Prisoner

1. Order no 227-1

1

Order no 227

On Tuesday they were to execute an Uzbek deserter but the soldiers refused to shoot. In truth, they had refused so that nobody else would, but each one was hoping that he would be the last to shoot, and that no one would notice his simulation. And the same for all eighteen people. The order and then silence. The Divisional Commander pretended that nothing had happened! Once more the order! And again silence. (In actual fact, such things happen. Strange but there was nothing too odd.) They would all stand at twenty paces and watch. But this unhappy Uzbek began by burying his head in some birch tree, begging God and the birch tree, he didn’t find any other tree. But when no one shot the second time, he rushed off and escaped. Then some bolt turns in the soldier’s head, and if he hasn’t already shot at close range, he stops the fugitive, the traitor. At any price! Catch and disarm! Therefore when the Uzbek ran off, the shots themselves began to thunder without an order. And the Divisional Commander again reacted as if nothing had happened. Well the same for the others.

This was on Tuesday, but on Wednesday a telegram arrived for Gelik, which woke him at sunrise: ‘Come quickly, Father is very ill. Alexandra.’

And a load off his mind. What fine fellows, how good!

He ran at once to the headquarters, without washing, or brushing his hair, nothing. He put on his belt, while running as the sweet phrases of the rapport were going around in his head: ‘Due to . . . allow me to submit . . .’ only he didn’t know there, what to attribute it to finally, since he hadn’t been home for two years, from the very start. And he decided for the time being not to write, not to rely heavy on pity, but simply to explain the situation in the most business-like tone.

He wrote it. Handed it in.

‘Smooth your hair! Good! Lieutenant, cunt . . . Gaer!’

He stood to attention: ‘Yes, sir!’

‘Go f**k yourself!’

This one was from the intelligentsia, he swore with emphasis and with the polite ‘you.’

Returning is also like flying. The morning is so murky and dreary, it's only six o’clock, but you can’t lie down and finish sleeping any more, although you have a chill from lack of sleep and aching gums (due to the wisdom tooth cutting painfully for the fifth day), and as if all of this wasn't tough and murky enough, like the tooth ache, through a milky curtain the wretched sunshine breaks, and only worse it's blinding. But! The telegram warms.

The whole of the previous half year with Alka went more or less regularly, although it was a painful correspondence indeed. She didn’t understand an-yth-ing! and Father didn’t understand. But Gelik quietly carried on. Finally, something would suddenly begin to get through to them, but then, they would also get another anecdote. He was not able to tell them the exact place of his sojourn, but simply by way of an experiment, in order to train them, he wrote: ‘Now I'm? . . . Do you remember these books, that I left you on my table before my departure? Work it out by the name of the author.’ He left a little collection of the poems of Bely and the ‘Little Housewife of the Big House.’ So they didn’t seem to know about the existence of the little town of Bely and in total seriousness, the saintly people, they decided that he had been sent on a secret mission to London.

Later, out of the blue, Alya wrote: ‘These days brought me unpleasantness. Now I'm about to make a big decision. I can't write in detail, but try to understand: they are proposing to work with Nadya, Katya, Vera and Dora . . .’

He jumped up suddenly, can you imagine, what an intelligent girl! And only a moment later he was taken aback, oh the poor girl! What would she do? But after a couple of letters, the phrase flashed up: ‘Vera and Dora are not worried at the moment.’ Relief.

But he himself wrote every time: asking after Father, whether he is ill? I worry about you, about you, about you.

And there they understood, good people. Like three days ago still a cheerful, a shockingly cheerful letter arrived from father, with a little parcel and a postscript: ‘My sunshine, acned Gelios! I wanted to send you chocolate, but Varvara Erofeeyevna said that you’re well fed so instead I'm sending you tarragon.’ They made themselves powerfully ill with laughter. ‘Eat well!’ and he himself laughed, but he was already irritated: well what are they there generally, do they think straight? ‘I feel decent, as long as you, my sunshine, are healthy.’

In six months his efforts are killed by one phrase. Honesty, her mother.

But here suddenly a precious telegram.

. . . He had only just stretched out on the bed, he had fallen into a blissful dream, a short dream, contemplating every minute of his illegality and short life span and that is why he felt shamefully sweet. And they were already shouting over his ear, a violent, clumsy foul language: Polevoy!

He jumped! Present! Yes sir!

‘I will kill you some day. You found time to snooze! Blockhead!’

Something happened either in our section or in theirs, but it was impossible to understand anything.

‘Quickly! I will wait for him here!’

And they rushed to their section.

Running Gelik was finding out the details from Polevoy. Something was strange. Like the Divisional Commander Baev had drunk himself to hell. A mad Lieutenant just rushed in and, hiccuping, said that the Divisional Commander had locked himself in in his place and fired from foolishness without hitting anything. People! They started to force their way towards him, as he watched, suddenly opened the door and bang! Panchenko grabbed him. He shot him in the leg, the calf, the bone was not hurt, but what is it, Mummy?!! Panchenko was in the infirmary, the surgeon looked at him and took him by the head; but Baev dug himself in, three fighters gathered under the little window, the ones he could get hold of and he was allowed to shout orders from the little window. And what do you order the fighters to do? The fighters, the cretins, obey, and he cursed benevolently some nonsense of the sea-ding dong: surveying compass! Protractor! And if someone isn't listening to him, he fires straight at that person, the b***h! And he shouts: 'squadron, shoot! Bottoms up!'

