Captain of the Steppe

by Oleg Pavlov

  But the memory of that reddish wolf muzzle would return to Peregud and his fear would revive when they stopped refilling his glass on the steppe, and when they refused to pour anything for him in the little towns, and again when eventually he could scarcely beg a mug of rancid beer off the labourers. And then again came the stench of dried fish, and it seemed to Peregud that the hounds were seeking him out; they were on his trail.

  What’s more, in all the years since his spell in the camps, Ilya dreamed one and the same dream: He’s been drinking vodka and he’s wandering about on his native soil in a posh white shirt. Suddenly he’s approached by the guardians of order, who seize him and sling him in the back of a lorry, so tightly enclosed by stinking metal that it seems more like a coffin. His soul is shaken right out of the back of the lorry and he gets thrown into a huge, lifeless house, inside which everything is metallic and rusting, and again there’s that smell of dried fish, as though old women are living there. Then he is stripped naked and hosed down with icy water, just as if he’s shat himself. The women doing the hosing are so fat they look like blokes. For good measure, while he’s still naked and frozen, these massive women give him a good going-over with their boots. Almost dead, he is dragged off and they stretch him out to sleep on a bedframe, tying his hands to it with what is either barbed wire or a guitar string. Come the morning, for further punishment, they shave him, using clippers to make it uglier. They give his things back without the buttons, which for some reason they have torn off, and they laugh at him: ‘Look at you, you sorry bastard, you ought to be annulled, you’re a disgrace to your motherland.’ He takes a look, and his shirt is dirty and torn, and covered in blood.

  Although he bore all these tortures, in his dream Peregud could never endure the fact that they shaved off his topknot and moustache with those vicious large-toothed clippers, and he would awake from his suffering in those moments of horror. Tormented by his dreams and by reality, Peregud surrendered: he consciously sold his soul to the hounds, in the supposition that they would not destroy him. This artless deal was struck in Ugolpunkt, in the barracks-like hostel for camp-workers where he was getting drunk with the prison guards; with tears in his eyes he begged his new friends to sort him out a job in the camp administration.

  Maybe this had happened in a drunken moment, but once he had been taken on, Peregud served many years. To begin with, he served as a prison guard – nicknamed ‘Sledgehammer’ – and then he transferred to the sentry company under Captain Khabarov, as a form of retirement, thinking secretly to himself that the captain, too, was on the run from the hounds; that he, too, although he was hiding it, was one of the last Cossacks.

  However, Peregud’s unsettling vision came true! Khabarov was arrested, the potatoes taken away, and it seemed to Peregud that the hounds had begun hunting down the Cossacks. Meanwhile, there were no doubts in the company that Peregud would release the captain just as soon as Skripitsyn had got well away. Peregud grew obstinate, saying he was not about to disobey an order. But he still ran for the armoury, where Khabarov had been locked up.

  The captain was sprawled in the cage of the weapons room. The metal cabinets in which the weapons were stored ran round the sides in unbroken ranks, which made it seem as though the cage was empty. Khabarov lay silently, like a dead man, but when he heard footsteps approaching, he roused himself and made for Peregud. ‘Let me out of here right now!’

  Peregud, whom the Special-Department agent had left in charge of the company, simply whined in response: ‘There’s no way I can do that, Vania, they’ll take you before the court tomorrow, just be patient.’

  ‘So you’ve bought into all that bollocks, too?’ exploded Khabarov. ‘Well, I spoke to the general yesterday, they’re going behind his back!’

  ‘There is no general … ’ sobbed Ilya. ‘You’ve got to confess, maybe they’ll still let you off.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be my friend. Who else is going to believe me?’ said the captain, deflated. Peregud stepped back out of the cage in silence, hiding his bovine eyes and sobbing. ‘The potatoes! Save the potatoes!’ yelled Khabarov into the void, and went on yelling until he grew hoarse.

  Ilya took the keys to the armoury from the sentry on duty, hid them in his pocket and headed for a quiet corner of the barracks, where he shut himself up in his hovel. Shortly after, he began singing:

  ‘If he hadn’t known his own woes, my lads,

  he wouldn’t have known how to carouse or to quaff.

