You come to, lying on the concrete. Your head is on the lap of your brother-in-misfortune, and you hear him quietly shedding tears in mourning for you. You ask what he is crying for. He starts at the sound of your voice and, placing his hand on your chest, he replies that he wasn’t crying. You are too calm, and this frightens him. The soldiers sitting there leave you in peace. You have to convince him of your sanity.
In the dark you hear the mumbling of the lieutenant (a contract soldier,[31] as you learn later), who has been arrested along with two other officers and imprisoned here in the cellar with you. He is tirelessly addressing ‘Comrade Colonel’, who is sitting with him, and he’s threatening to get mad, and accompanying this with an explanation of how scary he is when angry. You get fed up with hearing this and so you suggest he should go on and get mad or shut up. He asks, ‘Who’s that?’
The soldiers reply, ‘A Chechen.’
‘Is he violent?’ he asks.
And despite the soldiers’ assurances that ‘He’s mellow, he’s taken a right clobbering’, he decides to quit talking. A strip of light is showing through a small hole punched through the top of the tank car. It is dawn. But the dawn will bring with it new torture. For the first time in your life you are frightened of the dawn. You know they won’t shoot you straightaway. You realized that during the night. You wait. Afraid. Afraid of not being able to take it. You don’t trust your willpower and you don’t trust your tongue. You’re frightened of ceasing to be their enemy. You may have forgiven them, they may have stopped being the enemy to you, but you must be the enemy to them. They do not know how to forgive. They do not know the vast power hidden in forgiveness. They’re revelling in their physical dominion over you. They are not free of hatred, and that is their curse. The door opens and you are led outside. You step into the morning sun and fresh air. Everyone is eating army porridge for breakfast – everyone except you. You are unable to. You can neither chew nor swallow. So you watch them in silence.
7
They’ve blindfolded you and are taking you for interrogation. As they bring you into the room, they remove the blindfold. Two men are in the room: a man just over forty with a black moustache who is in civilian clothes and a strapping guy in uniform without any rank insignia. You immediately work out who this second man is. He’s a praporshchik – a warrant officer. In the Soviet Army, praporshchik was a rank for losers. For men who would never be officers but were no longer soldiers. The praporshchik usually serves in a position too demeaning for a professional officer but that cannot be entrusted to a sergeant. These are administrative roles and also what are tacitly regarded as valets to the generals and admirals (the Soviet Army didn’t officially have valets). Of course, there were praporshchiks who were experts, but they were a tiny minority. When I served in the Soviet Army our platoon commander was a praporshchik. But I could never bring myself to call him one. And I wasn’t alone – the other soldiers in the platoon felt the same. A first class professional, his intellect and skill inspired respect. Soldiers would nickname praporshchiks ‘Swag-Baggers’ or ‘Dogs’. These praporshchik flunkies can always be spotted by their stunted intellectual development, the cowardly cruelty in their eyes and the permanently spiteful expression of a loser on their faces. ‘I am a praporshchik,’ he introduces himself, as though declaring that you’ve won a prize. ‘I’ve been at war for the past twelve years, ever since Afghanistan, and the word “mercy” has been wiped clean from my memory. By the way, I’ve found out your call sign,’ he tells you gleefully. It’s “Dog”, that right?’
‘What, you’ve decided to name me that?’ you ask.
‘Ah, so he can speak!’ he says, thumping you on the head with his fist, which is clenched around a pistol. This knocks you to the floor, along with the chair you’d been seated on. Getting up with effort, you sit back down. Next, the praporshchik comes up behind your back and whacks you round the head with the pistol butt. Your face strikes the table, and for a moment you lose consciousness. But a new blow to your kidneys brings you round, knocking the wind out of you. The praporshchik fires the pistol into the ground at your feet. The pistol has a silencer, and instead of shots, you hear pops.
‘Now I’ll smash your other foot up so bad it’ll have to be lopped right off, you bleeding bastard!’ he spits. But the seething praporshchik is stopped by the man in civilian clothing, who until now has remained silent. He’s clearly an officer, although he is trying to play the part of a civilian.
‘Are you an only son?’ he asks. You nod in reply.
‘And if you die, your line will end, yes?’ You nod again, unable to speak from the pain. He is well-versed in your traditions. He understands the importance for Chechens of maintaining their genetic line, the blood of the clan. He’s probably a native of the Caucasus himself.
‘Look, we’ve thought things over and we’ve decided to give you a chance. You tell us all that you know. Show us on the map where the rebels have their base. Tell us the weapons they have, how many men are in Gelayev’s special-forces unit, what their rank insignia is, the location of their positions, and we’ll release you. If you refuse, then you’ll be killed. And after they’ve killed you, they’ll blow your head off with a grenade. And nobody will be able to identify the corpse.’ Yet another demonstration of his knowledge of Chechen culture: corpses must never be abused or mutilated, it is an insult to the living members of the victim’s clan; but what he doesn’t know is that during war this rule takes on a different interpretation. ‘But before they kill you, they’ll make you speak anyway. We haven’t yet tried our full range of techniques on you.’
‘Look, I can’t read maps. I don’t know the first thing about weapons. I don’t even know one end of that RPG you found on me from the other. I’ve never been to the bases – they never trusted me enough. And as for the number of men and the rank insignia of the special forces – I simply don’t know.’
‘But you’re lying to us. You’re on good terms with Dudayev. You had a photo of him, you had poems dedicated to him, you had a report intended for him, and you’re trying to tell us that you and he aren’t friends. You expect us to believe that? Why won’t you look us in the eye when you answer?’
‘First, tell me whose eyes to look into. You’re both asking questions and you’re both demanding I look you in the eyes. Well, I can only look at you one at a time. As for the poems… I’m a poet. And it’s my right as a poet to dedicate my work to whoever I want. The photo of Dzhokhar was from a press conference. It’s got the date on it, so you can go and check whether there really was a press conference that day. Those scrappy old notes of mine could hardly count as a report, they don’t follow any system. And there’s no intended recipient named anywhere.’
31