by Oleg Pavlov
However, that same evening, they ordered in a joiner from the camp: ‘Go and measure him up, mate, so that we can pack the captain come the morning.’ The joiner scratched his head and sucked in his cheeks as he sidled round the captain.
‘What you need here is something to break his bones with, or you could put him in a sack … ’
‘Oi! We’ll tear your legs off and stick you in a sack in a minute, you son of a bitch!’
The joiner groaned, but in the morning the soldiers found him cheered again, rolling a barrel along. ‘Here, use this. It used to have pickled cabbage in. I’ve steamed it out. Just smell that, it couldn’t be nicer. I can’t think of anything else, even if you threaten to cut me up. It’s all right, this here barrel; it’s a good ’un.’
Giving in, the soldiers crammed the captain into the barrel and the joiner caulked it up. Four soldiers who had been told to accompany the cargo and answer for it set about carrying the barrel as if it were a coffin, and the joiner watched them go, laughing quietly to himself. Then they spat, to ease their conscience, and began rolling the barrel along the calm, still snowy steppe.
The snow under the barrel crackled as though it was frying, and indeed the air smelt of Pancake Day: spring had arrived, after the winter. Taking their time, and struggling with their burden as they tried to get onto the passing train, the soldiers did finally deliver their captain to Ugolpunkt, where the morgue and the battalion HQ were awaiting him, ready to put the last full stop to his dossier. The soldiers never once baulked at their load. If anything, they were proud of the barrel, with which they had saved their captain and themselves from the sickened glances of other people. Nobody met them in the town, although they had been promised a vehicle and some orderlies. Once they had smoked their way through a packet of cigarettes – which was all they had between the four of them – the comrades decided to roll the barrel themselves to the battalion: it could make the men there sick now, for all they cared.
But along that same side street, without any idea what was in store for him, walked Ilya Peregud, released from the guardhouse. As it happened, he was walking towards the soldiers. He was strolling along, having long since forgotten about his expulsion by the captain. After he’d served a month for insubordination and drunkenness, he’d stayed in the guardhouse to see out another sentence; what’s more, he’d done it in such a way that the prison governor nearly succumbed to alcoholism. Peregud was already fed up of walking along this street. Tormented, he looked out from under his grown-out topknot far into the back yards, on the off-chance he might get to put away a glass or two. He was hoping to spy a housewife who (you could tell by looking at her) ran her household the old-fashioned way, choosing only the best; or maybe the man of the house, no one out of the ordinary, who you could compliment on his woodshed, and on the logs themselves, at which he’d be bound to show a bit of generosity and pour a good man a glass; or, perhaps, he’d be sufficiently moved to set up all his bottles. Housewives in well-managed homes never mind pouring a drink for the sake of it; perhaps because they are women and women are like that. But somehow Ilya could not spot anyone: it was either children messing about in the snow, or those bloody old women shaking their dusty doormats into the air. By now he was thinking gloomily that he might as well go as far as the station itself to sniff its rusty ironwork and dream of drinking.
When he caught sight of the soldiers rolling the barrel, out of nowhere he had a vision of it full of beer. But it was impossible that soldiers would be rolling a barrel of beer along in broad daylight, and also Ilya had recognised, with some surprise, a few familiar faces. The comrades had recognised Peregud too, but they had stopped and were looking at him as if he were a ghost. Ilya could not contain himself. ‘What’s that barrel you’ve got, then?’
‘It’s sort of a coffin for Captain Khabarov. He’s lying in it and we’re rolling him to HQ. He’s dead.’ Skirting quickly round Ilya, they rolled the barrel on further. Peregud was rooted to the ground, and could only gaze helplessly after them while they hurried and hurried, gathering speed so that Ilya would not catch them up.
At peace with the world at last, the captain arrived at the regimental base with a fractured spine, his arms and legs twisted right off inside the coffin, and his stomach bristling with splinters, but they could not eradicate the smell of pickled cabbage. This remained just as strong in him as it had ever got, and when his casket was placed in the club for people to take their leave of him, both the honour guard and the line of people passing through luxuriated in a fragrant tickling of the nostrils, which made them want to sneeze.
No one could ever have imagined that one day a grave would be dug on the regimental parade square, but Captain Khabarov was buried there, on the base, with a hero’s honours. The coffin was brought out onto the square, in full view of the serried ranks, who looked on, motionless. Behind the coffin came the regimental colours, dipped in salute, as though they were planning to bury these, too; they were just as red and solitary as the coffin. Skripitsyn uttered a speech at the edge of the still-empty grave, which acted as an echo chamber, making his voice carry over the entire square. They listened to the Special-Department agent listlessly, as though the personality in question aroused no interest in the servicemen, and at this the lopsided little man who looked more like a woman started speaking more fiercely, in paroxysms, and his final words were vented in a scream, ‘Farewell, comrade Khabarov! You will remain in our hearts!’
