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them over shaven and unshaven heads: their eyes would stare out from behind
the glass, which would soon mist over, and long tubes extended like trunks
from the masks to the filter in the bag. Very soon, a joke started doing the
rounds about a commander of unit X whose small, capricious daughter demanded
that Daddy show her some elephants running around outside, otherwise she
won't go to sleep, or eat, and stood there stamping her tiny feet angrily.
Anything for peace! So Daddy issued an order: "Company, ten-hut! Gas masks!
On the double!" And the "elephants" had to run around and work up a sweat,
choking and cursing everything on earth until ordered to stand down.
Maybe someone picked up the bug in the mess hall, or drank unboiled
water, or ate an unwashed fruit from the town. Or maybe the disease had come
from the nearby village, brought in by flies, or a cloud of dust, which
would hang in the air for a long time after the passage of any vehicle.
The regiment had long shielded itself from the Afghans and anything
connected with them. Fenced itself off with barbed wire, minefields,
trip-wires, flares, machine gun nests, trenches, parapets, watchtowers, tank
armor, mortar and artillery positions. Sentries kept a sharp lookout to
ensure that the enemy or some Afghan from the neighboring village could not
come close. But the enemy did not come, made no move to attack the regiment.
Dysentery, hepatitis, amebic dysentery and typhoid struck instead.
"Go take a rope and hang yourself!" joked the company commander
watching senior warrant officer Pashkov's diarrhea-induced sufferings. "At
least you'll die like a man and not a shit fountain!"
Pashkov was the first to fall ill, and for some time it was suspected
that he had been the vector. However, it turned out that three soldiers from
the last contingent of newcomers had been afflicted for several days now.
Rookies Myshkovsky, Sychev and Chirikov had simply kept their mouths shut
out of military stupidity and ignorance of local diseases.
From their arrival in Fergana, efforts were made to instill elementary
rules of basic personal hygiene into the thick workers-and-peasant skulls of
the recruits but as a rule, with meager results. Only after having gone
through the furnace of hepatitis, typhoid and dysentery does the rookie
understand that hands must be washed with soap, and not just once a day,
that only boiled water should be drunk - and if that's not available, it is
better to remain thirsty. That it is not advisable to use someone else's
spoon, that mess tins should be scrubbed until they shine, that if an Afghan
fly settles on your miserable portion of yellow, runny butter, you should
think a dozen times before sticking it down your throat, that you should not
eat anything that comes to hand however hungry you might be. Young soldiers
are always hungry. They will gape at the fruits and vegetables displayed on
Afghan stalls, they will pick up a fallen unripe tomato from a puddle and
eat it after a cursory wipe against their sleeve, eat their fill of free
water-melon, they will drink from a mountain stream without a second thought
if they're thirsty.
PFC Prokhorov saw private Chirikov hanging around near the latrine, and
called him over:
"Hey! 'Buchenwald strongman'! Come here!"
"What?" asked Chirikov listlessly.
"Not 'what', but report properly!"
"Comrade PFC, private Chirikov reporting as ordered."
"Go get me a bottle of soda."
"What about money?"
"Don't you have any of your own?! What are you gaping at?! I'll square
up with you later." Prokhorov was a small man, but very agile. He took up a
karate stance and landed Chirikov a shrewd blow on the neck with the edge of
his palm. Chirikov yelped and shuffled off in the direction of the store.
Junior sergeant Titov gave a snort of laughter.
"Think you're a regular Bruce Lee, don't you?"
"If I wasn't sick, I'd show you the meaning of sparring!"
"You already have." Titov waved dismissively. "While you're flinging
your fucking feet around in the air, I'll give you such a whack on the head
you won't know what hit you."
Myshkovsky and Sychev emerged from the latrine. Myshkovsky had been
nicknamed "Virgin" because his parents had conceived him somewhere in the
steppes of Kazakhstan, while they were turning up its virgin soil. They must
have been overcome with joy at their own inhuman efforts. The mother died
soon after giving birth, and the father took to drink. So Myshkovsky had
been called "the orphan" in his time, but eventually "Myshara" was the
nickname that stuck. The other one, Sychev, freckle-faced and with prominent
ears, gloried in the nickname "Odessa" in honor of the fine Black Sea city
in which he was born.
"Myshara! Odessa! Get your asses over here! Going to the can a bit too
often, aren't you?" Hounding the youngsters was a favorite pastime of
Prokhorov's. He used Chirikov as a target for his karate tricks, but did not
try that with Sychev, who was strongly built and quite up to taking on
Titov. However, there was nothing to stop Prokhorov from having his fun
verbally. "What the hell do you do in there? Read the papers?"
"What does everyone usually do there?" snarled Sychev.
"Jerking off?!"
"No!" chorused the recruits indignantly.
"Don't wait for policemen in the night!" quoted Prokhorov aggressively.
"How does the rest of the rhyme go?"
"Jerking off you'll feel all right," replied Myshkovsky and Sychev
obediently. "Dismissed!" Prokhorov ended the lesson - warrant officer
Pashkov was trotting purposefully toward the latrine.
Like any warrant officer, Pashkov was convinced that he was craftier
than everyone else. His craftiness was expressed in his refusal to accept
medical methods of treatment. Having done his share of dashes to the
latrine, Pashkov realized that the microbe would not just go away but had
taken up firm residence in his guts. So Pashkov acquired a three-litre jar
of pure alcohol, locked himself in the store-room and did not emerge for
three whole days. Drinking himself stupid, he would snore like a pig,
whistling, snorting and grunting.
Nobody dreamed of bothering him, simply every so often they would knock
on the door and offer to bring him some tea. True, some of the soldiers
maintained, and lieutenant Sharagin personally attested that, at night, when
everyone else was asleep, Pashkov would emerge from the seclusion of the
store-room and wander around the camp like the ghost from "Hamlet", heading
in the general direction of the latrine. He didn't recognize or even seem to
see anybody, did not react to human speech, and bore no resemblance to the
real senior warrant officer Pashkov, the terror of the troops.
Everybody felt sorry for Pashkov except the company commander.
Morgultsev knew Pashkov from service back home, so when lieutenant Sharagin,
suffering dysentery himself, remarked that it was a pity about poor old
Pashkov, looks as though the bug could kill him and wasn't it time for him
to be shipped off to hospital, Morgultsev snapped:
"The fuck he's sick! He's just gone on a bender with the booze! Happens
with him regularly, once every quarter! " Calming down, he added:
"Still, it happens even more frequently with some of the warrant
officers - just like women's monthlies..." Morgultsev left Pashkov alone -
he knew that he would come around and cure himself soon. Just like a wounded
animal going off alone to hide in the forest, Pashkov had hidden himself on
the store-room and closed himself off from anyone, fighting the illness or
depression.
On the third day, an explosion shook the store-room. The explosion was
not all that big, it sounded rather like the detonation of a fuse, but the
whole company took fright, thinking that maybe Pashkov had gone off his head
from too much drink and had decided to finish off not just the germs in his
intestines or the depression which tortured his mysterious Russian soul, but
himself as well.
The door was broken down. Inside they found the senior warrant officer
in the grip of dementia tremens and an empty three-litre jar.
Pashkov was half-sitting, half-lying on a pile of kit-bags and
greatcoats, whiskers quivering and his eyes rolling around madly. He was
pointing at a small crack in the floor from which, he maintained, scorpions,
phalanges and snakes were crawling out to get him, and that he had disposed
of some of them by throwing a lighted grenade fuse down the hole. Just in
case, he was gripping a Makarov pistol in his hands to shoot down any
"creeping bastards" that might venture near him.
"Take the gun away, and get him out of here! Cured himself, has, he,
stupid moron!" rapped out Morgultsev.
By some miraculous means the raw alcohol helped Pashkov get rid of the
Afghan bug and depression, so that a week later he was vainly trying to
convince his commanding officer that he had not been malingering, that he
really had been ill and -God forbid! - should comrade captain succumb to the
same curse he, Pashkov, bore no ill will and would help and explain, as a
specialist in the field, how and where to get a three-litre jar of the
necessary medicine. A smaller dose, according to him, was insufficient to
kill the offending microbes.
Unlike Pashkov, lieutenant Sharagin suffered longer, but resorted to
tablets instead of downing spirit. As an educated man, he did not believe
that the disease could be expunged by alcohol alone. Rising for the
umpteenth time in the middle of the night, sweating and sleepy, he hurried
outside.
Trying to breathe as infrequently as possible he studied a scrap of
"Red Star", then crushed it up in order to soften it a little. The central
Soviet press and the regional paper "Frunzevets" were frequently read in the
regiment, and not only during painful sessions in the latrine. They read
about events in the capitalist world, in countries where socialism reigned
triumphant, about Party and Komsomol congresses, laughed at the writers of
reports on Afghanistan. But should any outsider say the same, they would all
rise up as one in defense and swear that every word written about
international help was God's truth, and how, for example, that APC got blown
up because the lieutenant spared the Afghans' crops because he remembered
his own collective farm and the fields of home, the hard labor of the
peasants, how he had once dreamed of becoming a tractor driver but went to
military school instead, knowing that there is such a profession as the
defense of one's motherland: recalling all this, the lieutenant chose to
travel along the road rather than across fields, a road which the spooks had
mined, of course....
In any case, if you look at things squarely, it's not right to
criticize the Soviet Army; any story, any garbage in the press, any feat of
courage, be it true or invented, raises morale.
