The Matiushin Case

by Oleg Pavlov

  Next day the foreman ordered Matiushin to sweep the paths again – this time Matiushin kept his mouth shut.

  The day after that Matiushin saw what happened when someone was discharged from the infirmary. They discharged a Kazakh – he’d been there for a long time, working as a dishwasher. He was striking to look at and belligerent, the kind that people here said was ‘on the make’, like in the prison camps. He’d fed himself up around the kitchen cauldrons all right and got free and easy, but when the foreman hissed that the army surgeon had ordered him to pack up his bits and pieces and leg it back to his company, he dissolved into a pitiful, shapeless lump in front of everyone’s eyes. At lunch they could still see his puffy, crimson face in the serving window, but the foreman didn’t like that – the fact that he hadn’t left yet. The foreman finished his lunch calmly and let the others finish theirs, then he went into the snug, dark little room where the cook and the dishwasher worked – and everyone heard a loud racket and horrendous screams. They all stayed there, waiting to see who’d get the best of it, no one interfered. About ten minutes later the commotion in the catering block stopped. The foreman appeared, dragging the battered kitchen worker along the floor by his hair.

  ‘I told you, didn’t I tell you, to clear out of here before lunch? You were asked nicely, right? Decided you were smarter, did you?’ the foreman harangued him, feeding his fury with his own words.

  ‘YabastardIllkillya-a-a!’ the dishwasher screeched.

  ‘You … Don’t you go making out you’re mental!’

  Everyone standing about doing nothing came alive, wanting to get it over with quickly, to smack down this old buddy who no longer mattered to anyone.

  The words showered out of every mouth: ‘What were you told? Didn’t get it, did you? You didn’t get it, you scumbag!’

  A week later, they suddenly took Matiushin’s bandages off altogether. His feet had healed up. Only he couldn’t understand what good they were to him like that – healthy – now that they’d taken away his crutches. Now that he was well, not doubled up over crutches, Matiushin felt useless and doomed. All that week he’d worked – sweeping the paths in the garden, standing duty on the ground floor where the menials lived, running errands for the doctors, lugging medicines and papers about whenever he was sent for. But when they took the bandages off and the crutches away, he retreated to his own floor and hunkered down there, not knowing what would happen to him. The foreman sauntered around that floor without noticing him, and Matiushin was in torment, wondering if there was an order for him to be discharged and what the army surgeon would say. But that evening the foreman called him over and gave him a job to do.

  ‘First thing tomorrow you scoot over to the catering block … I promised the cook I’d let him have someone, but watch yourself, you try swinging the lead – and I’ll have you over in the latrines in a flash!’

  Early the next morning, the cook met Matiushin with a knife in his hand and wouldn’t let him inside the door of the catering block, making him stand outside among the empty tables. This skinny little Uzbek, who looked like a fourteen-year-old, seemed like a harmless little snake, creeping about but unable to bite. Finally he condescended to let Matiushin in, told him to sit down, thrust into his hands a bowl containing pieces of cold pork – actually from the cabbage soup at lunch – and sliced up half a loaf of bread. That was how he showed that he was good-natured and could even be generous with chow if he wanted. Matiushin wasn’t hungry, but he started chewing away willy-nilly – tucking in and taking a look around. The little Uzbek was pleased, thought he’d tamed him. He came up to Matiushin’s chest and they were only the same height when Matiushin was sitting down.

  Inside, the catering block was just that, a block – square-shaped and faced from floor to ceiling with glassy tiles. It was like a sauna in there: the room got no air, only the hot sunlight. The heat was nothing to the Uzbek. Deciding that his assistant had gorged himself enough, he showed how fierce he could be by grabbing the bowl out of his hands without any warning and barking, baring his teeth, to make him stand over by the sink.

