Homeward Bound Ch. 09

New day, new walk. It's true, the medic though: everything can become a routine. Even the fact that he was keeping in hand what he was keeping in hand. Who could have said that, just a month before? Semiautomatic assault rifle AK74, for its friend "Kalashnikov". For closers, "Kalash", it seemed. Just the new, "upgraded" version of the old AK47. So his drill sergeant had told him.

Yes, he had decided to serve out his time in the army before to go to the university. He just wanted to get out of home, or maybe to prove to himself that he was a man, "what does not kill us, strengthens us". Or maybe both things. And his father let him do: that maverick of a son needed a bit of discipline, before to end really bad...

So while many parents try to make her sons dodge conscriptions, his father did what he could to let him go in a "serious" unit. The airborne had a mixed reputation: good soldiers, but politically "ambiguous", sympathy for the "old times" and the likes. So they had agreed to avoid them. Family tradition is a family tradition.

And so he ended up in Sardinia. Assault Fusiliers, Monfenera Barracks, in Cagliari. Serious stuff, rather. And his drill sergeant took his job seriously.

One fine day, in the classroom, he had drawn an assault rifle on the blackboard. A masterpiece of realism, bearing in mind, he did it just with a piece of chalk. Then he asked the class what a kind of rifle it was. He just looked at the half-moon-shaped mag and said "AK47". The sergeant nodded: quite right, it was the new AK74, but the differences were in the materials, not in the real stuff. Less wood, more plastic. As for the rest, the same helluva gun. And he was not joking.

A dude mused something like "Americans do it better.", but the sergeant was not deaf. "Not in this field." he said, flatly. "They make the Armalite, or F16. A good rifle, but more costly, and with a story of defects. When they gave the first version of it to the soldiers, in Vietnam,, they said there was no need to clean it. and so, they did not supply the tools to do it. Result, those rifles got jammed regularly. Scarily regularly. Because the soldier who cured their stress with some illegal substances were using the barrels to enhance the effect... And this was not good, neither for them, nor for the barrels."

Then the sergeant had asked the soldiers, whether they thought that the "Charlie" cleaned their "Kalash". It was a rhetoric question, of course, just to get the message home. Clean your gun, boys. Take care of them, and they will take care of you. And no joint, please. Not even Paki. Got it?

The medic snorted, recalling all that. If the sergeant were there, he would have had a question for him. If you have a "Kalash", but no tools to clean it, then what do you have to do?

And the sergeant, very likely, without losing time about whose side was he on, would have advised him to get another Kalash, possibly just cleaned, at first chance. Get another one. What a euphemism...

Stopover. The girls went behind a groove, for obvious reasons. The medic and the soldier exchanged a glance, a bit embarrassed. They both thought the same thing.

To break the impasse, the medic pull out the map from a pocket of his backpack. It was not so precise, but covered all the country, and included the road they were on. A walking man can cover about four miles in an hour, and since a mile is about 1600 m, four miles are about six and a half kilometers. So, putting a fingertip on the scale, and then using it for measuring, the medic could have an idea of the distances and the times to travel them. Sure, there were hairpins, gradients... so the idea was quite vague, indeed. But, anyway...

"You really didn't take the initiative, with her?" the soldier asked.

"No.", the medic said, and kept measuring the map. Clearly, that boy still thought of that night Well, it was natural...

"I believe you... It had to be so... "

"Why?"

"Because she is a... "bòi bàba", as we say... "

"It means, she is a... " the medic searched a polite word in his head, but the choice was scarce. "A nymphomaniac?"

"No! Oh, no!" the soldier laughed. "I did not mean... She's a tough girl, a tomboy, hard to crack, determined. If you touch her without permission, you are dead!" he explained. There was respect, in his voice.

"Uh, yes, she know how to defend herself... But all in all she is just like any other girl... "

"Do you know many girls who could use a machine gun the way she did?"

The medic stop measuring the distance on thìe map. The soldier was right. Sure, with a machine gun, to kill people at wholesale was relatively easy, you don't need to be Hector or Achilles. But she had been... Yes, she had puked her soul, so to say, after that. So what? Facing all that blood and those bowels in the sun, like tripes with tomato sauce, many men would have puked too...

"No, I do not know so many girl of that kind... " he said.

And he did not want to criticize her, saying that.

He started measuring again. After some time, the soldier asked again:

"How many days to Kabul, yet?"

"Five, maybe six... "the medic said, looking at the map. Then he looked around. "If Charlie let us go... "

"Charlie?"

