Captain of the Steppe

by Oleg Pavlov

  ‘Wha-a-at?’ echoed the captain, from afar.

  ‘Ru-u-un! You-ou can ma-a-ake it! Run from the-e-em, follow your nose, don’t come back, hide – I’ll cover for you, I won’t te-e-ell!’

  Dawn was breaking over the steppe; the stark, swollen skies bobbed up from the night like a drowned man. The dawn was a dark blue, and cold: no sun, no clouds, no birds. Khabarov walked along the caterpillar-track ruts left by the camp tractors. The bit of breeze that was blowing past him caught in the cloth of his greatcoat, and set it rumbling and fluttering, gnawing at it like an angry dog. Khabarov climbed up onto the platform, which was open to the elements and rusting, and set himself down on an ammunition case. These had been dumped here by the dozen, so that you had something to sit your backside on along the way.

  He looked at the Karabas he had left, seeing it quite clearly, through a stranger’s eyes, and the image of the distant camp settlement moved him as though it were his own old photograph.

  The trusty appeared – an old fellow with a wooden leg strapped to his stump with thick string. Once he had got out by himself, he skipped along almost mischievously, not like an invalid, but like a little boy. Before setting his railway train in motion, the old fellow gave the captain a hard stare, working out who this person was. Then he recognised him and so didn’t start with any questions; instead, with preternatural calm, he skipped up into the driving compartment.

  The engine began to puff as it dragged itself away from Karabas, which grew smaller and smaller, swallowed up by heaven and earth until it finally vanished from view. The sleepers beneath the rails had rotted, and it seemed that the rails were wobbling to and fro as though traced out by ice skates – here they bulged out, there they curved in and down and even rippled. The shunter skidded, shrieking, when its wheels jammed; here it bobbed and there it dipped as it went along the tracks.

  In Stepnoi, the shift-workers were already waiting, numbed by the wind. Unnoticed by anyone, as though a stranger, the captain of Sixth Company jumped down from the platform and remained at the halt.

  Such halts were spread along the branch line like weeds. A Kazakh emerges from the steppe, sticks his banner into the ground, or maybe just ties a horsetail to a saxaul tree, and there’s your stop. Stepnoi, on the other hand, had been built more purposefully: the zeks of Karabas had built it for the ease of their warders. The structure resembled a barracks, but it was at least possible to shelter from the rain inside, plus they had furnished it to the best of their ability: there were benches and a stove. In its prime, the barracks had had a little extension built on, a shed and a co-operative, in which they traded with the Kazakhs, who brought furs and wool, and anything that they happened to make, into Stepnoi. In exchange they were offered primus stoves, logs and the like, and vodka.

  When there were elections to the people’s Soviets, a propaganda point would be set up in Stepnoi for the steppe-dwellers from the nearby shepherds’ bases and other such nomad camps. They would get dressed up to the nines; clans and families would gather together, travelling on wagons and horses, learning the last five years’ news from the propagandists. They would vote, but they wouldn’t go so far as to poke their faces into the barracks. They would sit themselves down in the steppe around a big fire; they’d eat, drink, and then go their separate ways again. When the halt was burned down, they never finished rebuilding it. The camp-dwellers blamed the Kazakhs, but you may as well try and catch the wind in a field. However, between themselves, the prison authorities in Karabas knew that the halt had been burned down by the warders themselves when, returning from their shift, they had got stranded at Stepnoi. They had drunk too much, and when the night chill had clutched at their thin hides, they had there and then set light to the barracks. They kept themselves warm, and so escaped certain death.

  Of all the structures at the halt, only the latrine had been spared. It lay close to the ground, for some reason, like a dug-out. Its walls were wattle and daub, in the Asiatic manner, with clumps of straw poking through the clay daub that held it all together instead of nails. The latrine roof had been swept away all the same, to be replaced by a bit of greasy khaki canvas that some practical-minded individual had stretched across.

  With great tenacity, this structure thrust itself out of the earth to the height of a few inches – it was both a milestone and a station, not to mention plenty of other things. ‘They could at least have planted some trees,’ thought Khabarov, gloomily.

