eone
would race from the command barracks to the  latrine like a bat out of hell.
The  rookies,  more seasoned  soldiers and  the grandpas were reduced  to  a
common level by their plight as they sat side by side in the latrine.
     There  were  not  enough newspapers.  The  bound  volume of "Red  Star"
disappeared  from the Lenin Room. Nemilov was  furious, branding the unknown
thieves  saboteurs, threatened  an  investigation  by  the Third Section but
removed the bound volume of "Pravda" just in case. The Political Officer was
known  for his fastidiousness,  washed his hands about  seventeen and a half
times a day,  tried not to  touch anything. His  thin,  pale lips twisted in
disgust  at  the  sight of  the diarrhea-drained soldiers, his face mirrored
distaste  toward  the  illnesses  which  broke  out  in  the  company,   his
evenly-parted  hair, clean  fingernails and flawlessly  white collars  spoke
eloquently  of   his   disapproval  of  the   common  soldiers  and  certain
non-too-clean officers.
     Formerly tanned  lads,  bursting with rude  health would quickly become
listless, thin,  their  faces a  greenish hue when they succumbed  to amebic
dysentery  or some other local  bug. They lost weight visibly, dehydrated by
the dysentery.
     Reveille-toilet-physical
exercises-toilet-breakfast-toilet-lineup-toilet-political
studies-toilet-weapons
cleaning-toilet-lunch-toilet-duties-toilet-dinner-toilet-lights out - toilet
round  the clock kept everyone chained  to the vicinity of the latrine, even
the sick did not venture from this vital object  to a distance from which it
would not be possible to reach the latrine faster than a spook's bullet.
     The  troops forgot everything on  earth, took no  pleasure in anything.
Even the grandpas were so exhausted by constant "shit hemorrhages" that they
stopped  harassing  the rookies. Junior  sergeant Titov, who  liked  to pump
lead,  flexing  his  ready  for   demobilization  biceps  and  triceps,  and
gunlayer-operator  PFC Prokhorov  -  a bark and  troublemaker,  and sergeant
Panasyuk, spent their  days sitting glumly in the smoking  room, because  it
was  closest to  the  latrine. All in all, though,  suffering  diarrhea  was
preferable  to  turning  yellow  and  being  shunted  off  to hospital  with
hepatitis.
     The only  officers  in  the company  who did  not  catch  the  bug were
Chistyakov and Morgultsev. Zhenka was certain that God was looking after him
and keeping him  safe from illness and death in battle, because  he had been
carrying a small  icon  in  his  pocket for  two years  now. His  mother had
sneaked the icon into  his case just before  he left home. Zhenka discovered
the icon en  route, did not throw it away but secreted it just in case, with
his documents,  and  thus managed to carry it through customs and across the
border unnoticed. Nemilov  once  caught Zhenka  with  the icon,  read him  a
homily,  but  refrained  from  reporting  him.  Actually,  the  God  who was
supposedly  looking  after  Zhenka slipped  up  once;  Zhenka ate  a jar  of
home-made jam, sharing the same spoon with a KGB officer who hailed from the
same  parts  as he. The  KGB  man  succumbed  first,  went  all yellow,  the
hepatitis gathered strength, and a  week later Zhenka followed him  into the
infectious diseases  hospital.  In  fact,  Zhenka  was  a  dyed-in-the  wool
atheist, and cursed by  God and  His Mother  so frequently, that the ears of
the Holy Family must have burned so much  it was a miracle that the wrath of
God did not descend on the senior lieutenant's unit.
     Morgultsev, company captain, considered himself a  total unbeliever. He
had never stepped across the  threshold  of a church and did  not believe in
miracles.  He kept himself safe with garlic.  He would  eat a whole head  of
garlic before lunch.  Zhenka had nothing against a bit  of insurance on  the
side through garlic,  but that made  forays into the goods depot  a problem.
Zhenka  went  there whenever  he could in order to entertain  members of the
female sex in the Soviet Army. He  would play the  guitar  and sing. Amorous
interludes would follow  later. He would swear that this  was true love, but
that he could not stay behind even for her, beautiful though she was. Before
going to sleep he would sigh: "A blonde....and  not for  money, but for real
love, with me..."
     They never did find out who brought the infection into the company.
     "The  fuck  you'll  sort  it  out,"  said  captain  Morgultsev  dourly,
sweepingly classifying the drooping "elephants" as malingerers.
     Any commanding  officer would be at his wits'  end in such a situation.
Is this a company, or what? Are these paratroopers, or what? The troops were
issued tablets, some were packed off to hospital.
     The strange appellation "elephants" caught on among the troops long ago
and for a rather unusual reason. It  arose from  their  training in case  of
chemical warfare, before Afghanistan. The  officer would shout: "Masks!" and
the men  would drag  gas  masks  out of the green bags on their backs, shove
them over shaven and  unshaven heads: their eyes would stare out from behind
the glass, which would soon mist over,  and long tubes  extended like trunks
from the masks to the filter in the bag. Very soon, a joke started doing the
rounds about a commander of unit X whose small, capricious daughter demanded
that Daddy show  her some elephants  running around  outside,  otherwise she
