Читать книгу Free Fall - Nicolai Lilin - Страница 8

When I turned eighteen, I already had a past behind me. But the world had one too, and it was decidedly more complex than mine. My country was turning into a realm of the absurd. Capitalism, so longed for, never came. The mentality of the crook reigned, the mentality of people out for easy money who wished to look smarter than God himself. Or, as my grandfather would say, ‘Everyone wanted to take God’s beard and try it on for size.’

In Transnistria people did nothing but talk about Western society. The United States and Europe were living examples of economic and social prosperity; everybody wanted to become Western, thinking that if they wore designer clothes, ate fast food and bought foreign cars, democracy would naturally follow, and take root in our great and beautiful Land. It was like an infectious disease, a fever whose origin and character nobody could explain.

Post-Soviet society had erased the values of my forebears, the people who had raised me and who, for me, represented the pinnacle of human wisdom. The more this Western euphoria grew, the clearer it became that chaos would rule our days.

It was in this cheerful context, as I was saying, that I turned eighteen.

*

One spring morning, I woke up and went outside, opened the mailbox, and found a white card with a red diagonal line across it. It said that the military office of the Russian Federation was asking me to appear for my physical and to bring my identification documents. It added that this was the third and final time they would send me notice, and if I didn’t show up within three days I could expect a criminal conviction for ‘refusal to pay my debt to the Nation in the form of military service’.

I thought that the scrap of paper was a joke, a formality, something of little importance. I went back inside, grabbed my papers, and without even changing, headed across town in my slippers to the old Russian military base.

At the door, I showed the guards the notice and they let me in without a word.

‘Where do I have to go?’ I asked one of them.

‘Go straight, it’s all the same . . .’ the soldier replied unenthusiastically, clearly irritated.

What an idiot, I thought, heading towards a large office where it said: ‘Drafts and New Recruits Department’.

The office was dark; you could hardly see a thing. On the back wall was a small window out of which shone a dismal, feeble yellow light. I could hear the tip-tap of a typewriter.

I walked towards the window and saw a young woman in a military uniform at a table, typing with one hand and holding a cup of tea with the other. She took small sips and kept blowing into the mug to cool it off.

I leaned on the counter and peered in. I saw that on her knees under the table there was an open magazine. It was an article on Russian pop stars, with a photo of a singer wearing a crown adorned with peacock feathers. It made me feel even sadder.

‘Hello, excuse me, Miss, I got this in the mail,’ I said, holding out the card.

The woman turned towards me and looked at me for a second as if she couldn’t figure out where she was or what was going on. She snatched the magazine she’d been reading and flipped it over behind the typewriter so that I couldn’t see it. Then she set down the mug of tea, and without standing up or saying anything, and without expression, she took the white card with the red line from my hand. She looked at it for a moment and then, in a voice that seemed to belong to a ghost, asked:

‘Papers?’

‘Which papers, mine?’ I asked awkwardly, pulling my passport and everything else out of my trouser pocket. She looked at me with a hint of disdain and said, through clenched teeth:

‘Well, certainly not mine.’

I handed over my papers and she put them in a safe. Then she took a form from a shelf and began filling it out. She asked for my name, surname, date and place of birth, home address. Then she moved on to more personal information. After asking for my parents’ details, she said:

‘Have you ever been arrested or had trouble with the law?’

‘Well, I myself have never had trouble with the law, it’s the law that seems to have trouble with me sometimes . . . I’ve been arrested lots of times, I can’t remember how many. And I’ve been in juvenile prison twice.’

She looked up and examined me. Then she tore up the form she’d been filling out and took another, larger one, with a red line running diagonally across it, like that on the card I’d received in the post.

We started again, covering all the personal information, this time including my convictions – article numbers, dates. Then my health: illnesses, vaccinations; she even asked if I consumed alcohol or drugs, if I smoked cigarettes. This went on for an hour . . . I couldn’t remember the exact dates of the convictions, so I made them up on the spot, trying to get at least the month right, or general period.

When we were finished I tried to explain that there must be some mistake, I couldn’t do military service. I had requested and been granted a six-month deferral, assuring them that in the meantime I was going to finish a course of study and then enrol at university. If everything went as planned, I added, I was going to open a physical education school for children, there in Bender.

She listened, without looking me in the eye, which worried me. Then she gave me a piece of paper. It said that from that moment onward I was the property of the Russian government and that my life was protected by law.

I couldn’t understand what all this actually meant.

‘It means that if you try to escape, harm yourself, or commit suicide, you will be prosecuted for damage to government property,’ she told me coldly.

I suddenly felt trapped. Everything around me began to seem more serious and sinister than before.

‘Listen,’ I burst out, ‘I couldn’t give a shit about your law. If I have to go to jail I’ll go, but I will never take up arms for your fucking government . . .’

I was furious, and when I started talking like that I instantly felt powerful, even more powerful than that absurd situation. I was sure, absolutely sure, that I could change this machine that was threatening to regulate my life.

‘Is there a general around, or whatever the fuck you call your authorities? I want to see one, talk to him, since you and I don’t understand each other!’ I raised my voice, and she looked at me with the same expressionless gaze as before.

‘If you want to speak with the colonel, he’s here, but I don’t think that will solve anything. I advise you to keep calm. Don’t make things worse for yourself.’

It was good advice, thinking back on it now. She was telling me something important, I’m sure; she was showing me a better way, but at the time I was blind.

I felt sick. How is it possible, I asked myself, that just this morning I was free, I had my plans for the day, for the future, for the rest of my life, and now, because of a little piece of paper, I was losing my freedom? I wanted to yell and fight with someone, to show how angry I was. I needed to. I cut her off, shouting in her face:

‘For Christ’s sake, Holy Lord on the cross! If I want to talk to someone, I talk to him, period! Where the fuck is this commander of yours, general, whatever the hell he is?’

She rose from her chair and asked me to calm down and wait for ten minutes on the bench. I looked around and I didn’t see any bench. Fucking hell, what is this place? Everyone here is nuts, I thought, as I waited in the dark.

Suddenly a door opened, and a soldier, a middle-aged man, called me by name.

‘Come, Nicolay, the colonel is expecting you!’

I jumped up like a spring and ran over, eager to get out of that disgusting little room as quickly as possible.

We went out into a small courtyard surrounded by buildings all painted white, with propagandist drawings and posters illustrating the exercises that the soldiers had to do to learn to march. We crossed the courtyard and entered a room filled with light, with big windows and lots of flowerpots. In the middle of the flowers there was a bench, and next to the bench a large ashtray.

‘Wait here. The colonel will call you from this door. You can smoke if you like . . .’

The soldier was kind. He spoke to me in a very friendly tone. I’d calmed down and I felt more secure; it seemed that my situation would be cleared up and that someone would finally listen to me.

‘Thanks, sir, but I don’t smoke. Thank you for your kindness.’ I was trying to be as nice as possible myself, to make a good impression.

The soldier bade me goodbye and left me alone. I sat there on the bench, listening to the soldiers who had come onto the courtyard for drills. I looked out the window.

‘Left, left, one, two, three!’ the drill sergeant shouted desperately. He was a young man in an immaculate military uniform, marching along with a platoon of men who didn’t seem to have any desire to march.

‘Nicolay, you can come in, my boy!’ called out a firm male voice. Despite its kind, almost sweet tone, the voice had something off about it, a false note you could hear underneath.

I went up to the door and knocked, asking permission to enter.

‘Come in, son, come in!’ he said, his voice still kindly and brimming with friendliness. He was a big, strong man sitting at an enormous desk.

I went in, closed the door, and took a few steps towards him, then suddenly I halted.

The colonel was about fifty and was very stocky. His head, which was shaven, was marked by two long scars. His green uniform was snug; his neck was so wide that his jacket collar was completely taut, as if it were about to tear open. His hands were so large that you could barely see his nails, they were so deeply set. A split ear suggested he was an experienced wrestler. His face might have been copied from the Soviet military propaganda posters of the Second World War: unrefined features, a straight wide nose, big resolute eyes. On the left side of his chest a dozen medals hung in a row.

Jesus help me, this one’s worse than a cop . . . I could already imagine how our meeting was going to end. I didn’t know where to start; it was like there was no way I would be able to express myself in front of somebody like him.

Suddenly, interrupting my thoughts, he spoke. He was looking through a file similar to the ones in which police keep confidential information on criminals.

‘I’ve been reading your story, my dear Nicolay, and you’re starting to grow on me. You didn’t do very well in school, in fact you didn’t do much at all, but you did play four different sports . . . That’s good. I played a lot of sports when I was young too. Studying is for the weak; real men do sports, prepare themselves for combat . . . You did wrestling, swimming, long-distance running and target shooting . . . Good, you’re well prepared; I think you have a good future ahead of you . . . There’s just one flaw: Tell me, why do you have two convictions? Did you steal something?’ He looked me straight in the eyes and if he could have done he would have looked right into my mind.

‘No, I didn’t steal anything; I don’t steal from people . . . I beat up a few guys, twice. They charged me with “attempted murder with serious bodily harm” . . .’

