In the army barracks he was respected, even if considered a stranger, and perhaps that was precisely why he was respected. Maybe it bespoke the old Russian deference to foreigners. Deference with no special liking.
In order to command authority in the army barracks, it was enough to ignore the camp administration. It was easy for Alikhanov to ignore the company command, because he was serving as a guard. He had nothing to lose.
One time Captain Prishchepa summoned Alikhanov. This happened at the end of December.
The captain held out cigarettes to him to indicate that the conversation was unofficial. He said, “The New Year is approaching. Unfortunately, this is unavoidable. It means there will be a drinking binge in the barracks. And a binge is a wreck waiting to happen. If you could make an effort, bring your influence to bear, as they say… Have a little chat with Balodis, Volikov… and of course with Petrov. Your thesis should be: drink, but within limits. Not drinking at all – that would be overkill. That would be an anti-Marxist utopia, as they say. But know your limits. The zone is right next door, personal weapons, you get what I mean.”
On the very same day, near the latrines, Boris spotted Lance Corporal Petrov, who was called Fidel by the other soldiers. The lance corporal had got this nickname a year earlier, during one of Lieutenant Khuriyev’s political lessons. Khuriyev had asked for someone to name the members of the Politburo, and Petrov had immediately raised his hand and said confidently, “Fidel Castro.”
Alikhanov went over to talk with him, skilfully imitating Prishchepa’s Ukrainian accent: “Soon it will be the New Year. To eliminate or even to postpone this bourgeois phenomenon is beyond the Party’s power. So it means a drinking binge will take place. And that is a wreck waiting to happen. All in all… drink, Fidel, but know your limits.”
“I know my limits,” Fidel said, pulling up his pants. “A litre to stick your snout in, and that’s it! I’ll live it up before the line goes dead. But your Prishchepa is a douche and a halfwit. He thinks – a holiday, so we’re going to get plastered. But we, goddamit, have our own calendar. If we got dough – we booze it up. But without dough, what kind of a holiday is it? Though in general, it’s time to put on the brakes. We haven’t dried out since Constitution Day. Wouldn’t want to give up the ghost by accident. Hurry up, I’ll wait for you. What lousy weather! The shit freezes, you have to break it off with your hand.”
Alikhanov headed for the rickety stall. The snow near it was covered with golden monograms. Among them, the calligraphic flourish of Potap Yakimovich from Belorussia stood out especially.
A minute later, they were walking side by side down the icy footpath.
“When my demob finally comes,” said Fidel dreamily, “I’ll go back to my native Zaporozhe. Go to a normal human toilet. Spread a newspaper with a crossword puzzle at my feet. Open a half bottle. And I’ll be as merry as the King of Siam…”
The New Year arrived. In the morning, the soldiers sawed firewood by the barracks. Just the day before, the snow had shone underfoot. Now it was covered with yellow sawdust.
Around three o’clock, the guard shift returned from duty. The shift commander, Meleshko, was drunk. His hat sat backwards on his head.
“About-face!” Sergeant Major Yevchenko, also tipsy, yelled to him. “About-face! Sergeant Meleshko – abou-u-ut-face! Headgear, in place!”
The weapons room was closed. The soldier guarding it had locked it and fallen asleep. Guards wandered around the yard with their guns.
In the kitchen they were already drinking vodka. They scooped it up in aluminium mugs straight from the borscht tub. Lyonka Matytsyn started singing the old army-guard hymn:“Do the recruits want war?
The sergeant has the answer ready,
He who’s drunk up all he could
From his shoulder belt to his boots.
The answer’s ready from the soldiers
Who lie about dead drunk,
And you yourself should understand
If the recruits want war…”
Political Instructor Khuriyev was the officer on duty. As a precaution, he had brought a pistol from home. The right pocket of his jodhpurs bulged visibly.
Tipsy soldiers in unbuttoned fatigue shirts wandered aimlessly through the corridor. At dark, mute energy was building in the army barracks.
Political Instructor Khuriyev gave an order for everyone to assemble in the Lenin Room. Ordered everyone to line up by the wall. However, the drunken guards could not stand. Then he permitted them to sit on the floor. A few immediately lay down.
