I hopped the knife from palm to palm and stuck it in the can. The sharp blade sliced though the lid like paper, and greasy, tasty-looking sauce oozed from the slit, smelling tantalizingly offish. I put the tin on the ground and got out my spoon.
‘Come on, let’s eat. Comrade Captain, maybe you’d like to join us?’
‘You go ahead,’ Sitnikov answered in a monotonous tone, still not turning round.
We took our time, scooping out the fish little by little. The war had taught us how to fool our stomachs that less is more.
After we’d taken care of the tin, we licked our spoons and took turns scraping out the remains of the fish with the rusks. My hunger wasn’t sated, but the emptiness in my stomach was a little less.
‘And so all good things must come to an end,’ Ventus summed up philosophically. ‘Let’s have a smoke.’
We didn’t manage to light up. In the bushes nearest to us a twig snapped underfoot like an exploding artillery shell, its crack hitting our straining ears and tugging at every nerve in our bodies.
I jumped involuntarily, and instantly broke out in a hot sweat of fear. Chechens! I flung myself down flat on my back where I’d been sitting, grabbed my rifle, rolled over and flicked off the safety.
Ventus managed to jump over the beam and threw himself down next to Sitnikov.
Out of the bushes lumbered Igor as noisily as a bear, snagging his trousers on thorns, swearing and breaking twigs and mumbling something like ‘Goddamn Chechen bushes’.
I let out a stream of curses too as I picked myself up from the ground and started to brush the mud and wet blades of grass from my jacket. When he saw me, Igor threw his arms open in joy: ‘Hey homeboy! How did you comms end up here? You should be back at headquarters.’
‘We fancied a bit of hunting, so we’re picking off idiots who blunder around in the bushes,’ I said.
‘Are you talking about me or what?’ Igor came over and gave me a gentle punch on the shoulder.
‘OK, take it easy, big man. How about you give me a smoke?’ Igor, a Muscovite like me, was one of the few people I was actually close to in the battalion. We’d met back in Moscow, even before we’d left for Chechnya.
It was early one sleepy winter morning. The snow crunched underfoot, the sharp frosty air packed my nostrils, and the bright streetlamps against the night gloom were hard on my eyes, which were still swollen after my farewell party the evening before.
I’d stepped down from the bus and was looking around the unfamiliar stop; the Tsaritsyn enlistment office was supposed to be somewhere nearby. A bow-legged guy of medium height stood at the stop too, trying to light up, cradling the flame of the lighter in his palm. His high cheekbones and a few gingery tufts of beard-growth indicated some Tartar blood, and his angled eyes glinted with cunning.
I went over to him to ask the way. He grinned at me: ‘To
Chechnya, do you mean? So who are you then, homeboy? I’m Igor,’ he said, holding out his hand.
Later, as we were being driven in a minibus to our Moscow region unit, Igor nattered the whole way without shutting up; he talked about his life and even pulled a photo of his daughter from his inside jacket pocket, showing it first to me, then to the driver, and then to the accompanying officer. ‘Look, Major, that’s my daughter.’
And from his small bag full of soldier’s stuff he produced a few quarter-bottles of vodka, one by one, to everybody’s glee, repeating each time; ‘So, infantry, who’s for a drink?’
We lit our cigarettes and sat up on the carrier. I took a drag, and spat, wiping my frozen nose.
‘Bloody Chechnya. I’m frozen like a dog. If only it would freeze properly then at least it would be dry... All I’ve got on underneath is long johns and pants. If you wear your underlining you keel over, it’s heavy as anything, really hard work. And I can’t find any trousers anywhere. Vasya offered me some and I didn’t take him up on it, for some reason. I should have gone with him and got them.’
‘You think you’re cold?’ Igor said, rolling up the dirty trouser of his camouflage fatigues to reveal a bluish, goosebump-covered leg. He had nothing on underneath.
‘I’ve just been lying in a puddle for four hours without anything on under my fatigues. Imagine that! I threw out my underlining back in Goity, and my long johns. They had more lice than thread.’ Igor felt the material and frowned. ‘What is this raggedy shit that doesn’t keep the warmth in or the water out? They could at least make canvas trusses for us - you could freeze your nuts off like this, isn’t that right, Comrade Captain?’ he said, turning to Sitnikov.
