Zinky Boys (23 page)

More coffins came over than cassette-recorders, I can tell you, but that's all been forgotten about …

Damn you, Afghanistan!

My daughter's growing up. We share a single room in a communal flat, although I was promised that when I got home we'd get a place of our own. I went to the housing committee with my documents.

‘Were you wounded?' they asked.

‘No, I came home in one piece. I may look OK, but that doesn't mean I'm not damaged inside.'

‘Aren't we all? It wasn't us that sent you there.'

I was queuing for sugar one day and heard someone say, ‘They brought suitcases full of stuff back with them and now they want special privileges … '

Once I saw six coffins laid side by side: Major Yashenko, his lieutenant and soldiers. The coffins were open, and they lay there with sheets over them; you couldn't see their faces. I never thought to hear men cry, even howl, the way they did there.

Big stone obelisks were put up where men were killed in action, with their names engraved on them, but the mujahedin threw them into the ravines or blew them up to wipe out every last trace.

Damn you Afghanistan!

My daughter's grown up without me. She spent those two years at boarding-school. When I went there her teacher complained about her bad marks. She wasn't doing well for her age.

‘What did you do over there, Mummy?'

The women helped the men, I told her. There was a woman
who told a man, ‘You're going to live.' And he did. ‘You're going to walk.' And he did. She wouldn't let him send a letter he'd written to his wife. ‘Who needs me, now I've lost my legs?' he'd written. ‘Forget about me!'

‘I'll tell you what to write,' she said. ‘My dearest wife, my dearest Alenka and Alyosha … '

You want to know how I came to be there? The CO called me in. ‘You're needed over there,' he told me. ‘It's your duty!' We were brought up on that word, it's second nature to us.

At the clearing centre I came across a young girl lying on a bare mattress, crying. ‘I've got everything I could possibly want at home — a four-room flat, a fiancé and loving parents.'

‘Why are you here, then?'

‘I was told things were going badly here, that it was my duty.'

I didn't take anything home with me — except my memories.

Damn you, Afghanistan.

This war will never be finished — our children will go on fighting it.

‘Mummy, no one believes you were in Afghanistan,' my daughter said to me again last night.

Private

Don't try and tell me we were
victims
of a
mistake.
I can't stand those two words and I won't hear them spoken.

We fought well and bravely. Why are we being treated like this? I knelt to kiss the flag and took the military oath. We were brought up to believe these things were sacred, to love and trust the Motherland. And I
do
trust her, in spite of everything. I'm still at war, really, although it's thousands of miles away. If a car exhaust goes off outside my window or I hear the sound of breaking glass I'll go through a moment of animal terror. My head is a complete void, a great ringing emptiness, like the long-distance telephone
§
or a burst of automatic fire. I can't and I won't just stamp out all that part of my life, or my sleepless nights, or my horrors.

Sometimes we'd drive around singing at the tops of our voices, calling out to the girls and teasing them. From the back of a lorry they all look great! That was fun!

There were a few cowards. ‘I won't go!' they'd say. ‘Even prison's better than war.'

‘Take that!' We'd make their lives a misery and beat them up. Some of them deserted.

My first fatality was a chap we pulled out of a tank. ‘I want to live!' he said — and died. It's unbearable to look at anything beautiful, like the mountains, or a lilac-covered canyon, straight after you've been in battle. You just want to blow it all up. Or else you go all soft and quiet. Another lad had a slow death. He lay on the ground and started to name everything he could see, and repeat it, like a child who's just learning to talk: ‘Mountains … tree … bird … sky … ' Until the end.

A young Tsarandui (that's Afghani for policeman) said to me once, ‘Allah will take me to heaven when I die, but where will you end up?'

Where I ended up was hospital. My father came to see me there in Tashkent.

‘You've got the right to stay in the Soviet Union if you've been wounded,' he told me.

‘How can I stay here when my friends are over there?'

He's a communist, a party member, but he went to church and lit a candle.