  Suddenly, the halt became more cheery: out of the blue a few Kazakhs had appeared, plus a few of their women and children. They sat down, keeping a good distance from the captain. The Kazakh women sat in pairs, clearly mothers- and daughters-in-law, or even mothers and daughters. They were waiting for the train.

  The young women were fair-skinned and slim, while the old women had skin like cured ham and were fat. They had three children with them, one of whom was ill, shivering with fever in a kind of papoose. They must have been taking him to Ugolpunkt, to the doctor there. They sat round the boy in silence, like a single family. An old woman, the oldest among them, wiped his sweating brow with her flabby hand from time to time. Yet the youngest of the women, who was most likely his mother, did not reach out to him, although her eyes were brimming with grief.

  She was still very much a girl – fragile, flat-chested, with swollen pink lips and soft down beneath them.

  The healthy children were clambering around in the ruins of the barracks, looking for nails in the ashes. Anxious, the grey old women called them back, but they either did not dare or did not wish to raise their voices against their future menfolk, and so they seemed instead to beseech them. Watching the steppe-dwellers, Khabarov was struck by the way Russian mothers would instead curse and swear at their own flesh and blood, and his gloom deepened.

  And now, believe it or not, it turned out the diesel engine was being driven by a Russian woman! A strapping lass, she leaned out of the window as she brought her train, which consisted of three prison transport wagons and the same again of goods wagons laden with a rare selection of old crap, to a standstill at a platform way past the station halt. Going past, she cried: ‘You’ll have to get on like this, I won’t back her up. Fucking hell, you can walk for all I care!’ The servicemen ran for the carriages, while, not waiting to be asked, Khabarov snatched up the shouting Kazakh women’s bundles, and together they ran to catch up – only it was difficult because of the little boy: carrying him, they couldn’t keep up. Then the captain abandoned the bundles and, going back, took the little Kazakh from the old woman, who was struggling for breath. The fearful young Kazakh women stretched out their arms to the people on board and thus were lifted through the air and into the dark goods wagon that had been refitted to carry people. But the old women hanging onto the wagon wailed, scared that they might be forgotten. It was hard work dragging them on board – Khabarov got under their weighty behinds and shoved upwards, while from on board the goods wagon they tugged at their arms with all their might. From her engine the driver was yelling: ‘I’d run over every last old woman!’

  The train shuddered and set off, so that the captain had to leap into a wagon that was already moving. This he managed without any great danger to himself: the train wasn’t powering ahead so much as waddling along the tracks, waggling its swollen hips from side to side like an old woman. Inside the wagon, the warmth was oppressive. The space was heated by coal, poured right in, in a great mound, and consumed bit by bit in an old barrel. There were benches nailed to the floor on which folk had huddled together in the smoky half-light. The captain could not make out any of them, and could only hear their loud breathing. From the corner of the workers’ wagon, a rotten stink intermingled with the stuffiness – there, in the floor, a hole had been knocked through; daylight shone through it, filtered by a scanty piece of veneered board.

  Khabarov shut his eyes, even though there was no point; but it seemed easier to bear like that. There were more stops, and everything happened just as at Stepnoi
– people crowded onto the workers’ wagons, the engine driver shouted at them, as if it wasn’t the locomotive but she herself, harnessed to a barge-hauler’s straps, who was dragging the wagons away from the platforms. And at each halt, each bare, wild halt, there would inevitably be a shithouse: wattle and daub or even wooden, with a roof or without, crooked, smeared with shit, with scratched sides: ‘Brick Factory’; ‘Sunray’; ‘Karakul’; ‘Pravdinskii’; ‘43rd Kilometre’. And so they formed a line, like guides, all the way to Ugolpunkt itself.

  Once upon a time, at the place where this small town now stood, the steppe had just got on with life, but people in blue-edged uniforms had marched up, driving a crowd of convicts before them, and it was upon their bones that the town had been built. It was a town of coal mines and camps, although the coalfaces were soon deserted.

