erging into the bright sunlight
on the road.
It took a while, but the platoon finally reached the top of the pass.
Oleg looked back down the winding road and saw, where the cliffs did not
obscure the view, the endless column of trucks, APCs, BTRs all moving
upwards and seemingly without end, heading towards the war, and who knew
where the end was, maybe only just leaving Kabul?
Closer to midday, when the road worsened perceptibly, pitted with ruts
and holes, forcing the vehicles to drive around fallen rocks, Sharagin
noticed that his driver was nodding off.
The BMP veered to the right, toward a steep slope, its nose swung up
and the vehicle began to tip.
... he's fallen asleep - we're going to overturn!...
Just a bit more, and they would have rolled over like a tortoise on its
back, a fifteen-ton juggernaut that would have crushed the life out of
everyone riding on its armor. Sharagin, who keeled over backwards and to the
side managed to right himself with difficulty, and rammed his boot into the
head of the driver, as if stamping on the brakes. The driver bashed his face
against the edge of the hatch, the taste of blood in his mouth and pain
snapping him back to reality. Shaken and disoriented he seemed not to know
who he was and where he was, he veered sharply to the left, blocking the
road and jamming on the brakes. Sharagin bit his tongue painfully.
... damn you, idiot! Now my tongue's going to hurt the rest of the
day...
Sharagin leapt to the nose of the BMP and punched the soldier's dust
covered face twice:
"I'll juggle your brains!"
The clouded eyes of the driver cleared. He found no reply or, more
likely, realized it was better to keep his mouth shut
"Keep moving! Go!"
The soldier tried to wipe his face with filthy, oil-smeared hands
covered in scabies, with cracked skin and hangnails, but all he succeeded in
doing was to make himself even dirtier.
...some luck! How do you fight with morons like that to back you?-every
third man in the platoon is a milksop who's never been under fire!-Never
mind, this one won't fall asleep again...
But for form's sake, he landed another blow on the driver's earphone
helmet:
"Just you try falling asleep again, Degtyarenko!"
Struggling to regain his calm, Sharagin chewed on a cigarette and
studied the surrounding countryside.
The stone monolith that had once cracked and given passage to the
aquamarine torrent and serpentine pass, was replaced by a valley. After the
oppressive feeling of the pass, the new vista gladdened a Russian's eye,
accustomed as it was to flat plains stretching into the distance as far as
one could see. He saw reeds, water-plains, something that for a moment
seemed almost familiar.
... if only one could see a habitual horizon, edged with trees...
He stared at the river which flowed more gently now, having broken
through the grip of the mountains, tried to find a familiar line of trees,
but his eye came up against a cluster of adobe dwellings and the illusion
vanished - Russia was a long way off.
... the village at the foot of the mountain belongs to the spooks-last
year our reconnaissance people got a nasty surprise there-.everything was
mined to the hilt-and over there is where we combed through the hills
ourselves, I think -mountains, just mountains-we're surrounded by
mountains...
The towering, virginal peaks of the mountains seemed to gaze down
disparagingly at the fuss and insignificance of human problems, while
between them lay streams and fields, scattered villages, and alien hordes,
speeding towards victory and death.
Huge cloud masses seemed jammed between the mountain peaks, no smaller
in size but floating like feathers. It was as if the ancient mountaintops
envied the lightness of the clouds, their ability to fly further without
thoughts or regrets. The snowy peaks reached up towards infinity, as if
wishing for freedom, wishing for the chance to break away from this world
and hide somewhere up above, as though tired of the world's foolishness,
cruelty, as if choking on air saturated with hatred, injustice, blood and
suffering.
