The Matiushin Case (20 page)

‘Who is it?' the Chinese asked in a low voice.

‘Some beast … ' Dybenko whispered behind his back. ‘Young, sleeping so soundly and sweetly. Ah, he needs a fix. Maybe I'll go up and take him while he's wasted
…'

The trainer stayed with the Alsatian
–
he squatted down and put his arm round the dog, choking it slightly so that it wouldn't make any sudden movements.

Dybenko and the Chinese crept towards the tower. During those long moments the cold caught up with Matiushin and the other waiting soldiers and they started feeling chilly. For some reason the sergeant stopped at the steps and Dybenko climbed up the tower alone, disappearing into the half-light. As Matiushin watched Dybenko climbing the steps like a hunter, drawing out the sweetness of it, he started trembling as the passion awoke in him to yell out at the top of his voice. Why, never mind; yell! He'd slip the automatic off his shoulder, strip this lot naked and make them dance!

The sleeping soldier didn't sense anything. He was lost in his dreams. Matiushin didn't feel sorry for him, he just didn't want to get stuck here waiting. This dopehead meant nothing but delay for Matiushin. Suddenly he heard the dopehead shriek and actually saw the tower shudder bodily. The Chinese shouted something, everybody relaxed and moved closer along the path, exchanging mocking comments. Laughing, Dybenko kicked the hophead head first down the steep steps from the tower. When he slithered off them the Chinese set about him, not giving him a chance to stand up. The soldier came to life and shuddered with joy at falling into the hands of his own kind. Realising they were making fun of him, he played up to them, babbling away in his own language. The trainer moved aside, restraining the growling Alsatian, and grinned. He'd been going to set about the dopehead seriously but he could see they'd turned it into a bit of fun. The dopehead rolled about, grunting, enough to make you die laughing; he writhed about as if he was dying and they didn't have the heart to trample on
him.

Matiushin just stood there, waiting. But they were enjoying themselves; they were in no hurry to abandon their fun. And then he couldn't take any more. He pushed the frozen brutes aside, stepping through from behind their backs, gazing with a painful ferocity at the dopehead writhing at his feet, and struck him a dull blow with the butt of his rifle, as if to crush him. The dopehead gave a shrill squeal, clutched his head and lay still, whining.

Dybenko started
back.

‘What did you slug him for, we were having fun … ' he said, and started helping the dopehead up off the ground.

The soldier struggled with all his strength to stay on his feet. The blood oozing out of his head was thicker than his short-cropped hair so it didn't run off but froze above his forehead in a brownish patch the size of a five-kopeck coin; he still had his smile, although now it looked guilty. He didn't believe they wouldn't carry on beating him. Dojo had kept out of things until this moment, but he came dashing in to restore order and they walked on in silence, moving round the camp, with the fences and the wire closing them into a circle without an exit, which they could only walk on round, from tower to tower. The squad crept on like a single caterpillar track and Matiushin a part of
it.

Now he fancied that he was crawling, not marching. He was disgusted by the painful realisation that he hadn't achieved anything by taking out the dopehead, but was still dragging himself along even more agonisingly with all the others: as painfully as if he was the one who had been stunned by the rifle butt. Panting and not marching but jerking himself forward, he gradually fell behind, failing as his strength ran out. He needed to get up that vodka tower and get through his watch as quickly as possible
–
and then they'd let him sleep, sleep, sleep … This muttering was enough to relax Matiushin a little bit, but it was just like when he was drifting in his sleep, he felt as if he was being crushed, squeezed up, shoved aside, and he filled with a trembling that was like little lead pellets. It was that other one who was sleeping, it was him, the bastard. That was what it was:
he
was sleeping. The trembling ran through Matiushin, its little pellets bit into his body and, in the grip of this deadly inner chill, Matiushin grew frightened, as if he was starting to drown and
die.

