Diggers

by Viktors Duks

  ***

  August 6, 2000

  I don’t really want to be writing right now. I have to write, though, so that you don’t get the idea that Latvia is a place where you find a tank or an airplane, to say nothing about the bones of soldiers and their bunkers, on every step. The Classicist, Communicator, Professor and I had long been waiting for this day, when we could go into a field of nettles up to our armpits or wander across a swampy area. An old man had shown her grandson the place where a tank had sunk. Her neighbor, who we met as soon as we got to the place in question, told us the same thing. I didn’t like something back then, the old lady said—it was somewhere over there, well, maybe over here. Asked where, she waved her hands in the air uncertainly—a road had been built, the swamp had been drained after the swamp. She was clearer about the location of a Soviet soldier’s grave. It wasn’t really a grave, it was a meadow, and we may have been standing right on the old Bolshevik’s bones, but we found nothing. We dug and dug and dug and dug and used the Professor’s metal detector, but nothing. We drove back home. Possibly there is a tank in there somewhere, but we don’t have the equipment to see it.

  ***

  August 13, 2000

  After many phone calls, yesterday I finally became acquainted with the Field Engineer. I gave him some balloons and wished him a successful adventure. We decided to meet today.

  The first thing I asked him: “So, how was it?”

  “Fine. It’s a Messerschmidt, in pretty good condition.”

  “How deep?” I couldn’t calm down.

  “Five meters. I did not see a pilot in there, I got his hatch open. I didn’t get to the wheels—looks like the tail end’s a bit damaged.

  “What’s the visibility?”

  “With a flashlight, you can see about a meter. I saw the propellers. It’s interesting.”

  We decided to continue the conversation after visiting a meeting of collectors. How did I feel there? I can’t say that I really liked it. It was a big market with people who bought, people who bought what others had bought, and people who were simply messing around. There was the stink of old junk. Some people were selling antiques that they had produced at home the day before, while others thought up ridiculous prices for old pieces of garbage. The Field Engineer got into it—he was trading army insignia. I found Mario and had a good chat with him. All kinds of things happen in life, and sometimes you have to introduce two old acquaintances to one another. Today it was my honor to introduce Mario and the Banker to one another. They had met ten years before, it turned out. The Banker had been a police officer, and Mario had been a criminal.

  Shit happens.

  ***

  August 16, 2000

  I was walking the streets of the city to relax for a bit, and the Classicist called.

  “Either we’re going to a whorehouse or we’re going out on a dig,” the Classicist started. “But because I’m not interested in women you buy, let’s go digging. My nerves are gone, things are happening—the administrator knows that if I get the factory back, he’s going to prison.”

  “No problem,” I tell him. “Let’s go to the forest, let’s dig. We should go back to the place where we were before—I know that there has to be something more there, I just know it.”

  “You don’t have to convince me. I’m always ready, and my equipment has been fixed.”

  ***

  August 19, 2000

  As soon as I pulled my camouflage vest with all of its pockets over my head, I was a proper digger. An hour later I pulled up to the Field Engineer’s house, hearing angry dogs barking behind his fence.

  “It’s all fucked up,” the Field Engineer said, depressed. “I need a bearing for my car, and I can’t go anywhere.”

  “But the Banker is going, isn’t he?”

  “He’ll be here in five minutes.”

  I want to remind you of an unwritten law in the world of diggers. If a colleague comes to visit, you must present him with a gift. The Field Engineer presented me with something that surprised me then and surprises me now. It was a bullet shell through which another bullet had passed—and got stuck. If there were ever a competition for the most peculiar military object, this little assembly would get a prize.

  I did not present anything to the Field Engineer, but I left him a booklet about Messerschmidts. The Field Engineer was surprised when I told him that there should be a camera somewhere in the wreck of the airplane, if it was the right model, of course. We didn’t talk much about this subject, because the Banker soon arrived, and off we went into the secretive folds of history with all of its adventures. When we were close to the forest and the bunkers, the Classicist called. In his voice I could hear that his heart was beating in a way which suggested that the business negotiations would soon be over, and then he would be with us.

  My much suffering car slowly rolled into the forest. Swaying across the pine needles on the floor of the forest, we drove closer and closer to the places where battles had been held years before. I turned off the engine, and it was quiet all around us. I could smell the fresh smell of the forest. What could possibly be better, you might ask. I’ll tell you. To be at home, to stand at the stove and cook something, to wash the floor and the toilet—all of that would be acceptable. The forest was nicely warm, and I felt like I was in a large, closed room, a room in which there could be no wind, no rain. There was no wind. There was no rain. There were mosquitoes. I felt like an enormous and stupid whale set upon by hungry sharks. That was the big problem that we had to face on this expedition. The Banker fired up his metal detector, it beeped, and I flew into the bunker like a bullet. I dug my shovel into the ground, and the first piece of earth flew out of the bunker ditch. The signal suggested that there was something fairly large under the ground. I dug deeper and deeper, and then my shovel hit something else that was made of metal. I bent down to stick my arm into the dark hole and to feel for the form of the object. My fingers cautiously touched a rusted piece of metal. I could determine immediately that it was not a piece of metal from an artillery shell or an aviation bomb. The object was smooth and rounded. I tried to feel something more. As I ran my hand across the object, I found that it was cone-shaped. Now I knew for sure.

