by Oleg Pavlov
The tower men grinned contentedly. Matiushin grinned too; it was easier for him to grin like that. They started sleepily trickling out into the guard room. Dojo and the sergeant-major were listening to the radio. The Chinese was sleepy and his head was nodding.
‘What do they say on the radio, what’s the weather like?’
‘Hail and snow with lightning!’ Pomogalov said with a weary grin and crowed with his voice breaking: ‘Right then, my sons, how about a bit more marching? Anyone still alive? You screw anything up in the zone, and I can’t give you a pardon. The show’s over.’
‘You what, you what?’ Dybenko protested aggressively. ‘The slightest little thing, and you start threatening. You ought to feed us properly. Just look, there wasn’t even enough bread, or tea …’
‘I know what you’re like, you guzzle it all and then complain.’
Dojo asked furtively:
‘Time for arm-up, comrade Commander?’
‘Go ahead, arm them … And mind you, sergeant … no funny business!’
One after another the tower men plodded off to take their guns. After finding his automatic in the stand, Matiushin dragged himself out into the little guardhouse yard.
Stretched out in a line, they walked across the steppe to the camp circle. Matiushin strode out in front, so he wouldn’t see anyone. They called and swore from the back, telling him not to push them so fast, but Matiushin didn’t listen to them.
After pulling well ahead of the squad, he got stuck at the path to the first metal gate, which he couldn’t go through without everyone else – there was an alarm on the entrance and when it was opened a siren started howling. The Chinese caught up with him at the path.
‘Eh-ha … That not good. You get ahead us all.’
‘They’re creeping along like women … Listen, give them a good angry shout, they’re a total shambles!’
‘Sell quick, you must. No need sell yours, but mine needed at home. Money good. Much money needed at a home.’
‘You keep going on about it, but I say – enough, leave it for a while.’
Dojo smiled and nodded his head once.
‘Then give money – and all right.’
‘I haven’t got any.’
‘E-e-e-eh … Not good. Sell – and will be money. Think, no money – you go to zone. Me report to commander, commander find out.’
‘You Chinese bastard, you’ll be shopping yourself, I won’t keep my mouth shut!’
‘Me no sell, Matiusa, you sell. Eh, you alone, Matiusa.’
The Chinese pulled a flask out from under his tunic and thrust it at him. Matiushin was about to push it away, but he heard the tramping of feet and grabbed it despite himself, silently hanging the weight on his belt, to one side of his clip pouch.
The men who had fallen behind started appearing out of the darkness: the trainer with an Alsatian, the two men from Khabarovsk and Dybenko, who was cheerfully driving on the sleepy, dejected local soldiers, like animals clumped together into a little herd.
‘Where were you going in such a rush, guys, tearing off ahead like that?’
‘Do we have to wait for you, lowlife?’
‘What a night, I just can’t get enough of it!’
‘Ah, shut it, will you?’
‘What’s up, scumbags? Don’t you want to rejoice in life? Is your life so full of shit?’
Matiushin swore, but he swallowed the insult. Dybenko wasn’t afraid of Matiushin’s oaths, but he wasn’t in the mood to poke fun or start a fight either. Neither of them noticed anyone around them, screening out the others with their bodies. When the Chinese opened the entrance, Matiushin strode through decisively, first onto the path, but Dybenko hustled a cigarette from the local soldiers and dropped behind, unhurriedly puffing out smoke.
The boiler house chimney towered up above the zone and into the night, the white smoke billowing and swirling out of its soundless trumpet mouth and melting away in the cold. From the searchlights attached to the chimney like little baby spiders, two white-hot beams of light thrust out and enveloped the path, so that the soldiers moved along in a blindingly bright mist. But on the other side of the camp wall there was breathless darkness, as blank as the two-metre-high wooden boards, and immediately above the fences the night began.
By the time they’d covered a good part of the path and come to the sequence of guard towers, the nerves of the men in the squad were jangling. They had all sobered up from their sleep, feeling the feather-lightness of their bodies, loaded down only by the weight of their automatics and the shuddering cold. One man fell back, one lengthened his stride, one held his pace in silent fury; the line of walking men levelled out and closed up, and the man whose turn it was to climb up the tower to his post was shoved forward to close in on it face to face.
