Zinky Boys (27 page)

‘Have you got a girlfriend?' his army pals asked him.

‘Yes,' he said, and showed them my old student card with a photo of me in long, long curls.

He loved waltzing. He asked me to dance the first waltz at his
graduation ball. I didn't even know he could dance — he'd had lessons without telling me. We went round and round and round …

I used to sit by the window in the evening, knitting and waiting for him. I'd hear steps … no, not him. Then more steps, yes, ‘mine' this time, my son was home. I never guessed wrong, not once. We'd sit down in the kitchen and chat until four in the morning. What did we talk about? About everything people do talk about when they're happy, serious matters and nonsense too. We'd laugh and he'd sing and play the piano for me.

I'd look at the clock.

‘Time for bed, Valera.'

‘Let's sit here a bit longer, mother of mine,' he'd say. That's what he called me, ‘mother of mine', or ‘golden mother of mine'.

‘Well, mother of mine, your son has got in to the Smolensk Military Academy. Are you pleased?' he told me one day.

He'd sit at the piano and sing:

‘My fellow officers — my lords!

I shan't be the first or the last

To perish on enemy swords.'

My father was a professional officer who was killed in the siege of Leningrad, and my grandfather was an officer, too, so in his height, strength and bearing my son was born to be a soldier. He'd have made a wonderful hussar, playing bridge in his white gloves. ‘My old soldier' I used to call him. If only I'd had the tiniest hint from heaven …

Everyone copied him, me included. I'd sit at the piano just like him, sometimes I even caught myself walking like him, especially after his death. I so desperately wanted him to live on inside me.

‘Well, mother of mine, your son will soon be off!'

‘Where to?' He said nothing. I started to cry. ‘Where are you being sent, my darling?'

‘What do you mean “where”? We know very well where. Now then, golden mother of mine, to work! Into the kitchen — the guests'll soon be here!'

I guessed immediately: ‘Afghanistan?'

‘Correct,' he said, and his look warned me to go no further. An iron curtain fell between us.

His friend Kolka Romanov rushed in soon after. Kolka, who could never keep anything to himself, told me that they'd applied to be posted to Afghanistan even though they were only in their third year.

The first toast: ‘Nothing venture, nothing gain!'

All evening Valera sang my favourite song:

‘My fellow officers — my lords!

I shan't be the first or the last

To perish on enemy swords.'

There were four weeks left. Every morning I'd go to his room and sit and watch him while he slept. Even asleep he was beautiful.

I had a dream, a warning as clear as a knock at the door. I was in a long black dress, holding on to a black cross carried by an angel. I began to lose my grip and looked down to see whether I would fall into the sea or on to dry land, and saw a sunlit crater.

I waited for him to come home on leave. For a long time he didn't write, then one day the phone rang at work.

‘I'm back, mother of mine! Don't be late home! I've made some soup.'

‘My darling boy!' I shouted. ‘You're not phoning from Tashkent, are you? You're home? Your favourite bortsch is in the fridge!'

‘Oh no! I saw the saucepan but didn't lift the lid.'

‘What soup have you made, then?'

‘It's called “idiot's delight”! Come home now and I'll meet you at the bus stop!'

He'd gone grey. He wouldn't admit that he was home on hospital leave. ‘I just wanted to see that golden mother of mine for a couple of days,' he insisted. My daughter told me later how she'd seen him rolling on the carpet, sobbing with pain. He had malaria, hepatitis and other things, too, but he ordered his sister not to say a word to me.

I started going to his room in the morning again, to watch him sleeping.

Once he opened his eyes: ‘What's up, mother of mine?'

‘Go back to sleep, darling, it's still early.'

‘I had a nightmare.'

‘Just turn over, go back to sleep, and you'll have a good dream. And if you never tell your bad ones they won't come true.'

When his leave was over we went with him as far as Moscow. They were lovely sunny days with the marigolds in bloom.

‘What's it like out there, Valera?'