... the mountains are always beside you in Afghanistan-sometimes behind
your back, like a person who stands there and stands there, you go to sleep
- and he stands there, you wake up - and he's still there-standing there
immobile and not going away-or the mountains rise before you like an
unimaginably high wall, so that nobody will ever be able to flee -Nature
didn't dream them up for nothing -if there were no mountains, who would
separate peoples who hate one another, who would shield them from death,
pursuit, vengeance-they would all slaughter their fellow beings on open
plains, would all come together in a mighty clash and perish in short order,
for people have not yet learned to live in accord, without envy and
violence-that's what mountains are for, and mighty forests, and deserts and
seas-these mountains protected Afghanistan for many years -It would appear
that we, Russians, as a people significant in history, have been endowed by
someone with extraordinary powers-history has scattered us over immense
territories, and maybe that's why we decided that we can influence the fates
of other peoples, not numerous by comparison with us, and therefore, not as
strong-.People whose bad luck it is to live next door to Russia-we never
took their plans into account, we decreed, we were intoxicated by our own
might-we colluded with evil, the devil, took part in his nefarious plans-the
devil's proving ground is here, in Afghanistan-sounds too mystical,
somehow-we got used to it gradually, the lust for power entered into our
blood - we must have some gene, just like the Americans, which is infected
by an illusory sense of being omnipotent-as if the fate of the rest of
humanity depends on us-.actually, that's partially right-if we want, we can
destroy the rest of the world in the fight against capitalism -however, my
friend, that's ideology-ideology is a temporary thing
- as for the Russian soul, that's eternal-who gifted us with this
mysterious soul, and why? -we will never have peace because of it-but enough
of that, it's not the time and place for such thoughts....
The ability to sense danger had never yet let Sharagin down. And if the
thought of spooks filled his head, it was not for nothing. That meant that
the spooks were really there, hidden, watching. Yet despite the sense of
spooks nearby, other thoughts flitted through his mind.
... they're right when they say: if you've got no erection, leave the
woman be!- we can't and don't know how to fight, we can't bring a dump like
Afghanistan to its knees all these years-so we should admit outright: we
failed, broke our back and spilled our guts-we keep imagining that we're the
strongest army in the world-yes, the paras did their job, so what else can
you ask of them? We're supposed to jump with parachutes, we're creatures of
the air, but they've driven us down into the dirt, we're ordered into
columns and driven like greasers to the ends of the earth, they've scattered
us over checkpoints and roadblocks, this isn't what we're supposed to be
doing, let the greasers from the infantry handle it!...
Sharagin turned and cast a look at his soldiers. Their dust-covered
faces expressed nothing.
...stupid blockheads-but the best soldier in the world is our soldier,
the Soviet soldier!...he isn't overly literate, he's not pampered, he will
bear anything, he'll die, he'll perish, but he'll never give up! Our
soldiers aren't spoiled American boys in Vietnam, who had special deliveries
of beer!...
Our soldier is the best! He'll break his back, but get to where he's
been ordered... and our officers - especially the lower ranks, say up to the
rank of major, or maybe inclusive, are all in top form, they can withstand
anything, they're not just ordinary people, they're supermen ... and then
what? What next? We're staying afloat on heroism of this kind, but it can't
last forever-so wouldn't it be better for us all to put our heads together
and work out where we went wrong?...
... he-e-ey! Mountains all around, it's just beautiful! If it wasn't
for the war, for those Afghans, it would be so great here!..
The Afghan landscape held numerous beauties for a northern man, and at
the same time frightened those who had not had time to become accustomed to
its alien contours.
At times it was hard to enjoy breathtaking panoramas objectively. Not
always and not everyone could separate the vision of snowy peaks and
copper-velvet slopes, plains covered with the lush green of vineyards, the
profusion of blood-red poppies spreading like a carpet woven by skilled
masters, from the image of a treacherous mujahideen, an evil character out
of some Eastern tale, a bandit clutching a knife.
The image of the mujahideen produced a feeling of danger: this feeling
of danger grew into fear, and fear generated hatred and distrust of the
mountains: one could enjoy the alien landscape only after conquering fear.
It took years to accept, to fit into and understand this place, come to
love it and learn to stop fearing it.
...the mistiness of Andromeda, the Milky Way, Solaris...we have come
from another galaxy, bloody cosmonauts... how did we get here? ..piled up
armored vehicles... disturbed the Afghan anthill...
And even if the surrounding landscape opened its secrets, became
understandable, no matter how slowly and reluctantly, the Afghans themselves
remained an enigma.
...why are we here? What can we have in common with this wild, backward
country? What fraternization can there be? Damn it, how can they possibly be
our friends?! This place should be declared a reservation...the Stone Age...
The Afghans had to be kept at a safe distance, any fool could see that.
