Zinky Boys (26 page)

The flight seemed long, and we were subdued. I looked out of the window and saw those beautiful mountains. I'd never seen mountains before — I'm from Pskov, which is all meadows and forest. We landed at Shindanta: I still remember the date: 19 December 1980.

They looked me up and down: ‘Six foot four, eh? Reconnaissance can do with boys like you.'

From Shindanta we drove to Gerat. We were put to work building again. We built a firing-range from scratch, digging the earth and clearing it of rocks. I built a slate roof and did some carpentry. Some of the boys never got to fire a weapon before their first taste of action.

We were hungry every minute of the day. There were two 20gallon drums in the kitchen, one for the first course, a watery cabbage-soup without a scrap of meat, and one for the second course, a gooey paste of dried potato mash or pearl barley, also without meat. Oh, and canned mackerel, one tin between four of us. The label said: ‘Year of manufacture: 1956. Consume within 18 months.' In my year and a half in Afghanistan I stopped being hungry only once, when I was wounded. You were looking for ways to get or steal food the whole time. We climbed into the Afghans' orchards and gardens, even though they shot at us and laid mines to blow us up with. We were desperate for apples, pears, fruit of any kind. I asked my parents to send me citric acid,
which they did. We dissolved it in water and drank it. It was nice and sour and burnt your stomach.

We sang the Soviet national anthem before we went into action for the first time. I was a speed-cyclist before the army, and built up such big muscles that people were scared of me and left me alone. I'd never even
seen
a fight, or a knife used in anger, or blood. Suddenly there we were, going into battle in an APC. We'd driven from Shindanta to Gerat by bus, and been out of barracks once, in a truck. Now, riding on top of this armoured carrier, weapon in hand, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, well, it was a completely new and strange feeling. A sense of power and strength, and a certainty that no one and nothing could hurt us.

The villages seemed so low, the irrigation canals looked tiny, the trees few and far between. In half an hour we were so confident we felt like tourists. It all seemed so exotic — the birds, the trees, the flowers. I saw those thornbushes for the first time in my life. We forgot all about war.

We crossed a canal by a mud bridge which I was amazed could take all those tons of metal. Suddenly — BANG! The leading APC had caught a direct hit from a grenade-launcher. Pals of mine were being carried away, their heads blown off like cardboard targets, hands hanging down lifelessly. My mind couldn't take in this new and terrible world.

Command: ‘Deploy mortars!' — with their 120 shells a minute. We fired every one of them into the village where the attack had come from, which meant several into every single house. After it was all over we collected up our boys in bits and pieces, even scraping them from the sides of the APC. We spread out a tarpaulin, their common grave, to try and sort out which leg or fragment of skull belonged to whom. We weren't issued with identification tags because of the ‘danger' of them falling into enemy hands. This was an undeclared war, you see — we were fighting a war which wasn't happening.

We were very quiet on the way home from this new world. We had something to eat and cleaned our weapons.

‘Want a joint?' one of the older guys asked me.

‘No thanks.'

I didn't want to start on all that in case I didn't have the will-
power to give it up. After a while, though, we all smoked — it was the only way to keep going. They should have let us have a quarter of a pint of vodka a day, like in World War II, but this was a ‘dry' country. Somehow or other you had to unwind, to blot it all out. We'd put it in the rice or porridge. Your pupils got as big as saucers, you could see like a cat in the dark and you felt as light as a bat.

Recce men kill at close quarters rather than in set-piece battles, and silently, with a stiletto or bayonet, almost never a gun. I soon got used to it.

My first? You mean the first guy I killed close up? We'd approached a village, I looked through the night-vision binoculars and saw a little lantern, and a rifle, and this guy digging something up. I handed my gun to my mate and got up close enough to jump him to the ground. I stuffed his turban in his mouth to stop him shouting out. The only knife I had on me was a pen-knife I used to cut bread and open cans with, an ordinary little knife. As he lay there on the ground I grabbed him by the beard, pulled it up and slit his throat. The skin of his neck went taut, which made it a lot easier. There was a lot of blood.

