The Last Hiccup (17 page)

Ileana leaned into Pavel's ear and whispered something, but his friends were so very amused and he was causing such a scene, he doubled his efforts.

“One of my friends at the sawmill told me all about your homecoming, Vlad. They said that you can't read or write. What have you been doing all these years that you haven't managed to learn how to read?”

Vladimir gave Discarov a look of abject hatred. Deep within, a red rage escalated. He glanced around. The entire bar had been drawn to the scene. They were all eagerly anticipating Vladimir's reply.

“I've become a hunter,” Vladimir said. “I've killed all manner of beasts in faraway lands.”

“Oh, I heard about that too.” Discarov's voice dripped with witless sarcasm. “I heard that you killed a pile of rats over at the mill. Is that what gets you off, rat-boy — stacking up piles of dead rats?”

Despite the lack of intellect or depth of wit behind his remarks, Discarov's friends broke out into a sea of hilarity. Never before had Vladimir been forced to match wits. He dreaded doing so. With his lack of education and inexperience at trading barbs, he would be destined to lose, even to an opponent as demonstrably unfunny as Discarov.

Vladimir gave Ileana a final look. He closed his eyes and breathed in her sweet smell one last time, then turned to walk back to his booth.

Discarov, however, was not done.

“Off he goes again,” he cried. “Poor hiccupping Vladimir is heading back to his land of make-believe, where he bangs away on sheep and murders
indriks
for sport.”

Ileana stood up and told Pavel to stop. Discarov grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back down into her seat.

Vladimir's eyes filled with fire. Needles shot through his arms. “Don't you hurt her,” he said.

“She's not your girl,” Discarov said, his hand still firmly gripping Ileana's arm. “So I fail to see how what I do is any concern of yours.”

Vladimir looked at this brute's doltish expression, his thick square skull and the beginnings of a wart on his chin. With each passing moment Pavel Discarov tightened his grip on Ileana's arm, cutting off her circulation and turning her wrist purple with pain. Vladimir felt that familiar sensation, that violent green mixed with piercing red that used to stab through his brain at night. He could take it no longer.

“If you don't release her — I will kill you,” Vladimir said.

The two men circled one another in the ankle-deep snow outside. Around them, the bar patrons had turned into a pulsing throng of humanity. They cheered and cried out, some raised glasses of beer while others jostled for better position. Above, a light layer of snow descended in wide, sparse flakes, incongruous with the battle about to take place. Vladimir positioned his legs. He raised his fists in the air and stared into the hulking beast that Discarov had become. Pavel towered over Vladimir, his shoulders round and wide. His jaw had a thickness to it that suggested even a running thrust with a mallet would do no damage. Discarov raised his fists as well. Each was nearly the size of Vladimir's head.

In Vladimir's haste, in his anger, he'd neglected to take into account that while sitting down, Discarov had near equaled his height. He must have outweighed Vladimir by twenty-five kilos. Still, Vladimir stood his ground in the snow. The cries and jeers of Discarov's friends, the cacophony of noise from the bloodthirsty onlookers, even Ileana's pleas for the men to stop, melted into the Russian night. Vladimir was ready. He'd been ready for this his whole life. He stepped forward with clenched fists. Discarov cocked his arms. Vladimir was not afraid. David had his slingshot. Vladimir had his cunning, his passion, his rage.

He swung a wild punch at Discarov.

The man moved aside and Vladimir's punch sailed through the air past the colossal brute. Vladimir lost his footing and turned around, trying to right himself. The last thing he saw was Discarov's fist driving into his face. Vladimir reeled. His jaw gave way and his legs turned to jelly. The world faded to black.

Vladimir came to slowly. The sudden unexpected unconsciousness was for a brief respite warm and comforting. Like the naked embrace of a devil-hearted woman who fears letting you go, the darkness held on longer than it had claim to him. Vladimir's eyes opened to see the black Russian sky dotted with fluttering flakes of snow. He tried to sit up, but his head hurt and his jaw was locked in place. The hiccups remained. Only now they hurt. A pang of pain shot along Vladimir's neck and jawline with each consecutive yelp.

