barracks were long, arranged on a single storey, and in the middle of the hallway there was an entrance that led underground.
During the first week they subjected us to various trials; they wanted to assess our health and endurance. Zabelin was our only drill instructor; there were a dozen sergeants who assisted, but he saw to the training himself. They woke us up during the night and made us run, armed and with full backpacks as if we were in the field. We would leave the base in total darkness, Zabelin at the head of the ranks and a few sergeants at the side and the back, and start running like a pack of animals. It was extremely difficult; we had to move in the dark down dirt paths in the woods, run up and down hills, and every metre of ground we covered cost us enormous effort. Lots of guys got hurt; one fell and broke a leg; another didn’t see a ditch and fell in, shattering one of his vertebrae. You couldn’t see a thing, and Zabelin didn’t let us use any lights.
‘You have to move in the dark like animals. Darkness is a saboteur’s best friend; you have to take advantage of it. It’s your lover, your partner . . .’ he would always say when anyone tried to complain.
We also had to learn how to orient ourselves in the dead of night; it was important to know where base was at all times, to be able to load our rifles, arrange things in our packs. Even in the barracks our windows were always covered by heavy shutters made of dark wood. We ate, did our business, showered, dressed, dismantled and cleaned our weapons, all in the dark.
Zabelin respected me because I had learned to run in the dark without being afraid to fall, I handled exertion well, I could go a long time without drinking water, and especially because I never asked pointless questions, which he hated more than anything.
After a week, we began target practice. Beforehand, Zabelin asked if any one of us was handy with weapons, if we had shot anything. A few of us said yes, so he ordered us to take up the AKSM-74 Kalashnikov assault rifles, and gave us each an entire clip. I had a head start; in addition to the target shooting I did in a city sports team, I had lots of hunting experience in Siberia with my grandfather Nikolay. Whenever I went to visit my grandfather, even when I was still just a kid, my father often let me shoot his Kalashnikov.
When it was my turn, I made a spectacular shot. Instead of just hitting the bullseye, I knocked it down, breaking the pedestal that secured it to the ground.
‘Siberian, what the hell are you doing? Why didn’t you aim for the centre?’ Zabelin pretended to be angry with me.
‘There’s no point in shooting straw targets with this cannon, Comrade Zabelin!’ I replied, like the ideal soldier. ‘If you want me to hit that bullseye give me a slingshot, at least then it would be fun!’
My comrades broke into laughter. Zabelin laughed, too:
‘All right, let’s make a pact: if you can knock down the rest of that pedestal, I’ll send you to a place where you can do whatever you want!’ His tone was very cheerful.
‘Consider it done, Comrade Zabelin!’
I levelled the rifle, fixed the stump in the crosshairs, lowered my aim by half a finger and fired, very delicately pressing on the trigger. The pedestal lifted off the ground completely, and fell with a bounce.
‘All right, Nicolay, you’ve earned a spot in the sniper course. Starting tomorrow you’ll be working with Comrade Sergeant Yakut!’
From then on, every day for four hours, I would leave the main group and follow individualised training with a small detachment composed of twelve men. The sniper instructor was a sergeant of Siberian origin, like me, and so they called him Yakut, after the region he came from.* He was sharp and knew all there was to know about war. He’d fought in several armed conflicts and was an expert in ‘micro expeditions’, brief and highly risky engagements in special war operations. He seldom spoke, and spent most of our lessons teaching us the basics of shooting with precision rifles. He explained how to make the most of the telescope and how to pick out and hunt down other snipers. The principle wasn’t difficult; you had to move slowly without letting yourself be seen, be patient, and be extremely alert – like a hunter.
After a month of training exercises, I’d figured out a way to escape from the base. So one night I grabbed a few of my things and crossed two fences watched by the sentry. Like a shadow, I crept along the walls, but when I finally emerged outside the base, thinking that I’d made it, there was Zabelin, eating an ice cream.
‘Want one?’ he asked casually.
‘Might as well . . .’
I couldn’t imagine what he had in mind, but something told me he wouldn’t get me into trouble. I followed him to where he’d parked his car. We drove into the city, although it must have been two or three in the morning, and we stopped at the sort of diner frequented by truckers, a place where people would sneak off to their cars with prostitutes.
We sat down at a table and, without exchanging a word, ate a meal together. He washed his meat down with long sips of vodka. He offered me some too, but I declined – I didn’t want to get drunk. After eating in perfect silence, Zabelin ordered two lemon ice creams. Once the obese, exhausted waitress had set them on the table, he finally began to talk.
‘Nicolay, I don’t know what kind of mess you were born into or raised in, but I can assure you that here, in the army, nobody cares who you are. You don’t exist. Here you’re a number, and if you make one mistake they erase you, just as they would erase a number. I’m certain you could become a good saboteur, and I think that this is your only chance to save yourself. You’re going to find yourself in serious trouble, but if you follow my advice you’ll thank me for it one day . . .’ He spoke softly, without a sign of irritation, still calmly eating his ice cream.
I was eating my ice cream too, and I wasn’t thinking about military prison – where, if he wanted, he could have sent me without much difficulty. The only thing that mattered to me at that moment was figuring out how he’d caught me, when I thought I’d been careful and invisible. He kept talking:
‘You running away from my unit makes me look bad. If this story got out I’d have problems with superior command, and I don’t want any problems with them, understood? You know, don’t you, that all deserters get sent to military prison? You know what that means? Well, don’t think that just because you’ve been in juvie a couple of times you’ve seen all there is to see in this world . . . The point, dear Nicolay, is that starting tomorrow I’m going to send you on clean-up duty for three days. You’ll help the team that runs the military prison here, not far from our base. When you return, you can decide whether to run away or stay here and do your duty like the rest of us . . .’
We returned to camp. I went to sleep in the barracks and in the morning a sergeant woke me up with a taunt:
‘Let’s go, Count of Monte Cristo, they’re hauling you off to jail!’
I got dressed while my comrades were still sleeping, and went out to the yard. A car was waiting for me, with three soldiers and a lieutenant. We introduced ourselves, and after the military formalities we left for the prison.
Zabelin hadn’t exaggerated when he’d told me about the prison. In the yard, a few soldiers were walking in a circle, wearing faded old military uniforms; huddled together they looked like an indistinct dark grey blob. They had big white numbers on their backs, and they were frighteningly thin, shuffling around hopelessly, dragging their feet in imitation of a military march. It was the most horrible place I’d ever seen in my life.
A