won't  go to sleep, or eat, and stood there stamping her  tiny feet angrily.
Anything for peace! So Daddy  issued an order: "Company, ten-hut! Gas masks!
On the double!" And the "elephants" had to run  around and work  up a sweat,
choking and cursing everything on earth until ordered to stand down.
     Maybe someone  picked up the bug  in  the mess hall,  or drank unboiled
water, or ate an unwashed fruit from the town. Or maybe the disease had come
from the nearby  village, brought  in  by  flies, or a cloud  of dust, which
would hang in the air for a long time after the passage of any vehicle.
     The regiment had long shielded itself  from  the  Afghans  and anything
connected  with  them.  Fenced  itself  off with  barbed  wire,  minefields,
trip-wires, flares, machine gun nests, trenches, parapets, watchtowers, tank
armor, mortar and  artillery positions.  Sentries kept  a  sharp lookout  to
ensure that the enemy or some Afghan from  the neighboring village could not
come close. But the enemy did not come, made no move to attack the regiment.
Dysentery, hepatitis, amebic dysentery and typhoid struck instead.
     "Go  take  a  rope  and hang  yourself!"  joked the  company  commander
watching senior  warrant  officer Pashkov's diarrhea-induced sufferings. "At
least you'll die like a man and not a shit fountain!"
     Pashkov was  the first  to fall ill, and for some time it was suspected
that he had been the vector. However, it turned out that three soldiers from
the last contingent  of  newcomers  had been afflicted for several days now.
Rookies Myshkovsky, Sychev  and Chirikov had simply kept their  mouths  shut
out of military stupidity and ignorance of local diseases.
     From their arrival in  Fergana, efforts were made to instill elementary
rules of basic personal hygiene into the thick workers-and-peasant skulls of
the  recruits but  as a rule, with meager results.  Only  after having  gone
through  the furnace of  hepatitis,  typhoid and  dysentery does  the rookie
understand that  hands must  be  washed with soap, and not just  once a day,
that only boiled water  should be drunk - and if that's not available, it is
better  to remain thirsty.  That it  is not advisable  to use someone else's
spoon, that mess tins should be scrubbed until they shine, that if an Afghan
fly settles  on your miserable portion of yellow,  runny butter,  you should
think a dozen times before sticking it down your throat, that you should not
eat anything that comes to hand however hungry you might  be. Young soldiers
are always hungry.  They will gape at the fruits and vegetables displayed on
Afghan stalls,  they will pick  up a fallen unripe tomato from a puddle  and
eat  it  after a cursory wipe  against their sleeve, eat their fill  of free
water-melon, they will drink from a mountain stream without a second thought
if they're thirsty.
     PFC Prokhorov saw private Chirikov hanging around near the latrine, and
called him over:
     "Hey! 'Buchenwald strongman'! Come here!"
     "What?" asked Chirikov listlessly.
     "Not 'what', but report properly!"
     "Comrade PFC, private Chirikov reporting as ordered."
     "Go get me a bottle of soda."
     "What about money?"
     "Don't you have any of your own?! What are you gaping  at?! I'll square
up with you later." Prokhorov  was a small man, but very agile. He took up a
karate stance and landed Chirikov a shrewd blow on the neck with the edge of
his  palm.  Chirikov yelped and shuffled off in  the direction of the store.
Junior sergeant Titov gave a snort of laughter.
     "Think you're a regular Bruce Lee, don't you?"
     "If I wasn't sick, I'd show you the meaning of sparring!"
     "You already  have."  Titov  waved dismissively. "While you're flinging
your  fucking feet around in the air, I'll give you such a whack on the head
you won't know what hit you."
     Myshkovsky and Sychev emerged  from  the  latrine.  Myshkovsky had been
nicknamed "Virgin" because his parents  had conceived  him somewhere in  the
steppes of Kazakhstan, while they were turning up its virgin soil. They must
have been  overcome  with joy at their  own inhuman efforts. The mother died
soon after giving birth, and  the  father  took to  drink. So Myshkovsky had
been  called "the  orphan"  in his time, but  eventually  "Myshara"  was the
nickname that stuck. The other one, Sychev, freckle-faced and with prominent
ears, gloried in the nickname "Odessa" in honor of  the fine Black Sea  city
in which he was born.
     "Myshara! Odessa! Get  your asses over here! Going to the can a bit too
often,  aren't  you?" Hounding the  youngsters  was  a  favorite  pastime of
Prokhorov's. He used Chirikov as a target for his karate tricks, but did not
try that  with  Sychev,  who was  strongly built  and  quite up to taking on
Titov.  However, there  was  nothing to  stop  Prokhorov from having his fun
verbally. "What the hell do you do in there? Read the papers?"
     "What does everyone usually do there?" snarled Sychev.
     "Jerking off?!"
     "No!" chorused the recruits indignantly.
     "Don't wait for policemen in the night!" quoted Prokhorov aggressively.
"How does the rest of the rhyme go?"
     "Jerking off  you'll  feel  all right,"  replied Myshkovsky and  Sychev
obediently.  "Dismissed!"  Prokhorov ended  the  lesson  -  warrant  officer
Pashkov was trotting purposefully toward the latrine.
     Like  any warrant officer,  Pashkov was convinced that he was  craftier
