Zinky Boys (20 page)

When I got home I opened the door, picked up a bucket and crossed the yard to fetch some water. Ecstasy!

I was presented with a medal at my college. Next day there was an article in the paper, with the headline: ‘A Medal Finds Its Hero'. I laughed, they made it sound as though the Frontier Scouts had been searching for me for forty years. And I certainly never said that we ‘went to Afghanistan dedicated to the dawn of the April revolution on Afghan soil'. But that's what they wrote.

I loved hunting before I went into the army. I planned to go to Siberia after I was discharged and become a professional hunter. Well, one day I went hunting with a friend of mine. He shot one goose, then we saw another, injured. He was trying to shoot it and I was racing after it, trying to save it. I was sick of killing and I still am.

There's something wrong with my memory. Just fragments, bits and pieces, as if there's something missing inside …

A Soldier

What was happening to my body didn't show on the outside, and my parents refused to let me be obsessed with something I couldn't do a thing about.

I went to Afghanistan with my dog Chara. If you shout, ‘Die!', she falls to the ground. ‘Shut your eyes!' she covers her face with her paws. If I was upset she'd sit herself next to me and cry.

I was bursting with pride my first few days over there. I've been seriously ill since I was a child and the army had turned me down. ‘Why isn't this lad in the army?' people asked. I was ashamed, and hated the idea of people laughing at me. The army is the school of life and makes a man of you. Well, I got into the army and started applying to be sent to Afghanistan.

‘You'll kick the bucket before the week's out,' they warned me.

‘I still want to go.' I needed to prove I was the same as everyone else.

I didn't tell my parents where I was stationed. I've had cancer
of the lymph glands since I was aged twelve and they've devoted their lives to me. I told them only the Forces Post Box Number, and that I was ‘attached to a secret unit in a location that cannot be disclosed'.

I took my dog and guitar with me.

‘How did you manage to end up here?' I was asked by the army security department.

‘Well … ,' and I told them about all my applications.

‘You actually volunteered? You must be mad!'

I've never smoked but I nearly took it up over there.

I fainted the first time I saw casualties, some of them with their legs tom off at the groin or with huge holes in their heads. Everything inside me was shouting, ‘I want to be alive!'

One night someone stole a dead soldier's submachine-gun. The thief was one of our soldiers too. He sold it for 80,000 afoshki, and showed off what he'd bought with the money: two cassette-recorders and some denims. If he hadn't been arrested we'd have torn him to pieces ourselves. In court he sat quietly, crying.

When we read articles in the Soviet press about our ‘achievements' we laughed, got angry and used them as toilet paper, but the strange thing is this: now I'm home, after my two years out there, I search through the papers to find articles about ‘achievements' and actually believe them.

I thought I'd be happy when I got home, and planned big changes in my life. A lot of soldiers go home, get divorced, remarry and go off somewhere new. Some take off to Siberia to work on the oil pipe-line; others go to Chernobyl, or join the fire brigade. Somewhere where there's risk and danger. They have a craving for real life instead of mere existence. Some of our boys had terrible bums. First they go all yellow, then they shed their skin and turn pink.

Mountain operations? Well, you carry your gun, obviously, and a double issue of ammo, about 10 kilos of it, plus a mine, that's another 10 kilos, plus grenades, flak-jacket, dry rations. It comes to at least 40 kilos. I've seen men so wet with sweat they look as though they've been standing in torrential rain. I've seen the orange crust on the frozen faces of dead men. Yes, orange, for
some reason, I've seen friendship and cowardice … What we did had to be done. No, don't start on that subject, please! There are a lot of clever dicks around now, but why didn't they tear up their Party cards, or shoot themselves in protest, while we were over there?