Wrapped in an alien prayer, the life of the Afghans ran its course, in the
distant 14th century by the Muslim calendar, behind blind walls in
accordance with laws passed down from fathers and grandfathers. In any case,
the distance between the Afghans and the shuravi was measured in centuries.
Sometimes the distance would narrow to the counter of a shop. But even then,
there could be no full understanding. Devoured by suspicion, excessive
caution, the Soviets would retreat quickly, buying a few things on the run.
More often than not, the distance between the Afghans and the Soviets was
measured by a burst of machine gun fire.
And because they did not understand and did not wish to understand the
Afghans, because they guessed subconsciously that the war would not be long
and was totally useless, nobody tried to like the land and its people. That
was probably why every Afghan, be he one of the mujahideen, or a farmer
tending his field, a smiling driver waving from a bus, an unwashed barefoot
urchin, a newly-drafted recruit into the Afghan army, clad in the sack-like
uniform of an army propped up by the tanks of the "limited contingent" -
they were all perceived as spooks, bandits, enemies, so you could trust only
yourself and depend on yourself, or on those like you, shuravi like
yourself, Soviets; and a man felt safe and secure only inside the garrison,
surrounded by barbed wire, tanks and machine guns; fate had strewn Soviet
military divisions all over Afghanistan, they were like islands in an ocean,
lonely, far from the mainland.
... "mountains, dust and hepatitis- free additions to the international
duty," grumbled captain Morgultsev... those bald mountains up ahead seem to
be crouching silently, waiting for their prey...us...and we still have to
crawl and crawl before we reach the foot of those mountains-we move and they
stand still, we will fight, we'll all die here, while the mountains will
continue to stand there indestructible and immobile, totally indifferent to
our sufferings, our joys, we're alien to them, our troubles,
bent turret, like an impotent's penis ...dozens of machine gun holes
and larger ones from grenades, remnants of fuel carriers, an empty "Kamaz"
cabin with smashed front and side windows...a huge garbage dump, the waste
products of unequal battles...here they got the better of us...the truck
found its mine, and it destroyed its front end, so now it looks like a drunk
with smashed lips, a broken nose and a dislocated jaw..."
A burned out BTR reminded Sharagin of a gigantic turtle. He had never
actually seen a giant turtle, only small ones, but in his imagination these
huge denizens of the ocean kingdom left the water as immense creatures
securely protected by an impenetrable shell, which hid a wise, wrinkled
head.
As if driven by some irresistible instinct, infantry combat vehicle
turtles and BMP turtles, whole armies of deep-water inhabitants had left
their domain and come to war.
Once in childhood Oleg had stopped a boy who was running and waving an
ax, like a Red Indian. In his hand he held a tortoise.
"Where are you off to?" asked Oleg, stopping the boy who was about
three years younger than he was.
"I'm going to smash the shell and pull that creature out!"
"Give it here!"
"No, I won't," the youngster replied sullenly.
"I told you - give it here!"
He took away the tortoise, took it to the river and let it go. Finding
itself free, the tortoise stuck out its head and began to move over the
grass. The next day Oleg encountered the younger boy again.
"What are you grinning for?" asked Oleg suspiciously. The lad stuck out
his tongue, pulled a face and ran off.
... he must have followed me and found that tortoise... And finished
it...
The burned BTR looked like a tortoise that had been subjected to
lengthy assault with an ax, blows inflicted with fury and shouts, until it
split.
Closer to the village lay a tank turret, flung far by a mine and bent
like a paralyzed figure. Two Afghan boys sat on it, watching the passing
column of Soviet military might with black, beady eyes.
A deeply tanned and wrinkled Afghan with a mangy beard walked along the
roadside, leading a heavily laden donkey. He looked askance at the passing
column and caught the eyes of a fair-haired, bewhiskered Soviet officer; the
Afghan muttered something to himself, barely moving his lips which exposed
greenish teeth; the old man's face expressed neither pleasure nor dislike.
In that moment or just afterwards, Sharagin experienced a sense of deja-vu.
... this has all happened before, but where? When?..
The answer surfaced fairly soon.
...a movie about the Great Patriotic War ...from childhood....one of
our men is driving along in a hay cart, and German tanks rumble past him.
