Nicolai Lilin - Free Fall

‘Be careful, boys, make sure you don’t harm this soldier. He has saved many lives. He’s a good sniper…’

One of the soldiers took the offering from Nosov’s hands and slipped it under his jacket. He and the other guy lifted me to my feet, made a show of dusting off my uniform and addressed Nosov in a pleasant voice:

‘Don’t worry, Comrade Captain. Your sniper will reach his destination safe and sound, I will see to it personally. May we be dismissed?’ He asked Nosov’s permission before leaving, as military regulation demands. My captain looked me in the face and said:

‘Have yourself a peaceful life, Nicolay, without too many worries…’

Then he turned to the two who were holding me up and saluted:

‘Soldiers, you are dismissed!’

They saluted back and I tried to as well, but my arm wouldn’t hear of travelling all the way to my head, so I must have just jerked it awkwardly. I was a mess.

I remember Nosov’s words and the look he gave me perfectly, and I often find myself thinking about it. But I can’t remember if or how I said goodbye to the guys in the group before leaving, what I said to them or what they said to me. All I remember is that phrase of the captain’s, the last thing I ever heard him say: ‘Have yourself a peaceful life…’

Then I had a surreal ride in the car. I wavered on the border between sleep and waking, each time thinking that I was in a thousand different places – at first I felt as though I was on the armoured car with the rest of the team on our way to a mission; then I thought I was wounded; finally, I was sure I’d been captured by the enemy – I looked for my rifle and despaired when I couldn’t find it… Then I realised I wasn’t wearing my bulletproof vest, and I got so scared I started shaking. I was on the verge of tears. I don’t remember if I was delirious or not, but when we got to the camp I heard one of my escorts who was smoking outside the car say to the other that it would have been better if I’d been shot in the war, because returning a person like me to society was a real crime.

There was no plane waiting when we stopped, so I thought that it was just a break and we hadn’t yet reached our destination. But I was wrong – I was taking the train home, not a plane. At that point even if they had told me I had to ride a donkey home, I’d still have been happy – without arms or ammo, without my precious vest, I felt naked. I wanted to go home as soon as possible, in peace.

They showed me to a barracks, where I had to have a physical examination. A military bureaucrat, without asking me a single question, without even looking me in the eyes, filled out a few forms and wished me luck. The examination was already over. Then they asked me to take off all my clothes, and gave me a chance to take a hot shower, in a barracks-cum-bathroom. Then they gave me a new uniform, which stank of mustiness; it was the typical smell of military depots. All the army stuff smelled like that.

I got dressed, took my bag and left for the station, accompanied by the same two soldiers. In the car with me were three other soldiers, who had just been discharged: an infantryman, a paratrooper and an artilleryman. None of them had any desire to talk or joke around; they were as desolate as I was, lost in thought, wearing the signs of their farewell celebrations from the night before. For the whole trip my three companions smoked like it was their last, and so I arrived at the station half-cured, pissed off and with a pounding headache.

The train trip was long and boring. The carriages were full of other discharged soldiers, officers on temporary leave and OMON officers who had finished their war service and were returning to their police precincts. As the wheels of the train ate through the kilometres of tracks people gathered in small groups to drink, tell stories and complain about everything and everyone… There was a lot of anger, but it was softened by the fact that we were alive, returning home in one piece, thinking of the future. I for one couldn’t wait to lie down in my bed and sleep in peace for as long as I wanted, without anyone interrupting my rest.

As soon as I stepped off the train I took a walk around my home town, and I realised that I had an inexplicable impulse to shoot everyone I saw on the street. I felt a lethal charge of hatred: it was eating me up inside, making me scorn everything that represented peaceful life.

I ate an ice cream but the feeling didn’t go away, so I bought a bottle of vodka and once I got home I started to drink. But even drowned in alcohol, my state of mind stayed the same – it was as if peace bothered me, as if I sensed something false, something wrong with people, and their polite behaviour. I left the house; it was hard for me to stay in one place for too long.

I looked at the houses, searching obsessively for signs of destruction, but everything was too nice. The window frames and panes were intact, and behind the glass, signs of a life of comfort and peace. Everything was in order: the light bulbs in their places, the brightly-coloured curtains, the flowers on the windowsills… it all seemed horrible to me. At night people would drink tea and watch television, laugh at some comedian’s idiotic jokes, listen to pop songs by singers decked out like living Christmas trees… And as the star machine cloned new idols, everyone wanted to be like the famous figures. Young people competed to see who was the most ignorant, because ignorance is something that’s always in fashion – running to the nightclubs to dance at desperate parties that went on until dawn, finally feeling like they were the stars of something. If you’re rich, you can do anything; if you’re beautiful, you should exploit your beauty to manipulate everyone – this seemed to be the only valid rule, besides unwarranted, limitless violence, because being violent is fashionable too.

The chaos of war seemed more ordinary and comprehensible than the so-called morality of peaceful society. I thought back to everyone I had seen die in the name of peace, and I was increasingly convinced that this kind of peace didn’t deserve to exist. Better the bloodbath I’d known, where at least we knew what the enemy’s face looked like and there was no chance of getting it wrong, where everything was as simple as a bullet. But now I had been returned to a peace that enabled me to be a consumer of the beauties of the universe, making me believe that they had been chosen just for me, even prepaid: packaged food and virtual sex, and after those fake orgasms you’re left with nothing but contempt for yourself and for the world.

Back at home, trying to calm down, I turned on the television, but all the news I heard seemed like a joke to me: in some cellar four Azerbaijanis had mixed tap water with a little alcohol and sold it as vodka, for the price of a stabbing during a fight in a nightclub car park; the former attorney general had been filmed doing drugs and having sex with an underage prostitute, later claiming that it was just an evening of fun, his civic right; politicians made lots of promises, then would get into ridiculous arguments that amounted to ‘who’s the more disgusting’, while on another channel the President spoke like a genuine criminal, openly threatening anyone who got in his way but at the same time so charismatic and reasonable that even I wanted to applaud his speeches…

When I saw a news feature about a group of our soldiers who had recently died in a battle in the mountains during a terrorist operation in Chechnya, I unthinkingly grabbed a clock and hurled it at the television, cracking the screen. The piece dedicated to our fallen soldiers had come on after two other stories: one on breeding pigs in southern Russia; the other on some young models who had won international beauty pageants and were ready to take on the world, thus making an enormous contribution to the cause of Mother Russia.