Zinky Boys

by Svetlana Alexievich

  People shouldn’t be subjected to such extremes of experience. They just can’t take it. In medicine it’s called ‘sharp-end experience’ — in other words, experimenting on the living.

  Today someone quoted Tolstoy’s phrase that ‘man is fluid’.

  This evening we switched on the cassette-recorder and heard Afgantsi songs — written and sung by veterans of this war. Childish, unformed voices, trying to sound like Vissotsky*, croaked out: ‘The sun set on the kishlak like a great big bomb’; ‘Who needs glory? I want to live — that’s all the medal I need’; ‘Why are we killing — and getting killed?’; ‘Why’ve you betrayed me so, sweet Russia?’; ‘I’m already forgetting their faces’; ‘Afghanistan, our duty and our universe too’; ‘Amputees like big birds hopping one-legged by the sea’; ‘He doesn’t belong to anyone now he’s dead. There’s no hatred in his face now he’s dead’.

  Last night I had a dream: some of our soldiers are leaving Afghanistan and I’m among those seeing them off. I go up to one boy, but he’s got no tongue, he’s dumb. I can see hospital pyjamas under his army jacket. I ask him something but he just writes his name: ‘Vanechka, Vanechka … ’ I remember that name, Vanechka, so clearly. His face reminds me of a young lad I’d talked to that afternoon, who kept saying over and over again: ‘Mum’s waiting for me at home.’

  For the last time we drive through Kabul’s dead little streets, past the familiar posters adorning the city centre: ‘Communism — Our Bright Future’: ‘Kabul — City of Peace’; ‘People and Party United’. Our posters, printed on our presses, and our Lenin standing here with his hand raised …

  At the airport we came across a film-crew we knew. They’d been filming the loading of the ‘black tulips’, as they’re known here. They wouldn’t look into our eyes as they described how the dead ‘sometimes have to be dressed in ancient uniforms, even jodhpurs and so on from the last century; sometimes, when there aren’t even enough old uniforms available, they’re put in their coffins completely naked. The coffins are made of shabby old wood, held together with rusty nails. Casualties waiting to be shipped are put in cold storage, where they give off a stench of rotting wild boar.’

  Who’ll believe me if I write of such things.

  15 May 1988

  My calling as a writer involves me in talking to many people and examining many documents. Nothing is more fantastic than reality. I want to evoke a world not bound by the laws of ordinary verisimilitude but fashioned in my own image. My aim is to describe feelings about the war, rather than the war itself. What are people thinking? What do they want, or fear? What makes them happy? What do they remember?

  All we know about this war, which has already lasted twice as long as World War II, is what ‘they’ consider safe for us to know. We have been protected from seeing ourselves as we really are, and from the fear that such understanding would bring. ‘Russian writers have always been more interested in truth than beauty,’ wrote Nikolai Berdyaev. Our whole life is spent in the search for truth, especially nowadays, whether at our desks, or on the streets, at demos, even at dinner parties. And what is it we literary people cogitate upon so interminably? It all comes down to the question, Who are we, and where are we going? And it dawns on us that nothing, not even human life, is more precious to us than our myths about ourselves. We’ve come to believe the message, drummed into us for so long, that we are superlative in every way, the finest, the most just, the most honest. And whoever dares express the slightest doubt is guilty of treachery, the one unforgivable sin!

  From a history book I’ve been reading:

  ‘On 20 January 1801 a Cossack expeditionary force, under the command of Vassily Orlov, was ordered to spearhead the conquest of India. They were given one month to reach Orenburg [in the Urals], and a further three to gain the Indus River via Bukhara and Khiva. These 30,000 Cossacks crossed the Volga and penetrated deep into the Kazakh steppes.’†

  From Pravda, 7 February 1989:

  ‘The almond trees were in blossom in Termez [a Soviet town on the Afghan border]; but even without so generous a gift from Nature the inhabitants of this ancient town could never forget these February days as the most joyful and splendid of their lives.

  ‘An orchestra played as the Nation welcomed the return of her sons. Our boys were coming home after fulfilling their international obligations. For ten years Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan repaired, rebuilt and constructed hundreds of schools, technical colleges, over thirty hospitals and a similar number of nursery schools, some 400 blocks of flats and 35 mosques. They sank dozens of wells and dug nearly 150 kilometres of irrigation ditches and canals. They were also engaged in guarding military and civilian installations in Kabul.’