than  everyone else. His craftiness was  expressed in his  refusal to accept
medical  methods  of  treatment. Having done  his  share  of dashes  to  the
latrine, Pashkov realized that  the microbe  would not just go away  but had
taken up firm residence in his  guts. So Pashkov acquired  a three-litre jar
of pure alcohol,  locked  himself in the store-room  and  did not emerge for
three  whole  days.  Drinking  himself  stupid, he would  snore  like a pig,
whistling, snorting and grunting.
     Nobody dreamed of bothering him, simply every so often they would knock
on  the door and offer to bring him  some tea. True,  some  of  the soldiers
maintained, and lieutenant Sharagin personally attested that, at night, when
everyone else was  asleep,  Pashkov would  emerge from the  seclusion of the
store-room and wander around the camp like the ghost from "Hamlet",  heading
in the general direction of the latrine. He didn't recognize or even seem to
see anybody, did not  react  to human speech, and bore no resemblance to the
real senior warrant officer Pashkov, the terror of the troops.
     Everybody  felt  sorry  for  Pashkov  except  the  company   commander.
Morgultsev knew Pashkov from service back home, so when lieutenant Sharagin,
suffering dysentery himself, remarked that  it was  a  pity about  poor  old
Pashkov, looks as  though the bug  could kill him and wasn't it time for him
to be shipped off to hospital, Morgultsev snapped:
     "The fuck he's sick! He's just gone on a bender with the booze! Happens
with him regularly, once every quarter! " Calming down, he added:
     "Still,  it  happens  even  more  frequently with some of  the  warrant
officers -  just like women's  monthlies..." Morgultsev left Pashkov alone -
he knew that he would come around and cure himself soon. Just like a wounded
animal going off alone to hide  in the forest, Pashkov had hidden himself on
the store-room and closed himself off from anyone,  fighting the  illness or
depression.
     On the  third day, an explosion shook the store-room. The explosion was
not all that  big, it sounded rather like the detonation of a fuse, but  the
whole company took fright, thinking that maybe Pashkov had gone off his head
from too much drink and had decided to  finish off not just the germs in his
intestines or the depression which tortured his mysterious Russian soul, but
himself as well.
     The door was broken down. Inside they found  the senior warrant officer
in the grip of <i>dementia tremens</i> and an empty three-litre jar.
     Pashkov  was  half-sitting,  half-lying  on  a  pile  of  kit-bags  and
greatcoats,  whiskers quivering and his eyes rolling  around  madly.  He was
pointing at a small crack in the floor from which, he maintained, scorpions,
phalanges and snakes were crawling out to get  him, and that he had disposed
of some of them  by throwing a lighted grenade  fuse down the hole.  Just in
case,  he  was gripping  a Makarov  pistol in  his hands  to shoot down  any
"creeping bastards" that might venture near him.
     "Take  the gun away, and get him  out of here!  Cured himself, has, he,
stupid moron!" rapped out Morgultsev.
     By some miraculous means the raw  alcohol helped Pashkov get rid of the
Afghan  bug and depression,  so  that  a week later he was vainly trying  to
convince his commanding officer  that he  had  not been malingering, that he
really had been ill and -God forbid! - should comrade captain succumb to the
same curse  he, Pashkov, bore no  ill  will and would help and explain, as a
specialist in  the  field, how and  where to  get  a three-litre  jar of the
necessary  medicine. A smaller dose,  according to him,  was insufficient to
kill the offending microbes.
     Unlike  Pashkov, lieutenant Sharagin suffered  longer, but resorted  to
tablets instead  of downing spirit.  As an educated man, he did  not believe
that  the  disease  could  be  expunged  by  alcohol  alone.  Rising for the
umpteenth  time in the middle of the night, sweating and sleepy, he  hurried
outside.
     Trying  to breathe  as infrequently as  possible he studied  a scrap of
"Red  Star", then crushed it up in order to soften it  a little. The central
Soviet press and the regional paper "Frunzevets" were frequently read in the
regiment, and not only during  painful  sessions in  the latrine. They  read
about  events in the capitalist  world, in countries where socialism reigned
triumphant, about Party and Komsomol congresses, laughed  at  the writers of
reports on Afghanistan. But should any outsider say the same, they would all
rise  up  as  one  in  defense  and  swear  that  every  word written  about
international help was God's truth, and how, for example, that APC got blown
up  because the lieutenant spared the Afghans'  crops because  he remembered
his  own collective  farm and  the fields  of home,  the  hard  labor of the
peasants, how  he had once dreamed of becoming  a tractor driver but went to
military school  instead, knowing  that there is  such a  profession as  the
defense of  one's  motherland: recalling all this,  the  lieutenant chose to
travel along the road rather than across fields, a road which the spooks had
mined, of course....
     In  any  case, if  you look  at  things  squarely,  it's  not right  to
criticize the Soviet Army; any story, any garbage  in the press, any feat of
courage, be it true or invented, raises morale.

