hiding. Their herd of horses was standing outside the gates.

  When the lorry drove past, the horses jostled one another, hitting out with their bell-like rears. The Kazakhs too took fright, despite their own rather frightful appearance, complete with whips whose lash seemed to sting at the mere sight of them. The Kazakhs had joined the settlement in earlier times too; it was never clear from where. Sometimes one would lose his way, drunk, and they’d leave him to spend the night there. Sometimes, they came with invitations to hunt in the steppe, because the servicemen had weapons, even if they were only government-issue ones. More often, it was the little rascals among them who carried on their own trade with the soldiers: they trafficked the local strain of marijuana and also exchanged well-made, rare things for the cheap knock-offs of the camp, which every soldier saved up for this purpose. The older ones particularly valued planks, metal and, most of all, nails. They would barter these for foodstuffs. However, most expensive of all were the vicious camp guard dogs’ pups, which the Kazakhs would exchange for sheep.

  Surprised by nothing, Peregud presented a mighty figure, standing on his two feet like some cast-iron monument, and at Captain Khabarov’s descent to the earth, with mournful, downcast eyes, greener than tarnished brass, he said, to no one in particular, ‘So, from that world to this.’ Only the Kazakhs seemed more certain, and more angry, as they recognised the captain of the steppe. Khabarov stood, upset, by the lorry. ‘Bloody hell … What’s happened now?’

  ‘You what?’ Ilya said reluctantly to the captain. ‘Don’t you know? You’re lying, you must know.’

  The Kazakhs were eavesdropping on the servicemen’s conversation, and it seemed to them that the warrior with the topknot was trying to persuade his commander to confess, while the other one was being obstinate. Hearing talk of lying, the old man broke in on them, angrily: ‘My family don’t lie! Oman found it. The potatoes died in the steppe. Oman found it. He knows!’

  ‘Ilya, son of a bitch, wake up. What’s this old man going on about?’

  ‘What’s to tell?’ said Peregud, in a voice made quiet by exhaustion. He spent a long time beating about the bush, but finally decided to spit it out. ‘Turns out, there’s none left. No potatoes, that is.’ The Kazakhs as one reached for their whips and pressed in on the captain as he snatched hold of their elder: ‘Did you see these potatoes with your own eyes? That can’t be possible, how can you not understand? I don’t believe it, you’re lying … ’ The elder, without fear but with some strength, pushed the captain away from him.

  Having hung around long enough for them to demand the use of his lorry, the big ginger-haired lad bitterly rued the moment that he had stopped in the settlement. He swore at the captain, but the latter climbed into the cab of his own accord and stared at him, so that the ginger lad had no option but to start up the engine. The elder, who had decided to show them the place in question after all, whooped at two of his kinsfolk, who obediently climbed into the back of the lorry, while he sat next to the captain in the cab, which was a novelty to him. On the way, they did not exchange a single word, each man quite alone beside the other. The Kazakh stared out at the steppe, noting each bend and how far they had travelled. His features were collected; stone-like, his expression did not change. He was enjoying travelling in the lorry, which led him to assume a dignified air. The elder’s determination was beginning to convince Khabarov, and he started glancing at him more and more often, his spirits falling.

  Wordlessly, the elder led him off, far from the road, the sides of which were already dissolving into the dusk. Behind them, the elder’s two kinsfolk stepped noisily over the stony ground. The soldier stayed in his truck and turned the engine off, so that all around became empty and still. There came a scent of something rotting, dissipated by the wind. The ground was rutted and covered in identical tyre prints made by the wheels of a lorry. An embankment of potatoes was staring at the frozen captain. It looked like a burial mound, and indeed it was a tomb. The elder looked at the hillock in surprise, prodding the captain: ‘Look, look, are those your potatoes?’ Khabarov bent down with difficulty, picked up a potato that may as well have been a cobblestone, and instantly dropped it. It banged hollowly onto the ground and did not roll. The Kazakh waited for the captain to say something. Then he touched him on the sleeve of his greatcoat, but it was as if there was no arm within. The old man was surprised. He muttered something and wandered off to the side, to his kinsfolk, who began whispering among themselves.

  Suddenly, the lorry began rumbling mournfully in the steppe, sca
ring away the deathly hush. It was then that the captain broke down. It looked for all the world as though the man had reached complete collapse, and he fell prostrate. It hit him in the side, at first; he crumpled, although without a single groan, then sank to his knees and planted himself in the ground.

  The Kazakhs ran and hid, but they could not bring themselves just to abandon him. When the lorry shot off in the opposite direction, away from the camp, the elder shouted something anguished after it, stamped his boots in anger, and huddled more warmly into his coat. The Kazakhs had nothing to wait for. Standing motionless on that fatal spot, all they could do was freeze. However, taking pity on the captain, the elder unexpectedly bade them all to remain. The Kazakhs sat nearby on the ground, hunkering down right into it, which was how they sheltered from the wind. Meanwhile, the wind scoured about above their heads. Freezing through, the old man took up a song, lamenting under its plaintive drone, and when he grew tired, his kinsfolk sang in turn, while he listened.