The lid was placed on the casket, which was lowered into the grave, and the staff officers threw down handfuls of soil. Gun volleys burst out, spreading clouds of gunpowder smoke over the parade ground, which had been quite cheerless enough beforehand; these clouds meant that no one could see the grave being filled in with earth nor the tin rocket with a star at its tip that was planted in it. The regimental orchestra struck up a march and the regiment filed past, paying their last respects. They had already marched past in parade order when Skripitsyn interrupted the band with a peremptory shout and, in full view of Degtiar, who remained silent, he ordered the regiment to go back to the start and march past again, because they had not been trying, they had gone by poorly. This was a shock to those in the ranks, which had by now become rather mixed up. The officers grew angry and ran about, shoving the soldiers from behind: ‘You sons of bitches, I want to feel the ground shake!’ And the troops slammed down their boots like hammers: they marched properly. After the parade, indifferent to all around him, a swaying, muttering Skripitsyn walked around the captain’s grave, which was now deserted, and then, suddenly growing sober, he looked around and marched away.
Due to the captain’s death, Senior Lieutenant Sokolskii was sent in his stead to serve in Sixth Company. There was nothing really unusual in this and no one felt sorry for him. However, three days or so after he’d been taken off by lorry to Karabas, the regimental commander’s office began to stink. The smell seemed to emanate by some mysterious means from the collected works of the Party greats – and there were such a lot of these – that stood in rows on the bookshelves. Everyone pretended that there was no stink. The office was aired frequently, but it would have been odd to leave the windows open. All the same, they made their minds up to check, pulling out the first volume of Das Kapital at random, and smelling it to see if, maybe, the paper had started to rot, but it was white as snow and, if anything, it smelt of cloth. Dangerous rumours began to circulate within the regiment, and then spread even further afield. When the stink died down and disappeared, the fears it had inspired nonetheless remained, as did the gloom. A heavy sense of expectation hung in the air. And one day, in the depths behind the collected works, a cleaner who was busy dusting with great seriousness discovered a slab-sided glass in which a turd had dried out into a rock; it had been put there by none other than Sokolskii: the only way he could enact his revenge.
Meanwhile, the earth on the captain’s grave hadn’t even time to settle before a terrible order hurtled through the army like a thunderbolt, takin
g everyone unawares and crushing them utterly: ‘ALL UNITS ARE TO PLANT POTATOES AND FEED THEMSELVES.’
Epilogue
Ivan Yakovlevich Khabarov’s Missive
Following Ivan Yakovlevich’s death, none of his personal belongings or documents remained. Even the things that his corpse was clad in – the boots he was wearing, his equipment – were described and sequestered; an inventory was drawn up, as should happen when a man is struck from the lists or transferred from one unit to another. It is difficult to imagine that his threadbare tunic is still being worn by the next generation; clearly, the captain’s tunic lay in the stores until it was written off, and then it was burnt, so that the mould would not spread. Not many people knew about a particular discovery, and those that had been aware completely forgot as the years passed. Yet a sheet of paper had been found on the captain when his body was searched; it had been folded into four, and the creases were worn. It was so thickly covered in writing it was as if it had been corroded by letters. This scrawl was appended to the case file that had hastily been opened on this corpse of dubious origin, when Khabarov had not yet been declared a hero. Very shortly after opening the investigation, it was closed, and all the strict rules were adhered to. Sealed and stamped, the file on Captain Khabarov was transferred with all its contents into the Karaganda military prosecutor’s archive, classified as unimportant: to be kept for five years. At the end of this period, it was disposed of, along with many others of no use to anyone. Overwhelmed by this dusty paper torrent, the archivist for no apparent reason pulled out two forlorn documents that had been shut away in the file: one of them, citizen Khabarov’s death certificate, went into the bin; but through a moment of carelessness, the other, which bore the legend that this was the ‘written complaint of citizen Khabarov’, acquired a life of its own. With meticulous attention to detail, the archivist discerned that the complaint had not been considered at all, and since the dead and the living had intermingled in his dulled mind, it seemed to him that someone had put this document on top of the file, rather than simply storing it inside the grey cardboard binding. So it went off on its travels, firstly around the prosecutor’s office, then into further channels, but nowhere could it be dealt with satisfactorily, and so they grew rather afraid of it, quickly striking it from the record, until, in the midst of all the revelations being made around this time, it landed in a pair of sympathetic hands.