...let the inventions continue to appear in the press...let people
remember that there is a war on... thought Sharagin.
... one must pretend that the concoctions in the papers are true ...
reporters come here on tours of duty in order to make a name for themselves
... like that one, what's his name? Lobanov ... some writer! ... made up a
truckload of malarkey ... made himself famous but mentioned us paratroopers,
too...
The night, dressed in a myriad of spiky stars, unfolded itself above
the regiment. The paras slept quietly, if you did not count the humming of
the diesel generators located on the edge of the camp, and to which everyone
had grown accustomed.
Sharagin stopped to clear his lungs of the acrid smell of human
excrement and lit a cigarette, enjoying the silky moon and the scattered
multitude of stars. His insides squirmed, he felt like a limp dish rag which
had been thoroughly wrung, no strength at all, he felt weakness filling him.
From time to time, tracers would rise into the sky - one of the sentries
must be relieving the boredom of standing watch.
...like the overburdened souls of people who were sick of war, the
tracers shot silently skyward in order to lose themselves in the skies above
Kabul, hoping to flee this city and this country...
It also seemed as if
...the distant stars were fragments of broken souls, scattered
throughout the cosmos; winking in the moonlight, still hoping for
something...
Back in the command barracks, he spent a long time turning from side to
side, bed springs creaking. When drowsiness finally began to muddle his
thoughts about family and slide into sleep, a shot sounded practically under
the window and broken glass seemed to cry out.
Zhenka Chistyakov was off his bunk and on the floor even before the
bullet which smashed the window became embedded in the wall.
Guessing at once that this was no enemy shot and that there would be no
more, he raced outside as he was, in sateen drawers, hastily shoving his
feet into sneakers.
"Bastards!" he yelled. "They want to kill me!"
By the time Sharagin and the other officers emerged and a mob of
soldiers, also awakened by the shot gathered nearby, Zhenka had managed to
give the sentry a good thrashing. The unsuccessful suicide did nothing to
shield himself from the blows. Dressed in helmet and bullet-proof vest, he
tried to explain between punches that it had been an accident, he hadn't
been intending to fire, but simply tripped. He lied, sweated, and tried to
justify himself.
...probably decided to shoot himself in the hand, then got scared at
the last moment...
Muddled thought reflected on the army-tried features of the soldier.
"Far as I'm concerned, it would be better if you'd killed yourself!"
grated Chistyakov, continuing to beat up the soldier. "Only quietly and
further from the barracks. But no, you had to go and do it under my window,
you sonofabitch! `'
...the "grandpas" must have really gotten at him...or he doesn't want
to serve in Afghanistan...
thought Sharagin, yawning.
...hope they don't drive Myshkovsky over the line ... I'll have to
answer for him, after all...
whispered a voice in his head.
The sentry looked very much like Myshkovsky, and Sharagin experienced
an ambivalent feeling of pity and irritation. The soldier looked awkward,
was obviously not too bright and clumsy.
The helmet had fallen off his head, and his ears stuck out funnily -
like two halves of a broken plate, which someone had pasted to his head. He
wore his uniform badly, but then nothing would have looked a good fit on a
body like that.
...anger arises from a desire to gain revenge ... the weaker the man,
the more he is oppressed, and when one who has been slighted gets a chance
to rise, he takes his revenge on the new boys - a vicious circle...
... time to sleep ... let others sort out this mess... after all, he's
not from our company...
"Let's go back to bed, Zhenka," suggested Sharagin after they both
smoked a cigarette,
"How can anyone sleep after that?"
He could understand Chistyakov. Afghanistan has made him so harsh and
fiery.
... who can say what I'll be like at the end ...
Chistyakov had served twenty three months in Afghanistan and for the
past eight weeks had been hanging around waiting to be replaced.
He had stopped going to the mess hall and lived off canned food, bread
and tea. From time to time the girls in the goods depot would give him a
snack out of gratitude for his songs and attentions, especially the
mysterious blonde nobody had ever seen but who, according to Zhenka, was
crazy about him.
"She though I was going to marry her," confided Zhenka to his friends.
"How's that?" queried Sharagin. "You've already got a family,"
"That's right. That's what I told her, if I didn't have a family, I'd
take you to the ends of the earth.
"And what did she say?" chipped in Pashkov.
"She kept crying, damn it..."
"That's a bad sign," warned Morgultsev. "We'll be going into combat
soon, and women in war bring bad luck..."
Chistyakov spent the entire following day lying on his bunk. He even
refused to go into town when the opportunity came up, just lay there in
silence.
"Where's senior lieutenant Chistyakov?" demanded the commander, running
his eyes over the troops.
"His lordship's resting.." replied Pashkov, smoothing his luxuriant
whiskers.
I see, down for safe keeping..." The captain knew this mood well. This
was the state of many awaiting replacements. The Lord helps those who help
themselves . Should the spooks start shelling, even the most seasoned and
brave soldiers would race for cover without a second thought. Who wants to
be killed a few days before going back home?
"Fuck! Where the hell is he?" moaned Chistyakov. "Where is that fucking
son of a no-good bitch?"
"Enjoying his leave," replied Pashkov, fueling the flames. "Or maybe
he's drunk as a skunk in Tashkent. Putting down one beer after another..."
"Just wait and see," prophesied the commander. "Right now Chistyakov's
cursing his replacement with every name he can think of, but the moment the
guy arrives he'll treat him like a china doll. We've been through all
that..."
Chistyakov did not go to dinner. He threw a tin can against the floor
with all his strength:
"... so the microbes inside will drop dead!" Then he polished off a
0.75 bottle of vodka and sat at the table, smoking, blowing smoke through
his nostrils and confiding bitterly to the sardines floating in the tin can.
Finally, after baring his soul, he declared: "... a cow stands on a bridge
and shits, and man lives and dies just like that..." When Sharagin turned up
Zhenka, quite drunk, said: "Look, you like writing down all sorts of crap.
So I'll tell you the paradox of the Russian soul: steal a crate of vodka,
sell it, and then spend the money on drink."
"Lay off." Sharagin stretched out on his bunk, thinking about writing a
few lines home.
"What's the date today, Zhenka?"
"The forty-fourth of April."
"There's no such thing."
"Yes there is."
"In April," retorted Sharagin who had not touched a drop of alcohol
either yesterday or today, "there are thirty days."
"I was supposed to be replaced in April. And until my replacement
arrives, it'll stay fucking April!"
Despite his bad mood and the vodka, despite his avoidance of duty and
short-distance sorties from the camp, Chistyakov was the first when it came
to combat duty, and infected others with his attitude. Ready for war.
"Now that everyone's run out of shit, it's time to get down to
business, " he barked at the "elephants." 'And I don't want to hear another
fucking word about someone not feeling well," he bellowed left and right.
Zhenka shone like a lamp in anticipation of battle, the risk, the fury
of combat. It's not frightening for an officer to die in battle. What is
frightening or, rather, it would be a shame, to catch a bullet or shell
fragment from some stupid act.
The soldiers' lot was no bowl of cherries, either. They waited to be
demobbed no less keenly, they'd spent a year and a half plugging away
without discharge or leave, but, unlike the officers, they had no choice and
could not show their displeasure. Chistyakov barked at everyone, testing the
livers of the "elephants" with his fist.
"A whack on the liver is as good as a mug of beer!"
Chistyakov was all afire to go to war, went around as if in a haze,
forgot all about his replacement, cleaned his rifle, got his gear together,
honed his combat knife.
"I sure don't envy the spooks," remarked Pashkov, shaking his head.
"Where'd he suddenly get all that energy?" He was checking out the fixings
of the machine gun on the turret of an armored vehicle.
"Why are you so glum, Sharagin?"
"I had a bad dream..."
Army service consists of discipline, petty tyrannies, humiliations,
details, eating, digesting, sleep and expectation -- expectation of orders,
expectation of leave, expectation of returning home, expectation of freedom
from the power of highly placed fools and scoundrels, expectation of the
decrees of Fate. If an army is at war, service also includes expectation of
death: be it in the name of obeying orders, serving the interests of the
Motherland, or simply because on that day, at that moment, a specific number
comes up, YOUR number. Someone must be sacrificed, after all.
Such choices of Fate are subsequently and most frequently described as
heroism and fulfillment of duty, less frequently as sheer bad luck, while
those who stood side by side with death, later find some explanation for
that particular stroke of fortune, even though everyone knows exactly why
and how it came to pass.
But people tied to the army conceal from each other that their survival
so far in this inscrutable lottery has been due to blind luck, no more; and
only in the deepest recesses of their minds, mostly subconsciously, do they
render thanks to that hand, which did not draw THEIR number...
Rebellious Afghan tribes that had refused to swear allegiance to the
new regime had taken refuge on the plain between high mountains. The troops
took up positions on the dominant heights above the plain, presiding above
villages and wooded patches -- "greenery" -- which lay below silently, like
a predator gone to earth. The troops knew that victory would be theirs, that
the greenery would fall before them, but they also knew the price they would
have to pay.
Those who had planned the battle and were ready to order its start had
already estimated the costs of the operation, because war is a science, and
science demands precision and calculation. War does not excuse weakness, war
knows no mercy, and therefore people who decide to make war never allow
themselves to be guided by such feelings. They deliberately distance
themselves from the epicenter of battle in order not to see the soldiers
they are sending off to be slaughtered, in order not to look into their
eyes. Instead, they content themselves with sending them rousing messages
and promising medals and titles. They are well aware that after victory the
number of the fallen will not be a determining factor, because those who
died will automatically become heroes, while the maimed and wounded shall be
whisked away from the theatre of war to specially devised hospitals and
military medical installations, so the sight of them will not upset their
former comrades in arms and newly arrived reinforcements.
