Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (72 page)

“…I have this friend, he and I were in the army together. He lived in Grozny. His neighbor was a Chechen. One fine day, the guy says to him: ‘You have to leave—I’m begging you.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because we’re about to start butchering you.’ They left behind a three-bedroom apartment. Now they live in a workers’ dormitory in Saratov. They weren’t allowed to bring anything with them. ‘Let Russia buy you new stuff. All of this is ours now!’ ”

“…Russia may be on her knees, but she’s not dead yet. We’re Russian patriots! We must fulfill our duty to Russia! You know the joke: Comrade soldiers and officers, if you prove yourselves in Chechnya, the Motherland will send you ‘on leave’ to Yugoslavia. You know, to Europe! Shit!”

My son put up with me until he couldn’t take it anymore. He started giving me a hard time: “Mama, the only thing you’re going to accomplish is giving yourself a stroke.” They sent me to a sanatorium. By force, you could say, after a huge family quarrel. At the sanatorium, I made friends with a good woman, her daughter had died young from an abortion, we’d cry together. Became friends. The other day, I called her and found out she had died. In her sleep. I know in my heart that she died of grief…Why can’t I die? I would be so happy to, but I keep on living. [
She cries.
] When I got back from the sanatorium, the first words out of my mother’s mouth were, “Child, they’re going to put you in jail. They won’t forgive you for trying to find the truth.” What happened was, the minute I left town, she got a phone call from the police: “You are to report to such-and-such an office at 2400 hours…There will be a fine for failing to appear…a custodial sentence of fifteen days…” My mother is a frightened woman—everyone in this country is frightened. Show me one elderly person who isn’t. And that was just the beginning. They showed up here and questioned the neighbors. They wanted to know what kind of people we were, our behavior…They asked about Olesya, if anyone had ever seen her drunk, if she did drugs…They asked for our medical histories at the health clinic. They wanted to know whether any of us were on the psychiatric clinic registry. It was such a slap in the face! I was furious!! I picked up the phone and called the police department: “Who’s been threatening my mother? She’s in her ninth decade. Why was she summoned by the police?” A day later, they sent me a summons: “Come to such-and-such an office…Detective so-and-so…” My mother was in tears: “They’re going to put you in prison.” I wasn’t afraid of anything anymore. I don’t give a damn about them! Stalin needs to come back from the dead! I am calling on him to rise up from the grave! That’s my prayer…He didn’t put enough of our administrators in prison, more of them should have been executed. It wasn’t enough! I have no pity for them. I want their tears! [
She cries.
] I showed up at that office to see this Detective Fedin. I started in on them from the doorway: “What do you want from me? You brought me my daughter in a wet coffin, wasn’t that enough for you?” “You illiterate woman, you don’t seem to understand where you are. We’re the ones who ask the questions around here…” At first, it was just him, but then they called in Olesya’s commander, that Klimkin…I finally got to see him in the flesh! He came in, and I pounced on him: “Who killed my daughter? I demand to know the truth…” “Your daughter was an imbecile, she was insane!” Oh, I can’t handle it! I can’t…He turned beet red, shouted at me, stamped his feet. Ugh! They were trying to provoke me, make me scream and scratch at them like a mad cat. Like I’m crazy and my daughter was crazy, too. They wanted to silence me…

As long as my heart is still beating, I will continue to search for the truth. I’m not afraid of anyone! I’m not a rag you can wipe the floor with or a bug you can crush. You’re not going to scare me back into my corner. They brought me back my daughter in a wet coffin…

…I was on a commuter train. A man sat down across from me: “Looks like you and I are riding together, mother. Let’s get acquainted…” He introduced himself: “I’m a former officer, former businessman, former member of the Yabloko party.
^*4
Currently unemployed.” No matter what anyone asks me, I always tell them the same story: “My daughter died in Chechnya…She was a junior police sergeant…” He said, “Tell me the story.” I’ve told it so many times already…[
She falls silent.
] He listened, and then he told me his…

“I was out there myself. I came back alive, but life at home isn’t working out. I can’t fit myself into these boxes. No one wants to hire me. ‘I see…You were in Chechnya?’ I’m afraid of people. They make me sick…But whenever I meet anyone who was also in Chechnya, they’re like a brother to me…