Sent to a newspaper that, at the time, was admired by the whole country for its bravery, it was printed as a reader’s letter:
‘When the regimental lorry is taken off its regular timetable, and then cancelled completely, a serviceman is left face to face with his troubles. He expends his energies on mere subsistence, rather than on his duties. He ekes out all his fats, and his supplies of bread and potatoes soon run out, or maybe they just brought him rotten potatoes to start with. But there’s nowhere else to turn, so you just lay down and die. You read the papers: it’s like everything here’s done for people’s benefit, they speak so respectfully to you. But take a look around, and it’s worse than a prison camp. To occupy a state-owned flat, you have to have served ever so long. But when it’s time to retire and you’ve lost all your health in the service, then you’re no longer needed by anyone and they kick you out onto the bare steppe to die. They write that everyone is equal. But the commander, the boss, is still more important and can’t be compared with the soldier at the sentry post. Almost the whole year long, daft orders hang over your head, and they strew broken glass under your feet, into your spirit and reason. There’s no one you can tell: the civilian authorities have no reason to take you in. Yet you don’t have the right to make a complaint to your own chain of command. And this regimental lorry, your sole link to the outside world. Who cancels it? That’s the nub of the matter. The commanders, the bosses cancel it, who else? You sit in the barracks or the guardhouse, with no escape, and you think that the beasts in the forest have it better, it’s all set up for a full life for them, there, while you’re in some sort of prison camp, although you haven’t robbed or murdered anyone. A few, select potatoes managed to grow, each as good as the next spud. It’s not just that they took them away, it’s that they went and let them rot pointlessly. All because I dared to do something without orders. They started trying to confuse me, saying you’re a friend to such-and-such but an enemy to such-and-such. No one said thank you for the potatoes, everyone just swore at me for taking the land. They said I should follow orders. They said that was more important.’
The captain had written all of this down, pouring out his soul, and then he had forgotten all about his missive. He had carried it about with him, though, and delivered it to us himself, like a postman. If anyone had read the missive in the newspaper, they would have thought its author was still alive. What else could they have thought? But many people might not have read it. There were so many in those days, these complaints. We grew blind and deaf to them. For this reason, we inform the public, in addition to his next of kin, if any remain, that Ivan Yakovlevich Khabarov is dead. To his life, as described in this tale, and to his death, likewise, we append his missive. May his soul rest in peace.
List of Characters
Balakaev
A stationmaster somewhere out on the steppe
Degtiar, Petr Valerianovich
Adjutant, Karaganda regiment
Dobychin
General, inspecting various army units
Khabarov, Ivan Yakovlevich (Vania)
Captain of the Sixth Company
Kolodin, Aleksandr (Sanka or Sasha)
Private in the Special Department
Korneichuk, Petr
Private in the Sixth Company
Peregud, Ilya (Ilyusha)
Warrant Officer, Khabarov’s second-in-command
Pobedov, Fyodor Fyodorovich
Colonel, OC Karaganda regiment
Prikhodko
Private, a former interrogee of Skripitsyn
Sinebriukhov, Vilor
Commandant of the zone
Skripitsyn, Anatolii
Senior Warrant Officer, Special Department
Smershevich
Former head, Special Department
Sokolskii
Senior Lieutenant, Karaganda regiment HQ
Velichko, Vasil (Vasia, Vasiliok)
Deputy Political Officer
Glossary and Note on Military Ranks
araka
A spirit distilled from kumis, qv.
Batu Khan
The grandson of Chingis Khan, Batu Khan led the Mongol conquest of Rus. In Russian folk memory, this is remembered as establishing the ‘Mongol Yoke’ over the Russian people, which lasted for some 250 years.
Buran
The great wind that blows occasionally over the Kazakh steppe.
Kalmyk
One of the nationalities in the USSR. Each officially recognised nationality had a corresponding ‘homeland’ territory, in this case Kalmykia, on the north-west shore of the Caspian Sea.
kumis
Fermented mare’s milk.
Kyrgyz
Another of the nationalities in the USSR, their putative homeland was the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, in Central Asia. It was not unknown for ethnic Russians to look down on the other nationalities inhabiting the Soviet Union.
Special Department
A section of the Soviet army dealing with counter-espionage and internal disciplinary matters. Its precursor, established during WWII, was SMERSH, an acronym formed from the Russian phrase ‘Death to spies!’ The literal meaning of Smershevich’s name is ‘son of SMERSH’.
verst
Traditional Russian measure of distance: equivalent to just over a kilometre.
zek
Camp inmate.
zone
That part of the camp complex where the zeks are actually confined.
Military ranks in the Soviet army do not map perfectly onto ranks in the British army: Captain, Colonel, General and so on are, how
ever, functionally equivalent. So too is a unit’s adjutant: Degtiar is here the senior officer responsible for the unit’s administration.
The lower ranks are likewise straightforward: in both armies, the privates were at the lowest point in the hierarchy. Things become more complicated past the rank of sergeant: the British army recognises two classes of warrant officer (WO), but given the great variety of regimental traditions, there is a bewildering array of titles given to soldiers who are WO1 or WO2. Accordingly, in this story, I have settled on ‘sergeant major’ to denote the most senior of the non-commissioned officers among the conscripts (starshina, in Russian), while the ‘warrant officers’ are the non-conscripts of long service and – in theory – a particular military specialisation that demands longer than the standard two-year conscript term for preparation (praporshchik, in Russian). As Skripitsyn is at pains to point out, he is a senior warrant officer. Peregud is merely a warrant officer.