The Matiushin Case (16 page)

In the guardhouse the sergeant-major punished him, but the punishment was the usual dirty work: scouring down the cast-iron latrine in the privy with a brick. Before that Matiushin had never sunk so low as scrubbing down the latrine, but everyone saw where he went off to with a brick in his hand to carry out the sergeant-major's order. While he was scouring, no one came to relieve themselves except Pomogalov, who squatted down in front of him without any embarrassment, laughed good-naturedly and
said:

‘Sorry, son, I couldn't hold out. I've left plenty of shit in here, you know. But what were you smoking? All right, we'll keep shtum then, keep shtum … You got started early … But watch out, don't go rushing things, son. The zone doesn't like those that move too fast, it punishes them.'

In the middle of the day (and Matiushin still hadn't completely finished his punishment, because he'd been away on his watch on the tower) Arman appeared in the guardhouse: he knew all about everything and had come to hold an investigation, but when he heard from the sergeant-major that Matiushin was scouring the latrine, he disdainfully decided not to meet him and was even piqued about something. No full investigation took place. Matiushin was called by the dejected sergeant-major, who passed on the political officer's instructions to leave the guardhouse and his post and walk to company headquarters unarmed. When he arrived in the barracks, thinking he was going to an interrogation, Arman's new order was waiting for him, transmitted in equally disdainful fashion via the day orderly: take a rag and a basin and wash the floors in all the rooms. The company barracks was a two-storey building and this job had never been done by one man because he would have been crawling around on the floors all night long. Realising that this was a continuation of his punishment, Matiushin took off his tunic in order not to get it dirty and set to work, running out to the summer washing area to change the water in the battered aluminium basin. As he was running like this he met Karpovich, whom he hadn't seen anywhere for a long time except for the changeovers at the guardhouse, when one platoon handed over to the other. Karpovich stopped, clearly not in any hurry, and looked at him sadly.

‘I've heard how things are with you: you caused a real uproar in the zone. So they've decided you won't go out on guard duty any longer. Arman wants to make you the permanent cleaner, so think on that, my cunning
lad.'

Matiushin turned away and strode off to finish washing the barracks, feeling his back shuddering as the other man watched him go. That evening at the roll call Arman ordered Matiushin to step forward out of the line and announced to the first platoon that Matiushin would no longer be going out on guard duty. And then the next day, after ordering Matiushin to step forward out of the line again, he announced to the second platoon that he was appointing Matiushin as the cleaner.

On Sunday Matiushin was taken to the military prosecutor's office instead of the bathhouse. The sergeant-major rode in the prison truck with him again, but he was taciturn and angry.

The old two-storey mansion of the military prosecutor's office looked like a henhouse, and even in summer it seemed chilly and rotten, so Matiushin trod cautiously on the squeaking floorboards, afraid that they would fall apart, and he stared in amazement at the doors beside which sickly-looking soldiers were sitting, waiting to be seen, like at a doctor's. The duty investigator turned out to be a youthful lieutenant, thin, with a pointy-nosed face. Overjoyed that a son had been born to him the night before, he spoke rather soulfully with Pomogalov and peered wearily with his sleepless eyes at the document sent with Matiushin, trying to make sense of it as he reluctantly started the interrogation. However, in the course of that interrogation Matiushin discovered the most important thing for him: that morning a signalling device on the door of his tower had been tripped and it had sent the alarm to the guardhouse.

It was pointless trying to deny it, so he confessed to having left his post, but he gave the same answer to all the questions after that: he went down the tower to relieve himself. Pomogalov barked at him, ashamed, and jumped up off his chair, all set to leave, because he suddenly couldn't bear the investigation any longer. The lieutenant took pity on him and flushed, nodding provocatively in Matiushin's direction.

‘Well go out for an hour or so if you like, dad, get some fresh air, we'll soon beat out of him what he needed to relieve himself of, we'll stick him behind bars.'

