Leonid just wanted his two years of conscripted service — easily the most miserable period of his life — to end so that he could go home to the state farm outside of Chelyabinsk, to his mother and his guitar.
“And this girl, Yelena, she’s got a sister who wants to know what’s going on, see?” Seryosha went on with his tales. “Her father’s this big wheel in the Party, though, and everybody else is afraid to lay a finger on her. So I’m up in this fancy apartment, waiting for Yelena to come home…”
Everything seemed to come so easily to Seryosha. Leonid tried to master the prescribed military skills, but his uniform was never quite neat enough, and he bungled the physical execution even of tasks he clearly understood in his mind. But Seryosha seemed to be able to do everything perfectly the first time. And he made fun of Leonid, who was included in the squad group, but only as a member of the outer circle. Now, however, Leonid felt compelled to reach out to the others, to get through to Seryosha that matters were serious, indeed, and that something had to be done, although he had no idea what that something might be.
Seryosha finished his startlingly vulgar story, in which he was, as usual, a hero of dramatic capabilities. As the admiring laughter subsided Leonid tried again to reach the others, despite the risk.
“I think,” Leonid began, searching nervously for the right words, “I think that things are… things must be bad.”
He could feel Seryosha turning in the darkness. “Things are,” Seryosha said imperiously, “the way they always are. In the shit. If you’re not in one kind of shit, you’re in another.” Seryosha laughed bitterly, then began again, speaking in exaggerated English, “Leonid, baby. Mister Rock and Roll.” Then he collapsed into Russian. “You’ve been in pig shit all your life out on your collective farm, haven’t you?”
“State farm,” Leonid corrected.
“Out there in Chelyabinsk,” Seryosha continued. “No, I mean from beyond Chelyabinsk. You must know what it’s like to be in the shit.”
Leonid desperately wanted to express something. But he did not know exactly what it was. He thought of Lieutenant Korchuk’s pale cheeks and scrawny mustache, and of a mental collage of troubling images. But none of it would fit into words.
“I wish we had some music,” Leonid said, drawing back again. It seemed to him now that he had never been happier than when he had been at home, with his small, precious collection of rock and blues music, his Hungarian jeans, and his guitar. He had dreamed of going to Leningrad, where a real music scene existed. Or at least to Moscow, where you could hear good blues. Now that he knew Seryosha, he had ruled out Leningrad. That garbage? Seryosha had said, when Leonid tried to talk to him about music. That’s old hat. Nobody listens to the blues. They’d all laugh at you in Leningrad. Everybody listens to metal music now, everybody who knows what’s going on is a metallist. You’d be lost in Leningrad, you little pig farmer.
The intensity of the drizzle picked up slightly, and the soldiers herded closer, each maneuvering for a greater share of the leaking protection of the camouflage net and stray bits of canvas.
“You know what?” Seryosha said. “If there is a war, I’m going to take care of one of those German bitches with her nose in the air. And I don’t care if she’s West German or East German, unless you can prove there’s a difference between a capitalist piece and a socialist one. It just drives me crazy when we’re driving by them and they act like they don’t even see you, like they’re looking right through you.” He paused as they all remembered deployments that took them through tidy German towns where the handsome women showed no regard for them at all. “I’m going to take care of one of them,” Seryosha resumed. “And when I’m done, I’m going to turn Genghiz loose on her for good measure.”
The group laughed. Even Leonid laughed at this image. Genghiz was their nickname for Ali, their Central Asian antitank grenadier. Ali did not understand enough Russian to get the jokes, but he always laughed along. Once, during the squad’s first field exercise, Ali had tried to sneak more than his share of the rations. Seryosha had begun the beating, and they had all joined in. The squad had almost gotten in trouble over the incident, but in the end, Ali had not needed to stay in the sick bay overnight, and Seryosha had concocted a tale to bring in Lieutenant Korchuk on the side of the squad. Ali never repeated his mistake, and he carefully did exactly what Seryosha told him to do as long as the task was clearly explained.
“No music,” Seryosha said wistfully. “No women. And nothing to drink. My father used to say, ‘War solves all your problems.’ My old man was in the big one, and he had a girl or two. Hell, he was on his third wife when I popped out.”
“You father,” Ali said happily, surprising them all. “You no know you father, Russian bastard.”
The group laughed so hard they swayed and banged their shoulders against one another in the little circle. Even Seryosha laughed. It was a great moment, as if a dog or cat had spoken.
The squad grew boisterous. Everyone was supposed to be quiet, on pre-combat silence. But there were still no officers around, and you could clearly hear the other squads nearby.
Leonid wondered where the officers had gone, and why it was taking them so long. He wondered what in the world was going on.
Suddenly, a vehicle engine powered up a few hundred meters away. Then another vehicle came to life, closer this time.
“Here we go again,” Seryosha said disgustedly.
They rode crouched in their armored vehicle, with the troop hatches closed. Only the driver and the vehicle commander were allowed to look outside. The interior was cramped and extremely uncomfortable, even though the squad was understrength with only six soldiers. The smells of unwashed bodies and of other men’s stale breath mingled with the pungency of the poorly vented exhaust. The jittering of the vehicle’s tracks seemed to scramble the brain. Leonid knew from experience that he would soon have a severe headache.
“Where do you think we’re going this time?” a voice asked from the darkness.
“Paris,” Seryosha said. “New York.”
“Seriously.”
“Who the hell knows?”
“I think we’re going to war,” Leonid said with helpless conviction.
All of the voices went heavily silent. The whine of the engine, the clatter of the tracks on the hard-surface road, and the wrenched-bone noise of shifting gears surrounded the quiet of the soldiers.
“You don’t know,” Seryosha said angrily, doubtfully. “You’re just a little pig farmer from the middle of nowhere.”
Leonid did not know why he had said it. He recognized that, in fact, he did not know where they were going. But somehow, inside, he was convinced that he was correct. They were going to war. Perhaps it had already begun. NATO had attacked, and men were dying.
The vehicle stopped with a jerk, knocking the soldiers against one another or into the metal furnishings of the vehicle’s interior. Road marches were always the same. You went as fast as you could, then came to a sudden, unexplained stop and waited.
“Leonid?” a voice asked seriously, just loud enough to be heard over the idling engine. “Has somebody told you something? Do you really know something? What makes you think we’re going to war?”