Prisoner

1. Order no 227-3

He of course did not remove the pistol, but he shifted his arm, grabbed, ‘so are you comfortable? Yes.’

Inka didn’t howl yet, she only whined from time to time complainingly and nastily and monstrously annoyed, because it was as if she translated on the surface the same sound, which itched in his very insides. And still Mad-agas-car, having pestered from the morning, but now he was already angry at him and, on the contrary, attempted to tune into the waves of Madagascar and not to the hysterical sobbing. But how the frenzied chaffinch of yesterday, ey-ey.

But Alka, Alka! Suddenly he thought with a terrifying despair, a terrible, unbearable one, that it’s impossible to live. How is it possible that I will not see her any more? They, the poor fools, sent a telegram and perhaps they would have let him go to them, but he would have read poetry to them. To Alka and Dad, everything that he managed to write to them, this is it, ‘soon whether the heart adds soundtracks with songs,’ and a prosaic fragment about pani Margarita, so he couldn’t decide, a frau or a pani, it would have had to be a frau, but somehow pani sounded better, and how she swallows the silvery balls of mercury. But now he is sitting on the floor in the white room, on the left is a sink, on the right a screen, and behind it the armchair on which was everything, whether you want an abortion or tooth decay; in the middle of the table, doughnuts were scattered from the bag; and there Baev holds the auntie in a white dressing gown, by the shoulders, the pregnant auntie, who always made him shiver with fear, but now he doesn’t know any more what he’s afraid of, afraid of Mad-agas-car, the island Mad-agas-car, but Baev with his free hand rakes the doughnuts and breaks and hurls a piece into his mouth. And there this doughnut finishes, to fall thus because of some kind of doughnut, and tango! Ooonce! Aaaaand once! Kum-pars-ita! Dou-ghn-ut pam pam pam! Literally he had already gone out of his mind. And he really wanted to sleep.

And when under the window a clatter had been heard and a multi-voiced agitated muttering, Baev smiled greedily, and in one go he fastened all the buttons, with a powerful gulp he swallowed the doughnut and with a fresh voice he shouted from the window:

‘Well, listen to my command!’

They piped down.

‘I have here three hostages!’ (And kill me if you want,’ he was clearly taking pleasure in the situation, no other way could you explain his full and satisfied physiognomy.) ‘I will perhaps release some of them . . . I will also shoot someone for the hell of it perhaps, but this we will have to decide. Therefore,’ and his mug simply oozes with honey, ey-ey-ey, ‘the conditions are these: I will have two standard fighters for hostages, munitions, meals, and I will go to the forest as a partisan. And everything is according to rank.’

Downstairs a disturbing whisper, and a minute and a half later Lavretsky (it seemed to be Lavretsky, but Gelik generally could not distinguish voices), shouted:

‘But are you not afraid of a tribunal? Here is a corpse for you, two injured . . .’

‘There is no corpse for me, you're lying now!’ Baev momentarily answered. ‘But generally I don't like how you talk. I feel that today I will be forced to shoot again . . . but I'm sorry for the lad . . .’ and so he was talking calmly, seemingly posing, but yet when he discharged a volley from his female fool, no one was expecting it, and Gelik, having nearly choked, listened, how his inner chaffinch walked its feet off with a wild shout and broke somewhere on the peak of something . . . on ultrasound. Inka shouted and crashed onto the ground. Blood . . .?

‘Baev. Have you been f*****g around?!!!’ They howled underneath the window.

‘Of the two of you, aha? And the ammunition. And all following rank,’ exceeding a howl, clearly and distinctly. Inka stopped, she lost consciousness.

And there had been a pause for three minutes. Then the whisper underneath the window resumed. The accordion played. Some kind of nightmare. Kanavella.

Dad, Dad, when the war started Dad cried for two days, copious tears, without ceasing, he sat at the table, the tears dripped a dark stain on the table cloth, and Kapitosha ruefully said: oy, what is to be done, there isn't a thing to eat; you didn’t even kill yourself so, when you buried Mum. But he, Gelik, having despaired had already left here, wrote rapport after rapport and finally couldn’t contain himself and when he awaited a precious telegram, he lied, in vain that he was about to take himself in hand, and lied again totally monstrously, Godlessly, supposedly, Father is ill and he has the same diagnosis as Mum had, dying in 1941, not managing to say goodbye. But Mum actually died in 1938, and the diagnosis that she had was uncertain, she had never been ill from anything, she felt good, and the unpredictable blood clot, and all that happened suddenly. This is already not talking about Dad being generally healthy, but Gelik already felt so sick, not superstitiously, that he didn’t care about anything and wrote that tearful rapport. To puke once.

Dad would have been in a state of terror. Yes, earlier. But now he himself sent that telegram. Generally, he would certainly have understood him better now, his unlucky boy, his ideal boy, with such a disposition and such great talent! And to write poetry and songs, although, well yes, he is clumsy of course, he can’t master himself and he tries to do too much, not a single engagement either along the way . . . but the talent is good, this you don't take away. And Dad always believed in him. Although he argued sometimes and he didn’t understand Gelik’s attraction to the effective garish word.

You should understand which is more important to you, the meaning of the statement or its sound: there it's for me, my dear, you know that nevertheless the meaning is more important . . . but Severyanin?! But Bely?! And there you know my dear . . . only don’t get angry! But it seems to me, that they have a meaning, a different business and it's not always possible for us to twig. . . but if it's already directly not . . . yes, I believe that it can, and not at all, ‘but then my dear, it's necessary to build this very sound, in order that nobody has any questions. But if there are questions about it, my dear . . .??’

‘Ay, yes Kanavella,’ said the dude on the accordion.

And here the doctor let out a wild scream.