     <i>...let  the  inventions continue to  appear  in the  press...let people
remember that there is a war on... thought Sharagin.

     ...  one must  pretend that the concoctions in the papers are true  ...
reporters come here on tours of duty in order to  make a name for themselves
... like that one, what's his name? Lobanov ... some writer!  ... made up  a
truckload of malarkey ... made himself famous but mentioned us paratroopers,
too...</i>

     The night,  dressed in a myriad  of spiky  stars, unfolded itself above
the regiment. The paras slept quietly, if  you  did not count the humming of
the diesel generators located on the edge of the camp, and to which everyone
had grown accustomed.
     Sharagin  stopped  to  clear  his lungs  of  the  acrid smell of  human
excrement  and lit  a cigarette, enjoying the silky  moon and the  scattered
multitude of stars. His insides squirmed, he felt like a limp dish rag which
had been thoroughly wrung, no strength at all, he felt weakness filling him.
From  time to time, tracers would rise  into  the sky - one of  the sentries
must be relieving the boredom of standing watch.

     <i>...like  the  overburdened souls  of people  who were sick  of war, the
tracers shot silently skyward in order to lose themselves in the skies above
Kabul, hoping to flee this city and this country...</i>

     It also seemed as if

     <i>...the  distant  stars  were   fragments  of  broken  souls,  scattered
throughout  the  cosmos;   winking  in  the  moonlight,  still  hoping   for
something...</i>

     Back in the command barracks, he spent a long time turning from side to
side,  bed springs  creaking.  When  drowsiness  finally began to muddle his
thoughts about family and slide into sleep, a shot sounded practically under
the window and broken glass seemed to cry out.
     Zhenka Chistyakov  was off  his bunk  and on the  floor even before the
bullet which smashed the window became embedded in the wall.
     Guessing at once that this was no enemy shot and that there would be no
more, he raced outside as he was,  in sateen  drawers, hastily  shoving  his
feet into sneakers.
     "Bastards!" he yelled. "They want to kill me!"
     By  the time Sharagin  and  the other officers  emerged  and  a  mob of
soldiers, also awakened by the shot  gathered nearby,  Zhenka had managed to
give the sentry  a good thrashing. The unsuccessful  suicide did nothing  to
shield himself from the blows. Dressed in  helmet  and bullet-proof vest, he
tried to explain  between punches that it had been  an  accident, he  hadn't
been intending to fire, but  simply tripped. He lied, sweated, and  tried to
justify himself.

     <i>...probably  decided to shoot himself in  the hand, then got scared  at
the last moment...</i>

     Muddled thought reflected on the army-tried features of the soldier.
     "Far as I'm  concerned, it would  be  better if you'd killed yourself!"
grated Chistyakov,  continuing  to beat  up the soldier. "Only  quietly  and
further from the barracks. But no, you had to go  and do it under my window,
you sonofabitch! `'

     <i>...the "grandpas" must have really gotten  at  him...or he doesn't want
to serve in Afghanistan...</i>

     thought Sharagin, yawning.

     <i>...hope they don't drive  Myshkovsky  over the line  ...  I'll have  to
answer for him, after all...</i>

     whispered a voice in his head.

     The sentry looked very much like Myshkovsky, and  Sharagin  experienced
an ambivalent  feeling of pity and irritation. The  soldier  looked awkward,
was obviously not too bright and clumsy.
     The helmet  had fallen off his  head, and his ears stuck  out funnily -
like two halves of a broken plate, which  someone had pasted to his head. He
wore his uniform badly, but then nothing  would have looked a good  fit on a
body like that.

