Four Soldiers

by Hubert Mingarelli

  We moved further and further away from one another.

  Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of one of the others.

  But in the end I lost sight of them all.

  33

  I NO LONGER knew where I was.

  Nor did I know where the horse was, or any of the others.

  I came to a halt. I stood there without moving and listened. I was trying to locate the sound of the pursuit. But my God, that silence! You’d have thought the field was completely deserted.

  I waited and I slowly turned my head in the hope that I would pick up the faintest sound of the pursuit from another direction. But still there was just that silence. And it was as if – this is strange, it came to me suddenly – it was as if I was alone in the world once again.

  So I spoke in my head to my parents: Don’t believe what you see. I told them: There’s Pavel, Kyabine and Sifra somewhere in the field, so don’t worry.

  I sat down in the grass.

  I watched the sun sink between the grass stalks, and after a while I lowered my head and began to sob. But, believe me, it wasn’t out of sadness.

  I said to my parents: You just look at me now, just look. I’m going to get up and I’m going to find the place where the Evdokim kid is looking after our rifles. It’s not far from here.

  And now I held them both in my arms and I sobbed as I pressed them against me and I swear it wasn’t out of sadness.

  34

  WE CAME BACK to the Evdokim kid, one after another. He was waiting for us, and he handed us our rifles.

  We set off again in the dusk.

  When we reached the railway tracks, the sun was close to the horizon. It was too late to go and visit Kossarenko’s company. The cook wasn’t going to wait for us with his ladle. Soon after we’d set off towards the camp, we remembered the stew and we started to run.

  We got there in time.

  While we were eating the pork stew, the potatoes and the beans, sitting outside the tent, Pavel asked Kyabine: ‘What, you’re still hungry?’

  He was making a joke about the tiny fish that Kyabine had eaten by the pond, of course. Kyabine didn’t react.

  ‘Two meals in the same afternoon, eh?’ Pavel said. ‘You’re going to be sick, Kyabine!’

  Kyabine stared at him proudly. Then, in a confident voice, he replied: ‘No, I won’t be sick.’

  Night was falling now, and the stew had all been eaten. Our bellies were full. We listened to the sounds of the camp while we sat peacefully on our sleepers. Somewhere there was the sound of metal on metal, though we didn’t know what it was. We could hear voices and, where people had lit fires, the sound of wood crackling. From the pine forest came the songs of redwings.

  Kyabine rubbed his cheeks with his right hand. He looked happy and inscrutable. His gaze moved to each of us in turn, then he stared at the upturned wooden crate. His hand slid behind his neck and he looked up at the sky. He started to laugh to himself. Then he stopped and watched us again.

  After a while, he said: ‘You know what?’

  We replied that no, we didn’t know.

  He lowered his head to contain his laughter. When he looked up again, his neck was red and his eyes were bulging.

  ‘What is it, Kyabine?’ I asked.

  He made a sort of croaking noise.

  ‘Come on, Kyabine, spit it out!’ I said.

  He took a deep breath and then suddenly boomed: ‘There’s a pig with fins in my belly!’

  I thought we were never going to stop laughing.

  35

  INSIDE THE TENT we slept on a bed of grass. When we cut the grass, it had been green. Now it had dried. We had to be very careful with the oil lamp because the grass and our blankets could go up in flames. After avoiding a fire in the hut all winter, it would have been really unlucky if it had happened to us now. That was why we always hung the lamp from the pole in the centre, quite high up. The flame was yellow. The draughts of air made it quiver.

  When we covered the ground with grass, we hadn’t forgotten that it would dry over time and get packed down by the weight of our bodies, so we’d put down a large quantity of grass. It had taken time but we’d been right. Our mattress had packed down but it was still nice and thick.

  Pavel and I slept on one side of the pole, and Sifra and Kyabine on the other. The Evdokim kid had found a place near the tent wall, next to Kyabine.

  We were warm under our coats and blankets. When we settled down for the night, our breath was white at first because it was still only the beginning of spring. But after a while, thanks to the warmth of our bodies and the flame from the oil lamp, the air in the tent became less cold and our breath grew invisible.