‘That’s nothing, don’t worry . . . I got into fights when I was young too; I understand completely. Men need to make their space in the world, to define themselves. Fighting is the best way – that’s how you find out who’s worth something and who’s not even worth spit . . .’

He was talking as if he were about to give me a prize. I felt uncertain; I didn’t know what to say and above all I didn’t know how to explain to him that I had no intention of doing military service.

‘Listen, son, I couldn’t care less about your jail time, your criminal convictions and all the rest of it; I think you’re a good kid, God bless you, and I want to help you out because I like you. I have your whole life written here, from your first day of school . . .’ He set the file on the desk and closed it, tying the two ribbons on the side. ‘I’ll give you two choices, something I do only in exceptional cases, for people I really care about. I can put you in the Border Guard and send you to the Tajikistan border – you’ll have a good career, and if you like mountain climbing, it’s perfect. Or, I can put you with the paratroopers, a school for professionals – after six months you’ll become a sergeant and you’ll go far there too. Eventually you could even get into special forces, in spite of your background. The army will give you everything: a paycheque, a home, friends and an occupation at your level. So what do you say? Where do you want to go?’

It was like listening to the ravings of a madman. He was saying things that made no sense at all. The army giving me all the things that I already had! How could I explain to him that I didn’t need an occupation at my level, or friends, or a salary, or a house . . .

It was like when you get on the wrong train and suddenly realise there’s no way to make it turn back. I took a breath and blurted out my response:

‘To be honest, sir, I want to go home!’

He changed instantly. His face turned red, as if a pair of invisible hands were strangling him. His hands balled into fists and his eyes took on a strange glint, like the sky before a storm.

He took my file and threw it in my face. I managed to put up my hands in time to ward off the blow. The file hit my fingers and came open, and the papers scattered all over the room, on the desk, the windowsill, the floor.

I stood as still as a statue. He kept glaring at me, full of hatred. Then he suddenly began shouting in a terrible voice, which I could immediately tell was his real one:

‘You thankless bastard! You want to rot in shit? Then you can rot in shit! I’ll send you to a place where you won’t even have time to pull your trousers down you’ll be shitting in them so much, and every time you do, think of me, you ungrateful bastard! You want to go home? Then from now on your home will be the saboteur base! They’ll teach you what life is really like!’

He was screaming at me, and I stood there, completely drained.

‘Out! Out of here!’ He pointed at the door.

Without a word I turned on my heel and left the office. Outside the door a soldier was waiting, and he saluted me.

‘Sergeant Glasunov! Follow me, comrade!’ he said, with a voice that sounded like a Kalashnikov when it sends a cartridge into the barrel.

Your comrade is a mangy dog, I thought, but said humbly:

‘Excuse me, Sergeant, may I use the toilet?’

He gave me a strange look, but didn’t refuse.

‘Certainly. Down the hall and to the right!’

I walked down the corridor; he followed, and when I entered the bathroom he stayed and waited for me outside.

I was able to reach a small, high window, and since it had no bars I jumped down without any problem. Out in the yard behind the office, there was no one around.

‘To hell with this madhouse, I’m going home . . .’

With this and similar thoughts in my head I headed for the exit of the base. There, the guard stopped me. The soldier was young, maybe my age, very thin and a little cross-eyed.

‘Papers!’

‘I don’t have them on me, I came here to visit a friend . . .’

The soldier gave me a suspicious look.

‘Show your permit to leave the base!’

At that my heart sank into my boots. I decided to play stupid:

‘What permit? What are you talking about? Open the gate, I have to get out . . .’ I moved towards the gate, going past the soldier, and he pointed his machine gun at me, shouting:

‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’

‘Get out of the way!’ I replied, grabbing the gun by the barrel and ripping it out of his hands.

The soldier tried to punch me in the face, but I blocked him with the butt of the rifle. Suddenly someone hit me on the head from behind, hard. I felt my legs wobble and my mouth went dry. I took two deep breaths, and at the third I passed out.

I came round a few minutes later. I was lying on the ground, surrounded by soldiers. The sergeant who was supposed to be watching me was there too, looking worried and telling everyone in a conspiratorial tone:

‘Nothing happened, everything’s fine. Listen, nobody saw anything, I’ll take care of him.’

It was clear that he was afraid of being punished for his carelessness.

He came over and kicked me in the ribs.

‘Do that again, you bastard, and I’ll kill you myself!’

He gave me a few more kicks, then gave me his hand and helped me up. He took me to a kind of house with barred windows and a steel-clad door. It looked just like a prison.

We went inside. There wasn’t much light and everything seemed dirty and grey, neglected, abandoned. There was a small, narrow hallway, with three steel-clad doors. At the end of the hall a soldier appeared, who looked about twenty and a little thin, but with a kind face. He was holding a big set of keys of various sizes and kept shaking them, making a strange noise that under the circumstances almost made me cry out of sadness and desperation. With one of his keys the young soldier opened a door, and the sergeant ushered me into a very small, narrow room, with a little barred window. There was a wooden bunk attached to the wall.

I looked around and I couldn’t believe it. Just like that, I’d ended up in a cell.

The sergeant looked me in the eye and said:

‘Stay here and wait!’

I looked right back at him, without concealing my hatred.

‘What the fuck am I waiting for? What’s the meaning of all this?’

‘For the end of the world, you piece of shit! If I tell you to wait, you wait and don’t ask questions. I’m the one who decides what you have to wait for!’

With that, the sergeant gestured to the soldier to close the door and marched off triumphantly.

Before locking me up, the soldier came closer and asked me:

‘What’s your name, kid?’

His voice seemed calm and not mean.

‘Nicolay,’ I replied softly.

‘Don’t worry, Nicolay, you’re safer in here than with them . . . Rest up; in a few days they’ll take you to the train that will take you to Russia, to your future unit . . . Have they told you where you’re going yet?’

‘The colonel said he’s assigning me to the saboteurs . . .’ I replied in an exhausted voice.

There was a pause, and then he asked excitedly:

‘The saboteurs? Holy Christ, what happened? What did you do to deserve that?’

‘I had a Siberian education,’ I replied, as he closed the door.

*

I was locked in that cell for three days.

There were lots of other people in the temporary prison, and every now and then I could hear them. Some would groan; many were silent; one was always begging for food. They passed us our rations, horrible stuff, in vacuum-packed bags. You couldn’t tell what was in them; the biscuits were all crumbs, probably smashed by something heavy. As the guard later confessed, the people ‘waiting for the train’ like me got the packs that had been damaged in transit.

‘But this food is disgusting, my friend, give me something better, just once. I don’t know – a piece of fruit?’ I was always asking the guard for extras, and once in a while he’d get me an apple, a peach, a couple of prunes.

‘Don’t be picky, kid. You have to get used to eating whatever’s around . . . Those dogs, in the place you’re going, they definitely won’t be waiting for you with piping hot dinners! You’ll see, the day will come when you’ll remember these biscuits as being the best thing in the world . . .’ He wasn’t being mean, although it was obvious that he was a little scared of me.

Every so often he’d open the little window and chat with me for a while. He asked me where I was from, about my family, and why my parents hadn’t paid the recruitment office to get me exempted from service. I was honest with him; I told him about my life and about my neighbourhood, Low River, and before long a sort of trust had been established between us.

I took care of my business in the latrine in the corner by the window. I was already familiar with the smell – it was the same as jail – but here I had no cellmates who smoked who could give me a match to burn some paper.

I asked the guard if he could give me anything and through the window he tossed me a bag of white powder, a bathroom disinfectant. I used it, but within half an hour the chemical odour became so strong it hurt to breathe – it was as if they’d thrown me into a vat of ammonia. I nearly passed out and I cursed with every breath.

On the evening of the third day, the guard told me that our train had arrived and would take us away that night.

I had decided to try to escape during transit.

I thought that if they put me in a jeep, I could jump out as it left the base.

At about midnight I heard a great racket, a car engine, and some voices. They started to open the cell doors one by one, calling out our names. Soon they opened the door to my cell, and in the corridor I saw a young officer staring at me. From the little stars on his epaulettes I could tell that he was a lieutenant. He called my name, his voice calm. When I replied, ‘Yes, that’s me!’ he responded in a tired but amicable tone:

‘From now on, boy, it’s better if you learn to reply like a real soldier. When you hear your name called, you should only say “Yes, Sir!” You understand?’ He looked at me with humility; it almost seemed as if he were asking me to do him a favour. Since I was thinking of escape, I decided to play along. I stood up nice and straight, like I thought soldiers were supposed to stand in front of a superior, and with a voice full of energy I said:

‘Yes, Sir!’

‘That’s it, very good. Now go to the door, there’s a truck waiting for you.’ And he turned to the next cell. I stared hard at his back and yelled:

‘Thank you, Sir!’

He waved his hand lazily, without looking at me, as friends do when they part ways after spending the day together.

From the hall, I could see a military truck in the courtyard, and two soldiers with their rifles aimed at me.