  “It’s an artillery shell—shot but not exploded.”

  “You didn’t bring it up?” the Banker asked.

  “Never. I don’t mess around with these things.”

  The Banker’s fingers tightened around the metal detector. “We should take a look at it.”

  Like a trained dog, the metal detector caught up with all kinds of military metal that had long been hidden from human eyes. Before the Classicist arrived we dug up a field engineer’s shovel and a Russian carbine key. Mentioning this junk does not do any honor to me or the Banker, by the way.

  When the Classicist got out of his car, I imagined that the thousands of biting mosquitoes that were flocking around us yelled in tiny mosquito voices: “Hey, girls! Fresh meat!” (For your information—the mosquitoes that bite, buzz and whore around are all female. Male mosquitoes do not need the blood of human beings.)

  We spent the rest of the time lifting fragments of artillery and aviation bombs out of the ground. It was not very promising. We moved further, behind what had then been the front lines. The mosquitoes followed us, of course. My colleagues found nothing of use, but I brought home an artillery shell that had exploded in a most interesting way. I don’t have the strength to describe it. By the way, Skvarceni called five minutes ago, while I was writing. The tone of his voice suggested that he had something interesting to tell. He was talking about old German army headquarters documents.

  ***

  The water was splashing its melody. I was sitting in the bathtub, and my wife was sitting between my legs and resting her head on my chest. I was playing around with the wonders that God had given her. In my 30 years I have not yet really found the place in us men that makes us yearn for, enjoy and worship the body of a woman. I don’t want to go
nuts over a question that nobody can answer—let’s assume that it’s nature. Somewhere far away (well, on the other side of the bathroom door), my friend the mobile phone rang. After a few moments I heard small feet running past the bathroom.

  “Daddy and mommy are sitting in the bathtub.”

  The unknown caller had received a detailed and specific description of the existing situation. I know that my son never lies and knows the words for everything. I kept my right hand on my wife’s breast but took the mobile phone with my left hand.

  “My boys found a bunker in the woods—the door is closed and locked with a key.”

  “Let’s go...on Tuesday, OK? But from what period is it?” I asked. “Will they be able to find it again?”

  “I don’t know. The boys said that we would have to wander around the forest and look for a while, but we’d find it. I believe them. They brought me a PPS machine gun.”

  We agreed to make contact later and arrange a meeting.

  ***

  September 6, 2000

  Mario disappeared. I couldn’t reach him on the phone, he gave no sign of his own.

  ***

  At 11:30 PM, unbelievably tired and dirty, I stepped into my house. Having rinsed off the dirt of the day, I stood before the mirror and looked at myself properly, the aim being to find a tiny, bloodsucking insect, and to find it alive. As though I were paging through the leaves of a book, I went through the hair under my arms and on my head. Then I looked down, between my legs, and—happy with the result, I took the last position for the review. Yes! Once again I found out how genial Kurt Vonnegut’s descriptions were. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about here, read Slaughterhouse. Knowing that my body was clean of the poison of various insects, I quietly crawled over to my sleeping wife.

  “Baby, your pussycat is home,” I said, but got no answer. “Your pussycat did a big job today.” My wife was still silent. “Your pussycat found a bomber today. Tell your pussycat, ‘Pussycat, you’re the best man in the world.’”

  “Pussycat, you’re an idiot,” said my beloved, somewhere between dreams and reality.

  I smiled and tried to remember the events that I should have been amazed about.

  The day had started at 4:00 AM.

  Damn! Forgive me! I went to sleep!

  ***

  I spent last weekend at the home of my wife’s brother. For certain security reasons, he is holding my collection. He also has a house that seems to have been created specifically so that I can work on restoring my old junk. That is what I was doing. First I restored the shell cover from an old Soviet machine gun—it was similar to a discus. I told you before about the trip on which we found the machine gun and the two German soldiers. When I picked up the shell cover, one side was heavier than the other, which suggested to me that there were still shells in it. My aim was to open up the disk so that it could be used as a museum exhibit of sorts. I was quite the jeweler, I’m proud to say, although I used a heavy hammer and screwdriver in my work. What did I see? Shells, fairly well preserved, and a spring. I opened the disk and immediately found the tragic answer to the question of why the two German soldiers had abandoned the machine gun. Why didn’t they fire all of the bullets? The answer was simple—the spring had broken. Two German soldiers died because of a silly little spring. The silly little spring, for its part, saved the lives of other soldiers.

  ...To continue. The morning was very early. I was at work at 5:45 in the morning, and I woke up the whole block while trying to wake up the guard. My working day ended in 15 minutes. In 20 minutes I was at the Classicist’s house.

  The cool autumn fog of the city was shattered by the BMW 750. We drove toward the Russian border. The Communicator joined us along the way. A bit later, so did Andrejs, who sold things at an antique shop. By the time we had managed to discuss everything that was new, we were at the home of the guy who was providing the information and who would be our guide today. He turned out to be an all right guy. He was ready to show us more than is really appropriate when you meet somebody for the first time.