  It was Pavel’s turn to sleep with the watch. I took it out of my pocket and passed it to him. He placed it on the dried grass, next to his head.

  Kyabine had been watching us. ‘Kiss her for me, would you?’ he asked Pavel.

  Pavel picked up the watch and tossed it to him.

  ‘Go ahead, Kyabine.’

  Kyabine sat up and found the watch on his blanket. He opened it up and gave it a passionate kiss.

  We smiled as we watched him. Then, as he seemed unable to stop, Pavel held out his hand and said: ‘All right, that’s enough. Give it back now.’

  Kyabine closed the watch and handed it over. Pavel put it back in its place by his head.

  ‘What is that?’ the Evdokim kid asked Kyabine.

  Kyabine didn’t know how to answer him. So Pavel answered for him: ‘It’s a watch.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kyabine said. ‘It’s a watch.’

  The kid must have been thinking that the soldiers of the Red Army kiss their watches before they fall asleep. I didn’t like that idea. I asked Pavel to pass it to me for a moment. I opened it and I handed it to the kid so he could see the photograph inside. Then I closed it again and gave it back to Pavel, explaining to the kid that it was just the photograph of the woman that we cared about. That it was nice to sleep with her and that she brought us luck. And with that, I blew out the lamp and covered myself with the blanket.

  For a while after that, there was silence. Then, in the darkness, Pavel asked: ‘So tell me, lad, what did you see today?’

  He was talking to the Evdokim kid, of course. About the things that he wrote in his notebook. The kid took his time before answering, and Pavel was impatient.

  ‘So?’

  ‘I wrote that we ran after some ducks,’ the kid said.

  ‘And that we fired at them?’ Pavel asked.

  ‘Yes,’ the kid said. Cautiously, he added: ‘And that you missed them.’

  ‘Well, that’s the truth,’ Pavel said. Next, he asked: ‘Did you say that we stole a horse?’

  I heard the dry grass rustling under the kid’s shoulders. Embarrassed, he answered: ‘Yeah, I said that.’

  ‘That’s the truth too,’ Pavel said calmly.

  The kid must have felt reassured by that, because we heard him raising himself up on one elbow and then he went on: ‘And I said that it escaped before everyone had had a turn riding it, and that that was a shame.’

  We all approved this in silence.

  Abruptly Kyabine asked: ‘Did you say how fast Sifra reassembles his rifle?’

  ‘No, I didn’t say that,’ the kid replied.

  ‘Shit, you should have done,’ Kyabine said, sounding very disappointed. ‘Anybody can reassemble a rifle, but nobody can do it as fast as Sifra. And he can do it without even seeing the pieces.’

  Then, to Sifra, he said: ‘Eh, wouldn’t you like him to say it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Sifra in his soft voice.

  ‘Oh Sifra!’ said Kyabine sadly.

  And so, in order not to upset Kyabine, Sifra said: ‘All right, yeah, I would like him to say it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, Kyabine.’

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Kyabine asked the kid excitedly. ‘He’d like it!’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So you wo
n’t forget?’

  ‘No, I won’t forget.’

  Kyabine’s satisfaction floated through the tent like steam. Nobody spoke now.

  The kid seemed to be waiting for one of us to speak to him again. But, as nothing happened, as nobody said a word, he lay down and stopped moving.

  The silence and the darkness covered us.

  Then suddenly, almost in a whisper: ‘I wrote at the end that we had a good day.’

  It was very strange and sweet to hear him say that, because, my God, it was true, wasn’t it? It had been a good day. I wished the lamp was still lit so I could see the effect of the kid’s words on Pavel, Kyabine and Sifra.

  I could tell that nobody was going to say anything else that evening. All of us were probably thinking about what the kid had written in his notebook. Because it had been the last thing we talked about that day, and because none of us knew how to write. Well, I knew a little bit, but I was the only one. And I only knew certain letters – the ones that had been painted in red on the tree trunks when they were delivered to Ovanes’ sawmill. They said where the wood had come from. There was a different letter for each district. That’s how I came to learn them.

