The Matiushin Case

by Oleg Pavlov

  ‘What’s the idea, suicide boy? In the correctional zone you get killed for a tattoo like that.’

  ‘Why don’t you just piss off!’ Matiushin swore without even thinking, sick and tired of all this uncertainty and of being examined.

  ‘Well, sorry,’ Dybenko said awkwardly. ‘But round here we don’t wear designs like that, you need to understand, whatever your human name is, if you have one.’

  Matiushin came to his senses and told him his name.

  ‘Well, since you’re Vasilii, let’s talk. I’m Vasilii too. But don’t go dropping any more clangers like that. This is the zone. You answer for what you say here. Once you’ve said it, consider it done. You take a life or else … you have yours taken.’

  He was half-frowning, half-smiling. He gave Matiushin a needle and a razor, without the slightest sign of squeamishness, and spoke in an ordinary voice, no longer guilty.

  ‘Help yourself, no charge, suicide boy, but spoil what’s mine and you have to give me back two like it or die. If you’ve borrowed something, know what the payback is.’

  The dormitory wasn’t a barracks either but a large hall. There were more empty beds than Matiushin could count. The men slept on whichever they liked, wherever they liked, but he already knew that the empty beds belonged to men on twenty-four-hour guard duty in the zone. Tomorrow the men here would go off to the zone, merely exchanging glances with the others at the change of guard. He took a bed in an alcove next to Dybenko, who called Matiushin over, questioned him to his heart’s content in the darkness and cheerfully told Matiushin all about himself. Dybenko turned out to be a yearling sergeant who had been demoted and exiled from his regiment because when he was drunk in an attic somewhere he’d flung the macaroni that he was eating with his vodka at a portrait of Brezhnev … When Dybenko got tired, he started falling asleep, and Matiushin only just remembered in time to ask why he’d had those exclamations about some Karpovich or other shouted in his face.

  ‘A-a-ah … We’ve got this screwball here … Keep well away from him, or he’ll pollute you too … ’ Dybenko replied sleepily.

  Morning came. An officer appeared in the barracks – young, swarthy-skinned, supple: he walked past the soldiers, not letting them near him, disdaining them. The officer watched everyone in silence. The hall filled up with movement, like a fermenting tub. Drunk on their own drowsiness, the men all walked in the same direction, all did the same thing. In the yard, after they’d jostled their way outside, semi-naked, the cold bit into their skin, and it jerked Matiushin awake like pain. The great, dirty-white wall was still standing there, frozen motionless in the steppe, stony hard in the damp air. On one watchtower there was the black figure of a sentry wrapped in a cloak tent, but the towers further off disappeared into the mist, which was like clouds that had wandered down from the sky.

  After the usual morning bustle and an almost home-style breakfast in a half-empty mess the size of an ordinary room, with little flowers painted on its walls that gave off a sharp smell of oil paint in the warmth, the time after reveille was abruptly cut short. The soldiers left to go to work: from their well-fed mutterings Matiushin realised that they were going to the zone. But the new arrivals were separated off and stayed with the soldier who was on orderly duty in the silent barracks, abandoned by everyone. They weren’t told what to do. So now they were like orderlies too, with no place of their own in all this empty space. Then the officer, who had also stayed in the barracks, called them in to his office one at a time.

  The officer sat at a desk, and Matiushin sat on a stool facing the officer. Sitting inside these four walls, the officer seemed either lonely or very haughty. He asked a series of apparently simple questions, wanting to hear something about Matiushin’s family and his past, but in reply Matiushin only complained stubbornly that he had ended up in this regiment by mistake and he ought to be sent back to Tashkent. He’d spent less than twenty-four hours in this new company but, after the way they’d called him by someone else’s name, jabbing their fingers at him as if he was a freak, he felt so lonely here that he was having dismal thoughts about himself. Probably this first acquaintance aroused a feeling of aversion in the handsome, manly officer; as he let Matiushin out of his office, the officer looked straight through him. Matiushin was aware that he hadn’t been any help, and he walked out indifferently, as if he was sinking down under water. He was only surprised by the man’s surname – Arman – and the fact that he turned out to be the company’s deputy commander for political affairs at such a young age.