A trio of concerned faces hovered over him. One was the female folksinger. Vladimir could see right up her nose. Beside her a gray-bearded man had a look of great concern and to that man's right was Ileana. She hadn't left. With the help of the bearded man, Vladimir sat up. Five meters away he could see the bar patrons filing back into the tavern, no doubt disappointed that his conflict with Discarov hadn't had more sport to it. Ileana was saying something. Vladimir reached up and cleared the snow out of his frozen eardrum.

“Are you okay?” she said again.

Vladimir tried to stand. The man helped him up by the elbow but he slipped and landed in the snow again. “I think I'm just going to sit here a while,” Vladimir said.

The bearded man and the folksinger waited a few moments before succumbing to the cold and following the others back into the tavern. Vladimir cleared the snowflakes from atop his head.

“Where were you all this time?” Ileana said.

Vladimir reached into his pocket and put on his wool hat. He couldn't bring himself to tell her about the hospital, about Mongolia, about Gog and the Waterfall of Ion. “I was in Moscow, mostly,” he said. “I left the country for a while too.”

Ileana sat down beside him; she rested on one leg so as not to get her entire bottom wet in the snow. Since the moment she had seen Vladimir, she'd had a curious gaze on her face, the meaning of which Vladimir couldn't quite place. He knew nothing of women. The conversation with nurse's aide Strekov was the most he'd spoken to a woman in a decade. Ileana's voice was gentle and soft. In the distance the tavern door closed, and now it was the two old schoolmates sitting alone in the snow.

Vladimir rubbed his jaw with his hand. His legs still felt like two slabs of rubber. “I thought of you while I was away.”

“Have you been hiccupping this whole time?” she said.

Vladimir nodded.

“Does it hurt?”

“It does since Pavel punched me in the face.”

Ileana laughed. Vladimir laughed too, a short little chortle that caused his jaw to lock into place.

“Where are you staying?” she said.

“At my mother's house. She's been living here the entire time I was away.”

“I know,” Ileana said. “My aunt takes her bread and fish once a month.”

“Are you married?” Vladimir said. It was an awkward statement, an assertion more than a question. Vladimir didn't know any better. He watched Ileana's shoulders stiffen, her slight smile flee her lips.

“Pavel and I are engaged,” she said. “We're planning to move to Saint Petersburg. It's beautiful there, I've been told. Pavel has a cousin who settled down in Saint Petersburg a few years back. People say it's just like Western Europe, that it's more like living in Sweden or Finland than Moscow. There I might get a job in the war effort or perhaps go to school.”

“But you're safe here. You're safe from the Nazis and the kamikazes.”

Ileana shuffled her tongue along the inside of her mouth. “I'm not afraid of the Germans,” she said and paused as if she were wondering whether or not she believed it. “I'm more afraid of never leaving this village, of never finding where I belong.”

“When are you going?” Vladimir said.

“Soon. Maybe in the springtime. Within the year.” A silence fell between them and hovered heavy in the night. Vladimir wished he'd known what to say. Ileana stood up. She brushed the snow off her leg. “I should head back inside.” She turned to walk toward the tavern.

“Can I see you again?” Vladimir said.

Ileana stopped. “I'm engaged to marry Pavel.”

“Not as lovers. As friends,” Vladimir said. “I don't have any friends in Igarka. It's been so long since I was here. It would be nice to have someone to talk to, someone to have the occasional meal with.”

She hesitated. “I don't know,” she said.

“See me once before you leave then,” he said. “Before you go away to Saint Petersburg and I never have a chance to see you again.”

The lights from the tavern silhouetted Ileana from behind and Vladimir saw once again the profile of her face. It was still pristine, still unimaginably beautiful. He wanted this moment to last forever, he and the little girl in the sailor suit grown up, her figure in curves, her eyes wide and bright in the snow-covered night.

“This Sunday I'll be driving into town to buy groceries,” she said. “You may accompany me if you wish. But only as a friend.” Her voice stressed that point as though she were talking to a small child. “Only as a friend, do you understand?”

Vladimir nodded.

Ileana started walking backward toward the tavern. “I'll meet you outside the old schoolhouse at 9 a.m.,” she said.

