Four Soldiers

by Hubert Mingarelli

  Behind me, Pavel was silent. He moved occasionally and I heard his sleeper creak against the others.

  Perhaps he wanted me to speak now?

  I suggested we go to the station to pick up the dice. I thought it would give us something to do and help him forget his nightmare. But I had spoken too soon. If we brought the dice back, we’d have them on us tomorrow morning when we woke, and how would we explain that to the others? Anyway, Pavel didn’t say anything. I don’t think he’d been listening. I went back to gazing at the sky.

  But I wasn’t thinking any more about the sky I’d seen in the forest.

  Pavel was still silent.

  And then suddenly I was seized again by that fear that one day I would take Sifra’s place in Pavel’s dreams.

  And Pavel’s silence went on so long that I started thinking: it’s already happened, I’ve already replaced Sifra, I was the one who was holding the knife in his dream and he doesn’t dare tell me.

  Without turning around, I quietly called out: ‘Pavel!’

  ‘What?’

  A very brief pause and then: ‘Was it still Sifra in your dream?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Tell me it was still him.’

  ‘Yes, it was him.’

  I relaxed. I felt confident again. And that confidence felt so good that I wanted more. Expecting that he would yell at me straight away for asking such a question, for having even thought it, I asked him: ‘Pavel, if it was me who did it . . . instead of Sifra, I mean . . . what would we do?’

  I couldn’t see him, but I could tell that he was thinking. So instead of yelling at me straight away for even thinking it, which is what I’d hoped for, instead of that, he was thinking about the possibility of it happening one day. I felt awful.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Pavel,’ I lied. ‘Forget it.’

  28

  WE GOT UP very early to go and fetch the dice from the station.

  We saw them as soon as we opened the door. They were stacked up on top of each other in the middle of the room. Kyabine grabbed them and started juggling them in his hand. I sat in a corner and tried to sleep because I was tired from my nocturnal outing with Pavel. I didn’t fall asleep, but it did me good to be able to close my eyes for a little while. When I opened them the station was empty. Everybody had left. I got up and went out onto the platform.

  Sifra and the Evdokim kid were sitting against the station wall. Kyabine was crouched in front of them. His coat was spread out on the ground, and all the pieces of his rifle were lined up on it. He was teaching the Evdokim kid. Kyabine started reassembling the rifle until Sifra said: ‘Wait!’

  ‘Wait for what?’ Kyabine asked.

  Sifra, in a gentle voice, said: ‘Show him that again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re going too fast, Kyabine.’

  Kyabine picked up the hammer spring again and slowly put it back in place.

  ‘That’s better,’ Sifra said. ‘Don’t go any faster than that.’

  I spotted Pavel far off in the field. I walked down the platform and joined him. We walked together for a while. When we came back, the rifle was reassembled and Kyabine was asking Sifra to show the kid what he could do. ‘Come on, Sifra,’ he was saying, ‘please do it!’

  Sifra smiled at Kyabine.

  ‘Show him, Sifra!’ Kyabine pleaded.

  I understood what he was talking about and I helped Kyabine convince Sifra to do it.

  ‘Yeah, he’s right, Sifra. You should show him!’

  Finally Sifra picked up his rifle and completely disassembled it, carefully placing each piece in front of him in a precise order. He always put the pieces in the same order. You’ll see why. When Sifra had all the pieces lined up, Kyabine said to the Evdokim kid: ‘Now watch this!’

  He got to his feet, stood behind Sifra and put his huge hands over Sifra’s eyes. Sifra groped with his hands for the first piece to his right and, as soon as he touched it, the show began.

  It happened very fast. He reassembled the rifle blind, more quickly than any of us could do it even when we could see what we were doing. Nobody in the company had as much skill or speed as Sifra when it came to reassembling a rifle. Maybe nobody in the whole Third Army did.

  It was over. The rifle was in one piece again. Kyabine removed his hands from Sifra’s eyes and he looked at the astonished expression on the Evdokim kid’s face.

