Captain of the Steppe

by Oleg Pavlov

  ‘Yes sir, yes sir.’ The colonel was touched. They had laid tables in the HQ canteen and the general was invited to dine richly, but they all ate as though conducting a wake. This dinner brought the first day of Dobychin’s visit to an end. The next day he was due to hold a Party meeting in the regiment, in order to convey the Party’s current policies.

  Towards midday, when the meeting was scheduled to start, servicemen began arriving at the regimental base from all its companies. These were battalion commanders, as well as those chosen from among the Party members, men who had already been around the block once or twice. The trip out was a holiday for these men: here they met their old comrades, their muckers, who had been scattered about by the demands of the service. They piled into the clubhouse as if it was someone’s home, for some reason wiping their feet as they went in. The ones who managed to find a seat flung their arms out to embrace their comrades, like dear guests, for whom they had kept the neighbouring seats free in readiness. Their happy buzz quietened when the members of the presidium took their places behind three tables covered with red calico on the podium. This podium wasn’t high; it was more like a tall step. Everyone sought out the general. Shining foreheads paved the stilled clubhouse, and the speeches began marching out as though along a living parade square.

  General Dobychin opened the meeting with his report, expressing himself so clearly it was as if he was cutting out just the words he wanted in swathes from the fresh air before their very eyes. Next, Pobedov gave his report. The way some people remembered it afterwards, his speech was forceful, as usual; although others, no fewer in number, maintained that as the colonel stood at the rostrum he was swaying and could hardly move his tongue.

  The air in the clubhouse grew stuffy. ‘Comrade Andropov blah-blah-blah Yurii Vladimirovich blah-blah-blah the general secretary blah-blah-blah the Party.’ Such words paced along the foreheads, dying off somewhere towards the back rows. When Dobychin clapped, the room was filled with clapping, as though by order. At the end, the voting took place. The servicemen could not remember what had been discussed in any detail and they voted in a forest of arms, generally relieved and glad to support all the Party’s decisions. When Colonel Pobedov declared the meeting closed, the clubhouse filled with a heavy buzz.

  ‘So what’s the story with this captain you had who planted potatoes?’ asked Dobychin suddenly, and mockingly, as they headed for the exit. Pobedov stood at attention and let fall the words, ‘No sir, comrade General, we put a stop to that madness, have no doubt.’ The general grew downcast; his handsome face darkened. It was clear that the old colonel’s answer had depressed him; it wasn’t what he had been looking for.

  ‘Back when I was still on front-line duties, a report came, also from an army base, that they had caught a spy. The Special Department had done its job,’ Dobychin began talking with complete seriousness. ‘When I get there, a young soldier is sitting in the cells; the milk hasn’t dried on his lips. I say, “What sort of spy do you call him?” They produce a tattered book in a foreign language. “Look,” they say, “he reads this at night and makes notes.” And do you know what kind of book it turned out to be? It was a textbook for students of English! It’s as well I at least managed to get the lad out of there. Maybe a clever head will manage to clamber out of this thistle patch of ours, and he’ll even know foreign languages.’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ rang out all round, each man trying to be louder than the rest. Dobychin had calmed down when, suddenly, a man emerged from behind the colonel, where he had gone unnoticed all this time, which is not to imply he might have been worth ignoring …

  It was the adjutant, Degtiar. In a sort of daze, he hurried to report through the hush that had descended: ‘But here in the regiment, comrade General, these clever heads are dying off; we had seven soldiers … ’ But Dobychin, almost in disgust, cut him off: ‘You idiot.’ Then he sought out Pobedov with his eyes and barked, ‘And so are you. It’s way past time for you to retire, hand your cards in.’

  ‘Yes sir, comrade General … ’ babbled Fyodor Fyodorovich, leaning way back just as though the general was breathing fire at him. ‘They hang on until you have to court-martial them … ’ growled Dobychin.

  The servicemen still crowding by the doorway were surprised to hear this from the general. They stepped back respectfully, making way for Dobychin. He looked around and caught a last distant glimpse of the old man, writhing on the empty podium. He had slumped over onto the presidium table as though he was choking; he was clutching his chest. Dobychin could not resist a condescending barb: ‘The old guard dies … It dies, and it dies … ’

  They heard him and so they poured after him, fearing to remain in the clubhouse. Shoved completely out of the way, Degtiar brought up the very rear, gasping desperately for air and not understanding anything going on around him. ‘Comrades, help me … ’ He heard the colonel’s call, but was too scared to turn round.