  The soldiers came back tired from their work and they looked more cantankerous over lunch. One barked out that those who hadn’t been working should only take the black bread; they weren’t supposed to eat the wheat bread. After lunch, lights-out was suddenly announced: they were supposed to sleep in the middle of the day. For Matiushin, getting into bed felt a bit bizarre, like packing himself into a box. Weary, the soldiers fell asleep one by one and then, after reveille, between five and six, they got ready for the zone.

  The weapons room looked like a cage, with a row of thick metal bars instead of one wall. It was right there, deep inside the sleeping area. The soldiers walked through the hall, with its rows of empty beds, already armed. Their automatic rifles were black, with battered wooden facings on their stocks. The empty beds and black automatics filled Matiushin’s eyes, crowding out the men. The genial sergeant-major from the day before, Pomogalov, went off to the zone, in charge. A little girl, his daughter, had come to the barracks with him from the village, muffled up in a winter scarf. She held on tight to her father, which amused the soldiers, but she wasn’t afraid of them at all. The sergeant-major managed to be affectionate with his little daughter and shout at the soldiers as well. The soldiers strode off along the road to the zone, respectfully slowing their step for their commander’s tiny daughter, who slithered her little feet over the dirt behind her father.

  After some time, the platoon coming off duty from the zone appeared on the road. They burst into the yard with their automatics and scattered. In an instant the yard was like a meadow covered with faces instead of grass and blossoming with non-Russian speech. Some, gasping and swaying, ran clumsily behind the barracks. Others disappeared into the barracks or dashed to fraternise with the mellow, well-fed day orderly and grab his delicious cigarettes. Matiushin and Rebrov now became part of this platoon; they merged into it and milled about in the yard, as if they were with everybody else.

  ‘Karpovich, there’s your brother,’ cheerful voices called out in delight. It was the non-Russians standing to one side who were shouting. They watched and waited, urging on someone who couldn’t be made out amid the motley rabble. Matiushin stared into that rabble, searching for someone who looked like him, but out came a smiling, thick-lipped, round-faced man – the very picture of a cook. He flung his big arms out, as if he had been pining wearily for a long time, and grabbed Matiushin, bear-hugging him at speed.

  ‘Greetings, brother, I’ve heard about you,’ he sang out in front of everybody. ‘I’ve been waiting impatiently to say hello. How have you settled in? How are you getting on?’

  The men around them chortled and guffawed. They were laughing at the soldier, because he spoke so loudly and mawkishly. They were amused by the way he toadied to Matiushin, who glared at him with a mixture of anger and detachment.

  Matiushin remembered very well what Dybenko had said in the night, but this wasn’t the man he had been expecting as he grew less rational and angrier during the day. This man was pitiful in the way he tried to please, but had the strength of patience and was big, solid and strong in general.

  Another two men entered the yard from the road on their own – a titchy little pigeon-toed sergeant and a solemn, severe soldier, leading an equally severe-looking Alsatian at his heels; the dog was swinging its head around briskly in its collar, drawn towards the men. They were walking on past, but the soldier looked round and shouted:

  ‘Karpovich! Follow me!’

>   The mass of soldiers fell dismally silent. The yard was suddenly calm.

  ‘Come on, don’t forget about your friend,’ the soldier said with a smile and added rapidly: ‘Come the evening, we’ll take a stroll well away from this lot, where it’s a bit quieter. I’ll enjoy it especially.’

  Karpovich set off at a brisk run, overtook the two men, and the three of them disappeared round the corner of the barracks together. But there was a morbid floundering in that man, something downtrodden that made Matiushin feel sorry for him. That was the way people with a hernia moved – struggling, holding it with their hand. Matiushin caught a glimpse of flinty-looking seams on the tops of Karpovich’s boots – exactly the same as the freaks that Matiushin was dragging about on his own feet. At some time Karpovich’s boots had been slit open and then sewn up with either wire or string in exactly the same way. Matiushin realised that he had been recognised as this pitiful man’s double because of his boots.