‘What did you do that for, Dad?'

‘I need something to put my faith in. Who else can I pray to for your safe return?'

The lad in the bed next to mine was from Dushanbe [Soviet Tadjikistan]. His mother came to visit him with cognac and baskets of fruit.

‘I want you home, son. Who do I have to go and see?'

‘Look, Mum, let's just drink to our health and leave it at that.'

A Mother

Perhaps she's alive, my daughter, somewhere far away from here … I'd be happy wherever she was, just as long as she's alive. I want it so much it's all I ever think of.

I dreamt she came home, took a chair and sat in the middle of the room. She had lovely long hair falling to her shoulders. She pushed it out of her face. ‘Mama, why do you keep calling me over and over again, you know I can't come to you. I have a husband now, and two children … I have a family.'

Even in my dream I remembered that about a month after we buried her I started thinking she'd been kidnapped, not killed. Whenever we went for a walk people used to turn round and look at her, she was so tall and lovely, and her hair just poured. Anyway, no one took me seriously, but I had a sign that she was alive …

I'm a medic and I've always thought of it as a sacred profession. I loved my daughter and pushed her in the same direction. Now I blame myself — if she'd been in some other line of work she'd have stayed at home and be alive now. It's just the two of us now, my husband and I, no other children. It's a completely empty existence. We sit at home in the evening and watch television. Sometimes we don't say a word to each other all night. When I start singing, and crying, my husband groans and goes out for a walk. You can't imagine the pain in my heart. In the morning I don't want to get up but I have to go to work. Sometimes I think I'll just stay in bed and wait until they come and take me to her.

I've got a dreadfully vivid imagination. I feel I'm constantly with her and she's changing all the time. We even read together although now I prefer books about plants and animals, anything but people.

I thought nature would help me, and springtime … We went for walks, my husband and I, saw the violets in bloom and the tiny leaves unfurling on the trees, but I began to cry. The beauty of nature and the joy of life hit me so hard. I was frightened by the passing of time. I knew it would take her, and the memory of her, away from me. Some things about her are receding already,
the things she used to say, the way she smiled. I collected the stray hairs from her suit and kept them in a matchbox.

‘What are you doing that for?' my husband wanted to know.

‘Let me do it. It's all there is left of her.'

I'll be sitting at home sometimes and I'll hear her voice, suddenly and clearly: ‘Don't cry, Mama.' I look round but there's no one there. So I go on thinking about her. I see her lying there, the grave already dug and the earth ready to receive her. I kneel next to her: ‘My darling little girl, my darling little girl. What's happened to you? Where are you? Where have you gone?' But we're still together, as if I were lying in the coffin with her.

I remember that day so well. She came home from work and told me, ‘The medical director called me in today.'

‘And?' Even before she answered I knew something was wrong.

‘He's had an order to send one member of staff to Afghanistan.'

‘And?'

‘What they actually want is a theatre sister.' She was theatre sister on the cardiology ward.

‘And?' I couldn't think of anything to say, I just repeated that one word.

‘I said I'd go.'

‘And?'

‘Someone's got to. And I'd like to be somewhere I'm really needed.'

We knew there was a war on, blood was being spilt, and nurses were needed. I burst into tears, but I couldn't say no to her. She looked at me sternly. ‘We've both taken the Hippocratic oath, Mama,' she said.

It took her several months to get her papers ready. She came and showed me her references, including one which proclaimed she had a ‘correct understanding of Party and Government policy', but I still didn't believe she was going.

Talking to you like this makes me feel better, as though she's here with us, and I'm going to bury her tomorrow. The coffin's here in the room. She's still with me. Perhaps she's still alive … All I want to know is — where is she now? Does she still have her long hair? And what blouse is she wearing? I need to know everything.