  29

  AFTER WITNESSING SIFRA’S demonstration, the Evdokim kid went back into the station. We stayed on the platform, doing nothing. We were silent, each of us lost in his thoughts. I was thinking that the Evdokim kid wasn’t really bothering us. Or not as much as we’d feared he would at the beginning, anyway. He followed us around, whatever we did, and barely spoke. I knew he found us intimidating.

  Just then Pavel said that before going to the pond we could try crossing the field to see where it led. I poked my head around the station door. The Evdokim kid was writing in his notebook. He looked up at me and I told him that we were going.

  We walked down the platform and went into the field. We didn’t have to find the pond today, so we walked together. We had taken off our coats and slung them over our shoulders. We were using our rifles as scythes to cut down the grass.

  I stopped, turned to the side and took a piss. While I was doing that, I thought about Pavel’s caterpillar because there were lots of insects in the grass. I tried to look for a caterpillar being eaten by ants. There wasn’t one. I re-buttoned my trousers and looked up at the sky. Some birds were flying towards us. They were flying quite low and I had the feeling they were ducks. I ran back to the others, yelling that there was a flock of ducks that was going to pass over us. They stopped and turned to look at them. We all held our rifles and when the ducks flew over us, we fired. Then we started running as we reloaded our rifles. We fired again and ran again. We shouted furiously at the ducks, reloaded, and fired. Our coats, slung over our shoulders, got in the way of all our movements. Soon the ducks were a long way ahead of us, but we continued shouting and running after them like madmen, until we reached the road.

  We tossed our coats and our rifles in the ditch and we lay down on the road to get our breath back.

  When I sat up again, the Evdokim kid was coming out of the field. He sat down with us and asked: ‘Did you get any of them?’

  For a moment nobody answered him. Then Sifra said: ‘No, we had no chance.’

  So he must have been wondering why we fired so many shots. Pavel, still lying on the road, took out his cigarette case and offered one to each of us. The Evdokim kid didn’t want one. Pavel put the case away. He lit his cigarette and said to the kid: ‘So you’re writing to your mother?’

  The kid looked surprised. ‘Oh, no!’ he said.

  ‘Who are you writing to, then?’ asked Pavel.

  The kid hesitated, then said: ‘Nobody.’

  Pavel rolled onto his side and put his elbow on the road, resting his temple on one hand. ‘What the hell!’ he said.

  All of a sudden he sat up and stared down the road. In the distance a horse and carriage had appeared from around a bend. A man was walking beside the horse, holding its bridle. Pavel continued to stare at the carriage. He stood up, went over to the ditch and grabbed his rifle, and then calmly walked in front of the horse. When he was close to it, the man brought the horse to a halt and held out his hand to Pavel. Pavel put the rifle over his shoulder and shook the man’s hand.

  We couldn’t hear anything from where we were. They were talking together for quite a long time. Suddenly the man pulled on the horse’s bridle and tried to turn it around to head back up the road from where he’d come. Pavel took a step back, grabbed his rifle and aimed it at the man, who let go of the bridle.

  30

  WE CROSSED THE field back towards the station. Kyabine wanted to ride the horse first. He held on tight to the creature’s mane and stared straight ahead. He looked very serious. He made a few
attempts to stand up in the stirrups so he could see farther ahead. But each time he almost lost his balance. Sifra was holding the horse’s bridle and the Evdokim kid was carrying Kyabine’s rifle and coat.

  All of a sudden Kyabine shouted, as though it was something extraordinary: ‘I see the station!’

  And then, as if spotting the railway station had been the objective of this little horse ride, he called out: ‘Stop, Sifra!’

  Sifra brought the horse to a stop and Kyabine passed one leg over the animal’s hindquarters. He slid down to the ground and took hold of the bridle. ‘Your turn, Sifra!’ he said.

