A chubby, disinterested looking cook piled eggs and kolbasa on his plate and there was a pot of thick black tea next to the griddle from which Chekov poured a mug. Settling down at the far end of one of the tables, Chekov started to inhale his meal as rapidly as safety and a modicum of manners permitted. The manners were not for his fellows, most of whom ate like pigs, but simply more ingrained habits of childhood.
“Hey, Chekov.”
A rough voice drew Chekov’s eyes up from his meal. A tall, broad man, as big as Dostovalov, approached. His brown-yellow eyes held none of Dostovalov’s warmth though as he sat down, uninvited, across from Chekov. The man had black hair with a pronounced widow’s peak over his hatchet nose, and crooked, yellowed teeth were visible in the middle of his bristly black beard. Chekov had seen the man around, he was with another company in the First Rifles, but they hadn’t been introduced.
“Yes, how can I help you, Comrade…?” Chekov kept his voice level.
“Yermilov,” he said. “Washed your hands like you were getting ready to take tea with the tsar over there. Thought you were a hardened war hero, not some bourgeois fop.”
Hygiene is counterrevolutionary now?
“All the war heroes are dead,” Chekov said, in between bites. “I’m a survivor, and I have the habits of a survivor.”
“Oh, daintily washing your hands is what survivors do?” Yermilov said.
“Indeed,” Chekov said, he set his fork down and gave Yermilov a steady, unimpressed look. “I lost boys to German shells, bullets, mines, gas, but unlike other units, none of my men died shitting their brains out. Know why? Because we washed our fucking hands as best we could before we ate.”
“That why the Imperialists gave you their shiny medals? Your table manners?” Yermilov said.
Chekov snorted and picked up his fork again.
“Leading men in war isn’t just about the shooting and screaming,” Chekov said. “It’s about the little shit you do in between to keep the men alive and able to fight. Then again, I expect you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Yermilov?”
The big man’s nostrils flared and color tinged his cheeks.
“That’s right, I was never cannon fodder in the tsar’s useless war,” Yermilov said. “From what I hear, though, all the ‘little shit’ didn’t actually keep your men alive after all, did it?”
Chekov’s hand clenched painfully on the handle of his dinner knife. For a second, Chekov imagined Yermilov grasping at its hilt with sticky, red-coated fingers as he died, yellow-brown eyes wide, gasping for air around the dull blade planted in his throat. He was sorely tempted to make the image a reality.
The conversation around them stopped, a couple dozen brown-uniformed men stared, waiting to see how the new man would react. Forcing a deep breath in through his nostrils, Chekov banished the gratifying vision of murder and calmly sawed off another piece of kolbasa.
“So it would seem,” Chekov said. “Do you have a point, Comrade Yermilov?”
Chekov maintained his level, unfazed stare as he chewed another bite of sausage and egg.
“Just this, Chekov,” Yermilov said. “Don’t think you’re better than the rest of us because you managed to kiss enough ass to get both the tsar’s flunkies and the Provisional Government to think you’re some big hero.”
“Right,” Chekov nodded. “Well, I don’t know that I’m better than any of these lads,” Chekov gestured with his chin to encompass the room, “And I’m definitely not better than anyone because I’m a war hero. But I’m better than you, you personally, Yermilov, because you’re a pathetic mudak with a chip on his shoulder and you waste better men’s time with your bullshit because you know that’s what you are.”
Yermilov put a boot on the bench, making to leap across the table, but Chekov’s reflexes were viper-quick. As far as his nervous system was concerned, he was still on the front, ready to kill Germans. Chekov’s left hand shot out and grabbed a healthy clump of Yermilov’s coarse black hair. Using the man’s own inertia against him, Chekov slammed his head down into the table with a mighty crack.
When his head came back up blood poured from Yermilov’s over-prominent nose, while his eyes were unfocused. Chekov, hand still entwined in Yermilov’s hair, pulled his opponent off balance and forward, then twisted, so he sprawled across the table on his back, sending Chekov’s dinner flying across the floor. He pressed his dinner knife, point first, into Yermilov’s throat hard enough to draw a bead of blood. Looking up he saw three men closing in from another table.
“That’s far enough,” Chekov said, his voice eerily calm. He twisted the dinner knife just a little so the bead became a trickling line. Yermilov’s three would-be rescuers stopped. Chekov took a good look, memorizing their faces. Then he looked down into Yermilov’s piss-shit eyes, which were now wide with fear.
“I want you all to hear this,” Chekov said, looking up again, voice echoing throughout the now silent mess hall. “I’m not a hero. I’m not the tsar, or the Party, or the father who knew the postman was humping your mothers. I’m just a man who has seen too much shit and wants to be left alone. Tell your friends.
“Wanna prove your manhood? Take it to the whores down at the brothel. They’ll at least pretend to be impressed for a couple more rubles or a dozen eggs. Wave it at me and I’ll chop it off and feed it to you.”
Chekov looked down at Yermilov.
“And as for you, Yermilov,” he said in a lower voice. “I’m not interested in boxing with you. You give me any more shit, I’ll slaughter you and your friends over there like pigs. Understand?”
Yermilov’s jaw worked silently for a second, but he didn’t have enough fight in him to mouth off to a man with a knife at his throat.
“Da,” he said.
Chekov applied a fraction of an ounce of pressure to the blade, just to see Yermilov’s eyes widen in terror again. Point sufficiently made, he withdrew the knife and released the man’s hair, then shoved him from the table to the floor. Setting the knife back on the table, Chekov retrieved his rifle and slung it. Without another glance at Yermilov or his friends, but with his right hand clenched on the contraband pistol in his jacket pocket, Chekov walked with an intentionally casual gait, first to clean the tip of the knife and then back to the food line.
“I’m sorry,” he said mildly to the cook. “There was an accident and my food spilled. Could I get another plate?”
“Anything you want, Comrade,” the chubby cook said, hastily ladling out another helping of kasha, some kolbasa, another slab of bread, a dollop of butter, and some salo.
His appetite was gone, chased away by the adrenaline dump, but Chekov knew he would be hungry later if he didn’t eat now. So he secured his second plate, returned to his spot at the end of the third table, and resumed eating, more slowly this time. Yermilov, helped by his cronies, made his way out of the canteen. All their eyes were firmly fixed on the floor as they went.
The previous guard shift was already off duty by the time Chekov reached Freedom House. And, of course, Dostovalov stood at the back entrance, his tall, wide frame dwarfing Olga’s slender figure. Dostovalov laughed at something the girl was saying and the smile on Olga’s face would’ve lit up Petrograd. Chekov picked up the pace, gravel crunching under his boots as he stomped up to the back door.