Zinky Boys by Svetlana Alexievich Page B

him off to the army. I prayed he wouldn’t be killed. I prayed he wouldn’t be beaten up and humiliated by the bigger, senior ones — he was so small. He told us how they could force you to clean out the toilets with a toothbrush and wash out other people’s underpants. That’s what I was afraid of. He wrote and told us he was being posted and to send him photos of his mum and dad and sister ... ‡‡‡
    He didn’t write where he was being sent. Two months later we had a letter from Afghanistan. ‘Don’t cry, Mum, our flak-jackets are very good,’ he wrote. Our flak-jackets are good … ’ My little sunshine …
    I was already expecting him home, he had only a month more to go in the army. I managed to buy him some shirts, and a scarf, and shoes. They’re still in the cupboard.
    The first thing I knew about it was when a captain from headquarters arrived.
    â€˜Try to be strong, mother … ’ That’s what he called me.
    â€˜Where is my son?’
    â€˜Here in Minsk. They’re bringing him now.’
    I fell to the floor. ‘My little sunshine. My little sunshine.’ I got up and threw myself at the captain. ‘Why are you alive and my son dead? You’re big and strong and he’s so small. You’re a man and he’s just a boy. Why are you alive?’
    They brought in the coffin. I collapsed over it. I wanted to lay him out but they wouldn’t allow us to open the coffin to see him, touch him … Did they find a uniform to fit him? ‘My little sunshine, my little sunshine.’ Now I just want to be in the coffin with him. I go to the cemetery, throw myself on the gravestone and cuddle him. My little sunshine …
    Private, Signals Corps
    I put a little lump of earth from our village in my pocket and had such strange feelings in the train …
    Of course, some of us were cowards. One lad failed his medical on account of his eyes and ran out crowing about his good luck. The very next guy was failed too, but he was almost in tears. ‘How can I go back to my unit? The send-off they gave me lasted two weeks. If I had an ulcer, at least, but not for tooth-ache!’ He ran, still in his underpants, straight to the general, begging to have the teeth pulled out so he could go.
    I got an ‘A’ in geography at school, so I shut my eyes and imagined mountains, monkeys, getting a sun-tan and eating bananas. The reality was being stuck in a tank in our greatcoats, with machine-guns poking out left and right. I was in the rear vehicle with a machine-gun pointing backwards, of course, and all automatics cocked. We were like a great iron hedgehog. Then we’d come across the paras in their special T-shirts and panama hats, sitting on their APCs and laughing at us. I saw a dead mercenary and got a shock. He had an athlete’s physique and there was I, who didn’t even know how to climb a rock.
    I lugged the field-telephone up ten metres of sheer rock. The first time a mine went off I shut my mouth when you’re meant to open it — to avoid your eardrums bursting. We were issued with gas-masks but threw them away the same day because the mujahedin didn’t have chemical weapons. We sold our helmets. They were just one more thing to carry and they get as hot as frying-pans. My big problem was how to steal extra magazines. We were issued with four, so on my first payday I bought a fifth from a friend of mine and I was given a sixth. In battle you take out the last round from your last magazine and hold it between your teeth. To use on yourself if necessary.
    We went to Afghanistan to build socialism but found ourselves penned in by barbed wire. ‘Don’t leave the compound, lads! No need to spread the message, we’ve got specialists for that.’ Pity they didn’t trust us.
    I talked to a shopkeeper once. ‘You’ve been living youlives the wrong way. Now we’ll teach you