Free Fall (19 page)

I had just taken position at one of the windows and was aiming at an armoured car when Shoe arrived.

‘What the fuck are you doing, Kolima!' he yelled, startled. ‘That's one of ours!' and he pulled the grenade launcher out of my hands.

Only then did I notice that it was already dark outside – it must have been late. I'd wandered around the building all day under the effect of the concussion.

‘Go down to the courtyard and sleep with the others!' Shoe said.

Obediently, I went to the exit.

I walked down the hallway of this building where people had once lived and now there was only destruction, while the shards of that ruined peace crunched under my feet: glass, pieces of paper, broken furniture, pipes, burned books, bricks . . . in some places the ceiling had caved in; a block of reinforced cement leaned against a wall, it was straight and whole as if it had been cut out precisely, with a chisel.

I was so exhausted I felt like a magnet was holding me to the ground. My body didn't hurt anymore, the blows I'd taken on that never-ending day had been completely absorbed by the emptiness that my tiredness had plunged me into. I was limping, dragging my swollen foot; I could see it bent in an unnatural way but I didn't feel any pain. My headache, too, had become almost pleasant. Reality
had gone and hidden somewhere else; a cloud of fog had fallen before my eyes, and like a giant strip of gauze, had dressed all my wounds . . .

Around me ran our infantrymen, paratroopers, the
spetsnaz
– they were all agitated, shouting, repeating the commands they'd been given. Right as I was passing by a room with windows overlooking the street, a violent burst of fire came. The bullets crossed the room and lodged into the wall in front of me. A cloud of dust rose up, and small bits of cement and plaster hit me in the face. Instinctively, I closed my eyes, but without making too much of it, and I continued down the hall. About ten infantrymen came in and started shooting wildly from the windows.

The rhythmic sound of the bullets calmed me down. It was hypnotic, it made me feel the calm and comfort you feel when you climb into a bed with clean, warm sheets after a day of tiredness and cold . . . Everything around me was moving at maximum speed, the battle was going ahead even if we had already condemned the enemy to defeat . . .

These are the moments in war in which human strength goes beyond its absolute limit; a sort of second collective breath comes on and everyone becomes fast and synchronised, like machines. But I saw everything as if in slow-motion; I felt like I was outside that reality.

I went out to the courtyard, where there were four armoured cars and a tank. There weren't many lights around, but the clearing was full of our soldiers, bustling around like ants. Ten artillerymen were placing two heavy
mortars right in the middle of the yard, and within seconds they were ready to fire. Everywhere there were open crates with cartridges for AKs, hand grenades, ammunition for grenade launchers, and coils for submachine guns.

To one side, our dead were laid out in a row. There were ten or so. One of them had the infantry insignia on his sleeve; someone had put a lit candle in his hands, which were folded on his chest. Another had lost an arm, which they had tied to his neck with a piece of fabric from his uniform. Some of the bodies were completely charred, but seemed tall as normal. They were covered with military tent fabric, but the cloth had shifted a little to the side, perhaps it had been the wind. One had the skin on his face burned off; he didn't have a nose or ears and his teeth stuck out, as if he were growling. Last, there was a body with just the left arm – he had lost both legs, and around him there was a pile of other arms, legs, pieces of ankles and hands. A piece of cardboard was attached on top with the date written in ballpoint – it was the day before our arrival, when the infantry had suffered a night attack from the enemy – and someone had added, in handwriting like a three-year-old child's: ‘Boys, here are all the pieces of the 201st unit, there was nothing else left in the area.'

An infantry lieutenant was standing beside the armoured car. I went over to him, and saw that he had a hole in place of an eye – the wound had been plugged up with a rag. He grimaced with pain, but he still continued giving orders to three sergeants, one of whom had a bloody bandage around his left arm.

Moscow was sitting on our car, treating his wounded leg. When he saw me he called me over right away, asking for help. I climbed up onto the BTR like a zombie; I didn't want to do anything.