  Berdyaev again: ‘I have always been my own man, answerable to no-one.’ Something which can’t be said of us Soviet writers. In our day truth is always at the service of someone or something — either the interests of the Revolution, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, or some brutal dictator himself, or the Party, or the first or second five-year plan, or the latest Congress … Dostoevsky insisted: ‘The truth is more important than Russia’.

  ‘Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ’ (St Matthew, 24:4,5). Russia has had to suffer so many false Messiahs — too many to mention.

  I ask myself, and others too, this single question: how has the courage in each of us been extinguished? How have ‘they’ managed to turn our ordinary boys into killers, and do whatever they want with the rest of us? But I’m not here to judge what I’ve seen and heard. My aim is simply to reflect the world as it really is. Getting to grips with this war today means facing much wider issues, issues of the life and death of humanity. Man has finally achieved the evil ambition of being able to kill us all at a stroke.

  Nowadays it is no secret that 100,000 Soviet troops were deployed in Afghanistan every year. Over ten years, that adds up to 1,000,000. The war can be described in neat statistical terms: so many bullets and shells spent, so many armoured cars and helicopters destroyed, so many uniforms torn to shreds. How much has all this cost us?

  Fifty thousand dead and wounded. A figure you may believe or disbelieve, because we all know how well officials can count. The dead of World War II are still being counted and buried …

  Fragments of conversations:

  ‘Even at night I’m afraid of blood, in my dreams … I can’t even bear to step on a beetle … ’

  ‘Who can I tell all this to? Who’d want to listen? As the poet Boris Slutsky put it:

  ‘When we returned from the war

  I saw we were needed no more.’

  I have the whole Table of Elements in my body. I’m still wracked by malaria. Not long ago I had a few teeth pulled, one after the other, and in my pain and shock I began to talk. The dentist, a woman, looked at me almost in disgust: “A mouth full of blood, and he wants to talk … ” At that moment I realised I would never be able to talk honestly about anything again. Everyone thinks of us like that: mouths full of blood, and we want to talk.’

  That’s why I haven’t used people’s real names in this book. Some asked for confidentiality; and there are others whom I can’t expose to the reproach of ‘a mouth full of blood, and he wants to talk’. Are we going to react to this moral crisis as we always have done in the past, by attaching blame to a few individuals in order to exonerate the rest of us? No! We are all accessories to this crime.

  But I did record their names, if only in my diary, in case my cast of characters wish to be recognised one day:

