CHAPTER THREE

The enemy was attacking continuously, now in infantry, now in cavalry formations, and it was only owing to his colossal courage that Sidelnikov was managing to fight off one attack after another. He had already been lying prone in the trench for half an hour. His shoulders and legs got numb but he continued to return fire.

A new detachment was approaching. Of course, it was the Tartars again. In order to terrify Sidelnikov they shaved their heads clean, they were brandishing their colourful lashes and shouting ‘Hurrah!’ in Tartar. Their only aim was to capture Maria, to put her forcibly on a horse and take her to Khan Girei’s harem. There, in his harem, Khan Girei would be able to ogle in any way and even touch her beauty – again, by force. That is how it would have happened – were it not for Sidelnikov.

Maria was lying next to him, aswoon from fright. She was completely helpless and so puny that she easily fitted on the edge of the couch, alias the trench, between the leatherette bolster and the elbow of her saviour. At the height of battle, hoarse from the loud machine-gun rounds, he would sometimes have a moment to fondle Maria, looming with his huge torso over her defenceless little body. Doing this, Sidelnikov would suddenly catch himself turning a little bit into Khan Girei, who resembled a black eagle. And although Maria was lying there wholly unconscious and actually was completely invisible, Sidelnikov himself was very visible during those moments and was slightly apprehensive that the maiden might notice this strange split in his personality and the totally out-of-place, shameful tension in his mended tight shorts.

A few days previously, Sidelnikov’s parents, who were forever either busy at work or engaged in sorting out their uneasy relationship, owing to the difference in their temperaments, all of a sudden made a short truce and remembered their half-wit son Gosha. They even got round to bringing him home for an evening from Granny Rosa (likewise half-witted, as a matter of fact), in order to take him with them to the Machine Builders’ Palace of Culture to see “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai”, performed by a touring ballet troupe. Such outings happened only once in several years, but for Sidelnikov it was the first time ever. So he had his reasons to worry and tread on the grown-ups’ shoes and ask them silly questions. They would cut him short angrily but he sensed in any case that all this festivity and his mother’s black and white polka dot dress, her smiling nervousness, the sharp sickly waves of her “Red Moscow” scent, his father’s starched cuffs and unusual good humour were presents, splendid but in no way deserved and surely not his to keep.

It turned out that an orchestra could play other than at a funeral, and much better and more frightening at that, even though at the time Sidelnikov could not imagine anything more frightening than a funeral band. However, on this occasion he found out that music was not responsible for death alone. It participated in everything, rather like the weather. The same music made Sidelnikov feel agonising envy and literally fall in love with all and sundry: Maria’s fiancé, hacked to death by a sword, and Khan Girei and even the homeliest of the slave girls attired in transparent nylon trousers. Not to mention that maiden, Maria...

The impact was so powerful that Sidelnikov had difficulty surviving till the following morning when he, numb, was taken in silence to the kindergarten where he at last fell greedily upon his audience – the always drowsy Vladik Baranov who had not yet known anything, not anything at all! The account was started at the clothes lockers, was continued during breakfast with the pearl barley gruel in his mouth, and was interrupted by the appearance of Galia Sharipovna, the pretty cleaner who started taking away the dishes and wiping the tables clean. Her arrival was always preceded by the suffocating reek of bleach from the rag she never let out of her hand.

During the walk around the playground shelter with the peeling paint, the eyewitness and well-nigh participant of the Bakhchisarai’s events proceeded to describe them anew. He could not afford to miss a single detail. He was narrating the music, emitting inhumanly complicated sounds with hasty side remarks: ‘Then they started dancing... Here’s dancing... Dancing again...’ Vladik Baranov was opening his eyes wider than usual and blinking fast.

All of the most interesting stuff was still untold, but after lunch the boys were parted by the “quiet hour”, the daily torture whereby one had to languish under sheets wasting one’s time for nothing and envying even the flies that could freely go wherever they wished anytime without having to ask permission.

But after tea, they congregated again, behind the lockers. Children were being picked up to go home and nobody was disturbing the boys. The crucial battle was approaching. And the Tartars flew at full tilt straight into the dancing room! The din of the skirmish and the sound of his own voice rendered Sidelnikov almost deaf. He was not scared, he just closed his eyes for one second – and when he opened his eyes, he saw the face of Galia Sharipovna disfigured by rage. Overpowering the orchestra, she screamed, ‘I’ll show you the “Tartars”! You little shit!’ After the wet rag slapped his face, he could no longer see anything and was not fighting anyone. He was standing, hunched, pressing his head into his shoulders and hiding his face that stunk of bleach in his palms.

There was a desert around him. Beyond it, people could still walk and talk and answer questions of the arriving parents. But that mash of sounds suddenly froze pierced by a voice that was colder than usual, almost icy, and could belong only to Rosa: ‘If you... scum... dare to touch him... ever again... I’ll have you ... put away.’

Rosa was dragging him by the hand across the yard of the kindergarten but at the gate, he abruptly stopped and tried to wrench his hand out and run back. He suddenly understood everything. The cleaning girl had not seen the show; she did not know what it was about. He should tell her everything! She assumed that he was saying bad things about those who were not Russian. She was hurt! And the wicked Rosa called her “scum”! And the girl was hurt and didn’t know... And he...

At this moment he vomited his tea straight down onto his feet and sandals. And his shorts got soiled as well. Rosa started wiping his face but he was fighting back, coughing, and finally started crying. Because nothing, but nothing, could be explained to anybody.