‘Ah, that's clear enough, he just needed a pee. He's not stupid … They don't court-martial you for that … ' Pomogalov exclaimed in exasperation. ‘You won't beat anything out of him. Look at him, you couldn't beat a speck of dust out of someone like that. It's just Arman playing the fool
–
he's the one who needs to be taught a lesson, he needs his face smashed against the desk. You know, they were all officers in his family, oh yes, and he boasts about his French blood. You know, they ended up with us when that Napoleon came over here. So they're fucking Napoleons. And the prick's a noble too, of course! Just give him some men so that he can lean hard on them, he'll enjoy that, show everyone what he's made of, he'll be a big man, maybe a marshal, a triple Hero of the Soviet Union. He hasn't got a life of his own and he won't let anyone else have one
–
he's for order, he puts things in order. Otherwise, without that order, he hasn't got even a shred of strength, nothing but arrogance. Why do you think he sent me here and kicked up a stink? Because he knows that I'll go back to the company with nothing apart from that stink, and that's what he wants, to make it look like I'm the one giving off the stink. He's trying to undermine me, creeping closer, the little frog. Well, we'll see who comes out on top; we'll see who's stronger! He'll get his order! I'll make a hero out of
him!'

Matiushin's life became one endless, drowsy hassle. He wandered around the barracks with a rag and a basin, more like a mouse or a cockroach than a man. When the cleaner got tired of hoping that Arman would forgive him and let him go out on duty, he became dejected and started neglecting himself. The dirty work made him dirty, and his fatigue and anger made him lazy and indifferent to his own condition. The political officer was just waiting for Matiushin to disobey orders, but Matiushin didn't have the will
–
or even the strength
–
to disobey orders after all these months. He still showed his teeth if someone tried to make him lackey for them personally, and he didn't allow the soldiers to beat him: he only gave in to the Chinese
–
the titchy sergeant liked to hide behind his back at line-ups and pinch him from behind the way a woman would.

The sergeant was called Dojo. He kept company with the trainer of the army dogs. There was a little world apart, an enclosure with a wire fence the height of a man, out on the edge of the company's territory, where they kept the Alsatians in cages in the summer and in an outbuilding during the winter cold season. Matiushin wasn't supposed to clear up after the Alsatians but, one day, Dojo lay in wait for him at a deserted spot and started pinching him fiercely and hissing that from now on he should go to clean out the dogs' enclosure and do what the trainer told
him.

With time Matiushin started recognising the Alsatians and telling their personalities apart. A black male with the nickname German, the trainer's favourite, took a dislike to him. There were also two stupid young bitches who barked at Matiushin as soon he approached the cages and, although they were in sections at opposite ends of the enclosure, they flung themselves at the wire at the same moment, barked together and calmed down together. The best dog was an old bitch who had worked in the army for some time. When he walked into her cage she lay there calmly with her head between her paws, looked at the broom and realised that he had come to clean up. Later Matiushin started smelling so strongly of the dogs' shit that she probably didn't even think of him as a man any more but a working dog like them who walked on two paws. In her cage Matiushin could always take a rest and have a smoke
–
the old Alsatian gladly shared that time with him. She kept an eye on every movement he made, and if something started slipping out of her field of view, she turned her head or changed her lying position so that she could see everything. That was the way she kept her own order.

Cleaning out the cages was no longer an oppressive burden for Matiushin. He realised that he was doing something for the Alsatians that they couldn't do for themselves, like children. The trainer sensed this and tried to think up even filthier work, but at the same time he started trusting Matiushin more. He was jealous: he didn't let the soldiers near the Alsatians and the Alsatians didn't like the men very much, but seeing that Matiushin had come to love the Alsatians and was making an effort, the trainer trusted him to feed and walk them. Matiushin hid himself away there. The only person who visited him was Karpovich. That is, it looked as if he came to visit Matiushin but what really took him to the dogs' enclosure was some kind of business with the trainer and the Chinese, who called him into the outbuilding, from which they would all emerge about five minutes later, one at a time, glancing around; Karpovich would come out looking either furtive and resentful or smiling and contented. After emerging hurriedly from the outbuilding, he never simply went his own way, but sat down beside Matiushin and started up long conversations that lasted a lot longer than those five minutes. He either complained or boasted, calling everyone bastards, trusting Matiushin with all his hopes and dreams, but the moment he was asked about those strange meetings in the outbuilding he either fell silent or tried to turn it into a
joke.

