The Matiushin Case (10 page)

‘What's up, bro, not pissed yourself, have
you?'

The folks in the infirmary lined up in the little garden; the infirmary sergeant-major, a haughty soldier with a moustache who wasn't sick with anything
–
in fact he was the plumpest, best-fed, healthiest of them all
–
gave the orders, striding up and down in front of the line. Some called him the ‘boss' and some the ‘foreman', like on a building site. He handed out work to everyone and, not bothering at all that Matiushin was on crutches, he told him to sweep the paths in the garden. Matiushin refused to do it, right there in the line-up. He thought the foreman was making fun of him. The foreman walked up and lashed him across first one cheek and then the other, with his open hand; Matiushin couldn't even raise his hands, he couldn't lift them off the crutches even to protect himself. And the foreman carried on lashing him across the cheeks until the lad next to Matiushin intervened
–
he shielded Matiushin with his body and persuaded the foreman to let him take on the job instead.

Next day the foreman ordered Matiushin to sweep the paths again
–
this time Matiushin kept his mouth
shut.

The day after that Matiushin saw what happened when someone was discharged from the infirmary. They discharged a Kazakh
–
he'd been there for a long time, working as a dishwasher. He was striking to look at and belligerent, the kind that people here said was ‘on the make', like in the prison camps. He'd fed himself up around the kitchen cauldrons all right and got free and easy, but when the foreman hissed that the army surgeon had ordered him to pack up his bits and pieces and leg it back to his company, he dissolved into a pitiful, shapeless lump in front of everyone's eyes. At lunch they could still see his puffy, crimson face in the serving window, but the foreman didn't like that
–
the fact that he hadn't left yet. The foreman finished his lunch calmly and let the others finish theirs, then he went into the snug, dark little room where the cook and the dishwasher worked
–
and everyone heard a loud racket and horrendous screams. They all stayed there, waiting to see who'd get the best of it, no one interfered. About ten minutes later the commotion in the catering block stopped. The foreman appeared, dragging the battered kitchen worker along the floor by his
hair.

‘I told you, didn't I tell you, to clear out of here before lunch? You were asked nicely, right? Decided you were smarter, did you?' the foreman harangued him, feeding his fury with his own words.

‘YabastardIllkillya-a-a!' the dishwasher screeched.

‘You … Don't you go making out you're mental!'

Everyone standing about doing nothing came alive, wanting to get it over with quickly, to smack down this old buddy who no longer mattered to anyone.

The words showered out of every mouth: ‘What were you told? Didn't get it, did you? You didn't get it, you scumbag!'

A week later, they suddenly took Matiushin's bandages off altogether. His feet had healed up. Only he couldn't understand what good they were to him like that
–
healthy
–
now that they'd taken away his crutches. Now that he was well, not doubled up over crutches, Matiushin felt useless and doomed. All that week he'd worked
–
sweeping the paths in the garden, standing duty on the ground floor where the menials lived, running errands for the doctors, lugging medicines and papers about whenever he was sent for. But when they took the bandages off and the crutches away, he retreated to his own floor and hunkered down there, not knowing what would happen to him. The foreman sauntered around that floor without noticing him, and Matiushin was in torment, wondering if there was an order for him to be discharged and what the army surgeon would say. But that evening the foreman called him over and gave him a job to
do.

‘First thing tomorrow you scoot over to the catering block … I promised the cook I'd let him have someone, but watch yourself, you try swinging the lead
–
and I'll have you over in the latrines in a flash!'

Early the next morning, the cook met Matiushin with a knife in his hand and wouldn't let him inside the door of the catering block, making him stand outside among the empty tables. This skinny little Uzbek, who looked like a fourteen-year-old, seemed like a harmless little snake, creeping about but unable to bite. Finally he condescended to let Matiushin in, told him to sit down, thrust into his hands a bowl containing pieces of cold pork
–
actually from the cabbage soup at lunch
–
and sliced up half a loaf of bread. That was how he showed that he was good-natured and could even be generous with chow if he wanted. Matiushin wasn't hungry, but he started chewing away willy-nilly
–
tucking in and taking a look around. The little Uzbek was pleased, thought he'd tamed him. He came up to Matiushin's chest and they were only the same height when Matiushin was sitting
down.