     <i>...anger arises from a  desire to gain revenge ...  the weaker the man,
the more he is oppressed,  and when one who has been  slighted gets a chance
to rise, he takes his revenge on the new boys - a vicious circle...

     ... time  to sleep ... let others sort out this mess... after all, he's
not from our company...</i>

     "Let's  go back  to bed, Zhenka," suggested  Sharagin  after  they both
smoked a cigarette,
     "How can anyone sleep after that?"
     He could understand  Chistyakov. Afghanistan  has made him so harsh and
fiery.

     <i>... who can say what I'll be like at the end ...</i>

     Chistyakov had served twenty  three months in  Afghanistan and  for the
past eight weeks had been hanging around waiting to be replaced.
     He had stopped going  to the mess hall and lived off canned food, bread
and  tea. From  time to time  the girls in the goods depot  would give him a
snack  out  of  gratitude  for  his  songs  and attentions,  especially  the
mysterious  blonde nobody  had ever seen but  who, according to  Zhenka, was
crazy about him.
     "She though I was going to marry her," confided Zhenka to his friends.
     "How's that?" queried Sharagin. "You've already got a family,"
     "That's right. That's what  I told her, if I didn't have a family,  I'd
take you to the ends of the earth.
     "And what did she say?" chipped in Pashkov.
     "She kept crying, damn it..."
     "That's  a  bad sign," warned Morgultsev. "We'll be going  into  combat
soon, and women in war bring bad luck..."
     Chistyakov spent the entire  following day lying on his  bunk. He  even
refused to  go  into town when  the  opportunity  came up, just lay there in
silence.
     "Where's senior lieutenant Chistyakov?" demanded the commander, running
his eyes over the troops.
     "His  lordship's resting.." replied  Pashkov, smoothing  his  luxuriant
whiskers.
     I see, down for safe keeping..." The captain knew this  mood well. This
was the state of many awaiting  replacements. The  Lord helps those who help
themselves  .  Should the spooks start  shelling, even the most seasoned and
brave  soldiers  would race for cover without a second thought. Who wants to
be killed a few days before going back home?
     "Fuck! Where the hell is he?" moaned Chistyakov. "Where is that fucking
son of a no-good bitch?"
     "Enjoying  his  leave," replied  Pashkov, fueling the flames. "Or maybe
he's drunk as a skunk in Tashkent. Putting down one beer after another..."
     "Just wait and see," prophesied the  commander. "Right now Chistyakov's
cursing his replacement with every name  he can think of, but the moment the
guy  arrives he'll treat  him  like  a  china  doll. We've  been through all
that..."
     Chistyakov  did not go to  dinner. He threw a tin can against the floor
with all his strength:
     "... so the microbes inside will  drop dead!"  Then  he polished  off a
0.75  bottle of vodka and sat at  the  table, smoking, blowing smoke through
his nostrils and confiding bitterly to the sardines floating in the tin can.
Finally, after baring his soul, he declared:  "... a cow stands on  a bridge
and shits, and man lives and dies just like that..." When Sharagin turned up
Zhenka, quite  drunk, said: "Look, you like writing down all sorts  of crap.
So I'll tell  you  the paradox of the Russian soul: steal a crate of  vodka,
sell it, and then spend the money on drink."
     "Lay off." Sharagin stretched out on his bunk, thinking about writing a
few lines home.
     "What's the date today, Zhenka?"
     "The forty-fourth of April."
     "There's no such thing."
     "Yes there is."
     "In  April," retorted  Sharagin  who had not touched a drop of  alcohol
either yesterday or today, "there are thirty days."
     "I was supposed to  be  replaced in  April.  And until  my  replacement
arrives, it'll stay fucking April!"

     Despite  his bad mood and the vodka, despite  his avoidance of duty and
short-distance sorties from the camp, Chistyakov was  the first when it came
to combat duty, and infected others with his attitude. Ready for war.
     "Now that  everyone's  run  out  of  shit, it's  time  to  get down  to
business, " he barked at the "elephants." 'And I don't want to  hear another
fucking word about someone not feeling well," he bellowed left and right.
     Zhenka  shone like a lamp in anticipation of battle, the risk, the fury
of  combat. It's not frightening for an officer to  die in  battle. What  is
frightening or,  rather, it would  be  a  shame,  to catch a bullet or shell
fragment from some stupid act.
     The soldiers' lot was no bowl  of  cherries, either. They  waited to be
demobbed  no  less  keenly, they'd  spent a  year and a half  plugging  away
without discharge or leave, but, unlike the officers, they had no choice and
could not show their displeasure. Chistyakov barked at everyone, testing the
livers of the "elephants" with his fist.
     "A whack on the liver is as good as a mug of beer!"
     Chistyakov was all afire  to go to war,  went around  as if in  a haze,
forgot all about his replacement,  cleaned his rifle, got his gear together,
honed his combat knife.
     "I  sure  don't envy the  spooks," remarked Pashkov, shaking  his head.
"Where'd he suddenly get all that energy?"  He was checking  out the fixings
of the machine gun on the turret of an armored vehicle.
     "Why are you so glum, Sharagin?"
     "I had a bad dream..."