Sharagin's platoon soon took possession of the hill overlooking the
road, making a nest for itself at the top. Like the company, the whole
battalion, and all the units assigned to this particular military operation,
the platoon lived in daily expectation of orders, meanwhile the soldiers
slept under canvas awnings erected on the slope and under armoured cars,
dreamt of home in the stillness of afternoons and nights, ate dry rations
and relieved themselves in the immediate vicinity.
Lieutenant Sharagin worried that this relaxed atmosphere could prove
fatal if it were to last a few more days, but there was little he could do
about it but hope for speedy orders to advance.
.... we're surrounded by mountains... when the sun goes down,
and darkness falls, and the first stars appear like sentinels in
the heavens, the sun still lights up the other side of the
mountain range, making it look as though it is still daylight
over there, and they look flat ... as though some giant has
made cardboard cutouts of ancient warriors, heads bent, and
tired horsemen, and the peaks and contours look like their
heads, lowered in exhaustion, who have struck camp, backs and
shoulders slumped, and their horses' heads ... the giant has glued
them carefully and disposed them like immense decorations,
gifting the sleeping valley with a certain coziness ... the
valley that we shall take soon...
The atmosphere of tedium and lyrical musing was heightened by the
effects of the dry, hot, all-pervasive and heavy wind known as the "afghan,"
which descended out of nowhere and blew unrelentingly all day.
The "afghan" was fierce, as though angered by the platoon and all the
troops that had come to the valley. It drove myriad grains of sand against
the canvas of the tents, stung faces, covered those who had taken refuge
behind rocks with sand and dust and harried the sentries who crouched in
dug-outs and waited to be replaced.
But the relief sentries never arrived punctually. The "grand-dads"
slept, unconcerned by the problems of the youngsters, and those who were
scheduled for duty strung out the time as long as possible to shorten their
own stint on guard.
The wind danced up and down the valley, blotting out the sky and
mountains with an impenetrable shroud of dust. Stubborn, capricious and
merciless, the "afghan" spun at liberty, feeling its power and impunity.
... what was that bit in the Bible? How apt it was!...
Sharagin racked his brains, trying to remember those words out of
Ecclesiastes, which he had read so long ago, before military school:
"The wind blows to the South and goes around to the North; round and
round goes the wind and on its circuits the wind returns."
... it was as if the prophet was talking about the "afghan"...
I'll have to read it again when I get back home....
It was easier to tolerate the "afghan" in company, but depression was
just as great, the desire to go home was always there, and because home was
far away, the next best thing was to get drunk.
The sand raised by the "afghan" penetrated everywhere, filtering
through every crack, every hole. People spat, rubbed their eyes and noses,
but the sand filled their hair and crept down their backs. The wind carried
a hidden premonition of disaster.
Toward evening the "afghan" finally tired of making mischief, and took
itself off. It had not exhausted itself, no, that was not why the wind died
down. Most likely it got bored with this place, and sped off to wreak havoc
and bother people elsewhere, after a few parting sand whirls.
It was completely quiet again, cold and distant stars filled the sky,
but in the morning torture by the sun resumed. The soldiers, usually so
talkative and noisy, were silent.
Sharagin inspected the positions once more. Two soldiers snored in the
shade of a canvas awning. One of them -- Savateyev -- was swiping at a fly
on his face in his sleep, frowning and scratching his cheeks. When his hand
brushed against the top of his head, the lice he dislodged leapt nimbly to
the head of the soldier sleeping next to him.
... I'll order their heads shaved, every last one of them!...
Sharagin saw junior sergeant Titov wandering around clad in nothing but
a pair of sateen drawers, rolled up to look like bathing trunks, absently
scratching his crotch. Sergeant Panasyuk, his face sunburnt a fiery red,
sprawled on a greatcoat on the ground. Nearby, private Sychev, in correct
uniform, was squeezing festering pimples on the back of a "grand-dad" of the
Soviet Army, Prokhorov.
... disgusting ...
By certain unwritten laws, only the so-called grand-dads had the right
to go around undressed. In principle, the grand-dads were not supposed to do
so either, but any officer in his right mind turned a blind eye to such
liberties, provided they remained within reason. The grand-dads knew what
they were about, they knew that they could allow themselves a measure of
insolence with any commanding officer, and if they did not go too far, if
they did not overdo things, no conflict would ensue. One only needed to know
exactly where to draw the line. Sharagin glanced sideways at Panasyuk, Titov
and Prokhorov, all in their satin underwear, threw a second glance on his
way to relieve himself, and when he passed by a third time, the grand-dads
were all getting dressed. They took the squad leader's hint. Once dressed,
they went off to harry the younger personnel, because there was nothing else
to do that day.
It did not take long for Panasyuk to adopt some of the squad leader's
mannerisms and expressions. Aping Sharagin, he took to addressing the lower
ranks with the polite "you" instead of the familiar "thou," but with an air
of paternal superiority; at combat training he would urge them on with one
of the new commanding officer's aphorisms: "At first, a soldier marches as
long as he can, and after that, as long as necessary." Panasyuk's
stubbornness and persistence earned him the nickname of "the mountain brake
of communism." Combat vehicles of the commando forces are all equipped with
a so-called mountain brake with a catch. Once this is engaged, the motor
will continue to roar and strain, but the vehicle will not budge an inch. It
was due to his unwillingness to give one iota that Panasyuk lost a front
tooth during his first months of service.
The people on the hilltop wilted from the burning sun and inactivity,
becoming dull and stupid. In this kind of heat, anybody's thoughts become
scattered. Even in the shade you toss around as in a fever, sweating out
every drop of moisture and waking up stupefied by the stifling heat, with
spittle on your lips, your head like a chunk of lead, sticky with sweat and
mind fogged with fragments of restless dreams.
... Sharagin wove around in his half-dreams, and although his thoughts
remained perfectly clear and consistent, coordination disappeared: the men
would run out to line up, and all Oleg could do was mumble something,
drunkenly trying to pull on a pair of socks which, for some reason, were two
sizes too small, so the heel was too far down and the sock wouldn't fit; he
hopped around on one bare foot, lost balance and tumbled backwards, luckily
onto his bunk, avoiding injury ... Soldiers' voices reached his ears through
a thin, silken veil of slumber: "...took fright, that greenhorn!...shit
himself when the shooting started!...well, it's true, isn't it?", "a rocket
exploded just five meters off, and not a single splinter hit us, would you
believe?", "and fuck me dead if I didn't kill three spooks right then and
there," "I'd rather walk into someone else's shit instead of going up there
on the slope. We already had one stupid bastard who went out into the field
for a crap ... we found his arse about twenty meters away, ha, ha, ha..." ,
"remember that warrant officer, Kosyakevich, how he rolled around on the
ground when that, well, when them spooks had us holed up in a ravine and
opened up with a fucking heavy machine gun? Kosyakevich copped it in the
stomach... the first aid instructor bandaged him up, but we knew that it was
curtains for the poor sod!", "death's a bugger, always catches you
unawares..."; and in his dreams Oleg also heard the soldiers bitching about
their details, and the lousy rations, and that "you always have to put down
your own cash to get a decent bite of something," and the curses the
soldiers aimed at the merciless sun of Afghanistan.
Finally Sharagin could not stand this monotonous and stupid chatter,
which would not let him sleep properly, and barked: "Stop that fucking
noise!" to shut them up. Then he took a gulp of water from his canteen and
turned over, hoping to fall asleep until dinner time.
One lot of voices was replaced by another, distracting him from his
attempts to sleep, and, if truth be told, Sharagin didn't really want to
sleep, and all kinds of thoughts went round and round in the lieutenant's
head.
... when you get down to it, soldiers are nothing but rabble, the
dregs of our society, they're ... hell, how quickly they've become
an uncontrollable wave away from home! ... nothing but trivial,
idiotic thoughts in practically every head that's why they
talk such rubbish ... but if our soldier is so dumb and useless,
what about the "diesel-heads"? All the mototrised infantry are
Morons!...
"I tell you, those flies weren't fucking!" cried someone, as though in
confirmation of Sharagin's thoughts.
"Everyone's a psycho!" yelled someone else.
... grown-up idiots, the whole bleeding lot...
The lives of sons of bitches like Prokhorov, slobs and mean bastards
like Titov, hounded juniors like Myshkovsky, Sychev and Chirikov, clowns
like Panasyuk and similar typical and untypical persons and non-persons of
the latest and intervening call-ups belonged to Sharagin. Rather, he was
assigned to this motley crew known as a platoon, and it was up to him to
make the platoon combat-worthy, it was his job to think about the platoon,
these people, every hour, minute and second, to worry and make decisions as
a result of which the soldiers would return home alive from Afghanistan, or
not.
One could spend eternity cursing these young men, drafted from all ends
of the Land of the Soviets to active military service,
... brainless "elephants"...
but right now Sharagin cursed them to himself, just as he did aloud,
for errors and for trifles about which the soldiers didn't give a damn, but
which could prove fatal in war. He cursed them, but at the same time he
sympathised with each one individually, and was saddened each time when the
hardened youngsters left his squad, in the USSR or here in Afghanistan,
after their two-year stint. Sharagin truly valued that inexplicable and
unique phenomenon that is called a Soviet, Russian soldier.