(But here are brackets, because the artillery team . . . I know from childhood, what an artillery team is. I know in particular that there is no such thing as ‘squadron, shoot!’

Before the weapon produces a shot, shells should be enclosed in it, hence the team should be given the option of a shell; next there should be some fire: active, the platoon or of the whole battery, continuous or with intervals, and then most important is how the barrel of the weapon should be inclined towards the horizon (such as a protractor) and how the barrel should be turned relatively to the sides of the light (such as a compass).

Around this time, while Gelik found himself near Bely, another friend of Grandmother’s, Seryozha O, was fighting in the Ukraine. The heaviest operation took place, and from out of nowhere journalists from ‘Pravda’ appeared.

‘Coverage from the scene of the action, comrade Senior Lieutenant,’ exclaimed one of them, loyally looking Seryozha in the eye. ‘Literally from the thick of it, comrade Senior Lieutenant!’

It brought them difficulties. But not just that.

‘This is what we wanted to ask you, comrade Senior Lieutenant! Today is a holiday, the birthday of our great writer, Maxim Gorky! We couldn’t, well, dedicate the operation to him?’

‘What?’

‘Well, I mean this, comrade Senior Lieutenant! You in the detachment should mark this important date for all of us! Something like: ‘Forward! For our Gorky! Well, something like that, comrade Senior Lieutenant! So that our fighters are inspired in heroic deeds in the name of our great writer!’

He touched his temple with his finger and said: lads come out of there.

And they kind of went.

After a couple of days he suddenly noticed that the older officers were looking at him strangely somehow, looking and laughing. He put up with it for a while, but then he couldn’t contain himself and went to find out what the problem was.

‘How about it,’ one of them answered laughing. ‘We read about you in ‘Pravda.’ ‘Battles on the front lines!’ The fearless Senior Lieutenant O, breaking his voice, shouted at his soldiers: ‘With the riff-raff brothers! For our Gorky! For the heart of Danko! For your mother and your motherland, shoot!’ Well there is still more there too . . .’

And Seryozha remembered this little article for a long time, it was worth his while to play his part, the officers began to laugh: ‘But Senior lieutenant O! This is for our Gorky!’

Well then. But Baev, entrenched at a pleasant distance, shouted something exactly in this manner, if it's not for Gorky, then it's certainly for the motherland, for Stalin, the squadron, fire, and such nonsensical, craziest co-ordinates; but these nitwits, under his window, in trousers of course, dutifully, like gophers, carry out all this nonsense: the gun fire settles for the second hour through the whole settlement, and the Divisional Commander does not come on the airwaves.

That is what Polevoy told Gelik, while they were running. Somewhere in the distance a chaffinch went into hysterics and the shots were heard throughout.

There were already a lot of people at the headquarters, all the top brass; and Polevoy played his part, of course: ‘And there, sirs, is indeed our operation, from our fantastic efforts I would say,’ the old regime scum bag. Gelik did not move an inch, he was at the apparatus at once and kept ringing.

And here he is lucky, the telephone operator pressed on the buzzer endlessly, and then something got through, visibly, and he picked up the receiver for Baev. The firing abated. There was interference down the line, then suddenly the fresh and sober voice of Baev bellowed:

‘Well?!’

‘Comrade Commander,’ suddenly almost stuttering, Gelik began ‘on the airwaves the on-duty watchman . . .’

‘Oh its you, prick!’ Baev handed Gelik the phone softly and with hatred. ‘I need you. That’s what, my chicken. And well tell your bosses there, that I will all of them, everyone of them, personally, do we understand, yes? Per-sona-lly! I will shake the sperm on the nose. Everyone. Have you written it? That’s all, adieu, you little prick!’ and he hurled the receiver, not at the arm but past it, and right there again is a mad howl: ‘Forward, lads! For the motherland! For saintly patriotism! Don't piss around! Our whole management pisses around; the deserter scum!’ And again shots ring out.

Gelik carefully put down the receiver. They were looking at him from all sides.

‘Ehhhh . . . Well he’s completely drunk,’ he said carefully. ‘And . . . Well yes. That. He has binged. Drunk.’

‘We don’t need your diagnosis,’ the Chief-of-Staff gloomily announced. ‘Tell us what he said.’

‘He says . . .’ Slowly hoping sharply, that the ceiling would collapse or something similar. ‘He curses a lot . . . and this, personally.’

‘Listen. Lieutenant!’ Lavretsky let out a roar.

‘Report accurately,’ said Polevoy. ‘What is at the start, what next . . .’

‘At first . . . at first . . .’ and understanding that he had nothing to lose, that’s how he chatted with all the stupid girls: ‘First he called me a prick!’

The officers neighed like stallions, and right here the second round of laughter struck like an echo under the window: there, the lads, it seems, were listening in.

And they could go to hell with all their Baevs! It was useless to even find out about the rapport, he only strained, waved his hands: what are you, he said, like one possessed, do you see what is happening in the world? We have a Divisional Commander in a white fever, the fighters are excited, up to you now? Well deal with it when there is time. Your Dad won’t die, jeez.’