"Go ahead then. Examine him…"
"No chance. We don't have anything to do with drunks!"
The argument dragged on. The driver got down from the ambulance; the second militiaman emerged from the yellow "Special Medical Service" van. He poked the body with his foot as it lay there and muttered: "Why are you wasting your breath? He may have kicked the bucket already. Let me have a look."
He bent over and brutally applied pressure behind Ivan's ears with two fingers.
"Hey, you should remember this little dodge." He laughed, winking at the nurse. "It's better than all your smelling salts. This'll wake the dead."
In response to intolerable pain, Ivan opened wild eyes and gave a dull groan.
"Alive!" chuckled the militiaman. "It'll take more than that to finish him off. He looks like he's lying under the streetlight to get a tan. All right, Seryozha, I suppose we'd better pick him up. There's no way we can leave this guy in the hands of these quacks. They do in more people than they cure."
"And you're plaster saints, I suppose!" retorted the nurse, glad to have won her battle at last. "I tell you, there was an article on sobering-up stations in Pravda the other day. When they bring a drunk in they empty his pockets. They steal his pay, his watch. They take everything…"
"All right, that's enough of that," the militiaman cut in. "We've had a bellyful as it is, what with Gorbachev and his speeches. Him and his perestroïka are a pain in the neck…"
The nurse jumped into the ambulance, slammed the door, and the vehicle drove off.
They lugged Ivan into the van and let him fall on the floor. One of the militiamen got behind the wheel, the other unbuttoned the top of Ivan's coat, searching for his papers. He took out a battered service record, held it up to the light and began to decipher it. Suddenly he uttered a whistle of surprise.
"Oh my God, Seryozha, he's a Hero of the Soviet Union! And those goddamned medics wouldn't take him off our hands! So now what are we going to do?"
"Well, what can we do? It's all the same to us if he's a Hero of the Soviet Union or even a goddamned cosmonaut. Our job's simple: we find him, we pick him up, we take him back, that's all. And at the station it's up to the officer to decide. Okay, let's go. Close that fucking door, my feet are frozen already."
Ivan had taken to drinking immediately after his wife's death. He drank a lot, fiercely, without explaining it to himself, without repenting, without ever promising himself to stop. Borissov is a small town. Soon everyone knew about the Hero turned drunkard.
The head of the motor pool called Ivan in from time to time and lectured him indulgently, as if talking to a child who has done something silly.
"Listen, Dmitrich, this is not good at all. You've got another two years before you retire and you carry on like this. That's twice they've picked you up dead drunk in broad daylight. It's lucky the local militia know you, otherwise you'd soon have been sent to the sobering-up station. I know you've got your troubles, but you're not a finished man. And don't forget you're behind a wheel. You risk either knocking someone over or getting killed yourself. And look what a bad example you're setting the young people."
They summoned him to the District Committee and also to the Veterans' Council, but in vain.
At the District Committee, Ivan listened to the Secretary's catalogue of reproaches and admonitions. Suddenly he interrupted him in a weary voice: "That's enough pettifogging nonsense, Nikolayich. You'd be better employed working out how to feed the people. Instead of which you talk a lot of rubbish – the Communist's duty, civic responsibility… It's a pain to listen to you!"
The Party Secretary burst out furiously: "Your drinking makes you forget where you are, Hero! As a member of the Party, how can you say such things?"
Ivan rose to his feet, leaned across the table toward the Secretary and observed in a low, dry voice: "As for me, now I can do anything… Understood? And as for my Party card, I could chuck it right back at you here on the table, if I chose!"
At the Veterans' Council the retired officers gathered there were looking forward with relish to some free entertainment. Ivan disappointed them all. He offered no explanation or defense, and did not argue with his irate accusers. He sat there, nodding his head and even smiling. He thought: "What's the point of offending these old men? Let them talk! Let them feel good. There's no malice in them, they're just bored. Look at that one, he's getting so worked up he's making his medals jangle. What a funny old codger. All dressed up and no place to go…"
The entertainment did not take place.
Toward May 9, as if he were observing a self-imposed fast, Ivan stopped drinking. He ran a broom over the rooms that for a long time had looked uninhabited. He cleaned his best suit, polished his medals and his Gold Star with tooth powder, and waited for the Pioneers. They usually came a few days before the Victory celebration, presented him with an invitation on a colorful card, and, after stammering out their prepared message, bolted down the staircase shouting gleefully.
He spent nearly a week waiting for them. "The little rascals must have forgotten," he thought. "They've got other things on their minds. Well, all the better for me. It was tiring in the long run, telling the same stories year after year."
But on May 8 he put on all his medals and went out. He wondered curiously: "Why haven't they invited me? If they've invited someone else, who is it?"
He walked past the school twice, but no one came out to meet him. Then he sat down in a square from which the entrance to the school could be seen. People walking past him greeted him with little disdainful smiles, as if to say: "Aha! The Hero! You've been seen dead drunk under a bench…"
In his head, inevitably, he heard the echo of phrases from his talks in days gone by: "Now then, my friends, just picture the scorching heat on the steppe in the summer of ' 42. In the distance Stalingrad is in flames and we're just a handful of soldiers…"
He kept turning to look at the school gate more and more often, was annoyed with himself, but could not overcome his curiosity. At length the gate opened wide and the stream of schoolchildren poured out into the street, shouting and squabbling. The "lesson on remembrance and patriotism" was over. Then a soldier appeared in the doorway escorted by a teacher. The soldier was holding three red carnations in his hand. Ivan went up to him in the alleyway. He was a young sergeant, the son of one of the drivers in their motor pool.
"Alexei, you're discharged already?" asked Ivan, with genial amazement.
"Since last autumn, Ivan Dmitrevich. And after that I spent ages in hospital. I had a foot blown off. You can see the kind of clodhoppers I wear now."
Ivan looked down. On one of the young sergeant's feet he was wearing a monstrously swollen orthopedic ankle boot.
"And how's it going back there in Afghanistan? It's a funny thing, but they never mention it in the papers now…"
"Well, what could they say about it? Back there we're up to our necks in shit…"
"So, you've just come from the school?"
"Yes, they invited me to the lesson on patriotism."
"So what did the children ask you?"
"They asked about the duty of internationalist soldiers and about the brotherhood of arms. And one rascal at a desk in the back row stood up and said: 'Please tell me, Comrade Staff-Sergeant, how many mujahideen did you kill yourself?' Well, there you are… The artificial limbs they make for us are just god-awful. When you walk down the street you have to grit your teeth. And when you take them off your boots are full of blood. It's as hard as… Well, Ivan Dmitrevich, have a good holiday. Happy Victory Day! Here, look at these flowers. Take them, Dmitrevich. You're a Hero, you deserve them. Give them to your wife… What…? But when…? Good God! That's terrible! I knew nothing about it. I've only been out of the hospital for five days. Well, keep your chin up, Ivan Dmitrevich. And… Happy Victory Day!"