... where does the Soviet soldier's frequent total disregard of death
arise, his endless courage and desperate feats? ... an Afghan soldier is
nothing like that, just try telling him that he has to go from Kabul to
Kandahar: he won't, not for any money, each one of those 'afghanoids' thinks
only of saving his own skin, while we guard their peace, do their dirty work
for them, slave our guts out ... because they're all cowards, and our lads
can't wait to get into battle ... what is it, excessive romanticism? no,
they've seen it all, and still strain at the leash ... are they stupid? but
they're not such fools as to throw life away needlessly ... duty? no, that's
for the newspapers, empty words ... Russian recklessness? partly ... nobody
can really understand it ... just as nobody can solve the riddle of the
Russian soul, nobody ... huge, deep, like our country ... untractable,
unpredictable ... only the Russian soul can encompass unbelievable breadth,
sincerity, openness and sentimentality alongside such traits as villainy,
boot-licking, baseness, servility, selfless love of others and total
disregard for human life ... especially for those on top, human life loses
all value, especially in Moscow, among those bastards who wear out the seats
of their pants in HQ offices ... they do not see us as individuals, but as
battalions, companies and divisions ...
... that's enough philosophizing, Sharagin, time to get back to
business, the war, and not sit around meditating ... what did I start with?
oh, yes - the boundless courage of Russian soldiers...
No matter how hard Sharagin tried to get away from philosophical
musings, he kept plunging back into thought. He turned over and started to
examine the peeling green paint of the APC, the dried mud plastering its
body, the thick layer of dust that covered it just as it lined his lungs.
Soviet people in Afghanistan choked on dust and spat it out in thick
gobs of yellow, pus-like spittle.
Unexpectedly it came to him that glorification of war, romantic
perception of battle begins in childhood, when a child encounters a
veritable landslide of literature on the subject, when his mind is barely
able to digest heroic films in which the soldier is always victorious, and
where death of the enemy is a great feat.
... kids barely out of the cradle run around with wooden machine guns:
bang-bang, you're dead! ... nobody ever told us what real war is like, not a
single book explained that by its nature, war is an abomination ... the
Great Patriotic War was idealized, made into a fetish ... yes, we won, but
at what price! ... I learnt a lot from my grandfather ... but this is
something that will never be published in a single book or newspaper! ... so
it looks as though the loss of ten million lives is justified, and instead
of condemning such monstrous losses, instead of condemning those who
couldn't give a damn whether thirty or forty millions perish in the name of
victory, we eulogise martial success and prepare another generation hooked
on self-sacrifice ... my generation was well prepared, that's why we're
here, that's why our Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan perform miracles of
heroism ....
Saturated with specious, sweet, superficial and erroneous images of
war, boys with wooden guns dream of battle, dream of going to war, no matter
where or what.
... sadly, most of them never shed these childish illusions as they
grow up ... stop! cancel that! it looks as though we can't live without
violent emotion, without heroics, we always need an enemy who must be
destroyed ... so were we all, our whole country, only waiting for yet
another war, like this one in Afghanistan? ...
As soon as the sun was past the zenith, the soldiers, who had quieted
down for a while, came back to life, rubbing their eyes, yawning, crawling
out of their holes. With returned vigour came jokes, laughter, swearing,
shouts.
The day before, when the squad was moving out to its assigned position,
the lads pulled a fast number to get additional food, which they hid from
their commander while they were digging in and sheltering from the "afghan."
The armoured military vehicles, BMPs, met a herd of goats on a narrow
mountain road. The older herdsman, a sturdy man who struck Sharagin as
highly suspicious,
... he's a "spook," for sure ... and he'll remain in our rear, the
bastard ...
and a young boy, were driving the herd toward them. The Afghans were
afraid that the shuravi would run down their goats and began to mill about
and fuss. Sharagin signalled a halt. At the same moment, lance-corporal
Prokhorov, the wiry and daring gunner in the first BMP, opened the rear
hatch and seized a young kid.
Sharagin didn't notice anything, all he heard was a dull thud as the
hatch slammed shut, and turned around in surprise to see a female goat
butting the BMP's armour:
... stupid animal ... what on earth possessed it? ...
The kid traveled on with the squad, quietly chewing into a sack of
potatoes. Halfway through, it almost started on some sticks of TNT that were
kept to help in digging trenches. Prokhorov and Panasyuk caught the kid
devouring the short-supply potatoes and dragged it out of the vehicle,
swearing profusely, to the encouraging shouts of their comrades.
The poor, frightened animal plunged wildly amid a forest of legs and
shadows cast by surrounding soldiery until Titov felled it to earth and slit
its throat with his bayonet.
Naturally, there was not enough fresh meat to go around. The younger
men had to make do with boiled pearl barley, but the youngsters devoured it
greedily, chomping and belching, licking their spoons and mess tins clean in
their hurry to fill their bellies before their older comrades could
intervene.
They watched from a respectful distance how the old hands savoured
their meat, sucking the bones clean and helping themselves to baked
potatoes: first they would poke around in the hot ashes with a twig, roll
out a potato, pull off the blackened peel, pop the white inside into their
mouths, and take another bite of goat meat.
"A drop of whaddya call it, port, would go down a treat now, eh Panas?"
Asked lance-corporal Prokhorov, licking his greasy fingers.
"Stop breaking my heart. When we get back to the Union, then we'll pull
out all the stops and celebrate! As much port and vodka as you can hold!"
"Shit yes, that'll be really something!"
"When we get back to the company, fuck me if I get up off my bunk for
anything. I won't move a finger until I'm demobbed!" Panansyuk took a bite
of potato. "If it wasn't for this assignment, we'd be getting ready to go
back right now..."
The youngsters chewed on dry crackers, listening enviously to the old
hands' fantasies.
"Hey, Chiri, why are you resting your balls by that fire? Where's the
tea, boy?" shouted Prokhorov. "Damn greenhorns! You'll be jerking off for a
long time yet before you can think of demob!" He laughed loudly. "But the
grand-daddies of the Soviet Army will be getting up to God knows what in a
month's time. Lock up your daughters, people! I told you, remember, how
we've got this whole female hostel right next door, a new slit every night,"
he went on, making things up on the spur of the moment, and believing his
own lies. "I remember Panas, see, how you'd come every night to a dance,
pick up a chick, and on the way back to the hostel, naturally, you'd get her
into a clinch somewhere in the bushes, then take her home, and another one
would be waving out the window at you, like, hell, come and hop into my cot,
soldier-boy! Just think, fuck it, what a life we had!"
"Who d'you think you're shitting, Prokhor?" jeered Titov. "One and a
half years I've known you, and all you've done is bullshit on about that
hostel, and I bet before that you hadn't so much as squeezed a tit!"
"Bullshit yourself, I didn't!" roared Prokhorov, though he clearly
realized that any moment now he'd be pinned down for outright lying.
"With a willy like yours, even if you got to climb up on a woman she
wouldn't feel a thing! It'd be like a pencil in a glass!" said Titov,
quashing his friend even further.
"How would you know?" challenged Prokhorov sourly.
"Well, it's no great military secret, is it? We've been in the
bath-house together, haven't we?"
"Chiri, you mother-fucker!" Shouted lance-corporal Prokhorov, glaring
at a soldier sitting nearby. "How long are we going to wait for that tea,
eh? It's ready? Well, bring it here, bugger it, before I have to get up!
I'll count to three ... fucking one ... fucking two ..."
Thin, fair-haired Chirikov grabbed up the hot mugs with his bare hands,
and just made it on the count of three.
"And where's the jam, worm?" Demanded Prokhorov, pinning the hapless
soldier with a merciless glare.
" ? "
"I'll count to one and a half! Starting now! One..."
"Come off it," interrupted Panasyuk. "Dismissed, Chiri!" After the
soldier retreated, he added: "You've driven the poor sod into the ground.
He's just come off duty. Give him a break. Otherwise, he'll goof off on
duty, fall asleep, and that will be that."
"Fuck the lot of you!" Retorted Prokhorov, offended, and stumped off
with his mug, muttering as he went: "Fine friends, bugger them! If I hadn't
swiped that fucking goat, you'd all be sitting around sucking your balls!"
"Hold it!" Shouted Panansyuk.
"Let him go," interposed Titov, waving dismissively. "Five minutes, and
he'll be back to normal."
They sat around, slurping thick black tea, which had been overboiled on
an improvised grill made out of a zinc cartridge box. The subject under
discussion was how to make a cake out of biscuits and condensed milk. It was
imperative to make their own demob cake. Tradition. Sweet dreams of
demobilisation reflected on the faces of Panasyuk and Titov, while
Prokhorov, miffed by his friends' digs, wandered around the post, sipping
his tea, burning his mouth on the hot aluminum mug, and shouting at the
younger soldiers.
Sharagin, relaxing with an after-dinner cigarette, heard a single shot.
"Find out who that was, and report back," he ordered private
Myshkovsky, who had jumped at the shot, and again at the harsh tone of his
commanding officer's voice.
... you'd swear someone dropped him flat on his face on some asphalt in
childhood ... he's put up with the grand-dads, month after month ... never
mind, Myshkovsky, we'll make a paratrooper out of you yet ...