Inside, the catering block was just that, a block
–
square-shaped and faced from floor to ceiling with glassy tiles. It was like a sauna in there: the room got no air, only the hot sunlight. The heat was nothing to the Uzbek. Deciding that his assistant had gorged himself enough, he showed how fierce he could be by grabbing the bowl out of his hands without any warning and barking, baring his teeth, to make him stand over by the
sink.

It wasn't even a sink but a huge vat with aluminium kitchenware dumped in it. The little Uzbek jumped up and sat on the high windowsill, looking down on Matiushin as he worked. When the pans and huge cauldrons had all been washed, he ordered Matiushin to wash the floor and watched him again as he crawled around with the rag. When the floors had been washed, he showed how good-natured he could be again and gave back the bowl of food: Matiushin was already hungry, or perhaps it was rage sucking at his insides. Then the little Uzbek pulled on his cook's outfit over his skinny little snake's body and shepherded Matiushin out with him
–
it was time to take the trolley and push it over to the regimental mess for the rations.

Walking outside the infirmary fence felt as strange to him as being in the streets of an unfamiliar town. On all sides, no matter which way his eyes turned, there were barracks standing blankly on guard, asphalted paths stretching out to make mysterious connections, identical little trees growing. They didn't meet anyone until they were approaching the mess, when they ran into a crowd of soldiers. The little Uzbek drew himself up and stuck out his chest and started shouting, to goad him on. The cast-iron trolley turned stiffly on its three wheels. Matiushin was dragging it from the front, so that he looked more like a dumb animal than anything else. The food cans clattered against each other with a dull chiming sound, and the crowd stared at them in a way that made Matiushin uneasy. The cook ran up and thumped him hard on the back with his fist. The soldier lads hooted approvingly. They started shouting: ‘Go hang yourself! Go hang yourself!'

In the immense chef's kitchen, which could have swallowed up a dozen of their catering blocks, there were three boiling cauldrons that looked like wells and everyone who was hanging around near the mess gathered to take a look at the quarantine soldier. Every last one of them looked like Matiushin's little Uzbek, so Matiushin lost sight of him. Matiushin dragged over the large food cans with noodles, and soup from one of the wells was poured into them by their downtrodden lackey, perched up on a stool in soldier's fatigues so dirty that they were brown. The lackey bustled like a little cockroach, delighted to be right there with Matiushin in full sight of everyone. He gave Matiushin orders in their language, and the Uzbek cooks standing around laughed. No one said a single word to Matiushin in Russian, and the fun of it all was that he didn't understand what they were shouting at him, in fact he did just the opposite of what they wanted. When they were getting the bread, the breadcutter, a big, strapping Uzbek with a bull neck, asked what his name was, and when he heard it was Vasilii, he was delighted: his name was Vahid, which was kind of the same. He was so pleased, he said, that he was making him, Vahid-Vasilii, his little brother, and from now on he would help Matiushin in the regiment, and Matiushin could call him brother: he demonstrated with a rumbling laugh how a brother and his little brother should embrace each other when they
met.

The little Uzbek withdrew into his shell when his assistant and the regimental breadcutter became brothers right there in front of him. The two of them took the loaded trolley back to the infirmary without a word. The noodles were kept ready on the stove until supper and, after supper, Matiushin set to work again. The little Uzbek was in a nasty mood, he smoked and didn't do anything, but Matiushin worked like he'd never worked in his life before. It had already got dark outside, the infirmary was sinking into sleep, but Matiushin had to take a container of the day's waste to the mess on that same trolley. The little Uzbek, staggering about with his big knife in the silent, empty catering block, smiled with a drunken smile that had appeared out of nowhere
…

Following the route that he scarcely remembered and could barely make out in the dark, Matiushin trundled the trolley to the mess, where there were soldiers on fatigue tinkering drowsily with something. These soldiers, who had probably been herded here on the sly to do some kind of dirty work, swarmed round him from all sides; they wanted to make him do the work for them. They kicked and mauled him until some powerful man appeared out of the night: a single glance from him sent them creeping off into various corners, back to their
jobs.

