The weapons room was closed. The soldier guarding it had locked it and fallen asleep. Guards wandered around the yard with their guns.
In the kitchen they were already drinking vodka. They scooped it up in aluminium mugs straight from the borscht tub. Lyonka Matytsyn started singing the old army-guard hymn:
“Do the recruits want war?
The sergeant has the answer ready,
He who’s drunk up all he could
From his shoulder belt to his boots.
The answer’s ready from the soldiers
Who lie about dead drunk,
And you yourself should understand
If the recruits want war…”
Political Instructor Khuriyev was the officer on duty. As a precaution, he had brought a pistol from home. The right pocket of his jodhpurs bulged visibly.
Tipsy soldiers in unbuttoned fatigue shirts wandered aimlessly through the corridor. At dark, mute energy was building in the army barracks.
Political Instructor Khuriyev gave an order for everyone to assemble in the Lenin Room. Ordered everyone to line up by the wall. However, the drunken guards could not stand. Then he permitted them to sit on the floor. A few immediately lay down.
“It is still six hours till the New Year,” the PI observed, “but you’re already drunk as swine.”
“Life, Comrade Lieutenant, races ahead of the ideal,” Fidel said.
The political instructor had a proud, handsome face and broad shoulders. In the army barracks he wasn’t much liked.
“Comrades,” Khuriyev said, “a great honour has befallen us. In these days, we guard the peace of Soviet citizens. For example, you there, Lopatin—”
“And why Lopatin? Why Lopatin? Always Lopatin, Lopatin. All right, so I’m Lopatin,” Andrei Lopatin said in a bass voice.
“What is the reason that you, Lopatin, stand at your post? So that the kolkhoz* workers in your native village, Bezhany, may sleep peacefully.”
“Political work ought to be concrete.” This had been explained to Khuriyev during courses in Syktyvkar.
“Did you understand, Lopatin?”
Lopatin thought a moment and said loudly, “I’d like to burn down that native village and the kolkhoz with it.”
Alikhanov did not join in the drinking. He went to the soldiers’ quarters, crowded with bunks. Then he pulled off his felt snow boots and climbed onto a top bunk.
In the neighbouring bunk, wrapped in a blanket, lay Fidel. Suddenly he sat up in bed and started talking. “Know what I was just doing? Praying to God. I thought up the prayer myself. Wanna hear?”
“Well, go on.”
Fidel lifted his eyes and began, “Dear Lord! You see this whorehouse, I hope? You understand what guard duty means, I hope? If so, let it be that I get transferred to aviation. Or else, if worse comes to worst, to a construction battalion. And also, see to it that I don’t drink myself to death. For as it is, the trusties have vats of moonshine, and everything goes against the Moral Codex for Building Communism.
“Dear Lord! What do You hate me for? Even though I’m a no-good shit, I’m clean before the law. After all, I’ve never stolen anything. I just drink. And even that not every day.
“Dear Lord! Do You have a conscience, or not? If You’re not a phoney, let it be that Captain Prishchepa kicks the bucket as soon as possible. But the main thing, get rid of this melancholy… What do you think, is there a God?”
“Unlikely,” Alikhanov said.
“And I think that while everything is okay, maybe He really doesn’t exist. But when your back’s against the wall, maybe He does exist. So maybe it’s better to establish contact with Him ahead of time.”
Fidel leant over to Alikhanov and said softly, “I would like to get into paradise. Since Constitution Day I’ve set that goal for myself.”
“You’ll get in,” Alikhanov assured him. “You don’t have much competition in the guard section.”
“That’s just what I think,” Fidel agreed. “Our crowd here is hard to beat. Thieves and thugs. No paradise for them. They couldn’t get into a disciplinary battalion. So maybe with them for a backdrop I could just squeeze in, as a non-Party member.”
Towards ten o’clock, the whole company was completely drunk. The next guard shift was chosen from among those who could still walk. Sergeant Major Yevchenko assured them that the cold would sober them.
Security men wandered through the barracks, dragging machine guns and guitars behind them.
Two soldiers had already been tied up with telephone wire. They were carried to the drying room and set down on a pile of sheepskin jackets.
The guards in the Lenin Room were playing a game called “The tiger’s coming”. Everyone sat down at the table. Drank down a glass of vodka. Then Lance Corporal Kunin would say, “The tiger’s coming!”
The players slid under the table.
“As you were!” Kunin commanded.
Then the players would crawl out from under the table. Again drink vodka. After which Lance Corporal Kunin said, “The tiger’s coming!” And everyone again crawled under the table.
“As you were!” Kunin commanded.
This time, someone stayed under the table. Then a second and a third. Then Kunin himself keeled over. He could no longer say, “The tiger’s coming!” He dozed, resting his head on the red calico tablecloth.
Around twelve, Instructor Volikov ran in, shouting, “Guard section, to your weapons!”
Soldiers gathered around him.
“There’s a drunken female somewhere in the kennels,” the instructor explained. “Maybe she wandered in from the deportee settlement.”
The settlement of Chir was located a few kilometres away from the Sixth Camp Subdivision. Deported “social parasites” lived there, mainly prostitutes and black-marketeers. In exile they continued not to work. Many of them were convinced they were political prisoners.
The boys crowded around the instructor.
“Dzavashvili has a condom,” Matytsyn said. “I saw.”
“One?” Fidel asked.
“Oh look, a scholar!” Volikov said, getting angry. “This one needs his own private condom! You’ll wait your turn.”
“A lowly condom won’t help,” Matytsyn assured them. “I know these floozies. They’ve got as many gonococci down there as dogs. Now, if it were made of stainless steel…”
Alikhanov lay there thinking how vile were the faces of his fellow servicemen. “God, where have I landed?” he thought.
“Brothers, follow me!” Volikov yelled.
“Are you men or animals?” Alikhanov said. He had jumped down from his bunk. “You’re rushing out in one platoon to some dirty broad?”
“We don’t lap up politics!” Fidel said, stopping him. He had managed to change into a khaki fatigue shirt.
“I thought you wanted to get into Paradise.”
“Hell is all right with me too,” Fidel said.
Alikhanov stood in the doorway. “We stand guard over every sort of carrion. And you’re all worse than the zeks! What, it’s not true?”
“Don’t start,” said Fidel, “Why all the noise? Just remember, people call me courageous.”
“Quit jabbering,” said the towering Gerasimchuk. And he walked out, bumping against Alikhanov with his shoulder. The remaining soldiers followed him.
Alikhanov cursed, crawled under the blanket, and opened a book by Miroshnichenko called Clouds over Bryansk.
Balodis the Latvian was sitting on an overturned cooking pot taking off his shoes. He monotonously tugged at his leg. And each time he did this, he hit his head on the corner of the iron bed.
Balodis served as cook. His chief concern was the larder. Fat, jam and flour were stored in it. Balodis carried the keys on him all day, and when he went to sleep he tied them with a string to his genitals. This did not help. The night shift had twice managed to untie the keys and raid the larder. Even the flour had been eaten up.