This was a simple psychological gesture: he didn’t have to get up at all, but if you’re on your feet, your team works better than from a lying position.
In any case, with animals like Sluggish, it was generally better to keep yourself in line, and stay alert. In empty deserts, subordination is sometimes forgotten.
What’s going on? the Sergeant thought, walking back and forth aimlessly. Where has everyone disappeared to… We’ll soon be out of cigarettes.
Ridge squatted down and started squashing an empty can, turning it into a pancake.
Ridge, the Sergeant recalled, was the only one in the unit who frightened the regiment’s German shepherd, which was not even afraid of Sluggish, who constantly harassed it. Although Ridge did not do anything bad to it. He just started stroking its back, and then, without even noticing himself, he tried to pin it to the ground, and could not stop from playing some more: he didn’t let the dog get up, he butted it, and lifted it up with his heavy hands, until the dog, with an unusual, almost hysterical squeal, shook itself loose. It then made large circles, looking sideways at Ridge with an eye that was frightened and furious at the same time. Ridge then stood without a smile, not quite sure of what had happened, and looking like a heavy, perhaps underwater, rock that would break in two any boat that happened to hit it.
“Ridge, I forgot, do you have any children?” the Sergeant asked. He suddenly thought with horror how Ridge would play with his kids.
Ridge shrugged his shoulders:
“Where from,” he replied strangely.
“You ask Vitya where they come from,” Sluggish joined in. “You probably don’t use your girlfriend properly, you’ve got it all wrong.”
Ridge frowningly looked to where Sluggish’s voice came from — he couldn’t see him behind the wall.
“So you’re not married?” the Sergeant asked.
Ridge shrugged his shoulders, as if he didn’t know himself whether he was married or not.
…Samara turned on his side and seemed to fall asleep. Ginger sat by the wall, pressing his bare head against it; it was strange that it didn’t hurt him.
…There is no greater emptiness than waiting.
As a child, the Sergeant would try to cheer himself up at any depressing moment by telling himself: Just imagine that you have to die today: with what melancholy you will be to remember this time that seemed completely intolerable to you… Enjoy yourself, idiot, breathe every second. How good it is to breathe…
“I’m sick of lying around here!” Samara suddenly got up. He didn’t look sleepy at all.
“What’s with you? Sleep!” the Sergeant said. “You’ll go back to the base and sleep anyway.”
“It’s different there. There I’ll… sleep peacefully. But here… Did their car break down or something?”
The Sergeant did not reply.
“All three at once?” Ginger asked for him.
There were three cars in the unit.
“Maybe they went somewhere in two of them,” Samara suggested.
“Where?” Ginger asked. “To Russia?”
“How do I know?” Samara said; he realized himself that there wasn’t really anywhere to go.
He fell on his back once more and lay there with his eyes open.
“I feel sick,” he said.
The Sergeant thought for a moment, and said the thing with which he had calmed himself at such moments, and which he had recalled recently. He generally avoided abstract conversations with the soldiers — they were pointless, but here he unexpectedly felt himself to be in a lyrical mood.
Samara looked at the Sergeant in surprise and didn’t reply: he simply didn’t know what to say.
“Sergeant, what did you used to do for a job?” Ginger asked.
“I was a bouncer in a bar,” the Sergeant replied, turning back to Ginger.
“And after that?”
“A loader.”
“And after that?”
“After that I was a bouncer again.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever work as a psychologist?”
“No.”
“You could. Talk some sense into people.”
I shouldn’t have done that, no, the Sergeant decided. I shouldn’t have said all that, after all, I know…
“All right, Ginger, I’ll think about it,” he replied calmly.
“I’ve got a name,” Ginger said, half closing his eyes.
The Sergeant directed his clear gaze at him, but Ginger didn’t react.
“If I understand correctly, two people will call you by this name: your mama and I,” the Sergeant said.
“I have no mama.”
“Well, just me then.”
“Just you.”
The Sergeant swallowed an angry mouthful of spit.
“Get up, private,” he said to Ginger.
Ginger opened his lazy eyes.
“And be so kind, private, tell me what’s the matter. Is something bothering you?”
“Yes, I…”
“Get up first.”
Ginger slowly got up and stood with his back to the wall.
“I’m bothered by the fact that our radios aren’t charged.”
The Sergeant nodded his head.
“And you should have checked it,” Ginger concluded.
“I heard you,” the Sergeant replied. “You can write a report to the commanding officer about this fact. Are there any other questions?”
“Not right now.”
“Then go and check the signals and tripwires.”
Damn him, the Sergeant thought, following Ginger with his gaze. What’s up with him?
Who called him Ginger, anyway? he tried to recall — and suddenly he did.
It wasn’t anything speciaclass="underline" back in distant Russia, they were sitting around and drinking, and that guy was sitting to the side — he had recently joined the unit.
“What are you sitting there for the whole time, on the side?” the main unit’s joker asked, the deputy engineering specialist, who was thin and talked in a slightly nasal voice, and was nicknamed Sinew. “Why are you acting like a redhead?”
This wasn’t funny in itself, but applied to the shining, hairless head it seemed amusing. Everyone laughed drunkenly.
“Aren’t you sharp,” Ginger had replied quietly. “That’s a sharp tongue you’ve got there. You want to sharpen my pencil for me?”
“I won’t sharpen your pencil, I’ll jerk you off,” Sinew replied, and everyone once more merrily bared their drunken fangs and pink tongues.
“All right, Ginger, don’t honk,” Sinew honked himself, quite amiably. “Come on, let’s drink to brotherhood, to your new name.”
For all his cheerfulness, he was brutal, Sinew was, and he was good at shooting people down, and liked to do so.
So that’s how it came about: Ginger…
“What’s with him?” Samara asked the Sergeant cheerfully.
“Go with him,” the Sergeant replied, quickly calming down. “Or he’ll fall over the tripwire. Make sure that…”
Samara, grinning cheerfully, went outside.
“Take an automatic weapon, where are you going with that oar of yours!” the Sergeant shouted after him.
Samara came back and put the sniper rifle in the corner, and took an AK-47.
“What’s going on here?” Sluggish appeared.
The Sergeant shrugged his shoulders.
“Everything’s fine, Sluggish,” he replied, smiling. “Or shouldn’t I call you Sluggish anymore?”
“No, call me Swift,” he chuckled in reply.
Another dreary, limping hour dragged by.
Ginger came back and sat down in silence, staring ahead.
The others walked around him, as if he were not alive.
“Sergeant!” Sluggish called. “Could I have a word with you?”