Karpovich himself remained a mystery to Matiushin. One day he said he was tired and wanted to clear out and that he had a plan for doing it. One man in the company who hated him was Dybenko. But it turned out that this was to Karpovich's advantage, and he even deliberately tried to rile Dybenko. That way, when Karpovich wanted, he would easily be able to make Dybenko furious, and all he needed was for someone to give him a really hard beating. Then he would end up in the hospital and, after that, it was all very simple: he would go home, because of his injuries, and Dybenko, who had injured him, would be condemned to a disciplinary battalion
–
and all legal and above board!

Matiushin believed Karpovich, although it was sickening to know and understand what he was keeping up his sleeve. From that day on Matiushin kept that secret as if it was his own, as if he too could break out and be free. The repair work crept over from the zone to the barracks, so that the men entered it along ramps, straight through the window into the sleeping area, which was partitioned off with scaffolding, with the beds shifted into one corner. Prisoners on work release were brought in to do the painting and whitewashing: they wandered around the barracks, pestering the soldiers for matches or cigarettes. For lack of space the soldiers slept two men to a bed. On 1st September Arman went away on leave, disappearing from the company just as cleanliness, peace and order had disappeared from
it.

By the time that man left, all the floor-washing amid the dirt of the repairs, the clambering in through windows and sleeping in heaps, had left Matiushin without any feelings, thoughts or desires, and every day he merely waited drearily for something that was hovering in the air, which had been made new and strange by the smell of fresh paint drying. Then Karpovich started to irritate him with his meaningless conversations: Matiushin would probably have beaten Karpovich himself, and he even imagined it more than once when his reason or patience was exhausted. Karpovich's complaining and groaning roused an incomprehensible fury in him. They seemed to come from some other life, they were alien and unnecessary, just a heap of petty
junk.

But one day there was loud shouting and everybody ran to the mess, where it sounded as if someone was being killed. Karpovich was lying on the floor, screaming terribly, his face bloodied and his eyes staring wildly, while the cook Gadjiev towered over him. At the slightest sign of movement he beat Karpovich about the head and arms with a ladle. The men simply surrounded the site of this bloodletting but no one interfered, and in any case Gadjiev wasn't the kind of man who could be subdued even by a crowd like that. He had ended up as a cook during his first year in the army, after shooting a runaway from his tower. He was given home leave and, when he came back, he was transferred to work in the mess. That was the unwritten rule because if he had stayed on his tower, he might never have served out his time: the convicts would have done for him in revenge. Gadjiev was in clover as a cook, he had power in the company, but he was afraid of the zone and rarely left the cook's quarters except at night, for a breath of air. Matiushin stood in the crowd with everyone else, astonished that Karpovich's plan was being realised, although he saw the cook there, instead of Dybenko. But the Chinese came running up and the crowd slunk away. Nothing was said about taking Karpovich to the hospital. The titchy sergeant led the platoon off to the zone, as usual, and Karpovich, who had already washed himself down and seemed pleased about something, marched off to go on duty with the rest of
them.

Twenty-four hours passed. The platoon came back and, in the arms room, while they were handing in their guns and the bullets from their automatic clips, and the duty officer was signing for them, Karpovich suddenly started rushing about and howling, even weeping: after twenty-four hours on guard duty his clip was three live bullets short. When the duty officer realised that Karpovich wasn't playing the fool and all this wasn't just a joke, he ordered Karpovich to be held there while he ran off to get his superior. Karpovich was led away and interrogated all night long, and in the dormitory, which was on the same floor, they could hear him weeping and groaning. Whispers ran round the beds in the dark. Everybody understood what had happened. Matiushin understood too. In the guardhouse after every watch you handed in your rifle to the arms locker, but the pouch with the automatic clip had to stay with you throughout the twenty-four hours of guard duty, so you walked and ate and slept with it on your belt, ready for action the moment the signal came. If even a single bullet disappeared, a court martial was inevitable, and then the disciplinary battalion, even though the only proof of guilt was the fact that the bullet had disappeared. But that was exactly why Karpovich couldn't have robbed himself, just as he couldn't have lost those bullets, jammed into the automatic clip. Someone had opened his pouch, probably when he was sleeping, taken out the clip, clicked out those three bullets and then put the clip back into the pouch without Karpovich feeling anything or noticing when he went to his tower afterwards. One of their own must have done it, someone who had walked along the path with him to the same watch
–
or Dojo; someone who could have been in the guardhouse dormitory at the same time as he was and pretended to be sleeping.