‘You! Get in the truck. Now, now!’ one of them shouted in my face.

I knew very well that once I was in there I wouldn’t have another chance to escape. I froze, as if struck by lightning. I still couldn’t believe that what was happening to me was real.

‘Get in the truck, I said! What, are you deaf?’ he taunted, pointing his rifle at me.

I had no choice, and so I got in. Twenty men climbed in behind me, then the armoured door closed and the truck took off.

Inside it was so dark you couldn’t see a thing. Some of them were speaking, asking questions: Where is the train? Is it far away? As if wherever the train was made any difference. Some of the men were calm; they said they already knew where they had been assigned. One said:

‘I don’t care. My father knows the commander at the base they’re sending me to. He set it all up; I’ll hide out for my whole term of service. I’ll pass the time with the country girls . . .’

As I listened to them talk, I realised that none of them felt responsible for his own life. I was surrounded by children. For many of them, military service was their first opportunity to be on their own, without their parents coddling them. It was a new experience, they said, an adventure. I couldn’t believe my ears. They were losing two years of their life doing something that none of them would ever have chosen to do, and in spite of all that they were happy.

After a few hours, we reached the railway station. It was enclosed by a red brick wall with heavy barbed wire on top. It reminded me of the sorting yard in the central prisons. The train was there on the tracks, with a long row of sleeper cars. Floodlights from the towers illuminated a square full of young men, like me, dressed in civilian clothes. Some carried bags, as if they were going on a holiday. There were guards everywhere, some with dogs; it was just like when they’d taken me to jail. I lost all hope of escape.

My only thought at that moment was procuring a toothbrush and a few other things I needed – I’d left the house without imagining I’d end up here, and I hadn’t brought anything with me. I went up to a guy with a backpack and asked him if he happened to have a toothbrush. He looked at me strangely. It was clear that even though he was taller than me and definitely seemed stronger he still didn’t know a thing about the crude realities of life. I smiled at him.

‘Listen up – give me your toothbrush, toothpaste, towel and soap . . . I want to show you a trick!’ I tried to sound friendly.

‘What trick?’ he asked.

‘A funny trick, trust me,’ I said, forcing myself to chuckle, as if I actually wanted to astonish him with some sleight of hand.

‘Give me your stuff while there’s still time!’

He looked a little suspicious, but in the end his childlike curiosity won out, and he reached into his backpack, which was full of all kinds of stuff his mummy had packed for him to help make him comfortable during his tour, and pulled out a small bag. I snatched it out of his hands and slipped it under my jacket, and walked away as if nothing had happened.

‘Hey, what about the trick?’ the idiot asked, a smile still on his lips. Poor fool, he still hadn’t realised that I’d ripped him off.

I glared at him, and in an ugly voice replied:

‘Get lost or I’ll rip your eyes out, you piece of shit!’

Filled with shame and fear, head hanging, he walked back over to the others in his group.

As soon as we reached the yard we lined up in fours. There were a few hundred of us altogether. The soldiers passed by and took away whatever they considered ‘useless’, which was nearly everything. Bags, backpacks and any other possessions were immediately confiscated.

‘Money, watches, jewellery, cigarettes . . . everything out of your pockets!’ the soldiers yelled.

The others looked around, disorientated. The most fragile ones burst into tears after a soldier yelled at them. I was angry, but at the same time I almost felt like laughing at their behaviour.

At last the doors of the train opened and they ushered us on one at a time. Two soldiers made another sweep, throwing everything they found on the floor in a corner: watches, chains and other items, until a giant pile formed. I had put the bag between my legs, inside my underwear – to be more precise, I’d hidden it under my balls. The soldiers didn’t even touch me; I raised my arm to show that I didn’t have anything in my trousers, and they let me by.

I took a place at the window, just as I had done in jail. I had learned that that was the best spot, the safest.

The train hadn’t even pulled away and the complaints had already begun. One guy was whining about the guards hitting him because he hadn’t boarded the train fast enough, others because they’d lost the things they had brought from home. It was clear that they had never felt the sense of vulnerability and powerlessness that you feel in the face of the system, when you are crushed by the reality of power.

After a two-day journey, we reached a place similar to the one we had just left. There were lots of soldiers in the yard wearing various uniforms. It was midday, and all the men had come to the windows to get a look.

And they began to chatter:

’Look, the tankers! They’re here for me, I’m going with them!’

‘The ones in blue berets are the paratroopers. Look, that guy has a bayonet hooked on his boot!’

‘Well, the infantry still have the smartest uniforms!’

The cheerful voices made me nauseous. I wanted to get off that damned train as quickly as possible.

The officers opened the doors and let us out, and then they began to call us, one by one. The first on the list were the ones headed for the infantry, so the yard was immediately half emptied. Then they called the artillery, and almost the entire second half left. After that, they called three groups simultaneously: paratroopers, tankers and motorists. Then there were about twenty of us left. Some officers in blue, navy and white uniforms came; they were the spetsnaz, the autonomous special units of the infantry, and they took most of the rest.

There were three of us left. A man in civilian clothes came, gave us a melancholy look, and said:

‘Saboteurs, let’s go!’ Without waiting for us, he turned and started walking towards the car, an armoured military off-road vehicle parked on the other side of the yard. We didn’t look at one other, just followed him, and after a moment an officer ran after us with a folder full of papers. Each unit’s representative had signed a piece of paper covered with stamps and other scribbles before leaving with his group. Now the officer, still running, yelled at the top of his lungs:

‘Zabelin! Give me your bloody signature for once, you bastard!’

The man in civilian clothes casually kept walking. The soldier gave up, and, cursing, gestured contemptuously in our direction.

‘Your unit is bullshit; you’re just a bunch of amateurs!’

The man in civilian clothes stood by the car with the keys in his hand, staring at us.

‘All right, boys, I’m Senior Lieutenant Zabelin, in charge of the saboteur training unit . . . Which of you boys can drive?

‘I can, Senior Lieutenant Sir!’ I replied, with the voice of a young communist – full of energy and faith in the Nation’s future.

He gave me a funny look:

‘Tell me, how many times have you been in?’

‘Two, Senior Lieutenant Sir!’ I replied, without missing a beat.

He whistled, and then asked:

‘Did you steal? Deal drugs?’

‘No, Senior Lieutenant Sir!’

‘Well then,’ he said, raising his voice, ‘are you going to share what the hell you did that was serious enough to get two juvenile convictions?’

‘I impaired some people’s health, Senior Lieutenant Sir!’

‘You impaired some people’s health? What language are you speaking, boy! Can’t you explain yourself any better?’

It was like talking to my late, great uncle Sergey. He used the same expressions, and his voice wasn’t cruel or fake like that of other soldiers.

‘I beat up and stabbed two people, Senior Lieutenant Sir! But I did my time and I’ve learned my lesson!’ I kept playing the good soldier, responding in the way I imagined that soldiers were supposed to respond: fast, like tap-dancing with your tongue.

‘Good boy! I like you!’ he said, amused. ‘Now take the keys and be careful with the transmission, it’s an old car . . .’ Then he paused, looked at all three of us and said in a normal voice, without any trace of mockery or arrogant bullshit or anything of the sort:

‘Never call me “Senior Lieutenant Sir” again, is that clear? From now on, you’re saboteurs. We don’t have ranks, just names, remember that. So I’m “Comrade Zabelin” to you. Let’s go, get this thing started . . .’

The saboteurs’ camp was in the paratroopers’ camp. It was a base within the base, with fences, checkpoints and everything. The paratroopers went about their daily lives and we never encountered them.

Our barracks were long, arranged on a single storey, and in the middle of the hallway there was an entrance that led underground.

During the first week they subjected us to various trials; they wanted to assess our health and endurance. Zabelin was our only drill instructor; there were a dozen sergeants who assisted, but he saw to the training himself. They woke us up during the night and made us run, armed and with full backpacks as if we were in the field. We would leave the base in total darkness, Zabelin at the head of the ranks and a few sergeants at the side and the back, and start running like a pack of animals. It was extremely difficult; we had to move in the dark down dirt paths in the woods, run up and down hills, and every metre of ground we covered cost us enormous effort. Lots of guys got hurt; one fell and broke a leg; another didn’t see a ditch and fell in, shattering one of his vertebrae. You couldn’t see a thing, and Zabelin didn’t let us use any lights.

‘You have to move in the dark like animals. Darkness is a saboteur’s best friend; you have to take advantage of it. It’s your lover, your partner . . .’ he would always say when anyone tried to complain.

We also had to learn how to orient ourselves in the dead of night; it was important to know where base was at all times, to be able to load our rifles, arrange things in our packs. Even in the barracks our windows were always covered by heavy shutters made of dark wood. We ate, did our business, showered, dressed, dismantled and cleaned our weapons, all in the dark.

Zabelin respected me because I had learned to run in the dark without being afraid to fall, I handled exertion well, I could go a long time without drinking water, and especially because I never asked pointless questions, which he hated more than anything.

