Siberian Education

FREE FALL

On my eighteenth birthday I was abroad. I was studying physical education in a sports school, trying to build myself a different future, outside the criminal community.

It was a very strange time for me: I read widely, met more and more new people and was beginning to understand that the path of crime, which I had previously seen as good and honest, was an extreme one, which society saw as ‘abnormal’. But ‘normal’ society didn’t impress me greatly either; people seemed blind and deaf to the problems of others, and even to their own problems. I couldn’t understand the mechanisms that propelled the ‘normal’ world, where ultimately people were divided, had nothing in common and were unable to feel the pleasure of sharing things. I found the standard Russian morality annoying: everyone was ready to judge you, to criticize your life, but then they’d spend their evenings in front of the television, they’d fill the fridge with good cheap food, get drunk together at family parties, envy their neighbours and try to be envied in their turn. Flashy cars, preferably foreign, identical clothes, to be like everyone else, Saturday evening in the village bar showing off, drinking a can of Turkish-made beer and telling others that everything was fine, that ‘business’ was going well, even though you were only a humble exploited worker and couldn’t see the true reality of your life.

Post-Soviet consumerism was an appalling thing to someone like me. People wallowed in branded detergents and toothpastes, no one would drink anything unless it was imported and women smeared themselves with industrial quantities of French face-creams they saw advertised every day on television, believing they’d make them look like the models in the commercials.

I was tired and disorientated; I didn’t think that I’d ever succeed in fulfilling myself in some honest and useful way.

However, I had never stopped attending the sports club in my town. I did yoga: I was slim and supple, I could do the exercises well and everyone was pleased with me. One of my wrestling coaches had advised me to attend the yoga lessons given by a teacher in Ukraine, a man who had studied for many years in India. So I often went to Ukraine for advanced courses, and every year, with a group from my sports club, I spent a month and a half in India.

By the age of eighteen I was about to take my diploma as a yoga instructor, but I didn’t like the way things were run at my school; I often quarrelled with the teacher, who told me I was a rebel and only let me stay on because many of the other boys were on my side.

The teacher exploited a lot of his students. He would get them to do his accounts, paying them a pittance, and then justify his behaviour with strange arguments connected to yoga philosophy, but which in my view were simply opportunistic. The only reason I put up with all this was that I needed to get that diploma, which would enable me to continue my studies at any state university, and so avoid compulsory military service. I dreamed of opening a sports school of my own and teaching yoga to the people of my town.

But it was to remain just a dream. Because just before the end of the course something very unpleasant happened: one of the boys in our yoga class died of a heart attack.

Many people who do yoga believe in things that are remote from everyday experience. This teacher always used to tell us about people who after years of exercises had been able to fly, or turn into various life forms, and other such claptrap; I never listened to him, but there were others in my group who believed those things. Among these people was Sergey. He had had heart problems since birth, and he needed regular medical treatment and supervision from doctors, but our teacher had led him to believe that the problem could be resolved with the help of exercises. Sergey really believed his weak heart could be cured in that way. I often tried to explain to him that yoga couldn’t treat serious illnesses, but he wouldn’t listen to me; he always said it was just a matter of exercise.

One day Sergey went to a big gathering of the schools of yoga in Hungary, and on the way back, in the train, he had a heart attack and died. I was upset, nothing more than that; I wasn’t particularly close to him and we weren’t great friends, but to my mind his death was entirely on the conscience of our teacher.

The upshot was that I told the teacher exactly what I thought, and we quarrelled. He expelled me from the school, so I didn’t get my diploma; instead they gave me a kind of certificate of participation which entitled me to perform some disciplines in public. A complete farce, in other words.

All this happened in the spring, when Transnistria was blooming like a bride dressed in white, full of scents and refreshing breezes.

I did nothing for a while, except think about what had happened; then I went to stay with my Grandfather Nikolay in the Tayga. We hunted together, made nets and traps for catching fish in the river, took saunas and talked a lot about life.

Grandfather Nikolay had lived alone in the woods since the age of twenty-four, and had a wisdom all of his own. It was good for me to be with him during that period.