"It was lance-corporal Prokhorov shooting, comrade lieutenant,"
reported Myshkovsky breathlessly when he got back. "He said it was so the
spooks in the village wouldn't stick their noses out. Remedial shot, he
the glass, which would soon mist over, and long tubes extended like trunks
from the masks to the filter in the bag. Very soon, a joke started doing the
rounds about a commander of unit X whose small, capricious daughter demanded
that Daddy show her some elephants running around outside, otherwise she
won't go to sleep, or eat, and stood there stamping her tiny feet angrily.
Anything for peace! So Daddy issued an order: "Company, ten-hut! Gas masks!
On the double!" And the "elephants" had to run around and work up a sweat,
choking and cursing everything on earth until ordered to stand down.
Maybe someone picked up the bug in the mess hall, or drank unboiled
water, or ate an unwashed fruit from the town. Or maybe the disease had come
from the nearby village, brought in by flies, or a cloud of dust, which
would hang in the air for a long time after the passage of any vehicle.
The regiment had long shielded itself from the Afghans and anything
connected with them. Fenced itself off with barbed wire, minefields,
trip-wires, flares, machine gun nests, trenches, parapets, watchtowers, tank
armor, mortar and artillery positions. Sentries kept a sharp lookout to
ensure that the enemy or some Afghan from the neighboring village could not
come close. But the enemy did not come, made no move to attack the regiment.
Dysentery, hepatitis, amebic dysentery and typhoid struck instead.
"Go take a rope and hang yourself!" joked the company commander
watching senior warrant officer Pashkov's diarrhea-induced sufferings. "At
least you'll die like a man and not a shit fountain!"
Pashkov was the first to fall ill, and for some time it was suspected
that he had been the vector. However, it turned out that three soldiers from
the last contingent of newcomers had been afflicted for several days now.
Rookies Myshkovsky, Sychev and Chirikov had simply kept their mouths shut
out of military stupidity and ignorance of local diseases.
From their arrival in Fergana, efforts were made to instill elementary
rules of basic personal hygiene into the thick workers-and-peasant skulls of
the recruits but as a rule, with meager results. Only after having gone
through the furnace of hepatitis, typhoid and dysentery does the rookie
understand that hands must be washed with soap, and not just once a day,
that only boiled water should be drunk - and if that's not available, it is
better to remain thirsty. That it is not advisable to use someone else's
spoon, that mess tins should be scrubbed until they shine, that if an Afghan
fly settles on your miserable portion of yellow, runny butter, you should
think a dozen times before sticking it down your throat, that you should not
eat anything that comes to hand however hungry you might be. Young soldiers
are always hungry. They will gape at the fruits and vegetables displayed on
Afghan stalls, they will pick up a fallen unripe tomato from a puddle and
eat it after a cursory wipe against their sleeve, eat their fill of free
water-melon, they will drink from a mountain stream without a second thought
if they're thirsty.
PFC Prokhorov saw private Chirikov hanging around near the latrine, and
called him over:
"Hey! 'Buchenwald strongman'! Come here!"
"What?" asked Chirikov listlessly.
"Not 'what', but report properly!"
"Comrade PFC, private Chirikov reporting as ordered."
"Go get me a bottle of soda."
"What about money?"
"Don't you have any of your own?! What are you gaping at?! I'll square
up with you later." Prokhorov was a small man, but very agile. He took up a
karate stance and landed Chirikov a shrewd blow on the neck with the edge of
his palm. Chirikov yelped and shuffled off in the direction of the store.
Junior sergeant Titov gave a snort of laughter.
"Think you're a regular Bruce Lee, don't you?"
"If I wasn't sick, I'd show you the meaning of sparring!"
"You already have." Titov waved dismissively. "While you're flinging
your fucking feet around in the air, I'll give you such a whack on the head
you won't know what hit you."
Myshkovsky and Sychev emerged from the latrine. Myshkovsky had been
nicknamed "Virgin" because his parents had conceived him somewhere in the
steppes of Kazakhstan, while they were turning up its virgin soil. They must
have been overcome with joy at their own inhuman efforts. The mother died
soon after giving birth, and the father took to drink. So Myshkovsky had
been called "the orphan" in his time, but eventually "Myshara" was the
nickname that stuck. The other one, Sychev, freckle-faced and with prominent
ears, gloried in the nickname "Odessa" in honor of the fine Black Sea city
in which he was born.
"Myshara! Odessa! Get your asses over here! Going to the can a bit too
often, aren't you?" Hounding the youngsters was a favorite pastime of
Prokhorov's. He used Chirikov as a target for his karate tricks, but did not
try that with Sychev, who was strongly built and quite up to taking on
Titov. However, there was nothing to stop Prokhorov from having his fun
verbally. "What the hell do you do in there? Read the papers?"
"What does everyone usually do there?" snarled Sychev.
"Jerking off?!"
"No!" chorused the recruits indignantly.
"Don't wait for policemen in the night!" quoted Prokhorov aggressively.
"How does the rest of the rhyme go?"
"Jerking off you'll feel all right," replied Myshkovsky and Sychev
obediently. "Dismissed!" Prokhorov ended the lesson - warrant officer
Pashkov was trotting purposefully toward the latrine.
Like any warrant officer, Pashkov was convinced that he was craftier
than everyone else. His craftiness was expressed in his refusal to accept
medical methods of treatment. Having done his share of dashes to the
latrine, Pashkov realized that the microbe would not just go away but had
taken up firm residence in his guts. So Pashkov acquired a three-litre jar
of pure alcohol, locked himself in the store-room and did not emerge for
three whole days. Drinking himself stupid, he would snore like a pig,
whistling, snorting and grunting.
Nobody dreamed of bothering him, simply every so often they would knock
on the door and offer to bring him some tea. True, some of the soldiers
maintained, and lieutenant Sharagin personally attested that, at night, when
everyone else was asleep, Pashkov would emerge from the seclusion of the
store-room and wander around the camp like the ghost from "Hamlet", heading
in the general direction of the latrine. He didn't recognize or even seem to
see anybody, did not react to human speech, and bore no resemblance to the
real senior warrant officer Pashkov, the terror of the troops.
Everybody felt sorry for Pashkov except the company commander.
Morgultsev knew Pashkov from service back home, so when lieutenant Sharagin,
suffering dysentery himself, remarked that it was a pity about poor old
Pashkov, looks as though the bug could kill him and wasn't it time for him
to be shipped off to hospital, Morgultsev snapped:
"The fuck he's sick! He's just gone on a bender with the booze! Happens
with him regularly, once every quarter! " Calming down, he added:
"Still, it happens even more frequently with some of the warrant
officers - just like women's monthlies..." Morgultsev left Pashkov alone -
he knew that he would come around and cure himself soon. Just like a wounded
animal going off alone to hide in the forest, Pashkov had hidden himself on
the store-room and closed himself off from anyone, fighting the illness or
depression.
On the third day, an explosion shook the store-room. The explosion was
not all that big, it sounded rather like the detonation of a fuse, but the
whole company took fright, thinking that maybe Pashkov had gone off his head
from too much drink and had decided to finish off not just the germs in his
intestines or the depression which tortured his mysterious Russian soul, but
himself as well.
The door was broken down. Inside they found the senior warrant officer
in the grip of dementia tremens and an empty three-litre jar.
Pashkov was half-sitting, half-lying on a pile of kit-bags and
greatcoats, whiskers quivering and his eyes rolling around madly. He was
pointing at a small crack in the floor from which, he maintained, scorpions,
phalanges and snakes were crawling out to get him, and that he had disposed
of some of them by throwing a lighted grenade fuse down the hole. Just in
case, he was gripping a Makarov pistol in his hands to shoot down any
"creeping bastards" that might venture near him.
"Take the gun away, and get him out of here! Cured himself, has, he,
stupid moron!" rapped out Morgultsev.
By some miraculous means the raw alcohol helped Pashkov get rid of the
Afghan bug and depression, so that a week later he was vainly trying to
convince his commanding officer that he had not been malingering, that he
really had been ill and -God forbid! - should comrade captain succumb to the
same curse he, Pashkov, bore no ill will and would help and explain, as a
specialist in the field, how and where to get a three-litre jar of the
necessary medicine. A smaller dose, according to him, was insufficient to
kill the offending microbes.
Unlike Pashkov, lieutenant Sharagin suffered longer, but resorted to
tablets instead of downing spirit. As an educated man, he did not believe
that the disease could be expunged by alcohol alone. Rising for the
umpteenth time in the middle of the night, sweating and sleepy, he hurried
outside.
Trying to breathe as infrequently as possible he studied a scrap of
"Red Star", then crushed it up in order to soften it a little. The central
Soviet press and the regional paper "Frunzevets" were frequently read in the
regiment, and not only during painful sessions in the latrine. They read
about events in the capitalist world, in countries where socialism reigned
triumphant, about Party and Komsomol congresses, laughed at the writers of
reports on Afghanistan. But should any outsider say the same, they would all
rise up as one in defense and swear that every word written about
international help was God's truth, and how, for example, that APC got blown
up because the lieutenant spared the Afghans' crops because he remembered
his own collective farm and the fields of home, the hard labor of the
peasants, how he had once dreamed of becoming a tractor driver but went to
military school instead, knowing that there is such a profession as the
defense of one's motherland: recalling all this, the lieutenant chose to
travel along the road rather than across fields, a road which the spooks had
mined, of course....
In any case, if you look at things squarely, it's not right to
criticize the Soviet Army; any story, any garbage in the press, any feat of
courage, be it true or invented, raises morale.
...let the inventions continue to appear in the press...let people
remember that there is a war on... thought Sharagin.