Tanned young men, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, smoking and shouting
something in their own German tongue...the man turns his head, and the
camera captures the hidden, unwilling fear in thy eyes of those fascists, a
fear of the Russian who is presently unarmed, in principle poses no threat
at the given moment, who hasn't said a word, but who silently watches the
German army vehicles heading across the field in the direction of the
village...every Soviet viewer would have felt, after that shot, that no
matter how gay and carefree the fascists seemed, in their heart of hearts
they feared our people, especially the partisans-and fear had probably found
a place deep in the hearts of the fascists, because the more death, grief
and destruction they wreak on our Motherland, the more fear they experience
because they cannot know that the day of reckoning will come...
Such thoughts and associations were fleeting, lasting only a few
seconds, and in order not to let them grow into something bigger, press on
his psyche, he pushed them away quickly, to the back of his mind, for later.
... we're not invaders-we're carrying out orders-.we came to help the
Afghans, even though some of them don't want our help...
All that was asked of Sharagin was that he obey orders, make sure that
the unit entrusted to his care - a tiny part of the machine called the Army
- functioned smoothly. And that he, as a man genuinely devoted to the Army,
try to carry out his duty as platoon leader to the best of his ability,
thrusting aside any heart-burning doubts which, especially towards the end
of the term of service, tried to surface and demand answers and conclusions.
Sometimes he envied his friends who lacked the ability to reason, and
were thus calm and carefree.
... their faces have never been disfigured by thought...and they have
no trouble going to sleep...
...as captain Morgultsev says: "An officer shouldn't think why he
receives a certain order from the Motherland, the more so some
Ivan-the-platoon-leader!"-we are paid not for our rank or duties, but for
devotion to the Motherland, which has the right, when she so wishes, to
demand the life of an officer who has sworn allegiance to her...
On the way to the operation Sharagin repeatedly recalled the first
months of service in Afghanistan, his first sharp impressions of the war and
the people involved in it. Some of those people served in the platoon today,
riding neighboring BMPs, part had gone home, others had not lived to be
replaced but found their final resting place in the mountains, the sands and
the greeneries of Afghanistan.
...somewhere in the dust storms are the souls of our men, borne away by
the 'afghan' wind, people who were close, and then perished. ..all our
people are somewhere close ...one foot here, the other one back home...
This was what the senior lieutenant usually told himself whenever he
sighted yet another cairn - out of stones, shell-cases, tires - with a name
and surname, and dates of birth and death - short stretches of time, from
twenty to twenty five years.
The leading vehicles stopped, so there was something like a short
break: those who had lagged needed a chance to catch up. And the men could
grab a quick bite of something, relieve themselves and stretch their legs.
The drivers took advantage of the unscheduled break and with tacit
consent delved in the motors of their vehicles; the army didn't dismount for
long, and only the front ranks, the rest had long ago lost the general
rhythm of the march, like the tail of an immense lizard had become delayed,
broken down, lost miles far behind.
Sharagin's platoon, occupying its place in the general "thread" of the
company, came to a halt some two hundred meters from an Afghan checkpoint, a
squat clay fortification to the side of the road, surrounded by some sparse
trees and a proudly waving flag.
Children from the nearest village were already swarming over the
military vehicles.
"Nobody move away from the vehicles!" ordered Sharagin. "I'm off to see
captain Zebrev."
"What if we need a crap, comrade senior lieutenant?" cried Myshkovsky
with exaggerated pathos, theatrically clamping his arms around his stomach.
"Worry not, Myshkovsky, crap into your partner's hand!"
... never would have thought that weed would turn into a real para...
"Hey, commander, how's things?" panted a barefooted Afghan kid, running
towards Sharagin.
He was carrying mandarins, chewing gum and postcards of Indian film
stars in a torn paper bag.
"Buru, bacha! Buru!" snapped Sharagin at the youth weaving around
underfoot.
"Hey, friend! How are things?" said the lad to the soldier sitting on
the nose of the BMP, who had just been kidding about a bellyache and was
about to jump down to the ground. "Got goods? What you sell?"
Junior sergeant Myshkovsky stretched himself, sighed deeply and
squinted in the sunlight.
"Nothing, bacha. We've earned nothing yet."
"Yet!" repeated Sychev in minatory tones, raising his index finger.
The young Afghan, sensing an interest, did not retreat but kept
offering mandarins, fanned out the postcards.