“It is still six hours till the New Year,” the PI observed, “but you’re already drunk as swine.”
“Life, Comrade Lieutenant, races ahead of the ideal,” Fidel said.
The political instructor had a proud, handsome face and broad shoulders. In the army barracks he wasn’t much liked.
“Comrades,” Khuriyev said, “a great honour has befallen us. In these days, we guard the peace of Soviet citizens. For example, you there, Lopatin—”
“And why Lopatin? Why Lopatin? Always Lopatin, Lopatin. All right, so I’m Lopatin,” Andrei Lopatin said in a bass voice.
“What is the reason that you, Lopatin, stand at your post? So that the kolkhoz* workers in your native village, Bezhany, may sleep peacefully.”
“Political work ought to be concrete.” This had been explained to Khuriyev during courses in Syktyvkar.
“Did you understand, Lopatin?”
Lopatin thought a moment and said loudly, “I’d like to burn down that native village and the kolkhoz with it.”
Alikhanov did not join in the drinking. He went to the soldiers’ quarters, crowded with bunks. Then he pulled off his felt snow boots and climbed onto a top bunk.
In the neighbouring bunk, wrapped in a blanket, lay Fidel. Suddenly he sat up in bed and started talking. “Know what I was just doing? Praying to God. I thought up the prayer myself. Wanna hear?”
“Well, go on.”
Fidel lifted his eyes and began, “Dear Lord! You see this whorehouse, I hope? You understand what guard duty means, I hope? If so, let it be that I get transferred to aviation. Or else, if worse comes to worst, to a construction battalion. And also, see to it that I don’t drink myself to death. For as it is, the trusties have vats of moonshine, and everything goes against the Moral Codex for Building Communism.
“Dear Lord! What do You hate me for? Even though I’m a no-good shit, I’m clean before the law. After all, I’ve never stolen anything. I just drink. And even that not every day.
“Dear Lord! Do You have a conscience, or not? If You’re not a phoney, let it be that Captain Prishchepa kicks the bucket as soon as possible. But the main thing, get rid of this melancholy… What do you think, is there a God?”
“Unlikely,” Alikhanov said.
“And I think that while everything is okay, maybe He really doesn’t exist. But when your back’s against the wall, maybe He does exist. So maybe it’s better to establish contact with Him ahead of time.”
Fidel leant over to Alikhanov and said softly, “I would like to get into paradise. Since Constitution Day I’ve set that goal for myself.”
“You’ll get in,” Alikhanov assured him. “You don’t have much competition in the guard section.”
“That’s just what I think,” Fidel agreed. “Our crowd here is hard to beat. Thieves and thugs. No paradise for them. They couldn’t get into a disciplinary battalion. So maybe with them for a backdrop I could just squeeze in, as a non-Party member.”
Towards ten o’clock, the whole company was completely drunk. The next guard shift was chosen from among those who could still walk. Sergeant Major Yevchenko assured them that the cold would sober them.
Security men wandered through the barracks, dragging machine guns and guitars behind them.
Two soldiers had already been tied up with telephone wire. They were carried to the drying room and set down on a pile of sheepskin jackets.
The guards in the Len
in Room were playing a game called “The tiger’s coming”. Everyone sat down at the table. Drank down a glass of vodka. Then Lance Corporal Kunin would say, “The tiger’s coming!”
The players slid under the table.
“As you were!” Kunin commanded.
Then the players would crawl out from under the table. Again drink vodka. After which Lance Corporal Kunin said, “The tiger’s coming!” And everyone again crawled under the table.
“As you were!” Kunin commanded.
This time, someone stayed under the table. Then a second and a third. Then Kunin himself keeled over. He could no longer say, “The tiger’s coming!” He dozed, resting his head on the red calico tablecloth.
Around twelve, Instructor Volikov ran in, shouting, “Guard section, to your weapons!”
Soldiers gathered around him.
“There’s a drunken female somewhere in the kennels,” the instructor explained. “Maybe she wandered in from the deportee settlement.”