  Now, a group of anxious horsemen appeared in the night. The young men jumped headlong from their horses and dashed over to the weakened elder. He growled at them and gripped their arms for support. Once he had clambered onto the horse they had brought for him, regaining poise and power in the saddle, he sent some of the relatives who had hastened to find him off to fetch the captain from the mound. They hauled Khabarov to his feet. Seeing the horses pawing the ground, and their owners, he went without a murmur into the arms of the Kazakhs who had fetched him, and they tossed him onto the back of a horse whose rider was no more than a boy. Sensing that they were about to be loosed for a gallop, the horses started to prance; their shaggy muzzles with greedy, wide-open nostrils were lifted towards the steppe, towards the scent of the boundless black expanse. The elder was readying his stallion for the off, taking his leave of that ill-starred place without sentiment, but also without hurry. ‘Though the potatoes was yours, Captain!’ he exclaimed, as though he had worked it all out, and he set off on his way, not waiting for a response. The Kazakhs dispersed, whirled away by the wind, disappearing into the other side of the night. But the boy turned his horse in a circle and galloped hurriedly off towards the camp, as he had been commanded.

  Catching the sound of solitary hoofbeats, Ilya strode out of the gate, crashing his vast frame into the approaching horse. The animal staggered back, afflicted by the scent of vodka, while Peregud held firm and did not stagger. The captain got down by himself, but collapsed again. The boy waved his lash to and fro so wildly that Ilya began to wonder whether the Kazakhs had left the captain unharmed. ‘Are you alive, at least?’ he called, and the captain came to again.

  ‘They’ve rotted away. The potatoes have rotted away; they didn’t even feed them to the pigs. Not even the worms got to eat them … They’re all there, on the stones, they might as well be stones themselves.’

  ‘What are you shedding tears over them for, Vania? The effort’s a shame, that you broke your back for nothing, but that’s your own fault. So don’t do anything, don’t believe anyone, just drink some vodka. We’ve run off into the steppe, we can run further still, go right round the earth. It’s round, after all. Vania, cheer up, look: you’re a long way from Moscow!’

  It was as if this had seared the captain, so that he took a dislike to this drunken bullshitter who had laughed at his grief; although if Peregud had been laughing, it was in order to console the captain, to stop him giving up on life completely.

  By falling out with the last person close to him and, what’s more, making some effort to do so, at a single stroke the captain converted everything he had been accustomed to into something alien, which is what he had little by little begun to want. They were still standing side by side, so now Peregud accompanied him into the administrative office, staying assiduously by his side, imagining that he was leading home a lost friend. He even stayed in the office to sleep on the bare floor, although Khabarov himself tried to drive him away. Ilya would not budge, no matter how the other man tried to bundle him out. ‘Be happy! Be happy!’ The captain groaned from time to time, while Ilya lay still, only gulping from the bottle that was the one thing he had hugged to his chest with complete determination when Khabarov resolved to throw him out. Ilya had never seen his company commander so sober, so distant, like a block of ice. There was no trace of hangover in him, either, not even while he’d been in the truck. Peregud was perturbed that night; he kept waking up and dropping off, as if something was about to happen. Once he woke up and saw that the captain was writing and writing. Ilya felt sorry for him: ‘So what’s that you’re writing, then? Leave off, drop it, or they’ll come for you again … ’ Khabarov turned round, frightened by the voice behind his back and, through his sleepiness, Ilya made out the captain’s creased, tormented face, like a greasy rag – not remotely sober. Waking again, later, when it was already light, Ilya saw an empty desk and scrunched up paper scattered around, while the captain himself was sprawled on the bunk, asleep and snuffling. Ilya took off his boots and covered him with his greatcoat.

  The captain opened his eyes at some dreary hour, very late in the day. The smell of liquor was emanating from Ilya, as if he was steaming. ‘Well, good morning to you, you’ve overslept the time you should have been on duty!’

  ‘I’m not a dog, to be on duty!’ bristled the captain. ‘Whatever I want to do, I will do, and don’t you try to point the finger.’

  ‘That’s true,’ agreed Ilya, who had a store of patience like a camel, but the captain turned away and huddled closer to the wall.

  Later, feeling hungry, he forced himself to move. Over the previous few days he had forgotten about food, but now he felt an increasingly unbearable hunger, as though his food had been hidden on the other side of the wall and he could hear other people gobbling it down. ‘Give me something to eat!’ he suddenly demanded, with such a harsh decisiveness that Ilya was brought to his senses. It seemed to Ilya that, since turning to face the wall, the captain had been waiting far too long for his food, which they had forgotten to bring him.