  I hadn’t used my letters for a long time. But they were still familiar to me. Every time I saw them somewhere, they caught my eye. On crates of ammunition or on the sides of trucks, there was always writing. I didn’t know what the words meant, but the letters that I knew leapt out at me as soon as I saw them. And it’s funny, but I always wondered what they were doing there. And straight away I would hear, muffled as if it were coming through a wall, the sound of Ovanes’ band saw.

  36

  WE WERE BARELY out of bed before Kyabine started bustling about like a man on a mission. He’d slung Sifra’s rifle over his shoulder and he was dusting off his blanket. I stood outside, watching him, wondering what had got into him, and I stamped my feet because it was cold that morning. Around us, steam rose from the other tents and fires were lit to boil water.

  Pavel was standing next to me, his coat buttoned up to the collar. ‘What the hell are you doing, Kyabine?’

  Kyabine did not reply. He’d covered the wooden crate with his blanket and was now smoothing it down with the flat of his hand.

  When Sifra returned from pissing behind the tent, Kyabine pointed to one of the sleepers and said: ‘Sit down, Sifra.’

  ‘Why?’ Sifra asked.

  ‘Oh, please!’ Kyabine begged.

  Sifra sat on the sleeper and Kyabine told him to wait. Next, he called out to the Evdokim kid, who was still inside the tent. The kid came out and Kyabine gestured for him to sit down on the sleeper facing Sifra. Then he put Sifra’s rifle on the blanket that covered the crate and said: ‘Go on, Sifra, do it one more time, so the kid can see how you do it again.’

  Everybody understood now.

  Out of kindness, Sifra did what he was asked. He disassembled his rifle and carefully lined up the pieces on the blanket. Kyabine stood behind him and, as he put his hands over Sifra’s eyes, he said to the kid: ‘Watch this again, because I don’t want you to forget anything. I want you to write exactly how Sifra does it. His skill and all that, you know?’

  The kid nodded. Kyabine put his hands over Sifra’s eyes. Sifra groped with his hands until he found the first piece, and then it began. Sifra’s agile fingers went to work. All the way through, Kyabine watched the kid to make sure he didn’t miss anything. When the rifle was reassembled, he dropped his big hands to Sifra’s shoulders and stared questioningly at the kid. He wanted to be sure that he had followed Sifra’s feat, from beginning to end. The kid nodded and said: ‘Got it.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Kyabine asked. ‘You saw all of it?’

  ‘Yes,’ the kid replied.

  Kyabine leaned down towards Sifra and said: ‘You told me yesterday, that you’d like it.’

  ‘Yes, Kyabine,’ Sifra replied.

  ‘When are you going to write it?’ Kyabine asked the kid.

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘You’ll remember?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘All the details, I mean,’ Kyabine said.

  The kid touched his index finger to his forehead to indicate that all the details were in there.

  37

  THEN SUDDENLY THERE were noises coming from all over the camp. People started to move around and talk outside the tents. Our commander appeared in front of the company office. Sergeant Ermakov was with him. We tried to overhear what was being said. Finally the news reached us. We were leaving that night, one hour after Kossarenko’s company. We were supposed to follow them from a distance. The order from the general staff had arrived last night. We lowered our eyes as if it was our fault. I just had time to see Kyabine’s neck turn red. We kept staring at the ground and withdrew within ourselves, tense and motionless.

  ‘What?’ Kyabine asked. ‘When do we go?’ His head gently bobbed as he spoke and his voice was full of fear.

  He’d heard the news, just like we had. But he needed one of us to confirm it for him. I decided to do it myself.

  ‘We’re going tonight, Kyabine.’

  After that, we each went back to our thoughts. Until Pavel spoke, we were separated from one another. But then thankfully Pavel said: ‘Let’s go to the pond now.’

  We picked up our rifles and quickly left the camp, trying not to be seen. The last thing we wanted was for Sergeant Ermakov to spot us and order us to dismantle the company office or the kitchen, or to do any of the other things that needed doing before we broke camp.