‘Easy as anything.’
‘Shame we can’t make a fire, dry off a bit. You got anything to eat?’
‘No. We’ve just had a tin of sprats. I wouldn’t mind something myself.’
‘And what about the Kombat, the bastard! He’s stuck us in this hole and forgotten about us. He could at least have sent us some grub. When they had their supper in the regiment they could have delivered some here too. Do you know when they’ll relieve us?’
‘We should have been relieved already. But now we’ll be here until morning, whatever happens.’
We fell silent. The dank and the damp hampered my movement and I didn’t feel like budging.
‘Did you hear, they say Yeltsin has resigned.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘It’s just going around,’ Igor shrugged his shoulders. ‘At New Year, supposedly. They showed it on TV. He gave a speech and said his health wasn’t up to it any more. Of course it’s not up to it, the amount he drinks.’
‘Ah, rubbish. That can’t be true - a pig like that wouldn’t simply give up his throne. He’s a thief and a murderer. And a careerist. For the sake of power he first destroyed the empire, then he started a war and smashed parliament with tanks, and now he’s simply gone and retired, just like that?’
I turned sharply towards Igor, barely controlling my anger. ‘I will never forgive him for the first Chechen war, him and that pig of a defence minister, Pavel Grachyov. I was eighteen, a puppy, and they pulled me off my mother’s apron strings like a clothes peg and dumped me in that mess, leaving me to sink or swim. I floundered, I wanted to survive and they sent me right back there. In the two years I was in the army my mother changed from a woman in her prime into an old lady.’ I shuddered with agitation. ‘They’ve ruined my life, see? You don’t know it yet, but they’ve ruined yours too. You are already dead - you won’t have any more life. Yours ended here, in this marsh. How I waited for this war! I never really came back from the first; I went missing in action in the fields by Achkhoi-Martan. Oldie, Anton, Baby, Oleg - none of us came back. Take any contract soldier you like, they’re almost all here for the second time. And not for the money this time, but as volunteers. We are volunteers now because back then they forced us to come down here. We can no longer do without human flesh. We’re psychopaths, get it? Incurable. And now you are too. Only you don’t notice it here, because everyone’s the same. But back there it shows straight away. No, our tsar cost us too dearly to step down now - he paid for his throne with thousands of lives just so he can toss his crown around as he sees fit -’
‘OK, OK, take it easy, what are you getting so worked up for? To hell with our tsar. Maybe this war will end now, what do you reckon?’
I shrugged.
‘Maybe it’ll end, God knows. What’s it to you anyway?’ Suddenly I lost interest in the conversation. My agitation ebbed away as fast as it had appeared.
‘We get paid a kopek for every second of this war. That’s eight hundred and fifty roubles in your pocket every day. So I don’t care either way - if it ends, great; if not, that’s pretty good too.’ ‘You’re right there. But the thing is, I wouldn’t mind going home. I’m tired of this lousy winter. I’m frozen, and I don’t think I’ve been warm once when I’ve been asleep.’
Igor made a dreamy face, his eyes turned to the heavens. ‘Yeees... They say there’s no winter in Africa, but that’s probabl
y rubbish. You know what, the first thing I’ll do when I get back to Moscow... no, vodka is the first thing, of course, I’ll have a drink,’ Igor grinned. ‘And then after a couple of shots, I’ll fill the bath up with hot water and I won’t get out of it for a day Heating, my friend, is a wondrous blessing, bestowed on us by the good Lord!’
‘Uh-huh, quite a philosopher, aren’t you?’
‘What about you?’
‘Me too. You become a philosopher here, like it or not.’
‘No, I mean, what will you do first when you get home?’
‘Oh, that... I dunno, get pissed out of my head.’
‘And after that?’
‘Get pissed again.’ I looked at Igor. ‘I don’t know, Igor. You see, it’s all so far away that it’s not real. Home, beer, women, peace... It’s not real. The only thing that’s real is the war and this field. I’m telling you, I like it here - it’s fun. I’m free here, I don’t have any obligations, I don’t have to take care of anybody or be responsible for anyone, not for my mother or any kids, no-one. Just myself. I can die or survive, as I wish. If I want, I can go home, or I can go missing in action. I live and die the way I want. I’ll never be this free again in my life. Trust me, I already came home from the war once. Right now you desperately want to go home, but once you’re there you’ll only feel down. Everyone is so petty there, so uninteresting. They think they’re living, but they don’t know shit about life. They’re puppets.’ Igor looked at me with interest.