"Give us a look at those," said Sychev. "Shuravi control, bacha!"
The lad extended the photos.
"Here, take them back! Now, if only they were wearing swimsuits-"
The Afghan remained where he was.
"Got no money, understand? No paysa. Nist paysa! Want to exchange?"
Myshkovsky offered a pack of "Donskiye", the worst possible cigarettes
without filters that were issued to the soldiers. "You give me some
mandarins." The bacha understood and agreed. "Only remember, bacha, don't
die from cigarettes! One costs three years of life!"
The other soldiers laughed.
Myshkovsky climbed down and began to peel the mandarins and would have
finished them quietly and driven on, only it was his bad luck that a chubby
lieutenant colonel appeared on the scene. Cheeks like a chipmunk, eyebrows -
a spitting image of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev.
The lieutenant colonel looked ludicrous in a helmet, because nobody
ever wore a helmet on the march, especially during a rest break. A machine
gun with paired magazines was slung across his chest, a cartridge case stuck
out from his side like an enlarged liver, grenade pins protruded from the
breast pocket of his bullet-proof vest - indeed, it appeared as though he
was ready to take on an entire band of spooks single-handed.
The lieutenant colonel fastened on to Myshkovsky, yelling as though
he'd been just let loose off a chain.
The officer was infuriated by the fact that a soldier had entered into
an exchange with an Afghan, cigarettes for mandarins.
"So what's wrong with that?" asked Myshkovsky, unperturbed.
He was no newcomer to Afghanistan, he kept his cool. But the lieutenant
colonel, judging by his extravagant equipment, was a new arrival, and was
probably a political officer who'd never been under fire to boot, decided
Myshkovsky, even though he wore a striped undershirt.
"They were my cigarettes, we swapped-"
"By what right?" yelled the officer. "What's your name? Where's your
commanding officer? What company?-"
Not waiting to hear the answer, the lieutenant colonel became even more
angry when he saw the soldier was not dressed in regulation kit: Myshkovsky
was wearing "Kimry" sneakers instead of boots.
Political officer for sure, decided Myshkovsky. Bloody headquarters
rat!
The well-fed lieutenant colonel, who had gone on this battle assignment
like a walk in order to earn another merit mark which would count later when
it came time to receive a medal, had no understanding of an ordinary
soldier's cunning: in the mountains, the regulation boots were heavy and
awkward, little better than the domestic "shit-squashers." And in any case,
it did not matter what you wear in combat and what your have on your feet
when you get killed.
And so they stood there face to face.
The lieutenant colonel saw an insolent, rotten creature of a soldier,
who eats mandarins on the march, who has acquired freedom, who has been
over-indulged by his commanding officer, and who must be punished because he
stands there in the middle of the road without a machine gun, without a
bullet-proof vest and wears sneakers.
The soldier, in his turn, thought that all officers are, by and large,
animals, blood-suckers, and this particular lieutenant colonel is a pig who
doesn't really care about anything except his own hide and career-
The soldiers and junior officers drawn by the lieutenant colonel's
shouts stood around in silence and, as is customary in the army, did not
interfere.
Accustomed to frequently unwise displays of emotion, high-handedness
and sheer rudeness from senior officers, they watched this unexpected
nonsense in silence; none of them had the right to contradict a senior
officer. Everyone understood that the lieutenant colonel was an idiot, that
he had been born that way and would never change, and also realized, because
that is always obvious, that the lieutenant colonel had no genuine
commander's anger in him, only a passing outburst, a stupidity far removed
from matters of principle or discipline, the stupidity of a man who had
never assumed command and therefore had nobody to vent his spleen on for a
long time.
In the army - you yell, and get it off your chest. As for the one you
yelled at, he'll yell at or insult somebody else, you can't bottle emotions
up indefinitely, after all, or you'll go mad.
So that's how it comes to pass that the armed forces of the Soviet
Union are daily shaken by yelling, the chain of slights extends from the top
to the very bottom of the scale, to the soldiers, and they have their own
conflicts-
Undeserved offensive words poured from the lieutenant colonel's lips,
like amoebic diarrhea. Myshkovsky had vivid recollections of that illness:
he'd done his share of running back and forth to the latrine. The plump
officer had grown hoarse, drops of sweat trickled from beneath the cap he
wore under the helmet, but he continued to rant at the soldier, calling him
a thief, a looter, a robber, that bastards like him are a blot on the honor
of the Soviet internationalist soldier.