When they stopped at the first tower, started talking and livened up a bit, a soldier stuck his head out of the tower and roared deafeningly.
‘I’ve frozen solid waiting to be relieved! Did you dig in at the guardhouse, you scumbags?’
Another soldier was already clambering up into the tower and forcing himself to look back behind him, at the path, but no one called to him. The one who’d been yelling, a big strapping guy, came slithering down, flopped onto Dybenko’s chest, half-stunned, and wheezed right into his mouth:
‘Vasyok, give us a smoke! I’m gasping, brothers, a drag at least!’
The trainer led the Alsatian on along the path. The fourth tower was at a spot like a dead-end, blank and dark, where the fences closed together at an angle, choking off the path like a vice. The trainer skulked along, signalling for them to stop with a wave of his hand. No one could make out what he was afraid of, but they all went quiet and completed the path in agonised suspense.
At the tower they got their breath back and relaxed when they realised what was going on.
‘He’s asleep,’ the trainer reported in a whisper and fell silent, waiting for what would come next.
The tower was shrouded in the bright haze of the guard-post lamps. They were sideways on, so that the soldier’s black figure could be seen in the opening of the tower’s square box. The soldier was sleeping on his feet, with his head lowered.
‘Who is it?’ the Chinese asked in a low voice.
‘Some beast … ’ Dybenko whispered behind his back. ‘Young, sleeping so soundly and sweetly. Ah, he needs a fix. Maybe I’ll go up and take him while he’s wasted …’
The trainer stayed with the Alsatian – he squatted down and put his arm round the dog, choking it slightly so that it wouldn’t make any sudden movements.
Dybenko and the Chinese crept towards the tower. During those long moments the cold caught up with Matiushin and the other waiting soldiers and they started feeling chilly. For some reason the sergeant stopped at the steps and Dybenko climbed up the tower alone, disappearing into the half-light. As Matiushin watched Dybenko climbing the steps like a hunter, drawing out the sweetness of it, he started trembling as the passion awoke in him to yell out at the top of his voice. Why, never mind; yell! He’d slip the automatic off his shoulder, strip this lot naked and make them dance!
The sleeping soldier didn’t sense anything. He was lost in his dreams. Matiushin didn’t feel sorry for him, he just didn’t want to get stuck here waiting. This dopehead meant nothing but delay for Matiushin. Suddenly he heard the dopehead shriek and actually saw the tower shudder bodily. The Chinese shouted something, everybody relaxed and moved closer along the path, exchanging mocking comments. Laughing, Dybenko kicked the hophead head first down the steep steps from the tower. When he slithered off them the Chinese set about him, not giving him a chance to stand up. The soldier came to life and shuddered with joy at falling into the hands of his own kind. Realising they were making fun of him, he played up to them, babbling away in his own language. The trainer moved aside, restraining the growling Alsatian, and grinned. He’d been going to set about the dopehead seriously but he could see they’d turned it into a bit of fun.
The dopehead rolled about, grunting, enough to make you die laughing; he writhed about as if he was dying and they didn’t have the heart to trample on him.
Matiushin just stood there, waiting. But they were enjoying themselves; they were in no hurry to abandon their fun. And then he couldn’t take any more. He pushed the frozen brutes aside, stepping through from behind their backs, gazing with a painful ferocity at the dopehead writhing at his feet, and struck him a dull blow with the butt of his rifle, as if to crush him. The dopehead gave a shrill squeal, clutched his head and lay still, whining.
Dybenko started back.
‘What did you slug him for, we were having fun … ’ he said, and started helping the dopehead up off the ground.