        Chapter Three. Panasyuk

     Army service  consists of discipline,  petty  tyrannies,  humiliations,
details, eating,  digesting, sleep and expectation -- expectation of orders,
expectation of leave, expectation of returning  home, expectation of freedom
from  the power  of highly placed fools  and scoundrels,  expectation of the
decrees of Fate. If an army is  at war, service also includes expectation of
death: be  it in the name  of  obeying orders, serving the  interests of the
Motherland, or simply because on that day, at that moment, a specific number
comes up, YOUR number. Someone must be sacrificed, after all.
     Such choices  of Fate are subsequently and most frequently described as
heroism  and fulfillment of duty, less  frequently  as sheer bad luck, while
those  who  stood side by side with death, later find  some explanation  for
that particular  stroke of fortune, even  though  everyone knows exactly why
and how it came to pass.
     But people tied to the army conceal from each other that their survival
so far in this inscrutable lottery has been due to blind luck,  no more; and
only in the deepest recesses of their minds, mostly subconsciously, do  they
render thanks to that hand, which did not draw THEIR number...

     Rebellious Afghan tribes that  had refused  to swear  allegiance to the
new regime had taken refuge on the  plain between high mountains. The troops
took up positions on the  dominant heights above the  plain, presiding above
villages and wooded  patches -- "greenery" -- which lay below silently, like
a predator gone to earth. The troops knew that victory would be theirs, that
the greenery would fall before them, but they also knew the price they would
have to pay.
     Those who had planned the battle and were ready to order its  start had
already estimated the costs of the operation, because war is a science,  and
science demands precision and calculation. War does not excuse weakness, war
knows no  mercy,  and therefore people  who decide to  make war  never allow
themselves  to  be  guided  by  such  feelings.  They  deliberately distance
themselves from  the  epicenter of  battle in order  not to see the soldiers
they are sending  off to be  slaughtered, in order  not to look  into  their
eyes. Instead,  they  content  themselves with sending them rousing messages
and promising medals and titles. They are well aware that after victory  the
number  of  the fallen will not  be a determining factor, because those  who
died will automatically become heroes, while the maimed and wounded shall be
whisked  away from the theatre  of war to  specially  devised hospitals  and
military  medical installations, so the sight  of them will  not upset their
former comrades in arms and newly arrived reinforcements.

     Sharagin's  platoon soon took  possession of the hill  overlooking  the
road, making  a  nest  for itself at  the top.  Like the company,  the whole
battalion, and all the units assigned to this particular military operation,
the  platoon  lived in  daily expectation  of orders, meanwhile the soldiers
slept  under canvas  awnings  erected on the slope and under armoured  cars,
dreamt of home  in  the  stillness of afternoons and nights, ate dry rations
and relieved themselves in the immediate vicinity.
     Lieutenant Sharagin worried  that this  relaxed atmosphere  could prove
fatal if it were to last a few more days, but there was  little  he could do
about it but hope for speedy orders to advance.

     <i>.... we're surrounded by mountains... when the sun goes down,
     and darkness falls, and the first stars appear like sentinels in
     the heavens, the sun still lights up the other side of the
     mountain range, making it look as though it is still daylight
     over there, and they look flat ... as though some giant has
     made cardboard cutouts of ancient warriors, heads bent, and
     tired horsemen, and the peaks and contours look like their
     heads, lowered in exhaustion, who have struck camp, backs and
     shoulders slumped, and their horses' heads ... the giant has glued
     them carefully and disposed them like immense decorations,
     gifting the sleeping valley with a certain coziness ... the
     valley that we shall take soon...</i>

     The  atmosphere of  tedium and lyrical  musing  was  heightened by  the
effects of the dry, hot, all-pervasive and heavy wind known as the "afghan,"
which descended out of nowhere and blew unrelentingly all day.
     The "afghan"  was fierce, as though angered by the  platoon and all the
troops that  had come to the valley. It drove myriad grains of sand  against
the  canvas of  the tents, stung faces,  covered those who had  taken refuge
behind rocks  with  sand and dust and  harried the sentries  who crouched in
dug-outs and waited to be replaced.
     But the  relief sentries  never arrived  punctually.  The  "grand-dads"
slept, unconcerned by the problems of the youngsters,  and  those  who  were
scheduled for duty strung out the time as long  as possible to shorten their
own stint on guard.
     The  wind danced up and  down the  valley,  blotting  out the  sky  and
mountains with an  impenetrable  shroud  of dust. Stubborn,  capricious  and
merciless, the "afghan" spun at liberty, feeling its power and impunity.

