“My God,” exclaimed the officer after a second interview, exasperated. “The number of injuries these men sustain in the showers. It’s a wonder we allow them to wash at all.”
As Viktor lay on his cot, recovering, the guys came to see him again. “Hey,” one said, “we heard you kept your mouth shut.”
“Not that he had much choice,” snickered another.
“We brought you something to make the time pass.” They produced a jar of spirit, the sort that was kept in the tank shed to clean parts. “Drink it down. It’ll do you good.”
Viktor opened his mouth as far as he was able—about an inch—and sucked the spirit through his teeth. Halfway through he stopped, retching, but the men tipped the jar up and sent a great gulp flooding down his throat and chin. When it was finished, they gave him water and clouted him on the shoulder. “See you,” they said, and left.
“After that the army was all right,” Viktor continued, topping up his glass. “Normal. And, you know, when I got into second year, I did the same. We all did.”
It is a commonplace among Russian mothers that their sons are changed for the worse by military service. He left such a good boy, they lament. Never been away from home, seventeen, mild as milk. The army ruined him. Now he drinks, and when he’s drunk he gets angry, and as for his feet! The smell! Nonsense, reply the fathers. I came through it all right, didn’t I? They have to learn to be men. You learn a lot in the army, oh, it’s amazing how fast you learn…
I didn’t see much of Ashot apart from that one afternoon. He changed money for us, his eyelids drooping as he counted out the notes; occasionally he sold us some cannabis, measured by the glassful, although he can’t have made much money from the deals. None of our Armenians conformed to the stereotype—wily, grasping, flashy with their money. They were as shabby as the rest of us, but something kept them separate. Ashot and the other Armenians—Garo, round and jolly, with a bristly face like a pirate’s, Pasha, and the komendant—sat together night after night behind a closed door, and all we heard of them was the buzz of conversation and laughter that seeped out into the corridor. I asked Mitya why.
“It’s very simple.” He shrugged, slightly exasperated. “The historical imperative for them to hate Russians has been augmented by personal experience.” After a pause he added, “Military service is just one example. Men are sent thousands of miles to regiments made up of the multitude of friendly Soviet peoples. It’s meant to turn them all into Soviet patriots. After two years of the army, you can imagine, they go home hating each other even more than they did in the first place—”
This was the map of the Soviet Union that the conscripts picked up: Armenians hated Azeris, Chechens hated Ossetians, ethnic minorities hated Russians, Russians hated Jews, and everyone hated the boys from Moscow—so pleased with themselves, looking down their noses, with that nasal accent that made you grit your teeth. They were sent packages with condensed milk and jellies and little “Hunters’” sausages, the kind of delicacies you could get only on Kalininsky Prospect. They paid for it though. The men made sure those Muscovite noses paid for it.
The point was, Mitya explained, you had to watch out for the Caucasians and the Central Asians. The guys who beat you up and bullied you weren’t out to kill you, although it did happen—games that went too far, people who didn’t know how to take a beating. You had to be careful, but that was to be expected. The dangerous ones, though, were the wild boys from the mountains and the desert who instantly established a clan system within the camp and who’d grown up knowing how to fight. They carried knives with blades as supple as grass that twanged in their hands if you passed them too close in the corridor. “All right, keep calm,” you’d mutter to them, not knowing if they felt their honor had been compromised, if they even understood you. They were different. It was just one of the things you had to accept in the army.
“When I see the news from the Caucasus,” Mitya said, “I always wonder if I’ll see one of the boys I knew, up there in the mountains. They’re fighting now, I’m sure of it. They had a worse time than us in the army, of course… But if it taught them one thing, it was to stick together.”
On the first day of spring, Mitya and I walked down to the reservoir, past trees almost bare of snow. The ice still held and several fishermen were sitting by their ice holes for another day’s cold, silent vigil. These were the fanatics. The fish they caught were not at all good to eat; in fact most were poisoned by the dirty water. Occasionally the fishermen tried to sell them by the roadside, slapping a couple of pike on a plastic bag laid down in the mud. They did not look tempting. And to go out on the lake now, so late in the season… Apparently these men knew special paths, recognized the thin patches by sight and calculated to the hour when the ice would finally splinter. All the same, every year there were casualties.
There was a soft breeze, and for the first time in months I was outside without hat, gloves, and scarf; the air on my forehead and cheeks felt wonderfully free, and at last I could move without slipping or watching my feet. Mitya and I ran until we came to a stop, puffing, and sat on a railing by the water.
“Remember the yacht we were going to live on?” Mitya said. “Let’s sail it through the Black Sea in the summer. The Crimean coast, past Odessa, Yalta, and to Batumi. It’s a pity we’ll have to avoid Abkhazia.”
“Perhaps you could come and visit me in England this summer?”
Mitya looked at me and smiled. “If you’d like me to.”
When it grew cold, we turned back to the hostel, stopping to buy snowdrops from a babushka standing by the bridge.
“The spring arrives with them, children. Have two bunches,” she implored. “The wind’s chilly, I’ll go home if you take them.”
I was sniffing the icy petals as we came up the stairs and heard it: a high, long howl that grew in volume, choked, and continued. Someone shouted and silenced it. But instantly it began again. The sound made my heart thump. By the time we got to the fourth floor, there was a crowd outside the Armenians’ room.
The komendant came out and pushed past us. “Get out of the way.”
“But what is it? Is someone hurt?”
“Ashot,” said Garo, appearing in the doorway. His round face was slack and pale. “The Azeris have shelled his village in Karabakh. Half the houses are hit. His brother is dead and God knows who else.”
Within the room Ashot stopped howling and began to knock his head slowly and deliberately against the wall.
“Those bastards,” Garo said. “We’ll kill them.”
The reservoir held for a few more days. The following week I saw a couple of fishermen heading out across it, intent on a last catch, but by the end of the month great cracks had appeared; water was bubbling and hissing through them, tearing the ice apart. From the center of the bridge Mitya and I watched slabs like tectonic plates start to move. In some places, there were still footprints in the snow, and bits of debris from the life they had supported: sticks, broken baskets, a single shoe. The sheets of ice drifted beneath us, gathering speed as they made their way toward the sea.
17
Iron Boots
If you’re a mushroom, you must jump in the basket.