Read Online The Matiushin Case by Andrew Bromfield, Oleg Pavlov - Free Book Online

demanding more and more, as if it was all theirs. One who ended up with a shirt tossed it onto the roof of a hut and went back to trying to scrounge or steal something else. Shirts, t-shirts, shoes, cigarettes, jeans, wristwatches – they took all these and then fought in screeching frenzy over who would get what.
    Then the Russians showed up, looking for men from their own parts. They had white teeth and a sickly-sweet smell of eau de cologne. The officers let them through, probably because they knew them all by sight. The Russians had an aura of calm and self-confidence. Sitting down by the recruits, quizzing them crudely about where they were from, they struck up conversations and helped themselves to cigarettes, even if they couldn’t find anyone from back home. They said they served in some kind of special platoon, the only Russian platoon in the regiment – there weren’t any more Russians, only Ukrainians from previous drafts serving in the prison camp companies, and they’d been scattered around. That this was some kind of escort regiment. No one would have it easy in this regiment. And if anyone was put in the special platoon, he should soap up a piece of rope, that was what they said, grinning: we won’t beat you on the first day, that’s our custom, but afterwards go hang yourselves, you’ve had it, guys. They started driving home the very sensible idea that it was best to give any money to them now. After all, they were Russians, their own kind.
    Matiushin’s head was aching from its drunken spinning and he had a thirst more agonising than any he had ever known, so he kept thinking he could hear water gurgling. He was only distracted from it when a kind of scruffy beggar crept in under his shoulder, covered in filth from head to toe, so coal-black that even his round white eyes with red rims breathed out heat, like glowing coals.
    â€˜Kid, give us the trainers,’ he said with a Ukrainian accent. ‘Give ’em us, they won’t be no good to you. I ain’t got nothing and I walks over coal in the boiler room, come on, kid.’
    â€˜Just stop your whinging, will you … ’ Matiushin managed to force out, and scraped off one trainer, tanned with thick dust that had turned it to clay. And then, with a sudden sense of relief, he freed himself of the other one and closed his eyes so as not to see anything any more.
    A sensation of lightness entered his apathetic soul. He could hear everyone whispering about the bathhouse, but they wanted to drink, not wash themselves. And he fancied that there was a freezing-cold sea in the barracks hut, but when the hut was opened, they would choke on it. And only that morning hadn’t there been a light breeze blowing over everything, but now it was midday and the sun was a blazing pillar in the sky and it had chained him to itself. That’s it – the thought flared up and faded away again: everybody’s thinking about the same thing, longing for the same thing – but then a tiny whisper trickled in from somewhere and there was a whiff of coal:
    â€˜Kid, kid …’
    Matiushin opened his eyes. Like some little demon, the ragamuffin conjured himself out of the wall of the hut again right there in front of him. Smouldering joyfully, with his bony back curved over and his vertebrae glittering with coal, he pulled out from under his belly, as scarily as if it were his own liver, a dull mug or can, trembling with moisture.
    â€˜Tekit, have a drink of water. I’ve got lots, got a whole tapful in the boiler room. Cummon kid, tekit, it ain’t infectious!’
    Matiushin looked for a long time, as if he didn’t believe it, but his throat contracted at the glitter of the bright, pure water, and he reached out a trembling hand for the can and took a swig from it, then took another swig – and he came alive, feeling the hard pebble of coldness clutched in his hand, giving him weight,