  Sifra handed his rifle to the Evdokim kid and I helped him up onto the horse. Sifra started to tremble. I held his ankle for as long as I could. Then, gently, I let go, and he climbed on top of the horse.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Kyabine asked. ‘Holding on tight?’

  Sifra whispered yes.

  Kyabine pulled on the bridle and the horse started to walk. Sifra gripped the horse’s mane with all his strength and begged Kyabine to go more slowly.

  So Kyabine slowed down and Sifra carefully sat up on the horse. Finally he turned to us and smiled.

  And let me tell you, at that moment, I looked at the confident smile on Sifra’s face, because Kyabine was leading the horse at the right speed. And I watched Kyabine’s slow, reassuring gait, and Pavel was there too, walking next to me, and suddenly I was filled with emotion because each one of us was in his place and also because it seemed to me in that instant that each of us was far away from the winter in the forest. And that each of us was also far away from the war that was going to start up again because the winter was over.

  I looked away, I looked at the field and the sky, and Pavel kept on walking by my side.

  31

  IT WAS MY turn to ride the horse, but I was unlucky. Kyabine was holding the bridle and Sifra was holding my foot. I hoisted myself up but the horse suddenly lurched forward. Kyabine let go of the bridle and I fell to the ground. Then Kyabine ran after the horse. The two of them disappeared. Some time later, Kyabine came back, covered with sweat, without the horse, looking miserable.

  We told him that it wasn’t his fault, that nobody was strong enough to hold back a horse, and we headed towards the pond.

  Around noon, Kyabine and the Evdokim kid went back to the camp to fetch our meals. We played dice while we waited for them. We didn’t gamble though. We just tried to make complicated combinations.

  Kyabine and the kid returned from the camp with the meals. The kid was carrying our mess tins and our cutlery, Kyabine the big dish that he’d carved from a tree stump over the winter. He was excited when he reached the pond. He asked us if we knew what we were going to eat. We guessed straight away. It was the pig, of course. And there were old potatoes too, and beans. It was a nice stew, and it was still warm because Kyabine and the kid had hurried back. We ate everything and sucked the bones.

  Miming compassion, Pavel said: ‘There are two lads from the Shuyski regiment who are dreaming of going home so they can eat pork.’

  ‘Poor lads,’ I said.

  ‘They’ll get to eat chicken,’ Kyabine said. ‘The woman at the farm had a chicken.’

  We stood up and threw the bones in the pond. We were expecting loads of fish to swarm all over them. In fact only two came and swam calmly around the bones.

  Pavel and I lay down again. Sifra took off his boots and waded around the edge of the pond. Kyabine washed the big dish, then went into the water and used it to try to catch fish. He slowly lowered it into the water until it was full and then quickly pulled it out, checking to see if there was a fish inside.

  The Evdokim kid went to sit on the grass behind us. We heard him take out his notebook. After a while, without turning around, Pavel asked him: ‘So tell me, who do you write to if it’s not your mother?’

  It was as if the kid had been expecting this question, because he answered very fast and enthusiastically: ‘To myself.’

  Pavel raised his eyebrows at me. But what could I say?

  Then, still without looking at him, Pavel asked the kid what exactly it was that he was writing.

  But it was Kyabine who replied. We thought he was absorbed in his fishing. But he was listening. He said to Pavel: ‘Yesterday he wrote that I won at dice.’

  ‘Shut up, Kyabine!’ said Pavel.

  Kyabine burst out laughing.

  Pavel asked again: ‘So what is it exactly?’

  The kid said: ‘Things that I see.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Pavel, shaking his head. ‘Everything you see in a day!’

  Suddenly we couldn’t believe our eyes. Kyabine was crouching in front of us, holding the big dish on his knees, and inside it swam a fish so small it could have fitted twice over into the palm of his hand. Kyabine looked at us. He couldn’t seem to believe it either. He shouted to Sifra, who was on the other side of the pond: ‘Hey, Sifra, come over here, quick!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I caught one!’

  Sifra came over. He looked at the fish and congratulated Kyabine.