  It wasn’t even a sink but a huge vat with aluminium kitchenware dumped in it. The little Uzbek jumped up and sat on the high windowsill, looking down on Matiushin as he worked. When the pans and huge cauldrons had all been washed, he ordered Matiushin to wash the floor and watched him again as he crawled around with the rag. When the floors had been washed, he showed how good-natured he could be again and gave back the bowl of food: Matiushin was already hungry, or perhaps it was rage sucking at his insides. Then the little Uzbek pulled on his cook’s outfit over his skinny little snake’s body and shepherded Matiushin out with him – it was time to take the trolley and push it over to the regimental mess for the rations.

  Walking outside the infirmary fence felt as strange to him as being in the streets of an unfamiliar town. On all sides, no matter which way his eyes turned, there were barracks standing blankly on guard, asphalted paths stretching out to make mysterious connections, identical little trees growing. They didn’t meet anyone until they were approaching the mess, when they ran into a crowd of soldiers. The little Uzbek drew himself up and stuck out his chest and started shouting, to goad him on. The cast-iron trolley turned stiffly on its three wheels. Matiushin was dragging it from the front, so that he looked more like a dumb animal than anything else. The food cans clattered against each other with a dull chiming sound, and the crowd stared at them in a way that made Matiushin uneasy. The cook ran up and thumped him hard on the back with his fist. The soldier lads hooted approvingly. They started shouting: ‘Go hang yourself! Go hang yourself!’

  In the immense chef’s kitchen, which could have swallowed up a dozen of their catering blocks, there were three boiling cauldrons that looked like wells and everyone who was hanging around near the mess gathered to take a look at the quarantine soldier. Every last one of them looked like Matiushin’s little Uzbek, so Matiushin lost sight of him. Matiushin dragged over the large food cans with noodles, and soup from one of the wells was poured into them by their downtrodden lackey, perched up on a stool in soldier’s fatigues so dirty that they were brown. The lackey bustled like a little cockroach, delighted to be right there with Matiushin in full sight of everyone. He gave Matiushin orders in their language, and the Uzbek cooks standing around laughed. No one said a single word to Matiushin in Russian, and the fun of it all was that he didn’t understand what they were shouting at him, in fact he did just the opposite of what they wanted. When they were getting the bread, the breadcutter, a big, strapping Uzbek with a bull neck, asked what his name was, and when he heard it was Vasilii, he was delighted: his name was Vahid, which was kind of the same. He was so pleased, he said, that he was making him, Vahid-Vasilii, his little brother, and from now on he would help Matiushin in the regiment, and Matiushin could call him brother: he demonstrated with a rumbling laugh how a brother and his little brother should embrace each other when they met.

  The little Uzbek withdrew into his shell when his assistant and the regimental breadcutter became brothers right there in front of him. The two of them took the loaded trolley back to the infirmary without a word. The noodles were kept ready on the stove until supper and, after supper, Matiushin set to work again. The little Uzbek was in a nasty mood, he smoked and didn’t do anything, but Matiushin worked like he’d never worked in his life before. It had already got dark outside, the infirmary was sinking into sleep, but Matiushin had to take a container of the day’s waste to the mess on that same trolley. The little Uzbek, staggering about with his big knife in the silent, empty catering block, smiled with a drunken smile that had appeared out of nowhere …

  Following the route that he scarcely remembered and could barely make out in the dark, Matiushin trundled the trolley to the mess, where there were soldiers on fatigue tinkering drowsily with something. These soldiers, who had probably been herded here on the sly to do some kind of dirty work, swarmed round him from all sides; they wanted to m
ake him do the work for them. They kicked and mauled him until some powerful man appeared out of the night: a single glance from him sent them creeping off into various corners, back to their jobs.

  Matiushin dragged himself back to the infirmary, drove the trolley into its stall, trudged off to his own floor and into his ward, where he fell into a deep, work-worn sleep. And early in the morning, when everyone was still sleeping, the little Uzbek, who looked as if he hadn’t slept a wink and could hardly even speak, woke him up – it was time to go off to the regimental mess for the rations.

  Three times a day he fraternised with Vahid, drove the trolley to the regimental mess and washed the tableware, the kitchenware and the cauldrons. At midnight, when he took the waste to the mess, the hungry, cowed soldiers from the kitchen fatigue were waiting for him. And from early in the morning he languished in the catering block, deprived of something more than mere freedom, left one-on-one with the little Uzbek.