Matiushin dragged himself back to the infirmary, drove the trolley into its stall, trudged off to his own floor and into his ward, where he fell into a deep, work-worn sleep. And early in the morning, when everyone was still sleeping, the little Uzbek, who looked as if he hadn't slept a wink and could hardly even speak, woke him up
–
it was time to go off to the regimental mess for the rations.

Three times a day he fraternised with Vahid, drove the trolley to the regimental mess and washed the tableware, the kitchenware and the cauldrons. At midnight, when he took the waste to the mess, the hungry, cowed soldiers from the kitchen fatigue were waiting for him. And from early in the morning he languished in the catering block, deprived of something more than mere freedom, left one-on-one with the little Uzbek.

The Uzbek wasn't very bright and everyone yelled at him because he was so slow on the uptake. But all the yelling had no effect at all: he remained deaf. His job in the infirmary was a doddle because he didn't boil or roast anything, except maybe for his friends and himself; he got the rations ready-cooked from the regimental mess
–
the only thing he did was cut the bread with the huge knife that he never let out of his sight.

The cook spent all day sitting in the catering block, going out at night. It turned out that he was a local man
–
home for him was a collective farm outside Tashkent, and his wife and younger brothers came to see him every other day, bringing food from home. They also brought him cannabis, which he hid in a little pouch under the stove. He'd probably gone crazy ages ago, visibly withering away from smoking this stuff. The cook smiled stupidly and said nothing, but that was the madman inside him, cunningly hiding, keeping shtum and smiling. If he got any kind of feeling, for instance, if he was suddenly afraid, then the fear overcame him completely, filling up his soul so that it flowed over
–
and he could be frightened to death just like that by an empty saucepan clattering on the floor. He couldn't actually work; he couldn't even be forced to work. He didn't sleep at night, because he couldn't sleep unless he smoked himself into unconsciousness. And there was a special significance to the fact that he never ever put down his knife: the huge bread knife was the only thread that bound him to life, without it he couldn't feel or understand anything. He was killing himself, but it was as if he was playing with death, which had become impersonal to him, it was everybody's
–
but nobody knew that. He lay in ambush for Matiushin when they were alone together in the catering block, waiting for moments when he bent down or sat on a stool, and then skipping up to Matiushin from behind and setting the large blade to his throat. The first time this happened, Matiushin barely had time to be afraid, the pounce was so sudden. He thought the cook wanted to frighten him and tried to push his hand away. But the little Uzbek started trembling all over and pressed the knife against his throat without speaking, and then Matiushin started trembling too, like him, with his eyes goggling … Matiushin's fear of death gradually calmed the cook down
–
and perhaps saved Matiushin's life. Waiting until the cook's grip slackened and he lowered the knife, Matiushin flung him against the wall. The little Uzbek cringed and looked at him with dim, watering, spiteful little eyes. But a day later it all happened again.

No one came to help Matiushin. Half-awake at most, they ran as far as the latrine
–
in other parts of the building there weren't even supposed to be any lights on; the catering block was submerged in darkness, as if its hull was holed and it had choked on the night's black waters and drowned. Stoned out of his mind, the cook held the knife at Matiushin's throat, ready to slit it at the slightest excuse, and kept on demanding an answer to the question: was his wife unfaithful to him out there on the loose or not … The little Uzbek got carried away and started telling Matiushin about his wife, complaining that she wanted to kill him and brought him poisoned food, and that she had another husband who also wanted to kill him. And he tortured Matiushin as if he could really know the truth. Matiushin repeated after him, like an echo, that his wife wanted to kill him, and this went on for half the night, until Matiushin felt like he was answering the little Uzbek through his own delirium. The cook, half-dead, as if someone had been torturing
him
all night there in the catering block, eventually sank into oblivion, finally letting go of the big knife. He sprawled on the floor, like a sleeping dog. Matiushin kicked him in resentment, but then lugged him off to his bed
–
everyone in the infirmary was still asleep
–
clearing him away like a corpse.