As soon as they reached the vodka tower, despondency swept over the other soldiers as well; the Chinese and the men from the other squad drove Matiushin on so they wouldn't have to dawdle. They wanted to get away from this lousy place as soon as possible. Matiushin shared the watch on the vodka tower with a tame young soldier whose name no one in the company even knew. Matiushin was the only one who associated with him, as his watch partner. The soldier was clutching his automatic in his arms and mumbling something mournfully, endlessly. Matiushin climbed up the tower. He'd have to explain to the creature that his time was up
–
otherwise he wouldn't even realise it and would spend the whole night there. Matiushin had to hit him so it hurt, then he'd understand and the fear would make him clear out. But when this creature had to take over from Matiushin it was just the opposite; he would stare down stubbornly at the ground and not move a step until the sergeant overseeing the changeover drove him up the tower with his fists.

Someone shouted up after Matiushin:

‘Don't sleep, Matiukha, or you'll get fucked!'

The soldiers didn't wait for them. The squad moved on, flowing away hurriedly along the path into the darkness in which the guardhouse was already glimmering.

‘Fuck off out of it!' Matiushin yelled, kicking out with his
boot.

The soldier huddled into a corner and started keening something pitifully.

‘Come on, or I'll give you some real hassle!' cried Matiushin, ready to throw himself at
him.

The little soldier calmed down. And he was moved to say something: to complain. Matiushin calmed down himself and agreed.

‘You're right there … Hang in there, hang in there … The two of us know it: you and me are going to die here
…'

The beast's eyes were glazed and dim, but suddenly they flashed, and he shed a tear as he realised something, or perhaps took fright again. Then he couldn't hold back and started bawling in his fear. And Matiushin hit him hard right in the very soul, in the pit of the stomach.

‘I'll kill you, you bastard, get out of here!'

When the soldier disappeared from view, it grew dark on the vodka tower. It had been black before, but now it turned even blacker. Matiushin looked round desolately at the realm he was meant to guard. The railway branch line from the zone ran right next to the tower and the round form of the convicts' hospital loomed up out of the blackness. Only a vague outline of everything was visible now: walls that weren't walls, rails that weren't rails, ground that wasn't quite ground … And this was the point where the great expanse of the steppe, which from morning to night stretched out wider than the sky, withdrew from the camp territory to wait at the guard-post lamps: even the strength of its vastness wasn't enough against their no-man's-land, hard-labour light.

At night the warders would be led out of the zone. A handful would be left as a formal presence and they'd shut themselves in as securely as possible and wait for the morning. Because the branch line ran by there, the exclusion zone and the barriers were absolutely negligible at the vodka tower. Here a convict could spit in the soldier's face and leap over all the barriers in a single bound. Never mind flasks
–
you could drive a tractor along the rails into the zone without leaving even a trace, and no one would
hear.

Matiushin felt like running away from the vodka tower, but he kept standing there. Only the tower room didn't suit his height. In order to stay standing, he either had to slump over lopsidedly against the wall or bend his head down. He twisted himself round and lit a cigarette, feeling inconsolably angry. Life was shit because it was a long march to the vodka tower and, when you got there, there wasn't enough space to live in. And nothing to look at, and nothing to think about.

While you were content with just one square foot of land in the world, you stood on just that one square foot. But the moment you looked up at the sky, you scraped your dirty face against its vastness. And you felt so vile: the most you could ever do on your own little patch of land was choke on it or defile it. You were a low, creeping creature in these expanses, and you'd been given a square foot of ground as an act of mercy. But how can you live if you hate life itself? You'll live with a struggle, in a fury … Croak? No damn way! Shove over?
You
go and croak!

But the wind lashes at your face and hurtles off into the steppe, and breathing against its blast is frightening
–
you start gasping and it rips open your chest from the inside. There's the wind driving along a huge cloud of dust, there it is straining against a guard tower, setting it cracking and humming. And it comes hurtling out of everywhere, and thrashes about everywhere, as if it's seeking refuge, but the space is so vast that it goes rushing on impetuously.