  They all left. The club was deserted. Bereft of strength, Pobedov’s torso collapsed onto the red calico-covered presidium table, and he began to wheeze.

  No one caught hold of the old man, everyone fled; none of them could wait to get the hell out of that meeting. The soldiers, meanwhile, couldn’t be bothered clearing up the clubhouse that same evening and instead quietly turned up the next morning to do some lackadaisical tidying. Overnight, the hungry clubhouse rats had gnawed at the dead colonel’s legs, chewing off his genuine cowhide officer’s boots, of which there remained bits of stony sole and hobnails under the presidium table.

  It was said that when he heard of this death, General Dobychin burst into tears. Setting himself up temporarily in the old colonel’s office, he summoned the adjutant Petr Valerianovich Degtiar. ‘This means that you’ll take command of this here regiment for me, as you wanted,’ he said. He had expected to find Degtiar an example of the lowest of mankind, but instead discovering a featureless stump of a man, like an iron nail, he said no more, dismissing him with those words. Then, mulling things over, he remembered that he had ordered the man who had started it all to be brought to him. Skripitsyn was sought out and brought in; they led him into the office looking like a man sentenced to face the firing squad: made stupid, with a kind of fishy, cold gravity escaping into his vacant, wide-open eyes. Struggling to master his wrath, Dobychin muttered, ‘So that’s what kind of man you are … Are you scared, now? Have you got a mother and father?’

  ‘They are not around … ’ said the other man, with unwilling obsequiousness, and promptly shut up.

  ‘Did you have no pity for that old man, who could have been your father?’ Their eyes met. Skripitsyn was staring, no longer able to conceal his amazement. ‘I was telling the truth about the comrade colonel … They criticised him, and he died.’ And the general leapt up from behind the desk, shouting, ‘You rotten bastard!’

  Looking as if they were done up in lacquered tunics, the black cars soon drove away from the lifeless regiment. Back at HQ, where the cars pulled up, as Dobychin got out and made for the doorway, he could not get that surname out of his mind. ‘Skripitsyn, Skripitsyn … Should I reinstate him, then? What post did he hold there, anyway?’ He flung this out morosely as he went, and those nearby only happened to hear him.

  The light in the old colonel’s office window was out. Maybe General Dobychin himself had extinguished it as he was leaving. The regiment descended into a deathly gloom. Compelled to stand vigilantly at their posts, the sentries spent that night in dejection. They looked out into the steely darkness, in which they were scarcely able to discern the dim outlines of the base, and quivered at every sound behind them, which never used to happen before. It used to be that you’d be stamping your feet, frozen through and hungry, but far off the colonel’s window would be blazing for everyone, like you could light up a cig from it. And even if they all knew that there was no one in the office, it still made them all calmer thanks to this gift of a flare, left on view by the old man to steady their nerves. The sentries that night cou
ld not comprehend that the light had gone out for good. They complained that the dark had been let in; that the bosses did not stint on light for themselves, but rationed it out to the men. They also could not comprehend what purpose the inspection had served. The general had been and gone. He’d made just the one appointment, but what an appointment that had been. He had removed one colonel, but what a removal that had been. Where he’d found the time to look was where it had all happened, and that had been the entire inspection, even though it seemed like they had been waiting a whole year to find out who would attract a brief comment or who would catch his eye. However, the reputation that followed General Dobychin, that he was a man without mercy, took even stronger root. This being the year they recognised his character, in the army they even gave him the nickname Batu Khan.

  When Petr Valerianovich Degtiar turned up for work at the regiment, the duty officer did not report to him or even salute him, despite the other soldiers watching. They looked askance at him from all sides and whispered. Only in the anteroom did Senior Lieutenant Sokolskii break into a smile. ‘Good morning to you, comrade Lieutenant Colonel, my congratulations … ’ Degtiar averted his eyes guiltily and went through into the office. He looked out of the window in torment. A soldier was stirring up clouds of dust on the parade square with a broom that haphazardly sprouted bristles. From a lorry that had pulled up next to the cookhouse, soldiers were unloading freshly baked bread. Life went on its way, as per routine, yet Degtiar could no longer go out onto the square and simply strike up a conversation with these soldiers, to whom he had become alien. And everyone else was holding out to see who would be brave enough to speak to Degtiar first.