     <i>... what was that bit in the Bible? How apt it was!...</i>

     Sharagin racked  his  brains, trying to  remember  those words  out  of
Ecclesiastes, which he had read so long ago, before military school:

     "The wind  blows to the South and goes  around to the North;  round and
round goes the wind and on its circuits the wind returns."

     <i>... it was as if the prophet was talking about the "afghan"...
     I'll have to read it again when I get back home....</i>

     It was  easier  to tolerate the "afghan" in company, but depression was
just as great, the desire to go  home was always there, and because home was
far away, the next best thing was to get drunk.
     The  sand  raised  by  the "afghan"  penetrated  everywhere,  filtering
through every crack, every hole.  People spat, rubbed  their eyes and noses,
but the  sand filled their hair and crept down their backs. The wind carried
a hidden premonition of disaster.
     Toward evening the "afghan" finally tired of  making mischief, and took
itself off. It had not  exhausted itself, no, that was not why the wind died
down. Most likely it got bored  with this place, and sped off to wreak havoc
and bother people elsewhere, after a few parting sand whirls.
     It was completely quiet again, cold and distant stars filled  the  sky,
but  in  the morning  torture by the sun  resumed.  The soldiers, usually so
talkative and noisy, were silent.
     Sharagin inspected the positions  once more. Two soldiers snored in the
shade  of a canvas awning. One of them --  Savateyev -- was swiping at a fly
on his face in his sleep, frowning and scratching his cheeks.  When his hand
brushed against the top of his head, the  lice he dislodged leapt  nimbly to
the head of the soldier sleeping next to him.

     <i>... I'll order their heads shaved, every last one of them!...</i>

     Sharagin saw junior sergeant Titov wandering around clad in nothing but
a  pair of sateen  drawers, rolled up to look like bathing trunks,  absently
scratching his  crotch.  Sergeant  Panasyuk, his face  sunburnt a fiery red,
sprawled  on a greatcoat  on the ground. Nearby, private Sychev,  in correct
uniform, was squeezing festering pimples on the back of a "grand-dad" of the
Soviet Army, Prokhorov.

     <i>... disgusting ...</i>

     By certain unwritten  laws, only the so-called grand-dads had the right
to go around undressed. In principle, the grand-dads were not supposed to do
so either,  but any  officer in his  right mind  turned a blind eye  to such
liberties,  provided they  remained within reason. The grand-dads  knew what
they were  about, they knew that they could allow themselves  a  measure  of
insolence with any  commanding officer,  and if  they did not go too far, if
they did not overdo things, no conflict would ensue. One only needed to know
exactly where to draw the line. Sharagin glanced sideways at Panasyuk, Titov
and  Prokhorov, all in their  satin underwear, threw a  second glance on his
way to relieve  himself, and when he passed by a  third time, the grand-dads
were all  getting dressed.  They took the squad leader's hint. Once dressed,
they went off to harry the younger personnel, because there was nothing else
to do that day.
     It did not  take long for Panasyuk to adopt some of the  squad leader's
mannerisms and expressions. Aping Sharagin, he took to  addressing the lower
ranks with the  polite "you" instead of the familiar "thou," but with an air
of paternal superiority; at combat training  he  would urge them on with one
of the new commanding  officer's aphorisms: "At first, a  soldier marches as
long  as  he  can,  and  after  that,  as  long  as  necessary."  Panasyuk's
stubbornness and persistence  earned him the nickname of "the mountain brake
of communism." Combat vehicles of the commando  forces are all equipped with
a so-called  mountain  brake with a catch.  Once this is engaged,  the motor
will continue to roar and strain, but the vehicle will not budge an inch. It
was  due  to his unwillingness to  give one iota that Panasyuk lost  a front
tooth during his first months of service.
     The people on the hilltop wilted  from  the burning sun and inactivity,
becoming  dull and stupid. In this kind of heat,  anybody's thoughts  become
scattered.  Even  in the shade you toss around as  in  a fever, sweating out
every drop  of moisture and  waking up  stupefied by the stifling heat, with
spittle on your lips, your head like a chunk of lead, sticky with sweat  and
mind fogged with fragments of restless dreams.
     ... Sharagin wove around in  his half-dreams, and although his thoughts
remained perfectly clear and  consistent, coordination disappeared:  the men
would  run  out  to line up, and all  Oleg  could  do  was mumble something,
drunkenly trying to pull on a pair of socks which, for some reason, were two
sizes too small, so the heel was  too far down and the sock wouldn't fit; he
hopped around on one bare foot, lost balance  and tumbled backwards, luckily
onto his bunk, avoiding injury ... Soldiers' voices reached his ears through
a  thin, silken  veil  of slumber:  "...took  fright, that greenhorn!...shit
himself when the shooting started!...well, it's true, isn't it?", "a  rocket
exploded just five meters off, and not a single splinter hit us,  would  you
believe?", "and  fuck me dead  if I didn't kill three spooks right then  and
there," "I'd rather  walk into someone else's shit instead of going up there
on the slope. We already had one stupid bastard who went out into the  field
for a crap ... we found his arse about twenty meters away,  ha, ha, ha..." ,
"remember that warrant  officer,  Kosyakevich,  how he  rolled around on the
ground when that, well,  when them  spooks  had us holed up  in a ravine and
opened  up with a  fucking heavy machine gun? Kosyakevich copped  it  in the
stomach... the first aid instructor bandaged him up, but we knew that it was
curtains  for  the  poor  sod!",  "death's  a  bugger,  always  catches  you
unawares...";  and in his dreams Oleg also heard the soldiers bitching about
their details, and the lousy rations, and  that "you always have to put down
your own  cash to get  a  decent  bite  of something,"  and  the curses  the
soldiers aimed at the merciless sun of Afghanistan.
     Finally  Sharagin could not stand this monotonous and  stupid  chatter,
which  would  not  let him sleep properly, and  barked:  "Stop that  fucking
noise!"  to shut them up. Then  he took a gulp of water from his canteen and
turned over, hoping to fall asleep until dinner time.
     One  lot of voices was  replaced  by another, distracting  him from his
attempts  to sleep, and, if truth  be told, Sharagin didn't  really want  to
sleep, and all kinds of  thoughts went round  and round in the  lieutenant's
head.