“I'll be there,” he said.

“Don't be late.”

“I won't.” Vladimir's smile spread from ear to ear. He watched her walk up the stairs and open the tavern door. The revelry echoed out into the night.

“And, Vladimir,” she said, “it's good to have you home.”

The next morning when Vladimir arrived at work, something seemed strange. He pulled up on the back of his coworker's dogsled, stepped into the shin-deep snow and stood in front of the mill to find it eerily quiet. Even at this early hour before the rise of the sun, the mill should have been a veritable hodgepodge of noises. The rackety old log loader, the four-sided canter with its malfunctioning linear positioners, the creaky vises and screeching saws, voices yelling up to the second floor and voices calling back down — it all added up to a blusterous roar.

This morning, Vladimir could have heard a cricket chirp. He and his coworker arrived twenty minutes late, their tardiness owing in large part to the injured leg of one of the lead sled dogs. Vladimir anticipated they would be the last ones in to work. He stood beside the injured husky and stroked it behind the ears. The animal nestled its nose into his hip and still Vladimir heard nothing from inside. The sled's driver, Anatoly, a toughened forty-three-year-old Tatarian skilled with a table saw, cast him an uneasy look as they approached the mill's central doors. Vladimir stepped inside to see the millworkers lined up alongside the far wall. Each of his compatriots had a grim look in his eyes. The lineup snaked all the way through the central floor and toward the foreman's office. Dutifully, Vladimir and Anatoly joined the back of the line.

“What's happening?” Vladimir whispered in one of the workers' ears. “Is the mill closing down?”

“That's the least of our worries,” the worker said. The man stood on his toes and peered over his coworkers' heads. Vladimir did the same but couldn't see what was happening.

“The Red Army is here,” the worker said.

“Why?”

“Conscription into the Great Patriotic War.”

Vladimir was confused. “I'm not familiar with that word — conscription. Does it mean the same thing as genocide?”

The millworker shot him a foul sneer and turned back to stand in line.

Anatoly tapped Vladimir on the shoulder. “Conscription means that they're drafting us into the war. It's every Soviet male's holy duty to serve the motherland. We're going to be soldiers,” he said. “We're going to fight the Germans.”

Vladimir couldn't believe what he'd heard. He felt stunned. A sense of the surreal crept over him and suddenly everything and everyone in the mill looked pink. The flushed coral color radiated upward from the floorboards, dripped from the men's fingertips, hung like a coruscated mist in the air. The millworkers' downcast faces melted together into one sinister, frightful haze. Vladimir wiped his eyes. He stood on his toes again in an attempt to see the foreman's office and then looked back toward the mill's entranceway and wondered why no one had taken off running yet.

Anatoly's voice brought Vladimir back into reality. “You can't be surprised.”

“I am,” Vladimir said. “I'm very surprised.”

Anatoly scratched his thick beard. He too eyeballed the front door. “I never believed conscription would happen so far north. Still, there've been rumblings about this for weeks.”

“Well, no one told me.”

The workers' heads all turned in unison to watch as two Russian soldiers, both young men no more than twenty-four years of age with pistols attached to their hips and steely looks in their eyes, walked in perfect step from the foreman's office, past the lineup of workers and toward the entranceway, where they loitered about, speaking in hushed whispers. Vladimir could only wait as the line moved forward. Every few minutes a new recruit would leave the office with a yellow envelope in his hand. Some of the draftees marched straight past the soldiers, through the doorway and out into the cold. Others returned to their work. Most were stoic, others grim. One young man couldn't help himself and broke into tears, his face red and purple, his mouth a quivering rectangle as he covered his eyes with his hands. Vladimir stood second to last in line as the numbers dwindled from over sixty, down to thirty, until just a handful remained, and finally Vladimir stood next to the closed office door.

It creaked open and another neophyte soldier brushed on by, yellow envelope in hand. A voice sounded inside.

“Next.”

