Free Fall

by Nicolai Lilin

  We slept for an entire day. One of the infantrymen had thrown a tent cloth over us, just like the one we used to cover the bodies of the fallen. Even the clean-up crew took us for dead. One of them gave me a kick in the chest, as they would do – and as I had done too – to drive the rats out of the bodies.

  I moved, and he was startled. I pulled down the cloth and sat up, looking around me, confused. There was no trace of the infantrymen; they had gone ahead with the rest of the troops.

  Our car was the only one left in the yard. Next to it there was just one tank, and behind that a small mobile kitchen, where there was something good boiling on the fire. Two tankers were sitting on the tank, eating hot food out of little individual pots.

  Behind me, I could hear that Shoe had woken up too. He gave me such a hard slap on the shoulder that I almost fell over.

  ‘Ahhh, damn, what a great nap…’ he said. ‘And now it’s time to eat! Let’s move, Kolima, before everything gets cold!’

  I scratched my head without really understanding, and I responded:

  ‘Let’s go, yeah, I’m dying to eat…’

  And along with him I went limping towards the kitchen.

  We ate in silence. When we finished, Shoe came out with a statement that seemed to me like an absolute truth:

  ‘I understood for the first time today how nice it is to be in the world.’

  That’s what he said, simply, and it felt like he was showing me his soul as a material thing, like an object there in his hands.

  NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW…

  The forest burned over the river

  and along with it burned the dawn.

  Out of eighteen boys

  only three of us remain…

  How many dear friends

  have fallen in the dark,

  near an unknown town,

  in a place with no name…

  From the song of the Russian veterans of WWII

  Russia is a country whose citizens are the first to support government corruption. This is why our society will never be able to become democratic or liberal: the Russians can only live properly under some form of dictatorship.

  A statement made by the history teacher at Bender’s top middle school

  Parade uniform collects dust on the shelf,

  moths eat at the gold epaulettes.

  And we have the tough and thankless lot

  of defending this world without law.

  Today ancient evil’s not scared of the cross,

  chaos is trying on the crown,

  and he who still has a clean conscience

  is destined to become an outlaw.

  On a series of fronts generals stage

  this new drama of the nation,

  but because of this theatre season

  an officer’s dignity is against the law.

  In the bought prattle of media hacks

  and functionaries at every level

  we deploy on a military mission,

  where our every step is unlawful.

  In this poor downtrodden nation

  that so much resembles a prison,

  someone might as well stay

  in the civil war – the outlaw.

  Song by Sergei Trofimov dedicated to the officers and soldiers who took part in the counter-terrorist operations in the Chechen Republic

  It was late October in Chechnya when our team was given a temporary post. We were sent to the 46th motorized infantry unit base. The position was in the mountains, at a strategic point with a view of two very narrow valleys.

  The word going around was that the explorers had sounded the alarm because the enemy was concentrating military forces in those mountains. There were two large armed groups equipped with Igla single-fire missiles, a surface-to-air missile system they had used to take down one of our transport helicopters.

  A few units from the two paratrooper divisions had reached the base first, in tanks and armoured cars; you could sense that a big military operation was getting underway, with several units of the Russian Army involved.

  No specific orders came for three days but lots of strange stories circulated among the soldiers about that helicopter explosion. Some said that an officer from command had been on board, so it had to do with the death of someone important; others just kept saying it was scandalous for the enemy to possess one of our most powerful weapons. The infantry officers had in fact explained that some Iglas, about ten, had been stolen during a battle when one of our columns transporting equipment had been attacked by the Arabs.

  As usual, Captain Nosov derided all these theories, and would say it was about illegal trafficking, supported and run by the men in command. He cursed those double-crossing traitors, who according to him sold all our most cutting-edge, high-tech weapons to the Chechens and Arabs to help them to resist us as long as possible, because ‘it’s in their interest for this war not to end too quickly’. As the captain often said, ‘The generals and politicians at the Kremlin eat our charred flesh and drink our rotten blood.’ Sometimes his rants almost seemed poetic.

  Even back during the First Chechen Campaign, it was very common for the enemy to have the same equipment as us, even the latest models produced in Russia – which, for our army, were still considered experimental prototypes and thus were barely in circulation – sometimes ended up in their hands.

  The Russian politicians of the time – led by that ‘stupid drunk Yeltsin’, as Nosov always called him, ‘who sold out to the United States of America’ – needed, according to our Captain, a black hole, a place that swallowed money and spat it out clean, supporting their so-called ‘democratic’ regime, which was run the American way – that is, with wars, lies, illicit trade and total lack of respect for the people of the Russian Federation. That black hole was Chechnya.

  ‘The Americans gave Yeltsin and his men a huge helping hand – they were able to control the whole orchestration of this disgusting war,’ Nosov vented for the thousandth time while we were on our way to base in the helicopter. ‘Who knows how much fun the strategists at the Pentagon had when they came up with this foul plan of local war right within the borders of their old enemy, the USSR… And through misinformation, political and ethnic agitation, they provoked us like a bunch of war dogs, straining at the leash.’

