Depeche Mode

Introduction No. 1-2

18.25

Dogg Pavlov revives one more time at the stadium, it’s good to sit like this with your friends, he thinks, on a bench somewhere under trees that rustle and sway in every direction, no, he suddenly thinks, they’re not trees, what are they then?

A few sections over to the left, the opposing team’s fans stand under the heavy June rain. There are a few dozen of them, they arrived at the railway station in the morning and several patrols have been trailing after them all day. At the stadium they’ve been assigned their own section, where they forlornly wave their soaked flags. Just before half-time the locals, disappointed with the score and the weather, break through the fence and begin to beat them. From down below on the field, a company of trainee firefighters runs up. The police don’t think of anything better to do than push everybody out of the stadium and so they begin to press the people toward the exit while the first half is still going on; obviously, everyone forgets about the game and begins to cheer for our guys in the stands, the players also take more interest in the fighting than in their own game, it’s interesting, after all, and unpredictable, here on the field everything has been clear from the start—in the final minutes someone is bound to screw up and lose the game—but over in the stands, see, there’s a real contest going on, a rugby game, now even the firefighters are taking a few hits, but then the first half ends and the players reluctantly make their way to the tunnel, the police drag off the last of the visitors, so when the game resumes their section is empty. Only trampled and torn banners lie heavily in puddles like fascist standards on Red Square, our survivors return delightedly to their sections, the most passionate and principled among them go off to the railway station to hunt for the visitors as they return home; and then, around the fifteenth minute of the second half, one visitor runs into the stands—some very young kid, disheveled and wet, where he was all this time is a mystery, he has definitely missed all the most interesting stuff—he runs in and sees the signs of a battlefield, the torn flags of his team and none of his friends; where are our guys? he cries, turning to the suddenly silent stands, hey, where are all our guys?!—and no one can answer him. Everyone feels sorry for the kid, even the ultras are silent, having interrupted their endless “the referee’s a prick,” and look dejectedly at the visitor, feeling embarrassed in front of the kid—it wasn’t really very sporting, was it?—and the kid looks up at the now quiet sections, at the wet field on which the teams are churning up the mud, and he looks at the cold and almost motionless sky, and he cannot understand what has happened, where are the boys, what have these clowns done with them, and he picks up the bent plastic trumpet that one of his fallen friends had been blowing, and suddenly begins blowing into it, making a shrill, tearful and desperate sound that astonishes everyone: he blows with his back turned to the field, to the ultras, and to the now silent and shamed firefighters, he blows a note familiar to him alone, loud and false, breathing into it all his courage, all his despair, all his purely boyish love of life.

19.30

In the rafters above the last rows the sleepy pigeons have grown accustomed to our team’s defeats, they coo sleepily and live quietly, bothering no one, delightful wet flocks, but Dogg hears them through his dream, they appear to him in his alcoholic debility and pull him out of it; you know that strange condition in which you see the light ahead with one eye, and with the other—how do you explain this—with the other you see what can perhaps be called the other side of the light, well, you know, in a word when you are shown a lot all at once but are not in any condition to see anything. And you don’t want to. That’s why Dogg sinks to the cement floor and begins to crawl away toward the exit, crushing the husks of sunflower seeds, cigarette butts, and lottery tickets with his tired chest. He crawls up to the exit, gets to his feet, and shakily keeps going up and up, to the last row; he grasps onto the metal support and hangs off it in complete exhaustion— don’t fall off into the stands and on top of the fans, if you do you’ll need to say you’re sorry, to talk to somebody, to say something, and then everyone will immediately sense how bad your breath smells and will immediately guess that you’ve been drinking, so the main thing is not to speak to anyone and not to turn to anyone and if you fall then definitely someone will talk to you then you won’t get out of it they’ll say that your breath smells bad they will definitely smell it at soon as they begin talking to you even if you turn away and talk to the side they’ll smell it anyway unless you turn completely aside and speak that way—what should I say? what should I say so they don’t notice? what should I tell them? Quickly, before they notice and say something—what will they say? they’ll say why don’t you say something? why aren’t you shouting? Why am I not shouting? I need to shout, otherwise they’ll notice that my breath smells badly they will say that my breath smells because I’m not shouting or they’ll think that I’m drunk because I’m not shouting what should I be shouting? what should I be shouting? well, what, what should I be shouting? I have to ask someone I have to turn aside and ask or turn aside and shout then no one will notice anything in any case they won’t notice with all this noise alright I’ll shout something to the side no one will notice how my breath stinks but everyone will notice that I’m shouting that means I’m not drunk everything’s okay this is an okay plan only what should I shout well what should I shout what are they all shouting? about the ref about the ref only to the side so they don’t hear and so they still notice yes I have to shout and definitely about the ref then everything will be okay—and here our forward breaks away one-on-one with the goalkeeper and shoots, he just f*****g blasts it as hard as he can, several thousand wet supporters go still, hold their collective breath, you might say, and at this moment behind their backs in the damp silence a desperate cry echoes:

