Diggers

by Viktors Duks

  One of the pilots from the bomber brigade had been taken as a prisoner. He was a professional German pilot with a wealth of battle experience. He asked to see the asshole who had shot him down. They all pointed at me. The German asked that the Russians stop mocking him by showing him a child. I did not look like a real man. My uniform was too big, and I looked like a clothes hanger with clothes on it. The translator told my story to the German, and he had to believe. The German put out his hand—”Congratulations!” We shook hands. The German took a pipe out of his pocket and handed it to me. “My father gave this to me. It was my talisman, but I don’t need it any more. Take it. It’s yours.” I did. Then I got in trouble with the KGB. “Why did you shake hands with a Fascist?” the investigator asked me. I told him that the loser always puts out his hand to the winner—that’s something I had read in books about behavior on the battlefield. Then it became known that I was not yet 18, I was not allowed to fight. It was not enough. The KGB man found out that I had not sworn fealty and that I had no right to sit down at the controls of an airplane, let alone fly and participate in battles. So how did it end? The commander and the director of the political division agreed with the special services. I was born in 1925, but they added a little line to the five, and there it was—I was born in 1923. Theoretically I became two years older in a single day. I swore my oath and became a soldier.

  I didn’t have all that much time to fly—in one aerial battle my engine was shot up. In a few seconds the cockpit was full of smoke from burning oil. I had been taught that if I ever had to jump with a parachute, I should tighten the strap between my legs. In the confusion of the situation, of course, I forgot, and when I jumped out of the cockpit, I began to plummet toward the earth like a stone. I pulled on the ring, the parachute opened up, and when it was completely open the strap hit me in the balls so hard that I don’t even remember how I got to the ground. When I came to my senses, there were men with guns all around me—”Haende hoch,” they shouted. I screamed back: “I’m one of yours!” That was the end of my flying career. I was sent to a military hospital in Siberia, where a medical commission said that my stomach lining had been torn. I could not fly for six months. After I got out of the hospital I was sent to learn how to drive a tank. It was difficult, and it hurt my stomach a lot to push down the clutch. Despite this, I became a tank commander. In the early years there were often women who manned the machine guns in the tanks, and there were always problems with them. They were forever having love affairs with men from the units, and they often got pregnant. And during battles they always pissed themselves—not much use at all.

  You ask whether I drove my tank over fallen soldiers? Let me tell you—the tank was always driven in those places where there was the least likelihood of driving over a mine. I remember one battle in Russia when we attacked some little village. I drove onto the main street and saw a car full of Germans coming around the corner. I ordered the guns to be loaded, the gun fired, the Opel blew up. We shot, and we were ordered to move forward. Other commands followed. The street in the village was full of fallen soldiers and damaged military equipment. I saw a burning house, and there were injured soldiers—Soviet prisoners of war—jumping out of the second floor window. The Germans had set fire to the building while retreating. Something broke in me. You understand that if a man is not ready for battle, he cannot be a soldier. I lost any feelings for the enemy soldiers, I was no longer a noble knight. We couldn’t stay in place, because that would have made us sitting ducks.

  We drove down the road, destroying everything and everyone that got in our way. I felt that the engine was suffering. I told the mechanic about my suspicions and asked him to check the water temperature. My suspicions were confirmed. We arrived at a church, which provided us with cover, and right then the tank’s engine stopped. We got out of the tank and saw a horrible sight. The treads of the tank had captured someone’s kidneys and tendons, the clothing of a soldier, someone’s belt. We tried to scrub the stuff off of the treads with a knife, but it did not work. Finally we built a fire under the treads—you know, the entire area smelled of shish kebob. It was not easy, but we cleaned the treads.

  Did anyone shoot at my tank? Yes. It was near Staraja Rusa. We attacked across railroad tracks. I had a bad feeling about it. When we got to the battle zone, I saw many American Sherman tanks that had been shot up. I felt that it would be difficult to move forward. As soon as I drove up the embankment of the tracks, and the nose of my tank was pointed upward, there was a deafening explosion. When I recovered, I was covered with blood and pieces of flesh. I thought that I had been injured—as commander I was on one side of the tower, while the guy who loaded the gun was on the other. The gun was between us. I understood that the blood and flesh were from my loader. I started to examine myself. I found a piece of metal in my groin, and somehow—I don’t know how—I pulled it out. As soon as I did, the blood started to gush, too, and I lost consciousness. When I came back to consciousness I was already out of the tank. I have to thank the nurse who braved enemy fire to save me.