  The Uzbek wasn’t very bright and everyone yelled at him because he was so slow on the uptake. But all the yelling had no effect at all: he remained deaf. His job in the infirmary was a doddle because he didn’t boil or roast anything, except maybe for his friends and himself; he got the rations ready-cooked from the regimental mess – the only thing he did was cut the bread with the huge knife that he never let out of his sight.

  The cook spent all day sitting in the catering block, going out at night. It turned out that he was a local man – home for him was a collective farm outside Tashkent, and his wife and younger brothers came to see him every other day, bringing food from home. They also brought him cannabis, which he hid in a little pouch under the stove. He’d probably gone crazy ages ago, visibly withering away from smoking this stuff. The cook smiled stupidly and said nothing, but that was the madman inside him, cunningly hiding, keeping shtum and smiling. If he got any kind of feeling, for instance, if he was suddenly afraid, then the fear overcame him completely, filling up his soul so that it flowed over – and he could be frightened to death just like that by an empty saucepan clattering on the floor. He couldn’t actually work; he couldn’t even be forced to work. He didn’t sleep at night, because he couldn’t sleep unless he smoked himself into unconsciousness. And there was a special significance to the fact that he never ever put down his knife: the huge bread knife was the only thread that bound him to life, without it he couldn’t feel or understand anything. He was killing himself, but it was as if he was playing with death, which had become impersonal to him, it was everybody’s – but nobody knew that. He lay in ambush for Matiushin when they were alone together in the catering block, waiting for moments when he bent down or sat on a stool, and then skipping up to Matiushin from behind and setting the large blade to his throat. The first time this happened, Matiushin barely had time to be afraid, the pounce was so sudden. He thought the cook wanted to frighten him and tried to push his hand away. But the little Uzbek started trembling all over and pressed the knife against his throat without speaking, and then Matiushin started trembling too, like him, with his eyes goggling … Matiushin’s fear of death gradually calmed the cook down – and perhaps saved Matiushin’s life. Waiting until the cook’s grip slackened and he lowered the knife, Matiushin flung him against the wall. The little Uzbek cringed and looked at him with dim, watering, spiteful little eyes. But a day later it all happened again.

  No one came to help Matiushin. Half-awake at most, they ran as far as the latrine – in other parts of the building there weren’t even supposed to be any lights on; the catering block was submerged in darkness, as if its hull was holed and it had choked on the night’s black waters and drowned. Stoned out of his mind, the cook held the knife at Matiushin’s throat, ready to slit it at the slightest excuse, and kept on demanding an answer to the question: was his wife unfaithful to him out there on the loose or not … The little Uzbek got carried away and started telling Matiushin about his wife, complaining that she wanted to kill him and brought him poisoned food, and that she had another husband who also wanted to kill him. And he tortured Matiushin as if he could really know the truth. Matiushin repeated after him, like an echo, that his wife wanted to kill him, and this went on for half the night, until Matiushin felt like he was answering the little Uzbek through his own delirium. The cook, half-dead, as if someone had been torturing him all night there in the catering block, eventually sank into oblivion, finally letting go of the big knife. He sprawled on the floor, like a sleeping dog. Matiushin kicked him in resentment, but then lugged him off to his bed – everyone in the infirmary was still asleep – clearing him away like a corpse.

  After sleeping all day long, the little Uzbek dragged himself to the catering block when it was already almost evening and everyone had finished supper ages ago, and reached in under the stove, where he hid his grass. Matiushin, standing at the sink with his back to him, caught the odour of hash fumes snaking and coiling round the catering block. Then the cook started wandering about, still not saying anything, wandering on his own, with the big knife … He crept stealthily about behind Matiushin; sometimes Matiushin could hear his footsteps and sometimes they disappeared … Matiushin hit him on the hand, knocking the knife out of it, then grabbed hold of him and dragged him along, scattering kitchenware with a clatter – and he beat the little Uzbek, believing he was killing him, revelling in every sound that burst out of that puny, rotten little body.

  ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!’ Matiushin howled, almost passing out at the piercing, agonising sweetness of it, dragging the half-dead cook about and flinging him against the wall. ‘I’ll kill you!’

  And those words brought Matiushin round: he recovered his senses.

  The cook was hardy and he began to stir as soon as Matiushin left off. Soon he even perched on a stool.

  ‘Now you just sit there! Sit! Got it?’ Matiushin shouted obtusely, as if at a dog. ‘Just who are you? Who are you? You’re a dumb desert bonehead, that’s who … Come on, get up! Get u-u-up!’

  The stunned little Uzbek forced himself to get up and started crying soundlessly.

  The cook could easily have got someone to get rid of the Russian, taken his revenge on him so that there wouldn’t be a trace of him left in the infirmary, but he swallowed everything. And it was all repeated day after day – the two of them bleakly incarcerated in the catering block, the cook’s oblivious stupor, and these drubbings. However Matiushin now beat him with deliberate precision, knowing the moment when he should thump him hard and he would quieten down. The cook really did quieten down, but he almost always cried, as if some kind of poison seeped out of him with the tears. These outbursts of weeping made him repulsive to Matiushin, who treated him like his own assistant, except that Matiushin did all the work himself, for the two of them, disdaining to coerce the little Uzbek.

  Matiushin took the bread knife away from the cook, hid it in a place of his own and didn’t let the cook get hold of it again. But the little Uzbek put up with this apathetically as well. What Matiushin couldn’t take away from him – he was afraid to – was the grass. Out of a kind of spite, he started smoking it himself. The cook gave him dope on demand. The little Uzbek wasn’t actually burning up grass that he had paid for; it was free. Soldiers who looked like wild beasts used to come to see him on the sly. When they arrived, they sent Matiushin away and talked about something in secret with the cook and sometimes even beat him. The cook didn’t say what they beat him for. He looked just as dejected and desolate when he was called for a meeting with his wife and brothers and someone else – who it was, he didn’t say.

  Matiushin spotted a tattoo on the shoulder of one man in the regiment: it was a snake, coiled round a sword that was lying on a shield that looked like a chevron, and this shield was framed by an inscription: ‘I serve the law’. He managed to find a handyman in the infirmary who drew the tattoo for him, and only took two cans of stewed meat for the picture. Now the chevron with the snake decorated his shoulder too. Although what law it was that he was willin
g to serve he didn’t understand. He liked the snake, the shield, the sword … When the foreman saw the tattoo on his shoulder, not healed up yet, a mass of scratches, he lashed Matiushin across the face with the back of his hand once, and then again, in front of everyone in the mess.

  ‘Have you forgotten who you are? What law is it that allows you to go flaunting yourself around here, you lowlife? That’s it, I’m throwing you back into the regiment. You’ll be licking out the privies with your tongue … They’ll teach you, if you haven’t learned already …’

  Matiushin avoided anyone from Dorbaz who ended up in the infirmary. The downtrodden young guys, about ten of them, who were blown in like dirt, amounted to nothing in the infirmary – anyone could push them around or hassle them and, more than that, everyone tried to make one of them into his own personal lackey. Sometimes he fed them in the catering block, but only because the food turned his own stomach. Behind his back they repaid him for this with their united hostility, although in his sight they sucked up to him, thinking that otherwise he wouldn’t give them anything. Secretly they thought the way he stuck with the cook was a dirty trick – they all thought that he was the same as they were and had betrayed them.

  But one morning for some unknown reason a great commotion broke out around the infirmary … A whole crowd of officers – staff officers – came running, and everybody else was running around too, an incredible hullabaloo erupted. A whole platoon had come from Dorbaz. His own lads, Russians, the ones he had started with in the army, in the same platoon in quarantine. Their tunics had faded to white from the sweat and the salt, and their voices had a low drone to them, like the hot fire in a stove.

  ‘So this is where you got to!’

  ‘Look here, it’s Vasilii! Vaska! Vasyata!’