A bloody political officer for sure, decided Myshkovsky.
The lieutenant colonel spluttered on:
"-here in Afghanistan people serve with a clear conscience! They die
for the revolution..!" he proclaimed as if he were reading a lecture to a
group of dumb collective farm workers. He kept trying to pin Myshkovsky
against the armor, even though the soldier was quite hefty.
The officer kept his eyes just above Myshkovsky's head, almost treading
on his toes.
Sharagin and Zebrev were drinking tea from a thermos. They opened a tin
and poked fun at Pashkov. Pashkov had finished his cigarette and stuck his
hands into his pockets.
"What are you doing with your hands?" queried Zebrev. "Playing billiard
balls?"
"Hey, sarge, are you planning to retire in Afghan?"
"Give me a break-" Pashkov cleaned his sunglasses with the hem of his
shirt, blew on them and wiped them again.
"Say, sarge, is "Zubrovka" vodka Montana?"
"Zubrovka? You bet!"
"What about "Pertsovka"?"
"That's Montana, too!"
"And pork belly?"
Engineering marking and mine-clearing vehicles began to crawl past the
ones that had stopped for a break, with their long arms and unwieldy scoops,
bullet-proof cabins; they were followed by a tank without a cannon with
rotating huge "eggs" on top - mine crushers; then came sappers, riding a BTR
with a canopy rigged on top, accompanied by two German shepard dogs, dry
tongues hanging out.
"What would be the first thing you'd do back home?"
"Enough of that, comrade captain! I'm off for a piss!"
"Remember Oleg, how they went to the latrine hand in hand"
... The love affair with the fat waitress was the talk of the regiment.
After the appearance of this woman of enormous sizes, something struck
Pashkov, he went around in a daze for a week.
None of the officers would have dreamed that Pashkov would fall for the
waitress. When Sharagin and Zebrev first saw them going for a walk together,
they could not believe their eyes.
At first they thought that Pashkov simply wanted a woman, but
afterwards the warrant officer declared that it was serious.
"Real Montana!"
Amid the laughter of the officers, Morgultsev recounted an anecdote
about a goat, which was kept on a ship instead of a woman. The captain
ordered the men to put a ruble in a moneybox every time they "used" the poor
animal in order to collect the sum that the goat had cost. After a while the
captain noticed that someone was not paying the set sum. It emerged that the
boatswain was the guilty party.
"When pressed, the boatswain said exactly what you're saying, sarge. He
said: "I can't pay, comrade captain, we've got a serious relationship-!"
Pashkov cast dark looks at Morgultsev for a week after that, but that
didn't stop him from shaving thoroughly every morning and dousing himself
with eau-de-cologne, saying: "Eau-de-cologne - that's cultured. And yogurt's
healthy."
They made such an odd couple - wiry Pashkov and the fat waitress on her
short legs - that the entire regiment watched the romance unfold with bated
breath. It was especially funny to see the lovebirds walking hand in hand
and then splitting up to go to the latrine - a low building, separated in
half. The waitress would break off and head left, Pashkov - right, and then
a few minutes later they would reunite and continue their stroll or go to
the barracks which housed female personnel.
The romance lasted more than a month. Then clouds appeared in Paradise,
and Pashkov resorted to a three-litre jar for solace-
"Something's going on with your guys," said Zebrev suddenly.
"That's right," affirmed Pashkov. "Something's up. Not Montana!"
"Can't leave them alone for a moment!" grumbled Sharagin, turning and
seeing the strange huddle of soldiers.
The corner of Myshkovsky's lip jerked with a nervous tic. He bore the
abuse, held on to his composure and kept his mouth shut. Mentally, however,
he put a few bullets into the lieutenant colonel's head.