When I returned to Transnistria I organized a big party on the river with my friends to celebrate my birthday, which was already a few months past. We took ten boats, filled them with bottles of wine, some of the bread that Mel’s grandmother made and our fishing equipment, and set off upstream for a place called ‘The Big Drip’.

The spot was renowned for its beauty and tranquillity, and was situated about fifty kilometres from the town. At this point the river widened out and here and there formed clusters of little interlinked pools, where the water was warm and still. The current hardly ever reached there, except when the river was high in March and early April, the period of the floods. Many fish, especially the wels catfish, would stop there, and we used to go and catch them. We would set out at night in our boats, turn on a big torch, and shine it down into the water: attracted by the light, the fish would come up to the surface, and then we’d kill them with a sort of long-handled wooden mallet specially made for that kind of fishing. One person would hold the torch while another stood ready to strike with the mallet; everything had to be done in silence, because the slightest noise or movement would frighten the fish, and then it would be at least another couple of hours before you could entice them back up to the surface.

I used to team up with Mel, because nobody else would fish with him, as he would never keep quiet at the crucial moment. He was also a menace with the mallet: once he had missed the wels but hit his fishing partner, our friend Besa, breaking his arm. Since then, whenever he asked anyone if he could go with them they would make excuses, claiming they’d already agreed to go with someone else. As a result he often got left on the bank, but sometimes I relented and took him along; unlike the others, I could usually get him to behave at the critical moment.

We had a pleasant trip upriver to the Big Drip; the weather was beautiful and the water seemed blessed by the Lord – it offered no resistance, even though we were going upstream. My boat’s motor worked very well that day and didn’t stall even once. In short, everything was perfect, like on a picture postcard.

When we arrived we had lunch, and I overdid the wine a bit, which made me too good-humoured – unusually so – and as a result for the umpteenth time I agreed to team up with Mel, who was delighted we weren’t going to leave him ashore.

I was feeling so relaxed I allowed him to hold the mallet. Well, ‘allowed’ isn’t really the right word; he just sat down in my boat and, without asking, picked up the mallet, with a nonchalant glance at me. I said nothing; I just showed him my fist to indicate that if he made a mistake he was in serious trouble.

We set off for our pool. Each boat entered a different one: you had to be absolutely alone, because if everyone had hunted in the same pool, at the noise of the first blow the fish would have hidden on the bottom and the other boats wouldn’t have caught anything.

The night was beautiful; there were lots of stars in the sky and in the middle a faint tinge of white which gleamed and shimmered – it seemed like magic. In the distance you could hear the sound of the wind blowing over the fields, and sometimes its long, thin whistle came close, as though passing between us. The scent of the fields mingled with that of the woods and was constantly changing – you seemed to catch the smell of acacia and lime leaves, separately, and then that of the moss on the river bank. The frogs sang their serenades in chorus; now and then a fish would come up to the surface and make a pleasant sound, a kind of plash, in the water. At one point three roe deer came out of the wood to quench their thirst: they made a lapping noise with their tongues and afterwards sneezed, as horses do.

I was carried away by the enchantment of it. If someone had asked me what heaven was I might well have said it was this moment prolonged for all eternity.

The only thing that stopped me rising towards heaven was the presence of Mel: as soon as I looked at him I was filled with a heavy sense of reality, and I realized that as long as that person – like a penance which I was destined to endure – continued to be at my side, I would never be able to free myself completely from my coarse human frame.

‘Keep your mouth shut, Mel, or I’ll crown you with that mallet,’ I said, starting to row slowly, so as not to make too much noise.

Mel was in a state of absolute concentration. He sat in the middle of the boat, gripping the mallet with both hands, as if he were afraid it would try to get away.

When we got to the middle of the pool I took out an old underwater torch. I turned it on and gradually lowered it, leaning out over the edge of the boat. The light under the water created a beautiful effect – it shone down to a depth of ten metres, where you could see lots of little details – tiny fish circling round the torch in a kind of lap of honour.

Mel stood over me, ready with the mallet, awaiting my signal.

