The Torn Souls 3 страница

I was sitting on the bonnet of the truck; all the others were standing in a semicircle at some distance from Beck, representing a living decoration for the action that was about to happen, or perhaps shielding this ridiculous scene from any casual viewer. Beck examined Soul from top to toe with that weird look of his which I hated so much. What was to follow was a regular scenario with a rare innovation. I felt sick. “Just do not say…”the helmet” “, – I was begging Beck in my mind.

“Put on the helmet”, – said Beck, almost whispering. Nothing could force Soul to not blindly obey the order. He was so spoiled by his luck that he could not understand why he was given that order. More than once he had to stand like this in front of the sergeant. In his understanding, he had no reason to hurry, and in general, he just carried out his duty. But I am sure that from gradual awareness of what was happening, he felt much worse after the fall. Beck returned to the carrier and took the grenade thrower’s cartridge. Soul did not watch his step: his eyes filled with alarm; he was riveted to the RPG (see “Terminology and Glossary”  – Editor) in Beck’s hands.

It was like a shot. With all his might Beck hit the helmet on Soul’s head with the cartridge. Soul managed to keep his balance although his face was twisted with pain. But in a second he fell to the ground, without making a sound. Those who surrounded him kept silent. Soul quickly came to himself and with a thoughtful look, which conveyed his agony, followed our reaction.

The dembels (see “Terminology and Glosssary”  – Editor) were climbing on the armored vehicle one by one – the punishment was over.

“So, what now? ”– I asked Beck, after we pulled Soul inside the troop-carrier. He made no reply; having pushed me away with his shoulder, he threw his body on the weaponry with a powerful jerk. I noticed that he was sullen, as before. Why was he like that, while all the others were filled with fear and disapproval of his deed? Sometimes it was hard to understand Beck, and now was a time when it was better to leave him alone. “Well, you never can tell. The night is not over yet”, he noted dryly, when I took my place next to him. At that moment each of us was lost in our own thoughts.

Many boarding houses make preparations beforehand for the “Afghans” who are arriving. Before their arrival, the administration puts the place in order: the new cushioned furniture is hidden in the storerooms; its place is taken by old sofas, battered chairs and tables. All carpets and table lamps are removed. The staff is instructed in case of emergencies. And then comes the long-awaited day of arrival of the “Afghans”, who, accompanied by an easily recognizable sound of the clinking of glasses, arrive in a dignified manner, sedately carrying the weight of state awards and benefits. Unlucky old-aged veterans, not knowing what to expect, find themselves in the situation of hiding in their rooms as the only way to get through this horror invasion.

By the evening a boarding house turns into an arena of military operations, the base of crash courses in survival. Along the corridors, with a wild noise and a sound of prostheses and crutches, the troops are rushing to and fro: people unite in groups according to their divisions, regiments, and brigades, and provinces where they had served, according to their participation in joint operations, according to hospitals, according to the nature of their wounds, and finally, according to groups of disability. If you go through the floors, you can see people hugging and kissing in lobbies and bars. The meetings are celebrated in every room: you can open any door without knocking, and everyone will be pleased to pour you a glass or two, sincerely offering to share the joy of meeting with a brother-soldier.

The next morning, before you can open your eyes, you are horrified to think of a long and painful return to the interrupted conversation with new and old friends you were socializing with the day before; and having being buried in a pillow, you begin to listen to steps in the corridor. Sometimes you just have to say to yourself: “Enough of that! Go to hell! ” You want to shut yourself in the room and do something enjoyable, for instance – to read, listen to music and at last to dream. It is quite possible that in an hour you will be lucky enough to fall asleep, and in a few days you will escape from this hell and forget your friends of the nights. However, the lucky ones are few. In most cases, the struggle is prolonged, because it is not so easy to get rid of awakened memories. Insomnia itself is not as terrible as the memories associated with it and as a result, “war cartoons”: nightmares. You are calmed down by only one thing: you are not alone in your torments.