Everything around us was black; the only light came from the machine gun turret, which Moscow had turned towards his leg. He was holding surgical pliers and a scalpel – the hole was about ten centimetres above his knee, towards the outside of his leg. The good kind of blood, the kind that's not too thick, was coming out of the wound, but there was a lot of it.

‘You were so lucky,' I said, looking at his leg. ‘A few centimetres and it would have hit your artery . . .'

‘What the fuck are you talking about!' He was irritated, but his voice didn't betray any trace of suffering. ‘There's no way they're going to get me in this war. The gypsy told me . . .'

Without replying I took the scalpel from his hand and made two cuts around the wound a few centimetres wide. That way it would be easier to extract the bullet; pulling the skin down on both sides, I would try to pull the bullet as far out of the flesh as possible.

Moscow intently observed the way I cut the wound, disinfecting it as best I could with a dirty rag that smelled like gasoline.

As always, he found something to complain about:

‘Is that what you call a cut? Come on, go deeper!'

‘What, have you got a missile in there?' I responded. ‘That's enough, don't be annoying . . . Just hand me the pliers.'

Moscow made a disgusted face and passed me the pliers. I noticed that my hand was trembling from tiredness. Trying to gather my last strength, I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Behind my closed eyelids, instead of darkness, I saw flying stars, white circles and flashing lights – a clear sign of exhaustion.

‘What are you waiting for, I'm tired too!' Moscow shouted at me, bringing me back to reality.

Then he took his leg with his hands and violently pulled the skin down. The wound widened immediately and blood started pouring out – the skin was almost turned inside out. The light was directly on his leg, but even with that I couldn't see much. I strained to put things into focus.

I stuck the pliers into the wound, and they went down, sliding around smoothly. I pushed slowly, until the point hit the end of the bullet. I opened the pliers slightly, closed the bullet in the grip and tried turning it a little to make sure I had a good hold. The bullet seemed pretty firm and stable, so I tightened the pliers until they went
clack
.

Moscow was still. After all the action he was still full of adrenaline; the shock caused by the trauma hadn't yet subsided. At that moment I could have taken his appendix out without anaesthesia and he wouldn't have felt a thing.

With my hand trembling, I very slowly extracted the bullet from my friend's leg. It was a 5.45-calibre, it had definitely come from a model of Kalashnikov that has a short barrel, which had not put much force on the bullet. If it had been shot from a long-barrelled rifle, that same bullet would have entered the body but wouldn't have
stopped, it would have travelled, slicing through the flesh, leaving little hope . . . A bullet like that could go into your leg and come out of your neck, making a pâté of your internal organs. Moscow had been very lucky.

I cleaned the wound a little more, since it kept bleeding, then I took out one of my medi-kits. Moscow didn't have any more: he'd just given his last one to one of the infantry soldiers.

‘Hang in there, boy, you're all grown up now,' I said, passing him a needle and thread. ‘You should sew it up, my hands are shaky . . .' He took the kit without a word, but he gave me a friendly slap on the back, his way of saying thanks.

I jumped down from the car, and walking unsteadily as if drunk, I went over to the back where Shoe was already sleeping.

I set down my rifle and couldn't even get my vest off before a superhuman force pinned me to the ground.

The soil was hot, boiling almost – I could feel it vibrate with every explosion. Thus sleep came over me, and looking up at the starry sky I felt a piercing sense of fear and weakness. I could no longer tell whether the stars I saw up there were real, or if they were just fiery bullets that were going to rain down over me. I wondered what those lights could be, and in this state of uncertainty I fell asleep. I was too tired, so tired I would have let myself be killed by the stars which I confused with the flaming lead mercilessly falling all around me . . .

We slept for an entire day. One of the infantrymen had thrown a tent cloth over us, just like the one we used to
cover the bodies of the fallen. Even the clean-up crew took us for dead. One of them gave me a kick in the chest, as they would do – and as I had done too – to drive the rats out of the bodies.