And there he sits, let us say, on a train, he catches amfibrachs in the clatter of the wheels, he who jumps, he who dashes by in a hazy wind, nothing else is thought up, he smacks his lips, because the gums are twitching anyway. . .it's better that he goes to the doctor. But that is all for later, later, later. When he arrives, he comes tearing along straight from the station, when Dad and Alka finally believe with their own eyes, look at him, say ah, how he has grown; Dad of course will cry, the poor thing. Postponing the doctor on the very first day and also on the second; everything later, later. Yes. And now the most important.

It was as if his opinion then had improved. The excerpt about pani Katarina, of course, turned out not to be prose, why would it, he had never written prose. This was freestyle verse, he had already broken it in lines and rhythmed it gently. It was not necessary to finish there at all, the freestyle verse sat very well in this poem, which he had thought about even before the war. This will be a gallery of female forms and this Katarina encompassed different parts of his heroine, and Katya Vorms (probably because of the name) and Ivisti, because of the exterior, because of well-bred parts; the thin bones of the nose, the high cheekbones, the wearisomely beautiful narrow eyes. Of course, he noticed what Dad still says, which was embarrassing and obviously restraining: but my dear, the collection of portraits without a story, without a plot suggests a unique life experience or some improbable present, but are you certain ?. . .

Now the experience enhanced him, and Dad will not deny it. Yes and that story (as she was not crazy) that she told him gave him two female forms, the doctor and Inna. In truth he didn’t understand what to do with Inna, he liked her, everything in her contradicted his idea about what genuine beauty should be. Inka was not, oh, Akhmatova. That is why he was a little ashamed of his passion. And how to describe this chubby-lipped body beauty, he didn’t know. But then the doctor . . .

When she started to shout so terribly and hit his hands and strike herself by the lower part and break him, poor Baev, the trustful one, he decided that she had problems. But a woman with problems can do anything: to take his hand behind, so that he screamed, and from his broken arm he pulled a pistol, to toss it to the side, to tie tassels with the belt of the dressing gown; and he himself went blue from the pain, because with a shove at him is completely natural (she later, putting a plaster cast on the forearm, will shake her head, well excuse me, she didn’t reckon on it). But the doors didn’t creak any more, one fold opened with a roar, the other hung on a loop, they tumbled, shouted. But the doctor with some age-old tiredness sighed: take him away from here! And, having sat on the floor, she strongly unfurled Ina, lying face down, and she had already broken a vial with ammonium chloride and slapped it on the cheeks; well, well, come on, girl, nothing terrible.

They called her Tamara. Baev called her that.

Two months later she later gave birth to a son. Or a daughter. Gelik doesn’t remember now, he talks from general imaginings, a son because people like her usually give birth to sons. But this happened later, and all will be good there.

‘We’ll give you eight days,’ Lavretsky said gloomily, signing papers. ‘thank the Divisional Commander. Ho-st-age . . .’ This was around a week after Baev’s story. Gelik was standing, gloomily and not breathing. Fathers, Mothers, Grannies, Aunties (he already knew this), they were all heavily ill, they all scribbled rapports, they were all urgently summoned by telegrams, to succeed, to find, to bid farewell. And they didn’t let anyone go, because there was a situation.

And then with jumping hands preparing documents in the artillery board, he suddenly asked about Baev, he asked with a rattling and also somewhat agitated voice. They sent the Divisional Commander home, Lavretsky answered. On discharge. And generally, with limits, because with such like him according to the bigger picture, to give arms into the hand isn't allowed. And let them already decide about him there and then.

After a number of years, Seryozha O, the same ‘Senior Lieutenant O, for our Gorky,’ playing, was rolling in the palms a cut glass, in the glass was one part pomegranate juice and two parts spirits. He loved this strange pungent cocktail from war times. Then they sent Gianni Bekyana this phenomenal parcel; forty pieces of huge pomegranates. They squeezed them with their hands, they strained through a cloth, they poured the spirit and they haven’t known anything sweeter since. But Gelik of course drank cognac.

‘He did everything correctly, this Baev of yours. He knew everything. All, his simulation was reckoned on from the beginning to the end.’

‘I implore you! What was it possible to reckon on? Who knew that they are scrutinising him so?’

‘They are scrutinising or not, all this isn't important, Gel. It fitted any scenario for him. He had all the cards in his hands. When they were shooting an Uzbek the day before, he cut everything then. Order 227 then stood in front of his eyes, he read it as he had to. He understood everything then. He was able to do anything, because he was not a deserter.’

Straight from the train station. There were no trams at all, therefore he rushed on foot, swallowing the warm October dust. The sound rocked the flat, and he counted to himself ‘one-two-three-four’ while they were not opening; having not even succeeded at being scared, that suddenly there was nobody at home; at nine Alka opened the door and began to cry right there at the entrance. He had never, even in childhood, seen her cry, after all she was older and always reserved, a little ironic. He knew that she cried over his chrysanthemums, which he had left her in September, leaving for the recruiting station and not waiting for her from work. But this ‘she cried over chrysanthemums’ was a phrase from her letter, and such poetry, that reading it, he valued the transcription and only. And here she would cry like a little girl, totally small, she was always of small stature, but now, hugging her and kissing her tears, he managed to be amazed that he indeed, it seems, is towering above her.

The flat circled around him with a mad happiness, the kitchen, the lamp, our lounge, our pictures on the wall, all torn at the sides the same, dear books, books, books.

As for Dad himself they missed him by ten minutes! He only just left, to the doctors.

Probably, his face moved and changed , because she waved her hands:

‘No, no everything is all right, what are you! Dad isn't ill! And not for a day has he been ill! It’s all lies, Gel. Everything is ok.’