Finally running out of expletives, the lieutenant colonel saw that the
soldier was wearing a magnetic bracelet on his wrist: this set him off
again, even more than before, with new force, as though he had discovered
stolen property:
"Aha! He's got a bracelet! I'm an officer, and I can't afford anything
like that! "
"Jackal," thought Myshkovsky. "can't afford it, you sonofabitch.! You
earn thirty times more than I do! All I'll be taking back home will be this
bracelet, a briefcase and a shawl for my mother on my wages. As for you, you
rotten bastard, you'll ship back a whole container, fill your apartment to
bursting with Japanese gadgets!-And never expose your ass to gunfire-"
"You're a thief!" shouted the lieutenant colonel. "In sneakers, with a
bracelet! Sold your rifle already, hey? Where's your rifle? Where's your
bullet-proof vest?"
That was too much, and the lieutenant colonel knew he had gone too far.
However, raised as he was on slogans and agitation jargon, he lost control
of himself when he had an audience, pushed his line and attacked the "enemy"
or the miscreant with due Party ferocity, seeing the "truth" only as he knew
it, how it appeared in his own head, giving out his own version of what he
had heard from people with more stars on their shoulder-boards. You can
drive anyone up the wall with quotes and slogans.
Myshkovsky pulled the bracelet off, threw it on the ground at the
lieutenant colonel's feet, turned around and stalked off.
"Live, you sonofabitch," he muttered through clenched teeth.
The lieutenant colonel was clearly nonplussed by such insolence and
made a move as if to seize Myshkovsky's shoulder, casting a regretful glance
at the bracelet (too many witnesses to pick it up) but at that moment he was
hailed from the BTR he'd jumped from five minutes ago:
"Let's go, Borya! The column's moving!"
The lieutenant colonel swore as though at all the surrounding soldiery
and hurried off, clumsy under his own weight and an excess of unnecessary
weapons and bullet-proof vest, grabbed someone's extended hand, hung in
mid-air for a moment, helmet askew, then scrambled up on the armor.
"What happened, Myshkovsky?" asked Sharagin.
"Nothing much, comrade senior lieutenant. He didn't like my sneakers."
"Mount up!"
The army moved on, leaving evidence of its rest in the form of oil
stains, tin cans, dry rations packs, puddles of urine and cigarette butts.
Sharagin's platoon moved off in its turn, keeping a sensible distance,
allowing the preceding vehicle a fifty-meter clearance, so that the dust it
raised would settle a little.
Myshkovsky turned away from the others and smoked, hiding the tears of
frustration in his eyes. The lieutenant colonel had made it quite clear to
him that he was a louse, that he had no rights whatsoever, just like a year
ago when he had been a newcomer to the platoon and junior sergeant Titov had
hazed him mercilessly day and night. Myshkovsky had taken it all, hadn't
given in, had not succumbed to self-pity, had not complained, had not cried
from pain and humiliation. Yet now he had let it get at him; just as well
nobody could see these tears of someone with no defense in the face of
stupidity, inhumanity, and base behavior of an officer to a soldier.
Myshkovsky's unmoving, stooped back gave no clue to what had happened
and whether he was upset by it. He, a soldier, would never admit that
someone had been able to hurt him. It's not done in the army for a soldier
to pour out his troubles to an officer.
...that's our apprentice's lot in the army, you have to grin and bear
it...the one with the most stars on his uniform is always right...
As if breaching a dam, the armored vehicles poured out into a valley,
spreading out over a wide field that opened before them, leaving no room,
filling all the available space like a camouflage blanket; the army units
wound across the field like a thick snake coiling in upon itself; the battle
group was settling down as comfortably as it could for the night.
The immense army scattered like wandering tribes over the field: tents,
armored vehicles, trucks, communication lines; more and more units arrived.
Every branch of the army contributed men to this operation, a platoon
here, a battalion there, a regiment - all were gathered into the huge army
cauldron: artillery, paratroops, reconnaissance, airmen, communications
staff, medics. This was all to be directed at the enemy, to crush and
destroy him.
A smell of diesel, fires, urine and feces hung in the air, permeating
tasteless combat rations, and only the Kabul-baked bread, which had become
stale during the march, did not absorb the odors of the gigantic military
force.
The contours of upraised gun barrels, like masts at a ship graveyard,
rose against the reddish copper disc of the setting sun; trucks displayed
their humps; helicopters, blades drooping, settled on the outskirts of the
force; darkness fell quickly, the tired army prepared for sleep.
At different spots of this maelstrom of men and machines, general
Sorokin and senior lieutenant Sharagin sat and smoked. The silhouettes of
armored vehicles were all around.