  Sergei Amirkhanian, Captain; Vladimir Agapov, 1st Lt., gun-crew leader; Tatiana Belozerskikh, civilian employee; Victoria V. Bartashevich, mother of Private Yuri Bartashevich, killed in action; Private Dmitri Babkin, gun-layer; Maya Ye. Babuk, mother of Nurse Svetlana Babuk, killed in action; Maria T. Bobkova, mother of Private Leonid Bobkov, killed in action; Olimpiada R. Bogush, mother of Private Victor Bogush, killed in action; Victoria S. Valovich, mother of 1st
Lt. Valery Valovich, killed in action; Tatiana Gaisenko, nurse; Vadim Glushkov, 1st Lt., interpreter; Captain Gennadi Gubanov, pilot; Ina S. Golovneva, mother of 1st Lt. Yuri Golovnev, killed in action; Major Anatoli Devyatyarov, political officer of an artillery regiment; Private Denis L., grenadier; Tamara Dovnar, widow of 1st Lt. Petr Dovnar; Yekaterina N.P., mother of Major Alexander P., killed in action; Private Vladimir Yerokhovets; Sofia G. Zhuravleva, mother of Private Alexandr Zhuravlev, killed in action; Natalya Zhestovskaya, nurse; Maria O. Zilfigarova, mother of Private Oleg Zilfigarov, killed in action; 1st Lt. Vadim Ivanov, platoon leader, engineer; Galina F. Ilchenko, mother of Private Alexandr Ilchenko, killed in action; Private Yevgeny Krasnik, armoured car gunner; Konstantin M., military adviser; Sergeant-Major Yevgeny Kotelnikov, medical instructor in an intelligence unit; Private Alexandr Kostakov, signaller; 1st Lt. Alexandr Kuvshinnikov, mortar-platoon commander; Nadezhda S. Kozlova, mother of Private Andrei Kozlov, killed in action; Marina Kiseleva, civilian employee; Vera F. K., mother of Private Nikolai K., killed in action; Private Taras Ketsmur; Major Petr Kurbanov (mountain infantry battalion); CSM Vassily Kubik; Private Oleg Lelyushenko, grenadier; Private Alexandr Leletko; Sergei Loskutov, army surgeon; Sergeant Valery Lissichenko, signaller; Vera Lysenko, civilian employee; Major Yevgeny S. Mukhortov, battalion commander, and his son Andrei, 2nd Lt.; Lydia Ye. Mankevich, mother of Sergeant Dmitri Mankevich, killed in action; Galina Mlyavaya, widow of Captain Stepan Mlyavy; Private Vladimir Mikholap, gunner; Captain Alexandr Nikolayenko, helicopter flight-commander; Oleg L., helicopter pilot; Natalya Orlova, civilian employee; Galina Pavlova, nurse; Private Vladimir Pankratov, reconnaissance company; Private Vitaly Ruzhentsev, driver; Private Sergei Russak, tank crew; 1st Lt. Mikhail Serotin, pilot; 1st Lt. Alexandr Sukhorukov (mountain infantry battalion); Lt. Igor Savinsky, armoured car platoonleader; Sergeant Timofei Smirnov, gunner; Valentina K. Sanko, mother of Private Valentin Sanko, killed in action; Lt-Col. Vladimir Simanin; Sergeant Tomas M., infantry platoon commander; Leonid I. Tatarchenko, father of Private Igor Tatarchenko, killed in action; Captain Vladimir Ulanov; Tamara Fadeyev, doctor and bacteriologist; Ludmilla Kharitonchik, widow of 1st Lt. Yuri Kharitonchik, killed in action; Galina Khaliulina, civilian employee; Major Valery Khudyakov; Sergeant Valentina Yakovlova, commander of secret unit.

  * Vladimir Vissotsky, a dissident singer and song-writer who dared to express what millions thought. He died in 1980, but is still vividly remembered.

  † The unspoken message here is that this force never reached its destination, and that the Emperor Paul I was assassinated in a coup partly provoked by such adventurism.

  The First Day

  ‘For many will come in my name … ’

  Very early one morning the phone woke me like a burst of machine-gunfire.

  ‘Now you listen to me!’ said my caller without introducing himself. ‘I’ve read this slanderous stuff you’ve been writing, I’m warning you … ’

  ‘Who are you?’

  One of the people you’ve been writing about. God! How I hate pacifists! Have you ever tried climbing a mountain in full battle-dress, or sweltered inside an APC in 70 degrees Celsius? Have you had the stench of desert thorn-bushes in your nostrils all night? If you haven’t, then shut up and leave us alone! This was our affair, and nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Why won’t you tell me your name?’

  ‘Just leave it alone! My best friend, he was like a brother to me … I brought him back from a raid in a plastic bag. His head cut off, and his arms, and his legs, and all flayed — yes, skinned. He used to play the violin and write poetry. He should be writing now, not you … His mother went mad two days after the funeral. She ran to the cemetery at night and tried to lie down with him. Just leave it alone! We were soldiers. We were sent there to obey orders and honour our military oath. I kissed the flag … ’

  ‘“Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name.” Gospel according to St Matthew.’

  ‘Aren’t you the clever ones! With ten years’ hindsight! You all want to stay squeaky clean. Motherfuckers! You don’t even know the way a bullet flies. You’ve never shot anybody … I’m not scared of anything. I don’t give a damn about your New Testament or your so-called truth. I brought my truth back in a plastic bag … Head, arms, legs, all skinned … Go to hell!’

  He slammed down the phone; it sounded like a distant explosion.

  All the same, I’m sorry we didn’t talk. He might have become the main character of this book, a man wounded to his very heart.

  ‘Just leave it alone! It’s ours!’ he had shouted.

  All of it?

  Private, Grenadier Battalion

  I could hear voices, but the voices had no faces attached, however hard I tried to make them out. They faded away, came back, faded again … I remember thinking, I’m dying — and then opening my eyes.

