Branches and tree trunks turned black and shiny and parts of roofs started to appear. Every day for a week, snow fell, wet, sloppy drifts that soaked through fur boots and stood on the streets in puddles up to a foot deep. Walking would have been impossible if paths had not evolved, built collectively, piece by piece: hop onto that little stone, then to the curb past the puddle, then one foot on that bit of board and a quick splash in the icy water before you reach five yards of dry land. It was pitiful to watch the pensioners trying to follow these courses.
One day I stood on the hostel steps gazing at the pale sunshine on the poplar trees and listening to the sound of dripping water. The thrill was almost erotic.
“During my first year of military service in the Urals,” Mitya said later, as we sat in my room drinking tea, “there was a roar like tanks coming at us and for two days we all wandered around half-crazy from the noise. Then one lunch time we heard what sounded like gunfire, round after round of it. We ran down to the river and saw the ice cracking. Great chunks the size of a car were flying through the air, rolling and crashing and roaring like an avalanche. That’s how the thaw began there.”
The atmosphere in the hostel was still subdued. Sveta was sweeping cockroaches out of her room and watching them scuttle through the doors on either side and over the Afghan veteran Sasha’s legs; he was sitting in the passage, groaning to himself, hoping for someone to drink with. Ibrahim’s hapless friend came knocking at his door: Bang-bang-bang! Ibrahim! Bang-bang-bang! Ibrahim, our Syrian neighbor, never answered this cry, which echoed hoarsely down our corridor several times a day.
The outside world seldom impinged on our little community. We occasionally saw the news, less often read the papers, and ignored the stirrings on Russia’s southern border. In Georgia, refugees were pouring out of Abkhazia, and up in the mountains of Karabakh, Armenians on one side and Azeris on the other were cleaning their weapons after the winter lull; we knew this, vaguely, and yet the idea that there could be a war seemed as distant and incredible as summer.
“When the weather is changing one has to be very careful of one’s health.”
This was Viktor, of course, with an open bottle of vodka, saying, “Time for otdykh.”
With him was one of the Armenians, Ashot, who had a face like a boy’s: slight, with heavy-lidded eyes and a sleepy expression. It looked as though the two of them had already been drinking. Ashot raised his glass and said without smiling, “To the friendship of nations.”
“Drink up,” insisted Viktor. “Moskovskaya vodka, full of vitamins.”
Mitya was still thinking about the army. “God, the filth we drank,” he groaned. “When I was called up, we were taken to Kiev for registration. The first night we drank samogon—I thought I would die. Anyway, one boy disappeared. They didn’t find him until the next morning—he’d gone to the latrines and the seat had given way beneath him. He almost drowned. There was a thousand-liter tank underneath, he had to keep swimming all night. His nerves were shattered, they had to send him straight home.”
I had not eaten since morning, and so after two shots I noticed that the objects and people around me were brighter and clearer than they had been. The smoke from Mitya’s cigarette curled upward in fascinating bluish strands; Viktor’s face was a fiery pink, and he was telling a long story about a journey to the Caucasus. I could barely understand him.
“… hounds…” he seemed to be saying. “… the southern nights… exotic fruits, the silky mustaches of the women…”
Ashot leaned forward. His eyelids weighed more heavily on his eyes than ever and something in his expression woke me. “Now they are starving there. My family lives in Karabakh. They’ve had no electricity for more than a year. They’ve hardly any food and no medicine and any day the Russians might drive them out of their villages or the Azeris shoot them… I’ve had no news since January.”
There was a pause. “You Armenians started the war,” said Viktor.
“We have the right to freedom, just as you do.” Ashot spoke quietly.
Mitya put on his coat. “I have to go home. My parents will be waiting for me.”
Ashot got up with him. “Bye,” he said. “Thanks for the warming.”
“Nichevo.” When they’d gone, Viktor sighed and filled our glasses. “Back in 1988, in the army, everyone used to talk about independence for the republics. We thought it sounded wonderful. I suppose we never thought it would actually happen.” He drained his glass and began to tell me about the army.
Men didn’t talk about their military service much. Oh, occasionally we heard about the drinking, their friends, having to be out of bed and ready in forty-five seconds. But that day Viktor wanted to talk. “You know they beat me until I cried,” he started. He shook his head, barely able to believe it. “Cried! My mother always said she’d never seen me cry, yet under their boots I didn’t last long.”
Viktor was sent to a base beyond the Urals, near the Chinese border—a spot that even Russians considered remote. The officers had been there so long they’d become naturalized into two types: a few brutes and many poor hungry creatures. When the conscripts got packages from home, you could be sure the latter would turn up in the barracks on the off chance. “Hey guys, what’s new?” they’d ask casually.
Of course, it was the brutes who ran the place, along with the second-year conscripts—not the men about to go home, who wore their caps pushed back on their heads and lolled at their posts, chewing cigarette butts and gazing with lofty amusement at the rest. They were separate; their imminent freedom came off them like steam. No, the men to watch were those who’d just made it into their second year, who still smarted from the treatment they’d received over the previous twelve months. They were the ones who organized entertainments like the silver chair: take three new boys and make them crouch over a seat of needles standing up in wax until their thigh muscles give way.
Four years after Viktor returned to Voronezh he went to the doctor with a painful boil on his calf. It was lanced, and the doctor was astonished to find a needle poking out of the flesh. Over the years, it had worked its way down the leg. The doctor said he was lucky: it could just as easily have turned inward.
For his first few months in the army, Viktor vowed to himself that he would not make trouble. But by Christmas, what with malnutrition and cold, his control was wearing thin. One day a sergeant took exception to the way he completed the morning run, and sent him to clean the latrines. Viktor bowed his head and trudged away. There was a song he used to repeat to calm himself, about a happy, drunk, naked woman in a supermarket, but this time it did not diffuse his anger. As he bent over the first bowl and began to scrub, two second-year men came in and saw him.
“Look at the little shit-lover,” one jeered. “Like getting your hands dirty, do you?”
Viktor said nothing.
“Let’s help him out, men,” said the other, standing over him and undoing his fly. “We’ll wash your hands for you.”
Before he knew what he was doing, Viktor was shaking the soldier until the man’s eyes popped.
“What’s all this?” a sergeant bellowed, entering.
The second-year men were sent away, Viktor returned to his scrubbing, and the rest of the day passed without incident—until the evening, when the soldiers came to pay Viktor a visit, along with a few of their friends. They pinned him in a corner and broke his jaw.
For two weeks he wore a metal brace, while his commanding officer tried to extract names from him. Since perestroika they couldn’t ignore incidents like these completely. But Viktor, looking him straight in the eye, muttered only that he’d slipped in the shower and, Sir, it was painful to talk.