If you come here and concentrate only on this, you can lose your good health in a short time. Let us say, the question for me is not idleness. One day as part of one of those “landings” I happened to be in a boarding house not far from Moscow. Having dived head first into the above-described atmosphere that reigned in a decent society of serious people for those who came here to be treated for injuries and to be returned to a normal condition, I found myself not ready to face my past.

The main responsibility of the administration was to make patients feel relaxed and rested, so that life became a bed of roses starting from the very first day. Well, we came here because we wanted to be well. The sharing of “war cartoons” was an unspoken taboo. It was important to not stand out from the normal rhythm of life and to not avoid one’s familiar circle of friends. I had already known that those people who recovered faster helped others who were struggling in a similar situation. Therefore, there was one fellow I chose for my own course of treatment.

He looked so skinny. He was dressed in a plain tracksuit, which together with his jeans made up his entire wardrobe. The impression of gauntness was enhanced by his seemingly external inaccessibility. This fellow obviously had not managed to objectively assess his budget for the rest of period, having brought here just what was left from his monthly salary or pension. A couple of times I tried to approach him, taking a seat next to him, but he showed a demonstrable independence. It is quite common behavior of those who have been faced with mockery and undeserved reproaches from relatives and loved ones. Most likely he had his own reasons for becoming an “iron man”, and one day he had made a decision about living as courageously as possible.

But still, it was not difficult for me to draw him out. As soon as it became clear that we had been in the same brigade for the same years, I asked him umpteen questions about things that were hard not know if he was really there at that time. His sluggish, vague answers disappointed me and settled doubts in me as to their veracity. He remembered the location of the military unit, knew some details from brigade life, but he absolutely did not remember the people with whom he had said he had shared the difficulties of service. Apparently, hoping somehow to justify his strange forgetfulness, he started to tell something about his life. His speech was incoherent, and his diction left much to be desired.

Having armed myself with patience, I listened to his story. He used to be a soldier, but he was wounded and a couple of years after that he developed a strange disease. He began to lose weight; his memory, hearing and sight began to worsen. And then it got even worse: there were problems with his right foot. Strange bouts of pain in his back began to bother him, after which his foot completely failed. He married a woman with a child. The boy did not consider him as a father, he despised him for his weakness. The problems with his head prevented him from staying on a well-paid job and he started repairing TVs at home, but the number of orders was constantly decreasing. He had to now come here for his health.

Understanding the problem and trying to be an attentive listener, I asked politely about his wound. His answer disappointed me completely. “Grenade struck my head”, he said. If I had not known people with similar wounds, I might have believed him. But he did not know where to draw the line. Continuing to listen to his story, I involuntarily began to overhear a conversation the next table, where the helicopter pilots were sitting. The familiar word “Kalat” in their conversation made me strain my ears.

“When we had flown there, they were already being pelted with launchers. The tank and the APC were already burning. We just made a couple of sorties, and there was already a commander with a launcher-wound in his head. They all were screaming on the “Romashka”, demanding evacuation. I looked down: they were under fire, the “box” was burning, and they were like mice thrashing about in a ditch! ” For the first time I heard the impressions of a man who had taken a detached view of a battle in which I had also taken part: the comparison with mice shocked me; you could have knocked me down with a feather.

By noon the next day we were trapped.

After receiving an order, our team, consisting of two incomplete platoons, left the zone of ambush actions in three cars and went down to a concrete road. We had to go as a patrol accompanied by a column that was carrying cotton from India. Outpacing the column, we moved close to a Afghan tank, which had been given to us for support. The Afghan commando unit was reinforced by the fourth company of our battalion.

The commander said: “Halt! ”. We stopped. At the head of the patrol there was a tank and after it you could see our three “boxes”.

A small village was divided into two parts by the concrete road 500 meters away. There was an irrigation ditch on the left, with two dryers on the left, and on the right there was a garden, surrounded by a heavy adobe wall. The concrete road led to a blown-up bridge. The silence was alarming.