  The train did not arrive at the actual station in Ugolpunkt, but came in to a siding. The sweating mass of people piled out into the cold. Khabarov fixed his eyes on his new godson, the little boy, and helped the Kazakh women carry him down and on to the station, where the local doctor was waiting to receive them. The women rewarded his labours with their bread, on top of which they gave him three roubles. The captain did not refuse their bread and other food – they would come in very handy for his onward journey – but he felt ashamed to accept them.

  The station was a hub, with a marshalling yard, so Khabarov was not alone here as he had been at the halt. He looked at the tracks, strewn randomly over the ground, leading off in all directions; he listened to the shunters hooting; and he breathed the burnt air thrown out by the blackened trains as they passed through on their way from one far-flung place to another.

  The Kazakhs mingled with the Russians, and there was a great shove of people like at a market. Baggage was piled up, and children, forgotten for the while, ran to and fro among it, playing games. When the local train came in, the crowd quietly carried the captain along into it; among these same people he sat down on a bench and fell asleep, surrounded by them all, as if at peace. He was roused by an old woman, in a carriage that was already empty. ‘Now then, I’m an old fool and a sinner, my dear, I took you for dead, and you were only asleep … Heavens, but what a face you were pulling! Let me make the cross, for your sins. Here we are now, in Karaganda. Maybe you missed your stop? Anyway, keep well, I’ll be off. Don’t fall ill, now. Stay out of trouble.’

  With the sign of the cross made over him, which for some reason upset him, Khabarov set forth into Karaganda, having slept so well that he could remember nothing. He’d had occasion to serve in this town. Remembering that he had deserted, he stepped up his pace, surprised as he recognised everything anew. The station was situated on the outskirts, as was the regimental base; as he drew nearer, so the captain’s anxiety grew … Suddenly he remembered that he had not shaved nor had his hair cut as required, and so, remembering with relief the three roubles he had been given by the Kazakh women, he hurried off to the barber’s; he was worried that he wouldn’t find it in its old location, but there it was, still. They shaved him, gave him a crew-cut and sprayed him with eau-de-cologne at his own request, so that he would look his finest. His appearance became so impressive that they let this unknown captain into the regimental base without a pass; what’s more, they even looked at him with respect as they breathed in the scent of his eau-de-cologne. Unhindered by anyone, the captain made his way into HQ … After a short while, yells and the sound of fighting could be heard from within; men fled, officers and soldiers alike, while a person, wheezing from the suffocating embrace he was held in, was dragged out of the entrance, all the while trying to tear himself free and get back into HQ. From the scrum came piteous shouts: ‘He wanted to kill comrade Pobedov!’ To all this was added yet more horror because the man stank of eau-de-cologne and was wheezing, as loud as he could: ‘I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!’ Caught, as it were, at the scene of the crime, the evil-doer began to receive a beating, but then his assailants came to their senses: ‘Take him off to the Special Department!’

  6

  A Passion for Orders

  Reveille in the sickbay happened later than in the barracks. The sickbay was managed by a military doctor with a foreign-sounding surname; it was his habits that set the rules here. A sergeant major roused the men from their beds before the doctor arrived, although he himself would hide in the storeroom and doze, waiting to find out what mood his boss was in that morning.

  Relaxing after breakfast, which had been brought to him right in the ward, Skripitsyn set off to explore the sickbay, still holding his dirty crockery. He wanted to wander round, maybe eavesdrop on conversations, but the sickbay was full of the wildest people. The wards, which seemed just like gas chambers, were crammed with either Kalmyks or Kyrgyz, little earthenware figurines, wordless, quiet. This little tribe was huddled to the walls in the corridor, and everyone – there must have been about fifty mouths, you wouldn’t have put it at any less – everyone was eating right there out of mess tins, ignoring everything around them, just hunched over their tins.

  Wishing to be of use to the Special-Department agent, the sergeant major sprang towards Skripitsyn and led him out into the fresh air, clearing a way for him. Striking up a conversation with him about this black tribe, Skripitsyn’s mind wandered around and about the sergeant major’s simple replies. The more junior man explained that the rejects from every company had been brought to the sickbay. They couldn’t serve on sentry duty, so it had been decided to send them off to the construction battalions in Baikonur and Semipalatinsk. ‘They’ve been here at least a week, they’ve worn us all out, but they still haven’t been sent on,’ the sergeant major moaned.