  Were there moments in the war when I thought that it was all over for me? Yes, there were. I returned from the field hospital to my unit. It was winter, and the night was very, very dark. I arrived at army headquarters to find out where my unit was located. I was offered a chance to spend the night at headquarters, but I refused. I was also offered a man with a machine gun to accompany me to my unit, but I rejected that, too. I told them that I had a pistol and would do fine. I was shown a path that had been trod into the snow, and off I went. When I was already some way away from the headquarters, I saw dark figures among the trees. I thought that my eyes were fooling me and that I had not yet completely recovered from my injuries. Then I noticed the black shadows of human beings, however, and less than a second later I was hiding under a pile of branches that were covered with snow. I heard someone speaking German. I was not certain of my hiding place and thought that perhaps my legs were sticking out. The German scouts came very close to me, sat down and lit up cigarettes, not sensing anything. My heart was pounding, and I thought that my rapid breathing would give me away in a moment. I aimed and fired twice, and both bullets hit the target. The soldiers fell silent. The third scout was a bit further, and I fired in his direction, too. Amazingly enough, I hit him, but the shot was not fatal. He was injured and began to yell. The men at my own army headquarters heard the shooting in the forest, and they began to fire randomly in the direction where I and the dead German scouts were located. Bullets whizzed above my head, and it was terrible.

  When everything had calmed down, the injured German was arrested. I had shot him in the hip. I ended up spending the rest of the night at headquarters after all.

  Coming home...(there is a pause). When Riga was being liberated, I was already a student at the Moscow War Academy. I tried to look good, and I studied hard. I was an experienced solider and a Latvian. I asked my general for permission to go visit my father. The general had fought with the red riflemen from Latvia in World War I and during the Russian civil war, and he knew how the Latvians could fight.

  The general talked to Stalin’s son, who was commanding the airport of the government in Moscow from which heavy bombers flew to the front lines. I was put on a bomber as a second pilot, and I flew across the Latvian region of Kurzeme to drop bombs on my older brother, who was a Latvian Legionnaire. When we landed in Riga at night, the first pilot said that he would be fine and told me to go visit my father. It was around Christmas. I was given a car with a driver, and off we went. I looked impressive. I was wearing a winter pilot’s uniform from Canada, and I had on warm boots. I had a flyer’s cap with goggles on my head. As we were driving, I told the chauffeur to go see my father first and ask him whether he remembered his youngest son. I wanted to prepare a surprise for him. We drove into the farm. My father and his neighbor were sawing firewood. The driver went up to my father and asked about his youngest son. My father responded that his youngest son had died in
Russia in 1941, and that there was someone who had promised to show him the grave. I could not stand it. I tore my hat off and yelled, “Father, do you not know your own son?”

  My father looked at me, his knees buckled, and he fainted. The driver helped me carry my dad into the house and put him in bed. I had some alcohol in my bag, and I tried to pour some into my father’s mouth to bring him back to his senses as quickly as possible.

  We uncork some vodka—it’s the Communicator’s name day.

  “So?” I speak up while we are turning the cassette over. “Make a movie. You don’t have to think up anything, eliminate anything. It’s a real life story, isn’t it?”

  “Fuck!” Both diggers were tired of the story.

  We are in an eastern city. A local researcher called Mario hops into our car. He is undoubtedly a fine young man. Off we go. The spring roads make the Classicist’s car shudder—oh, how it is going to suffer!

  We open up another 300 grams.

  Eventually we get to a small, naked hillside. On top of the hill is an equally naked and lonely farm. A woman who is about 50 years old and who is moderately drunk in terms of local standards comes out to greet us.

  “Come on in,” she invites us.

