The Matiushin Case (13 page)

They climbed into the iron lobby of this slammer on wheels. The entire back of it was taken up with two cages divided by a partition and locked shut; there was something living lurking in them, making low grumbling sounds. Matiushin was struck by
–
not a stench exactly, but a fusty, earthy smell, like from a greenhouse. The soldier slammed the door shut behind them and walked away. There was a smell of hunger and pain. They heard gates rattling
–
the van drove out and the back of it started swaying about and screeching, clattering the cages. Rebrov sat in his corner with a haunted look, not saying a word. Matiushin clambered over to the window and breathed in the fresh wind. First they were run around through the town for a little bit, and then driven into the gloomy, frozen steppe and dragged on across
it.

They would have gone for each other's throats, but they'd run out of strength ages ago. They held out until a stumpy little railway station flashed by in the window and there was a whiff of soot from a railway line and a glimpse of the chipped wooden boards of houses or sheds
–
they couldn't make out which in the damp, smoky, cotton-wool air. A minute later the truck sputtered into silence. A soldier swung the door open and stood to one side, as if he was used to it, dangling his automatic rifle in his
hand.

They climbed out at a neat, tidy barracks that looked like a residential block. About three hundred metres away, a sheer, high, long, dirty white wall soared upwards, as if it was patching a hole in the sky. There were nesting boxes on its naked apexes, and they could see the little fledgling sentries. The sentries watched from on high as the truck drove inside and dropped off two unknown men
–
they waved their arms and shouted. There was a distant hoot from the station. The roofs of a village stood, hunched over, out in the steppe. A welcoming little family of soldiers darted out of the domestic-looking barracks to surround and greet the new arrivals. All the soldiers looked the same and they all gaped at Matiushin and laughed, their eyes flashing and twinkling:

‘A new Karpovich has arrived! Karpovich's brother! Karpovich's brother has arrived!'

The genial officer, the elderly, grey-haired man who had driven them from Karaganda in the prison truck, was the sergeant-major here; Matiushin heard his name
–
Pomogalov.

Pomogalov sat in a separate room, the orderly room, with its doors standing wide open, and fell asleep like a log at his desk. Everyone who was in the barracks whiled away the time until lights-out in the recreation room. Matiushin remembered the name of one of the soldiers, Dybenko, and the story that he, or some other soldier, told about a girl being raped in some town or other. Dybenko presided in the recreation room, apparently in charge there. He sat in the middle, half-naked, stout and ponderous. In the meantime, his trousers were being ironed for him by a ginger-haired soldier with whom he spoke like an equal, to show the others that he wasn't humiliating the soldier, simply training him. Apart from the incomprehensible exclamations when they arrived, the new arrivals in the company were given the silent treatment. Rebrov tried to break into the general conversation, but they listened to him without saying anything and looked
away.

As the soldiers trickled out of the recreation room Dybenko started talking. He turned lazily towards Matiushin, nodded at his uncovered shoulder, where he had spotted the tattoo, and asked:

‘What's the idea, suicide boy? In the correctional zone you get killed for a tattoo like that.'

‘Why don't you just piss off!' Matiushin swore without even thinking, sick and tired of all this uncertainty and of being examined.

‘Well, sorry,' Dybenko said awkwardly. ‘But round here we don't wear designs like that, you need to understand, whatever your human name is, if you have
one.'

Matiushin came to his senses and told him his
name.

‘Well, since you're Vasilii, let's talk. I'm Vasilii too. But don't go dropping any more clangers like that. This is the zone. You answer for what you say here. Once you've said it, consider it done. You take a life or else … you have yours taken.'

He was half-frowning, half-smiling. He gave Matiushin a needle and a razor, without the slightest sign of squeamishness, and spoke in an ordinary voice, no longer guilty.

‘Help yourself, no charge, suicide boy, but spoil what's mine and you have to give me back two like it or die. If you've borrowed something, know what the payback
is.'

