Zinky Boys by Svetlana Alexievich Read Free Book Online

‘Now, lads, how would you like to work on the latest engines?’ Of course we all shouted ‘Yes please!’ with one voice. Next question: ‘First, you’ll have to spend some time helping with the harvest in the tselina. ‡ Any objections?’ No objections.
    It was only in the plane, when we happened to find out fromthe crew that the flight was to Tashkent, that I began to wonder if we really were going to the tselina. At Tashkent we were lined up and marched to a barbed-wire compound a little way from the airport. We sat and waited. The officers were going around whispering, all excited. At lunch-time crates of vodka suddenly arrived. We were lined up in rows and informed that in a few hours’ time we would be flying to Afghanistan to do our duty as soldiers in accordance with our military oath.
    It was incredible! Fear and panic turned men into animals — some of us went very quiet, others got into an absolute frenzy, or wept with anger or fell into a kind of trance, numb from this unbelievably filthy trick that had been played on us. That was what the vodka was for, of course, to calm us down. After we’d drunk it and it had gone to our heads some of us tried to escape and others started to fight with our officers, but the compound was surrounded by troops from other units and they shoved us into the plane. We were just thrown into that great metal belly like so many crates being loaded.
    That’s how we got to Afghanistan. Next day we saw our first dead and wounded and heard phrases like ‘reconnaissance raid’, ‘battle’, and ‘operation’ for the first time. I was in shock from the whole thing — I suppose it took me several months to get back on an even keel.
    When my wife enquired why I was in Afghanistan she was told that I’d volunteered. All our mothers and wives were told the same. If I’d been asked to give my life for something worthwhile I’d have volunteered, but I was deceived in two ways: first, they lied to us; second, it took me eight years to find out the truth about the war itself. Many of my friends are dead and sometimes I envy them because they’ll never know they were lied to about this disgusting war — and because no one can ever lie to them again.
    A Mother
    My husband served in East Germany for many years and later in Mongolia. I spent twenty years of my life away from my country,which I loved and longed for with incredible passion. I even wrote a letter to General Staff HQ, in which I pointed out that I’d spent twenty years of my life abroad and warned them I couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Please help me to go home,’ I said.
    Even on the train I couldn’t believe it. ‘Are we really going home?’ I asked my husband, over and over again. ‘It’s not some joke of yours, is it?’ At the first stop on Soviet territory I picked up a handful of earth. I looked at it and smiled — yes, it really was our national soil. I ate it, truly I did. I ate it and rubbed it all over my face.
    Yura was my eldest son. A mother shouldn’t admit it, probably, but he was my favourite. I loved him more than my husband and my younger son. When he was little I slept with my hand on his little foot. I wouldn’t think of going to the cinema and leaving him with some baby-sitter, so when he was three months old I’d take him (together with a few bottles of milk) with me and off we’d go. I can honestly say he was my life. I brought him up to model himself on figures like Pavka Korchagin, Oleg Koshevoi and Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. §
    In his first year at school he knew whole pages of Hardened Steel by Nikolai Ostrovsky by heart, rather than fairy-tales or nursery rhymes like the other children.
    His teacher was delighted with him: ‘What does your Mama do, Yura? You’ve read such a lot already!’
    â€˜My Mummy works in the library.’
    He understood