‘Afghanistan, mother of mine, is something we should definitely not be doing.' He looked at me and at no one else as he said it. He wiped the sweat from his brow and embraced me. ‘I don't want to go back to that hell, I really don't,' he said, and moved away. He looked round one last time. ‘That's all, Mama.'

He had never, ever called me ‘Mama', always ‘mother of mine'. As I say, it was a beautiful sunny day and the marigolds were in bloom. The girl at the airport desk was watching us and started crying.

On the 7th of July I woke up dry-eyed. I stared sightlessly at the ceiling. He'd woken me, he'd come to say goodbye. It was eight o'clock and I had to go to work. I wandered round the flat, I couldn't find my white dress for some reason. I felt dizzy and couldn't see a thing. It wasn't until lunchtime that I calmed down.

On the 7th of July … Seven cigarettes and seven matches in my pocket, seven pictures taken on the film in my camera. He'd written seven letters to me, and seven to his fiancée. The book on my bedside table, open at page seven, was Kobo Abe's
Containers of Death
…

He had three or four seconds to save his life as his APC was crashing into a ravine: Out you jump, boys! I'll go last'. He could never have put himself first.

‘From Major S. R. Sinelnikov: In execution of my military duty I am obliged to inform you that 1st Lieutenant Valery Gennadevich Volovich was killed today at 10.45 a.m. … '

The whole town knew. His photograph in the Officers' Club was already hung with black crêpe, and the aeroplane would soon be landing with his coffin. But no one told me, no one dared … At work everyone around me seemed to be in tears and gave me various excuses when I asked what was wrong. My friend looked in at me through my door. Then our doctor came in.

It was like suddenly waking from a deep sleep. ‘Are you mad, all of you? Boys like him don't get killed!' I protested. I started hitting the table with my hand, then ran to the window and beat the glass. They gave me an injection. ‘Are you mad, all of you? Have you gone crazy?'

Another injection. Neither of them had any effect. Apparently I shouted, ‘I want to see him. Take me to my son!'

‘Take her, take her, or she won't survive the shock.'

It was a long coffin, with VOLOVICH painted in yellow on the rough wood. I tried to lift the coffin to take it home with me. My bladder ruptured.

I wanted a good dry plot in the cemetery. Fifty roubles? I'll pay the 50 roubles. Just make sure it's a nice dry plot. I knew it was a swindle but I couldn't object. I spent the first few nights here with him. I was taken home but came back again. It was harvest time and I remember the whole town, and the cemetery too, smelt of hay.

In the morning a soldier came up to me. ‘Good morning, mother.' Yes, he called me ‘mother'. ‘Your son was my commanding officer. I would like to tell you about him.'

‘Come home, with me, son.'

He sat in Valera's chair, opened his mouth and changed his mind. ‘I can't, mother.'

When I come to the grave I always bow to him, and I bow to him again when I leave. I'm only home if people are coming. I feel fine here with my son. Ice and snow don't bother me. I write letters here. I go home when it's dark. I like the street-lights and the car headlights. I'm not frightened of man or beast. I feel strong.

‘I don't want to go back to that heil.' I can't get those words of his out of my mind. Who is to answer for all this? Should anyone be made to? I'm going to do my best to live as long as possible. There's nothing more vulnerable about a person than his grave. It's his name. I shall protect my son for ever …

His comrades come to visit him. One of them went on his knees. ‘Valera, I'm covered in blood. I killed with my bare hands. Is it better to be alive or dead? I don't know any more … '

I want to know who is to answer for all this. Why do they keep silent? Why don't they name names and take them to court?

‘My fellow officers — my lords!

I shan't be the first or the last

To perish on enemy swords'

I went to church to speak to the priest. ‘My son has been killed. He was unique and I loved him. What should I do now? Tell me our old Russian traditions. We've forgotten them and now I need to know.'

‘Was he baptised?'

‘I so much wish I could say he was, Father, but I cannot. I was a young officer's wife. We were stationed in Kamchatka, surrounded by snow all year round — our home was a snow dugout. Here the snow is white, but there it's blue and green and mother-of-pearl. Endless empty space where every sound travels for miles. Do you understand me, Father?'