  I came to in Tashkent sixteen days after I was wounded. My head hurt when I whispered — I couldn’t speak out loud. In the hospital in Kabul they’d opened up my skull, found a lot of porridge and taken out a few bits of bone. They put my left hand back together, but with screws instead of knuckles. The first thing I felt was sad. Sad I’d never be going back there, never see my friends, never work out on those horizontal bars again.

  I spent two years less fifteen days in various hospitals. Eighteen operations, four under general anaesthetic. Medical students wrote essays about me — what I had and didn’t have. I couldn’t shave myself, so the lads did it for me. The first time, they poured a bottle of eau-de-Cologne over me, but I screamed at them to do it again because I couldn’t smell a thing. They took every damn thing from my bedside table, sausage, gherkins, honey, sweets and left me with nothing. I could see colours and I could taste all right, but I’d lost my sense of smell. I nearly went crazy. When Spring came, and the trees blossomed, I could see but not smell it. They removed one and a half cubic centimetres of my brain, including some kind of nerve centre connected with the sense of smell. Even now, five years later, I can’t smell flowers, or tobacco smoke, or a woman’s perfume. I can make out eaude-Cologne if it’s crude and strong, but only if I shove the bottle right under my nose. I suppose some other bit of my brain has taken the job on as best it can.

  In hospital I got a letter from a friend of mine. He told me that our APC got blown up by an Italian land-mine. He saw a guy being blown out together with the motor — that was me.

  I was discharged and then given a one-off payment of 300 roubles.* It’s 150 for minor injuries and 300 for serious. After that, well, it’s your look-out. Live off your parents. My father had his war without going to war. He went grey and got high blood pressure.

  I didn’t really grow up in Afghanistan. That came later, back home, when I saw my whole life from a different point of view.

  I was sent over there in 1981. The war had been going on for two years, but the general public didn’t know much about it and kept quiet about what they did know. In our family, for example, we just assumed the government wouldn’t be sending forces to another country unless it was necessary. My father thought that way, so did the neighbours. I can’t remember anyone thinking different. The women didn’t even cry when I left because in those days the war seemed a long way away and not frightening. It was war and yet not war, and, in any case, something remote, without bodies or prisoners.

  In those days no one had seen the zinc coffins. Later we found out that coffins were already arriving in the town, with the burials being carried out in secret, at night. The gravestones had ‘died’ rather than ‘killed in action’ engraved on them, but no one asked why all these eighteen-year-olds were dying all of a sudden. From too much vodka, was it, or flu? Too many oranges, perhaps? Their loved ones wept and the rest just carried on until they were affected by it themselves. The newspapers talked about how our soldiers were building bridges and planting trees to make ‘Friendship Alleys’, as they called them, and about how our doctors were looking after Afghan women and c
hildren.

  At our training-camp in Vitebsk everyone knew we were being prepared for Afghanistan. One guy admitted he was scared we’d all be killed. I despised him. Just before embarkation another guy refused to go. First he said he’d lost his Komsomol card! Then, when they found it, he said his girl was about to have a baby. I thought he was mad. We were going to create a revolution, weren’t we? That’s what we were told and we believed it. It was kind of romantic.

  When a bullet hits a person you hear it. It’s an unmistakable sound you never forget, like a kind of wet slap. Your mate next to you falls face down in the sand, sand that tastes as bitter as ash. You turn him over on his back. The cigarette you just gave him is stuck between his teeth, and it’s still alight. The first time it happens you react like in a dream. You run, you drag him, and you shoot, and afterwards you can’t remember a thing about it and can’t tell anyone anyway. It’s like a nightmare you watch happening behind a sheet of glass. You wake up scared, and don’t know why. The fact is, in order to experience the horror you have to remember it and get used to it. Within two or three weeks there’s nothing left of the old you except your name. You’ve become someone else. This someone else isn’t frightened of a corpse, but calmly (and a bit pissed off, too) wonders how he’s going to drag it down the rocks and carry it for several kilometres in that heat.

  This new person doesn’t have to imagine: he knows the smell of a man’s guts hanging out; the smell of human excrement mixed with blood. He’s seen the scorched skulls grinning out of a puddle of molten metal, as though they’d been laughing, not screaming, as they died only a few hours before. He knows the incredible excitement of seeing a dead body and thinking, that’s not me! It’s a total transformation, it happens very quickly, and to practically everyone.