Spring of a Down - 18
Королевство кривых зеркал
Hush, he will tell the story forwards, but it makes more sense in reverse.[1]
He was at his house, leaving. He closed a red door and he thought “I must have it painted black.”[2]
His car was broken. It was a Mercedes Benz. It had been broken since 1969.[3]
So, he walked up the road. It was a long row to how and he would be walking for two solid days to get to where he was going.
And on that second day, the waters parted from the waters.[4] The mirror crack’d from side to side as the man turned to the dirt path from the paved.[5] There were trees crowded around the road and twigs dropped into the puddles from above. Again, he looked above at the clouded sky. There was no rain falling. Yet. But it was pregnant and foreboding. The late winter weather seemed waiting to drench him again. At least it was not snow.
He trudged along the basin. To his right, there were glimpses of a large reservoir. The reservoir was where the Dnipro and the Pripyat merged and converted. It was a Kingdom of crooked mirrors – which bank was which?[6] He realized he was more tired than he thought.
There were the quivers of spring, but not yet, not yet. Then ahead the was a yellow pickup truck parked in the distance. Joy leaped from his heart. He ran very slowly because the trail was made of mud, and he had a long way to go. His eyes were fixed on the yellow back of the truck hoping that he would rest. Even if the rest was in the back. Even if rest meant sitting in the rain. Anything was better than this. Anything.
So along he ran with drenched green boots and tatter fur on the inside with brown coat draping and gray hat dropping. Then he saw, he saw… He saw nothing. The was no driver behind the wheel. It seemed as if the truck was abandoned. A crushing feeling made him feel more alone. He went walking; a sad walk at that.
Along the truck’s edge until he reached the driver’s side. There, there was a body. He could see red that exited towards the back. He did not see the face. It was a civilian – all the good that got him. Then he spied the keys still in the ignition. Never one to look at the teeth he opened the door and pull the corpse out.[7] For a moment he saw the wrinkled face. It had a white and black freckled beard. The man looked away, quickly. Very quickly. One should not look at a dead man. It would be irreligious and sacrilegious.
But in the driver’s seat, everything felt different. He felt a little bit in charge. He sat upright. His boots still felt wet and outside the precipitation went to the ice, but these things did not matter. He checked the petrol and found it half full. He ignored the murmuring in his head that it was just too fortunate to find a truck with any amount of fuel in it. Coincidence.
The wheels slogged through the grime. It had been raining much of the time and the road showed the wear and tear of the late winter rain with a vengeance. He focused now on driving because his eyesight was not as it used to be. But he ignored glasses. Too fragile, too delicate, too easily lost, too easily forgotten.
He was a man, God damn it.[8] Oleg was his God-given name.
Then up ahead the were men on the road. Infantrymen. Green-clad infantrymen. Russian green-clad infantrymen.
There were only two choices, and he did not have time to choose either. The truck stopped.
The window was rolled down by inches and a manual window handle moved. Teeth.
The first man on the outside placed his hands over the door, and began to speak:
“What are you doing driving around here?” The face was young the words were plastic. The young face stared blankly into his eyes with a brown surreptitious look.
The man could see that there was a hidden agenda. The man started to sweat in the snow fluttering in. The snow had no colors anymore.[9] Black edged in from his eyes. He stuttered: “I am going to my cousin’s house.”
“Not anymore. Get out of the truck.” He seemed a God to the man with a 30-second attention span.[10]
Panic reigned. They would find out that he did not own the truck. He knew how dangerous panic is. He once wanted to be a hero. Two battles would do. Though he knew what happened after a couple of battles. [11]
The man stepped out into the falling snow.
They searched.
They found.
They looked at him.
They made a decision.
It was the wrong one for Oleg.
But they decided.
But the psychopathic God declared:[12]
“We have seen your evil. Taking a truck from a deadman.”
The man went to his knees and wept. Jesus wept.[13]
Then God proclaimed the sentence under the code; the code of those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.[14] It is what all schoolchildren learn.[15] Dead souls.[16]
The mob herded him a mile and he saw a red-painted barn.[17] He wished it was painted black.[18] Piled like goats into a pen but he knew that a truck, a massive produce truck with aluminum sides and steel driver’s cage, was going to maw them down inside its gullet. Even if the driver did not know why he was here.
He could see broken men stomping up the side door in a double file like they were to work that sets you free.[19] Dull in their drab fervor. Cows to loaded into the slaughter.