To tell you the honest truth, I don't want to see anyone. I prefer to be alone with Svetochka and talk to her. If someone comes in it spoils everything. I don't want to let anyone into this world of mine. I don't want to share her with anyone. One woman did come to see me once, from work. I wouldn't let her go, we sat together until it was so late we thought she'd miss the last bus; her husband phoned, he was worried about her too. Her son had been in Afghanistan, but he'd come back totally different from the boy they'd known. ‘I'll stay home and help you with the baking, Mum,' or ‘I'll go with you to the launderette, Mum.' He was scared of men and only got on with girls. She asked the doctor about it and he told her to be patient and everything would get better. I feel closer to people like her now. I understand them. I could have made friends with her, but she never came to see me again. She saw Svetochka's picture on the wall and cried the whole evening …

But I was trying to remember something … What was I going to tell you … ? Oh yes, the first time she came home on leave? No, how we saw her off when she first left? Her school-friends and colleagues came to the station to say goodbye, and an old surgeon bowed and kissed her hands. ‘I'll never come across hands like these again,' he said.

She did come home on leave. She was thin and small and slept for three days. Got up, ate and slept. And again. And again.

‘How are you getting on out there, Svetochka?'

‘Fine, Mama. Everything's fine.' She sat there quietly smiling to herself.

‘What's happened to your hands, Svetochka?' I hardly recognised them, they were like a fifty-year-old's.

‘There's too much work out there for me to worry about my hands, Mama. Before an operation I wash my hands with antacid. “Aren't you worried about your kidneys?” one doctor asked me. Men dying, and he's worrying about his kidneys. But don't you worry, I'm happy there, it's where I'm really needed.'

She went back three days early:

‘Forgive me, Mama, but there are only two nurses left for the whole field-hospital. Enough doctors but a shortage of nurses. The girls are exhausted. I've just got to go.'

She was terribly fond of her grandmother, who was nearly ninety. We went to see her in the country. She was standing by a big rose-bush and Svetochka told her, ‘Don't go and die on me, Grandma. Wait for me!' Grandma cut all the roses and gave them to her …

We had to get up at five in the morning. ‘I haven't had enough sleep, Mama,' she said when I woke her. ‘I don't think I'll have enough sleep again.' In the taxi she opened her bag and gasped. ‘I've forgotten the key to the flat. What happens if I get home and you're not here?' I found her key in an old skirt and was going to send it to her, so she wouldn't worry about opening the door.

Suddenly she's alive. She's walking somewhere, laughing, enjoying the flowers — she loved roses. I still go to Grandma's, she's still alive. “Don't go and die on me. Wait till I get home!” Grandma still remembers that. Once I got up at night. On the table was a bunch of roses she'd cut that evening, and two cups of tea …

‘Why aren't you asleep?'

‘I'm having a cup of tea with Svetlanka'. She always called her Svetlanka.

I dream about her and in my dream I tell myself, ‘I'll go and kiss her now. If she's warm it means she's alive.' I go to her, kiss her, she's warm — she's alive!

Suddenly she's alive, in another place.

Once I was sitting by her grave in the cemetery and two soldiers passed by. One of them stopped. Oh! That's our Sveta. Look!' He noticed me. ‘Are you her mother?'

I threw myself at him. ‘Did you know Svetochka?'

He turned to his friend. ‘She had both her legs blown off during a bombardment, and died.'

I burst into tears. He was shocked: ‘Didn't you know? Forgive me.' And he ran away.

I never saw him again. Or tried to find him.

Another time I was sitting near the grave and a mother came by with her children. ‘What kind of a mother would let her only daughter go off to war at a time like this?' I heard her tell them.
‘Just give away her daughter?' The gravestone had ‘To My Only Daughter' carved on it.

How dare they. How can they? She took the Hippocratic Oath. She was a nurse whose hands were kissed by a surgeon. She went to save their sons' lives.

‘People!' I cry inside me. ‘Don't turn away from me! Stand by the grave with me for a little while. Don't leave me alone … '

Sergeant, Intelligence Corps

I assumed people would become kinder and gentler after all the bloodshed. Surely they wouldn't want even more killing?