... one must pretend that the concoctions in the papers are true ...
reporters come here on tours of duty in order to make a name for themselves
... like that one, what's his name? Lobanov ... some writer! ... made up a
truckload of malarkey ... made himself famous but mentioned us paratroopers,
too...
The night, dressed in a myriad of spiky stars, unfolded itself above
the regiment. The paras slept quietly, if you did not count the humming of
the diesel generators located on the edge of the camp, and to which everyone
had grown accustomed.
Sharagin stopped to clear his lungs of the acrid smell of human
excrement and lit a cigarette, enjoying the silky moon and the scattered
multitude of stars. His insides squirmed, he felt like a limp dish rag which
had been thoroughly wrung, no strength at all, he felt weakness filling him.
From time to time, tracers would rise into the sky - one of the sentries
must be relieving the boredom of standing watch.
...like the overburdened souls of people who were sick of war, the
tracers shot silently skyward in order to lose themselves in the skies above
Kabul, hoping to flee this city and this country...
It also seemed as if
...the distant stars were fragments of broken souls, scattered
throughout the cosmos; winking in the moonlight, still hoping for
something...
Back in the command barracks, he spent a long time turning from side to
side, bed springs creaking. When drowsiness finally began to muddle his
thoughts about family and slide into sleep, a shot sounded practically under
the window and broken glass seemed to cry out.
Zhenka Chistyakov was off his bunk and on the floor even before the
bullet which smashed the window became embedded in the wall.
Guessing at once that this was no enemy shot and that there would be no
more, he raced outside as he was, in sateen drawers, hastily shoving his
feet into sneakers.
"Bastards!" he yelled. "They want to kill me!"
By the time Sharagin and the other officers emerged and a mob of
soldiers, also awakened by the shot gathered nearby, Zhenka had managed to
give the sentry a good thrashing. The unsuccessful suicide did nothing to
shield himself from the blows. Dressed in helmet and bullet-proof vest, he
tried to explain between punches that it had been an accident, he hadn't
been intending to fire, but simply tripped. He lied, sweated, and tried to
justify himself.
...probably decided to shoot himself in the hand, then got scared at
the last moment...
Muddled thought reflected on the army-tried features of the soldier.
"Far as I'm concerned, it would be better if you'd killed yourself!"
grated Chistyakov, continuing to beat up the soldier. "Only quietly and
further from the barracks. But no, you had to go and do it under my window,
you sonofabitch! `'
...the "grandpas" must have really gotten at him...or he doesn't want
to serve in Afghanistan...
thought Sharagin, yawning.
...hope they don't drive Myshkovsky over the line ... I'll have to
answer for him, after all...
whispered a voice in his head.
The sentry looked very much like Myshkovsky, and Sharagin experienced
an ambivalent feeling of pity and irritation. The soldier looked awkward,
was obviously not too bright and clumsy.
The helmet had fallen off his head, and his ears stuck out funnily -
like two halves of a broken plate, which someone had pasted to his head. He
wore his uniform badly, but then nothing would have looked a good fit on a
body like that.
...anger arises from a desire to gain revenge ... the weaker the man,
the more he is oppressed, and when one who has been slighted gets a chance
to rise, he takes his revenge on the new boys - a vicious circle...
... time to sleep ... let others sort out this mess... after all, he's
not from our company...
"Let's go back to bed, Zhenka," suggested Sharagin after they both
smoked a cigarette,
"How can anyone sleep after that?"
He could understand Chistyakov. Afghanistan has made him so harsh and
fiery.
... who can say what I'll be like at the end ...
Chistyakov had served twenty three months in Afghanistan and for the
past eight weeks had been hanging around waiting to be replaced.
He had stopped going to the mess hall and lived off canned food, bread
and tea. From time to time the girls in the goods depot would give him a
snack out of gratitude for his songs and attentions, especially the
mysterious blonde nobody had ever seen but who, according to Zhenka, was
crazy about him.
"She though I was going to marry her," confided Zhenka to his friends.
"How's that?" queried Sharagin. "You've already got a family,"
"That's right. That's what I told her, if I didn't have a family, I'd
take you to the ends of the earth.
"And what did she say?" chipped in Pashkov.
"She kept crying, damn it..."
"That's a bad sign," warned Morgultsev. "We'll be going into combat
soon, and women in war bring bad luck..."
Chistyakov spent the entire following day lying on his bunk. He even
refused to go into town when the opportunity came up, just lay there in
silence.
"Where's senior lieutenant Chistyakov?" demanded the commander, running
his eyes over the troops.
"His lordship's resting.." replied Pashkov, smoothing his luxuriant
whiskers.
I see, down for safe keeping..." The captain knew this mood well. This
was the state of many awaiting replacements. The Lord helps those who help
themselves . Should the spooks start shelling, even the most seasoned and
brave soldiers would race for cover without a second thought. Who wants to
be killed a few days before going back home?
"Fuck! Where the hell is he?" moaned Chistyakov. "Where is that fucking
son of a no-good bitch?"
"Enjoying his leave," replied Pashkov, fueling the flames. "Or maybe
he's drunk as a skunk in Tashkent. Putting down one beer after another..."
"Just wait and see," prophesied the commander. "Right now Chistyakov's
cursing his replacement with every name he can think of, but the moment the
guy arrives he'll treat him like a china doll. We've been through all
that..."
Chistyakov did not go to dinner. He threw a tin can against the floor
with all his strength:
"... so the microbes inside will drop dead!" Then he polished off a
0.75 bottle of vodka and sat at the table, smoking, blowing smoke through
his nostrils and confiding bitterly to the sardines floating in the tin can.
Finally, after baring his soul, he declared: "... a cow stands on a bridge
and shits, and man lives and dies just like that..." When Sharagin turned up
Zhenka, quite drunk, said: "Look, you like writing down all sorts of crap.
So I'll tell you the paradox of the Russian soul: steal a crate of vodka,
sell it, and then spend the money on drink."
"Lay off." Sharagin stretched out on his bunk, thinking about writing a
few lines home.
"What's the date today, Zhenka?"
"The forty-fourth of April."
"There's no such thing."
"Yes there is."
"In April," retorted Sharagin who had not touched a drop of alcohol
either yesterday or today, "there are thirty days."
"I was supposed to be replaced in April. And until my replacement
arrives, it'll stay fucking April!"
Despite his bad mood and the vodka, despite his avoidance of duty and
short-distance sorties from the camp, Chistyakov was the first when it came
to combat duty, and infected others with his attitude. Ready for war.
"Now that everyone's run out of shit, it's time to get down to
business, " he barked at the "elephants." 'And I don't want to hear another
fucking word about someone not feeling well," he bellowed left and right.
Zhenka shone like a lamp in anticipation of battle, the risk, the fury
of combat. It's not frightening for an officer to die in battle. What is
frightening or, rather, it would be a shame, to catch a bullet or shell
fragment from some stupid act.
The soldiers' lot was no bowl of cherries, either. They waited to be
demobbed no less keenly, they'd spent a year and a half plugging away
without discharge or leave, but, unlike the officers, they had no choice and
could not show their displeasure. Chistyakov barked at everyone, testing the
livers of the "elephants" with his fist.
"A whack on the liver is as good as a mug of beer!"
Chistyakov was all afire to go to war, went around as if in a haze,
forgot all about his replacement, cleaned his rifle, got his gear together,
honed his combat knife.
"I sure don't envy the spooks," remarked Pashkov, shaking his head.
"Where'd he suddenly get all that energy?" He was checking out the fixings
of the machine gun on the turret of an armored vehicle.
"Why are you so glum, Sharagin?"
"I had a bad dream..."
Army service consists of discipline, petty tyrannies, humiliations,
details, eating, digesting, sleep and expectation -- expectation of orders,
expectation of leave, expectation of returning home, expectation of freedom
from the power of highly placed fools and scoundrels, expectation of the
decrees of Fate. If an army is at war, service also includes expectation of
death: be it in the name of obeying orders, serving the interests of the
Motherland, or simply because on that day, at that moment, a specific number
comes up, YOUR number. Someone must be sacrificed, after all.
Such choices of Fate are subsequently and most frequently described as
heroism and fulfillment of duty, less frequently as sheer bad luck, while
those who stood side by side with death, later find some explanation for
that particular stroke of fortune, even though everyone knows exactly why
and how it came to pass.
But people tied to the army conceal from each other that their survival
so far in this inscrutable lottery has been due to blind luck, no more; and
only in the deepest recesses of their minds, mostly subconsciously, do they
render thanks to that hand, which did not draw THEIR number...
Rebellious Afghan tribes that had refused to swear allegiance to the
new regime had taken refuge on the plain between high mountains. The troops
took up positions on the dominant heights above the plain, presiding above
villages and wooded patches -- "greenery" -- which lay below silently, like
a predator gone to earth. The troops knew that victory would be theirs, that
the greenery would fall before them, but they also knew the price they would
have to pay.
Those who had planned the battle and were ready to order its start had
already estimated the costs of the operation, because war is a science, and
science demands precision and calculation. War does not excuse weakness, war
knows no mercy, and therefore people who decide to make war never allow
themselves to be guided by such feelings. They deliberately distance
themselves from the epicenter of battle in order not to see the soldiers
they are sending off to be slaughtered, in order not to look into their
eyes. Instead, they content themselves with sending them rousing messages
and promising medals and titles. They are well aware that after victory the
number of the fallen will not be a determining factor, because those who
died will automatically become heroes, while the maimed and wounded shall be
whisked away from the theatre of war to specially devised hospitals and
military medical installations, so the sight of them will not upset their
former comrades in arms and newly arrived reinforcements.