  But if his voice hadn’t called out the songs from the Don, my lads,

  he wouldn’t have known how to sing or to love … ’

  Starving, bereft of the potatoes and the captain’s care, the soldiers enacted reprisals on one another, yelling, ‘So, did you sell out the captain? Did you sell out our spuds?’

  One guilty party was found nevertheless – a soldier by the name of Korneichuk, who simply had not run off anywhere, hadn’t hidden, but just moved to one side, smoking tobacco and looking around without interest. Petr Korneichuk believed that his dear mother and father had given him as much strength as there was water flowing in the river. Whoever came at him, he walloped them with his square army belt buckle, so hard that one lad bounced off the floor. The soldiers then lunged for Petr in a mob, which left the square and the entire camp settlement once again devoid of people. They beat him until darkness fell, as though they truly meant to kill him. They hit him until they grew tired, ran away, then came back to hit him some more, but there was no way they could put a mark on his face; waves of attackers kept trying for one really telling blow before once more ebbing away.

  They went back for Petr when his share was left over from dinner. They were scared that they had done him in completely, although that rubbery young lad – who it turns out had himself gone looking for revenge with a belt and a buckle on the end of it – maintained that, even after the buckle hit Korneichuk, he had been breathing like a good ’un, and even snuffling, abandoned on the barracks square. In the darkness they didn’t immediately make out the fissure. The fissure went right up to the latrine, although the shithouse was empty. The missing man was discovered by accident, when one of the soldiers decided to relieve himself, and from under his arse, freshened by the steppe winds, were heard Korneichuk’s groans. They looked through the hole, which was festooned with plumes of newspaper, and were able to make him out, drowning. They threatened, explained and cajoled, to try and get him to come out, but Korneichuk had grown so scared of people that he no longer believed them. Summoned to assist as the commander, Peregud tore a board off the shithouse wall and lashed out with it at the assembled crowd. They all ran away from the enraged Ilya. Left to himself, Peregud had a long and heartfelt conversation with Korneichuk, but the other man would not agree to come out for anything, although he did not talk this through so much as mumble. Angry on the other man’s behalf, Peregud knocked down the clapboard shithouse, levelling the latrine. If any member of the rest of humanity had appeared on that steppe just then, their gaze would have taken in an astonishing picture. Boards were strewn over the ground as if after some great catastrophe. Among them, on the bare dark steppe, sat a mysterious warrior who was clutching his top-knotted head and maintaining a muffled monologue, which seemed to be intended for only two people; ‘You have to keep living. No matter what they did to you, spite them and live. It’s simpler. You can hide in the shit, but then what? You’re not going to sit there for ever, are you?’ And the ground beneath the warrior whines piteously, at which the warrior bends low and listens. ‘Are you still breathing, or what?’ And he says, as though entreating the earth itself: ‘Come with me; they won’t touch you if you’re with me. Tell you what, shall I find you a new uniform, one of the really good ones? Listen, come on, let’s get one. And we’ll get the bathhouse warmed up!’ What happened next, no one will ever know. But Peregud somehow did his duty and extracted the man who had been drowning in shit.

  Karabas plunged into the dark, chilly water of night. On its
surface, which appeared shrivelled as though burnt, only the camp searchlights swam. The guard dogs chained to their posts howled mournfully, sensing the complete disorder that reigned in the world of people. That was the kind of night it was when Peregud appeared before the arrested man with a mess tin of peas, a lump of rye bread and a confession. ‘Enough! It’s beyond my powers to endure any more.’ He stuck his hands through the gaps in the locked grille and undid the canvas straps on the captain’s numb extremities. Then he pushed through the mess tin and the bread, whispering, ‘We’ll tell them that you managed to untie yourself.’

  The captain was dozing, but when Ilya untied his hands as though he was taking the boots off a drunk, he instantly awoke, catching scent of the peas and bread from within his doze. Khabarov had forgotten that there was such a thing as pease pudding in the world, and that he was supposed to have a ration allotted, and he spent a long time munching up the last traces. ‘After all, the general made me a promise … ’ the captain moaned. Once again he had clean forgotten about his peas; his hands were just wrapped around the mess tin now for warmth. ‘There you go again about this general, and he doesn’t exist.’ Ilya grew sad. ‘You be glad that they’ll be passing sentence on you. Prison is the most reliable protection from them. They’d shave my head, and there’s no vodka, but I’d go myself. What am I talking about, there’s no way out for me. But you’re a different sort of person. Don’t you run away from them, let them pass sentence!’