The patrol team was on the dirt road. The steep slope of the hill met the blade of the concrete road and limited our maneuvering to the left. A deep ditch was at our right, and behind it, there were deep ravines that went down to the river valley. Our position was not the best. The commander had already decided to send one carrier ahead to gain a dominant position at the top of the hill.

But as soon as our APC had moved to the tank that gave way to us, a launcher hit from the nearest ravine on the right. The fire stream pierced the armour of the tank between its wheels. The stored ammunition exploded immediately. The multi-ton bulky machine jumped on the spot. The turret jerked and slowly rode up. The pillar of flame broke away from the open-top hatch and the gunner, who was sitting behind the machine-gun, was thrown out on the burning concrete road.

It seemed to me that the gunner’s flight lasted endlessly and in absolute silence. The world and time itself gave way to the triumph of death. Perhaps due to the effect of dopamine, which rushed into my blood, everything that was going on around suddenly was filled with its own rhythm and started to live its own life. In fact, the world broke down into many event-fragments, each of which consisted of a pause, in order to give the body an opportunity to react, and for the brain to become aware of what was happening…

... A bearded man in a waistcoat is slowly emerging from the ditch and then, in cold blood, he fired a short round at the writhing, burning Afghan man. On the right, a hundred meters from us, profiting from our confusion, four mujahedeen ( see “ Terminology and Glossary”  – Editor) ran across the road to the ravines carrying guns. On my left Soul was trying to untie the knapsack full of grenades and their fuses. His hands were shaking, his lips were firmly set, and his eyes were fixed on the mujahedeen running across the road. He did not notice the loud pings of bullets striking the concrete road which ricocheted in his direction. Completely at a loss, I was hiding behind the armour of our APC. The tank exploded five meters away from it. I was on the armour, when the blast wave shook the machine frame, and it was strong enough to blow me off instantly.

Only when I felt a violent stream of air whistling out of a tire punctured by a bullet, did my wits came back to me and I woke up, conscious of the familiar sounds of chaos; and events began to turn at an immense speed.

Our carrier received two grenade hits within fifteen minutes. The first shot hit the spare wheel on the turret, wounding the gunner and the driver. The gunner fell out of the carrier through the side hatch. The driver, trying to direct the carrier away from the destroyed tank, began to zigzag to the narrow traffic lane of the concrete road, wisely keeping away from the mined track. The mujahedeen had come so close that we were throwing grenades like stones at each other. Tension in this battle was so high that fairly often from both sides un-cocked grenades flew: they were gathered up, the pins were pulled out and all of them were returned to the owners.

The only protection from bullets and bullet splinters were immovable APCs on the road which were abandoned by us. The close proximity of the enemy made their large-caliber machine-guns useless. In this cocktail of screams, shots and grenade explosions, the commander made an attempt to get into the carrier to help the shell-shocked driver, whose position inside prevented us from being able to hide behind its armour. All our attempts to stop the convulsive movement of the heavy eight-wheeled frame with the butts of rifles on the armour and our shouting yielded no results. Hardly had the commander put his hands over the hatch’s clamp, when the second fatal grenade shot resounded.

I was there; I just heard a loud clap. Then the five-meter APC’s trunk jerked and almost simultaneously the armour cracked like an eggshell and hit the company commander head. His powerful, well-muscled body was tossed into the ditch, straight to Soul’s feet. By this time Soul’s face became so inflated, that his head seemed twice as large.

The commander was thrashing about the ground, shaking his head so that the ingot had turned into a solid blood clot with hair clumps and only one miraculously saved eye with a furiously rotating pupil. That was horrible! At such moments a man is guided by his instincts rather than by his mind. Soul rushed at the commander, pressing him down with his body, while the others were frozen as if turned into stone. The commander, trying to get rid of Soul, was shaking his smashed head from side to side. We finally managed to bandage his head, but I do not know how. Somebody was vomiting nearby. The battle continued.