I was usually put in charge of our night raids. We'd crouch behind a tree, knives at the ready, watching as they went past, with a scout in front. It was our job to kill him. We took turns to do it. If it was my turn I'd let him get a little bit past me and then jump him from behind. The main thing is to grab the throat with your left hand and throttle him to keep him quiet as you stick the knife into him with your right. Right through, under his liver. I used a knife I picked up from one of them, a Japanese job with a blade over a foot long which cut like it was going through butter. There'd be a quick twitch and he'd be dead without a squeak.

You soon got used to it. It was less a psychological problem than the technical challenge of actually finding the upper vertebrae, heart or liver. We learnt karate, immobilisation techniques and how to kill with our bare hands.

Only once something snapped inside me and I was struck by the horror of what we were doing. We were combing through a village. You fling open the door and throw in a grenade in case there's a machine-gun waiting for you. Why take a risk if a grenade
can sort it out for you? I threw the grenade, went in and saw women, two little boys and a baby in some kind of box making do for a cot.

You have to find some kind of justification to stop yourself going mad. Suppose it's true that the souls of the dead look down on us from above?

I got back home and tried to be good, but sometimes I have a desire to cut the odd throat. I came home blind. A bullet went in one temple, came out the other and destroyed both retinas. I can only distinguish light and dark but that doesn't stop me recognising the people whose throats I'd like to cut: the ones who won't pay for gravestones for our lads, the ones who won't give us flats (‘It wasn't us who sent you to Afghanistan'), the ones who try and wash their hands of us. What happened to me is still boiling inside. Do I want to have my past taken away from me? No! It's what I live by.

I learnt to walk without my eyes. I get around the city, using the metro and the pedestrian crossings, on my own. I do the cooking — in fact my wife admits I cook better than she does. I've never seen my wife but I know what she looks like, the colour of her hair, the shape of her nose and her lips. I feel everything with my hands and body, which see everything. I know what my son looks like. I used to change his nappies, did his washing, and now I carry him around on my shoulders.

Sometimes I think we don't need our eyes — after all, you close them anyhow when the most important things are going on, and when you're feeling really good. A painter needs his eyes because that's the way he earns his living, but I've learnt to live without them. I
sense
my world now, and words mean more to me than they do to you sighted people.

A lot of people seem to think I'm a man with a great future behind me. ‘You've had it, boy!' Like Yuri Gagarin after that first space flight. But they're wrong: the most important part of my life is still to come. I'm convinced of it.

Your body is no more important than a bicycle, say, and I should know — I was a professional cyclist. Your body's an instrument, a machine to work with, that's all. I realise now I can find happiness
and freedom without my eyes. Look how many sighted people can't see. I was more blind when I had my sight.

I'd like to cleanse myself of everything that's happened, of all the dirt they shoved us into. It's only our mothers who can understand and protect us now.

You don't know how terrified I get at night, jumping a man with my knife, over and over again. And yet it's only in my dreams I can be a child again, a child who isn't afraid of blood because he doesn't know what it means and thinks it's just red water. Children are natural experimenters, they want to take everything to bits to find out how it's made. But blood frightens me, even in my dreams.

A Mother

I rush to the cemetery as though I'm meeting someone here — and I am, I'm going to meet my son. I spent die first few nights here on my own and never felt a moment's fear. I know all the birds' little habits, and how the grass moves in the wind. In spring I wait for his flowers to grow up, out of the earth, towards me. I planted snowdrops, so that I'd have an early hello from my son to look forward to. They come to me from down there, from him …

I sit with him until nightfall. Sometimes I give a sort of scream, which I don't hear until the birds fly up around me. A storm of crows swirls and flaps over my head until I fall silent. I've come here every day for four years, morning or evening, except when I had my heart attack and couldn't come for eleven days. I wasn't allowed to get up, but eventually I did anyway. I managed to get to the toilet on my own, which meant I could escape to my son, even if I collapsed on his grave. I ran away in my hospital nightie.