The dormitory wasn't a barracks either but a large hall. There were more empty beds than Matiushin could count. The men slept on whichever they liked, wherever they liked, but he already knew that the empty beds belonged to men on twenty-four-hour guard duty in the zone. Tomorrow the men here would go off to the zone, merely exchanging glances with the others at the change of guard. He took a bed in an alcove next to Dybenko, who called Matiushin over, questioned him to his heart's content in the darkness and cheerfully told Matiushin all about himself. Dybenko turned out to be a yearling sergeant who had been demoted and exiled from his regiment because when he was drunk in an attic somewhere he'd flung the macaroni that he was eating with his vodka at a portrait of Brezhnev … When Dybenko got tired, he started falling asleep, and Matiushin only just remembered in time to ask why he'd had those exclamations about some Karpovich or other shouted in his
face.

‘A-a-ah … We've got this screwball here … Keep well away from him, or he'll pollute you too … ' Dybenko replied sleepily.

Morning came. An officer appeared in the barracks
–
young, swarthy-skinned, supple: he walked past the soldiers, not letting them near him, disdaining them. The officer watched everyone in silence. The hall filled up with movement, like a fermenting tub. Drunk on their own drowsiness, the men all walked in the same direction, all did the same thing. In the yard, after they'd jostled their way outside, semi-naked, the cold bit into their skin, and it jerked Matiushin awake like pain. The great, dirty-white wall was still standing there, frozen motionless in the steppe, stony hard in the damp air. On one watchtower there was the black figure of a sentry wrapped in a cloak tent, but the towers further off disappeared into the mist, which was like clouds that had wandered down from the
sky.

After the usual morning bustle and an almost home-style breakfast in a half-empty mess the size of an ordinary room, with little flowers painted on its walls that gave off a sharp smell of oil paint in the warmth, the time after reveille was abruptly cut short. The soldiers left to go to work: from their well-fed mutterings Matiushin realised that they were going to the zone. But the new arrivals were separated off and stayed with the soldier who was on orderly duty in the silent barracks, abandoned by everyone. They weren't told what to do. So now they were like orderlies too, with no place of their own in all this empty space. Then the officer, who had also stayed in the barracks, called them in to his office one at a
time.

The officer sat at a desk, and Matiushin sat on a stool facing the officer. Sitting inside these four walls, the officer seemed either lonely or very haughty. He asked a series of apparently simple questions, wanting to hear something about Matiushin's family and his past, but in reply Matiushin only complained stubbornly that he had ended up in this regiment by mistake and he ought to be sent back to Tashkent. He'd spent less than twenty-four hours in this new company but, after the way they'd called him by someone else's name, jabbing their fingers at him as if he was a freak, he felt so lonely here that he was having dismal thoughts about himself. Probably this first acquaintance aroused a feeling of aversion in the handsome, manly officer; as he let Matiushin out of his office, the officer looked straight through him. Matiushin was aware that he hadn't been any help, and he walked out indifferently, as if he was sinking down under water. He was only surprised by the man's surname
–
Arman
–
and the fact that he turned out to be the company's deputy commander for political affairs at such a young
age.

The soldiers came back tired from their work and they looked more cantankerous over lunch. One barked out that those who hadn't been working should only take the black bread; they weren't supposed to eat the wheat bread. After lunch, lights-out was suddenly announced: they were supposed to sleep in the middle of the day. For Matiushin, getting into bed felt a bit bizarre, like packing himself into a box. Weary, the soldiers fell asleep one by one and then, after reveille, between five and six, they got ready for the
zone.

The weapons room looked like a cage, with a row of thick metal bars instead of one wall. It was right there, deep inside the sleeping area. The soldiers walked through the hall, with its rows of empty beds, already armed. Their automatic rifles were black, with battered wooden facings on their stocks. The empty beds and black automatics filled Matiushin's eyes, crowding out the men. The genial sergeant-major from the day before, Pomogalov, went off to the zone, in charge. A little girl, his daughter, had come to the barracks with him from the village, muffled up in a winter scarf. She held on tight to her father, which amused the soldiers, but she wasn't afraid of them at all. The sergeant-major managed to be affectionate with his little daughter and shout at the soldiers as well. The soldiers strode off along the road to the zone, respectfully slowing their step for their commander's tiny daughter, who slithered her little feet over the dirt behind her father.

