by Oleg Pavlov
One of the sailors squatted down, opened his attaché case and started going through the things in it, rearranging them, searching, while the other towered over him and laughed. One item glinted, slipped out of his hands and clanked on the floor – a hand-made steel knife. It was left lying there, over to one side. The sailor took out a ring of sausage, broke it in two, and they started chewing on the sausage in silence.
Matiushin walked out of the vestibule, sat for a while in his berth where everyone was sleeping and then went out again for a smoke when it was probably midnight already, but he found the young sailors still standing in the vestibule just like before. There was another station, a poky little one, and then another, but the sailors went on standing there, getting ready for something. The people in the carriage were sleeping with their bodies stacked on top of each other and, when Matiushin had smoked enough and set off back from the vestibule for the last time, he couldn’t force himself to walk through the carriage. He lay down and tried not to think now about the young sailors with the knife, to go to sleep, but they were still standing there in front of his eyes. The train was always either frozen motionless or silently setting off from way stations where he couldn’t see a thing through the window. The desert halts, although they were brief, even hasty, filled him with a dreary terror. Every stop seemed like the last to Matiushin.
Suddenly a tramping of feet, howls of joy and a concerted human droning erupted out of nowhere and scattered the dismal phantom of the night. He twisted round like a little animal and pressed his face against the window. In the circle of light hovering beside the carriage, a whole crowd of folk had gathered. Laughing faces with slanting eyes flickering like lights and mouths like slits of joy; shadows danced with wide-flung legs and strong, resonant voices sang. Men with whips, women, children, even horses held by the bridle off at one side, all swirled about beside the carriage. Two patches of snowy white drowned in the embraces of indistinguishable shabby outfits. Held shoulder-high, the sailors were dragged into the circle, and people crushed up against each other just in order to touch them. The sailors bobbed and pranced about, floating on people’s backs, clutching their peakless caps so they wouldn’t be torn off their heads. And with their other hands they clutched their fragile-looking attaché cases, waving them in the air like flags. Those two flags jerked about for a long time, jutting above the crowd, before they were lowered to the ground. The sailors were carried to the horses and set down. They climbed onto the horses with ponderous dignity, making their mounts sag under them like frail little boats, and were intoxicated to find themselves way up above the ground, swaying in the saddles. People around them started whooping, either egging them on or expressing admiration, gazing at the flat, thin bread cakes of their caps with the ribbons and golden letters, and at the small, bony, flattened objects that they were holding in their hands like bags. In the night the faces couldn’t be made out, but they all seemed somehow dear and beautiful to Matiushin. To demonstrate their boldness to their relatives and the sailors, little kids who looked like small midges launched into a gallop, clutching on tight to the shaggy manes of their horses. Black herds of them hurtled along the line of carriages. As they flew past, they flogged the carriage with their whips, lashing at its blind, sleeping windows as if they were eyes, which Matiushin found bizarre to see – but even so they couldn’t wake anyone up. The carriages were as silent as lifeless barrels, which was probably why the kids dared to whip them. Soon the crowd of folk flooded back from Matiushin’s carriage and all took their seats as if taking up their posts for action. The men moved aside slightly and each of them drew himself erect on his own steed. The women and children sat two or even three together on broad-backed, bloated nags, ready to set off after the men. The sailors were imperious, radiating a new, mysterious strength. Already accustomed to this strength of theirs, they sat enthroned, choosing to keep their lips calmly closed and say nothing.
Happy at not having to wait for the train any longer and tired after this nocturnal raid, the entire horde stood in the darkness of the way station, and their horses could be heard stamping their feet, murmuring restlessly and breathing out clouds of steam, as if they were smoking.
When the train set off, the horsemen also moved off quietly, level with the carriages. The train picked up speed, but the people on the horses picked up speed too, not falling back but racing after it – then suddenly went dashing off into nowhere, into the blackness, and disappeared from sight. For a long time Matiushin fancied that the horsemen were still close, but time began flowing more drowsily. He got tired of waiting and moved away from the window.