He heard a rustling sound close by and a convict who looked like he was bricked into his clothes limped out into the light of the guard-post lamp, making no attempt to hide. Looking closely at him, Matiushin slipped the automatic off his shoulder just in case, but he decided that there was nothing to be alarmed about: maybe it was some deadbeat from the hospital
–
they sometimes came out and staggered about at night, for the fresh air. Then the convict relaxed, squatted down and stretched out his gnarled hands, as if warming himself at a little campfire.

‘Well, lad, how's army life?'

‘What do you want?' Matiushin snarled.

‘I'm waiting for the shop to open. I need a drink. Sell me something … ' the convict whined. ‘I'll pay top price, lad, sell me something
–
I'll die otherwise
…'

‘All right. Twenty roubles, and you'll have your booze. Throw it in under the tower. They'll pick it up there. But you'll have to wait,' Matiushin hissed. He saw a little bundle fly through the
air.

The convict silently turned away from Matiushin and walked back into the darkness of the
zone.

Matiushin suddenly choked. It was a gust of wind, setting the camp beating its knotted living shadow, its ragged, dishevelled head, against the ground until it swelled up with black blood, and then reeling back into the night, as if it drew strength and solidity from this blood. Sensing intuitively that this was a turbulence of the air, that somewhere in the steppe the winds had clashed, hurtling together precipitately from all sides of the world, and their currents and their lightning bolts, hewn out of the steppe, would pound at the camp
–
at the chimneys, the beacons and the guard towers
–
Matiushin sat down on the floor of his little hut, where it was like being in a coffin. He lit a cigarette with chilly fingers, no longer hearing the wind's howls but a profound silence. Drying himself out with the warmth of the smoke, dragging it in deeper and harder, in order not to fall asleep, Matiushin didn't doze or sink into a tobacco stupor but dreamed timelessly and motionlessly. Suddenly what had been tormenting him unawares ever since he woke rose up clearly and simply out of his weakened entrails: last night he had grown tired of the time he had lived and the time he still had to live
–
deadly tired. And even if that desperate young guy hadn't shoved him off the bunk, he would still have gone off onto the path, dragging this deadly weight with him, thinking in his shuddering impatience that he could overcome it, finally defeat it. And instead of selling moonshine, scurrying about with it night after night, he felt like getting drunk on it and burying himself in the steppe, in order to sleep soundly through at least one night.

Yet at this point something stronger than his own will, some other fear, like a second wind, made him tense up and jump to his feet. The zone stood there docilely in its twilight rows of barriers. Not a sound, not a rustle on all sides apart from the noise of the wind. However, this order and silence in the night was a quiet torment to Matiushin, destroying his peace. He looked out and listened, uncertain what he was preparing for but remembering that the vodka tower was due for a visit.

A minute later, from the next tower after his, the one that completed the circle round the camp and stood right beside the guardhouse, there was the hoot of a challenge
–
the guard there had passed the test, he hadn't slept through it. But they were moving round the path in reverse, not the regulation way, because the reverse route to him was less visible and shorter
–
and the shout warned him that the vodka tower would soon have visitors too. He waited for a man to appear out of the distant darkness of someone else's guard post, but soon heard the jerky, gurgling breathing of an Alsatian that seemed to surface from under the ground and fixed its eyes on the steep spire of the watch tower, throwing its head back as if howling silently. The Alsatian was guarding Matiushin for the trainer, who had let it off the lead, sending it on far ahead to reconnoitre at the vodka tower; if any warders came close on the zone side to check, if there was even one living soul anywhere nearby, the Alsatian would do its job and start barking; the trainer would know that the coast wasn't clear and he ought to march past the tower without stopping.

Matiushin made out the trainer and the titchy Chinese hurrying after him, afraid to march in front for some reason. The closer they came, the harder Matiushin found it to breathe. And when the sergeant and the trainer drew completely level with the tower, so that Matiushin could hear the Chinese panting and his automatic and accessories jangling, all he felt was the oppression of a boredom and a depression that were infinitely alike. He was bored because he knew everything and depressed because the Chinese simply wouldn't calm down, he kept on twitching and jangling mournfully, as if he was stuffed full of copper coins.