‘It is not good that he wasn't baptised, mother Victoria. Our prayers will not reach him.'

‘Then I'll baptise him now!' I burst out. ‘With my love and my pain. Yes, I'll baptise him in pain.'

He took my shaking hand.

‘You must not upset yourself, mother Victoria. How often do you go to your son?'

‘Every day. Why not? If he were alive we'd see each other every day.'

‘Mother Victoria, you must not disturb him after five o'clock in the afternoon. They go to their rest at that time.'

‘But I'm at work until five, and after that I have a part-time job. I had to borrow 2,500 roubles for a new gravestone and I've got to pay it back.'

‘Listen to me, mother Victoria. You must go to him every day at noon, for the midday service. Then he will hear your prayers.'

Send me the worst imaginable pain and torture, only let my prayers reach my dearest love. I greet every little flower, every tiny stem growing from his grave: ‘Are you from there? Are you from him? Are you from my son?'

*
Communist Union of Youth. Until recently, membership was almost unavoidable.

†
Basmach: A Central Asian partisan fighting for independence in the Civil War after the Revolution. Tolstoy's story deals with a similar war of resistance to Tsarist rule in the Caucasus.

‡
Meresyev was a World War II pilot who lost both his legs in action but, equipped with artificial limbs, returned to the front to perform further acts of heroism.

§
In the Soviet Union a trunk call is signalled by a longer and harsher ringing tone than that of a local call.

¶
A reference to a few well-publicised cases of Soviet Army deserters who were taken from Afghanistan to the USA and other Western countries (where they were much feted) but who later returned voluntarily to the USSR.

#
Kirzachi
: heavy, multi-layered waterproof boots of substitute leather. Foot-bindings are used in the Soviet Army instead of socks.

Postscript: Notes from my Diary

I perceive the world through the medium of human voices. They never cease to hypnotise, deafen and bewitch me at one and the same time. I have great faith in life itself — I suppose I'm an optimist by nature. At first I feared that the experience of my first two books [about World War II] in this ‘voice genre', as I call it, might actually get in the way of this third venture. I needn't have worried, for this was a totally different war with much more powerful and merciless weaponry: take, for example, the ‘Grad' rocket-launcher, which is capable of dislodging a mountain-side. The bitter psychology of this conflict was also very different from the positive mood of the nation as a whole during World War II: Afghanistan wrenched boys from their daily life of school and college, music and discos, and hurled them into a hell of filth. These were eighteen-year-olds, mere school-leavers who could be induced to believe anything. It was only much later that we began to hear such thoughts expressed as, ‘We went to fight a Great Patriotic War, namely World War II, but found something totally different.' Or, ‘I wanted to be a hero but now I don't know what kind of a person they've turned me into.' Such insights will come, but not soon and not to everyone.

‘There are two things necessary for a country to love bullfighting. One is that the bulls must be raised in that country, and the other, that the people must have an interest in death.' (From
Death in the Afternoon
by Ernest Hemingway.)

After excerpts from this book were published in various newspapers and Belorussian magazines a storm of queries and opinions, judgments, convictions and prejudice, broke about my head, together with the political rhetoric inseparable from ‘intellectual' life in our country. There was a deluge of telephone calls, letters and personal encounters which left me feeling that the book was still in the process of being put together …

From some of those letters:

I find your book impossible to read. It makes me want to cry out loud, perhaps because it is only now that I begin to understand what kind of war this was. Those poor boys — we all stand guilty before them! What did we know about the war? We should embrace every one of them and ask his forgiveness. I didn't fight in this war, but I was part of it.

Here are some of the things I felt, thought and heard at the time.

I read a book by Larissa Reissner, a Bolshevik writer of the 1920s, describing Afghanistan as full of half-naked tribesmen dancing and chanting, ‘Long live the Russian magicians who helped us drive out the British.'

The April Revolution gave us the immense satisfaction of believing that socialism had triumphed in yet another country. All the same …