Prisoner

1. Order no 227-2

Such bastards. And the gums hurt even more from illness.

They announced that Baev had shot a pig in the yard, he injured Levchenko and Esenin and at lunch ran to the forest.

‘I didn’t want to worry you,’ wrote Alya even earlier, ‘but our affairs are not good. Dad is severely ill. If only you could come! As you see, I didn’t annoy you at other times, but now the situation is very bad, and I hope that your top brass understands our extreme circumstances. My dear little one, ask, beg, insist. Despite everything I'm quiet, nothing but silence, do you remember? I'm on the move all the time and all the time there is ‘silence’ here and still the island of Madagascar . . . Oh what a terrible time, my little one.’ She wrote theatrically and pompously, she just warned of course, she calculated completely correctly in this, but all the same he winced while re-reading, because where is this from? My dear little one, she had never called him that in her life, it was never the custom.

Sheets of paper lay around on the crumpled bunk, he began to write but discarded it. There were always a lot of drafts. When enough of them were gathered it was possible to collect them in a poetic collage. He composed such a poem, even before the war, and he became quite angry at Erlikh, who gave him a ticking off about non-coordination and sketchiness. Gelik noted the sketchiness from the threshold, it was not generally necessary to have an ear in order to blabber. All right, a variance, let it even be sloppiness, but there was such feeling in it, in these drafts, that there was sketchiness.

And there now again the start.

‘I returned home upset,

I threw my hat and walking stick on the bed.’

And

‘I go along stone marshlands.

It's dark. Nothing is f*****g visible.’

Started and discarded. That somehow stretched desperately to prose, uncontrollably, and he feverishly wrote a wonderful passage, the intonation of a fairy novel with high Germanic notes, with Gothic traits and wonder, with a Hoffman-like little silver coffee pot and then a mystical awe should have erupted with thunder; there it was: Pani Angelina, a consumptive blush, a sudden and fantastical disease; a pale chrisolyte sky, the nectar of dog rose, mercury balls, he was hassled, she was a pani or a Frau and suddenly he cooled it all together.

And now again he looked with a heavy glance. There is no strength to compose, the gums are annoying him, all his passion had gone.

He collapsed on his bunk.

Perhaps he never wanted the dear doctor from the infirmary. There were none too few chicks around then, well as in war understanding of course, none too few, seven in the officer compound and the doctor the eighth. But she was, firstly, a lot older, thirty two, a joke perhaps! He knew well then that after thirty nothing more interests them. Secondly, the medic was decisive and capable, her terrifying hands were white, strong, had no fear of scalpel or needles, how could she manage it all? And more importantly she could do everything: pull a tooth, an injection, apply a plaster cast, cut out appendicitis just twice here; and everything so special from her doctor’s spirit, a little carbolic acid and sea salt. He was afraid of doctors, like a little boy. It was understood that the doctor for him was a s****l object.

In the infirmary he ambled along because of the same damned gums. He decided firmly that to cut it would not be the answer, it needed an ointment or a mouthwash; if the doctor herself, known for her sudden temper, begins to get restive, he will complain about her to Polevoy.

He entered the office, an overpowering medical smell, a shameful fear, the inescapable, childish, good Lieutenant. He got up by the wall, behind the half see-through screen Inka fastened her belt, straightened her skirt and pulled on her boots. The doctor sat at the table and detachedly looked at some papers. Inka came out from behind the screen, so clumsily inept, dishevelled in a creased skirt, but in this case, yes, Gelik saw there was in it a certain chilly charm.

‘I'm fed up with you, my girl,’ the doctor said faintly, ‘how fed up I am with you. With such a delay, as you have, indeed you're simply a cunt, that’s what. You don't care about anything, you're considered lazy, I'm lazy to look after you. Eh, that’s what. . . What are you looking at me for? What are you all looking at me for?’ In truth she looked somewhat strange, smiling foolishly. ‘How many times have I told you, it's all to no avail. On the whole, that is it, Inna. This is the last time, and after this do as you like.’

But this one still smiled her idiotic smile and did not leave and it would have been all right for her to dress in front of him, to fasten her skirt, that was at once so clear, what they did with her now and what they were yet to do, neither shame nor a conscience, not to show the gums to her or to gossip with her, that they don’t permit them to be cut. Alka’s recent Madagascar beat in the ears, it latched itself on to her but didn’t keep up.

The doctor got up with difficulty, exited from behind the chair and stood up at the window, holding herself by the waist, and he somehow suddenly shot her a glance and at once understood that she was pregnant and in quite an advanced stage, but not as he had thought before, she was putting on weight. Everything left his head, that is what, the war all around, but there would only be the one thing for them.

‘What did you want?’ she asked in the same dull voice.