...everything repeats itself-that time there was also a military
operation, the same mountains, spooks...
Scattered memories beckoned into the past, varied, prickly, painful and
untimely recollections washed over him as he sat smoking.
-The fuel truck had just moved away from the last chopper, rumbling
over the airport metal. On command, the paras who had been resting beside
the airstrip, moved in single file, bulky with equipment, machine guns slung
across their chests. They entered the chopper one by one, settling in and
staring out of the windows.
The Mi-8 moved out on to the strip, bobbing around a bit, feeling the
air, like a boxer warming up before a fight. They rolled forward, gathering
speed as if not intending to leave the ground, then rose and veered to the
left.
... fields slipped by like the squares on a chessboard which had been
moved out of line for some reason, upsetting the proper order, spots of
greenery flashed by, the chopper's shadow sped along underneath, growing
larger or smaller, a village, a vineyard, a small river, the chopper rose,
gaining altitude as it neared the foothills...
... and the Mi-8 chopper, like a big, green tadpole...which just a
moment ago had been flying on a parallel course, grim and ready for battle,
suddenly plummeted to earth...
...they took it out in full flight, like a duck shot at dawn...
...flare! There was an explosion and a burst of flame!..
Blackened corpses, scattered throughout the smoking remains of the
chopper.
...the sweet smell of human flesh...
They burned alive. Nobody survived.
...there'll be many who won't come back from this operation-and
somebody will draw up figures: so many killed, so many wounded-and nothing
will change in the world...and some stupid lieutenant will come up to the
fire and ask about the number of losses...
He had come up to the fire then, that lieutenant from the motorized
infantry, started chattering about the heroic feats of the Bagram division,
then asked:
"What are your losses?"
"Five from the regiment today."
"That's nothing!" responded the lieutenant proudly. "We've already got
seventeen dead! Six went up on a mine only yesterday!"
It was unclear, what he had been expecting. Possibly he thought that
everyone would think that his unit really knew how to fight, so had been
sent into the very thick of the combat.
Nobody said anything.
After that mission Sharagin bought a bottle of vodka in Kabul, they
steamed themselves for about three hours, sweating out tiredness and bad
thoughts.
"Sell your last pants, but have a drink after washing," said Zebrev,
slashing Sharagin's already red back with a bunch of twigs. "Ulyu-ulyu! Who
was it said that? Peter the Great, that's who!"
When they raised the traditional third toast, Sharagin caught himself
thinking that the "portrait gallery" of the dead had increased. The first in
the "gallery" was sergeant Panasyuk, on whose bed an enlarged and therefore
murky photograph had been kept put up a long time-the last-The last had
been-
...Nikolai- how did that happen? -why him?..
And Sharagin answered himself:
...his number came up...
The faces of the dead rose in his mind's eye - soldiers who had not had
time to become men, faces of lieutenants, still partly boys, faces of grim
captains - faces which formed the foundation, the backbone of the army.
The army lived at the cost of soldiers, lieutenants and captains, and
sometimes even won. It was they who bore the weight of the army on their
shoulders.
If not for these lieutenants, captains and simple village lads,
battered by the anxiety and unstable army life, by vodka, by the war itself,
-unpolished ignoramuses, nothing in their heads, simple as the whistle
of a train-
if not for them- the Soviet Army would have ceased to exist long ago-
Sharagin stepped on his cigarette butt, went off to sleep. It was
already totally dark.
...all that's in the past-shouldn't have come to mind-
He crawled into his sleeping bag and dropped off to sleep quickly,
despite the stirrings of the men all around, the far and close by noises,
the swearing and shouts, which seemed to breathe life into the camp,
creating the illusion of a big city, far from the war and therefore
comforting.
The general was not at all tired and was afraid that he would have
trouble getting to sleep and probably for this reason drew out time,
questioned the soldier who acted as his driver in a kind and fatherly manner
about where he was from, as though the general really cared, how much time
he had left to serve, did he go on missions often? The soldier kept his eyes
lowered and pretended that he was touched by the general's interest, though
experience showed that generals often have these moods, maybe because they
feel guilty before soldiers, maybe because they want to seem better than
they really are.
The soldier knew that generals never remember the men's faces, that
there was nothing to be expected from this passing