‘Right... And you call me a philosopher. You think too much about the war, homeboy. Give it a rest. A fool has a much easier life. Generally it’s not good for you to think, and especially not here. It’s enough to send you crazy. Although you already are crazy, as you have correctly noted.’
He tapped his forefinger on his temple, slapped me on the knee and stood up.
‘OK, I’m going back to our positions,’ he said, flattering his ditch full of swamp water with the word ‘positions’. ‘We have to sort out guard duty for tonight. Dark, isn’t it?’
‘Did you rig up tripwires?’ asked Sitnikov, turning round as he woke from his contemplation of the marsh.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Where?’
‘Over there in the rushes,’ said Igor, motioning with his arm. ‘We set signal flares there, and grenades over by the water. There’s no way they’ll get through.’
The black Chechen night covered the marsh with an impenetrable shroud. It was quiet. Even the silos had stopped howling.
Ventus and I slumped back to back on the flak jackets, warming each other. The cold rain persisted and we couldn’t sleep. Like a stubborn child, the cold kept creeping under the edge of my jacket. After ten minutes of lying in a state of delirium I’d jump around and flap my arms. I was dog-tired, and although it couldn’t even be midnight yet, the night had already broken me. Lying for hours in the dank marsh without food, water or warmth, only uncertainty, had squeezed out my last strength. I no longer wanted anything, or rather, I no longer cared if I sat, lay or moved. Everything I wore was wet through, cold and nasty, and it clung to my body, driving waves of cold into my kidneys.
Without warning, the moon sailed out in full-bodied roundness from behind a black cloud and cast instant light.
We crawled into the shade of a bush, scaring a flock of sparrows that slumbered on its twigs. The bright moonlight filled the whole valley, illuminating the water in sharp silver and bringing every object into focus.
Strange nature they have here, I thought to myself. Just now it was black as black can be, then the moon comes out and you can read the house numbers in Alkhan-Kala. No, this was definitely a dream. This marsh, river, rushes... It was all so distinct it could only be a dream. And I myself was soft, blurry, unreal. I shouldn’t be here. I had been somewhere else all my life, in a different dream. My whole life I hadn’t known there was such a thing as Chechnya. I still wasn’t sure what it was, just as I wasn’t sure about Vladivostok, Thailand or the Fiji Islands. I have a completely different life where no-one shoots at me, where no-one is killed, where I don’t have to live in marshes, eat dog flesh and die of cold. And that’s the life I should have always, because I have nothing to do with Chechnya, and I don’t give a damn what it is, because it doesn’t really exist. Because completely different people live here who speak in a different language, think differently and breathe differently. And it’s logical. And I too should think and breathe differently. Everything is logical in nature, everything conforms to natural laws, everything that happens does so for a reason, with some goal. So why am I here? What is the sense, what law does all this conform to? What will change back home, in my normal life, because I have been here?
On the riverbank, half a kilometre away from us, an armoured carrier crawled along, the sound of its rumbling engine muffled by the damp air. It stopped. People poured out of it, scattered to the ridge and disappeared into the night as if they’d never been there.
‘What the hell?!’ I shook off my stupor and exchanged glances with Ventus and Sitnikov. ‘What’s that, Comrade Captain, Chechens?’
‘God knows. I can’t see a damned thing,’ Sitnikov said, lowering the binoculars. ‘Doesn’t look like Chechens, but who knows? Two days ago they did actually pinch a carrier from the 15th.’
‘How?’
‘Hit it with a rocket, hooked it up to a tractor and towed it into the mountains. Right in these hills here somewhere, as it happens.’
The truck stood on the bank like a piece of dead metal. The moonlight danced off the smooth barrel set against the dark body. There was no movement. It was as if the people had died and vanished in the marsh.
Sitnikov broke the spell.