The carrier took fire – the red-hot fragments set aflame the barricade we had made out of mattresses on the zinc ammunition load. There was a wounded driver enveloped in pungent smoke in the vehicle’s interior. In a couple of minutes the ammunition load would detonate. While we, being busy with the commander and regrouping, were running between cars and creeping over the ditch, Soul had pulled out the driver who was riddled with splinters and, ignoring the shelling, covered the fire in the carrier with sand.

After the commander and the driver had been evacuated, Beck took command. We got to know on the jabbering walkie-talkie that the commander died aboard the helicopter.

The back-up arrived astonishingly fast. Our battalion, consisting of two platoons and the fourth company that joined us, with the support of Afghan commandos and two undamaged tanks, made the mujahedeens retreat to alternate positions prepared beforehand. Having organized the all-round defense, we decided to take the initiative in the battle.

The garden surrounded by the heavy adobe wall, the concrete bridge blown up at the end of the kishlak (see “Terminology and Glassary”  – Editor), the narrow concrete road with the disabled, burned tank, – all of these came together in the bright and smooth color of a sunset. We decided to dislodge the enemy from his positions with a bold attack. The commandos went in the center of the attacking line, and two of our platoons were on the flanks. The fourth company was preparing r the attack at the garden. The sun went downrapidly, leaving us no time to adjust our strategy.

The attack misfired. The commandos fell back, taking with them two dead and three wounded fighters. We retreated too, not having managed to make it to the right flank of the enemy. Our flimsy advantage was destroyed by the enemy’s heavy-caliber machine gun, which came from the left flank.

During the roll call after the failed attack, we learned that Beck and Soul, who with their group had attacked the left flank from where the mujahedeen’s machine-gun had rained us with fire, had gone.

We had to report that to the battalion commander.

– “Hectare-4, Hectare-4. This is Mars. Do you copy? Over”

– “Mars, Mars, This is Hectare-4, read you. I’m in the last position on the enemy’s left flank. We are ready to attack. Over”, – Beck reported the situation calmly.

– “Hectare-4. This is Mars. You are ready to support the attack. Roger that. How many of you are there, son? Over”. The commander was definitely trying to make sense of the current situation.

– “Mars, This is Hectare-4. There are two of us here, just two; we grabbed our “samovar” ( see “Terminology and Glossary”  – Editor). Ready to support the attack with fire”, it was obvious that Beck was flying into a rage.

The commander made a decision.

– “Calm down, son. ‘Elephants’ (see “Terminology and Glossary”  – Editor) are going to strike from two barrels. Try to adjust the fire. Over”. We passed “Get ready to attack” down the line.

It was beautiful. In gathering dusk two tanks at great speed, simultaneously turning around, lept out into the position for the straight shot. Just the look of their maneuver made our hearts beat faster, the dose of adrenalin made our knees tremble and our heads spin. The tanks stopped sharply, and at the same time, seemingly without preparation, fired a volley towards the left flank. A cloud of dense dust, almost black in the coming dusk, covered the enemy. At this moment the walkie-talkie began to speak with Soul’s stammering voice: “М-а-а-r-s, М-а-а-а-r-s, th-i-s i-s S-o-u-l.. Shots landed 15 meters from us. Sergeant is wounded. Th-i-si-s S-o-u-l, over! ” Everybody froze, waiting for the command. “Calm down, son, no shots anymore. Support the attack, over! ” we could sense in the commander’s voice a note of suppressed laugher. Then there was a command “Forward! ”. Almost in full darkness, torn by our tracing fire, we rushed in silence upon the mujahedeen’s positions. The machine gun opened from the left flank, but Soul covered us. The mujahedeen abandoned their position and retreated with no resistance.

“That’s the place! ”. At the next table, breaking the taboo, helicopter pilots bent over the map which had been taken by someone. Without ceremony I interrupted the man I was talking with, and approached their table. Now, so many years after the company commander’s death, I felt tears welling up in my eyes, but I was not ashamed of them. “That’s the place, ”– I said to myself after twelve years – “look, here’s the place where I was shot in my head by a grenade launcher”. Suddenly, my companion stabbed his finger right at the point our group had passed just twenty-four hours before the mujahedeen’s ambush!