The soldier struggled with all his strength to stay on his feet. The blood oozing out of his head was thicker than his short-cropped hair so it didn’t run off but froze above his forehead in a brownish patch the size of a five-kopeck coin; he still had his smile, although now it looked guilty. He didn’t believe they wouldn’t carry on beating him. Dojo had kept out of things until this moment, but he came dashing in to restore order and they walked on in silence, moving round the camp, with the fences and the wire closing them into a circle without an exit, which they could only walk on round, from tower to tower. The squad crept on like a single caterpillar track and Matiushin a part of it.
Now he fancied that he was crawling, not marching. He was disgusted by the painful realisation that he hadn’t achieved anything by taking out the dopehead, but was still dragging himself along even more agonisingly with all the others: as painfully as if he was the one who had been stunned by the rifle butt. Panting and not marching but jerking himself forward, he gradually fell behind, failing as his strength ran out. He needed to get up that vodka tower and get through his watch as quickly as possible – and then they’d let him sleep, sleep, sleep … This muttering was enough to relax Matiushin a little bit, but it was just like when he was drifting in his sleep, he felt as if he was being crushed, squeezed up, shoved aside, and he filled with a trembling that was like little lead pellets. It was that other one who was sleeping, it was him, the bastard. That was what it was: he was sleeping. The trembling ran through Matiushin, its little pellets bit into his body and, in the grip of this deadly inner chill, Matiushin grew frightened, as if he was starting to drown and die.
As soon as they reached the vodka tower, despondency swept over the other soldiers as well; the Chinese and the men from the other squad drove Matiushin on so they wouldn’t have to dawdle. They wanted to get away from this lousy place as soon as possible. Matiushin shared the watch on the vodka tower with a tame young soldier whose name no one in the company even knew. Matiushin was the only one who associated with him, as his watch partner. The soldier was clutching his automatic in his arms and mumbling something mournfully, endlessly. Matiushin climbed up the tower. He’d have to explain to the creature that his time was up – otherwise he wouldn’t even realise it and would spend the whole night there. Matiushin had to hit him so it hurt, then he’d understand and the fear would make him clear out. But when this creature had to take over from Matiushin it was just the opposite; he would stare down stubbornly at the ground and not move a step until the sergeant overseeing the changeover drove him up the tower with his fists.
Someone shouted up after Matiushin:
‘Don’t sleep, Matiukha, or you’ll get fucked!’
The soldiers didn’t wait for them. The squad moved on, flowing away hurriedly along the path into the darkness in which the guardhouse was already glimmering.
‘Fuck off out of it!’ Matiushin yelled, kicking out with his boot.
The soldier huddled into a corner and started keening something pitifully.
‘Come on, or I’ll give you some real hassle!’ cried Matiushin, ready to throw himself at him.
The little soldier calmed down. And he was moved to say something: to complain. Matiushin calmed down himself and agreed.
‘You’re right there … Hang in there, hang in there … The two of us know it: you and me are going to die here …’
The beast’s eyes were glazed and dim, but suddenly they flashed, and he shed a tear as he realised something, or perhaps took fright again. Then he couldn’t hold back and started bawling in his fear. And Matiushin hit him hard right in the very soul, in the pit of the stomach.
‘I’ll kill you, you bastard, get out of here!’
When the soldier disappeared from view, it grew dark on the vodka tower. It had been black before, but now it turned even blacker. Matiushin looked round desolately at the realm he was meant to guard. The railway branch line from the zone ran right next to the tower and the round form of the convicts’ hospital loomed up out of the blackness. Only a vague outline of everything was visible now: walls that weren’t walls, rails that weren’t rails, ground that wasn’t quite ground … And this was the point where the great expanse of the steppe, which from morning to night stretched out wider than the sky, withdrew from the camp territory to wait at the guard-post lamps: even the strength of its vastness wasn’t enough against their no-man’s-land, hard-labour light.
At night the warders would be led out of the zone. A handful would be left as a formal presence and they’d shut themselves in as securely as possible and wait for the morning. Because the branch line ran by there, the exclusion zone and the barriers were absolutely negligible at the vodka tower. Here a convict could spit in the soldier’s face and leap over all the barriers in a single bound. Never mind flasks – you could drive a tractor along the rails into the zone without leaving even a trace, and no one would hear.