Vladimir entered the office. He'd expected to find the foreman inside, along with an entire committee of Russian generals clad in formal red attire, innumerable medals adorning their coats. Instead, he found a lone man wearing a green tunic with subdued collar tabs and a hidden buttoned front. Small, round glasses framed his face, and what a gaunt, yellowed face it was. The man's sunken eyes, his clean-shaven jaw that widened at the bottom to center his thin-lipped mouth, the premature gray hair protruding in slick slivers from under his military-issued cap — it all spoke of death. Vladimir felt as though he'd walked into a room and seen a corpse sitting behind the desk, calmly smoking a cigarette.

The man searched his list. “I only have two names left,” he said. “Are you Vladimir or Anatoly?”

“Vladimir.”

“Take a seat, young man.”

As he sat down, the man checked Vladimir's name off his long list and pulled a piece of paper from a stack on the foreman's desk. He scribbled something down in black ink and then looked up.

“My name is Captain Karolek. I represent the 322nd Rifle Division of the 10th Army of the Soviet Union. The motherland calls you into duty.” He paused to let the gravity of his words sink in. “Are you over seventeen years of age?”

“Yes,” Vladimir said.

“Is there any disability, physical or otherwise, that would preclude you from active service?”

Vladimir didn't quite know what to say.

“Well, is there?”

“I have the hiccups.”

“I know. I can hear that.”

“No,” Vladimir said. “You don't understand. I've had the hiccups for twelve years.”

Captain Karolek set his paperwork aside. His eyes grew close together. “What did you say?”

Vladimir told him again how long he'd had the hiccups.

The captain extinguished his cigarette. He pulled out a thin metal case, lit another white Sobranie and leaned back in his chair. Captain Karolek turned his head to the side, squinted and arched his neck until he heard a loud crack. This captain, this cadaver come to life, lurched forward. He clasped his hands together. “Have you seen a doctor about your condition?”

“I spent several years in the hospital,” Vladimir said.

“And they couldn't cure you?”

“No, sir.”

“Captain,” Karolek said.

“I'm sorry?”

“My rank is captain. As you're being inducted into the military, it is appropriate that you refer to me as Captain Karolek.”

“No, Captain,” Vladimir said. “They weren't able to cure me.”

The man stood up from his chair and stretched, cigarette in hand. He walked around and sat down on the edge of the desk. His sudden informality surprised Vladimir. Karolek inhaled a long drag of smoke and exhaled it in consecutive circles, four in total, each wider and rounder than the last. When he was done, he fashioned a wry smile.

“I learned that trick from a composer I met in Moscow. I think his name was Prokofiev. Have you heard of him?”

Vladimir stared straight forward and hiccupped.

“No?” Karolek said. “He's quite highly regarded, I believe. Anyways, the man was sitting at a piano, tinkling the ivory keys in the high register with his right hand and all the while he was smoking with his left hand. He could blow seven or eight smoke rings from his lips in succession without ever losing his place in the music. Once the smoke was in the air, he set the cigarette down and struck the keys with both hands.” As the captain shot his hands up in the air and brought them down swiftly to illustrate, Vladimir hiccupped again. It seemed to vex the man this time. Karolek paused to regain his composure and then continued. “It was a sound like no other I'd ever heard before. It was Russian music written by a Russian, played by a Russian under a red Moscow moon. I felt in that moment more patriotism than I've ever felt on the battlefield, more than I've ever derived from any of Stalin's rhetoric. The young people can have their Parnakhian jazz with those ear-splitting trumpets and saxophones. For me, the purest sound of this great nation will always be a man at a piano playing the music intended by our forefathers.”

Vladimir stared at the man without the foggiest idea of what to say.

Karolek took a long drag off his cigarette and exhaled again. “I'm inclined to believe you when you say you've been hiccupping all this time. Quite frankly, it's too preposterous a story to just make up. Only I'm not quite sure what to do with you, Vladimir. A soldier simply can't make the noises you make. There is an element of stealth required in battle, even modern battle. If I were to assign you to my infantry division, you alone could cause the death of a hundred men. Perhaps more. By the same token, I'm loath to send you in on the first wave of an armed struggle. The men in the first wave rarely ever survive and that would seem unbearably cruel in your case — sending an invalid to the slaughter.”

