Zakhar Prilepin - Sin

He shuddered, and realized that he had fallen asleep for a second. Perhaps for even less than a second. And he had had a dream.

He squatted, looking into the semi-darkness.

“What did you see?” Samara asked.

“Stalin,” the Sergeant replied hoarsely, thinking his own thoughts.

“Sergeant!” Samara exclaimed.

“Mmm.”

“What’s with you?”

“Everything’s fine. Gather the posts. Let’s go hunting.”

They walked in the darkness, hardly concealing themselves.

The Sergeant said nothing to anyone. So as not to persuade them. And in any case he didn’t want to talk anymore.

This is a foreign land, the Sergeant repeated, as if in a delirium. A foreign land. Why does it want me so much?

I used to be light… I felt light… I knew how to live lighter than snow… Why has it oppressed me so?

The land is breaking up. The crazy and trampled East. Apparitions, and the flickering remains of the West. And magma that will swallow everything.

…And there’s nothing to hold on to..

“Where are you leading us?” Ginger asked.

The Sergeant kept silent, not at all comprehending what these words meant.

“I am leading you,” he replied with difficulty.

“I don’t get it, Sergeant,” Ginger answered rudely. “I don’t believe you, Sergeant. Where are you going?”

I also love my Homeland, the Sergeant thought, looking into the darkness and stumbling. I love my land terribly. I love it horribly and immorally, not regretting anything… Humiliating myself and others… But what is spreading out under my feet — is that my land? My Homeland? What have you done with it, you…

The Sergeant took out his flask, and drank the last gulp of water.

“Sergeant, why aren’t you saying anything?” Samara asked, and his voice trembled.

And Vitka snorted nearby, looking the Sergeant in the face.

Only Ridge stood at a distance, confident and firm.

“What are you driveling about, everything’s OK,” Sluggish replied.

“Everything’s OK,” the Sergeant repeated loudly.

“You do remember where to go?” Sluggish asked him.

“Yes.”

He remembered, and took his men through the darkness right to the buildings: one hundred meters from them, the soldiers squatted down.

Shots came from the base from time to time. Occasional flares cut through the darkness and hit the roofs and walls of the buildings.

A volley of automatic gunfire responded from somewhere nearby, and the soldiers thought that they were being shot at, they all immediately fell down into the sand, with their hands, bellies and faces… but the shots were being fired in a different direction.

“The jeep is parked there,” the Sergeant said. “We’re going to take it now.”

“What for?” Ginger asked.

“We’re going home,” the Sergeant replied. “I’ll take you home, Ginger,” the Sergeant repeated angrily.

They crawled, stopping and listening from time to time.

The Sergeant licked salt off a stone and ran the crunchy grains of sand over his tongue and lips.

He did not have a single thought in his head.

“…there’s no key there…if…there’s no key?” the words reached him: Sluggish was whispering.

“I’ll start it,” the Sergeant replied. “I’ll take off the hood… cables… I can do it… Shit.”

Twenty meters away they lay down and stayed there for a few minutes, without moving.

Someone laughed inside the buildings.

And it was quiet again.

“Ridge,” the Sergeant called. “Everyone will get into the car, and you get in the back, in the box.”

The “box” was what they called the section behind the seats in the jeep.

“When I start moving, shoot from the grenade launcher… at them.”

Ridge nodded.

“Wait,” the Sergeant said to everyone and crawled ahead.

Slowly, slower than a blossoming flower, he crawled the last meters to the car. He lay by the wheel, stroking the tyre, as if the iron jeep was an animal that could be scared.

The Sergeant got up, and bending over, trying to tread quietly, walked around the car.

He searched for the handle… there it was, ice-cold… He raised his head and looked in the window, expecting to see crazy eyes stuck to the glass from the other side. There was no one there, no eyes.

He pushed the handle down and pulled the door towards him.

He stuck his head inside, and smelled rather than looked. It didn’t smell of a living, sleeping person.

It smelt of the strangers who had left, dirt, sweat and gunpowder.

The Sergeant put his leg in, and then moved his entire body into the car. He stretched out on the seat and even shut his eyes for a second.

Don’t think, he begged himself.

He felt in the dark car with his blind hand and shuddered: it seemed to be the key.

He bent over: yes, the key. In the ignition. They hadn’t taken it.

Why the hell should they take the key, who would steal the car here…

And the radio… Where’s the radio? There it is.

There was laughter in the buildings again: ridiculous, foolish laughter.

The Sergeant listened, and suddenly thought quickly: They’re out of it… That’s how people laugh when they’re out of it… They probably looted the pharmacy in the village…

He felt light, light and clear, and everything fell into its place.

He touched the steering wheel, the gear stick, the pedals, adjusting to the car, so that he wouldn’t get anything wrong.

And no one’s storming the base, he thought, not hurrying himself. They blocked it. They’re waiting for their own guys, I suppose. Reinforcements. Our guys are probably all fine. There wasn’t any assault on the base. Good. Look alive, men. The planes will be here soon. And those bastards will get it… they will…

The Sergeant bent over across the seat and opened the door on the right.

“Sluggish!” he called quietly.

Sluggish climbed into the car calmly, as if he was stealing it from his father’s garage, and not…

“Don’t slam the doors,” he said to the others, when Vitka, Ginger and Samara climbed into the back.

“Fuck it, we’ve got to turn around,” Sluggish said. “Can you?”

“Is Ridge there?” the Sergeant asked instead of replying.

“Yes,” Sluggish sighed, turning around.

“Let’s go,” the Sergeant said, turned the key, and switched on the headlights.

In the blinding beams of the headlights, thirty meters away, a bearded man was standing, swaying, with an automatic weapon over his shoulder, and urinating on the wall of the building. It seemed as if the light had caused him to sway. He turned his head, not at all surprised.

For a fraction of a second everyone looked at him from the car. The Sergeant was already starting the engine.

“Hey, who turned on the light? Are you nuts?” someone shouted inside the building, in a nasty voice, with an accent, but in Russian.

The engine started on the second try.

“For the Homeland,” the Sergeant said, and moved into first gear. “For Stalin.”

In second gear, he stepped on the gas and the man with the weapon went flying on to the bonnet of the car, before he had time to realize what was going on.

The Sergeant immediately put the car in reverse, knocking the limp body off the bonnet, and drove out onto the square in front of the cattle barn. Furiously turning the steering wheel, he turned around and drove off, not seeing the road to start with — jolting, risking stalling every second — and then suddenly, by intuition, he drove on to it.

Fourth gear… They flew along, yelling and weeping.