The settlement of Chir was located a few kilometres away from the Sixth Camp Subdivision. Deported “social parasites” lived there, mainly prostitutes and black-marketeers. In exile they continued not to work. Many of them were convinced they were political prisoners.
The boys crowded around the instructor.
“Dzavashvili has a condom,” Matytsyn said. “I saw.”
“One?” Fidel asked.
“Oh look, a scholar!” Volikov said, getting angry. “This one needs his own private condom! You’ll wait your turn.”
“A lowly condom won’t help,” Matytsyn assured them. “I know these floozies. They’ve got as many gonococci down there as dogs. Now, if it were made of stainless steel…”
Alikhanov lay there thinking how vile were the faces of his fellow servicemen. “God, where have I landed?” he thought.
“Brothers, follow me!” Volikov yelled.
“Are you men or animals?” Alikhanov said. He had jumped down from his bunk. “You’re rushing out in one platoon to some dirty broad?”
“We don’t lap up politics!” Fidel said, stopping him. He had managed to change into a khaki fatigue shirt.
“I thought you wanted to get into Paradise.”
“Hell is all right with me too,” Fidel said.
Alikhanov stood in the doorway. “We stand guard over every sort of carrion. And you’re all worse than the zeks! What, it’s not true?”
“Don’t start,” said Fidel, “Why all the noise? Just remember, people call me courageous.”
“Quit jabbering,” said the towering Gerasimchuk. And he walked out, bumping against Alikhanov with his shoulder. The remaining soldiers followed him.
Alikhanov cursed, crawled under the blanket, and opened a book by Miroshnichenko called Clouds over Bryansk.
Balodis the Latvian was sitting on an overturned cooking pot taking off his shoes. He monotonously tugged at his leg. And each time he did this, he hit his head on the corner of the iron bed.
Balodis served as cook. His chief concern was the larder. Fat, jam and flour were stored in it. Balodis carried the keys on him all day, and when he went to sleep he tied them with a string to his genitals. This did not help. The night shift had twice managed to untie the keys and raid the larder. Even the flour had been eaten up.
“But I, I did not go,” Balodis said proudly.
“Why not?” Alikhanov slammed the book shut.
“I have a sweetheart near Riga. You don’t believe me? Her name is Anelle. She’s crazy about me something awful.”
“And you?”
“And I respect her.”
“What do you respect her for?” Alikhanov asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What attracts you to her? I mean, what made you fall in love with her specifically, this Anelle?”
Balodis thought awhile and said, “I could hardly love every broad near Riga…”
Reading was out of the question for Alikhanov. He didn’t manage to fall asleep. He thought about the soldiers who had gone to the kennel, imagined the vile details of their bacchanalia, and couldn’t fall asleep.
Twelve o’clock struck, people were already asleep in the barracks. This was how the New Year began.
Alikhanov got up and switched off the loudspeaker.
The soldiers returned one by one. Alikhanov was sure they would start sharing their impressions, but they each went silently to bed.
Alikhanov’s eyes got accustomed to the dark. The surrounding world was familiar and disgusting. The dark, hanging blankets. The rows of boots wound with foot cloths. Slogans and posters on the walls.
Suddenly Alikhanov understood that he was thinking about the exiled woman. More exactly, that he was trying not to think about that woman.
Without asking himself questions, Boris got dressed. He pulled on some pants and a fatigue shirt. Grabbed a sheepskin jacket from the drying room. Then, lighting a cigarette by the sentry, he went out onto the porch.
The night had come down heavily, right down to the ground. In the cold gloom, one could barely make out the road and the outlines of the forest that narrowed to the horizon.
Alikhanov crossed the snowy parade ground. Beyond it, the kennel compound began. The hoarse barking of dogs on chains came from behind the fence.
Boris cut across an abandoned railroad branch line and headed for the commissary. The store was closed, but the saleswoman, Tonechka, lived next door with her husband, an electrician. There was also a daughter, who came to visit only during holidays.
Alikhanov walked towards the light of a window half-covered by snowdrifts.
Then he knocked, and the door opened. From the drunken haze of the narrow room, the sounds of an old-fashioned tango could be heard. Squinting from the light, Alikhanov walked in. In the corner was a Christmas tree, leaning to one side and decorated with tangerines and food labels.