Vladimir was about to challenge this man's description of him as an invalid when he realized any objection would only serve to send him to the slaughter. He remained quiet.

“Do you have any skills that I don't know about?” Karolek said.

“I'm a hunter,” Vladimir said.

“So you're adept with a rifle?”

“No. I hunt with a knife and a spear.”

“Like a savage?” Karolek said.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Efficiency with a spear is not a skill the Red Army is presently seeking. Do you have any medical expertise?”

“No.”

“Are you a skilled chef?”

“Not really.”

“Do you know anything about electronic devices? Are you well-versed in telegraphic communications code? Do you speak multiple languages or have any proficiency in mechanics?”

“No,” Vladimir said.

Karolek stood up from the desk, walked around to the other side and sat down in the foreman's chair. He extinguished his cigarette and reached into his case to select another. “Then I'll have no choice but to send you into combat in one of our first-wave advances.”

The room turned pink.

“Into the slaughter?”

Captain Karolek's sunken eyes peered at Vladimir over top of his round glasses. “Perhaps I've been too candid with you,” he said and cleared his throat. “Giving one's life in the name of the motherland is the greatest honor to which a proud Soviet can aspire.” Karolek reached up and took off his hat. He yanked his head sideways again, this time as hard as he could. Despite his best efforts, the vertebrae in his neck refused to cooperate. The crack never came and Vladimir could only sit and watch until Karolek finally relented. The captain composed himself and then handed Vladimir a yellow envelope, and when he did, Vladimir hiccupped. This involuntary eruption from his phrenic nerve — though very much identical to all of his other hiccups — seemed to affect Karolek. The man's eyes changed.

Vladimir moved to stand when Karolek spoke again.

“Wait. Sit. Please. I fear I've been hasty. My father was always hasty with me,” he said. “As a result I grew up to hate the man with a vengeance. Now as to you, Vladimir, perhaps I could assign you to our field artillery unit. This will allow you to be useful and at the same time keep you and your hiccups out of earshot of our enemy.” Karolek looked at Vladimir expectantly. “Aren't you going to thank me?” he said.

“Yes. Thank you,” Vladimir said. “Just one question — what is a field artillery unit?”

“You will be part of the team that fires our long-range weapons.”

“So I'll be required to shoot bombs at German soldiers?”

“Artillery shells,” Karolek said. “Not bombs, per se.”

Vladimir shifted in his seat. “How will I know how many people I've killed?”

“The field artillery unit doesn't necessarily know how many targets they've neutralized. Regardless, the point is moot. This assignment is a good result for you. You should be happy. I would be happy if I were you.” The captain smiled.

Vladimir smiled back, but in his stomach, he felt as though he were about to throw up. The very notion of killing other soldiers — innumerable men, by the sounds of it — sent a shockwave racing through Vladimir's entire body. He pictured the faces of the soldiers wounded but not killed by an artillery blast, their inflamed bodies writhing on the battlefield. It was all too much for him. Vladimir hiccupped. Three-point-seven seconds passed and then, unexpectedly, without warning, the next hiccup failed to arrive. That sense of the surreal increased tenfold. The pink cloud hanging over the room turned red. This had never happened before.

Vladimir sat in his chair, staring at Captain Karolek, dizzy and uncertain. Had his hiccups stopped? Was this the moment he'd been waiting for all these years? One second passed and then two and still nothing. Vladimir didn't know what to feel: joy, exhilaration, loss, anguish, bewilderment. Another 1.7 seconds passed and then suddenly, like clockwork, Vladimir's hiccups returned to their metronome pulse.

The military captain was still staring at him, waiting for a response.

“Thank you,” Vladimir warbled finally. He stood up to leave, yellow envelope in hand.

To his great surprise, Captain Karolek hurried around the desk and met him at the door.

“Be truthful with me now,” he said. “Are you unwell?”

Vladimir hesitated.

“You strike me as a very ill young man,” Karolek said, eliciting in his voice a tone of compassion for the first time since Vladimir entered the room. “Now I'm not apt to absolve a proud Russian from his nationalistic duty,” he said. “But I'm also not the type of officer who would force a sick man into military service. So I ask you — are you well enough to serve your country?”