That would be his fate he realized as he moved through a line that magically appeared. He became like all the others: a good soldier Švejk, a little teensy-weensy gift to the propetariat.[20] How we drown in stylistic audacity like a parrot.[21]
He put his foot ahead of the other. He did this several more times each time becoming less, less, less of a man and more, more, more of a robot. That is, it was his job to step in. Робота – robota – job – крок – krok – step - робота - це крок – job step, job step, job step – until he did not know. He was now a private and twisted himself into knots and quivers in an ecstatic terror at the approach of a Russian soldier.[22] As he when from open snow to closed spruce barn he looked around: the was no torture chamber, of KGB-style, here, but each man had to undress and be examined by the young nurse of tightly knit blond hair or her opposite number who looked the same but was sloppy in the details of uniform and dress. He imagined them to have opposite names, like Uyla and Yalu.[23]
He slowly robot-step until he was at the front of the queue. The slovenly one addressed him. “Name?”
“Oleg Moskalenko.”
“What rank?”
“I am a civilian.”
Her opposite number, seated on a metal chair behind a plywood desk wrote down Moskalenko, Oleg, Ryadovóu on her paper.[24]
But he could read. “That is not right, I said I was a civilian.”
The nurse at the table stared into the paper and then into his eyes: “This life's not for living, it's for fighting and for war.[25] I have done you the favor of conscripting you.” She then went down to writing.
Uyla, the standing one then asked: “What was your job here?”
He smiled: “To step.”
Yalu wrote down: Infantryman.
And so it went. Each question was asked. But the response was distorted in translation. They went in as free men and left as Jigsaw puzzle traitors.[26] He was then thrown into a shorter line on the egress side. He quickly put on his clothes before the wind from the outside swirled and swooshed around him but was forbidden by a guard to put on boats or socks. So did the others. He was placed barefoot on metal plates; he imagined that they were charged with electricity.[27]
Outside again. Then robot-step onto the truck. As the doors were closing in on the prisoners, the man realized there was no light. He sat quickly on a long, low wooden seat. The side door closed, and it was black. The ripeness of 40 male frames already started to wreak in the darkness. He bumped on both sides with other jackets.
Then he heard on his left: “So what did they catch you for?”
Before the man could answer another middle-aged voice chimed up: “I stole a loaf of bread.”
Another older voice: “I stole a cup with water in it.”
Finally, Oleg said: “I was more of a thief, I stole a truck.”
Then a booming voice rang out: “I was in an abandon grocery store; I could take everything you had and give you change.”
Another Voice: “There is more change on the other side.”
The First Voice: “What do you think will happen?”
Another Voice: “Are you actually a soldier?”
First Voice: “No.”
Another Voice: “I am. They trained us for torture. We are probably going to be extremely renditioned as non-civilian combatants. If we were women, the unspeakable would happen.”
First Voice: “But we are not.”
Booming Voice: “We stole, that means we are the enemy.”
Another Voice: “Give that man a cheroot.”[28]
Oleg dreamed they were like angels, with no bodies only stench. Surely, thought Oleg the had to be some kind of discipline, a military order. But all he heard was the snoozing of the men, with occasional swerve on the road and the banging from the inside by slaps on the metal. Occasionally, he heard the Russian driver talk to his infantryman. The was panic in his voice along with a dose of tiredness. They wept. He also heard the guard talking about rape patrol. The guard then laughed.
But then the truck stopped. The doors were opened wide, and the guards roughly tore down each and every man and laid him on the ground. His turn: face to the black ground. It rotted even under the gray snow though heard bells, as if by a church.
Suddenly there was a dull pain in his left leg from a rifle butt. The man grunted but this was for effect. But then the rifle butt was followed by others – a parade of pounding with an organizing rhythmic pulsing black.
Oleg faded to black with only the church bells chiming.
He opened his eyes and was aware that he had been moved. There was a brackish pool that lapped upon his skin. The was a prickling as his blood rolled to his limbs. A flush in his eyes as if his face was turned to a frozen sun.
A strong sting from a rod climbed up his left leg.
“Keep your head down.” It was a Russian accent.
The man kept his down. He kept it still. He could only hear his own breathing and that of another man – raspy, grapply, and heavy.
“I do not think you realize how deep hole you are in. Why were you spying on us?”
“I was not spying. I was go…” And then he coughed as two whips sting his back.
“We know that you were spying. Do not answer an affirmative question with a negative response. It is impolite.”