  The first to appear in the regimental commander’s office was Skripitsyn. He went in without knocking, as was his wont, slamming the door as strongly as he could, right in Sokolskii’s face. ‘I’ve come to tell you that I respect you; you haven’t changed in my eyes. I know how to remember a good turn, Petr Valerianovich,’ Skripitsyn deigned to say. ‘We’re all human, everyone makes mistakes in life. But I don’t blame you for the colonel’s death. We’ll bury him with full honours, no matter what happened, and he deserved full honours, what with being commander for so long. In fact I came to talk about the burial. It wouldn’t do to put the matter off … ’ Not knowing he was doing it, or, more likely, knowing it only too well, Skripitsyn lifted the heaviest burden from the lieutenant colonel. Degtiar felt ashamed that Skripitsyn had been merciful, as though he had offered a transfusion of his own blood and Degtiar had been ashamed to take it. They talked it all through; that is, Petr Valerianovich agreed with relief to the entire procedure that Skripitsyn was suggesting. Not to bring the body onto the base, but to lay it out in the Karaganda Officers’ Club, posting just an honour guard around the coffin, and then on to the cemetery, the military one, where a salvo in the colonel’s honour was to be permitted. That was all there would be to it. ‘There’s a certain other matter, I don’t know how this will go down … ’ said Skripitsyn. ‘The colonel occupied some living space, a single room. You couldn’t make a museum out of it, and he doesn’t seem to have left any descendants. Meanwhile, I’ve spent seven years living in hostels. All the HQ men here have set themselves up all right, with their wives. Could you not turn that living space over to me? How do you see it, Petr Valerianovich? It’s an indelicate question, but best not put it off … ’

  ‘I’ve no objections, Anatolii,’ replied Degtiar, unthinkingly. When Skripitsyn had left, Sokolskii ran into the office. ‘Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, I’m an officer, I demand that I be provided with accommodation. You’re giving that flat to the man who stained it with blood. But I loved Fyodor Fyodorovich.’ At that instant, Degtiar regained his prior strength of will, driving himself back into it like a nail. ‘He killed for the flat, you loved for the flat, while I loved and killed … ’ But his will just then gave out and, listlessly, embarrassed, he said, ‘Anatolii has been in the regiment longer than you, he needs it.’

  Whether or not it was Senior Lieutenant Sokolskii who started the rumour, from that day on they began saying in the regiment that Skripitsyn was in charge of everything and that Degtiar had acceded to this with relief. The general’s words protected Skripitsyn better than any armour. Even at divisional HQ they knew who had noticed the Special-Department head.

  It was at this time that Skripitsyn devised the notion of sending a consignment of potatoes off to Sixth Company, as though to return what he had taken away.

  He even thought of Captain Khabarov with pleasure now, for some reason. ‘Make sure they pass on my best wishes to Ivan Yakovlevich!’ No matter how much Skripitsyn fancied showing off, though, he didn’t follow anything up, and so, as per usual, they sent off nothing but rotten stuff.

  He celebrated New Year with a flutter in his soul, sensing the beginning of a new era that would somehow be very important for him. However, once the festivities were over, he grew cautious, expecting that captain from the steppes to show up in gratitude any day now, although he never did.

  Once he’d begun trying to find things out, to sniff around, Skripitsyn noticed that the forgotten settlement had by now been silent for a long time; that the regimental duty officers were themselves having to extract bulletins from the distant company, and they had already managed to report to HQ that there didn’t seem to be anyone in charge at the Sixth. Skripitsyn called the company on the direct line and spoke to God knows who, so he was hardly able to extract any firm facts. ‘What about the captain?’

  ‘He’s-a here, he’s-a dying, everyone’s-a dying here, they found some dead potatoes round here. They brought some more in, rotten, they all got scoffed. There’s no one in charge, the captain’s gone off to die. There’s-a not enough eats here, all the eats have gone missing somewhere.’