That night, way station after way station, their carriage emptied of people. After Balkhash, where they woke with the morning, when the soldiers roused each other they saw a half-empty carriage. They were moving faster, although there were just as many senseless stops. They knew they were supposed to arrive by midnight at some place called Karaganda, but in the midst of the cold, grey steppe morning it began to seem as if the sky was darkening and midnight was already approaching, the moment you simply thought about it. During the doldrums of the rest of the journey, the companions in good fortune dreamed until darkness came that they were being taken to train as cooks. One was a half-Czech from Syzran, a tailor by the name of Husak, small but with huge eyes, as if he was crying, and a leg that was crooked from birth – Matiushin remembered the funny way he had walked across the platform at Tashkent, dragging his leg the way a mother drags a stubborn kid along after her. There was a quiet one too, with poor eyesight, the kind of person who likes to study. His name was Sergei and he said he was from a music college. There were Anikin and Kulagin, as alike as two brothers after the hepatitis, two fellow townsmen from Penza; one of them had been a landscape gardener in his previous life, the other hadn’t had time to do anything since school. Matiushin felt depressed: they thought they were all going to be trained and turned into cooks, but he didn’t want to be a cook. He didn’t even want to share his air with them on the journey – he’d been choking on his melancholy since the end of the first day. The lights of the main station glittered malevolently that midnight, at the hour of their arrival. They disembarked from the half-empty carriage in Karaganda and immediately saw the gun-mount backside of an army truck jutting out of the darkness. The wind was bending small trees that were swamp-coloured in the night, and the damp air had the smell of a swamp. It seemed as if Karaganda was always like this: chained to greyness, cold and damp. As they waited to learn their fate they froze in the cold and wind on a platform as black as if it was wet. After the joy of boundless light and warmth, they felt as if now they had ended up in a damp, cold basement – not on the ground, but under it.
Keeping the men in the cold beside the truck, the duty officer swore and insisted stubbornly that he had nothing to feed them and nowhere to put them, and things had to be decided somehow. The hope flared up for a moment that they were here by mistake, but the escorting officer from the Tashkent regiment squelched it. He swore and insisted even more stubbornly than the duty officer. It became clear who was going to win. The strong man got what he wanted, the weak man’s faith failed him and he backed down – and beds were found in the middle of the night. In the darkness, they guessed from the smell that it was some kind of infirmary again.
Early in the morning, between four and five, they were woken by local men who had heard the noise in the night and come to gape. Outside the window, rain flailed about in the wind. A large pan of yesterday’s meat and cabbage soup was dragged in for them and even cold it tasted good; they were more generous with food here than in Tashkent. The new arrivals discovered that they had ended up in an escort regiment where men served as soldiers, and didn’t learn to be cooks. They couldn’t make any sense of why they had been sent from the escort regiment in Tashkent to this one. In the morning some majors came into the room, looked at the men without speaking, as if they were sick, infectious animals, and went away again. The men didn’t go anywhere else
all day long. Starting from the next morning, they were driven round the rain-soaked town to various hospitals: in one they had blood samples, in another they had their stomachs palped. They were brought back to the infirmary, fed lunch, then taken back to the doctors to be examined.
Then Husak was separated out and taken away, and he didn’t come back. Anikin and Kulagin disappeared, taken away to a barracks for the night. Nobody wanted to explain anything.
The next day it seemed as if they’d come for the rest of the men, who were ordered outside. The little hills of hangars and warehouses stretched out in lines behind barbed wire as they wandered along the edge of the road after a little officer. At one warehouse, where a van was standing idle and silent with its doors wide open, revealing that it was stuffed with large-headed pigs’ carcasses, the officer stuck his head into a low little door.
‘Glebich, I’ve brought some manpower.’
‘Oo-oo-oo … ’ The approving drone floated out of depths into which an iron staircase led down, and when they walked down it, they found themselves in a cold stone cellar, fragrant with the aroma of fried meat. A dishevelled, softhearted-looking man was frying the meat for himself on a stove, as if he were working a miracle.
‘Eating it straight away?’ the little officer asked ingratiatingly.
‘I’m taking a sample! And who are these? Where’d you drag them in from?’
‘Why, they’re from the infirmary, let them work …’
‘From the infirmary … Well right enough, work’s a healer. Now then, my sons, you saw those dead pigs. They won’t get you dirty, don’t worry; the important thing is, make sure you don’t drop them: meat’s treacherous stuff. Drop it and it’ll start stinking.’
After an hour’s work, pork from the carcasses that had been taciturnly weighed and hoisted up under the ceiling was browning and sputtering away without any smoke. The smell given off while it fried put the warehouseman in a mellow mood; after eating a bit, he flourished his cleaver and threw another great chunk into the frying pan, unafraid of any germs, and when the soldiers had done the job, he gave each one of them a piece like a slice of bread. True, the little officer refused fastidiously, but he was angry looking at the fry-up and the way they tucked into it. The warehouseman relaxed and encouraged them:
‘Eat up, eat up! You’re people too, you need your vitamins too.’
‘And what about us?’ the little officer asked boldly. ‘I’ll wait and drop in when it’s a bit darker, but don’t you do me down, Glebich.’
‘I won’t do you down … These are good lads, handy, bring them again. I’m tired of running around begging.’
‘You couldn’t beg snow in winter from our lot, the kind of people we’ve got now.’
‘No, it’s the way times are – got to keep a tight rein on things. But I could do with a soldier to help out, one at least … Are these all sick then?’
‘It’s time for this lot to die! They’ve been dumped on us from Tashkent, it got too hot for them there,’ the little officer said with a grin. ‘But just look at them, they work as if they were alive. Run over to our chief, maybe he’ll fix it up, and then take them, or they’ll be sent off to the fucking companies; they’re short of men in the companies.’