When I got home my mother undressed me and patted me all over. ‘All in one piece, you're fine!' she kept saying. Yes, I was fine on the surface, but inside I was on fire. Everything irritates me now — even sunshine, or cheerful songs, or someone laughing. My old books, my tape-recorder, photos and guitar are all in my bedroom as before — but I've changed. I can't walk through the park without looking behind me. If a waiter in a café stands behind me to take my order I want to jump up and rush out — I can't stand anyone standing at my back. If someone provokes me my immediate reaction is, ‘Shoot the little shit!' In war we had to do the exact opposite of what we'd been taught in normal life, and now we're meant to unlearn all the skills we learnt in war. I'm an excellent shot and my grenades always hit their target. Who needs all that now?

We believed we were there to defend something, namely the Motherland and our way of life. Yet back home, what do I find? My friend can't lend me a fiver because his wife wouldn't like it. What kind of a friend is that? I soon realised we were surplus to requirements. We might just as well not have made it — we're unwanted, an embarrassment. After Afghanistan I got a job as a car mechanic. Then I worked for the Komsomol at regional level in the ideology department, but I left there too, even though it was a cushy job. Life here is one big swamp where all people care about is their wages, dachas, cars and how to find a bit of smoked sausage. No one gives a damn about us. If we didn't stand up for our rights ourselves nobody would know a thing about this war. If there weren't so many of us, 100,000 in fact, they'd have shut us up, like they did after Vietnam and Egypt … Out there we all hated the enemy together. But I need someone to hate now, so that I can find some friends again. But who?

I went to the recruiting office and applied to go back to Afghanistan but I was refused. The war would soon be over, they said.
A lot more like me will be home soon. Yes, there'll be a lot more of us one day.

You wake up in the morning and you're glad you can't remember your dreams. I never tell my dreams to anyone. There is something that really happened that I can't talk about either …

I dream I'm asleep and see a great sea of people, near where I live. I look round and feel very cramped, but for some reason I can't stand up. Then I realise I'm lying in a coffin, a wooden coffin. I see that so clearly, but I'm alive, and I know I'm alive, even though I'm in a coffin. A gate opens and all the people pass through the gate on to the road, carrying me along with them. The faces of the crowd are full of grief but also a kind of mysterious ecstasy I can't understand. What's happened? Why am I in this coffin? Suddenly the procession comes to a halt. ‘Give me a hammer!' I hear someone say. I suddenly realise I'm dreaming. ‘Give me a hammer!' I hear again. The lid is hammered down, then I hear hammer-blows and one nail goes through my finger. I beat my head and legs against the lid. Bang — the lid flies off. The people watch as I sit up straight. ‘I'm in pain!' I want to shout. ‘Why are you nailing me down? I can't breathe in here.' They're crying but they can't, or won't, speak to me. And I don't know how to get them to hear me. I think I'm shouting, but my lips are glued together and I can't open them. So I lie back in the coffin. ‘If they want me to be dead perhaps I
am
dead and must keep quiet.' Again someone says, ‘Give me a hammer!'

*
The ‘Winter War' of 1939–40, about which the Soviet public was, until very recently, permitted to know almost nothing.

†
An allusion to the widespread practice of officers using their men for private gain. His work at the furniture factory may well have been on the same basis, despite the reference to ‘our company getting new tables'.

The Third Day

Author:
‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth …

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.

And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters …

And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so …

And the earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind …

And the evening and the morning were the third day.'

What am I looking for in the scriptures? Questions, or answers? Which questions and which answers? How much humanity is there in man? A great deal, according to some; very little, say others.

Perhaps my Leading Character will be able to help me. I wait by the phone all day, but it is evening before he calls.