Usually the arrival of the catfish was marked by a large black shadow rising up from the bottom and advancing towards the light. As soon as you saw the shadow it was essential to move the torch at once: to bring it up slowly, without making a noise, so that the fish would follow it, but without ever quite reaching it. When the lamp reached the surface and came out of the water it was the climactic moment: the person with the mallet had to bring it down with all his strength on the spot where an instant before the lamp had been, and hit the fish. If you hesitated a moment and the fish managed to touch the lamp, it would immediately dive down again, because catfish are very cowardly creatures and are frightened of any contact with objects they don’t know. So to catch the fish with this technique it was important to move in perfect harmony.

I peered into the water, and suddenly I saw a shadow rise from the bottom, so I started to lift the torch by slowly pulling the string. Mel, behind me, raised the mallet, ready to strike.

I had no doubts: it was clearly a catfish and it was coming up very quickly. I just had to recover the torch in time.

When I had nearly pulled it right up and only a small part of it remained in the water, Mel brought down the mallet with such violence I heard it whistle through the air, as if a bullet had passed close to my ears.

‘Christ!’ I shouted, and just managed to take my hands off the torch before Mel’s mallet struck it with brutal force. The torch smashed and the light went out instantly. In the darkness I heard a faint sigh from Mel:

‘Shit! What a stupid fish, I thought it was coming up faster…’

He was still standing over me, mallet in hand. I got to my feet, picked up an oar and without a word hit him on the back.

‘Why?’ he asked me, alarmed, retreating towards the bow of the boat.

‘For Christ’s sake, Mel, you’re a fool! What the hell did you hit the torch for?’

I heard the voices of Gagarin, Gigit and Besa on the bank.

‘What’s happening? Have you two gone crazy?’ asked Gagarin.

‘Ah, there’s nothing happening! It’s just that the fish is so big they can’t get it onto the boat,’ said Gigit sarcastically, knowing perfectly well that that bonehead Mel must have ruined the fishing as usual.

‘Hey, Kolima!’ shouted Besa. ‘You can go ahead and kill him, don’t worry. None of us saw a thing. We’ll say he went swimming on his own and was drowned.’

I was angry, but at the same time the situation made me laugh.

‘Switch on that motor. Let’s get back to the bank,’ I said to Mel gruffly.

‘Don’t you want to have another go?’ he asked me, sounding rather crestfallen.

I looked at him. His face in the darkness seemed to belong to a demon. I said to him with a smile:

‘Another go? And what torch are we going to do it with?’

On the bank everyone laughed.

When we reached the bank, Besa, who was always joking, looked into the boat and confirmed:

‘Just as I thought, brothers! These two have eaten all the fish themselves! And they were so desperate not to share it with us they’ve eaten it raw!’

And they all roared with laughter. Mel laughed too.

I alone was a bit sad. I had a feeling something new was about to happen in my life; I sensed an air of change around me.

We had a fantastic party. The others had caught some big wels catfish; we cleaned and prepared them for cooking in the earth. Everyone seemed a bit withdrawn, though, as if they were aware that we were about to go through a significant period of change. We talked about things of the past; each boy told stories about his childhood, and the others laughed or sat in silence, respecting the atmosphere that was created by the narrative.

We sat around the fire all night, until dawn, watching the sparks and the pieces of ash that had turned to dust rise up into the air, mingling with the faint gleams of the morning which was bringing a new day.

I too laughed and told a few stories, but I was filled with a new emotion, a kind of sad nostalgia. I felt that I was standing in front of a great void towards which I had to take the first step, and this was my last chance to look back and fix in my memory all the beautiful and important things I was about to leave behind me.

After drinking wine and eating and talking until dawn, I went away to sleep in the woods. I took a blanket from my boat, wrapped it around me and walked towards the bushes, where there was a freshness in the air that brought relief. My friends were scattered around; some were asleep in front of the nearly dead embers. Mel was lying in the middle of the track that led to the pool where we had left the boat: it was a very muddy path, but he was sound asleep, with his arms round an oar. Besa was wandering around with an empty bottle, asking the boys if anyone knew where the supplies were. Nobody answered him – not because they didn’t know where the things were, but because they were all in a total stupor.

As I walked along, wrapped up in my blanket, I felt a sense of disgust; I remember that although I was drunk and couldn’t even walk straight, I thought with absolute lucidity that we were a bunch of pathetic drunkards who were only capable of getting into trouble and making a mess of our lives.