Matiushin felt like running away from the vodka tower, but he kept standing there. Only the tower room didn’t suit his height. In order to stay standing, he either had to slump over lopsidedly against the wall or bend his head down. He twisted himself round and lit a cigarette, feeling inconsolably angry. Life was shit because it was a long march to the vodka tower and, when you got there, there wasn’t enough space to live in. And nothing to look at, and nothing to think about.
While you were content with just one square foot of land in the world, you stood on just that one square foot. But the moment you looked up at the sky, you scraped your dirty face against its vastness. And you felt so vile: the most you could ever do on your own little patch of land was choke on it or defile it. You were a low, creeping creature in these expanses, and you’d been given a square foot of ground as an act of mercy. But how can you live if you hate life itself? You’ll live with a struggle, in a fury … Croak? No damn way! Shove over? You go and croak!
But the wind lashes at your face and hurtles off into the steppe, and breathing against its blast is frightening – you start gasping and it rips open your chest from the inside. There’s the wind driving along a huge cloud of dust, there it is straining against a guard tower, setting it cracking and humming. And it comes hurtling out of everywhere, and thrashes about everywhere, as if it’s seeking refuge, but the space is so vast that it goes rushing on impetuously.
He heard a rustling sound close by and a convict who looked like he was bricked into his clothes limped out into the light of the guard-post lamp, making no attempt to hide. Looking closely at him, Matiushin slipped the automatic off his shoulder just in case, but he decided that there was nothing to be alarmed about: maybe it was some deadbeat from the hospital – they sometimes came out and staggered about at night, for the fresh air. Then the convict relaxed, squatted down and stretched out his gnarled hands, as if warming himself at a little campfire.
‘Well, lad, how’s army life?’
‘What do you want?’ Matiushin snarled.
‘I’m waiting for the shop to open. I need a drink. Sell me something … ’ the convict whined. ‘I’ll pay top price, lad, sell me something – I’ll die otherwise …’
‘All right. Twenty roubles, and you’ll have your booze. Throw it in under the tower. They’ll pick it up there. But you’ll have to wait,’ M
atiushin hissed. He saw a little bundle fly through the air.
The convict silently turned away from Matiushin and walked back into the darkness of the zone.
Matiushin suddenly choked. It was a gust of wind, setting the camp beating its knotted living shadow, its ragged, dishevelled head, against the ground until it swelled up with black blood, and then reeling back into the night, as if it drew strength and solidity from this blood. Sensing intuitively that this was a turbulence of the air, that somewhere in the steppe the winds had clashed, hurtling together precipitately from all sides of the world, and their currents and their lightning bolts, hewn out of the steppe, would pound at the camp – at the chimneys, the beacons and the guard towers – Matiushin sat down on the floor of his little hut, where it was like being in a coffin. He lit a cigarette with chilly fingers, no longer hearing the wind’s howls but a profound silence. Drying himself out with the warmth of the smoke, dragging it in deeper and harder, in order not to fall asleep, Matiushin didn’t doze or sink into a tobacco stupor but dreamed timelessly and motionlessly. Suddenly what had been tormenting him unawares ever since he woke rose up clearly and simply out of his weakened entrails: last night he had grown tired of the time he had lived and the time he still had to live – deadly tired. And even if that desperate young guy hadn’t shoved him off the bunk, he would still have gone off onto the path, dragging this deadly weight with him, thinking in his shuddering impatience that he could overcome it, finally defeat it. And instead of selling moonshine, scurrying about with it night after night, he felt like getting drunk on it and burying himself in the steppe, in order to sleep soundly through at least one night.
Yet at this point something stronger than his own will, some other fear, like a second wind, made him tense up and jump to his feet. The zone stood there docilely in its twilight rows of barriers. Not a sound, not a rustle on all sides apart from the noise of the wind. However, this order and silence in the night was a quiet torment to Matiushin, destroying his peace. He looked out and listened, uncertain what he was preparing for but remembering that the vodka tower was due for a visit.