  ‘You mean you won’t let me out?’

  ‘You’re a different sort of person, but they’d hound me to death.’

  ‘You want me to sit quiet in prison? Let me call the regiment.’

  ‘Now leave it, Vania … ’

  The captain got up with difficulty and, leaning on the metal front of a gun cabinet, took to kicking it with his boot like he was ringing a bell. ‘Ivan, they’ll hear you!’ Peregud pressed himself up to the grille. ‘Damn you, make a noise, then, go to hell!’

  And then, in his misery, Ilya performed a heroic deed.

  Peregud himself checked the connection and carried the receiver of that terrible device to the captain, as though it contained a bomb ready to explode: ‘It’s ringing, the son of a bitch. Get ready, Ivan!’ The telecommunications apparatus was right up against the grille. At the same moment as Ilya was looking at the captain, shining with a clear light, Khabarov himself was ringing up the regiment, as though returning to a past time: ‘Operator, sister mine, it’s me, I … Captain Khabarov! The Sixth! Where’s that general of yours? What do you mean, “no”? Be a dear, look it up, they put me through to him!’ Suddenly he shrieked in a frenzy: ‘The regimental commander, then. Give me Pobedov, I’ll speak to him!’ The next moment, he reddened. ‘I want to hear it from him, I don’t believe you … I’m telling you, let him say so!’

  But the regiment did not give the captain a chance to get aggressive, and so, hunching over like a mountain, he took to blowing, shouting and banging at the receiver. Eventually, he gave in: ‘They cut me off, the bastards … ’

  Ilya shook, and with a great roar he blew the soldiers out of the woodwork: ‘Pack up that talking shop, put it back where it belongs!’ The proceedings were like a kind of stampede. The device retreated to the office, Peregud carrying it back there in two bounds, like a piece of fluff. It seemed to Ilya that any moment now the barracks would be struck by lightning, or the hounds would attack out of the blue, as a punishment for their sins. He said over and over: ‘Oh, we brought it on ourselves! Oh, now we’re for it … They’ll take us first!’

  After an eternity, there once more came a ring from the office. From somewhere in that hinterland between life and death, Peregud shambled off in answer to its summons and, afterwards, paced heavily back down the corridor. He held a key-ring on which jangled all the company keys. He silently unlocked the cage and muttered to the captain, who had grown quiet: ‘Come on out. It’s an order from your general. We’ve been ordered to let you out, apparently. They said you’re an idiot and you’re not to ring again. They’ll look into your case later, when they get round to it.’ Peregud could no longer hold back. ‘That’s how it’ll be. Come out! If you don’t want to, you can spend the night there. It’s the right place for idiots, behind bars.’

  This was how they greeted the morning: Khabarov in his open cage, Peregud in the office, silently and stubbornly waiting for the Black Maria to arrive. But nobody came for Khabarov. The captain left his cage to fetch in a mattress, a pillow and an old greatcoat, and he lay back down. He got up early, went out to freedom after all, and had a wash. They brought his rations into the cage, as he had already refused to come out for his food. The following morning, they brought him nothing: they had forgotten. Towards evening they remembered and brought him some cold pearl-barley gruel. Later in the night, Ilya paid him a visit, out of duty, and ruined everything: ‘What are you turning yourself into a scarecrow for? Just be happy you’re still alive.’

  That night, when no one could see him, the captain paid a visit to the shack where the potatoes had been stored. He went and set up home in there, while awaiting his arrest. When it grew light, Khabarov would go out to the field, which had become so empty, the ground like rock; and when it grew dark, he disappeared back into the shack. They brought rations to the captain like alms to an invalid or beggar. After all, no one knew if he was under arrest, or demoted, or even if he was still on the books. Suddenly, one morning, the gusting wind carried the clatter of an engine over the steppe. Then, from the sentry towers, they tried to make out what was crawling its way towards the settlement, but it was still hidden behind the slope of the steppe. Soldiers poured out of the guardhouse. They couldn’t see anything yet, but the settlement came alive with the sound of shouting: ‘They’re coming! They’re coming for Khabarov!’ The captain sprang out of his shack; his face, covered in prickly stubble, shone. ‘He’s been waiting for this,’ sighed Ilya Peregud, who was standing to one side by himself, doing his duty.