As soon as I lay down on the ground, I fell asleep. By the time I woke up it was already evening and darkness was beginning to fall. My friends were calling my name. I opened my eyes and lay there, not moving; I felt even more strongly than the night before that something was really about to happen in my life. I didn’t want to get up; I wanted to stay in the bushes.

When we got home I took a sauna. I lit the stove and burned some wood, then I prepared the dry oak branches and put them in the warm water so I could use them later for the massage. I mixed some pine extract with some lime essence and put it by the stove, to infuse the air that I would breathe. I made myself two litres of a tisane of dog rose, lime, mint and cherry blossom. I spent the day relaxing in the sauna, lying naked on the wooden benches which slowly cooked me. Now and then, as I lay surrounded by that aromatized steam, I drank the very hot tisane in big gulps, without noticing how much it scalded my throat.

That night I slept flat out, as if I had fallen into a void. The next day I woke up and went out of the house. I opened the mail box to see if anything was there and found a small piece of white paper with a red line across it from one corner to the other. It said that the military office of the Russian Federation asked me to present myself for verification, bringing my personal documents. It added that this instruction was being sent for the third and last time, and that if I didn’t present myself within three days I would receive a criminal conviction for ‘refusal to pay my debt to the nation in the form of military service’.

I thought the note was a trifle, a mere formality. I went back indoors, fetched my documents and, without even changing my clothes, set off in my flip-flops towards the address indicated, a place on the other side of town, where there was an old Russian military base.

At the entrance I showed the note to the guards and they opened the door, without a word.

‘Where do I have to go?’ I asked one of them.

‘Go straight on. It’s all the same anyway…’ a soldier replied, without enthusiasm and with obvious irritation.

‘Bloody idiot,’ I thought, and I headed for a large office where there was a notice saying: ‘Military service and new arrivals section.’

The office was dark; I could hardly see a thing. At the back there was a little window in the wall, out of which there came a dismal, faint, yellow light.

There was the sound of someone tapping on a typewriter. I approached and saw a young woman, in military uniform, sitting at a small desk, typing with one hand and clutching a mug of tea in the other. She took little sips and kept blowing into the mug to cool it.

I leaned on the counter and craned my neck: I saw that on her knees, under the desk, the woman had an open newspaper. There was an article about Russian pop stars, with a photo of a singer wearing a crown decorated with peacock feathers. I felt even sadder.

‘Hello. Excuse me, ma’am, I’ve received this,’ I said, holding out the note.

The woman turned towards me and for a second looked at me as if she couldn’t understand where she was and what was happening. It was clear that I had interrupted a train of thoughts and personal dreams. With a quick movement she picked up the newspaper that lay at her knees and put it upside down behind the typewriter, so that I couldn’t see it. Then she put down her mug of tea and, without getting up or saying anything, and with an indifferent expression on her face, she took the white sheet of paper with the red line from my hands. She glanced at it for a moment and then asked, in a voice that sounded to me as if it belonged to a ghost:

‘Documents?’

‘Which documents, mine?’ I asked awkwardly, taking my passport and all the other things out of my trouser pocket.

She eyed me rather scornfully and said through clenched teeth:

‘Well, certainly not mine.’

She took my documents and put them in a safe. Then she took a form from a shelf and started filling it in. She asked me my first name, surname, date and place of birth, and home address. Then she went on to more personal information. After asking me for my parents’ details, she said:

‘Have you ever been arrested? Have you had any problems with the law?’

‘I’ve never had any problems with the law, but the law seems to have problems with me now and them… I’ve been arrested dozens of times, I can’t remember how many. And I’ve done two stretches in juvenile prison.’

At this her expression changed. She tore up the form she had been filling in and took another, larger one, with a line running from one corner to the other, like that on the postal note.

We started afresh; once again, all my personal details, including, this time, those of my convictions: the article numbers, and the dates. Then my health: diseases, vaccinations; she even asked me if I consumed alcohol or drugs, if I smoked cigarettes. And so it went on for an hour… I couldn’t remember the exact dates of my convictions, so I made them up on the spur of the moment, trying at least to get the right time of year, and if possible the right month.