“Drink!” said the electrician.
He pushed a wine glass and a plate of wobbling aspic across the table to him.
“Drink, marauder! Eat, you son of a bitch!”
The electrician then put his head down on the oilcloth, obviously completely exhausted.
“Much obliged,” Alikhanov said.
Five minutes later, Tonechka handed him a bottle of wine wrapped in a poster from the local social club.
He left. The door crashed behind his back. Instantly, his long, awkward shadow disappeared from the fence. And again darkness fell under his feet.
He put the bottle in his pocket. The poster he crumpled up and threw away. He could hear it turning over and opening.
When Boris got back to the wire fences of the kennel, the dogs again began snarling.
The kennel grounds housed a lot of people. The dog-trainers lived in the first room, which was hung with diagrams, work rosters, lesson plans, a shortwave radio band decorated with a sketch of the Kremlin tower. Beside these, photographs of film stars from Soviet Screen had been tacked up. The film stars smiled, their lips slightly parted.
Boris stopped on the threshold of the second room. There, on a pile of dog-trainers’ uniforms, lay a woman. Her violet dress was entirely buttoned up. For all that, the dress had been yanked up to her ribs, while her stockings had fallen around her knees. Her hair, recently bleached with peroxide, was dark at the roots. Alikhanov came closer, bent down.
“Miss,” he said.
A bottle of Pinot Gris stuck out of his pocket.
“Ugh, just you go away,” the woman said, tossing uneasily in a half-sleep.
“Right away, right away, everything will be all right,” Alikhanov whispered, “everything will be okay.”
Boris covered the table lamp with a sheet of official instructions. He remembered that both instructors were away. One was spending the night in the barracks. The second had gone on skis to the railway crossing to visit a telephone-operator girl he knew.
With trembling hands, he pulled out the red stopper and started to drink right from the bottle. Then turned sudd
enly – the wine was spilling down the front of his shirt. The woman was lying with her eyes open. Her face expressed extraordinary concentration. For a few seconds both were silent.
“What’s that?” the woman asked. There were coquettish notes in her voice, garbled by drunken drowsiness.
“Pinot Gris,” Alikhanov said.
“Come again?” the woman said, startled.
“Pinot Gris, rosé, strong,” he answered conscientiously, reading the label.
“One of them here said, ‘I’ll bring some grub…’”
“I don’t have anything with me,” Alikhanov said, flustered. “But I’ll find something. What may I call you?”
“Whatever. My mama called me Lyalya.”
The woman pulled down her dress. “My stockings are always getting unDONE. I DO them up and they keep getting unDONE… Hey, what’s the matter with you?”
Alikhanov had taken a step forward, bent down, and shuddered from the smell of wet rags, vodka and hair tonic.
“Everything’s fine,” he said.
An enormous amber brooch scratched his face.
“Oh, you swine!” was the last thing he heard.
He sat in the office without turning on the lamp. Then he straightened up, his arms hanging limp. The buttons of his shirt cuffs clicked.
“Lord, where have I landed?” Alikhanov murmured. “Where have I landed? And how will it all end?”
Indistinct, fleeting memories came to him.
…A square in winter, tall rectangular buildings. A few schoolboys surround Vova Mashbits, the class telltale. Vova’s expression is frightened, he wears a foolish hat, woollen drawers… Koka Dementiyev tears a grey sack out of his hand. Shakes a pair of galoshes out onto the snow. After which, faint with laughter, he urinates into the sack. The schoolboys grab Vova, hold him by the shoulders, shove his head into the darkened sack. The boy stops trying to break loose. It’s not actually painful…
The schoolboys roar with laughter. Among the others is Borya Alikhanov, Pioneer* section leader and straight-A student.
The galoshes lie there on the snow, black and shiny. But now he also sees the multicoloured tents of a sports camp on the outskirts of Koktebel. Blue jeans hanging out to dry on a clothesline. A few couples dancing in the twilight. A small and shiny transistor radio standing on the sand.
The Zone Page 3