  We are passed by a man of the same age. Perhaps the owner of the farm. Odd. He’s walking across the frozen ground in woolen socks.

  “He knows a lot, he has a lot, but he doesn’t talk,” Mario whispers. You understand what I mean by “a lot.” Another resident of the home appears behind him. One of the old man’s hands is gone—we find out later that this is something that happened when he was young. He was messing around with ammunition. He’s his own man.

  We walk across the frozen mosses of the forest, and I test the ground. It is pretty hard. It will be tough to dig.

  The two metal detectors go to work. The farm owner and Mario carry our weapons—our shovels. They are ready to go into battle with the frozen ground at the slightest beep from the metal detectors.

  Bingo! An old, abandoned farm. The silhouette of the half-collapsed house increases our yearning to find something. “The Germans had a headquarters here,” says the man with no hand. A wheel from a Russian T-34 tank is on the ground, and some of the armament of the tank is put up on a fence post by the Communicator. “We should take it with us, but damn, it’s heavy,” the digger says with sorrow in his voice.

  Everything would be fine—in an old and collapsed farm like this there is always something to find, and surely there must be something that is of interest to us. But how long can we tolerate finding rusty nails and all kinds of household metal under the ground? Shit!

  We go into the garden. After the war, it turns out, the owners of the farm stuck huge artillery shells into the ground, like fence posts, so that they could put beehives on top of them. Damn inventors!

  We are back in the forest. We find scraps of metal, the shells from a major machine gun, and, most interestingly, five German hand grenades—no explosives, just the metal shells. The wooden parts had long since rotted away.

  It is getting dark, we have to go back. We open up half a liter of brandy to mark our meeting with Mario.

  We walk into a cafe, the Classicist and I decide to drink only orange juice.

  A nice waitress brings us a locally produced pork chop with potatoes and vodka. The Communicator, a bit drunk, launches into a monologue. There is tobacco smoke and light from the fireplace. We feel as though he is talking not just about the three of us, but about everyone in the cafe. He does have a voice.

  “I was the one who set up the monument there, I was the first one to begin everything! I’m the Communicator—let me...” and so on, and so forth.

  Time passes quickly as we talk.

  On the way home we drop by Mario’s again. I don’t know why, but the owner of the home always gives everyone a souvenir. I get a porcelain coffee cup plate with the symbol of the Wehrmacht. Great!

  We drive home. The Communicator pours the rest of the brandy in to himself, and when the time comes, we make note of the fact that the Communicator has gotten drunk.

  “That’s it,” the Classicist says.

  We conclude a pact with the Classicist—”Work and leisure without alcohol!”

  The next day the Classicist called. “The Communicator called and told me that was it—no more drinking during working hours.”

  ***

  March 12, 2000

  The day is sunny, but our faces are being hit with a cold wind. The Classicist and I are driving to my native village to meet my teacher—a man who has been collecting information about everything that happens in this tiny town since time immemorial. If you don’t have information these days, it’s like you don’t have any hands. Each time we find to our consternation that there are fewer and fewer eyewitnesses. Once again the Classicist’s car is being damaged, but we drive through a thick forest of fir and end up in an open space.

  It is an interesting place. When we look on the map we see that it is a hilly area that is surrounded by forest. The stories have been pretty precise—not far away we find the graves of Red Army soldiers with at least 600 names of men who fell during the war. Must have been quite a battle. But there’s a but. From where did the attack come, and where was it met by the opposing force. We look all around, the metal detectors listen to the ground, but we don’t even find a decent piece of scrap metal. We leave.

  We’ll be back.

  The Classicist drove away. Family business. I drove into the forest.

  I found nothing. Nasty day.

  I drove around to scope out the area. There was a home where I found two dogs that looked like the hound of the Baskervilles. Once I determined that they were tightly tied up, I climbed out of my fortress and knocked on the door. A silver-haired old man appeared before me in a moment, and once I got him to trust me, he said, “Fine—I heard somewhere that four kilometers from here there is an abandoned home with a hay barn next to it. There are three Red Army soldiers buried there. I believe they died in 1941—they were lost, and the locals killed ‘em.”