Before that I had a dream in which Valera said to me, ‘Don't come to the cemetery tomorrow, Mama. It isn't necessary.'

But I raced here and found the grave as silent as if he weren't here. He'd gone, I felt in my heart. The crows sat quietly on the gravestone and railing instead of flying away from me as they usually did. I got up from the bench and they flew up in front of
me, agitated, stopping me from going to the grave. What was going on? What were they trying to warn me about? They settled down and flew up to the trees; only then did I feel myself drawn to the graveside once again. A sense of deep peace descended and the turbulence left my soul. His spirit had returned. ‘Thank you, my little birds, for telling me not to go away. I waited until he came back.'

I feel ill at ease and alone when I'm with other people. I don't belong any more. People talk to me and pester me with this and that. I feel better here with my son. If I'm not at work I'm usually here. To me it's not a grave but his home.

I worked out where his head is; I sit nearby and tell him everything about my everyday life. We share our memories. I look at his photograph. If I stare at it deep and long he either smiles at me or frowns a little bit crossly. We're still together, you see. If I buy a new dress it's only for me to come and see him in and for him to see me in. He used to kneel in front of me and now I kneel in front of him.

I always open this little gate in the railing here and get down on my knees. ‘Good morning, my dear … Good evening, dear … ' I say. I'm always with him.

I wanted to adopt a little boy from the children's home, someone like Valera, but my heart isn't strong enough.

I force myself to keep busy; it's like pushing myself into a dark tunnel. I'd go mad if I let myself sit in the kitchen and gaze out of the window. Only my own suffering can save me from madness. I haven't been to the cinema once in these four years. I sold the colour television and spent the money on the gravestone. I haven't switched the radio on. When my son was killed everything changed, my face, my eyes, even my hands.

I fell madly in love with my husband and just leapt into marriage! He was a pilot, tall and handsome in his leather jacket and flying boots. Was this beautiful bear of a man really my husband? The other girls sighed with envy! I was so tiny next to him, and I got so cross that our great shoe industry couldn't produce a smart pair of high-heels to fit me! I used to long for him to get a cough or cold so I could have him at home and look after him all day.

I desperately wanted a son, a son like him, with the same eyes, the same ears and the same nose. And heaven must have heard my prayer — the baby was the spitting image of his father. I couldn't believe I had two such wonderful men, I just couldn't believe it. I loved my home, even the washing and ironing. I was so in love with everything that I wouldn't step on a spider or a ladybird or a fly, but carry them gently to the window and let them fly away. I wanted everything to live and love as joyfully as I did. When I came home from work I'd ring the bell and turn the light on in the hall so that Valera could see my happiness.

‘Lerunka!' I'd call. (That was my name for him when he was a boy.) ‘I'm home! I've miiiissed youououou!' Out of breath from running back from work or the shops.

I loved my son to distraction, just as I do now. I was brought photographs of the funeral but I wouldn't take them, I couldn't believe it. I was like a faithful dog, dying on his master's grave. I always was a loyal friend.

One time I remember, when I was still breast-feeding him, my breasts were bursting with milk, but I'd arranged to meet a friend of mine to give her a book she wanted. I waited for an hour and a half in the snow but she never came. Something must have happened, I thought, you don't just promise to come and simply not turn up. I ran to her home and found her asleep. She couldn't understand why I burst into tears. I loved her, too — I gave her my favourite dress, the light blue. That's the way I am.

I was very shy when I was young and never believed anyone could love me, and if a boy said I was beautiful I didn't believe that either. But when I did finally launch myself into life I brimmed over with excitement and enthusiasm. After Yuri Gagarin made that first flight into space Lerunka and I were shouting and jumping for sheer joy in the street. I was ready to love and embrace everyone on earth at that moment …

I loved my son to distraction. And he loved me back the same way. His grave draws me as though I hear him calling.