After a week, we began target practice. Beforehand, Zabelin asked if any one of us was handy with weapons, if we had shot anything. A few of us said yes, so he ordered us to take up the AKSM-74 Kalashnikov assault rifles, and gave us each an entire clip. I had a head start; in addition to the target shooting I did in a city sports team, I had lots of hunting experience in Siberia with my grandfather Nikolay. Whenever I went to visit my grandfather, even when I was still just a kid, my father often let me shoot his Kalashnikov.

When it was my turn, I made a spectacular shot. Instead of just hitting the bullseye, I knocked it down, breaking the pedestal that secured it to the ground.

‘Siberian, what the hell are you doing? Why didn’t you aim for the centre?’ Zabelin pretended to be angry with me.

‘There’s no point in shooting straw targets with this cannon, Comrade Zabelin!’ I replied, like the ideal soldier. ‘If you want me to hit that bullseye give me a slingshot, at least then it would be fun!’

My comrades broke into laughter. Zabelin laughed, too:

‘All right, let’s make a pact: if you can knock down the rest of that pedestal, I’ll send you to a place where you can do whatever you want!’ His tone was very cheerful.

‘Consider it done, Comrade Zabelin!’

I levelled the rifle, fixed the stump in the crosshairs, lowered my aim by half a finger and fired, very delicately pressing on the trigger. The pedestal lifted off the ground completely, and fell with a bounce.

‘All right, Nicolay, you’ve earned a spot in the sniper course. Starting tomorrow you’ll be working with Comrade Sergeant Yakut!’

From then on, every day for four hours, I would leave the main group and follow individualised training with a small detachment composed of twelve men. The sniper instructor was a sergeant of Siberian origin, like me, and so they called him Yakut, after the region he came from.* He was sharp and knew all there was to know about war. He’d fought in several armed conflicts and was an expert in ‘micro expeditions’, brief and highly risky engagements in special war operations. He seldom spoke, and spent most of our lessons teaching us the basics of shooting with precision rifles. He explained how to make the most of the telescope and how to pick out and hunt down other snipers. The principle wasn’t difficult; you had to move slowly without letting yourself be seen, be patient, and be extremely alert – like a hunter.

After a month of training exercises, I’d figured out a way to escape from the base. So one night I grabbed a few of my things and crossed two fences watched by the sentry. Like a shadow, I crept along the walls, but when I finally emerged outside the base, thinking that I’d made it, there was Zabelin, eating an ice cream.

‘Want one?’ he asked casually.

‘Might as well . . .’

I couldn’t imagine what he had in mind, but something told me he wouldn’t get me into trouble. I followed him to where he’d parked his car. We drove into the city, although it must have been two or three in the morning, and we stopped at the sort of diner frequented by truckers, a place where people would sneak off to their cars with prostitutes.

We sat down at a table and, without exchanging a word, ate a meal together. He washed his meat down with long sips of vodka. He offered me some too, but I declined – I didn’t want to get drunk. After eating in perfect silence, Zabelin ordered two lemon ice creams. Once the obese, exhausted waitress had set them on the table, he finally began to talk.

‘Nicolay, I don’t know what kind of mess you were born into or raised in, but I can assure you that here, in the army, nobody cares who you are. You don’t exist. Here you’re a number, and if you make one mistake they erase you, just as they would erase a number. I’m certain you could become a good saboteur, and I think that this is your only chance to save yourself. You’re going to find yourself in serious trouble, but if you follow my advice you’ll thank me for it one day . . .’ He spoke softly, without a sign of irritation, still calmly eating his ice cream.

I was eating my ice cream too, and I wasn’t thinking about military prison – where, if he wanted, he could have sent me without much difficulty. The only thing that mattered to me at that moment was figuring out how he’d caught me, when I thought I’d been careful and invisible. He kept talking:

‘You running away from my unit makes me look bad. If this story got out I’d have problems with superior command, and I don’t want any problems with them, understood? You know, don’t you, that all deserters get sent to military prison? You know what that means? Well, don’t think that just because you’ve been in juvie a couple of times you’ve seen all there is to see in this world . . . The point, dear Nicolay, is that starting tomorrow I’m going to send you on clean-up duty for three days. You’ll help the team that runs the military prison here, not far from our base. When you return, you can decide whether to run away or stay here and do your duty like the rest of us . . .’

We returned to camp. I went to sleep in the barracks and in the morning a sergeant woke me up with a taunt:

‘Let’s go, Count of Monte Cristo, they’re hauling you off to jail!’

I got dressed while my comrades were still sleeping, and went out to the yard. A car was waiting for me, with three soldiers and a lieutenant. We introduced ourselves, and after the military formalities we left for the prison.

Zabelin hadn’t exaggerated when he’d told me about the prison. In the yard, a few soldiers were walking in a circle, wearing faded old military uniforms; huddled together they looked like an indistinct dark grey blob. They had big white numbers on their backs, and they were frighteningly thin, shuffling around hopelessly, dragging their feet in imitation of a military march. It was the most horrible place I’d ever seen in my life.

A soldier holding a baton stood in the middle of the circle and barked out commands:

‘Left, left, one, two, three!’ He had an iron whistle in his mouth, tied to a little strap around his neck.

When he whistled, everyone immediately dropped to the ground, their bodies straight like logs, their hands on their heads. Yet one of them remained on his feet.

The soldier screamed at him, his voice almost hysterical:

‘You! Did you not hear the whistle?’ Then, seeing that there was no reaction, he moved quickly over to him. The prisoner’s knees shook so hard you could almost hear them knocking, but he kept on his feet. ‘For fuck’s sake, are you deaf?’ the soldier said, standing right in front of him. And without warning, he unleashed a series of blows with the baton, on the man’s back, neck, head. The man fell to his knees and wet his trousers. He was crying, begging the soldier not to beat him anymore. But the soldier’s only response was to laugh in his face.

‘You piece of shit traitor, you pissed all over yourself! How dare you?’ He gave him another volley of blows. The prisoner was on the ground now, the soldier’s boots kicking him.

The most chilling thing was that the whole scene had taken place in absolute silence. No one breathed, as if the yard were completely airless, without oxygen, without anything at all. It was like we were trapped inside a bubble that kept us from understanding what was going on.

My task, along with six other men, was to do the cleaning and take the food to the blocks where the military prisoners were being held. None of them was mentally stable; it was like they were in a catatonic state. They didn’t respond to questions; they behaved like animals, scurrying from one side of the cell to the other and then freezing the moment you looked at them, as if they were afraid to be caught moving. They lived according to the simple orders dictated by the whistle; they would eat in their cells, then march out to the yard, take their blows, undergo humiliation and torture from the guards, and then go to sleep at night only to wake up the following morning and start it all over again. They couldn’t communicate with each other, and any activity that would let them think was prohibited. They were unrecoverable, so deeply traumatised that – as one of the guards later confirmed – once they left prison, they never managed to reintegrate into society again. Many of them committed suicide; some wandered the streets until winter came and the cold killed them.

After three days in that prison, I decided not to tempt fate again, and so I returned to the routine of boot camp.

We saboteurs had an unusual uniform; we wore civilian clothes, things from home. As we would be conducting missions behind the front lines, travelling through territory under enemy control, it was essential that we be able to pass unrecognised. ‘The most important thing,’ Zabelin always said, ‘is your shoes.’ He explained to us that in wartime many soldiers complained of foot pain because of their boots, and he made us wear trainers so we would always be comfortable and light on our feet.

Zabelin had taught us the precious rules of ‘saboteur survival and solidarity’, as he called them. They were like commandments, and each of us had to learn them by heart. The idea was to create a sense of unity, to make us into our own clan within the army. The rules were very precise: saboteurs obey no one outside their commanding officer; under no circumstances may saboteurs be transferred to other units of the armed forces; in armed combat, saboteurs are forbidden to leave their dead on the ground. If a group suffered serious losses and was left isolated from the rest of the unit, they were not allowed to retreat from the line of operations. The only valid alternative was the most drastic: suicide. Each of us carried a personal hand grenade, which we were supposed to use to blow ourselves and the others up should the unit be surrounded by enemies and run out of ammunition. They were extreme rules, and I didn’t like them very much. I didn’t understand why we would have to kill ourselves, just because the saboteur strategy had no retreat plan, unlike every other unit of the Russian army.

What’s more, unlike the rest of the Russian army, we had nothing to do with military law. Every Russian soldier is required to memorise if not the entire military code, at the very least the principal articles. But as for us, we’ve never even touched our books, just as none of us has ever learned to march or salute properly.

Our weaponry, however, was better than the rest of the army’s. The paratroopers were equipped with Kalashnikov assault rifles, models with folding stocks and silencers which were attached in place of flash suppressors. With the silencer fitted we used ammunition with less gunpowder – the bullet would explode with less power so as not to exceed the speed of sound, and thus the weapon effectively turned out to be almost silent compared to the rifles they used in the infantry.