When we had finished I tried to explain to her that it must have been a mistake, that I couldn’t do military service, that I had asked for and been granted a postponement of six months, promising that in the meantime I would finish a course of study and then go to university. If everything went according to plan, I added, I was going to open a school of physical education for children, there in Bender.

She listened to me – but without looking me in the eye, which worried me. Then she gave me a sheet of paper: it said that from that moment onwards I was the property of the Russian government and my life was protected by the law.

I couldn’t understand what all this meant in practical terms.

‘It means that if you try to escape, self-harm or commit suicide, you’ll be prosecuted for damaging government property,’ she informed me coldly.

I suddenly felt trapped. Everything around me began to seem much more ominous and sinister than before.

‘Listen,’ I snapped, ‘I couldn’t give a shit about your law. I’m a criminal, period. If I have to go to jail I’ll go, but I’ll never pick up the weapons of your fucking government…’

I was furious, and when I started to talk like that I immediately felt strong, even stronger than that absurd situation. I was sure, absolutely sure, that I would succeed in changing this machine that was supposed to regulate my life.

‘Where are the fucking generals, or whatever you call your authorities? I want to see one and talk to him, since I can’t make you understand!’ I raised my voice, and she looked at me with the same indifferent expression as before.

‘If you want to speak to the Colonel, he’s here, but I don’t think it’ll get you anywhere… In fact, I advise you to keep calm. Don’t make things worse for yourself…’

It was good advice, if I think about it now. She was telling me something important, I’m sure of it; she was trying to show me a better way, but at the time I was blinded.

I felt sick. How can this be, I said to myself. Only this morning I was free, I had my plans for the day, for my future, for the rest of my life, and now, because of a piece of paper, I was losing my freedom. I wanted to shout and argue with someone, show them how angry I was. I needed it. I interrupted her, shouting in her face:

‘Jesus, Blessed Lord on the cross! If I want to speak to someone, I speak to him, and that’s that! Where is this fucking commandant, general, or whatever he’s called?’

She got up from her chair and asked me to calm down and wait for ten minutes, on the bench. I looked around but couldn’t see any bench. ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, what is this place? Everyone’s crazy here,’ I thought, as I waited in the dark.

Suddenly a door opened and a soldier, a middle-aged man, called me by my first name:

‘Come with me, Nikolay. The Colonel’s expecting you!’

I jumped up like a spring and ran towards him, eager to get out of that dingy little office as quickly as possible.

We went out onto a small square surrounded by buildings all painted white, with propaganda drawings and posters with pictures of the exercises the soldiers had to do to learn how to march in a group. We crossed the square and entered a room full of light, with large windows and lots of flowers in pots. Among the flowers was a bench, and beside the bench a large ashtray.

‘Wait here. The Colonel will call you from this door. You can smoke if you like…’

The soldier was kind; he talked to me in a very friendly tone. I had calmed down and felt more confident; it seemed that my situation was at last going to be cleared up and my voice heard.

‘Thank you, sir, but I don’t smoke. Thank you very much for your kindness.’

I tried to be as polite as possible myself, to create a good impression.

The soldier took his leave and left me alone. I sat there on the bench, listening to the sounds made by the soldiers, who had gone out onto the square for their drill. I watched from a window.

‘Left, left, one, two, three!’ came the desperate shouts of the instructor, a young man in an immaculate military uniform, marching with a platoon of men who didn’t seem very keen on drilling.

‘Nikolay! You can come in, son!’ a very rough male voice called me. Despite its kind, almost gentle tone, there was something false about it, an unpleasant tune in the background.

I approached the door, knocked and asked for permission to enter.

‘Come in, son, come in!’ said a big strong man sitting behind an enormous desk, his voice still amiable and kindly.

I entered, closed the door and took a few steps towards him, then stopped abruptly.

The Colonel was about fifty years old and very stocky. His head, which was shaven, was marked by two long scars. His green uniform was too small for him; his neck was so wide the collar of his jacket was stretched tight and seemed on the point of tearing. His hands were so fat you could hardly see his fingernails, so deep did they sink into the flesh. One split ear was a sure sign of an experienced wrestler. His face might have been copied from the Soviet military propaganda posters of the Second World War: coarse features, straight thick nose, large resolute eyes. On the left side of his chest, a dozen medals hung in a row.