“Ye-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-s!!! You-u-u-u-u-u-uu-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u!!!”

And the soaked fans in the nearest sectors turn their heads as though enchanted and see good-old Dogg Pavlov there, whom even all the dogs here know, which is to say every sergeant, he’s hanging from the steel support completely exhausted, having turned let’s call it his back to the stands, and is emitting a prolonged wail from somewhere into nowhere, or whatever you want to call it.

19.45

Why? Because you’re not just some moron who has reconciled himself to the existing unjust state of things and the surrounding accumulated crap, because you’re not prepared to tear at someone’s throat all your life over the grub they’ve chewed up. Because, all things considered, you’ve got something to say if someone asks you about the things that are most important, so that’s enough, thinks Dogg, or more exactly, he’s actually in no condition to think anything like this, but if he could think at this moment, he, I suppose, would think this, and so he begins to climb up the beam that supports the roof, tearing off the old green paint and the dried birdshit with his fingernails, pushing himself up against the cold pipe, carefully pulling himself higher, transposing his feet on the ironwork, he climbs directly over the heads of the sergeants who have forgotten about him for the moment, over the heads of all his wet and drunken acquaintances, as many as are here, over the heads of Vova and Volodia. He even recognizes them and stops just above them, examining them from above, thinking, wow, fantastic, if I reach down with my hand I can pull both of them up here, and he reaches out and says something to them, without even noticing how bad his breath smells.

And here our team puts he the ball in the back of the net, and the wet throats roar: Sco-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-r-r-r-rre!!!!!! Sco-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-r-r-r-r-re!!!!!!—they roar and from this roar hundreds and thousands of sleepy pigeons tear themselves out from their dreams and fly out like bullets from their perches nestled with feathers, earth, and lottery tickets, they fly out in a wave into the wet sky, and this wave breaks against Dogg Pavlov, and he can’t hold on and goes flying down, dropping a few metres and flopping with a smack onto the bench right next to Vova and Volodia, who finally remember their comrade, turn and see him next to them, just where he should be.

“Oh, Dogg,” shouts Vova.

“Dogg, we scored,” shouts Volodia.

“Great,” says Dogg and smiles for what is the first time in the last three days.

19.50–08.00

Vova and Volodia are afraid to show their IDs and therefore are not allowed to approach Dogg, who is being hospitalized; they explain that they’re friends, even relatives, distant but relatives all the same, but are told that they should be ashamed to admit that Dogg is a relative and he is placed—drunk and sleepy—on a stretcher and then quickly pushed into the ambulance, for some reason they all think Dogg is injured and not drunk, this saves him, he’s not killed on the spot, as required by the instruction manual of sergeants, officers, and cadets when they are called upon heroically to defend sports complexes, places of mass relaxation for the laboring class during soccer games, political meetings, and other satanic rituals of the sporting-instructional type. Some sergeant with a bleeding heart even comes up to the driver of the ambulance, writes down his name and station number, leaves him his own office telephone number and orders him to immediately rush the badly injured Dogg to hospital, and tomorrow, if there’s nothing serious, to bring his patched-up body to them in the district police station for further laboratory tests, there they will establish what kind of Gagarin this is who has fallen out of the f*****g sky onto their heads. The driver all but salutes, well, you know what I mean, and the ambulance disappears behind the stadium’s green gates, its sirens scattering wet supporters in whose cheerful whirlpool Vova and Volodia disappear— victories require congregations and a joyful collective mass, toasts, and harmonious choral singing. It’s only defeats, bitter personal defeats, that require nothing more than drunken medics and respiratory equipment that doesn’t work, or, more accurately, works but no one knows how.