  Kyabine wanted to cook and eat his fish, and he wouldn’t listen to anyone who tried to dissuade him. Even Sifra joined in: ‘There’ll be nothing left of it by the time you’ve cooked it.’

  ‘Why will there be nothing left?’ Kyabine asked.

  He put the big dish down in front of him, got to his feet, and went to fetch some stones from around the pond. He made several trips, arranged them in a circle, and put a flat stone on top. But the problem was that there was no wood nearby. So he went into the field and returned with his arms full of half-dried grass. He took the fish out of the water, banged its head against the flat stone and laid it on top. He picked up a handful of grass, set fire to it, and slid it between the stones in the circle. It gave off more smoke than flames and quickly burned up. He took another handful and put it inside the circle of stones. He did this at least a dozen times.

  The flat stone started to warm up and the fish started to sizzle and smoke. But Kyabine was almost out of grass. He ran into the field and came back with another armful. He stuffed more of it into his little fireplace and blew on the grass. We could smell grilling fish now. He picked it up by the tail and turned it over.

  Ever since he’d started doing this, Kyabine had not even glanced up at any of us. All the attention and intelligence he possessed had been focused exclusively on the task of cooking his fish. He had none left for anything else.

  We knew this and we were paying attention. We sat there, observing him without moving.

  The Evdokim kid had put away his notebook and joined us when he saw the smoke beginning to rise.

  Kyabine was lying on his front. His pile of dried grass was close by and he kept digging into it. The pile was getting smaller and smaller. Suddenly there was none left and the fire was out. Kyabine sat up, looked at his fish, grabbed it between his finger and thumb, dropped it in the water in the big dish to cool it down, and ate it in three mouthfuls – head, bones and all – with a thoughtful look on his face. After that, without looking at anyone, he went over to the pond to wash his hands, then came back and lay down next to us.

  32

  WE STAYED BY the pond all afternoon. We did nothing but talk and sleep, then wake up, lie in the sun and talk again. Strangely, Kyabine didn’t try to catch another fish. Occasionally I would see him staring at the surface of the water with a happy, mysterious look on his face. I wondered what his fish tasted like.

  When the time came to return to the camp, Pavel suggested we go to Kossarenko’s camp to say hello to the lads we’d known in the forest that winter.

  Kossarenko’s company had built huts in a clearing an hour’s walk from ours. Several times, while out searching for firewood, we had bumped into a group of lads doing the same thing. Then, sitting on tree stumps, we’d smoked cigarettes together and discussed how we were heating our huts. After that, we discussed our companies. We tried to work out which company we’d ra
ther be in. We quickly realised that there were pros and cons to each of them, that it was difficult to choose, and that in the end it didn’t really matter. Winter would end and we would leave the forest: those were the only things that really mattered, and the only things we could all agree on.

  We set off.

  We were walking through the field, towards Kossarenko’s company. I’d lent my rifle to the Evdokim kid, so he could learn how to carry it in regulation fashion. He was pleased, and I felt lightened.

  We heard something moving in the grass and we turned around. All of us stood there in shock. The horse was behind us. We could only see its head and neck above the tall grass. It was covered in white sweat. It looked wild and very beautiful, not at all like the sort of horse that would pull a carriage any more. It lifted up its swollen neck. We could almost hear it breathing. And I’m telling you that it was beauty itself that suddenly appeared and struck us all dumb.

  Pavel slowly put his rifle on the ground. He signalled to Kyabine and Sifra to do the same, and he whispered to the Evdokim kid to look after the rifles and wait for us.

  At Pavel’s signal, we ran towards the horse, spacing out so that we could catch it from behind. We should have left our coats with the kid too. It was difficult to run while we were carrying them. Just as we were about to reach it, the horse suddenly spun and bolted, leaping over the grass.

  We sped up.

  Sifra and I were on the sides. It was up to us to run as fast as possible, to overtake the horse and then turn to face it.