  When the prison lorry at last showed itself – it looked like an ordinary bread lorry – for some reason it did not turn off into the barracks, but drove on towards the camp, carrying them all behind it in a crowd. It stopped by the camp entrance.

  The escorts jumped to the ground – a pair of soldiers stifling yawns and a warrant officer hurrying them on.

  It turned out the escort had other orders: to bring another batch from prison to the camp. The head of the escort had heard nothing about the captain’s case. Agitated, Khabarov sought answers from the warrant officer: ‘Why are they not coming to arrest me, then? Anyway, since when has there been a general back at regimental base?’

  ‘That’s right, they say a general is coming from Moscow to do an inspection. They’re expecting him any day now, but he hasn’t got there yet. And guess what, they’ve had another fire at the regiment. Yes, it broke out in the garage, everything inside went up … They saved five vehicles, no more, although of course those that were out elsewhere are still in service. Everyone’s at each other’s throats, looking for someone to blame for the fire. You see, there’s so much cash, so much equipment that went up at once!’ The young man in officer’s epaulettes said his piece, becoming more relaxed. ‘The general’s coming slowly, so to speak, but now this has happened he’ll take his time inspecting the regiment, that’s for sure.’

  At this, Khabarov turned excitedly towards him: ‘My fellow countryman, do me a favour: if the general’s going to be there, then I urgently need to get to the regiment. Would you drop me off nearby?’ The other man agreed without hesitation. ‘Get in, it makes no odds to me … Just not in the cab.’

  ‘Ah, I’d ride on top, if need be! Wait for me, I’ll go grab my things … ’ Khabarov roused himself and dashed into the barracks. But when he’d got all his things together in a flash and sprung back out into the square, the Black Maria was already heading off into the distance. Something about the captain had unnerved the officer after all, and so they hadn’t waited. Left beh
ind, Khabarov made plans with Peregud: ‘In the morning, I’ll go to the regiment. I’ll make it as far as Ugolpunkt, then hitch the rest of the way.’

  Ilya was agreeing to all of it. ‘Yes, you go. See that it all gets sorted out. Tell them there not to unleash the hounds. If need be, we’ll say you ran off by yourself.’ Then they sat together for a while, like they used to in the old days. They recalled everyone they had known, everyone they had served with, especially Vasil Velichko. The captain lay down to sleep in clean underwear on the bunk in his office – and would have missed his train, had Peregud not woken him as agreed, very early in the morning.

  In the window were faint traces of light like smoke, and the long winter darkness. That night, the first frost had settled on the steppe. While the bitter cold was still some way off, the muddy roads had solidified. In the square, where the captain took his leave of Ilya, the previous day’s footprints lay on the surface like potholes, while lumps of mud fallen from the men’s boots had turned silver overnight; the potato field, too, had turned silver and hard.

  The camp’s narrow-gauge railway ran as far as the station halt at Stepnoi, through which, as with all the other far-flung halts, ran the main line to Ugolpunkt, the capital of this part of the steppe, and of the camps. The shunting engine always stood outside the gates of the camp zone, a little into the steppe, so that the zeks could not drive it away. At five o’clock in the morning, one of those camp-workers who had earned the freedom to go about unescorted shackled up the engine and drove it to Stepnoi. On the way there, it was empty; on the way back, it carried the new shift to replace the warders who had been on duty for the previous twenty-four hours. Khabarov had not had a chance to shave and spruce himself up the way he wanted, but time wouldn’t wait: it was coming up to five o’clock. ‘Off you go, then, off you go … ’ repeated Ilya, staring at the ground. They said goodbye briefly, as if going their separate ways. But when Khabarov was already marching away from the gates, the warrior called out, ‘Iva-a-an!’