Sharagin's platoon soon took possession of the hill overlooking the
road, making a nest for itself at the top. Like the company, the whole
battalion, and all the units assigned to this particular military operation,
the platoon lived in daily expectation of orders, meanwhile the soldiers
slept under canvas awnings erected on the slope and under armoured cars,
dreamt of home in the stillness of afternoons and nights, ate dry rations
and relieved themselves in the immediate vicinity.
Lieutenant Sharagin worried that this relaxed atmosphere could prove
fatal if it were to last a few more days, but there was little he could do
about it but hope for speedy orders to advance.
.... we're surrounded by mountains... when the sun goes down,
and darkness falls, and the first stars appear like sentinels in
the heavens, the sun still lights up the other side of the
mountain range, making it look as though it is still daylight
over there, and they look flat ... as though some giant has
made cardboard cutouts of ancient warriors, heads bent, and
tired horsemen, and the peaks and contours look like their
heads, lowered in exhaustion, who have struck camp, backs and
shoulders slumped, and their horses' heads ... the giant has glued
them carefully and disposed them like immense decorations,
gifting the sleeping valley with a certain coziness ... the
valley that we shall take soon...
The atmosphere of tedium and lyrical musing was heightened by the
effects of the dry, hot, all-pervasive and heavy wind known as the "afghan,"
which descended out of nowhere and blew unrelentingly all day.
The "afghan" was fierce, as though angered by the platoon and all the
troops that had come to the valley. It drove myriad grains of sand against
the canvas of the tents, stung faces, covered those who had taken refuge
behind rocks with sand and dust and harried the sentries who crouched in
dug-outs and waited to be replaced.
But the relief sentries never arrived punctually. The "grand-dads"
slept, unconcerned by the problems of the youngsters, and those who were
scheduled for duty strung out the time as long as possible to shorten their
own stint on guard.
The wind danced up and down the valley, blotting out the sky and
mountains with an impenetrable shroud of dust. Stubborn, capricious and
merciless, the "afghan" spun at liberty, feeling its power and impunity.
... what was that bit in the Bible? How apt it was!...
Sharagin racked his brains, trying to remember those words out of
Ecclesiastes, which he had read so long ago, before military school:
"The wind blows to the South and goes around to the North; round and
round goes the wind and on its circuits the wind returns."
... it was as if the prophet was talking about the "afghan"...
I'll have to read it again when I get back home....
It was easier to tolerate the "afghan" in company, but depression was
just as great, the desire to go home was always there, and because home was
far away, the next best thing was to get drunk.
The sand raised by the "afghan" penetrated everywhere, filtering
through every crack, every hole. People spat, rubbed their eyes and noses,
but the sand filled their hair and crept down their backs. The wind carried
a hidden premonition of disaster.
Toward evening the "afghan" finally tired of making mischief, and took
itself off. It had not exhausted itself, no, that was not why the wind died
down. Most likely it got bored with this place, and sped off to wreak havoc
and bother people elsewhere, after a few parting sand whirls.
It was completely quiet again, cold and distant stars filled the sky,
but in the morning torture by the sun resumed. The soldiers, usually so
talkative and noisy, were silent.
Sharagin inspected the positions once more. Two soldiers snored in the
shade of a canvas awning. One of them -- Savateyev -- was swiping at a fly
on his face in his sleep, frowning and scratching his cheeks. When his hand
brushed against the top of his head, the lice he dislodged leapt nimbly to
the head of the soldier sleeping next to him.
... I'll order their heads shaved, every last one of them!...
Sharagin saw junior sergeant Titov wandering around clad in nothing but
a pair of sateen drawers, rolled up to look like bathing trunks, absently
scratching his crotch. Sergeant Panasyuk, his face sunburnt a fiery red,
sprawled on a greatcoat on the ground. Nearby, private Sychev, in correct
uniform, was squeezing festering pimples on the back of a "grand-dad" of the
Soviet Army, Prokhorov.
... disgusting ...
By certain unwritten laws, only the so-called grand-dads had the right
to go around undressed. In principle, the grand-dads were not supposed to do
so either, but any officer in his right mind turned a blind eye to such
liberties, provided they remained within reason. The grand-dads knew what
they were about, they knew that they could allow themselves a measure of
insolence with any commanding officer, and if they did not go too far, if
they did not overdo things, no conflict would ensue. One only needed to know
exactly where to draw the line. Sharagin glanced sideways at Panasyuk, Titov
and Prokhorov, all in their satin underwear, threw a second glance on his
way to relieve himself, and when he passed by a third time, the grand-dads
were all getting dressed. They took the squad leader's hint. Once dressed,
they went off to harry the younger personnel, because there was nothing else
to do that day.
It did not take long for Panasyuk to adopt some of the squad leader's
mannerisms and expressions. Aping Sharagin, he took to addressing the lower
ranks with the polite "you" instead of the familiar "thou," but with an air
of paternal superiority; at combat training he would urge them on with one
of the new commanding officer's aphorisms: "At first, a soldier marches as
long as he can, and after that, as long as necessary." Panasyuk's
stubbornness and persistence earned him the nickname of "the mountain brake
of communism." Combat vehicles of the commando forces are all equipped with
a so-called mountain brake with a catch. Once this is engaged, the motor
will continue to roar and strain, but the vehicle will not budge an inch. It
was due to his unwillingness to give one iota that Panasyuk lost a front
tooth during his first months of service.
The people on the hilltop wilted from the burning sun and inactivity,
becoming dull and stupid. In this kind of heat, anybody's thoughts become
scattered. Even in the shade you toss around as in a fever, sweating out
every drop of moisture and waking up stupefied by the stifling heat, with
spittle on your lips, your head like a chunk of lead, sticky with sweat and
mind fogged with fragments of restless dreams.
... Sharagin wove around in his half-dreams, and although his thoughts
remained perfectly clear and consistent, coordination disappeared: the men
would run out to line up, and all Oleg could do was mumble something,
drunkenly trying to pull on a pair of socks which, for some reason, were two
sizes too small, so the heel was too far down and the sock wouldn't fit; he
hopped around on one bare foot, lost balance and tumbled backwards, luckily
onto his bunk, avoiding injury ... Soldiers' voices reached his ears through
a thin, silken veil of slumber: "...took fright, that greenhorn!...shit
himself when the shooting started!...well, it's true, isn't it?", "a rocket
exploded just five meters off, and not a single splinter hit us, would you
believe?", "and fuck me dead if I didn't kill three spooks right then and
there," "I'd rather walk into someone else's shit instead of going up there
on the slope. We already had one stupid bastard who went out into the field
for a crap ... we found his arse about twenty meters away, ha, ha, ha..." ,
"remember that warrant officer, Kosyakevich, how he rolled around on the
ground when that, well, when them spooks had us holed up in a ravine and
opened up with a fucking heavy machine gun? Kosyakevich copped it in the
stomach... the first aid instructor bandaged him up, but we knew that it was
curtains for the poor sod!", "death's a bugger, always catches you
unawares..."; and in his dreams Oleg also heard the soldiers bitching about
their details, and the lousy rations, and that "you always have to put down
your own cash to get a decent bite of something," and the curses the
soldiers aimed at the merciless sun of Afghanistan.
Finally Sharagin could not stand this monotonous and stupid chatter,
which would not let him sleep properly, and barked: "Stop that fucking
noise!" to shut them up. Then he took a gulp of water from his canteen and
turned over, hoping to fall asleep until dinner time.
One lot of voices was replaced by another, distracting him from his
attempts to sleep, and, if truth be told, Sharagin didn't really want to
sleep, and all kinds of thoughts went round and round in the lieutenant's
head.
... when you get down to it, soldiers are nothing but rabble, the
dregs of our society, they're ... hell, how quickly they've become
an uncontrollable wave away from home! ... nothing but trivial,
idiotic thoughts in practically every head that's why they
talk such rubbish ... but if our soldier is so dumb and useless,
what about the "diesel-heads"? All the mototrised infantry are
Morons!...
"I tell you, those flies weren't fucking!" cried someone, as though in
confirmation of Sharagin's thoughts.
"Everyone's a psycho!" yelled someone else.
... grown-up idiots, the whole bleeding lot...
The lives of sons of bitches like Prokhorov, slobs and mean bastards
like Titov, hounded juniors like Myshkovsky, Sychev and Chirikov, clowns
like Panasyuk and similar typical and untypical persons and non-persons of
the latest and intervening call-ups belonged to Sharagin. Rather, he was
assigned to this motley crew known as a platoon, and it was up to him to
make the platoon combat-worthy, it was his job to think about the platoon,
these people, every hour, minute and second, to worry and make decisions as
a result of which the soldiers would return home alive from Afghanistan, or
not.
One could spend eternity cursing these young men, drafted from all ends
of the Land of the Soviets to active military service,
... brainless "elephants"...
but right now Sharagin cursed them to himself, just as he did aloud,
for errors and for trifles about which the soldiers didn't give a damn, but
which could prove fatal in war. He cursed them, but at the same time he
sympathised with each one individually, and was saddened each time when the
hardened youngsters left his squad, in the USSR or here in Afghanistan,
after their two-year stint. Sharagin truly valued that inexplicable and
unique phenomenon that is called a Soviet, Russian soldier.
