The Matiushin Case by Oleg Pavlov & Andrew Bromfield

Author:Oleg Pavlov & Andrew Bromfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: contemporary fiction, literary fiction, novel, translation, translated fiction, comedy, drama, dark humour, Russia, Soviet army, prison camp, conscription, Russian Booker Prize, Solzhenitsyn Prize, Russian fiction, Oleg Pavlov, Solzhenitsyn, Captain of the Steppe, Павлов, Олег Олегович, Récits des derniers jours, Tales of the Last Days, Andrew Bromfield
Publisher: And Other Stories Publishing
Published: 2014-06-08T16:00:00+00:00

Keeping the men in the cold beside the truck, the duty officer swore and insisted stubbornly that he had nothing to feed them and nowhere to put them, and things had to be decided somehow. The hope flared up for a moment that they were here by mistake, but the escorting officer from the Tashkent regiment squelched it. He swore and insisted even more stubbornly than the duty officer. It became clear who was going to win. The strong man got what he wanted, the weak man’s faith failed him and he backed down – and beds were found in the middle of the night. In the darkness, they guessed from the smell that it was some kind of infirmary again.

Early in the morning, between four and five, they were woken by local men who had heard the noise in the night and come to gape. Outside the window, rain flailed about in the wind. A large pan of yesterday’s meat and cabbage soup was dragged in for them and even cold it tasted good; they were more generous with food here than in Tashkent. The new arrivals discovered that they had ended up in an escort regiment where men served as soldiers, and didn’t learn to be cooks. They couldn’t make any sense of why they had been sent from the escort regiment in Tashkent to this one. In the morning some majors came into the room, looked at the men without speaking, as if they were sick, infectious animals, and went away again. The men didn’t go anywhere else all day long. Starting from the next morning, they were driven round the rain-soaked town to various hospitals: in one they had blood samples, in another they had their stomachs palped. They were brought back to the infirmary, fed lunch, then taken back to the doctors to be examined.

Then Husak was separated out and taken away, and he didn’t come back. Anikin and Kulagin disappeared, taken away to a barracks for the night. Nobody wanted to explain anything.

The next day it seemed as if they’d come for the rest of the men, who were ordered outside. The little hills of hangars and warehouses stretched out in lines behind barbed wire as they wandered along the edge of the road after a little officer. At one warehouse, where a van was standing idle and silent with its doors wide open, revealing that it was stuffed with large-headed pigs’ carcasses, the officer stuck his head into a low little door.

‘Glebich, I’ve brought some manpower.’

‘Oo-oo-oo … ’ The approving drone floated out of depths into which an iron staircase led down, and when they walked down it, they found themselves in a cold stone cellar, fragrant with the aroma of fried meat. A dishevelled, softhearted-looking man was frying the meat for himself on a stove, as if he were working a miracle.

‘Eating it straight away?’ the little officer asked ingratiatingly.

‘I’m taking a sample! And who are these? Where’d you drag them in

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