  He stood there, the first in line, with Karpovich beside him, relieved to realise the truth. At supper they were seated by height again, beside each other. Karpovich nibbled on leaves of white bread like a caterpillar. The men laughed at him, the way they probably always did, but he ate his fill, enjoying it. Not everyone at the table ate white bread, only six or seven men from the entire platoon, and for some reason Karpovich had that right. In the barracks Matiushin asked Karpovich for a razor and a needle and thread. Everything required was found in an instant and Karpovich whispered:

  ‘I sensed a kindred spirit immediately, let me tell you honestly. I’ve suffered more than my share too, but it hasn’t got them anywhere, so don’t let it get to you, little brother.’

  Karpovich spoke as if he was being watched. Before lights out Matiushin gave back everything he had borrowed from him without a word. In this platoon the alcove where Matiushin and Dybenko had spent the night belonged to different men. Without a bed of his own, Matiushin was obliged to go back to Karpovich, who knew which beds were free. Everybody tried to huddle together and not sleep out in empty space. Matiushin spotted Rebrov running about, lackeying for someone. When it was already night Matiushin was woken by a loud voice that he didn’t know. In the darkness he made out someone being roused from his bed and led away. Then he calmly fell asleep. Morning came. The same officer was striding round the barracks.

  At the morning roll call Arman ordered Pomogalov to leave the new men in formation and they marched off with the rest of the platoon. As they were approaching the zone, the cold surface of the sky suddenly turned a bright, tremulous blue and the sun glittered brilliantly, reflected in that coldness as if it was water. They crowded into the echoing concrete box of a small yard, glancing sideways through the massive, wide-open door of the guardhouse, then marched in a line into a gap that opened up in the old camp fortifications, where there were beams and rusty iron piles sticking out and mountainous heaps of sand. When they were released from duty, the men sat down to smoke. The titchy sergeant – a Chinese – was in command. Allowing the other soldiers to do nothing, he took Matiushin and Rebrov and led them off to a bleak spot where the repair work ended and the sandy strip of the perimeter security zone, overgrown with tufts of weeds, stretched off wearily into the distance. He walked about for a while with his clever little face wrinkled up, sighed a bit, scrunched the sand underfoot and ordered them to clear the security strip of tufts of grass.

  Matiushin wandered along the walls, kicking out the tufts with his boot. Rebrov scrabbled in the sand, making an effort, working, moving forward and, although he wanted to seem independent, he soon lost patience and shouted:

  ‘Come and work, you bastard! And quick! I don’t want to lose people’s respect here because of you! I respect myself.’

  They clashed with a dull thud, fell and rolled in the sandy soil, scrabbling and trying to choke each other. A sentry spotted them fighting from his watchtower and called the Chinese from the reinforcement works. He came running, panting hard, with a piece of wire that he’d picked up on the way, and when he reached them he immediately lashed out without speaking. That whistling wire burned more viciously than fire. They jumped up at his first swing, but the Chinese started circling round menacingly and lashing at them, giving them no chance to gather their wits. The blinding pain spun them round and set them running. The Chinese kept up with them, driving them all the way to the end, where the band of soldiers greeted them with loud horse laughs.

  Matiushin whiled away the rest of the working time with Karpovich, smoking at his expense. They set an iron pile in the ground where Karpovich had already dug a pit, working on his own, and for the first time in his life Matiushin saw a real live convict. A team of them, welders, were led out to the repairs. They welded hooks onto the ready piles. There were showers of fiery sparks and glimpses of the convicts’ lean, stringy bodies as they moved out from behind the sparks and then back in under the bright rain. Suddenly one of them dived out from under the fiery shower. He slung an armful of the iron rods he needed onto his shoulder and set off, slowed by the weight. For about ten steps he smiled, looking at Matiushin – the new, unfamiliar soldier who was standing in his way. But the only thing Matiushin made out was that all his teeth were metal, and then – without even remembering the face, because the convict was sweeping past him in a tight, living bundle of sinew and muscle – he saw the tattoo on the man’s chest: devils being boiled in a cauldron. For just an instant Matiushin fancied that those devils were alive. As the convict stepped out, the devils in the cauldron twitched and squirmed about. Sensing that the soldier was eyeing him, the convict rasped out audaciously:

  ‘Move aside! Make way!’

  After lunch and a sleep this platoon went off to the zone and the other one, with Dybenko, came back. He and Matiushin met like old buddies and embraced. The guards in this prison-camp platoon embraced as if they were kissing – they shook hands, took the other man’s shoulder with their free hand and pressed their cheeks together.

