Глеб Бобров - The Torn Souls - An Anthology of Prose About the Soviet War in Afghanistan

Meanwhile, other dogs joined Dick’s noisy entertainment. On this occasion, Truba decided to give me a tour around the kennel. We started a conversation. Indeed, he is, what we called a heavy metal soul, but this man was a magician with his dogs.

With obvious pain in his voice, Truba tells me about the Dick’s health situation.

— He cannot stand up on his leg. One leg he cannot raise. His chest is also still a mess, there are discharges continuously coming out. I think, some piece of metal is still inside…

I suggested:

— How about to call for Stepan right now? Let’s see what he can do…

Trubilin looked at me like I am a child in cuckoo land who has one leg shorter than the other and answered:

— The dog has the best treatment, every day a chief medical officer is checking on him and giving him all necessary injections, I give him injections too but… he needs different… he needs his Fedor…

— But how Fedor will help?

— He is missing Fedor, and this is the root of his sickness. By the way, I already asked Stepan if any more can be done… You, pal, saved Dick. You sewed him well but now his health is affected due to a different reason.

Here we go! They said that Truba is a beast… Hm…

Meanwhile our four-legged friend stretched out on the yellow grass and squinted his eyes enjoying a psychedelic song, mumbled in Tatar by my nuker, my military shadow Boldy.

January 1985 was the most depressive time. This endless and eventless time could be crowned on the top of all months of my entire military service. Before New Year nothing much happened, except for two trips to the God forgotten place called Baharak. During the first trip we sat at the “point” without even thinking to pick out our noses behind the gate. The second trip was even worse. It was such a boring trip! Hiding in dugouts, we were doing nothing, except playing fools and entraining ourselves with our own dicks, constantly masturbating to kill boredom. The only one attempt to get to the mountains, was not successful because our new battalion commander had no balls for it. He was a replacement. A sissy boy, I would say!

I remember celebrating the New Year on duty by smoking marihuana to the stage when the word “mama” cannot come out from my tongue. When our duty finished, we again stoned ourselves to the stage of complete dummies… meaningful time, nothing more to say…

Only one thought was bumping in my head:” Where is my replacement”. I see, due to the shitty weather condition, helicopters could not pass the clouds… what was left for us? Only waiting…

At that time I visited Dick almost every day. My friendship with Truba has been cemented and the sappers were puzzled how I managed it. I do not know how it happened. We had a common interest talking about dogs, I guess, and this was enough for our friendship. In my opinion, Trubilin knew nothing except the dogs’ life and, as I understood, he had no desire to expand his horizon of knowledge towards anything else. He could talk days and nights about his four-legged friends, he knew everything about them, he loved them dearly and dogs loved him too, obeying not only a verbal command but a slight gesture.

During this time our kid was constantly medically treated. He did not die, of course, but the significant breakthrough did not happen either. Discharges kept coming out from his chest; he could not stand up on his paw, but, at least, started to move this paw and it was a progress. Continuously new problems were chasing him: if not diarrhea, then a King’s evil had happened.

This pal had only one joy in his life — a time when a letter arrived from Fedor. Fedor was writing to a whole division, but unopened letters were delivered to the kennel and placed into Truba’s hands. Once I had a chance to see this ceremony. I was moved to a core…

Trubilin ceremoniously placed a letter in front of Dick to sniff who immediately fell on the belly and froze,; then Truba opened the letter and slowly, with the pronunciation of a TV news reporter, announced the text. Our Dick has turned into a statue. The shaking ears were elongated upward. An unreal reaction! But the letter’s content was crap as usual, something like: “Hey guys, I am ok, from day to day just waiting to be back, everything is annoying… Doctors are freaks, food is shit, nurses are bitches… How is Dick? I shake your paw. Fedor”. The end….

After announcing the contents of the letter, Truba placed the open letter in front of the dog. Dusya stretched, reached the piece of paper and several times inhaled this treasured scent of his owner and froze again… It seemed that he wanted to absorb literally the smell of Fedor to the last bit…. Then turning around he hobbled to a far corner of his kennel, laid, stretched his body and closed his eyes. I can swear on the Bible that I saw tears coming from his eyes…

I wanted to give him hug, but Truba stopped me without words. By this time, I, like his dogs. was also trained to have a clear understanding of his gestures. Trubilin picked up the letter, folded it and, gently pushing my back towards the exit, pointed to the way out of the kennel.

I asked:

— Comrade Trubilin! But Dick’s sadness will be deeper without a human touch.

In reply, I got the telegraphic but gravely gloom answer:

— Yes. The depression. But it keeps him alive…

The military salute. Keep in touch!

That is all. As I said — we became friends…

By the end of January, the weather finally turned to dry, sunny days. One morning, after the routine “Get up!, the youngest were outside for morning exercises, but I was still in bed, enjoying an unofficial military prerogative for military gurus, or “grandpas” as we said. My comrade Zubov, with firing insane eyes, jumped towards me. He threw me like a doll out of my bed to the floor and shouted:

— They are coming! Coming!

When he sat on my bed and stopped shouting, we distinctively recognized the noise of helicopters’ propellers. Forgetting about my underwear, in a second I was outside. Who cares! Other “grandpas” were the same and this entire ground was flooded with soldiers in their underwear like on a beach… Rio de Janeiro, far out! My dear Autumn conscripted brothers, finally this day has arrived! We hugged each other, we cried, we shouted something unrecognizable and non-comprehensive. It did happen! Wow! We all saw how a cavalcade of six helicopters MI-6, as we called them “cows”, heavily pregnant with newly conscripted meat, got closer to us every minute.

We got dressed and went to look at the replacements.

The newcomers were located in two tents that we usually use for a quarantine. All dembelya, (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor) turned immediately into A+ disciplined pupils. It was common sense that we will go in the first round, but with any mistake a possibility to meet March here was also very vivid.

On the same day I remember that we were sitting in front of the smoking room not far from the place where Sasha Moskovchenko, a political intelligence second commander, conducted classes. I will not go in details of what kind of classes he conducted, but I can assure you, that if Regiment Commander could hear what Sasha was bullshitting, to say at least, he would have a heart attack.

Sasha could not give a shit about how he carried on these political studies, same as the entire army. He put his dick on this military service a long time ago. He gibberishes on everything to everyone. He used to pull a young fellow out of a class and started to humiliate him to the point when the chosen one could not remember his own name, neither his biography.

So, whilst we were enjoying Sasha’s performance, some bloke was coming to us. I looked at him closer… this was Fedor! At last…