  Essentially, their tactics were analogous to raping a dead body. It wasn’t enough for them to kill the ‘Soviet bloc’ – they still wanted to satisfy their sick thirst for dominion somehow, and to our shame there wasn’t anyone in Russia capable of stopping them…

  Our first day on the 46th infantry base went by without anything in particular happening; we saboteurs stayed in our assigned barracks, waiting for something. Indeed, we knew that sooner or later command would give us our orders; they wouldn’t have moved all those units from one post to another without a specific reason.

  The paratroopers, on the other hand – as often happened in times of calm – caused a ruckus, got drunk, hassled the girls in the infirmary and the kitchen, and ribbed the other soldiers.

  Based on our captain’s experience and advice, we got some rest. Whenever we could, we slept, and the rest of the time we ate like cows. Nosov personally requested a double ration for each of us and a little something extra when possible, stuff from the food depot that was usually reserved for the officers, like sweet hot tea and a kind of cake that we really loved.

  In addition, Moscow had made a deal with the helicopter pilot who’d taken us to the base: in exchange for an American pistol – a Colt, and we had quite a few – he gave us a bag of lemons, ten chocolate bars and five tins of red caviar. It was a great deal; usually for a pistol we could get two cartons of cigarettes and three bottles of whisky at most. All the drivers and pilots asked the guys in the active units to get them American or European guns, and since in war money doesn’t mean the same as in civilian life – ‘the closer you are to the line of fire, the less money is worth’ – we calculated the value of everything in food.

&
nbsp; I should say that on that occasion the technical quality of the gun helped us out – it was really nice, and often for Russian soldiers, especially the ones who didn’t fight on the front lines, a Colt was a status symbol, an object to show friends and family when they returned home, and who knows how many stories they told to show off, to look like someone who had fought a tough battle and in the end had won. We also had a saying:

  ‘All the girls go for the guy who brings back a Colt as a trophy.’

  So, after going to the ‘store’, we were able to spend a few peaceful days on base. Our group went by the ‘law of the camel’: whenever you have the chance, eat everything you can and as much as you can.

  On the second night, a friendly nurse who would visit the various units to chat a little and look for some ‘male affection’, told us that our comrades in the motorised paratrooper division, unlike us, would usually offer her vodka. And they were happy to do so, seeing her as a symbol of feminine virtue.

  ‘Don’t you guys drink?’ she asked us out of the blue.

  I’ve never been much of a drinker, but the idea of downing a little good vodka didn’t sound too bad at all. And the rest of the guys seemed to agree.

  Zenith was the most eager; he had a real weakness for booze.

  ‘Well, I guess we could go for a sip or two…’

  ‘I know the tankers have quite a reserve,’ the nurse said.

  We started to think up a plan. It was pointless hoping that the tankers would give us any; we had no choice but to steal a few bottles from them or somehow force them to share their precious cargo with us.

  We knew that the tankmen, like many other units, had a mascot. It was a very common practice in war; soldiers would often bring dogs or cats with them, or even try to tame wild animals like squirrels or hedgehogs – some even had an ermine. Our tankers, however, were notorious because their favourite animals were sewer rats – probably because in military slang the tankers themselves were called ‘rats’, since during combat they had to stay inside the small cabin space inside the tank yet still be able to move with agility. As a matter of fact, each tank had its own rat – everyone would feed it and it would get fat like an old spoiled cat.

  Soldiers follow lots of superstitions in war, and losing the mascot is considered very bad luck…

  Maybe we’d found the way to have ourselves a nice big drink.

  Nosov had gone out a few hours earlier to visit an old friend of his, a major who’d fought with him in Afghanistan and now commanded one of the assault units stationed at the same base. When Nosov went to see his friends nobody was to disturb him, go with him or follow him. Everyone who had fought in Afghanistan had a tradition of sorts – they only met amongst themselves and didn’t allow us young people to come.

  That same night we left the barracks and headed for the area where the tanks were. It was a wide, unpaved clearing in the middle of the base. Down from the sky fell a light sharp rain that drummed on us insistently.

  Autumn is melancholy in those parts, and since we were obliged to wade through the mud, I almost felt like we were in the famous folk poem by Sergei Yesenin, the one where he talks about this season in a rather crude way. It goes like this:

  It is cold, it’s come autumn,

  the birds have quit pecking at shit,

  some cow crapped in the pail of milk,

  That’s just the weather, fuck it!

  The tanks were side by side, half a metre apart. The cannons were lowered so that water couldn’t get inside them. But if you looked carefully at the ends of the cannons, every now and then you’d see a rat’s nose poking out. Our tankers often kept their mascots there, and the rats liked it. They didn’t run away; sometimes they went out to get a little fresh air but they always went back inside where it was warm.

  There were some tankers standing guard, but we avoided them without too much difficulty and quickly reached the nearest tank. We waited a little, quiet, until a rat’s whiskered nose peeked out of the barrel.