Leading character
: ‘So the whole thing was a stupid mistake, was it? Do you realise what that means to me and the rest of us? I went over there an ordinary Soviet bloke, sure the Motherland wouldn't betray us or lie to us. You can't stop a madman going
mad. Some people say we went through a form of purgatory, others call it a cesspit. A plague on both your houses, is what I say! I want to live! I love life! I'll soon have a baby son and I'm going to call him Alyoshka, in memory of my friend. To my dying day I won't forget how I carried him, his head, and his legs, and his arms, all separate, and his flayed skin … If it's a girl I'll still call her Alyoshka …

So it was all just a stupid mistake, was it? But we weren't cowards, and we didn't betray you, did we? I won't phone again, I can't go on living in the past. I've forgotten everything, forgotten it all. You can't stop a madman going mad … No, I won't shoot myself. I'm going to have a baby son … Alyoskha … I want to live! That's it! Goodbye! …

Author.
He put down the receiver, but I went on talking to him for a long time. Hello, I'm listening …

‘And the evening and the morning … '

Major commanding a Mountain Infantry Company

A lot of people now claim it was all a waste of time. I suppose they want to carve ‘It Was All In Vain' on the gravestones.

We did our killing over there but we're being condemned for it at home. Casualties were flown back to Soviet airports and unloaded in secret so the public wouldn't find out. You say that's all in the past now, do you? But your ‘past' is very recent. I came home on leave in 1986. ‘So you get a nice suntan, go fishing and earn fantastic amounts of money, do you?' people asked me. How could they be expected to know the truth, when the media kept quiet.

Even the air is different over there. I still smell it in my dreams. ‘We were an occupying force' — that's what the newspapers claim now. If so, why did we give them food and medicine? We'd arrive in a village, and they'd all be happy to see us. We'd leave, and they'd be equally happy to see us go. I never understood why they were always so happy.

Once we stopped a bus for a security check. I heard the dry click of a pistol and one of my men fell to the ground. We turned
him on his back and saw a bullet had gone through his heart … I felt like mortaring the lot of them. We searched the bus but didn't find the pistol or anything else, except copper kettles and baskets full of fruit being taken to market. The passengers were all women, but someone killed my man …

Go on! Carve ‘It Was All In Vain!' on the gravestones …

We were on foot, on a routine patrol. I tried to shout ‘Halt!' but for some reason I was struck dumb. We carried on and bang! Some moments later I lost consciousness; then I realised I was at the bottom of the crater. I tried to crawl but I didn't have the strength and the others overtook me. I wasn't in pain, though. I managed to crawl 40 yards or so, until I heard someone say, ‘Sit! It's safe now.' I tried to sit like the others, then I saw my legs were gone. I dragged my gun towards me to shoot myself but someone snatched it out of my hand. ‘The major's lost his legs!' I heard him say, and then, ‘I'm sorry for the major.' When I heard that word ‘sorry' pain raced through my whole body, such a dreadful pain that I began to howl.

Even now, here at home, I never take the path through the forest — I stick to asphalt and concrete. I'm scared of grass. There's a soft, springy lawn by our house but it still frightens me.

In hospital we men who'd lost both legs asked to be put together in one ward. There were four of us. Two wooden legs stood by each bed, eight wooden legs in total. On 23 February, Soviet Army Day, some schoolgirls came with their teacher to give us flowers. They stood there crying. None of us ate a thing or said a word for two days afterwards.

Some stupid relative or other came to visit and brought a cake.

‘It was all a waste of time, boys!' he said. ‘Don't worry, though, you'll get a nice pension and sit and watch television all day long!'

‘Get out!' Four crutches flew at his head.

Some time after that one of the four tried to hang himself in the toilet. He wound one end of a sheet round his neck and tied the other to a window-handle. He'd received a letter from his girlfriend: ‘You know, Afgantsi are out of fashion now,' she'd written. And he'd lost both his legs …

Go on! Carve ‘It Was All In Vain!' on the gravestones.

A Nurse

When I got back home all I felt like doing was sitting in front of the mirror, brushing my hair. I wanted to have a baby, wash nappies and listen to baby-talk. The doctors advised against it. ‘Your heart can't take the strain,' they said — and my baby girl was born by Caesarean section because I did actually have a heart attack. ‘No one accepts our poor health is the result of Afghanistan,' a friend wrote to me. ‘They think that if we weren't wounded we weren't affected.'