By morning Dogg has barfed all over the bedsheets he was wrapped up in and elicits a reaction of strong disgust from the medical staff. The nurses on duty attempt to telephone somewhere, to find those distant relatives who wanted to take this trash back at the stadium, but no one knows the telephone number, the only document they find on Dogg is a veteran’s ID card in the name of Vira Naumivna Pavlova, everyone examines this document—ragged and burned around the edges— but Dogg, any way you look at it, doesn’t resemble Vira Naumivna Pavlova, they also look in the files just in case and discover with astonishment that, according to their records, this same Vira Naumivna passed away three and a half years ago, but things like this occur with their files, says the senior nurse on duty, she refuses wholly to believe that this is not Vira Naumivna who is before her but some unidentified scum, so in the morning they call out the ambulance driver, who celebrated the end of his shift by boozing all night, at first he doesn’t understand about Dogg, and says that he never picked up a Vira Naumivna at the stadium yesterday, swears that he is married and that he and his wife get on fine, they even have s*x sometimes when he isn’t on duty, but, then, in the end he understands what they are talking about and gives the nurses the sergeant’s phone number, the one who was interested in Dogg’s fate. The nurses rush to telephone the sergeant, saying, as it were, we have a problem, comrade sergeant, there’s a piece of trash lying here covered in barf; who do you say is there? asks the sergeant with an early morning zest in his voice and begins immediately to note something down, I am taking notes, he says: co-ver-ed–in–barf, and then what? worse than just covered in barf, say the nurses, he doesn’t have a passport, yes-yes-yes, replies the sergeant, not so fast: worse–than–co-ver-ed–in, listen, he suddenly asks, it’s not my job, is it? maybe he has suffered a concussion? no—say the nurses—he doesn’t have a concussion, or a brain, he’s some kind of deserter with someone else’s documents, ah-hah, rejoices the sergeant, yes, with someone else’s documents and also he has barfed all over everything here—the nurses repeat, unable to calm down, well okay, says the sergeant, drag him over here to us, but quickly, my shift ends at nine, and my partner likely won’t have anything to do with him—he has high blood pressure. Of course, say the nurses, high blood pressure.

They immediately call out the driver on duty, take away this rubbish, they say, that has barfed over everything and take him to the district police station, there’s something wrong with his documents, uh-huh, says the driver, just like that I’m supposed to drop everything and take this trash somewhere to put his documents in order, maybe even take him to the civil registry office? I don’t have anything better to do—in fact he has only just started his shift and really doesn’t have anything to do, alright stop making an ass of yourself, says the senior nurse on duty, whose shift is just ending, you’ll drive him and come right back, we still have a sea of work, yeah, says the driver, the Black Sea, and squeamishly taking the weakened and demoralized Dogg under his arm he leads him downstairs, opens the emergency vehicle’s back doors, come on, he tells Dogg, climb in, sit on the stretcher, or better still lie down, or you’ll fall on a turn and break some glass, or cut yourself, or turn over the paint, what paint? asks Dogg, any kind, says the driver, go on, lie down, maybe I should sit? asks Dogg anxiously, don’t screw around, says the driver to him and gets behind the wheel. Dogg tries to lie down but immediately feels nauseous and begins to barf—over the stretcher, the walls, some paint, well, you know what I mean. The driver brakes in despair, runs to the back, opens the doors, receives his portion of Dogg’s barf, and throws the half-cold Dogg onto Kharkiv’s early-morning asphalt, and cursing everything in the world he returns to the hospital, where no one in particular, to be absolutely honest, is waiting for him.