Free The Light and the Dark by Mikhail Shishkin

wrote that if it had really been love on my side, he hoped that now it would definitely pass off. The tooth really was horrible. But I took it and stuck it in my cheek.
    One time he came and spoke about something for ages with Mummy and Daddy behind a closed door, then came into my room. I stood at the window as if I was paralysed. He wanted to come closer, but I pulled the curtain shut and hid behind it.
    He said: ‘Sasha-the-smasher! My poor little lovesick girl! How can you possibly fall in love with such a monster? Listen, there’s something important I have to explain to you, although I’m sure you already understand everything anyway behind that curtain. You don’t love me at all, you simply love. These are two quite different things.’
    And he left.
    He didn’t come to our place when I was there any more after that. And he didn’t answer my letters.
    One day I played truant from school. I just decided I wouldn’t go – and I didn’t. I wandered about in the rain, not even noticing that it was pouring from the heavens, the way that cows don’t notice rain.
    I was holding his tooth in my fist in my pocket.
    The only thing I remember is the smell of a burned rubbish bin that got stuck in my nostrils. And a sugar-coated pair ofnewly-weds in the mud-splattered window of a photographer’s shop.
    I was chilled to the bone and soaked to the skin. I trudged back home.
    I open the door of the apartment and there’s someone’s huge umbrella standing open on the floor.
    I catch a familiar scent in the hallway. A long coat, a white scarf and a hat are hanging on the hallstand.
    I hear water running in the bathroom.
    The bedroom door is open. Mummy glances out with her hair in a mess. Pulling on her Chinese robe with the dragons over her naked body. She asked in fright:
    ‘Sasha? What’s happened? What are you doing here?’

    Today the chief of chiefs and commander of commanders summons me and says:
    ‘Sit down, write an order.’
    I sit down and write:
    ‘Brothers and sisters! Soldier boys! Contractors, peacekeepers and assassins! The fatherland is disintegrating like blotting paper in the rain! There is nowhere to retreat! Not a single step backwards! Whoah, take a look at that! Did you see the butt she has on her? No, not that one! She’s already turned the corner. Cross that out about the butt. Right, where were we? Ah, yes! Right then. Wigs to be woven into a hairy braid from the centre of the crown of the head and thereafter plaited into a braid woven with a ribbon. No toupees to be worn. All men to arrange their temples in identical fashion, as is presently established in the regiment, to one longpigeon-wing, but brushed out and backcombed smartly so as not to droop like an icicle, and in frosty weather to be made wider so as to cover the ear. This drill will preserve the men from the idleness that is the source of all soldiers’ wanton antics. Which seems reason enough to keep a soldier practising it constantly. Boots to be of each man’s correct size, neither too broad nor too narrow, such that in frosty weather straw or fibrous material may be inserted into them, nor too short, such as not to chafe the toes in walking, owing to which a soldier on the march often cannot keep pace with the fleet of foot, but to sit straight on the foot. Also to be kept always faultlessly repaired, cleaned and greased and changed daily from one foot to the other so as not to wear out and not to damage the feet during marching and walking. Shaving shall not be neglected. For the slower of wit I explain: the wearing of a beard may connote defeat in hand-to-hand combat, because it is easy to grab hold of it and defeat the enemy. We march out tomorrow. Our road is long. The night is short. The clouds are sleeping. First we shall march through the friendly kingdom of Prester John, whose great might is the talk of the whole world. It says here in the
Evening News
that he defeated Genghis Khan himself in a war of attrition. This