  Moscow signalled for us to keep an eye out, and we surrounded the tank. Then he put on a pair of thick leather gloves, the kind that machine gunners usually wear, because during a battle the gun gets so hot that if you reload it with your bare hands you risk getting burned. Moscow climbed onto the tank, then grabbed on to the cannon with one hand while with the other he made a quick swipe, clamping the rat by the head and pulling him out with a strong and firm sweep of his arm. As soon as Moscow jumped down, we ran back to our post.

  Back in the barracks, we got to know the rat. He was a big, fat animal, with a long tail and very clean fur that shone as if he shampooed it every evening. He had a collar made from a piece of green tent fabric, with the rat’s name and the number of the tank he belonged to sewn on with white thread. It was a boy; his name was Zeus.

  Zeus never gave the impression he was scared of us, even if he seemed annoyed by the kidnapping. We put him inside a zinc box where we usually kept bullets for the Kalashnikovs. Moscow was very attentive to him; he put a piece of bread in his box, and made a little water bowl by cutting a piece out of an empty tube of tomato paste. Then he made three holes in the top of the box so air could circulate.

  After all that Moscow looked satisfied. He gave the rat’s temporary prison a little tap with his knife and said:

  ‘In here, my dear fellows, we have not only the key to getting the vodka… but also the key to winning the tankers’ respect!’

  We started laughing. He seemed as determined as Napoleon must have been before his Russian campaign.

  A delegation composed of Moscow, Zenith and Shoe communicated to the tank’s crew the means, time and conditions for payment of the ransom. The tankers accepted our offer on the spot: a case of vodka in exchange for Zeus. We were ecstatic.

  Around four in the morning five of them came knocking at our door, carrying twenty-five bottles of vodka in an equipment crate. We gave them back their animal, they quickly verified Zeus’s health, and then we all decided to drink together in celebration of our happy transaction.

  We sat down at the table and lit a small portable stove that ran on kerosene. Moscow took a zinc case to use as a pan and poured in four tins of stewed meat and some potatoes we’d nabbed from the kitchen the day before. At that point one of the tankers went to their base and came back with a big piece of salted lard; its smell was so strong, intense and appealing I thought I was going to faint. We opened the first bottle of vodka, and after pouring it into a big iron canteen our party finally began.

  The canteen was passed from hand to hand, and one by one the bottles were emptied. Amidst many stories of war, peace and life, we started to get a little drunk. The tankers were really nice guys – often the ones who have to be on the alert are more human than the others; knowing they’re risking their lives every day gives certain people a kind of purity that’s hard to explain. Their leader, a young lieutenant, was great company. He always had a joke at hand, and knew the right thing to say when the conversation went off track.

  Around six in the morning – by then we’d emptied almost half the case and could hardly stand – Nosov came back.

  Our captain was tired and looked like someone who had just finished a battle. He was sloshed and stank of garlic and fried potatoes. His Kalashnikov was slung over his shoulder and he seemed to be in a terrible mood. He greeted the tankers with a gesture that recalled Stalin saluting his Soviet comrades from the platform at Lenin’s tomb. He took note of our little party, then took a piece of bread from the table and dipped it in the melted fat in the zinc pan, where a few potatoes and bits of stew remained.

  As he finished his bite, Nosov started looking at each of our faces with such profound desperation in his eyes that despite the effect of the alcohol I had a premonition of danger, as if something tragic were about to happen… Then he got up from the chair, shuffled across the barracks and fell into the first bunk he found. His Kalashnikov was still on him, and it poked out from the bed menacingly, right in our direc
tion.

  Shoe said to Zenith:

  ‘Brother, go and disarm our captain. Better not to tempt the Lord’s patience…’

  Zenith turned to Spoon and repeated Shoe’s request verbatim.

  Spoon went to move, but it was clear that it was a struggle for him to get up, so without anyone saying anything Deer stepped up. He carefully lifted our captain, who was already snoring, and unceremoniously grabbed the rifle out of his hands with a forceful and determined tug. Nosov didn’t resist, and with his eyes closed he mumbled:

  ‘We’re at altitude 216 southeast of Jalalabad… Everyone down, fucking whore of a war! Nobody goes on recon without my permission… Bastard helicopter, we’re not leaving anyone…’

  He went on giving orders for a few minutes, cursing at the helicopter and getting pissed off with who knows whom. Finally, mentioning some general whose surname was followed by a vulgar term (which in Russian indicates the female genital organs after sexual intercourse with an animal), he concluded:

  ‘Everywhere we’ve been, there’s no life left…’

  Then he fell into a deep sleep. We remained in silence for a little while, then we drank to our captain’s health as the tankers started retreating to their post.

  It was morning, but outside it was very dark. It hadn’t stopped raining yet, and the smell of fried food in our barracks intermingled with the smell of the rain. The air was damp and icy; you could feel the cold coming from outside all the way down into your bones. One by one, we fell into our bunks too.

  Deer took off his shoes and lifted his stinky socks up to my face, but I was so tired and drunk that I didn’t even have the strength to turn the other way, and I fell asleep inhaling the smell of his feet. Even that was overpowered by the odour that we were already used to – in war, everything is rank and foul.