     <i>... when you get down to it, soldiers are nothing but rabble, the
     dregs of our society, they're ... hell, how quickly they've become
     an uncontrollable wave away from home! ... nothing but trivial,
     idiotic thoughts in practically every head that's why they
     talk such rubbish ... but if our soldier is so dumb and useless,
     what about the "diesel-heads"? All the mototrised infantry are
     Morons!...</i>

     "I tell you,  those flies weren't fucking!" cried someone, as though in
confirmation of Sharagin's thoughts.
     "Everyone's a psycho!" yelled someone else.

     <i>... grown-up idiots, the whole bleeding lot...</i>

     The  lives of  sons of bitches like Prokhorov, slobs and  mean bastards
like Titov, hounded  juniors like  Myshkovsky,  Sychev and Chirikov,  clowns
like Panasyuk and similar  typical and untypical  persons and non-persons of
the  latest and  intervening call-ups belonged to Sharagin. Rather,  he  was
assigned to  this  motley crew  known as a platoon, and it was up to him  to
make the platoon combat-worthy, it was his job to think  about the  platoon,
these people, every hour, minute and  second, to worry and make decisions as
a result of which  the soldiers would return home alive from Afghanistan, or
not.

     One could spend eternity cursing these young men, drafted from all ends
of the Land of the Soviets to active military service,

     <i>... brainless "elephants"...</i>

     but  right now Sharagin cursed them to  himself,  just as he did aloud,
for errors and for trifles about which  the soldiers didn't give a damn, but
which could prove fatal  in  war. He  cursed them, but  at the  same time he
sympathised with each one individually, and  was saddened each time when the
hardened  youngsters left his squad,  in the  USSR  or here  in Afghanistan,
after  their  two-year stint.  Sharagin  truly valued  that inexplicable and
unique phenomenon that is called a Soviet, Russian soldier.

     <i>...  where does the Soviet soldier's  frequent total disregard of death
arise,  his endless  courage and  desperate feats? ... an  Afghan soldier is
nothing  like that, just try  telling him that he  has to go from  Kabul  to
Kandahar: he won't, not for any money, each one of those 'afghanoids' thinks
only of saving his own skin, while we guard their peace, do their dirty work
for them, slave our guts out ... because  they're all cowards, and  our lads
can't wait to  get into  battle ... what  is it, excessive romanticism?  no,
they've seen it all, and  still strain at the leash ... are they stupid? but
they're not such fools as to throw life away needlessly ... duty? no, that's
for the newspapers, empty words ...  Russian recklessness? partly ... nobody
can really understand  it ... just as  nobody can  solve the riddle  of  the
Russian  soul,  nobody  ... huge, deep, like our  country  ...  untractable,
unpredictable ... only the Russian soul can encompass unbelievable  breadth,
sincerity,  openness  and sentimentality alongside such traits  as villainy