After some time, the platoon coming off duty from the zone appeared on the road. They burst into the yard with their automatics and scattered. In an instant the yard was like a meadow covered with faces instead of grass and blossoming with non-Russian speech. Some, gasping and swaying, ran clumsily behind the barracks. Others disappeared into the barracks or dashed to fraternise with the mellow, well-fed day orderly and grab his delicious cigarettes. Matiushin and Rebrov now became part of this platoon; they merged into it and milled about in the yard, as if they were with everybody
else.

‘Karpovich, there's your brother,' cheerful voices called out in delight. It was the non-Russians standing to one side who were shouting. They watched and waited, urging on someone who couldn't be made out amid the motley rabble. Matiushin stared into that rabble, searching for someone who looked like him, but out came a smiling, thick-lipped, round-faced man
–
the very picture of a cook. He flung his big arms out, as if he had been pining wearily for a long time, and grabbed Matiushin, bear-hugging him at speed.

‘Greetings, brother, I've heard about you,' he sang out in front of everybody. ‘I've been waiting impatiently to say hello. How have you settled in? How are you getting
on?'

The men around them chortled and guffawed. They were laughing at the soldier, because he spoke so loudly and mawkishly. They were amused by the way he toadied to Matiushin, who glared at him with a mixture of anger and detachment.

Matiushin remembered very well what Dybenko had said in the night, but this wasn't the man he had been expecting as he grew less rational and angrier during the day. This man was pitiful in the way he tried to please, but had the strength of patience and was big, solid and strong in general.

Another two men entered the yard from the road on their own
–
a titchy little pigeon-toed sergeant and a solemn, severe soldier, leading an equally severe-looking Alsatian at his heels; the dog was swinging its head around briskly in its collar, drawn towards the men. They were walking on past, but the soldier looked round and shouted:

‘Karpovich! Follow
me!'

The mass of soldiers fell dismally silent. The yard was suddenly
calm.

‘Come on, don't forget about your friend,' the soldier said with a smile and added rapidly: ‘Come the evening, we'll take a stroll well away from this lot, where it's a bit quieter. I'll enjoy it especially.'

Karpovich set off at a brisk run, overtook the two men, and the three of them disappeared round the corner of the barracks together. But there was a morbid floundering in that man, something downtrodden that made Matiushin feel sorry for him. That was the way people with a hernia moved
–
struggling, holding it with their hand. Matiushin caught a glimpse of flinty-looking seams on the tops of Karpovich's boots
–
exactly the same as the freaks that Matiushin was dragging about on his own feet. At some time Karpovich's boots had been slit open and then sewn up with either wire or string in exactly the same way. Matiushin realised that he had been recognised as this pitiful man's double because of his boots.

He stood there, the first in line, with Karpovich beside him, relieved to realise the truth. At supper they were seated by height again, beside each other. Karpovich nibbled on leaves of white bread like a caterpillar. The men laughed at him, the way they probably always did, but he ate his fill, enjoying it. Not everyone at the table ate white bread, only six or seven men from the entire platoon, and for some reason Karpovich had that right. In the barracks Matiushin asked Karpovich for a razor and a needle and thread. Everything required was found in an instant and Karpovich whispered:

‘I sensed a kindred spirit immediately, let me tell you honestly. I've suffered more than my share too, but it hasn't got them anywhere, so don't let it get to you, little brother.'

Karpovich spoke as if he was being watched. Before lights out Matiushin gave back everything he had borrowed from him without a word. In this platoon the alcove where Matiushin and Dybenko had spent the night belonged to different men. Without a bed of his own, Matiushin was obliged to go back to Karpovich, who knew which beds were free. Everybody tried to huddle together and not sleep out in empty space. Matiushin spotted Rebrov running about, lackeying for someone. When it was already night Matiushin was woken by a loud voice that he didn't know. In the darkness he made out someone being roused from his bed and led away. Then he calmly fell asleep. Morning came. The same officer was striding round the barracks.