The warehouseman looked all three of them over and nodded at Matiushin:
‘What’s your name? Like to join me here in the stores?’
‘No, I’ll go with all the rest, we’re off back to Tashkent.’
‘Why, you’re a fool, lad – look, he doesn’t want to go to heaven!’ the warehouseman laughed. ‘Who’s going to ask him where he wants to go!’
The little officer took them back stealthily to the infirmary. When they were ensconced in the ward, Rebrov started hurling reproaches at Matiushin:
‘What Tashkent, who’s this you’re going with? You bastard, you should have told him, you ought to have spoken up for all of us, said we wanted him to take us all. You heard him, they haven’t got any men!’
Matiushin slumped against the wall and stared silently, as if afraid of starting a fight, but Rebrov was furious. He fell silent of his own accord, ran out of steam. That evening the one who could play the trumpet, the third one, couldn’t take any more and decided to risk it: he’d found out from local men that they were fond of music in this regiment and there was a club where they played their trumpets, and he ran off to the club. And he didn’t come back again either. But a truck that looked like a bread van with iron sides came for the rest of the men. Matiushin had never seen one like it before. He realised they were being taken away for ever, and he felt sick at the sight of Rebrov and his repulsive face: that interminable, despicable wish of his, for them to be together, had come true. Rebrov himself was shattered. A tired-looking soldier and officer were having a smoke by the truck.
‘Fucking hell, Karpovich!’ the soldier said with a smile, as if he’d recognised someone he knew, keeping his fastidious little eyes fixed on Matiushin.
‘Shut it, you foreign devil, you. Stop fuddling my lads’ brains, gawping like that!’ the genial officer rapped out. ‘Right, climb in, let’s go. The cons have been loaded up, we’ll drive like the wind. If you’ve got fags, ok, smoke, only the butts go out the window. Our driver’s a strict one, no littering in the cabin. And we’ll have a proper heart-to-heart at home. Ours is a fine place, lads, like being out in the country.’
They climbed into the iron lobby of this slammer on wheels. The entire back of it was taken up with two cages divided by a partition and locked shut; there was something living lurking in them, making low grumbling sounds. Matiushin was struck by – not a stench exactly, but a fusty, earthy smell, like from a greenhouse. The soldier slammed the door shut behind them and walked away. There was a smell of hunger and pain. They heard gates rattling – the van drove out and the back of it started swaying about and screeching, clattering the cages. Rebrov sat in his corner with a haunted look, not saying a word. Matiushin clambered over to the window and breathed in the fresh wind. First they were run around through the town for a little bit, and then driven into the gloomy, frozen steppe and dragged on across it.
They would have gone for each other’s throats, but they’d run out of strength ages ago. They held out until a stumpy little railway station flashed by in the window and there was a whiff of soot from a railway line and a glimpse of the chipped wooden boards of houses or sheds – they couldn’t make out which in the damp, smoky, cotton-wool air. A minute later the truck sputtered into silence. A soldier swung the door open and stood to one side, as if he was used to it, dangling his automatic rifle in his hand.
They climbed out at a neat, tidy barracks that looked like a residential block. About three hundred metres away, a sheer, high, long, dirty white wall soared upwards, as if it was patching a hole in the sky. There were nesting boxes on its naked apexes, and they could see the little fledgling sentries. The sentries watched from on high as the truck drove inside and dropped off two unknown men – they waved their arms and shouted. There was a distant hoot from the station. The roofs of a village stood, hunched over, out in the steppe. A welcoming little family of soldiers darted out of the domestic-looking barracks to surround and greet the new arrivals. All the soldiers looked the same and they all gaped at Matiushin and laughed, their eyes flashing and twinkling:
‘A new Karpovich has arrived! Karpovich’s brother! Karpovich’s brother has arrived!’
The genial officer, the elderly, grey-haired man who had driven them from Karaganda in the prison truck, was the sergeant-major here; Matiushin heard his name – Pomogalov.
Pomogalov sat in a separate room, the orderly room, with its doors standing wide open, and fell asleep like a log at his desk. Everyone who was in the barracks whiled away the time until lights-out in the recreation room. Matiushin remembered the name of one of the soldiers, Dybenko, and the story that he, or some other soldier, told about a girl being raped in some town or other. Dybenko presided in the recreation room, apparently in charge
there. He sat in the middle, half-naked, stout and ponderous. In the meantime, his trousers were being ironed for him by a ginger-haired soldier with whom he spoke like an equal, to show the others that he wasn’t humiliating the soldier, simply training him. Apart from the incomprehensible exclamations when they arrived, the new arrivals in the company were given the silent treatment. Rebrov tried to break into the general conversation, but they listened to him without saying anything and looked away.
As the soldiers trickled out of the recreation room Dybenko started talking. He turned lazily towards Matiushin, nodded at his uncovered shoulder, where he had spotted the tattoo, and asked:
