Chapter 18. This is the censored version.
If you read the original uncensored version, the continuation is here.
Consciousness came back slowly. How much time had passed since the blow, there was no telling. A minute, maybe an hour. Dizziness gave way to a slow sinking into fog. Flashes of the visible alternated with visions of the imagined. Journeys along the waves of memory ended on the shore of oblivion, only to continue as a voyage into nowhere. Reality took its time coming back. It came back in the sound of native speech.
— Damn it! And this devil doesn’t even have smokes! Damn it all!
The next second I was quickly searched. I didn’t see who — I squeezed my eyes shut. Before long the searching stopped, and the cursing man walked off, judging by the sound of his footsteps. I carefully cracked my eyes open. There he was! Some soldier with a light machine gun in his left hand, bent over the bearded man from the jeep.
— What a nuisance! Where are their cigarettes? Ah! There they are! There’s gotta be some! Gotta be! Gotta be! Gotta be! — he kept muttering without stop.
«Looking for smokes,» I concluded. «But the smokes are, well, gone.»
I remembered the previous soldier. Funny how it worked out with them. One destroyed the smokes, the other went looking. Hop! A pack of cigarettes slid out of the bearded man’s boot and dropped onto the gravel. The soldier, though, didn’t notice. Having searched the bearded man, he peered under the jeep. He fiddled with something underneath, then kicked the wheel with his knee and, exhausted, sat down on a boulder, propping his head on one hand. I stirred, trying to get up. The soldier reacted instantly to the rustle. He aimed the machine gun at me.
— Don’t shoot! — I yelled, frightened.
— You speak Russian? — he asked, surprised.
— Yes.
— Where are you from, dressed like that? — he asked, getting up off the boulder and coming closer.
— Moscow.
— A countryman, then. Long here?
— Since yesterday.
— Fresh one. What year is it there?
— Ninety-three.
— Got it, — the guy rolled me onto my stomach. Probably, like the first soldier, checking the quality of the loop binding my wrists. That’s exactly what it was. He muttered under his breath: — Tied up nice and proper.
I sighed heavily. The soldier sighed too, and, crouching down beside me, asked:
— Got anything to smoke, brother?
— Not on me, but that one over there does.
— No kidding? — he perked up. — Who?
— The bearded one over there. Under him, actually.
In two bounds the guy was by the bearded man, shoved him aside, and grinned with delight when he found the pack:
— Contact!
Coming back to me, he settled comfortably on a small flat rock, stretched his legs out, and, clearly savoring it, lit up slowly.
— Bliss, — he exhaled, letting out smoke rings. — If only more days like this would come — the kind you’d want to live forever.
— Listen, untie me, huh? — I asked him pitifully.
— Why on earth would I? — the guy asked, not taking his eyes off the smoldering tip of his cigarette.
— It’s uncomfortable.
— You know what’s uncomfortable? Tucking a fur coat into your underpants and sleeping on the ceiling. Everything else is fine. So don’t get clever, pal. Everything’s dandy.
«What a jerk,» I thought.
— Why would I even bother with you? — the soldier went on. — I untie you, and you brain me with a rock. Right? So lie there and don’t yap.
— I won’t do anything to you, I swear. Let me go, huh? — I pleaded.
— Course you won’t… as long as you’re tied up. So what year did you say it was?
— Ninety-three.
The guy, saying nothing, finished his cigarette, flicked the butt toward the jeep and lit another. I shifted about and, settling more comfortably, took a careful look at his strange appearance. On one foot he had a short boot with side lacing, gray with dust and worn down to nothing; on the other he sported a «Nike» sneaker, also gray and worn out, with wire instead of laces. His pale-green trousers, torn in many places, looked like one continuous hole, or a device for efficiently ventilating the lower limbs. The outfit was topped off with a brand-new blue flak jacket covered in pockets and little pockets, thrown over his bare torso. The body showing through the gaps in the clothing was dry and sinewy. With his left hand, wrapped in dirty bandages, he steadied a light machine gun. His right held nothing but the cigarette. His hair, bleached white, bristled in a short crop. His face, with a peeling, freckle-strewn nose, was the face of a hooligan kid from the courtyard next door. Where had he come from? When I tired of staring, I made another attempt to get up. Surprisingly, I managed it. Accompanied by the guy’s mocking gaze, I got to my feet with difficulty and looked around. The landscape turned out to be just as vile as it had been from the ground – rocks and more rocks. Though somewhere at the very horizon sands stretched out. That was where they’d brought me from. I looked the other way. From there came the sounds of battle – single shots, bursts of automatic fire, the chatter of machine guns, shells bursting. They’d been driving me in that direction, but there was no sense trudging there: a drink was unlikely, and getting shot was easy. So which way to go to get back home?
— Looking for a way out? Go ahead, — the guy smirked.
— Why not? I’ll find my way out somehow.
— You’re not getting out of here at all. I’ve been kicking around here since eighty-three, ten years now, and I haven’t found a single way back.
— What is this place?
— Nobody knows. Nobody has any idea. One thing’s clear — it’s the biggest hole you could ever end up in. And a hole for good.
— What do you mean, for good?
— Just that. I’d call it an inescapable anti-hole. There’s a way in, no way out.
— Can’t be.
— Anything can be here. Duck down, will you, or they’ll spot you. Extra attention is the last thing we need.
I obediently crouched down beside him. The guy glanced at my bound hands, snorted, spat, smiled:
— Feel like talking. What’s your name?
— Roma.
— I’m Anton. — He looked me over again carefully and asked: — Remember how you ended up here?
— Yeah. I was riding the metro.
— What?
— I was riding the metro.
— Well, that’s a new one. First time I’ve heard nonsense like that. Me, I got here from the war. — Anton paused, then added importantly: — Heard of Afghanistan?
— Of course.
— And what did you hear? About gardens of friendship on the radio? No, countryman, that was a real war. — Anton smirked. — Heh, «heard of Afghanistan.»
Anton went quiet. He watched the smoke rings he was blowing intently, seemingly deep in thought about something important. When the cigarette burned down to the filter, he flicked the butt toward the jeep, then shook the cigarettes out of the pack, laid them out in front of him, straightened them, and counted them twice. «Only eight left, damn it,» he sighed, and, lighting another one, put the remaining seven back in the pack filter-down. Blowing out a dozen pale nicotine rings one after another, Anton tucked the pack into one of the many pockets on his vest, the lighter after it, then rubbed his palms on his pants, glanced sadly up at the sky, and concluded:
— Life’s garbage.
I looked up too. There was nothing up there that could argue with Anton. Ugly brown clouds and red gaps between them. I sighed in sympathy, in unison with a conclusion I’d heard before, and one that, moreover, fully matched my own view of the world.
— And generally, everything is garbage, — Anton brought the thought to its logical conclusion. — Want to know how I ended up here?
— Sure, — I agreed, with the secret hope that Anton, as a grateful gesture to an attentive listener, would untie me at the end of the story.
— Then listen up. Nothing else to do anyway. Uh… What was I saying?… Ah, remembered. So, basically…