  When I drove away, I felt a bit better. Once again someone had found bones that lots of people knew about, but nobody gave a fuck about them. The enemy’s soldier is not a human being. What—am I supposed to agree with this idea or not? What would I do to my enemy?

  After a few kilometers I stopped at another half-collapsed home. The door was opened by a woman who was around 60 years old. Her apron was dirty, and it was clear that she didn’t care much about her appearance. The countryside is the countryside.

  “I do know where they’re buried,” the woman tells me. “I just don’t recall who buried them—Red Army soldiers who buried German soldiers, or Germans who buried Read Army soldiers.”

  “Could you show me the place?”

  The woman’s feet slid into rubber boots. “Let’s go.”

  The farmwoman took me to the abandoned part of the rural cemetery. It was hard to see the former grave mounds, but I tagged along with her.

  “The old forest guard told me—look here, we plant flowers on the graves, but here the flowers grow by themselves. There are soldiers under there. That’s what he told me. I don’t know myself who’s down there,” the gray-haired woman said.

  ***

  A week later.

  I dug in the aforementioned barn. I found nothing.

  I drove around to study the area.

  My Audi shook down a frozen country road that had been traveled by tractors.

  I drove into another farmstead, told them where I was from, what I needed. They understood me quickly enough. The men were in the wood business, they had no time to talk, but they trusted me. We agreed to call one another, I need those people. One of them showed me a place where a Russian T-34 tank was supposedly buried at a depth of four meters, all shot up, without a tower. He told me something when I left that made me fall down on my ass. He had found 50 German helmets recently, preserved, almost new—sold ‘em for ten bucks apiece.
/>   ***

  The next day

  After the meeting, the Academician and I walked into a I to share information. I suggested that it might be good to propose to military academies that they hold their lectures on old battlefields where men fought during the first and second world wars—let them look at the differences between the trenches that were used during the two wars.

  The Academician, who studied military science in America, says that the Americans are only interested in their own Civil War—they analyze it, study it. They don’t give a damn about what happened in Europe. “They don’t even know about the possibilities.” I can’t calm down. “We’ll give them a metal detector, let them go into the trenches—let ‘em find some souvenirs for themselves. They don’t even know was a real piece of a military bomb looks like. It’ll be a show—a walk through a minefield.” I was mocking them. “Next! Let’s offer them a chance to help us lift up a tank. I can’t believe that a young soldier might be uninterested in that. Just let him pay!”

  When I went home I once again asked myself where the people are who are willing to finance Utopian searches for Noah’s Ark—those who give money to find Atlantis or the spaceship of an alien in the depths of the ocean. I don’t know.

  ***

  March 21, 2000

  I’ve honestly put in my time at the company. It’s Tuesday, and I’m already abnormally tired. Why don’t I tire out on Saturdays and Sundays?

  My wife is once again late coming home from work, once again I was the one who picked up the boy from his kindergarten, once again I’m at the stove, preparing dinner from my spouse. It’s SUPER, when you get down to it. While I fix my royal dinner, I have placed by butt on a footstool, picked up a thick book and dug myself deep into the memoirs of the Soviet Marshal Zhukov. I turn the pages and stir the food on the pan. After a minute the telephone receiver is stuck to my ear. It’s the Communicator. I promised to talk to an old soldier and find out places in Russia where a great many Latvian Legionnaires fell and were buried. He and the Classicist are planning to go to Russia, where they’ll be greeted by local diggers. Good boys. The Communicator, for his part, tells me about a lake in which there is supposedly a tank. The roast burns a bit. There’s smoke in the room. I put down Zhukov’s memoirs and focus on just one single thing. Otherwise you simply become uninteresting to the society that is around you. Take a look at software programmers and mathematicians—very interesting partners in conversation. I open up a book from which the spirit of heroic Legionnaires flows forth—the winter cold of Russia, the three-row piles of dead bodies. Two completely different books—one about the problems of the Red Army, the other about Legionnaires … oh, God, someone’s calling again! This time it was the Academician—he wanted to emphasize heavy technology, or tanks. He knew all about tomorrow’s meeting at the War Museum. And once again the question—where to get money for the expedition?