‘No, it’s not Chechens, it’s the 15th. They just switched positions.’ He turned away from the marsh and switched on the light of his watch. ‘Right, it’s already gone one, let’s get some shut-eye.’
‘I’ll stay here Comrade Captain,’ Ventus said, nodding to the carrier. ‘The lads have some room, I’ll squeeze in there.’
Sitnikov nodded, got up and went towards the bushes and the infantry’s carrier, the same way Igor went earlier. I followed him.
The vehicle stood in a tiny hollow only slightly bigger than it was, in the middle of the hawthorn bushes. A disconcertingly large number of infantry were busying themselves all around. Damn, where did they all come from? I wondered. Haven’t they put out any sentries? Fat chance of getting any sleep here. The open side hatch of the carrier cast a circle of pale light on the ground. Igor was leaning against the side, swearing as he roused the next guards.
‘Come on, get a move on! You lot are like a bunch of sleepy flies. Hurry up or the Chechens will see the light. Next time I’ll toss a grenade and you’ll get out quickly enough! What, are you going to sleep here?’ he said, noticing Sitnikov and me.
‘Where else? Do you think the filthy infantry are going to live it up in the carrier while the staff commander and his radioman freeze the whole night on the hillock? Everything’s frozen to hell and my nuts are clanging already. Is it warm in there?’
‘No, we don’t use the engine. It’d be audible five kilometres away across the water at night. And we’re low on diesel anyway It’s like that joke, two mosquitoes fly into a gym and one says: “Brr, it’s cold here.” And the other one says: “No sweat, we’ll warm it up with our breath overnight.”’
‘Have you at least got room?’
‘We’ll make room. We’ve got a whole lot of sentries out tonight,’ Igor grinned, letting me go in front of him through the hatch. ‘I decided to split the night into three watches of four hours, from seven to seven. It’s a long time, but at least you can sleep when you’re not on. The lads are pretty tired. Lay down under the turret, on those crates.’
There were a dozen of them crammed into the vehicle. They had covered the landing-force bench with rags and made a sort of bed that could fit four. Two more lay on stretchers above the bench. Sitnikov shooed the sleeping gunn
er from the commander’s seat, and next to him the driver was snoring. Someone lay down behind them in the recess for the tarpaulin. The gunner crawled into his little seat behind the machine-gun and perched there with his head resting on the ammo box. I clambered past him beneath the turret and banged my forehead on a box of bullet belts, and then the back of my head on the machine-gun, snagging my jacket on the side ring mounting at the same time. I jammed myself between the sleeping platoon commander and the hull, using my weight to make a space as I settled on some ammo boxes. They were heaped up on the floor and their sharp corners dug into my ribs through my jacket. I wriggled a bit and found a way of supporting myself on four points; one corner under my shoulder, one under my backside, one under my knee and one under my foot. I put my head on the stomach of the guy who was sleeping where the tarpaulin should be. I pulled my cap down over my eyes and wrapped my rifle sling round my arm.
It was extremely uncomfortable. Two bulbs feebly lit the half-darkness inside the carrier and there were sleeping bodies everywhere. It really was a coffin on wheels, a common grave -some job they did of designing it. One person couldn’t have turned round in there, let alone ten. If we’d been hit with a Fly rocket we’d all have bought it - no-one would have got out of that crush, least of all me. I had the worst place of all, right in the middle under the turret.
I closed my eyes and teased the infantry as I dozed off.
‘Hey, lads, your lookouts won’t fall asleep will they?’
‘No.’
‘Because one Fly and they’ll be writing to your mother to inform her that your service didn’t quite work out...’
‘Spit for good luck, idiot.’
I spat three times, knocked on my forehead for lack of wood, yawned and then mumbled, ‘Don’t wake me, don’t turn me over, and in the event of fire, evacuate me first’, and then I must have gone out like a light.
I woke twenty minutes later. Poked by the corner of a box, my shoulder was nagging horribly, and my bent legs were starting to get cramps. But worst of all, my bladder ached; in the cold my body had expelled all the moisture it could to conserve warmth, and now I desperately wanted to take a leak. Always the same, and in Chernorechye we could have set our watches by it - every fifty minutes our platoon would wake to pee.
One Soldier's War In Chechnya Page 19