... where does the Soviet soldier's frequent total disregard of death
arise, his endless courage and desperate feats? ... an Afghan soldier is
nothing like that, just try telling him that he has to go from Kabul to
Kandahar: he won't, not for any money, each one of those 'afghanoids' thinks
only of saving his own skin, while we guard their peace, do their dirty work
for them, slave our guts out ... because they're all cowards, and our lads
can't wait to get into battle ... what is it, excessive romanticism? no,
they've seen it all, and still strain at the leash ... are they stupid? but
they're not such fools as to throw life away needlessly ... duty? no, that's
for the newspapers, empty words ... Russian recklessness? partly ... nobody
can really understand it ... just as nobody can solve the riddle of the
Russian soul, nobody ... huge, deep, like our country ... untractable,
unpredictable ... only the Russian soul can encompass unbelievable breadth,
sincerity, openness and sentimentality alongside such traits as villainy,
boot-licking, baseness, servility, selfless love of others and total
disregard for human life ... especially for those on top, human life loses
all value, especially in Moscow, among those bastards who wear out the seats
of their pants in HQ offices ... they do not see us as individuals, but as
battalions, companies and divisions ...
... that's enough philosophizing, Sharagin, time to get back to
business, the war, and not sit around meditating ... what did I start with?
oh, yes - the boundless courage of Russian soldiers...
No matter how hard Sharagin tried to get away from philosophical
musings, he kept plunging back into thought. He turned over and started to
examine the peeling green paint of the APC, the dried mud plastering its
body, the thick layer of dust that covered it just as it lined his lungs.
Soviet people in Afghanistan choked on dust and spat it out in thick
gobs of yellow, pus-like spittle.
Unexpectedly it came to him that glorification of war, romantic
perception of battle begins in childhood, when a child encounters a
veritable landslide of literature on the subject, when his mind is barely
able to digest heroic films in which the soldier is always victorious, and
where death of the enemy is a great feat.
... kids barely out of the cradle run around with wooden machine guns:
bang-bang, you're dead! ... nobody ever told us what real war is like, not a
single book explained that by its nature, war is an abomination ... the
Great Patriotic War was idealized, made into a fetish ... yes, we won, but
at what price! ... I learnt a lot from my grandfather ... but this is
something that will never be published in a single book or newspaper! ... so
it looks as though the loss of ten million lives is justified, and instead
of condemning such monstrous losses, instead of condemning those who
couldn't give a damn whether thirty or forty millions perish in the name of
victory, we eulogise martial success and prepare another generation hooked
on self-sacrifice ... my generation was well prepared, that's why we're
here, that's why our Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan perform miracles of
heroism ....
Saturated with specious, sweet, superficial and erroneous images of
war, boys with wooden guns dream of battle, dream of going to war, no matter
where or what.
... sadly, most of them never shed these childish illusions as they
grow up ... stop! cancel that! it looks as though we can't live without
violent emotion, without heroics, we always need an enemy who must be
destroyed ... so were we all, our whole country, only waiting for yet
another war, like this one in Afghanistan? ...
As soon as the sun was past the zenith, the soldiers, who had quieted
down for a while, came back to life, rubbing their eyes, yawning, crawling
out of their holes. With returned vigour came jokes, laughter, swearing,
shouts.
The day before, when the squad was moving out to its assigned position,
the lads pulled a fast number to get additional food, which they hid from
their commander while they were digging in and sheltering from the "afghan."
The armoured military vehicles, BMPs, met a herd of goats on a narrow
mountain road. The older herdsman, a sturdy man who struck Sharagin as
highly suspicious,
... he's a "spook," for sure ... and he'll remain in our rear, the
bastard ...
and a young boy, were driving the herd toward them. The Afghans were
afraid that the shuravi would run down their goats and began to mill about
and fuss. Sharagin signalled a halt. At the same moment, lance-corporal
Prokhorov, the wiry and daring gunner in the first BMP, opened the rear
hatch and seized a young kid.
Sharagin didn't notice anything, all he heard was a dull thud as the
hatch slammed shut, and turned around in surprise to see a female goat
butting the BMP's armour:
... stupid animal ... what on earth possessed it? ...
The kid traveled on with the squad, quietly chewing into a sack of
potatoes. Halfway through, it almost started on some sticks of TNT that were
kept to help in digging trenches. Prokhorov and Panasyuk caught the kid
devouring the short-supply potatoes and dragged it out of the vehicle,
swearing profusely, to the encouraging shouts of their comrades.
The poor, frightened animal plunged wildly amid a forest of legs and
shadows cast by surrounding soldiery until Titov felled it to earth and slit
its throat with his bayonet.
Naturally, there was not enough fresh meat to go around. The younger
men had to make do with boiled pearl barley, but the youngsters devoured it
greedily, chomping and belching, licking their spoons and mess tins clean in
their hurry to fill their bellies before their older comrades could
intervene.
They watched from a respectful distance how the old hands savoured
their meat, sucking the bones clean and helping themselves to baked
potatoes: first they would poke around in the hot ashes with a twig, roll
out a potato, pull off the blackened peel, pop the white inside into their
mouths, and take another bite of goat meat.
"A drop of whaddya call it, port, would go down a treat now, eh Panas?"
Asked lance-corporal Prokhorov, licking his greasy fingers.
"Stop breaking my heart. When we get back to the Union, then we'll pull
out all the stops and celebrate! As much port and vodka as you can hold!"
"Shit yes, that'll be really something!"
"When we get back to the company, fuck me if I get up off my bunk for
anything. I won't move a finger until I'm demobbed!" Panansyuk took a bite
of potato. "If it wasn't for this assignment, we'd be getting ready to go
back right now..."
The youngsters chewed on dry crackers, listening enviously to the old
hands' fantasies.
"Hey, Chiri, why are you resting your balls by that fire? Where's the
tea, boy?" shouted Prokhorov. "Damn greenhorns! You'll be jerking off for a
long time yet before you can think of demob!" He laughed loudly. "But the
grand-daddies of the Soviet Army will be getting up to God knows what in a
month's time. Lock up your daughters, people! I told you, remember, how
we've got this whole female hostel right next door, a new slit every night,"
he went on, making things up on the spur of the moment, and believing his
own lies. "I remember Panas, see, how you'd come every night to a dance,
pick up a chick, and on the way back to the hostel, naturally, you'd get her
into a clinch somewhere in the bushes, then take her home, and another one
would be waving out the window at you, like, hell, come and hop into my cot,
soldier-boy! Just think, fuck it, what a life we had!"
"Who d'you think you're shitting, Prokhor?" jeered Titov. "One and a
half years I've known you, and all you've done is bullshit on about that
hostel, and I bet before that you hadn't so much as squeezed a tit!"
"Bullshit yourself, I didn't!" roared Prokhorov, though he clearly
realized that any moment now he'd be pinned down for outright lying.
"With a willy like yours, even if you got to climb up on a woman she
wouldn't feel a thing! It'd be like a pencil in a glass!" said Titov,
quashing his friend even further.
"How would you know?" challenged Prokhorov sourly.
"Well, it's no great military secret, is it? We've been in the
bath-house together, haven't we?"
"Chiri, you mother-fucker!" Shouted lance-corporal Prokhorov, glaring
at a soldier sitting nearby. "How long are we going to wait for that tea,
eh? It's ready? Well, bring it here, bugger it, before I have to get up!
I'll count to three ... fucking one ... fucking two ..."
Thin, fair-haired Chirikov grabbed up the hot mugs with his bare hands,
and just made it on the count of three.
"And where's the jam, worm?" Demanded Prokhorov, pinning the hapless
soldier with a merciless glare.
" ? "
"I'll count to one and a half! Starting now! One..."
"Come off it," interrupted Panasyuk. "Dismissed, Chiri!" After the
soldier retreated, he added: "You've driven the poor sod into the ground.
He's just come off duty. Give him a break. Otherwise, he'll goof off on
duty, fall asleep, and that will be that."
"Fuck the lot of you!" Retorted Prokhorov, offended, and stumped off
with his mug, muttering as he went: "Fine friends, bugger them! If I hadn't
swiped that fucking goat, you'd all be sitting around sucking your balls!"
"Hold it!" Shouted Panansyuk.
"Let him go," interposed Titov, waving dismissively. "Five minutes, and
he'll be back to normal."
They sat around, slurping thick black tea, which had been overboiled on
an improvised grill made out of a zinc cartridge box. The subject under
discussion was how to make a cake out of biscuits and condensed milk. It was
imperative to make their own demob cake. Tradition. Sweet dreams of
demobilisation reflected on the faces of Panasyuk and Titov, while
Prokhorov, miffed by his friends' digs, wandered around the post, sipping
his tea, burning his mouth on the hot aluminum mug, and shouting at the
younger soldiers.
Sharagin, relaxing with an after-dinner cigarette, heard a single shot.
"Find out who that was, and report back," he ordered private
Myshkovsky, who had jumped at the shot, and again at the harsh tone of his
commanding officer's voice.
... you'd swear someone dropped him flat on his face on some asphalt in
childhood ... he's put up with the grand-dads, month after month ... never
mind, Myshkovsky, we'll make a paratrooper out of you yet ...
"It was lance-corporal Prokhorov shooting, comrade lieutenant,"
reported Myshkovsky breathlessly when he got back. "He said it was so the
spooks in the village wouldn't stick their noses out. Remedial shot, he