‘Jesus be with me, this guy’s worse than a cop…’ I was already imagining how our meeting might end. I didn’t know where to start; I felt incapable of expressing what I wanted to say in front of someone like him.

Suddenly, interrupting my thoughts, he started the conversation. He was looking at a folder which resembled those in which the police keep classified information about criminals.

‘I’m reading your story, my dear Nikolay, and I like you more and more. You didn’t do too well at school – in fact you hardly ever attended – but you belonged to four different sports clubs… Excellent! I did a lot of sport myself when I was young. Studying is for eggheads; real men do sport and train to become fighters… You did wrestling, swimming, long-distance running and shooting… Excellent! You’re a well-qualified young man; I think you’ve got a great future in the army… There’s only one blemish. Tell me, how did you get two convictions? Did you steal?’

He looked me straight in the eye, and if he could have done he would have looked into my brain.

‘No, I didn’t steal anything. I don’t steal… I hit some guys on two different occasions. I was charged with “attempted murder with serious consequences”.’

‘Never mind, don’t worry… I used to get into fights when I was young; I quite understand! Men need to carve out their own space in the world, to define themselves, and the best way of doing that is to fight. That’s where you find out who’s worth something and who’s not worth a spit…’

He was talking to me as if he were about to give me a prize. I hesitated; I didn’t know what to say now, and above all I didn’t know how I was going to explain to him that I had no intention of doing military service.

‘Listen, son, I couldn’t care less about your past in prison, the criminal prosecutions and all the rest of it; as far as I’m concerned you’re a good lad, may Christ bless you, and I’m going to give you a hand because I like you. I’ve got your whole life in writing here, since your first day at school…’ He laid the file on the desk and closed it, tying up the two ribbons at the side. ‘I’ll give you two choices, something I only do in exceptional cases, for people I think very highly of. I can put you in the border guard, on the frontier with Tajikistan: you’ll have a good career, and if you like climbing mountains that’s the place for you. Alternatively I can put you in the parachute regiment, a school for professionals: you’ll become a sergeant after six months and you’ll have a good career there too; and in time you’ll be able to join the special forces, despite your past. The army will give you everything: a salary, a home, friends and an occupation suited to your abilities. Well, what do you say? Which do you prefer?’

It was like listening to the monologue of a madman. He was saying things that were complete nonsense to me. The army giving me everything I had already! How could I explain to him that I didn’t need an occupation suited to my abilities, or friends, or a salary, or a home…

I felt like you do when you get on the wrong train and suddenly realize there’s no way of making it go back.

I took a bit of air into my lungs and blurted out my reply:

‘To be honest, sir, I want to go home!’

He changed in a second. His face went red, as if an invisible man was strangling him. His hands closed into fists and his eyes took on a strange tinge, something that might have had a distant resemblance to the sky before a storm.

He picked up my personal file and threw it in my face. I just managed to put my hands up in time to parry the blow. The file hit my hands and came open, and the papers scattered all over the room, on the desk, on the windowsill, on the floor.

I stood as stiff and motionless as a statue. He continued to glare at me with hatred. Then he suddenly started shouting in a terrible voice, which immediately sounded to me like his real voice:

‘You wretch! So you want to wallow in shit? All right, I’ll make you wallow in shit! I’ll send you where you won’t even have time to pull down your trousers, you’ll be shitting yourself so much, and every time it happens you’ll remember me, you ungrateful little upstart! You want to go home? All right, from today your home will be the brigade of saboteurs! They’ll teach you what life’s really like!’

He was shouting at me, and I stood there as stiff as a ramrod, not moving, while inside I was completely empty.

It was better getting beaten up by the cops; at least there I knew how it would end, whereas here everything was unknown to me. I felt an enormous anxiety, because I didn’t know anything about soldiers, I didn’t understand why I should shit myself and above all I couldn’t remember who the saboteurs were…

‘Out! Get out!’ he pointed to the door.

Without a word I turned round and went out of his office.

Outside, a soldier was waiting for me. He saluted.

‘Sergeant Glazunov! Follow me, comrade!’ he said in a voice which sounded like the piston of a Kalashnikov when it sends the cartridge into the barrel.

