LITMIR.BIZ

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revelry – as it always is in a boy’s fantasy.

      Images of girls mixed with Latin names, the stench of corpse brains – with body odor. There was also a strong smell of vodka and chokeberry jam. Dimka bought a small one, and I brought some jam from home. Our dorm’s jam was no less than legendary. Every day we had it with our breakfast tea, which was not forbidden – keeping the jam in a military school dorm was. But our Misha was a marathon runner: he ran all the time. That’s why his nickname was Jerboa, and maybe because he was so small, he probably survived on potatoes back in the village where he grew up. So, in the morning, during mandatory exercise, he filled a small plastic bag with jam which he poured from a jar hidden in a large crack in the fence of one of the clinics while warmed up and slept on a hot radiator inside a nearby entranceway. At 6:40 in the morning, we were kicked out into the street, and no one controlled us there: foremen and sergeants usually slept until breakfast, so we had to return by 7:20 sharp. Jerboa loaded the jam, and at the dorm entrance, where we were thoroughly searched by foreman Shadrin, he stuffed the plastic bag into his cap. Every day Shadrin performed a whole shakedown and could not find the jam. But he never inspected Jerboa. Misha was a good cadet, and his sweaty hat did not arouse a desire to look for jam inside it. So, the air is thick with testosterone, sweat, vodka, jam, rotting flesh, erotica, Latin… And then we distinctly hear course foreman Shadrin stomping towards our dorm.

      Our door was the first down the hallway, directly opposite the duty officer locker and the office of the head of the course, Pinochet, or Captain Olshansky. This proximity developed a lightning-fast reaction in us. Once, Grisha Litvak – an outstanding, talented, and most respected friend – brought a three-liter jar of beer into our dorm. The sergeants did not bother him because he helped them with homework, so he could smuggle beer into the dorm unnoticed. But the head of the course was another matter, a vile specimen, a notorious evil monster with slicked-back hair and square glasses for which – as well as for his cruelty – he was nicknamed Pinochet. So, we are standing around the beer on the table, drooling, and suddenly the cadet on duty yells, «Course, at attention!» The table is three steps from our door, and this bastard, the head of the course, liked to dive into one of the nearest dorms to catch the cadets by surprise. Two wide steps as if on skis, and he opens our door… Grisha – a genius move – grabs a boiler, which was also forbidden, but not as criminal as beer, sticks it into the outlet, and throws it into the beer. Olshansky: «Pospelov, tea again?! Extra duty!»

      Me: «Sir, yes, sir!»

      Why me? Because I am the head of the room, appointed by Pinochet out of revenge so that all the problems in the room were only mine: poorly made beds, where one could see wrinkles and dust particles under a microscope, and all that. It’s just that sometimes my grandfather, the general, came to visit me and ordered the captain to let me go, me, a cadet, Pinochet’s property, his meat, his slave, and Olshansky had to let me go, gnashing his teeth, twitching his shoulders, squeezing his lips until they were blue. And then he took revenge in various petty ways.

      But most of all, he liked to single me out while we were standing in formation, affectionately saying, «Cadet Pospelov, three steps forward! … Cadet, do you dry hay in your room?»

      I once collected some Saint John’s wort when our course went to a potato harvest.

      Or, «Who saw cadet Pospelov’s bones?»

      This was when we took a bag of skull bones from the anatomy class, and they disappeared from our room. We had to do extra duty for this. It must have been someone from our course or maybe Pinochet himself.

      By the way, the same brain that we are studying here while Shadrin is slowly creeping towards our room, I later put on the top shelf between some hats, it got moldy, and yes, I forgot to return it to the anatomy class.

      As usual, «Cadet Pospelov, three steps forward!»

      A saccharine smile plastered over Olshansky’s maniacal square face.

      «Pospelov, are you aware that your brain is moldy?»

      The course howls entirely out of order. So, the foreman creeps closer to our door – he must have noticed our light while smoking outside – abruptly grabs and opens the door handle. At this exact moment, our atlases fall to the floor, we feign innocent snoring, and the brain is safely covered with my blanket. The lights are off! We aren’t stupid: you have to press down the handle to open the door, there’s a thread tied to the handle, which ends with a piece of tape attached to the light switch. Snap – and it’s dark. Shadrin, without turning on the light, «Explain the mess!»

      «Huh? What, where, well, it’s, sir foreman, sir, we, we were revising anatomy before lights out».

      «Clean this up!»

      He closes the door. Silence. I realize that he is standing outside the door, listening. Dimka is choking down laughter, exhales, and rather loudly comments, «Fucking Pinkerton!»

      Foreman grunts outside the door and leaves. We didn’t pass the exam the next day – the best passed it on their fifth attempt, and the record was eighteen. At least we still remember those Latin names some 40 years later. To what end, I do not know.

      Loonies from my course: kleptomaniac, schizophrenic, stupid.

      The cadet sleeps, but the thought – never! My little quivering soul engulfed in flames yearned for freedom. Yes, you can go on leave to visit your girl, hold her hand in yours for half an hour, and run back. You can even go fishing during the summer holidays and spend a couple of weeks in the forest, where it seems that there aren’t any barracks or moronic superiors because nothing has changed there: the train, the drunkards on the stations, the round leaves of water lilies, the small fish at the bottom and the big pikes caught on a zherlitsa – everything is the same as before. Almost the same. Only now you’re covered with dust, and you can’t wash it off, no matter how much time you spend in the shower. It’s dust from our boots when we march to the bathhouse along the Liteiny Bridge across the Neva, dust from the wind on a potato field, dust from scraping the barrack floor with a piece of glass. It’s dust from a soul that has dried up in two years – you walk, and it crumbles, leaving behind you a trail of gray ashes…

      If this is considered normal, maybe it’s better to be abnormal? You instinctively turn to those who cannot be like everyone else – the loonies. They were distinctly visible against the perfectly symmetrical formation of indistinguishable cadets. In everyday life, where everyone is different and lives at home, dresses how they want, and goes to bed when they want, the loonies can conceal themselves. Or maybe it’s just that when no one yells at you, your soul also screams less, and your crazy can sleep inside you for a long time. It isn’t so in the barracks. Symmetric rows of identically dressed teenagers with identical haircuts – any difference is clearly visible. Madness, the things you cannot control, jump out immediately. Sergeant Guzimenko had a beautiful singing voice. He was from western Ukraine, and as we marched in formation, he sang in his high tenor.

      Unharness your horses, my lads, and lay down your heads to rest,

      And I will go to the garden, dig a well at your behest,

      Marusya, one, two, three, my dark-haired maiden,

      Picking berries in the garden.

      So he sang, but one day he quarreled with the course foreman, who forbade Guzimenko to sing. Sergeant became the storekeeper in charge of the pantry, a utility room for storing mops, buckets, winter clothes, and other things. It’s hard to say what went on in his head. We never talk about our worst struggles and may even be unaware of what’s tossing and turning inside our chests. Sergeant often locked himself in the supply room alone and smoked in the bathroom at night. A few months later, someone noticed he had taken their nice writing pen. Thief! – the word softly traveled through the ranks of marching cadets. And then some idiot nailed sergeant’s boots to the floor at night. In the morning, before morning exercise, sergeant put his feet into his shoes but couldn’t walk. He fell on the floor, and everyone stood around him in their

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