After some hesitation, he always added: “Request not to refuse.”
Then came the money from his Aunt Reyet. Pakhapil would get a litre of Chartreuse in the store and go off to the cemetery. There, in the green twilight, the crosses shone white. Farther on, by the edge of a reservoir, was a neglected grave and beside it a plywood obelisk. Pakhapil would sit down heavily on the little knoll, have a drink and smoke.
“Estonians should live in Canada,” he would mutter softly beneath the rhythmical humming of mosquitoes.
For some reason they didn’t bite him.
Early one morning, a homely-looking officer appeared in the division. Judging by his glasses, an ideological worker. An assembly was announced.
“Go to the Lenin Room!” an orderly shouted to the soldiers smoking near the parallel bars.
“We can’t eat politics,” the soldiers grumbled. But they went inside and took seats.
“I was a slender string in the thunderous concert of the war,” Lieutenant Colonel Mar began.
“Poems,” Balodis the Latvian drawled in disappointment.
Outside the window, the quartermaster sergeant and the staff clerk had caught a pig. The friends had tied a belt around her legs and were trying to drag her up a ramp into the back of a transport van. The pig screamed wildly, and her piercing squeals made the back of one’s neck ache. She fell on her belly. Her hooves slipped on the manure-muddied ramp. The little eyes disappeared in folds of fat.
Sergeant Major Yevchenko walked across the yard. He kicked the pig with his foot. Then he picked up the shaft of a shovel that had been left lying on the grass.
“In sections of the Soviet Army, a noble tradition is developing,” Lieutenant Colonel Mar was saying. “Soldiers and officers take the graves of fallen soldiers under their patronage. They painstakingly reconstruct the story of their martial achievements. They establish contact with the relatives and dear ones of the heroes. It is the duty of one and all to develop and strengthen such a tradition in every way possible. Let spiteful critics in the world of ready cash trumpet the conflicts of fathers and sons. Let them fan the cooked-up legend of the antagonism between them. Our youth sacredly honour the burial of their fathers, affirming in this way the indissoluble bond between the generations.”
They dragged the pig up a roughly planed board. The edges of the van, painted a light green, shuddered with a metallic ring. The driver stuck his head out the window to watch what was going on.
Nearby, the Moldavian Dastyan, excused from duty because of illness, was turning on the horizontal bars. He was waiting for orders from the commanding officer of his section and went around without a belt, quietly singing to himself.
“Your company is stationed across from a cemetery,” the lieutenant colonel droned, “and this is deeply symbolic. Established by us is the fact that among others we have here the resting places of heroes of the Great Patriotic War. Including also medal-bearing ones. In this way, all the conditions are ripe for taking these fallen soldiers under our special patronage.”
They dragged the pig into the back of the van. She lay motionless, only twitching her pink ears. Soon she would be brought to the slaughterhouse, where a greasy fog hung in the air. With a practised gesture, the slaughterer would hitch her up to the ceiling by a tendon. Then he would stab her in the heart with a long white knife. After one cut, he would quickly rip off her hide, with its growth of dirty wool. And then all the servicemen would get sick from the smell of blood.
“Who here is Pakhapil?”
Gustav started. He got up and remembered what had just happened a moment before. How Lance Corporal Petrov had raised his hand and said, choking with laughter, “There is already one such soldier in our subdivision. He has taken a fallen hero under his patronage and tends his grave. It is Instructor Pakhapil!”
“Who here is Pakhapil?” Mar asked mistrustfully. “You’re Pakhapil, are you?”
“Affirmative,” Gustav answered, blushing.
“In the name of the company commander, I extend to you our gratitude. Your initiative will be popularized. HQ is planning a ceremonial meeting of exemplary officers in battle training. You will come with me and tell them about your accomplishments. On the way there we will sketch out a plan.”
“Basically, I’m an Estonian,” Pakhapil began to say.
“That’s even better,” the lieutenant colonel said, cutting him off, “from the point of view of brotherly internationalism.”
It was crowded at headquarters. Servicemen stood in groups beneath work schedules, artistically arranged exhibits and visual propaganda materials. Boots and wet hair glistened. The room smelt of tobacco and tar.
They walked up the stairs. Mar put his arm around Pakhapil. On the landing, people surrounded them.
“Get to know each other,” the lieutenant colonel said in a civilian tone of voice. “These are our camp beacons. Sergeant Tkhapsayev, Sergeant Gafiatulin, Sergeant Chichiashvili, Junior Sergeant Shakhmametyev, Lance Corporal Laury, Privates Kemoklidze and Ovsepyan…”
“What the devil,” Gustav thought. “Nothing but kikes!”
But just then, the bell rang. Everyone angled towards the cigarette urns. They tossed in their cigarettes and went inside the spacious hall.
And Pakhapil found himself on the platform. Below him, faces shone white. To his left were members of the presidium, a carafe and a red calico curtain, beyond which he could see a double bass propped up offstage.
Pakhapil glanced at the people, touched his metal dog tag, then stepped forwards.
“I am, basically, an Estonian,” he began.
It was quiet in the hall. Under the windows, jingling, a tramcar went by.
In the evening, Gustav Pakhapil was being jolted around in the back seat of a car from HQ. He was recalling his speech, and how he had poured water from the carafe, how the glass had tinkled and a general in the presidium had smiled. And how they had pinned a memorial badge on him. (Three incomprehensible words, a figure and a globe.) And then Mar had spoken, pointing out Private Pakhapil’s valuable initiative. Something about enterprise, growth and perseverance… And something else concerning patriotic education, something on the order of continuity and indissoluble ties, with the aim of patronage of the graves of fallen heroes. Although Pakhapil is Estonian, because of the brotherly friendship between the two nations…
Before him loomed the driver’s back. Trees with meagre crowns flew past them, sun-bleached hills, the wretched taiga green.
When the car bumped over the railroad crossing, Gustav said to the driver, “I’ll get out here.” The driver, without looking around, waved goodbye and made a U-turn.
Gustav Pakhapil marched alongside the lustreless rails, then climbed up the embankment. The plank road took him to the local village store.
There his pockets filled up heavily.
He cut through an abandoned stadium and stepped onto the little bridge over the cemetery ditch.
It was raw and quiet. The leaves twittered in the wind.
Gustav unbuttoned his dress jacket. Sat down on the little knoll. Laid the ham on his knee. The bottle he set in the grass.
After which he lit a cigarette, leaning against the red plywood monument.
February 17, 1982. New York
Unless I’m wrong, we met in 1964 – that is to say, soon after my demobilization from prison-camp guard duty. By then I was a fully formed person, endowed with all sorts of oppressive complexes.
Since you didn’t know me before the army, you can hardly imagine how much I had changed, for I had grown up a normal young man. I had a set of loving parents. True, they had separated early. But the divorce hardly damaged their relationship with me. More than that, the divorce hardly damaged their relationship with each other, in the sense that even before the divorce their relationship wasn’t so great.