‘A flea-bitten dog is your comrade,’ I thought, but said in a humble tone:

‘Excuse me, Sergeant, sir, may I use the toilet?’

He looked at me in a strange way, but didn’t say no.

‘Of course. Down to the end of the corridor and turn left!’

I walked down the corridor; he followed me, and when I went into the toilet he stood outside waiting for me.

Inside the toilet I climbed up to the window at the top and since it didn’t have any bars I jumped down without any problem. Outside, in the garden behind the office, there was no one around.

‘To hell with this madhouse, I’m going home…’

With this and other similar thoughts in my head I started walking towards the exit of the base. There the guard stopped me. He was a young soldier, about the same age as me, very thin and with a slight squint in one eye.

‘Documents!’

‘I haven’t got them with me. I came to visit a friend…’

The soldier looked at me suspiciously.

‘Show me your permit to leave the base!’

At these words my heart sank into my boots. I decided to act stupid:

‘What do you mean, permit? What are you talking about? Open that door! I want to get out…’ I walked towards the door, going past the soldier, but he pointed his assault rifle at me, shouting:

‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’

‘Ah get out of the way!’ I replied, grabbing his gun by the barrel and tearing it out of his hands.

The soldier tried to punch me in the face, but I defended myself with the butt of the gun. Suddenly someone dealt me a hard blow on the head from behind. I felt my legs go limp and my mouth dry. I took two deep breaths, and at the third I passed out.

I woke up a few minutes later. I was lying on the ground, surrounded by soldiers. The sergeant who should have been accompanying me was also there; he looked anxious, and was walking around saying to everyone in a conspiratorial tone:

‘Nothing’s happened, everything’s okay. Remember, nobody saw anything. I’ll take care of him.’

It was clear he was worried he might be punished for his carelessness.

He came over to me and gave me a kick in the ribs.

‘Do that again, you bastard, and I’ll personally kill you!’

He gave me a couple more kicks, then held out his hand and helped me to my feet. He took me to a kind of house with barred windows and a steel-clad door. It looked just like a prison.

We went in. There wasn’t much light and everything seemed dirty and grey, neglected, abandoned. There was a long narrow corridor, with three steel-clad doors. At the end of the corridor a soldier appeared, a lad of about twenty, quite thin but with a kindly face. He was holding a big bunch of keys of different sizes and kept moving them, making a strange noise, which in that situation almost made me burst into tears of sadness and despair. With one of the keys the young soldier opened a door, and the sergeant ushered me into a very small, narrow room, with a tiny barred window. There was a wooden bunk against the wall.

I looked at the place and I couldn’t believe it. Just like that, simply, suddenly, I had ended up in a cell.

The sergeant said in a very authoritarian tone to the soldier, who was clearly some kind of guard:

‘Feed him at suppertime like all the others, but be careful: he’s violent… Don’t take him to the bathroom on your own; wake up your partner and both of you go together. He’s dangerous; he attacked the guard at the gate and tried to steal his submachinegun…’

The soldier with the keys looked at me in alarm: it was obvious he couldn’t wait to lock me up.

The sergeant looked me in the eye and said:

‘Stay here and wait!’

I, too, looked him straight in the eye, making no attempt to conceal my hatred. ‘What the hell am I supposed to wait for? What’s all this about?’

‘Wait for the end of the world, you arsehole! If I tell you to wait, wait and don’t ask any questions. I’ll decide what you have to wait for!’

The sergeant motioned to the soldier to shut the door and went out triumphantly.

Before locking me in, the soldier came towards me and asked me a question:

‘What’s your name, boy?’

His voice seemed calm and not aggressive.

‘Nikolay,’ I replied quietly.

‘Don’t worry, Nikolay, you’re safer here than you would be with them… Have a good rest, because in a couple of days they’ll be taking you to the train that will carry you to Russia, to the brigade you’ve been assigned to… Have they told you where they’re sending you yet?’

‘The Colonel said they’re putting me in the saboteurs…’ I replied in an exhausted voice.

He paused, then asked me in alarm:

‘The saboteurs? Holy Christ, what’s he got against you? What have you done to deserve this?’

‘I’ve received a Siberian education,’ I replied, as he closed the door.