In actual war, I was soon to discover, you would detach the silencers; they were cumbersome, and during a mission it was hard to get the right ammunition. The charges you could find on the front line were the usual Kalashnikov ones, whereas you had to ‘reserve’ the special stuff at the warehouses, which wasn’t very convenient. This is why everybody would replace the silencers with flash suppressors picked up from wherever, often taken from an enemy. If you were lucky, you could find nice handmade models that worked to perfection – that is, that completely concealed the burst of flame created by the shot.

My comrades and I used two precision rifles. One was the classic Dragunov with a long barrel, useful for covering long distances. With one of these, its release modified and reload slowed down, an expert soldier – if he had the right cartridge – could shoot up to a kilometre away. It was a rifle used primarily as a field weapon, good for operations in wide-open spaces or at the foot of the mountains. The other rifle was a variation for special units: a VSS with a folding stock, a scope that detached easily for transport and an integrated silencer on the barrel. I liked that gun; it was light, precise, and it never betrayed you. The scope in particular was very sturdy and even if it slipped or hit something heavy it didn’t break. The VSS didn’t make any noise, but it only worked with a certain type of cartridge. It was able to cover a maximum range of three hundred metres, and it was useful for urban combat, where the gunfights were at very close range. You could also use it for reconnaissance, scouting and sabotage operations. The back-up groups for the assault squads often used it to keep watch over enemies without being seen.

We learned to parachute jump; first in broad daylight, and then after some practice, only at night time.

The idea of jumping out of a plane scared me, and I had no desire to try it. The first time, Zabelin had to force me to jump, dragging me to the side door and pushing me out into the air. The parachute opened by itself. I felt something hard yank on my shoulders and my neck went crack – whiplash, as I found out later – and in a few seconds my legs hit the ground. My left knee, which I landed on with my whole weight, blew up like a balloon. In the two weeks afterwards I did the planned jumps, even though my left leg hurt like hell every time I landed. That way, at least, I learned to land as gently as possible.

Night jumps were very dangerous. The ground beneath us was dark, and even if we asked what altitude we were flying at – to figure out how many seconds to wait before opening the parachute – nobody ever told us the exact height, and we often hit the ground sooner than we expected and got hurt. I landed in the trees twice, and it wasn’t much fun. I didn’t like parachute jumping at all, and I never learned to handle it without anxiety.

*

In this way, a couple of relatively peaceful months went by. By then, we were all so used to night drills and all the other arduous aspects of the saboteur’s life that we hardly noticed them anymore.

But I had noticed that Zabelin often brought up the subject of war. He talked a lot about Afghanistan, Afghan fighters, Islam, Muslim society and their philosophy of life, but most of all he talked about military tactics. Knowing that we were right in the middle of the Chechen-Russian conflict, I began to worry – I had a million doubts about what our commanders were really thinking, and I didn’t like it at all.

One by one, they started to pull people from our unit, and my comrades disappeared into thin air. They asked one man to report to the colonel’s office and soon afterwards we were all told that he had been transferred to a fixed post, where he was to spend the rest of his military service.

After three months of field training, it was my turn.

That morning, they called me to the colonel’s office. There were two other guys from my unit with me, and we were all anxious. Where are they going to send us? our eyes asked one another.

The office was luxurious, full of valuable antique wooden furniture and leather sofas and armchairs. A lot of military stuff hung on the walls: flags, insignias, photographs, even some antique weapons. The colonel was a nasty, beefy man who was bursting out of his uniform and had a face the colour of beetroot. He was accompanied by three officers, two of whom had a very dodgy look about them – as my dearly departed uncle would have said, ‘they were born thugs’.

After the formal introductions, they invited us to sit down on the sofa, right in front of a big television. As we sat down, I searched the eyes of my comrades. Unlike me, they looked happy; maybe those idiots were expecting to see Cinderella. The colonel himself put on the video-cassette. The first image that appeared on the screen showed the flag of the Russian Federation, which waved proudly amidst smoke and fire, riddled with holes and torn in one corner as if mice had nibbled away at it. At that instant I felt panic rise within me. I couldn’t show my desperation, but my whole body screamed silently. I knew immediately, I was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt: they were sending us to Chechnya.

A male voice, strong and determined, and an equally determined female voice, spoke theatrically over images of war, their words snaking between the charred bodies of our soldiers, the children looking out from the rubble in the streets, the civilians marching off in rows, forced to abandon their homes . . . The shots documenting the chaos of battle were interspersed with clips taken by Chechens and Arabs as they decapitated one of our soldiers who’d been taken prisoner, while the tanks burned on the road in Grozny. Then Russian hostages who had been released showed the camera the stumps of their hands, fingers and ears, which had been cut off by their kidnappers in order to blackmail their families. The image of a Russian transport plane shot down by the Arabs at the base of the mountains and our soldiers’ bodies strewn all over the rocks was accompanied by the words: ‘The terrorists have no respect for the living or for the dead: an aeroplane carrying our soldiers fallen in battle was shot down by Chechen-Arab guerrillas, so our men were killed a second time.’

Sadness came over me. I was going to a place where every human value I had ever known would be meaningless. I couldn’t turn back; I would be forced to accept the rules of the game, of which I was now a part. I thought of the stories told by my grandfather Nikolay, who had travelled all over Europe during the Second World War. I remember vividly how this strong man – who, when I was little, had always seemed so real and pure – could handle the difficulties of everyday life without batting an eye, but when the word ‘war’ came out of his mouth, he would suddenly become sad and almost seem to wilt. I thought back on the war in Transnistria, when I was still a little boy, and the only thing that came to mind was the frightening number of bodies on the streets of Bender, my hometown.

Meanwhile, the voices on the film went on with their insane story, explaining, in the same flat tone they used in propaganda announcements for the masses, that the Chechens were the bad guys and the Russians the good guys; that truth, power and even God himself were on our side, and that the only good thing a Russian could do in this life was kill as many Chechens as possible, and exterminate all their allies, the Arab terrorists, fundamentalist Muslims and ‘all the weak elements under the influence of their propaganda’. There was no way I wanted to get into that mess, but the reality was clear. When the film concluded, with a shot of the same flag as the beginning, I had already lost all hope.

The three officers began to explain to us the reasons why we had to go and risk our lives, and my comrades seemed hypnotised: they were sitting on the sofa with foolish half-grins on their faces, and they punctuated the officers’ every statement with enthusiastic nods of affirmation.

‘So, boys,’ the portly colonel broke in, ‘the Nation is asking you to do your part! Are you ready?’

These words cut me like a knife. I couldn’t feel anything; my head was about to blow off and shoot ahead by itself, like an old locomotive speeding downhill, detached from the rest of the train.

All three of us leapt to our feet, and together, in perfectly idiotic unison, we yelled with all our might:

‘Yes, Comrade Colonel! We will serve and honour the Russian Federation!’

‘Good thing . . .’ he said ironically, switching off the television, his fat finger pushing so hard on the remote control that it went crack.

Once we were out of that office, they didn’t allow us to return to the barracks. They led us to a room where we waited to hear our fate.

After a few hours, Zabelin arrived. He was in good spirits, even whistling a little tune. My comrades asked him loads of questions: ‘What are they going to do with us?’ ‘What’s going to happen to us?’ He hated stupid questions, as I said, so he looked at them with a smile and said:

‘Did they have you watch that video? You’ll be in next year’s version . . .’ At which they stopped asking questions.

Zabelin took me aside and whispered to me. ‘Nicolay, I put in a word for you with someone I know; he’s called Captain Nosov,’ he said, looking at me sternly. ‘He’s an old friend of mine, an expert saboteur. You’ll be on his independent team. Do what he says, and if you’re lucky, you’ll go home alive and in one piece.’ Then he shook my hand. Before leaving, he told us all to go to hell, an old Russian saying for good luck.

Half an hour went by and then a soldier came in, with three new uniforms. They had the paratroopers’ insignia printed on them, and naturally they came with the blue beret so loved and sought after by every paratrooper. He brought army boots too, which weighed at least a kilo each. Another soldier set down three knapsacks identical to the ones in which they had brought our provisions, and said:

‘You have to wear uniforms because during the trip you’ll be with the paratroopers. Put your clothes in these backpacks, and when they leave you to your units you can put your civvies back on.’

I put on the uniform and looked at my reflection in the window. I didn’t like seeing the gear on me – it seemed unnatural. My comrades, however, were amused by the situation. They adjusted one another’s berets, struck model poses, as if they were getting ready for a party or an award ceremony.

We had a few hours’ flight to Chechnya. On the plane with us were soldiers who belonged to other units in the paratrooper force. They were joking, laughing, shouting, talking about the political situation and the war. To buck up their courage, they said the Chechens were ‘a bunch of fags – they can’t even keep their guns up’. Another threw out some serious insults towards the Arabs.

I would soon discover that in this war, for the sake of practicality – and thinking back on it now, it’s a very shameful thing – all our enemies were called ‘Arabs’, whether they were Chechens, Muslims, Afghans, Taliban, terrorists, or fighters who had sided with any political creed. The word ‘Arab’ was the way we indicated the enemy.