Either the wind raised up the curtain, or the frame slammed, or a vulgar detail came out, Gelik had already forgotten, but I can’t get on without her, because - something should have foreseen Baev’s appearance.

With a revolver but not drunk. In this there was also a fear that he was not drunk. There was no smell of fumes, his stride was even, his hand was firm and a firm sober madness in his eyes. Gelik suddenly remembered his own conversation of that morning, of a prick, the happy laughter of the lads, he recalled and screwed up his eyes, having remembered something suddenly and moved to the door, but it was already too late.

First Gelik tied Ina’s hands. Then the doctor tied his hand. Baev didn’t let the doctor go, but continued to keep one hand behind his shoulder. All this was indeed in the utmost silence, there were only four different intakes of breath: Inka’s was private, greedy, the doctor’s seemed as if suppressed, Baev’s sniffling was like his, Gelik’s, personal and normal, every gasp had a tinkling sound in his temples. The terror was outrageously unpleasant, shameful; the good Lieutenant who was taken hostage, and oh, s**t, no.

‘Baev, what do you want? A tribunal?’ The doctor asked quietly.

‘Silence,’ Baev just as quietly and dryly called out. ‘Better that you do it yourself . . . but you know that . . .’

And that was the worst, his sobriety. Also. He was more outrageous, disgusted and certain that none of them had made an effort. But it would seem, that he takes the chick by the shoulder, but what was Gelik himself to do with her? To rush forward, to scream, take the door by the shoulder, and let him do what he likes to this chick, even shoot, or kill. No. There was no opportunity of any kind to move.

‘I will tell you, Tamar, what I want. I can tell you. I have to take leave due to a health condition but with limits. With that as with me, by and large it's not allowed to give weapons into the hand, because I say that I shot the leg off one female ass hole, did you hear? Well then. And the guys today eat to be healthy, I recommended to them that they have a little fun to make our Perm citizen cry, do you know our Perm man? Our dear Lieutenant, who tried all of you. ‘Comraaaaade Divisional Commander!’ Here Baev’s face contorted terribly. ‘You confuse!’ Here Baev screamed wildly but then suddenly he stopped howling and began to guffaw. ‘I got confused, did you hear? Nooo, little chicken! I don't f*****g get mixed up! I'm for my homeland, I don’t f*****g confuse it with Stalin.’ Here he stopped behaving like an i***t and again spoke quietly and carefully: ‘I, Tamara, am for my homeland, for Stalin, whoever I want I can kill now because I'm dying to go into battle and not a single deserting scum stops me. Order or no order, it's all the same to us Tatars, it's single battle preparedness, but if I don't always dwell on this, but here I am suddenly, if you please, a storm warning, but I'm not f*****g wanked off and the bullet isn't shelled, put simply I have shat, then what am I? A traitor to the homeland. So I will not wait for an order, I will fight do you know, like Pestel said: only ass holes and cowards want to write an encyclopaedia first and then to go into battle. I will fight not by word but by deed; but if I inadvertently finished someone in this case, then, so first there is no need to distract by pushing and secondly I placed him on the altar of the homeland. And Tamar, while we are on the subject, we have more internal enemies somewhere than foreign ones and if this twit of yours with the brush of command does not give battle; he is the worst b***h udder for me, worse than any Fritz, because he has sold himself to the Fritzes. For Martel. Which, I saw myself, he feasts in the morning with a chii . . . Well stop!’ he shouted frantically.

Gelik moved and froze. The devil! How he only sees, indeed as if enthusiastically carrying on with his nonsense! But it meant only . . . only one movement . . . and right here he noticed, right here! But right here a wave, a shameless terror. Ohh, cu-nt.

‘Bear in mind, you little b***h,’ Baev pronounced with an even voice, swallowing, and in it most terrible of all were these momentary passages from the full likes of madness towards calmness and discretion. ‘Don’t make me nervous. I don’t only shake the brain of this chick. I'm this minute, you don't manage to fart, I’ll shoot you in the spine. And immediately in your little body. Then to you again, by the dotted line along the spine. Caviar, swept with fire by the dotted line, this is very unpleasant, you can believe me, you can ask your sidekick. I did this intricately from this morning, simply intricately. I won’t perform on your spine any worse, but the spine by the dotted line, this, little chicken, is a bad story. Then only pray that you die straight away. So I say to you kindly, well you have understood. Well there, what did we stop at? I say, eat like animals in the mornings Martel with boar. And I, Tamar, so hate this deserting scum bag, that the hatred is boiling inside me,’ here he suddenly winced, he made a laughable little face of a grieving old woman. ‘and periodically flowing out, well there like today. Therefore you see yourself, the person’s heavy situation, poisoned by war.’

The doctor somehow clumsily got going under his arm and he asked with care: what? She, wincing, answered: don’t press on the stomach.