«You finish building, then you go home,» the sergeant said, dismissively.
«What do you mean?» he asked in surprise.
«You finish building, then you go home,» the sergeant said with emphasis.
The unit commander descended to take delivery of the work. He inspected the house from all sides, banged the walls and examined it inside.
«Well done, lads. What a team!»
The soldiers straightened their shoulders.
«Now you can go to another town and do the same there for a friend of mine. He'll pay you.»
«It's time to go home,» said one of the soldiers, scratching his neck. «We're already overdue.»
The commander went over to him and laid a heavy hand on his shoulder.
«And where might you be from?» he asked.
«Near Pskov, a village…»
«So what have you left behind? What are you going to do when you get there?»
The soldier didn't know how to respond. He looked round at his comrades.
«What? You don't need money? I said he'll pay!» yelled the sergeant.
Taking a deep breath, the Penguin stepped forward.
«I'm due to go too… I'll be building at home… My Dad'll help.»
The commander pressed his lips together, jaws working, and the boy shrank still further under his gaze.
«You were told to grow another half metre. Have you? You're staying on!» said the commander, turning away and striding back to his vehicle. «That'll be all. Load them up.»
They drove for several hours, trying to guess the direction they were taking away from the town. The soldiers said nothing. They stared at one another and when the lorry bounced over potholes, they bounced up and down in the lorry too.
«Attempting to escape is desertion,» barked the sergeant. «Then it's goodbye, Mum!»
«But we've done our time,» the soldiers complained. «Our parents will be looking for us.»
«We've already phoned them to say their sons are in the disciplinary battalion,» said the sergeant with a grin of farewell.
The unit commander's friend was a local civil servant. They were building a dacha for his son next to the plot on which his own sturdy house stood. The soldiers were put up in the barn on camp beds that collapsed when the legs buckled in the night and that the lads woke up on the floor in the small hours.
«Built by soldiers,» said one expert, patting the walls.
«So what, by the time we've finished building for their children, their grandchildren will be grown up,» spat the soldier from Pskov, kicking off his boots. «There's no shortage of work.»
The owner's wife, old before her time, her grey hair pulled back in a bun, brought them hot pies that she'd wrapped in a towel to keep warm.
«Ooh, you're so skinny,» she said, shaking her head and trotting off across the courtyard for more, tucking up her hair that had come loose.
She loved to sit on a folding chair, listening to their discussions. It reminded her of her own childhood, spent in the military town to which her father was attached. When she saw their ragged uniforms in the light, she brought along some castoffs of her son's, which hung on the soldiers like clothes on a scarecrow.
«Meat pies,» she smiled, looking at the boys who were hovering impatiently. «And one has pepper in.»
«Pepper?»
«Yes, black pepper. For luck. Whoever gets it has to eat it and then he'll have good luck. That's what they say.»
«That's about my luck, a mouth full of pepper,» grumbled the boy from Pskov although he looked enviously around to see whether anyone else had got the «lucky» pie.
The Penguin started to howl, his eyes on stalks, and the woman clapped her hands.
«He's the lucky one! Eat it up. You mustn't spit out good luck!»
Gathering up the plates, the woman set off for home and the boy from Pskov caught her up at the fence.
«Aunty, could I ring home from your place?»
Her kind eyes became small and sharp as pepper: «It's not allowed,» she snapped in the voice of the unit commander.
When the house was finished, the sergeant came for the soldiers again in the ancient lorry with its angry cough. The women crossed the boys' path and thrust a packet of pies at them. Then leaning on the gate, she watched after the departing lorry for a long time.
«Just one more little house and back to your Mums,» the sergeant shouted from the cab. «What were you before you joined the army? Soft as shit. A waste of space! Now you've got qualifications. When you go home, you can go and work on building sites, earn yourselves a bit of money. There's just one last house…»
When the lorry braked at a turning, the Penguin jumped over the side and made a dash for the forest, not really looking where he was going.
«Stop!» yelled the sergeant but there was no trace of the soldier.
The sergeant didn't dare look for him in the forest. He was afraid the others would make a run for it as well. Instead, back at the unit, he sent soldiers with dogs out to find the deserter. They spent several days looking for the Penguin until a shaggy sheepdog, its throat hoarse from barking, hurled itself at the tree he dangled from, hanged by his belt.
His father, also short and fat, came to collect the coffin but he never saw how his son had stretched out and slimmed down. The plain wooden coffin had been nailed down and he ran his hairy hands over the lid as if trying to make out the shape of his son. Clearing his throat, the unit commander offered his condolences and the sergeant handed over his effects, which smelt of the forest and of death.
His father hung around the unit, picking up hints and allusions, from which he built up a picture of his son's life in the army. When he realized what had happened, he lay in wait for the unit commander, fists clenched, but the latter, looking down at the shorter man from his full height, pointed to the morgue and his son's coffin:
«Take it and get lost! Come back and you'll end up there too!»
The soldiers were glued to the barrack windows, noses pressed to the glass, but when the commander looked up they sprang away as if he might remember their faces.
Medics loaded the coffin onto the roof of an elderly car that looked like a slave bent under an impossible weight and the father took his son home, chatting to him all the way as if he could hear him.
Everything in Savage's room had been turned upside down. Clothes, crumpled papers and drawings had been tossed around everywhere, books had been thrown from the shelves like birds from a nest and the mattress lay, disembowelled, on the floor. A sturdy lad was busy leafing through the phone book and Saam, slouched on a stool, was flicking cigarette ash onto the floor.
«Maybe it just wasn't him?» suggested Mrs Savage, leaning wearily on the door. She was dishevelled and her sleepless nights showed in the blue under her eyes.
Saam stubbed the cigarette butt out on the sole of his shoe and threw it into the corner.
«Well, the others certainly weren't him!» she said, shaking her head.
«So who was it?» the gangster asked phlegmatically as he inspected his nails.
Mrs Savage moved closer, nervously fiddling with the belt of her housecoat.
«Come on, he's a complete pushover. Anyone could wipe the floor with him. He's scared of his own shadow. He sleeps with a night-light on!»
«Did your daughter see him fire?»
«She doesn't know whether she did or not. Sometimes, she thinks…»
Exchanging a look, Saam and his sidekick burst out laughing.
«Well, I believe my own eyes,» Saam smirked, giving her the once over. «And if I saw that hubby of yours fire the gun, no-one's going to persuade me that Coffin shot himself!»
Savage's daughter was hiding in the bathroom where she was plastered against the door. Hearing the gangsters' heavy tread, she cautiously locked the door. There, sitting in the darkness, Vasilisa listened to the sound of water from the neighbours' and once again went over the events of that evening in her head. In the beginning, she had known her father killed Coffin. After all, it had happened right in front of her. But then doubts crept in and eroded her memories the way water wears away a stone and she began to think her father hadn't fired or that he fired but missed, that there was a second shot and a third.