  A day later Matiushin ended up working under Dybenko’s watch tower. Dybenko spent his watch on the tower as if he was the boss. He took a stout board out from under the roof of his little kennel, arranged it crosswise and sat on it with his back held straight, so it looked like he was standing. Occasionally throwing a word down to Matiushin pottering about in the perimeter security zone, he would suddenly strike up a conversation with someone out of sight, looking straight ahead, over into the zone. Sitting in the pit between the fences, Matiushin could hear the voices. A twisted rag bundle flew up over the camp wall towards the tower. But it didn’t flop down loosely: its load must have been heavy – and Dybenko caught it.

  ‘All right, get on with it!’ he shouted to someone when he’d emptied the rag, and turned his head back towards freedom.

  A khaki-coloured sack went flying over into the zone, and then another one.

  ‘And you stop gawking, it’s too soon for you yet!’ Dybenko growled to Matiushin, spotting that the soldier had frozen below the tower and was watching.

  Beyond the tower, the invisible railway station droned and clattered. The local trains howled like hysterical bitches, right on schedule. Dybenko said nothing while he thought, gazing into the zone like a statue, and then he came to life.

  ‘Listen, there’s no one around, run over to the shop in the station and get some bagels. You’re the suicide soldier. Come on, pay back your debt! Don’t get the wind up, you’re not the first, it’s been done before. Get up this wall!’

  The camp wall was like a raft battened tight against the sky. Dybenko encouraged him offhandedly in the climb, indifferent to anything that might happen apart from the bagels. He handed Matiushin a paper rouble that he’d just earned, curled into a trough in his fingers, and pointed to a squat, grubby little house at the station, with a heap of coal lying abandoned beside it under the open sky and strange, spindly trees growing skywards. Matiushin, already sitting on the fence, glanced around fitfully, didn’t see any men in shoulder straps in all that
open space – and jumped down into the tall wild grass that grew outside the camp.

  In the shop they weren’t surprised to see the soldier. Women were standing in a queue. Boorish cockroaches were running across the floorboards. A cat was dozing right there on the counter – he must have been the languid, aged serving woman’s favourite. Matiushin waited his turn in the queue, turning numb when the door swung open and banged shut behind him, and walked out, burying his dead hands in the fragrant muff of bagels. He ran quickly over the stretch of wasteland, stuffed his purchase into the front of his tunic and climbed back into the zone with even greater difficulty, his belly swollen out by the bagels.

  It was July. Halfway through it the rain gave way to heat – but steppe heat, with free-ranging winds and shuddering cold at night. It turned out that the officers had all gone off on leave at the beginning of the month. The only ones left in the company were Arman and sergeant-major Pomogalov, whom the young political officer clearly didn’t like.

  Matiushin improved Arman’s opinion of him, without even knowing it, at the rifle range. He could shoot, because he had often been allowed to amuse himself like that at his father’s bases, where he was given either a pistol or an automatic rifle to blast away with. When he fired a gun for the first time, as a boy, he thought he’d gone deaf and for a long time he couldn’t understand what had happened. Devastated by the sheer din, as if he were a metal barrel and the automatic had been fired at him, the next time he fired as if he had already learned from practice that an automatic rifle requires strength, but only as much strength as an ordinary meat mincer. So now at the rifle range he simply squeezed himself up tight against the butt, saw the targets, set the sight on each of them in his mind’s eye and fired when the officer gave the command. All the targets were downed. Before the line-up, when the shooting was over, Arman praised him loudly. Then he suddenly walked over to one of the sergeants, a Tajik, ordered him to hand over his automatic, struck a pose, but didn’t lie down, and fired off two full clips in rapid succession, mowing down the same targets with sheer sustained bursts of fire. The Tajik stood there without stirring a muscle, stony-faced. After his amusement, the political officer tossed the automatic that he didn’t need any more into the man’s hands. Back in the barracks, as the men cleaned their weapons, this sergeant flung his rifle, with its fouled barrel, down on the floor, and started weeping angrily in front of everyone, not embarrassed, and Matiushin heard him curse the young political officer through his teeth.