Oleg nodded slowly. Strong stings on his right leg. Oleg grimaced.
The accent continued: “Next time it will cost you.”
Oleg nodded slowly. A gulp formed in the throat of Oleg.
“You may … you will not be… alive. If I say so.”
Oleg nodded slowly. He swallowed, rather dryly.
“So, what were you looking for?” There was anger for the first time in the accent’s tremolo. A darkness, a bile. There are bells from the nearby church. Oleg looked up: there he saw a dimly lit figure, perhaps in a nurse’s uniform but her face was scored, as if painted black.[29]
Down his face and over his neck came a canvas bag. The accent said: “I warned you not to move.” Oleg’s hands we tied. Then a sharp slit wash asunder on his left pinky. It tore brutally into the skin and then to flesh, and the articulated bone and gnawed the digit from the hand. The hand was wet with blood and red flesh. Oleg could not feel the finger. There were 9 fingers left on his ring of doom.[30]
Oleg faded to black with only the church bells chiming.
He awoke again. It seemed like night, but he did not lift his head. He waited and then a heavy-set creature dropped himself in the chair.
“Are you listening? We have done this a few times.”
Oleg counted his fingers. There were 5 fingers and the part of a sixth. He must have not remembered.
“You will wait until I decide what to do with you and others.”
Oleg’s groin pinched in a knot. The accent spoke: “Do you understand? Just nod.”
With the earth pummeling into Oleg’s nose, he groveled in the ‘yes’ direction.
He heard two sets of boots come down the wooden stairs. The footprint gouged the wooden floor. The bag was put back on. He was carried and slung on a different, and smaller, truck. He then noticed that his legs were tied. Mashed along he was in a morass askew of other prisoners, each one different, each on the same. Some were staring at their hands, lightened of the load of fingers and thumbs, lightened of white flesh.
They rode for some distance; Oleg did not know how far. Snow was the companion for much of this time. The truck stopped. They were thrown into a storm cellar which was shut. The faces looked up at once with wisps of hair and beard falling as a gray twilight sacked across all the bodies. Skin, sweat, and tears. They were, everyone, bags. Bag of bones.
There was no talking. The was not pointed in the castle of mirrors.
They simply waiting to be rescued or called by the angel of death painted to black.
The old man waiting for the pasture of the open sea from the war.
There are different boots. A white crow?[31] Hush.
[1] Allusion to the title.
[2] Rolling Stones. “Painted it Black.”
[3] Allusion to Eagles, “Hotel California.”
[4] Allusion to Genesis 1:6.
[5] Agathe Christie, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side.
[6] Title. Bank has a double meaning.
[7] Literally “Дарованому коневі в зуби не дивляться” (Darovanomu konevi v duby ne dyvlyatʹsya) – Do not look a gift horse in the teeth.
[8] Literally “Боже мир” (Bozhe myr)
[9] Rolling Stones. “Painted it Black.”
[10] Plant, “Heaven Knows.”
[11] The entire paragraph is an allusion to Gabriel Yegiazarov, Горячий снег (Goryachi Sneg) - Hot Snow.
[12] Allusion to Auden, “September 1, 1939.”
[13] The shortest verse in many English translations.
[14] Allusion to Auden, “September 1, 1939.”
[15] Allusion to Auden, “September 1, 1939.”
[16] Gogol Again.
[17] Allusion to Rolling Stones. “Painted it Black.”
[18] Allusion to Rolling Stones. “Painted it Black.”
[19] A reference to “Arbeit macht frei.”
[20] Jaroslav Hasek, The Good Soldier Svejk. “Propetariat” is intentional.
[21] Yes, “Hold On,” combined with a parrot from the film Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors.
[22] Allusion to Liebling, “Letter from Paris”. You may find it on Liebling: World War II Writings, Library of America, 689.
[23] Allusion to Liebling, “Letter from Paris”, Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors, and the Korean War.
[24] Рядово́й.
[25] Yes, “Hold On,”
[26] Allusion to Yes, “Hold On,”
[27] Allusion to Liebling, “Letter from Paris”.
[28] Wikipedia, Cheroot: “The cheroot is a filterless cylindrical cigar with both ends clipped during manufacture.” It was made famous by M*A*S*H* S8.E18 “Old Soldiers.”
[29] Allusion to Rolling Stones. “Painted it Black.”
[30] Rankin/Bass, an adaptation of Tolkien, The Return of the King.
[31] Literally “Біла ворона” bila vorona.