  Hearing him out, Skripitsyn passed him his dirty plate as if he had had plenty to eat and set straight off for the chief medic. When Skripitsyn promised the medical officer that he would send all these rejected human resources off that same day to their intended destination, the medic instantly cheered up, and assured the Special-Department agent that he would see to everything that was his responsibility without delay.

  A man could only be discharged from the regiment if the adjutant signed him off. Ringing Degtiar and telling him, incidentally, that he was unwell, Skripitsyn reported with great feeling the existence of the spongers he had discovered by chance in the infirmary. Degtiar agreed with Skripitsyn’s observations and, in an hour, at the adjutant’s order, an old bloke appeared in the infirmary. He had been charged with sorting out train tickets, and he wanted a list with a headcount of the people he would be taking, so that he could get hold of supplies.

  Meanwhile Skripitsyn had taken the medical officer to one side and whispered to him that the list for transportation had to include one more soldier: a private from the Special Department who had become unsuitable. The doctor demurred, saying it took more than a day just to have someone discharged from the sickbay. But Skripitsyn insisted and the medic gave way, and so Private Kolodin’s documents, which he pieced together on the spot, were sent off via the same old bloke to Degtiar, who signed them all off, barely glancing at them.

  They sounded lights-out in the regiment. Khabarov had yet to make his entrance, and Skripitsyn hadn’t counted on the captain appearing immediately, nor had any reports from Karabas reached him. Added to which, Skripitsyn knew the colonel’s habits; he knew that the colonel only had to put something off for him to forget about it straight away, since his tendency was to forget rather than to do.

  Knocking at the Special-Department door, Skripitsyn roused Kolodin from his bunk and, not allowing him to come round, unsettled him by saying: ‘They’re taking some of those savages off to the division and you’re going to help escort them. I gave my personal word. Be at the sickbay in the morning. Go on, don’t let me down. It’ll be a chance for you to wind down a bit, too; relax.’

  His greatcoat had been cleaned and pressed by Sanka; it was ready and waiting for him, which Skripitsyn noted; he took it without a word.

  In the morning, Sanka K
olodin did not find his boss in the sickbay, so could not say goodbye to him. This made him gloomy. However, the wild tribesfolk took Kolodin to be yet another boss: he was Russian, well built and had served his time. He had a sullen look on him and was dressed head to foot in new gear.

  The old bloke tasked Sanka with getting the dry rations from the stores and making sure that all the greatcoats had their epaulettes torn off. Sanka did not rip off the epaulettes. In fact, he stayed aside as the tribesfolk were ordered to strip naked and prodded towards the shower room, although they had to wait while the keys were found. The medical officer was walking round and checking the rejects for signs of lice or rashes, striking out to mark crosses on some of the shaven temples. Then he shouted to his sergeant major, who was in charge of the knot of people: ‘Vasia, my duck? The ones I put a cross on? They’ve gone septic! Give them a going-over with antiseptic liniment, but don’t let them in the showers. Vasia, they haven’t got lice, though. You can leave their underwear!’

  The shower room was more like a utility room: barrels of paint and slaked lime were stored there. There was just enough space left to stand under the shower head: an old stewed-meat can had been soldered onto the end of an ordinary hooked tap and had holes punched through the bottom, and so they showered. In his boots and jodhpurs, deigning only to roll up the sleeves of his shirt, the sergeant major stood in the shower room while behind him icy water dribbled out of the tin; the jagged flows looked like iron swarf. The men went in single file to wash, the sergeant major checking that no one remained dry. He shoved through anyone who hesitated and formed a blockage, while trying not to get splashed himself. Into the passageway, where the men were turning numb with cold, he threw a single towel between all of them. And while they were rubbing themselves down, Kolodin and the old bloke began handing out underwear and uniforms. Through the doors of the sickbay could be seen the cunning, greedy visages of men who had run in from all over the base. In a flash, they had swapped anything worth having for their cast-offs.