After a few minutes Sergeant Major Yevchenko looked into the Lenin Room and then, bending over me, he cut the telephone wire with a bayonet.
“Thank you, Comrade Yevchenko,” I said, “I won’t forget this when I tell the Voice of America correspondent the whole story.”
“Sure,” the sergeant said, “we’ve got a whole zone of correspondents for you out there.” Then he told me that Captain Tokar wanted to see me.
I entered the main office rubbing my wrists. Tokar rose from behind his desk. By the window sat Bogoslovsky, who had recently replaced me as company clerk.
“This time I do not intend to forgive,” the captain said. “You drank with the trusties?”
“Who, me?”
“You.”
“Well, yes, I drank, so I had a drink, so…”
“Just out of curiosity, how much?”
“I don’t remember,” I said. “I remember I was drinking from a tin can.”
“Comrade Captain,” Bogoslovsky said, “he’s not denying it. He won’t do it again.”
“I know. I’ve heard that before. I’m sick of it! This time let the military court decide. The days of the old camp garrison are past. We belong to the Regular Army, thank God. And don’t you forget it.”
He turned to me. “You have brought about several ‘incidents’ in the detachment. You disrupt political lessons, you put demagogical questions to Lieutenant Khuriyev. Yesterday you instigated a fight that had a bad chauvinist smell to it. That’s enough. Let HQ decide.”
The captain glanced suspiciously at the door, then flung it open. Fidel was standing there eavesdropping.
“Hello there, Comrade Captain,” he said.
“Well, here we are,” the captain said. “Petrov can serve as your escort to the stockade.”
“I can’t serve as his escort,” Fidel said. “He’s my friend. I can’t escort a friend. I feel no antagonism towards him.”
“But you can drink together?”
“Drinking is another matter,” Fidel said thoughtfully.
“Enough!” The captain slammed his palm on the table. “Take off your belt!”
I took it off.
“Put it on the table.”
I threw the belt on the table. The brass buckle struck the glass. “Pick up the belt!” the captain shouted.
I picked it up.
“Put it on the table!”
I laid it on the table.
“Lance Corporal Petrov, take a weapon with you and march him to the first sergeant for the documents.”
“What’s the gun for?”
“Follow orders.”
At this point I said, “I should have something to eat. You don’t have the right to starve me to death.”
“You know your rights,” Tokar said, grinning, “but I also know mine.”
When we went out into the corridor I said to Fidel, “Don’t feel bad. If it wasn’t you, it would be somebody else.”
After that we ate some cooked millet and stuffed some bread in our pockets. We put on warmer clothes and walked out on the porch. Fidel took a clip from his cartridge pouch and right there on the steps he loaded his sub-machine gun, and without looking back we walked to the crossing, where we could hitch a ride with a passing car or a log-carrier.
We marched along the mud path, leaving behind us the dark walls of the barracks, the transparent trees above the fence and the dull white sun.
The railroad barrier was down. Fidel smoked, and we stood there for several minutes watching a train speed by with a roar. We could make out blue curtains, a thermos flask and a man with a cigarette in one of the windows. I even noticed that he was wearing pyjamas.
It was all a little sickening.
A log-carrier braked nearby. Fidel waved to the driver, and we climbed into the cab, which was crowded and smelt of gasoline.
Fidel put the sub-machine gun between his knees, and we lit up.
The driver turned to me and asked, “What’d they get you for, fella?”
I said, “I criticized the authorities.”
When we passed by the old brick pump house, where the road turned into the settlement, I took a watch without a band out of my pocket and showed it to the driver.
“Buy it,” I said.
“Does it work?”
“Two hours more accurate than the Kremlin clock.”
“How much?”
“Five sticks.”
“Five?”
“All right, seven.”
The driver stopped the truck, took out his money, and gave me five roubles. Then he asked, “What do you need money in the stockade for?”
“To help the poor,” I said.
The driver grinned. Then he examined the watch for a long time and put it to his ear. “For my father-in-law,” he said. “I’ll present it to him on his name day, the old dog.”
We got out of the truck and made our way along a darkening path through the snowdrifts to the settlement, which greeted us with the knocking sound of a generator, the squeak of a sleigh’s runners, and the wind from deserted streets on which there were more dogs than people. Farther downhill the grey fences of the main camp section began, circling a two-storey brick staff building. Our way lay across the whole settlement, past the dilapidated stone gates of the shipping section, past the huts buried in snow, past the mess hall with white steam pouring from its open doors, past the garage where automobiles all faced one way like cows in a meadow, past the clubhouse with a silvery loudspeaker under the attic window, then along the interminable fence with its barbed-wire cornice, to the gate with the five-pointed tin star, and up the path to the staff building, crammed with foppish officers, the clattering of typewriters and numberless military trophies. There, behind an iron door, was a well-equipped stockade with a cement floor.
“We’ll bail you out,” Fidel said. “I’ll have a talk with the boys.”
“Yeah, have a talk with them.”
We crossed over a ditch on an ice-covered log. Then I said, “Do your orders say anything about time of arrival?”
“No,” Fidel said. “Why?”
“So then what are we in a hurry for?” I said. “Let’s go to the torfushki.”
That was the name for the seasonal women workers from the peat-packing plant who lived in barracks on the edge of the settlement.
“Well…” Fidel said.
“Well, what? We’ll get a bottle. I’ve got money.”
At this point I noticed that Fidel didn’t like the idea and was looking at me sadly.
“What’ll we do with the gun?” he said.
“Put it under the bed. Let’s go – at least we can sit for a while where it’s warm.”
Fidel walked along without saying anything.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We’ll sit, we’ll smoke. I don’t like whorehouses myself. We’ll just sit there calmly for a while where it’s warm, with no noise.”
But Fidel said, “Listen, there’s headquarters just close by. If we walk straight ahead across the bog we’ll be there in five minutes and you’ll be warm.”
“In the stockade, you mean?”
“So?”
“With a cement floor?”
“What difference does the floor make? There’s a bunk there. And a stove. According to regulations the temperature can’t be under sixty degrees.”
“Listen,” I said, “you’re not getting my point. All that lies ahead: the stockade, the bunk, the sixty degrees, Prosecutor Voyshko. Right now, let’s go to the torfushki.”
“In search of adventure?” Fidel said with annoyance.
“Ah, so that’s how you talk! So that’s what happens to a man when they give him written orders and a weapon! Go on – give the orders, Comrade Commander!”
Fidel started yelling, “What are you getting so riled up about, huh? What are you getting so riled up about? All right, we’ll go wherever you want! We’ll go to the torfushki! Wherever you want, we’ll go there!”
We made a turn back to the commissary, climbed some steps to the porch, shook off the snow, and went inside, where it smelt of kerosene and fish. A stack of barrels shadowed one corner, and the shelves were stocked with cigarettes, soap, biscuits in old-fashioned packages, a block of halva with melted edges, and gingerbread the colour of marble. On the counter a cat dozed by a red-hot heater, and beneath it a rooster was pecking at something in a crack between the floorboards.