I moved, and he was startled. I pulled down the cloth and sat up, looking around me, confused. There was no trace of the infantrymen; they had gone ahead with the rest of the troops.

Our car was the only one left in the yard. Next to it there was just one tank, and behind that a small mobile kitchen, where there was something good boiling on the fire. Two tankers were sitting on the tank, eating hot food out of little individual pots.

Behind me, I could hear that Shoe had woken up too. He gave me such a hard slap on the shoulder that I almost fell over.

‘Ahhh, damn, what a great nap . . .' he said. ‘And now it's time to eat! Let's move, Kolima, before everything gets cold!'

I scratched my head without really understanding, and I responded:

‘Let's go, yeah, I'm dying to eat . . .'

And along with him I went limping towards the kitchen.

We ate in silence. When we finished, Shoe came out with a statement that seemed to me like an absolute truth:

‘I understood for the first time today how nice it is to be in the world.'

That's what he said, simply, and it felt like he was showing me his soul as a material thing, like an object there in his hands.

_______________

*
This is what we called the armoured car drivers.

*
Radio code for casualties.

*
Radio code for wounded.

*
According to Russian military code, you may only salute with your hat on.

†
An officer in the Cossack army.

 

The forest burned over the river

and along with it burned the dawn.

Out of eighteen boys

only three of us remain . . .

How many dear friends

have fallen in the dark,

near an unknown town,

in a place with no name . . .

From the song of the Russian veterans of WWII

Russia is a country whose citizens are the first to support government corruption. This is why our society will never be able to become democratic or liberal: the Russians can only live properly under some form of dictatorship.

A statement made by the history teacher at Bender's top middle school

Parade uniform collects dust on the shelf,

moths eat at the gold epaulettes.

And we have the tough and thankless lot

of defending this world without law.

Today ancient evil's not scared of the cross,

chaos is trying on the crown,

and he who still has a clean conscience

is destined to become an outlaw.

On a series of fronts generals stage

this new drama of the nation,

but because of this theatre season

an officer's dignity is against the law.

In the bought prattle of media hacks

and functionaries at every level

we deploy on a military mission,

where our every step is unlawful.

In this poor downtrodden nation

that so much resembles a prison,

someone might as well stay

in the civil war – the outlaw.

Song by Sergei Trofimov dedicated to the officers and soldiers who took part in the counter-terrorist operations in the Chechen Republic

It was late October in Chechnya when our team was given a temporary post. We were sent to the 46th motorized infantry unit base. The position was in the mountains, at a strategic point with a view of two very narrow valleys.

The word going around was that the explorers had sounded the alarm because the enemy was concentrating military forces in those mountains. There were two large armed groups equipped with Igla single-fire missiles, a surface-to-air missile system they had used to take down one of our transport helicopters.

A few units from the two paratrooper divisions had reached the base first, in tanks and armoured cars; you could sense that a big military operation was getting underway, with several units of the Russian Army involved.

No specific orders came for three days but lots of strange stories circulated among the soldiers about that helicopter explosion. Some said that an officer from command had been on board, so it had to do with the death of someone important; others just kept saying it was scandalous for the enemy to possess one of our most powerful weapons. The infantry officers had in fact explained that some Iglas, about ten, had been stolen during a battle when one of
our columns transporting equipment had been attacked by the Arabs.

As usual, Captain Nosov derided all these theories, and would say it was about illegal trafficking, supported and run by the men in command. He cursed those double-crossing traitors, who according to him sold all our most cutting-edge, high-tech weapons to the Chechens and Arabs to help them to resist us as long as possible, because ‘it's in their interest for this war not to end too quickly'. As the captain often said, ‘The generals and politicians at the Kremlin eat our charred flesh and drink our rotten blood.' Sometimes his rants almost seemed poetic.