“Hey, man, give me more details about the grenade launcher’s attack on your head. ” I finally began to grasp the meaning of what was going on. “That was the sergeant who gave me a punch with the grenade launcher, ”  – he said, looking at me with the eyes of an old sick and tired man.

“Soul, is this you? That’s impossible! ” I realized I had repeated these words already a few times, feeling utter disbelief. Some onlookers formed a group around us.

“Yes, I’m Soul. I am Soul! ” This thin, exhausted man wept like a child.

We dislodged the mujahedeen with an impetuous push, grabbed their position and combed the garden in the complete dark. Nearly without losses  – two men from the fourth company were wounded and one was killed. We bumped into Soul when he was carrying Beck to our position. Beck shook his head, covered with flour-like dust, and moaned. It was dark and we were blinded because of flashes from our guns; but it was impossible not to notice a mad glint in Soul’s eyes and a shiny white smile on his swollen and heavily bruised face. He stammered and shivered from head to foot, but his enviable health had let him hold out till the end of the battle.

Later on, the grenade launcher’s hit on our carrier was officially seen as the cause of Souls’ trauma. His report to the commander became a joke and turned him into a brigade legend. He was awarded the rank of sergeant and was recognized as an equal among experienced soldiers. With the natural chronometer in his head turned off by by Beck’s blow, his world had became frozen, giving him his own particular rhythm in life.

Beck was transferred to the reserve in the Soviet Union, and he never came back to us.

The commander was posthumously awarded the “Order of Wartime Red Banner”, although he was recommended for the “Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union”.

Five men in the company were awarded the “Red Star” for that battle: Soul, the wounded driver and Beck among them. Seven others were awarded the “Medal for Bravery”.

The day before my departure I prepared presents for Soul, having shown great diligence and care in their choice. He had become a kind of special person to me. I had become attached to him, spending all my free time with him, describing, at his request, different events of our friendship. I wanted to say goodbye to Soul before the departure, and I was going to invite him for dinner. I felt sad – I was short of parting words.

The receptionist, who always knew everything in the boarding house, stopped me:

– Sorry, but he left. He checked out of his room, packed and left.

– I saw him an hour ago, and we arranged the meeting.

– Are you from Room 301? He asked me to hand over an envelope to you.

Taking the envelope, I went back to my room. I found a photo inside. It was a picture of our company, all together in our smoking-room. There was a little question mark above almost everyone’s head, put by Soul’s hand. But the marks above my head, the heads of the commander, Beck and Soul himself were crossed out. On the back side there was a recent inscription: “If I forget you – forget me”.

And finally I got it. He said no good-byes, while expressing so much at the same time. For Soul the picture was a symbol of his lost past, and the search for it made sense of his life. Slowly, piece by piece, he collected a mosaic of fragmentary memories, patching the flaws created in his mind by war. Memory about the past was disappearing, but my stories about it helped him to clarify the present.

His life was arranged as a game, in which the war set terms for several figures on the playing board. A figure continued to live, to participate in the game, if there were at least two or three other ones next to it. If there were fewer of them, the figure would die because of solitude. If there were more, it would die because of the overcrowded board. And another move, which could give some sense to the present figure’s state, was possible only for a few, limited to three sides of the square. Before time stopped for Soul, the figures of Beck and the commander were swept off the board, although they were the ones that marked his position on it.

Soul was slowly dying until I filled empty squares around him, giving us a chance to continue his violent game. And, in reward for this, having sensed my pre-farewell embarrassment and all I suffered at that moment, he left my life in the same manner he came into it: occasionally, and all of a sudden.

All of this going back in time tired me. I suddenly woke up with the feeling that there was someone next to me. I quickly turned on the light, but there was no one in the room. I was not able to fall asleep again: the fever of memories held me captive again.