There were two lieutenants next to me who seemed not to give any weight to the ruckus. They let the soldiers talk, and the atmosphere was upbeat, almost party-like.

We landed at night. They separated me from my comrades and pointed me to the armoured car headed for the mobile immediate-response unit, where the team of saboteurs under Captain Nosov was stationed.

I sat on top – sitting on the roof was known as riding the armour – along with a group of soldiers I didn’t know. As the car made the long journey in the dark, I realised that the others were speaking to me with some disdain. They were part of a special group from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and evidently I, the newcomer, was not welcome.

The first thing I noticed when we got to the base – and this would sink in over the days to come – was that everything worked opposite to the way it did at boot camp. There was no light to be seen at the checkpoint, there was no sign of recognition for entering vehicles – I only realised that we had arrived because in the dark I saw three soldiers cupping their hands to try to conceal their cigarettes. Smoking at the checkpoints was prohibited, especially at night – the risk of being spotted, even from a distance, was extremely high.

They took me to an ugly building, a military container for the transport of supplies that had been turned into a sort of cabin, with a small window and a rough-hewn wooden door. They handed me over to a soldier in civvies carrying a cut Kalashnikov with a folding stock. He put away my papers, and without even glancing at them, handed them back as soon as we were alone.

‘My name’s Pasha, but everyone calls me “Moscow”. You’re with us. Come on, put your stuff on the bunk in the back and take off that uniform, I’ll give you a jumpsuit. Have you got trainers?’

I looked at my papers in disbelief. According to regulation, all documentation regarding soldiers had to be kept in the office of the unit to which we were assigned. Giving them back to a soldier was strictly forbidden. So I introduced myself and immediately asked,

‘Hey, what’s the story with the documents, why did you give them to me? Where’s the secretary?’

He looked at me as if I were from another planet.

‘Who am I supposed to give them to, babyface? We haven’t got offices or secretaries, so everyone’s his own secretary around here. We’re saboteurs, a mobile unit. Today we’re in one place, tomorrow in another. We’re independent, get it?’ he said, chewing on a hunk of black bread. The smell of burned grain was overpowering and it reminded me of kvass, a drink that my grandmother made. ‘Follow me,’ Moscow said, before I could respond.

The cabin was full of men in everyday clothes – some were sleeping, others eating or chatting. I was surprised by the number of weapons lying around – there was a Kalashnikov at the foot of every bunk, and there must have been at least twenty more stacked against the wall, not counting the rifles that some of the men were holding. On the ground lay crates full of new cartridges, still covered with a thin coat of grease, and a crate with several hand grenades. Other ammunition was scattered around, along with a couple of rounds for RPG-7 grenade launchers. In one corner there was a stack of bulletproof vests, modified just like Zabelin had taught us in boot camp; they were short, with the bottom cut off in front so you could move your legs more easily and use the sides as pockets for ammunition. From two normal jackets you could make one good one, and at chest height, in the hand-sewn pockets, you would always insert a double set of iron plates.

I would soon learn that the saboteur base never stayed in the same place for long, and from time to time they would put us with units that needed our assistance. In the intervals between one operation and another we would sleep in the place we called ‘home’, that is, the temporary barracks, where the only things we never ran out of were weapons and ammunition, which were scattered everywhere and even got mixed up with our food.

Moscow led me to the back of the base. Next to a tumbledown wood cabin, there was a steel vat filled with water, and a pole with the flag of the Russian Federation, just like the one I had seen in the propaganda video, was attached to it. From the vat, you could see a man’s head, half-submerged, making bubbles as he breathed out of his nose.

‘Ivanisch, the new guy’s here . . .’

The head in the water lifted and I saw the face of a man in his forties, clean-shaven and with the expression of someone who wants to steal something. It was Captain Nosov, and in a very calm, low voice, one of those voices that can frighten you, he asked me:

‘So, you’re the hotshot delinquent? Zabelin has told me a lot of things about you . . .’

I was surprised, because I had no idea what Zabelin could have written about me, but I gave an affirmative response all the same.

‘That’s me, Comrade Captain!’

Nosov looked me straight in the eye.

‘Forget all that “Comrade Captain” crap. Here, we’re just one big family, call me Ivanisch.’

‘All right, Ivanisch . . .’

‘How is that old Zabelin?’ he asked me, as he kept working in the vat. ‘Has he gone completely deaf yet?’

I didn’t know what he meant; it was as if we were talking about two different people. ‘Deaf?’ I asked, confused. ‘He hears everything just fine. He’s good, actually. He said to tell you hello.’

The captain gave me a serious look.

‘Boy, I was side by side with Zabelin in Afghanistan for a long time. In Kabul they tried hard to destroy us, and after a bomb went off he nearly lost his hearing. As the years have gone by it’s got worse. Shit, don’t tell me you didn’t notice!’ he concluded, smiling.

Images of Zabelin as I had seen him in the three months spent in training camp flashed through my head.

‘I really didn’t, I didn’t notice. I’d never have thought,’ I replied. Only then did I realise what a tough guy Zabelin was. He had been able to hide from all of us something that should have been so obvious.

‘You think that if he were all in one piece they’d keep him in that shithole? Zabelin’s a professional saboteur. If he were completely fit he’d be here with us right now.’ Nosov said this with anger. Then he stood up and stepped out of the vat, resting his feet on an empty wooden crate, the kind they use to transport Kalashnikovs.

‘Soldier, towel!’ he thrust out his arm, waiting for Moscow to pass him the green rag that he’d already been brandishing for a while, almost like a votive offering, the ones they would put at the statues of pagan gods in ancient temples. Just then I realised that it wasn’t a towel but a flag; it was green, with different-coloured stripes and some Arabic writing in white. Nosov took the flag and started drying himself, making the strangest faces.

I couldn’t help laughing. His face turned serious and he asked:

‘What the fuck are you laughing at, delinquent? I put my skin on the line every blessed day to conquer these shit flags – I have the right to use them to wipe my ass, since they’re no good for anything else.’

Moscow laughed too, and bit off another hunk of black bread.

Nosov cut us short:

‘Listen, boy, this is how things work around here; until you’ve had some experience in the clean-up crew, our family won’t accept you for military operations. Now go and eat, rest, and starting tomorrow you’ll go and clear the fields. Just the other day we finished a mission close by, so you’ll have some work to do. Then, we’ll see.’

He started getting dressed, throwing the green flag to the ground. It was soaking wet; it had become a useless scrap of fabric, destined to be buried in the mud.

Moscow and I went back to the barracks, and on the way he told me how things worked in the unit. From what I understood, the two most important rules were: don’t try to escape, and eat at every opportunity.

‘What’s this business about the clean-up crew?’ I asked impatiently. ‘What fields am I supposed to clear? It’s not like I have to go pick tomatoes, right?’

‘Really? You haven’t figured it out?’ he said, giving me a sad look. ‘You have to collect the bodies. They make you do it so you get used to contact with dead bodies, so you won’t have a hard time at the crucial moments. We’ve all been there, friend – you’ll be on clean-up duty for a couple of weeks.’

The next morning, following Moscow’s directions, I reported for duty at a big military truck. There, on the wooden benches placed along the walls, sat ten others. I said hello and took my place.

The clean-up crew was composed of twenty people or so. Calling them ‘soldiers’ didn’t really seem right; they were like gravediggers, except they wore uniforms and drank a lot of alcohol.

Our job was very simple. We would go wherever battles had taken place, often major clashes, and gather all the bodies – human and animal – that we saw on the ground. We would toss the bodies into the truck, then jump in with them and take a pleasant ride back to camp.

My first ‘pick’, as we called them, was in a half-destroyed and long abandoned village.

They gave me a pair of thick rubber gloves that went all the way up to my armpits, typically used in the chemical protection units. Then they gave me a long rope with a slipknot at the top, like the kind people hang themselves with. One guy explained succinctly how to move the bodies:

‘You take two of them, tie their legs together with the rope and then drag them to the truck. Don’t go through their pockets and don’t take anything from the bodies, otherwise you’ll be in deep shit. If you find any weapons, take them to the sergeant.’

The battle had taken place a few days earlier. There were bullet holes everywhere, and the streets were filled with craters from the explosions from mortar fire and hand grenades. At the entrance to the village there was a Russian armoured car, gutted and burned. The wheels didn’t have tyres anymore, the back doors were slightly ajar and you could see a leg dangling out and an army boot. It was strange, like looking at a painting. I had the impression that I was entering a dimension where time had stopped: everything was dead, nothing living could pass there.

I took a few steps in the direction my new comrade had pointed and I saw a corpse in a ditch near the main road that led to the centre of the town. It was striking, because it didn’t resemble any corpse I’d ever seen before – and I’ve seen quite a few dead people in my day. The ones I’d found the most revolting had been the bodies of the drowned that I’d pulled out of the river – unfortunately, some of them had even been friends – and the thing that had struck me most was the smell. When they were still in the water you didn’t notice at all, but once they were brought to shore they started to stink so badly just being near them made you want to vomit. The bodies of the drowned get terribly deformed; they swell up, full of rotting parts and leaking fluids, until they look like a big ball of gelatin. When I was a boy, in the summer of 1992, after the war between Transnistria and Moldavia, I saw many war corpses in the streets, but I’d been almost indifferent to those bodies. I was too occupied with trying to find the weapons and ammunition, and I hadn’t given the dead much thought.

