I looked up at the stars and my head began to spin.
Just then Fidel climbed up a telegraph pole with a knife in his teeth. He was a competent technician and hoped to do some damage. He climbed higher and higher, and when his shadow on the snow had grown enormous he suddenly shrieked “Mama!” and fell from a height of ten metres. We rushed to him, but Fidel stood up, brushed off the snow, and said, “Getting down is the easy part.”
We looked for the knife but couldn’t find it. “Obviously you swallowed it,” Balodis said. “That’s OK,” replied Fidel, “I have two of them.”
Then we set off for the barracks, and when the bakery van came towards us around the turn, we kept walking ahead until the driver had to back up and run through somebody’s fence.
When we got back the duty detail were cleaning their weapons. We went to the mess hall and ate some cold pickle soup. Fidel wanted to relieve himself in the water can that stood on a stool in the corner, but Balodis talked him out of it.
Then we went into the Lenin Room and sat around a table covered with a red calico cloth. The walls were hung with bulletin boards, posters and printed slogans; the chandelier glittered, and a New Year’s edition of Lightning, the bulletin-board newspaper, lay rolled in a tube in the corner.
“Will Communism be here soon?” Fidel asked. “Because my needs are piling up.”
“And how about your abilities?” I asked.
“No problem,” Fidel said. “I have plenty of abilities.”
“For cursing,” Balodis said.
“Not only that,” Fidel said.
Fidel started setting up chess pieces. I rested my head on the tablecloth, and Balodis stood looking at photographs of the members of the Central Committee.
“That’s some name,” he said. “Comrade Dentures.” Just then Sergeant Major Yevchenko looked into the Lenin Room. “You’d better go to bed, boys,” he said.
But Fidel yelled, “Why is there injustice all around us, Sergeant? Explain why! A thief does time for what he did, but what are we rotting here for?”
“Who’s to blame for that?” the sergeant said.
“If someone could show me the man who’s to blame for all my misfortunes,” I said, “I would strangle him on the spot.”
“Better go to sleep,” Yevchenko said.
At this point we stood up and filed past the sergeant, brushing his shoulder. We sat on the logs in the courtyard and had a smoke, then we set off towards the administration compound.
“Bob, go into the zone and get some fuel, my engine is shutting down,” Fidel said.
“Aha,” Balodis said, catching on, “there’s no potion in the commissary, but there’s always plenty in the zone. The crooks’ll give us some without a murmur. They know we won’t be in their debt.”
He tugged at Fidel’s sleeve. “Give me a cigarette.”
“Smoking is unhealthy,” Fidel said. “Nicotine has an adverse effect on the heart.”
“No, it’s healthy,” Balodis said. “Healthier than vodka. What’s unhealthy is standing around in a watchtower.”
I wasn’t allowed into the zone. The controller on watch asked, “Where are you going?”
“To the zone.”
“On private business?”
“No,” I said, “public.”
“After vodka, is that it?”
“Well, so what?”
“Turn back.”
“Oho,” I said, “so this is socialist justice! You think it’s all right for the recidivists to drink it all up and then go commit another punishable offence?”
“You go after vodka, you get friendly with the contingent, then he uses you for precarious purposes.”
“Who’s that – he?”
“The contingent, that’s who. You’re supposed to feel antagonism towards the convicts. You’re supposed to hate them. And can you say that you hate them? Not that I can see. Where’s your antagonism, I ask?”
“I don’t hate anyone. Not even you, numbskull.”
“That’s my point,” the controller said, and added, “Want a shot from my private reserves?”
“Sure,” I said, “only don’t expect any antagonism.”
I returned to the barracks, stumbling as I went. I crossed the snow-covered parade ground in the dark and wound up in the drying room, where the stove was going and felt snow boots and sheepskin jackets were hanging from hooks. Fidel rushed over to me, knocking over his chair, but I told him there was no vodka and he started to cry. “But where’s Balodis?” I asked.
“Everyone’s asleep,” Fidel said. “We’re the only ones left.”
Then I almost started crying myself. I imagined we were all alone in the wide world. Who was there to love us? Who was there to take care of us?
Fidel picked up a harmonica and made a shrill, piercing sound on it. “Oho,” he said, “I pick up the instrument for the first time and the result is not bad. What shall I play for you, Bach or Mozart?”
“Mozart’s quieter,” I said. “If the next shift wakes up, they’ll come in here and kill us.”
We were silent for some time.
“Dzavashvili has some home-brewed chacha,”* Fidel said, “only he won’t give us any. Should we try?”
“I don’t feel like messing with him.”
“Maybe you’re scared of him?”
“What is there to be scared of? I don’t give a damn about him.”
“No, you’re scared. I noticed a long time ago.”
“Maybe I’m scared of you too? Maybe I’m even scared of Kogan?”
“You’re not scared of Kogan, and you’re not scared of me, but you are scared of Dzavashvili. All Georgians go around with hunting knives. They’ll pull out their knives over nothing. You should see the size of Dzavashvili’s saksan!* It wouldn’t fit in the top of his boot.”
“Let’s go,” I said.
Andzor Dzavashvili was sleeping right by the door. Even in sleep his face was handsome and a little anxious. Fidel woke him up and said, “Listen, you non-Russian, give us some chacha.”
Dzavashvili woke up in fright, the way any soldier in the guard section did if awoken suddenly. He put his hand under the mattress, then took a look at us and said, “This is no time for chacha, friend – it’s time for sleep.”
“Give, I say. Bob and I have hangovers to get rid of.”
“How are you going to work tomorrow?” Andzor asked.
“Keep your moustache out of our business,” Fidel answered.
Andzor turned over, his back to us.
Here Fidel shouted, “So, you son of a bitch, you won’t give a Russian soldier any chacha?”
“Who’s a Russian,” Andzor said, “you? You’re not a Russian, you’re an Alcoholist!”
Then it started.
Andzor yelled out, “Gigo! Vakhtang! Vai me! Arunda!”*
Georgians came running in their underwear, showing deep tans even here in the north, and they started making gestures in such a way that Fidel immediately began to bleed from the nose. Then a fracas began that would be remembered in the barracks for many years. I went down six times and got up around three. In the end they tied me up with telephone wire and carried me into the Lenin Room, but even there, lying on the rough planks, I was still going after someone. It was probably the man who was to blame for all the reverses in my fortune.
Towards morning my mood always goes bad. Especially after sleeping on a cold floor, tied up with telephone wire.
I heard the cook dropping firewood with a crash onto the metal shingles by the stove, and buckets clattering, and an orderly walking down the corridor. Then doors started slamming, and everything filled with the special noise of an all-male barracks where everyone walks around in heavy boots.