The Unfinished Letter

“Hello, my dear brother,

As I promised, I am writing this letter to you to let you know that I am okay. I do not work but receive my pension. My health is not failing me so far…”

The page with squared lines from a student’s notebook was covered with child-like letters: some letters were big, some were uneven and roundish, but it seemed all of them accumulated energy and diligence in each stroke of the author’s pen. I wanted to see who was the author, but forgot where I placed the envelope; and the sender’s name was also absent in the end of the letter. The author of this letter was definitely relying on my memory, but… after some guesses as to his identity, I decided that the author eventually might turn up in my life some day; this is why the letter was placed in a drawer of my desk.

A week later, my life had a rapid turn. Then every 3-4 months, I had several unexpected transformations in my life resulting in changes to addresses and places to live. This letter followed me in all the changes that occurred in my life, moving from one notebook to another until it found its rest in a folder with my personal documents, adding another puzzle for my memory.

Now, five years later, flipping through the pages of my diaries and looking at documents, I unexpectedly remembered the sender. My memory had played a cruel joke with me– I should have immediately guessed who was the author of this letter.

Feverishly scanning the page written in unsettled childishly looking handwriting, I scold myself for the impassiveness with which this little message from the past was treated. I was still hoping to find an address...

…It is Sunday, November 20, 1983, Leningrad, 442nd District Clinical Military Hospital. Our ward has only a window from which we see a trolleybus stop and some part of the street’s intersection.

Looking at us through the window, the peaceful bustle of Suvorovsky Prospekt, with its 3 colored traffic lights and the hissing doors of trolley buses, drives us mad with its inaccessibility for us.

Our ward looks like a pencil case with six people in it. We all ended up here after flying from one district hospital to another, we arrived in the same airplane – it was the flight from Tashkent.

Between us – six people in the ward– we have only one set of legs: Sanych– the ensign of the 345th separate parachute Bagram regiment – has the right leg, and Boris– a young lieutenant from Kunduz – has the left one.

The four other patients are not mobile. Two of us – Serega and myself from 177th regiment – have no legs. The third one – Lesha from the 180th regiment – can move only his head because everything else is encased in a plaster cast. The fourth one –Vitya from Anava – has no problems with his legs, but has big troubles with his hands and head – this is why we do not consider him as a walking man. So, this is a valuation of the “healthy” people in our ward…

Sanych and Boris, both have crutches and their hands are constantly occupied. How much can you carry in your teeth? Not much, I guess. For them it is difficult enough to hold themselves on these crunches; on top of this difficulty, Sanych’s left leg is shrouded with the Ilizarov’s apparatus which is also tied to his neck – this is why he hops forward with an awkwardly, and I would say, a kind of indecently protruding leg.

For us, recumbent patients, the internal news has been delivered by the passing patients. Usually, we ask the same question “How are things? ” and we always get the same answer – “As usual”. As for the sources of the news from outside of the world, we have newspapers and grumblings of baba Polya ( baba refers to an old age of women– Editor) who comes twice a day to do cleaning in our ward.

Vitya is always cooking something in his “birdhouse” (a head – Editor). He has a real hole in his head that has been fixed with a metal plate together with a piece of his own scalp. He has a weird habit – he likes to pronounce, suddenly and loudly, some shocking thoughts cooked up in his head. This is a result of his concussion. It is better to support him at such moments by asking questions on the topic, otherwise he starts to get nervous and will be running around the hospital in search for any communication until he will be caught and brought back to the ward. To be honest, Vitya, should be placed in another, more suitable for him, special place, but the reason for not signing him into a psychiatric hospital is related to the problem with his hands, or to be exact, stumps of his hands.

His wounds have already healed, but after amputation of the hands, the postoperative swelling has not yet come down. Little can be done to help this situation – only waiting and continuing all medical procedures in order to get ready for his prosthetic preparation.

Unfortunately, Vitya’s contused head does not give a break to himself and also to the whole ward.

Vitya did not dodge a grenade explosion. Ambushed somewhere in Panjshir together with his unit, he courageously covered the rest of his group by focusing the enemy’s fire to himself. This happened suddenly; and thanks to his immediate reaction, Vitya saved many lives as well as took the lives from others.

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