My first body in Chechnya, however, made a different impression on me. I felt pity, because it seemed like he’d been taken by surprise, at a moment when he hadn’t expected anything bad to happen. He lay straight, his legs extended, his hands joined over his heart, as though before dying he had tried to keep his soul from coming out. His face was completely white; his skin looked like marble, all taut over his bones, but the veins on his neck and temples were black. His eyes were wide open, so dark you couldn’t tell their colour. His mouth was slightly open and you could see his teeth, stained with blood.

I studied his body for a moment and then I grabbed him by his bulletproof vest near his neck, and tried to pull him to the road. At first glance he had seemed hefty, but when I pulled him up out of the ditch I was shocked. He weighed almost nothing; it was like moving a wet rag. I carefully examined his uniform, which in certain spots was paper thin, as if beneath it there were no longer a body but only the impression of a human being, the depth of a piece of cardboard. Standing there, motionless, with that poor man in my arms, I felt a sudden hard, violent tug coming from inside his body. Terrified, I instinctively slackened my grip.

The body dropped, and from the vest – where, a second before, my hand had been – came a giant sewer rat. His tail was greasy and disgustingly hairless, the skin glistening. As he came into the light of day, the rat gave me a look full of hatred, and then slowly crept back down into the ditch. Frozen, I tried to comprehend what I had just seen. Behind me, I heard the voice of someone else on the clean-up crew:

‘Never grab them by the vest, they’re full of rats. They’re dangerous, those beasts – they eat human flesh, so they’re strong and aggressive. Last year a rat almost tore three fingers off one guy in a single bite. Follow my advice; just grab the bodies by the legs and before you tie them, tap them with your foot a couple times, and those pests will run away.’

I couldn’t tell whether the man was messing with me or telling the truth. Either way, from that day on I did as he said.

When the truck was full, we climbed in and sat on the benches at the sides. The corpses were piled on top of one another in front of us. They made us eat in front of the bodies so we would get used to their presence. Sometimes, when the truck went around a corner on the trip back, the corpses fell on top of us. It bothered me the first few times, but after a while I got used to it. I’d shove them off and put them back on the pile. I learned to treat bodies like objects of no importance.

After two weeks of corpses and rats, they told me that I could officially become one of the saboteurs.

Everything in the saboteur unit seemed chaotic. At first glance one might think that we were a group of regular guys, people who had nothing to do with military life and had somehow ended up in the middle of a war. In reality, we had our own philosophy, a series of very precise rules and most importantly our own way of understanding war. The only thing the superiors really cared about was the outcome of a sabotage operation or the continual patrol of the territory. Other than that we could act however we liked. We were autonomous – we just had to do our job well.

The group was very close knit; we were more like a family than a military unit. This happens with people who have to be together no matter what – when you share tough times you develop a sort of collective brain, an ability to understand the world by putting aside your personal point of view and using the mentality of the group.

Often the drafted soldiers – especially the younger ones – were really angry, because they felt trapped, exploited by the regime. These feelings formed a wall of hatred between people, and made day-to-day life difficult. Especially in the large army units, where hazing was very common, there was no communication between the soldiers and none with the officers. This is why internal disputes were so frequent, and when disciplinary measures were taken many soldiers became deserters – and some committed suicide.

The effects could clearly be seen during war operations. Many units weren’t able to carry out their assigned tasks because the soldiers didn’t know one another or were afraid of their comrades. They were subject to frequent breakdowns; they felt alone and they didn’t trust anyone.

Among the saboteurs, on the other hand, hazing didn’t exist. We were like brothers, because each of us knew that in hard times it’s always better to have a brother by your side than an enemy.

I had been with my team for just a few days when I witnessed the tragic end of a group of infantrymen. Ten young soldiers were killed by one of their own, a machine-gunner who lost his mind during a mission and started shooting at everyone who tried to come near him.

When war gets tough, and emotions run very high, the stress can push you over the edge. It happens to everyone sooner or later, and it happened to me too. In times like that it’s important to have the support of people who will stand by you. You need someone who will give you a word of encouragement, listen to you, or keep you from feeling alone and abandoned. If there’s not a solid bond among your comrades, the person in trouble can become very dangerous – then everything ends in tragedy, just as it did with that machine-gunner.

I remember that for an instant I had him in the crosshairs of my rifle. I could see his face, he was desperate, his eyes were crazed and he kept on shouting something incomprehensible, shooting and crying. I followed him with my scope but I couldn’t bring myself to kill him – it seemed unnatural to shoot one of my own. In the end, since he wasn’t responding to our requests to stop fire, the paras were forced to shoot him down.

We knew that to survive we had to trust our comrades, but we also had someone else to lean on: Captain Nosov. He was like an older brother. We knew that whatever he did, he did it to save our skins, so that we could return home to our mothers alive and in one piece.

Nosov belonged to the generation of those whom the old generals referred to as ‘gladiators’, so called because many soldiers from that draft had never experienced a time of peace. They had gone to the war in Afghanistan as young men, and had embarked on a long, sad life, bouncing from one war to another without rest, taking part in every bloody conflict that broke out in USSR territory before and after its fall.

He had fought in all the post-Soviet wars; for a time he had even been stationed in the former Yugoslavia, where he was an instructor for the special units of the Serbian army. When the Chechen conflict broke out, he’d been one of the first Russians sent out there.

He was an expert saboteur, old Ivanisch, and every time one of us mentioned his name it was evident that the soldiers in the other units knew and respected him. Our enemies knew him well too, because when he fought in the war in Afghanistan, Chechnya was still part of the USSR and many Chechens had actually done their military service under him. It was incredible to think that the same soldiers – now grown men and professional soldiers – were now fighting against us. It often happened that one of the Chechen prisoners would recognise among the Russian soldiers an old friend from military school with whom they had once fought.

Sometimes Nosov would tell us war stories, and what struck me the most about him was the tenderness of the words he used to describe all the brutality and horror of social collapse. It was like he was talking about something very dear to him, like family. At times even the enemy seemed like a fundamental part of his existence, as though without it his life would make no sense.

In my head, I had extremely contradictory images of our captain. Sometimes he seemed too brutish, almost inhuman, while at other times I felt that he cared more about us than he cared about himself. In time I would come to understand that for Ivanisch a single person was less important than the whole unit. Our personal histories didn’t interest him. He saw in each of us a role; we were part of a mechanism intended to carry out specific tasks. This was his way of caring about us; he couldn’t allow himself to get too attached to the individual.

Nosov didn’t like to talk about himself or his family; we knew only that he had a sister named Rita, and that once in a while she would write to him.

He burned those letters right after reading them, and if the circumstances allowed it he would immediately ask one of us – often me – to write a reply. He always said the same things; he told her how charming the places we found ourselves in were, how the sun went down, how beautiful the rivers that flowed high in the mountains were. He explained how hard life was for the people there, and then every so often would ask us to add something of our own, ‘for beauty’s sake’, as he would say. In every letter he would reassure his sister, telling her to ‘keep clear of the war’ – of course he didn’t write that he was actually part of an active unit on the front lines; instead, he invented little stories about us, the men who were guarding a warehouse with him, in a safe place, on some Russian air base.

All we knew about Nosov was that he didn’t have a house, a wife or children. His relationships with women were limited to the little parties organised by his officer friends, where young nurses and cooks would go. He himself called those soirées ‘bordellos’, and after every one they had to carry him back to the unit. He’d come in very drunk, semi-unconscious and with scratch marks from a woman on his face. All the officials said that Nosov was a hit with the ladies because he had a ‘big calibre’.

There weren’t many of us; perhaps that’s why we became close to one another so quickly.

The first time I felt a strong sense of solidarity was during one of my first battles. We were walking close to the wall of a house when we were attacked by surprise. As we tried to cross the yard a group of enemy soldiers lying in wait on the roof of the house across the way opened fire on us. A hail of bullets came down around us, and pieces of brick flew off the wall and ricocheted. We took off running. In the chaos, however, we managed to keep calm; nobody changed direction or passed anyone else, and we moved as we always did; three covered, the others ran, then switch . . . We were in complete synchrony, linked parts of a single organism. As I ran with the others, that feeling gave me courage.

Of course, living together wasn’t easy at first – each of us had led very different lives, until we found ourselves in hell alongside a bunch of complete strangers.

My comrades came from all over Russia, and obviously each had his own story behind him, but we had all been marked by the same things: run-ins with the law, unstable families, difficult personalities . . .

The oldest comrade was Moscow, who, as you can tell by the nickname, came from the nation’s capital. He’d been called to arms two years late, because as soon as he had come of age he had run away from home to avoid military duty, but ultimately even he, like me, had been caught and sent to war.