  They quickly laid a table for him in the office. They chucked in some gruel and a concoction made from dried fruit for him to drink. There was lots of rye bread and ruddy pieces of crackling with salt and pepper – they had used up a chunk of beef fat especially for the captain. Swallowing all this food down, Khabarov expanded and grew heavier, but still did not feel full, which is to say, happy. ‘They sold us out!’ he said to Ilya, flushing a livid red. ‘This regiment needs to be burnt down, as an infection hazard. There’s not one man in it worth taking pity on. There’s sickness all around. The general rang me, but they’d sell out even a general, I know it! But I’ll manage it. Look, he’s on his way, which means I’ll tell him what needs to be done with this regiment. Which means douse it in petrol and set it alight. Let him give me the order. Oh, I’d do it all!’

  ‘That’s right, Vania … ’ agreed Peregud, turning sombre, and the captain spluttered, sinking into stinking oblivion. Forgetting everything he had been saying, he suddenly flushed that livid colour again, ending up like an inflated bladder. ‘But they sold me out! Where can I get hold of some petrol, to burn this infection out … The general rang me. He’s an honest man, I trust him. But they’ll sell him out, they’ll sell him out.’

  Ilya was fed up with the captain’s bilious speeches. No longer able to endure this torment, he could not hold back: ‘But what can you do about it?’

  ‘I can do everything!’ exclaimed the captain. This drove Ilya beyond endurance. Recoiling from the captain, he sprang up and muttered helplessly, ‘I’m not going to stay with you, you can sit here by yourself, seeing as you’ve become a right bastard.’ The captain looked at him in surprise, his gaze ascending to the summit of that mountain, the head, and, barely restraining his anger, he said, ‘That will be the death of you, Ilyushka … You’re a parasite and a freeloader, not a Cossack. Get out of my unit.’ The other man glowered and shrank into himself; turning clumsily in the narrow office and catc
hing himself on a stool that screeched along the floor, he made his way slowly to the door, barely managing the act of walking, as though his legs were beams of wood.

  Khabarov appeared before the soldiers in the cookhouse, his greed still unassuaged, despite having already put away his fourth portion. He normally joined the company for meals, sitting among the soldiers and waiting for the cauldrons to be brought out, receiving his portion in turn. For this reason the company commander was greeted as usual and many men did not even notice him as they took their seats or fought over a place. A pair of soldiers dragged in the pot, an enormous cauldron inside which an intrepid individual could have curled up like a fancy loaf of bread. It gave off a nourishing heat. The slop smelt of buns, although it might prove quite inedible, as though they had been boiling up rags in the cauldron. In their impatience, the men produced a living, human wail, every man desperate to try the slop and get some relief. It was at that instant, perhaps the most straightforward in their lives, that Khabarov sprang out, scaring them all. ‘I’m about to make you very happy, you sons of bitches!’ he exclaimed. ‘In the name of truth and justice, I am passing sentence upon you!’ He was struggling to speak, now, because he had pulled out the table along which the hot and steaming pan had been sailing, and overturned it. The cauldron toppled heavily, like a head lopped from a torso, spraying out the slop like lifeblood, drenching everything. The soldiers fought to get out of the way. Suddenly drained of strength, as though betrayed, the captain stupidly said, ‘What’s up, have you done eating?’ No one dared answer him; mind you, no one had yet managed to gather their wits. As he left, he threatened them joylessly, ‘Wait for me, now, I’ll be back for dinnertime.’

  With the sudden lull, the very air in the barracks turned crackly and icy, fettering not breath, but spirit. You couldn’t exactly have said that the captain had been plotting, hidden away in his office, but he appeared before dinner and walked off, away from the barracks, on some matter of his own. Blindly crossing the square, the captain nonetheless halted at the shack. This was the one place in the entire company that remained dear to him; he looked it over with feeling, and he remembered. There had been no lock on the shack ever since the Special-Department agent had broken in, but even in its dilapidated state it was still imbued with that same air of activity, as if its missing resident had re-established himself within. So it came as a great surprise to Khabarov when he observed that there truly was someone living in the shack. There, where his potatoes used to be, Petr Korneichuk, the soldier who had been pulled out of the shit, was hiding from the other men. The captain barely recognised him: he was puffed up and wearing pitiful, cast-off rags. Seeing the captain, the soldier flung himself down at his feet, moved to tears of joy, and blurted out, ‘Comrade Captain, you’ll be amazed: the lads aren’t giving me anything to eat; they’ve nicked my boots; they beat me up; they want me to sleep in the shithouse and not pass infection on to people … You’ll be amazed! Amazed, I tell you, comrade Captain!’