“An old Chechen sees a carful of us discharged soldiers. He stands there wondering at the sight: Here are these guys who seem completely normal, just regular Russian guys, but not long ago they all had machine guns, they were snipers. We…we were all in new coats and jeans. Where did we get the money to buy them? We earned it in Chechnya. What was our job? Waging war…shooting…Children and beautiful women are struck down as well. But take away a soldier’s weapon, dress him in civilian clothes, and you’ll have a tractor driver, a bus driver, a student…

“We lived behind barbed wire, surrounded by guard towers and minefields. A cramped, sequestered world. A penal colony. You couldn’t leave, they’d kill you. Death to the occupiers! Everyone drank, they’d drink until they were dumb beasts. Every day, you saw bombed-out houses, people looting, killing people. The things that start coming out of you! All of your boundaries break down—the boundaries of what you are capable of…You start allowing yourself to do all sorts of things…You’re nothing but a drunken animal with a gun. Running on sheer testosterone…

“…It’s executioner’s work…We were dying for a mafia that wasn’t even paying us what we were promised. Who cheated us. But it’s not like I was here at home killing people on the street, I was at war. I saw a Russian girl that those jackals had raped. They burnt her chest with cigarette butts so that she would moan louder…

“…I came home with cash…I bought my friends some vodka, got a used Mercedes…”

[
She no longer wipes her tears away.
] So that’s where my Olesya landed! That’s where she ended up! That filthy war…It had been somewhere far, far away, and now it’s in my home. It’s been two years…I knock on people’s doors, meet with all sorts of officials. Write to the prosecutor’s offices…district, regional…the Prosecutor General’s office…[
She points to a stack of letters.
] And in response, I always get form letters—a mountain of form letters! “Regarding the death of your daughter we write to inform you…” And all of them lie: They’ll say she died on November 13, when really, it was the 11th, or that her blood type is O, when it’s actually B. In some, she was wearing her uniform, in others, she was in civilian clothes. The hole was on the left side of her head near the temple, but they keep saying it was on the right…I wrote a query to our State Duma representative—I’d chosen him, I voted for him. I used to have faith in our government! Somehow, I managed to get a meeting with him. I remember standing on the ground floor of the Duma…My eyes were like saucers! I saw their jewelry stall: gold rings with diamonds, silver and gold Easter eggs, pendants…The smallest diamond ring cost more money than I’ve made in my entire life. One little ring…Our deputies, the people’s deputies—where do they get all this money? In all my years of hard labor, all I earned was a stack of certificates…same as my mother…While they all have shares in Gazprom…We get pieces of paper, and they get money. [
Angry silence
.] I shouldn’t have gone there and wept in that place for nothing…Bring back Stalin! The people are waiting for him! They took away my daughter and brought me back a coffin. A wet coffin…And no one wants to speak to the mother…[
She weeps
.] Now I wish I could go work for the police department myself…Conduct a thorough investigation, write a detailed crime report. If it was a suicide, there should have been blood on the weapon and gunpowder on her hands. I know everything now…I don’t like watching the news on TV. It’s all lies! But the crime shows—murders, things like that—I never miss a single one. Some mornings, I can’t get up, my arms and legs refuse to move, all I want to do is stay in bed. But then I remember Olesya…and I get up.

I pieced together the story…word by word…People would drunkenly blurt out bits of the truth. There were seventy of them there, word of what really happened must have spread. Our town isn’t that big, it’s not Moscow…Now, I have a partial picture of what happened…They all got outrageously drunk in honor of Police Day. Drunk to the point of blacking out, and things went downhill from there. If only Olesya had gone with the boys from home, from her own department. Instead, she was surrounded by strangers, in a combined unit, with people from everywhere. She ended up among the traffic police. These people, they live like kings, their pockets are always lined with bills. They stand on the roads with machine guns collecting tolls. Everyone has to pay them. A prime position! Boys like their fun…killing, drinking, and fucking—the three joys of war. They got tanked, they were sloshed…They turned savage…and supposedly raped every girl there. Their own girls. Olesya either resisted, or she threatened them afterward: “I’ll make sure you all end up behind bars.” So they wouldn’t let her get away.