One of our other brothers was Shoe. He had two juvenile convictions for burglary under his belt. His name was really Viktor, but he had earned his nickname because he never wanted to take off his shoes. Nosov was always yelling at him, telling him that if he didn’t wash his feet, sooner or later the smell would poison the entire unit. Shoe was always cheerful and had an athlete’s physique: he was nimble like a mouse, and he could fit through even the narrowest of spaces.

Another was Zhenya, aka Deer, so called for his hunting skills. He came from the region of Altai, in southern Siberia. His parents were scholars; his mother was an archaeologist or anthropologist, something like that. Deer was a normal guy, but when he got mad or didn’t believe what you were telling him his eyes became two slits so narrow that they disappeared.

Then there was Spoon, whose real name was Roman. He was physically strong, a little wild in his way of doing things. He would eat whatever he came across; he was always hungry. He was originally from a remote village in the woods at the foot of the Ural mountains. He got his nickname because of his surname, which in Russian sounded very similar to the word ‘spoon’.

Finally, there was big, bulky Aleksandr, who was from St Petersburg. Even though he was incapable of stringing together two words that made complete sense he always talked a lot, mostly about wanting to become a footballer (his nickname, in fact, was Zenith, from his favourite football team). He was our machine gunner, and he always carried his RPK 7.62-calibre gun. Nosov would joke that Zenith was ‘Mother Russia’s last shot’.

As for me, in Chechnya just as in Transnistria, everyone just called me Kolima. I was the sniper; I had to protect my comrades during transfers, participate in operations as a storm trooper, and find and eliminate the enemy snipers collaborating with other units.

In short, we of the 76th division were a group of men each cut to his own cloth, and despite the differences in age, background or social class, none of us ever felt alone. In fact, if I look back on it now, the only thing that truly helped us endure the war was finding in the others friends to lean on. Friends who strived every day with all their might to do the same thing you were doing: trying to stay alive.

We brought back trophies from every mission: the weapons and ammunition taken from the enemy. For this reason every saboteur had a couple of American and European guns, the most prized of which were the Colt .45 ACPs and their American clones. Having a weapon like that meant a lot; it meant that the person carrying it was a cutthroat, and commanded respect from the others. If a young soldier found a pistol like that, a senior soldier would swipe it from him, and thus the weapon would pass from hand to hand, until it wound up in the hands of the commanding officers.

The Austrian Glock and its variations, however, were the weapons of choice for conscripts and contract soldiers. People also liked CZs and other German guns. Among the terrorists, besides an unbelievable number of Russian-made firearms, like Makarov 9s, Stechkins and Tokarev 7.62s, European or American guns were always going around, generally ACP 45s, PARA 9s or 9x21s. I myself took a 9x21-calibre 98 Beretta FS from a dead man’s body, a beautiful, very handy weapon, more precise and secure than Russian pistols.

The assault rifles, as I said, were modified. We also used drum magazines with a higher number of charges than usual, and we would tie normal magazines together so that when we ran out of shots we could replace them in a second.

The enemy’s bayonets and knives were almost always American, and when we could we took them for ourselves. We liked those weapons a lot because they were useful and easy to handle, whereas the Russian bayonet seemed like a sort of universal tool you could use for anything – even plumbing, if you wanted – except close combat.

From the body of the first enemy sniper I killed, I took a Canadian-made knife designed for the American army. It was an all-black bayonet, nice, light, easy to carry and to hook to your belt. A year later, when I walked into a fight with a young Arab – our group was on a mission in a small city that we were liberating – that bayonet saved my life.

That one was a close call.

I was on reconnaissance in the basement of a city hall building. It was too dark to see anything, but all of a sudden I heard a noise. It was clear that the other guy had noticed my presence too. Shooting blindly, we used up our entire magazines without landing a single shot.

After that, the poor bastard threw a hand grenade, but it only made a terrible noise. With a heavy head and a constant whistling in my ears, I pulled out my bayonet and leapt into the dark where I thought my adversary was. We hit each other again and again; I hit him with the knife, while he tried to strike me with the butt of his empty gun.

When I finally made it out from underground, and my comrades brought out the man’s body, I saw that I’d practically ripped him apart. He was missing a few fingers; his whole face was full of open bleeding wounds. I had even gouged out one of his eyes. I don’t remember how I delivered the final blows, but on one side he didn’t have a single centimetre of living tissue left.

My muscles were frozen with emotional exhaustion, and for a good half hour I wasn’t able to open my right hand, the one that had been gripping the knife. It had been clenched so tightly it almost seemed as though an invisible hand were holding it shut.

Even if keeping the enemy’s weapons was prohibited by Russian military law, we didn’t care. As our captain would always say:

’If they want us to play their game, then they can at least let us use the toys we want!’

After I’d been with the saboteurs for a while, I realised that Captain Nosov had his own personal theory on war. It was based on his experience in Afghanistan; he often said that it was very similar to the war we were going through in Chechnya, because in the end the enemy was the same. His interpretation of the facts, when he commented on what happened during our operations, was decidedly anti-government. In short, as any Russian soldier worthy of the name would say – always ready to defend the nation’s honour at all costs – Nosov ‘whistled like a traitor’.

Our captain was convinced that the war in Chechnya was nothing but a farce, a performance that Russia had put on all by itself, making use of its friends in the Arabic world and even paying the mercenaries to fight against us. Since I had always kept my distance from political discussions, the captain’s claims weren’t always clear to me. His theories completely overturned my beliefs about the governing structures; Nosov often talked about the power of ex-KGB agents, asserting that somehow a group of veterans within our secret services had the Russian government under their thumb.

I was very curious and asked many questions, because I truly wanted to know what was going on, in this place I’d been thrown into. So the captain tried to explain everything to me in the simplest way possible:

‘Look, to understand the reasoning behind this conflict you have to know how the “chaos-effect” works. I’ll give you an example: you have a store full of delicious chocolates and a customer wants to buy them and take them home, but the law prohibits taking them away. They have to be consumed there, without leaving the store. But this guy knows a lot of other people who, just like him, want your chocolates, and they’re all prepared to pay you any amount to be able to take them away and eat them on their own time, or maybe even sell them to someone else. However, the law against the consumption of chocolate outside the store isn’t something you like either, because you’re interested in selling as much as possible. At this point Moscow comes into play, who in our story takes on the role of a representative of the law. He’s always there in your store, watching and making sure nobody takes any chocolate home. Obviously, you don’t like Moscow either. Do you follow me so far?’

Although it was a rhetorical question I nodded, and Nosov went on with his story:

‘So imagine that I come along and propose that you play a trick on Moscow. I send a couple of friends to your store, you send a few of yours, and one day our friends start a fight there. While they’re beating each other up – they break some tables, a few old chairs and maybe even one of the windows – Moscow, as a good representative of the law, steps in to calm them down and tries to re-establish order. In that instant, I take all the chocolates I want from your store, pay you how much I owe and run away. Thanks to the chaos-effect, our dear friend Moscow didn’t see a thing, and you and I got something out of it – and the next time, potentially, we can do it over again. The situation with the war in Chechnya is very similar, except that instead of you it’s the leaders of the Arab community, who control the drug trade, human trafficking, gun running, petrol and so on. The chocolates, in other words. Instead of me there’s the Russian secret service, who after the fall of the USSR took control of all illegal trafficking on national territory. Moscow, on the other hand, represents legal society, that is, the few who are still trying to somehow obey the law and have faith in institutions (this also includes the representatives of those countries that receive the traffic). And the idiot friends who come to fight in the store to trigger the chaos-effect are the Russian army and the mercenaries. The moral of the story is very sad; without realising it, we’re creating chaos to divert attention from the serious things going on in this place. The war we’re fighting is just a cover for the trafficking run by the corrupt people in the government.’

It’s not as though I knew much about the trafficking, but, explained in this way, the situation seemed a bit clearer to me.

Another issue was the mercenaries in Chechnya. It seemed impossible to track down the primary financial backer behind the armed terrorist groups. It was often the Islamic religious leaders themselves, the imams, who would use their places of worship as storage depots or makeshift field hospitals for their wounded. But they were just small fry, the latest cog in a complex machine.

I remember that after one of these discussions I said to our captain, my face serious:

‘Ivanisch, if you know that this war is wrong, if you really think it’s a joke, then why do you keep on fighting in it?’

He looked at me with an astonished expression and said in a playful tone:

‘Because I have nothing better to do. I’d be useless at home. The only thing I know how to do is war.’

After that remark, which for Nosov was clearly in jest, I reflected at length on how stupid we’d been, we Russians, over the course of history. For centuries we had pursued various political ideas – often going against the natural laws of humanity – only because we weren’t able to get out of the system, which kept us trapped inside a constantly shrinking circle.

Just thinking about it made me want to run. But it was physically impossible to cross the security lines that separated us from the other world, the peaceful world. And in any case, that would have been suicide – the images of military prison were still branded onto my mind.

_______________

* This nickname derives from ‘Yakutia’, a republic in Eastern Siberia.