  Skripitsyn took himself off on a mission the next day, not making a big noise about it on the base. Afraid to go, he was also afraid of putting it off, and so you couldn’t say what force it was that lifted him from his seat and moved him to Karabas.

  The lorry came to rest on the lifeless, deserted barrack square. As though they had been unloading sacks of flour, the square was lightly dusted in snow. Winter had yet to set in just there, or in the whole steppe, for that matter. Spreading snow across the yard, imprinting powdery white tracks with his boots, the Special-Department agent went into the barracks, where the emptiness, like a hungry mouth, exhaled a vapour that made your head spin. Maybe because his head had started spinning and he had suddenly lost his ever fragile willpower, Skripitsyn ran first for the administrative office, finding there the man he sought.

  The office was enormous, and terrifying: the walls there had wasted away, so that the oily paint had burst apart; the floor had given way and the ceiling had fallen in. Everything within was dead and withered; objects looked either like dried fish or greying paper. Khabarov was lying, completely uncovered, in some kind of woman’s woollen sweater, with no underwear whatsoever. Everything that had come out of him was heaped in a soiled vessel under the bunk. At the sight of this hopelessly ragged sweater, out of which a moss-covered log was seemingly poking, Skripitsyn was all set to flee, deciding to have nothing to do with a corpse, but a creak came from the log, and there was movement.

  Skripitsyn began to wail, to call out for someone, anyone, to help. At his order they dragged the bunk with the dying captain on it out into the chilly corridor. Once they had dragged the captain out, they made as if to disperse, but Skripitsyn had the presence of mind to say, ‘Cover him up with something, at least. Something good and warm … ’ He himself set out, at first unsteady and shaking, but with each step more and more angry and determined, to find the remaining men. He wanted to gather them together and punish every last man who was there.

  There were men in the barracks, but it seemed their numbers had diminished. Recognising Skripitsyn, the soldiers had vanished as if the very ground had swallowed them up. It took Skripitsyn a long time to gather the men and bring them to their senses
enough that they would set about carrying out his orders, by which time he had already managed to gradually to lose his anger.

  He sat day and night at Khabarov’s bunk, afraid to leave him alone, although the captain’s resolve had broken and he was slowly putting on weight before the special agent’s eyes. Skripitsyn did not take the captain to hospital, as he could have, but waited in torment for the other man to come round. It happened that, lying in clean underwear, in the warmth, and scrubbed to a waxy shine, the captain took a look at the world and his eyes filled with tears in surprise. Instantly tiring, they closed and dried up, like soil, but all the same a small ray of light made its way out of them in the other direction. One morning, as he was languishing away during this extended mission, Skripitsyn finally achieved his aim: looking around with clarity, the captain started speaking to him.

  He had been unswaddled, his hands lay on a rough wool bedspread, warming themselves as they never had before, pressing the palms together. He was breathing evenly and cleanly, at which Skripitsyn himself felt his spirits lift. ‘Don’t worry, father, I haven’t come to arrest you,’ he said in a single outburst, scared of frightening the captain. But Khabarov looked at him with that same clarity, and found his voice. ‘I’m not worried, though.’ The Special-Department agent hesitated, with an unpleasant sense of surprise, but he could not bring himself to begin, so he set about complaining, with a barely audible reproach. ‘You’re a proud man, but I am not. You’re proud, but me … This is what your pride is like: what’s good for me is instantly bad for you. So what am I to do with you?’ He looked hungrily at the captain, demanding a reply, and for his sake Khabarov forced himself to speak again, although his voice still sounded simple and ordinary: ‘Forgive me for everything, if you can.’ Skripitsyn was dumbfounded, helplessly gulping air, which lasted for an instant while he became aware of something, and then he took on a grand, albeit trembling, air. ‘But will you forgive me?’ Unable to contain himself, he slumped, hiding his face behind his ugly hands, and he started to mutter through the gaps. ‘I’m in charge now at the regiment, so you know this: we’ll do just what you want. You’ll have everything! Haven’t you got a house? Well, I’ll build you a whole town here, and you’ll be in charge. I’ll have trees flourishing here, watermelon trees! Everything, father. Make use of it, you’ve made it this far … ’