  Nobody spoke on the walk to the pond.

  I was walking behind Pavel and my heart was racing. We crossed the field. We no longer cared about crushing the grass. It didn’t matter now if we left a path that others could follow. Who would discover the pond and occupy our place once we were gone? Nobody from our company, in any case.

  We walked quickly and I could hear the Evdokim kid trotting behind me.

  We reached the pond and stood there without moving, staring at the opposite bank. The horse we had stolen yesterday was lying on its side. Its head was halfway into the water. It must have run for a long time after it had escaped from us. It had come here and it had died because nobody had stopped it drinking straight away after running for so long.

  We’d seen a lot of dead horses before this, believe me. If we’d laid them side by side, they’d have covered the whole field between the railway tracks and the road. And if we’d had all the dead mules we’d seen, too, there’d have been enough to cover all those horses.

  And yet this one made a bigger impression on us than a whole field of dead horses.

  We sensed that it had to be done quickly. We walked around the edge of the pond. We each grabbed one of the horse’s legs and dragged it with all our strength. We moved it barely a few feet and then paused to catch our breath. The kid had stayed on the far bank and was watching us. I didn’t think to ask him to help us. None of us did. Again we bent down and grabbed the horse’s legs. Yard by yard, we dragged the horse away from the pond. Until finally it seemed to us that it was far enough away and that the grass would hide it from us when we went back to sit on our bank.

  All the same, we stayed there for a while. From where we were, we couldn’t see the pond or anything. We got our breath back. At that moment I looked up at the sky above us. But I kept seeing Pavel, Kyabine and Sifra, and the horse between us, and it briefly crossed my mind that nothing existed any more except a dead horse under the sky, and the four of us.

  When we returned to our bank, Pavel suddenly started yelling at the Evdokim kid, asking him why he hadn’t come to help us. It was unfair but I didn’t say anything, and the kid stared despairingly at me. And Pavel asked him, shouting louder and louder, if he knew where all the dead horses were now. If he knew what had happened to them all because nobody had bothered to bury them? They had to be somewhere, all those dead horses we’d seen everywhere all the time.

  Pavel was yelling all this despairing
ly now, frantically rubbing the back of his neck, and the kid continued to look distraught. He didn’t even dare to tell Pavel that he didn’t know anything about the dead horses.

  While this was going on, Sifra stared straight ahead of him so sadly that I thought he might start sobbing at any moment. I don’t think I had ever seen Sifra look so sad. And Kyabine sat there with his mouth hanging open, looking even more idiotic than usual, and it was obvious that he was trying to understand what was happening, why Pavel was saying all of this and what his point was. And suddenly the expression on Kyabine’s face changed and I understood that he had started thinking about Pavel’s question, about the dead horses, that he was trying to come up with an answer so that he could save the kid by replying for him. And then in a trembling voice Kyabine said to Pavel that nobody could know where all the dead horses were, least of all the kid, and the kid looked at Kyabine as if he’d just saved him from drowning.

  I thought Pavel was going to get angry with Kyabine, that he was going to yell at him to shut it, that he was going to tell him he was just a big Uzbeki idiot. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t shout. In fact, it seemed to calm him down, it seemed to help him. He visibly relaxed. He crossed his hands behind his neck, pressing his forearms against his cheeks, and he stared at the water.

  For a moment we all remained motionless like that on the bank.

  38

  THE SURFACE OF the pond was calm. It was also bright green, but most of all it was unbelievably calm and I thought that was lucky because this was surely how I would remember it for ever, given that this was the last time we would come here. To make sure I would always recall it like this, so calm and bright, I let my eyes wander over it, slowly and very attentively. When I came to the place where the horse’s head had been lying in the water earlier, I realised that I would remember that too and that there was nothing I could do about it.

  My gaze finished its tour of the pond and then I lay on my back and closed my eyes. The air was still and mild.

  All of a sudden I realised that I hadn’t yet had time to remember last night. To recall where I went with Pavel and whether this time I’d found things to say to him to console him. I started to think about it.