  “Stop here!” he suddenly ordered. The Classicist hit the brakes. “I want to show you something interesting—from the first war.”

  If the first war, then the first war. Let’s look. I was pessimistic, at least until I started to climb the hill.

  The local digger took us to a hill that was covered with bushes and large trees. He showed us—and my jaw dropped. I have seen many bunkers, and I know the various styles, but this was simply unimaginable. The entire hill had been turned into a fortress. I stood on this silent herald of history and knew that it was mocking me: “You just wet your pants, didn’t you, little man?” Yes, I had to tell it—there was no shortage of underground passageways, of cement bunkers. I learned about the underground passages later, but now I saw entrances, each two or three meters deep, I saw fragments of the bunkers that had been blown up. Were we upset about the fact that the fortress had been blown up? Well, yes and no. Of course, it would have been interesting to walk around the fortification system, to peek through the apertures—but then we wouldn’t have found anything. It was better for us and our work that the entranceways were all collapsed. What’s more, not all of the entrances were gone. The Classicist turned on his metal detector just for the hell of it, but in a few moments he turned it back off. There was metal everywhere. Go ahead and dig. What could be found? Everything—mostly barbed wire, ordinary wire, nails, fragments of artillery shells. Let me calm you down if you’re up tight about this information—if you want to find just one rusty bayonet or firearm, you must first have to dig up hundreds of shards, pieces of barbed wires and nails. I found one nail, which I kept for my collection. Do you have a 30-centimeter nail from the First World War that was used to fasten together logs for fortifications? No, you don’t. But I do.

  This was an unplanned side trip, so we left the unbelievable place after digging around for an hour. We’ll be back. Oh, I have to laugh at myself—”We’ll be back!” Judging from everything, we hardly ever have time to go back anywhere.

  “Guys, let’s have something to eat. I understand you. You got up recently, but I’ve been up long enough to be ready for dinner.”

  Nobody objected, and we set the table on the hood of the car. Some had a second breakfast, some had a lunch—I very definitely had my afternoon meal. What do we eat on these trips? There’s always dried pork, bread and onions. I can afford to indulge some of my weaknesses on these trips. There are no clients, no women, and so we eat the onions as if they were apples.

  “The hill over there is full of holes,” said the local farmer. “I’ve lived at the foot of the hill all my life, and when I was a kid I wandered through all kinds of underground passages with candles or a flashlight.”

  We went back to the hill and heard the legend of the military warehouses. Today, however, we had different plans. We had to hurry up if we were to find the place where the airplane had gone down.

  I’ll skip the details. We found the place as soon as we had given up any hope of finding a ditch in a swampy forest in which a World War II plane could be found. We wandered around that damned swamp for an hour or even two. We jumped across ditches and pushed our way through bushes. The informer said that the hole had to be somewhere to the left of the farm, Andrejs was convinced it was to the right. The Classicist, the Communicator and I felt like cows that were wandering around stupidly—then behind one of them, then behind the other.

  “Enough,” I finally said. “Let’s go find the tank.”

  When I got the old men out of the woods, I was happy. Five tired diggers tramped along the side of the woods to get back to their car. After 50 meters, four of them stopped. The informer turned toward the forest and, in a minute, began to speak.

  “Listen, maybe we should go in here. Five years ago it was very different here, and it was spring.”

  “I’ll wait for you here,” I said, and then changed my mind. “No, I’m coming, too.” Murphy’s La
w was in my head—if something interesting happens, I’m never there.

  We passed through a thick stand of fir and then found a partly overgrown forest path. “This is the right one,” announced our informer.

  A few minutes later I saw a big hole in the ground, six meters long and three meters wide, full of brownish swamp water. At the edge of the ditch there were long sticks of wood with metal hooks tied to their ends. People had apparently been trying to get pieces of the plane out of the hole. Rank amateurs! I grabbed one of the tools and sunk it into the brown water. Amazingly enough, the five-meter stick never did reach the bottom, but I did hit something hard. The Communicator pushed the same pole into the water, once again reaching the unknown object. He pressed down a bit, and was rewarded with a huge burst of bubbles in the water—bubbles that brought the stink of aviation fuel with them. We found a few objects which allowed us to determine what the plane was—a Soviet bomber. We would find out the precise identity of the plane when we brought some of the items that we found to the Aviator.

  No matter what, but we’re going to lift that plane out of the water. It seems that the Communicator even wants to do it this year?!

  We drove back into Riga late in the evening, and I got into my own car. I put on some Clapton, and the lights of cars that were driving toward me seemed to be playing his melody. I drove home, tired, dirty and overjoyed. Why? Because I’m a digger!

  ***

  “What, you think I can tell you the model of the airplane from this shit?” the Aviator sneered. “Well, let’s see. I think it might be a destroyer. A Soviet one—the kind the Russians used in the Spanish war. Or maybe it’s a PO-2 nighttime bomber.”