There’s also another version…They were at the checkpoint letting cars through. Everyone out there is always hustling, trying to make some extra money however they can. Some people transport contraband—what and from where, I couldn’t tell you, and I’m not going to make things up. Drugs or I don’t know what…But this was a done deal. Everything had already been bought and paid for. A Niva drove up…everyone remembers it being a Niva…But Olesya dug her heels in. For some reason, she wouldn’t let the car through…And that’s why they shot her. A lot of money was on the line and she’d gotten in somebody’s way. Apparently, some high-ranking official was involved…

My mother had had a dream about a Niva…When I went to see a clairvoyant, I put this photograph on her table…[
She shows me
.] She told me she saw a car, “Some Niva…”

…I’d struck up a conversation with this woman, a nurse. I don’t know what she was like before she went to Chechnya, maybe she’d been a cheerful person. Now, she’s full of rage just like I am. Many people today are very hurt, they don’t say anything, but they’re wounded. Everyone dreamed of winning big in this new life, but few have won anything at all, and almost no one has ended up with the golden ticket…Nobody was prepared to tumble all the way down to the bottom. Now, a lot of people live with this pain, harboring it. [
She is silent.
] And maybe Olesya, too, would have come back different…a stranger…Oh…[
Silence.
] This woman was very open with me…

“…I went because I thought it was romantic! My friends laughed at me for a long time. To be perfectly honest, I was running from heartbreak. I didn’t care whether a Chechen shot me or if I died of despair.

“…People who don’t handle corpses think that they’re silent. That they don’t make a sound. Actually, they make all sorts of noises. Air comes out of them, their bones crack. Strange scratching sounds. It’s enough to drive you crazy…

“…I didn’t meet any men out there who didn’t drink and shoot people. They’d get drunk and shoot whomever they wanted. Why? No one can answer that question.

“…He was a surgeon…I thought we were in love. Then, right as we were about to go home, he told me: ‘Don’t call and don’t write. If I’m going to cheat, it better be with a beautiful woman, the kind that I’m not embarrassed to run into my wife with.’ I’m no beauty. But he and I would spend three days at a time in the operating room together. It felt like…something even stronger than love…

“…Now I’m afraid of men…The ones who came back from the war, I don’t even want to see them, they’re all pricks. Every last one of them! I was packing…thinking I want to bring this and that home…my stereo, my rug…The head of the hospital told me: ‘I for one am leaving everything here. I don’t want to take this war home with me.’ But the war isn’t in the things we brought home, it’s in our souls…”

They gave us Olesya’s things back: her pea coat, her skirt. Her gold earrings and necklace. There were some nuts and two little chocolates in the coat pocket. She must have been saving them for Christmas, collecting things to send to us. It’s bitter for me, very bitter…

So write down the truth, who should be scared of that? The people in the government…We can’t reach them anyway…Our last remaining option is to go on strike, brandishing our rifles. Lie down on the train tracks. Only we don’t have a leader…Otherwise, the people would have risen up ages ago. There’s no Pugachev! But if someone were to hand me a gun, I know exactly who I’d shoot…[
She points to the newspaper.
] Have you heard? You can go to Chechnya as a tourist now. They’ll fly you around in a military helicopter over the ruins of Grozny, the burned-out villages. War and construction are happening side by side. They’re shooting and building and showing it off all at once. We’re still crying, but someone is already profiting off our tears. Our fear. Selling them like they’re oil.

[
A few days later, we meet again.
]

I used to understand our way of life…The way we lived used to make sense to me…Now, I don’t understand anything anymore…None of it makes any sense at all…

*1
Grigori Yavlinsky (1952–) is an economist and politician, best known for the 500 Day Program, a plan for the transition of the USSR to a free market economy.

*2
Towns and villages in Chechnya.

*3
A term coined by Russian Minister of Defense Boris Gryzlov during a series of major police corruption trials that took place between 2003 and 2006.

*4
The Yabloko Party is a center-left Russian social liberal party founded by Grigori Yavlinsky.