"Ow... That was the way the Americans called the enemy, in Vietnam... " the medic said, awkwardly.

"Hm... well, we did not say "Charlie", we say "Dushmani"... Or "dukhi"... "

"I know,... Sorry, off piste a bit... "

"Never mind... " the soldier said.

"But... I know, "Dushmani" means "enemies", in a local language... But what means "Dukhi"?"

""Dukhi" is Russian".

"It means, "Ghosts"... " the soldier said. And he too went away, for deals of his own...

The medic stand up and looked around, to the tops of the mountains surrounding the road.

"Ghosts... " he mused. Right: they could be anywhere, around, and you couldn't see them... Then he saw the girls getting out of the groove, recalled the tank, the machine gun and everything, took back his rifle, looked at it in his own hands, and smiled.

"Who ya gonna call?"

Night. It was the turn of the soldier boy. He had just ripped some more boughs and thrown them around. The moon was not so full anymore, and there were clouds. No use to spoil the eyes too much. Better to use even the ears. As well as possible. And make the area as noisy as possible.

The soldier asked himself, whether the medic and the girl were making love. He shook his head: none of his business, definitely. And for not to think of it, he thought about when HE ad made love. With the girl in the photograph. He had to remember to ask the medic about that picture. Before he parted from them.

Of course, he did not need that piece of paper to remember that girl. That good, sweet, wonderful girl. His first girl. The first he had seen naked, the first he had... Yes, the first. And till then, the one.

Right: if he had not to go to war, maybe nothing had happened. Well, every dark cloud has its silver lining... The brownish bra, too trivial for her breasts... And how she had unsnapped it, as if it was the most obvious thing to do... Looking in his eyes... He didn't expect it, at all... "Blagoslovìte jènshini", bless the women, that's right...

She liked the way he was touching her. Delicately. Of course: he did not want to play the grunt, "sùnul vìnul i pashòl", get in, get out and get away... If it had to be the one and only time he could do it, then, let's do it as well as possible... And he was used to move the fingers with care, but calmly. The sax, a treasury of his family, and he liked to play it: he liked the jazz, more exactly, the Blues... American, so what? There two kinds of music: the good one and the craps, nothing more.

Even Vissotsky had written a song which was virtually a blues, or could be played that way: "Niedoliubìl". So, maybe Vissotsky played craps? Maybe during the Great Patriotic war you could not play Beethoven because he was a German? Yes, sure, the Blues is good, but it's not Beethoven. But in just two hundred years of history, what could they do?

It was hard to have those interests, and to find yourself down there. Very hard. Not for the musical tastes, nobody harassed you for that: "dèlai dèlo, gulyài smèlo", do your duty and chill out the way you like. But the situation... So once he had "borrowed" some medical alcohol from the "lazaret", the sick bay of his base, and drank it during his guard duty. Maybe he should have added more water to weaken the effect: quite soon he started to sing, and being a good Soviet boy, he sang "the International", or at least, some lines of it... Then he changed his mind and sent up a flare, Wishing "Happy first of May" to all the people of the world, overlooking the fact that it was March. And thank God he sent it up.

Well, those poor slobs of "Dushmani" who were cutting up the tin cans from the barbed wire fences would have disagreed about it, maybe. They wanted to surprise, and instead, they had got it, And they did not have to wait too much for the reaction of the boys at the base. Ripped over by metal explosions, caught in barbed wire, fireball, bullet shock... By the way, the shock had sobered him up in a wink. He threw away the half-filled bottle and shot in the same direction, some bullet hit the bottle and the alcohol inside blew up... Maybe it had been a good idea not to pour too much water in, after all... And even to take alcohol, and not Vodka: Vodka doesn't burn that way...

And the day after, the regiment in hollow square, but not to hang him as Danny Deaver: all the other way. Glowing words, pats on the shoulder... Three "Urà" for private Yuri! Urà! Urà! Urà! Shoot, Yuri, shoot! "Tak derjàt", keep on that way! "Da, tovàrish maior!"... Of course, you bet I will keep on that way... Let those Dushmani die for Allah... I have a lot of things to do, at home...

Yuri thought one more time to that poor slobs of Dushmani. How many of them had gone to Heaven that night? A lot. Overworking for Houris... He knew very well what could happen to them and to the boys if he did not send that flare, and if the boys did not react so well, But he was really sorry for the others. He had seen one of them, still breathing, but definitely done. Shrapnelled throbbing meat. Some Houris...

"Bednye ublyùdki," he mused smiling. "Kakàya nevesùka!"

Poor bastards. What a bad luck...