Free The Light and the Dark by Mikhail Shishkin Page A

terrain is difficult and most savagely savage. I most stringently recommend all gentlemen commanding regiments and battalions to expound and impress on their men that as they pass through the townships, villages and taverns they must not wreak even the slightest devastation. Local inhabitants are to be calmly spared and in no wise offended in order not to harden the hearts of the people and thereby earn the vicious reputation of marauders. Houses are not to be run into, enemies begging for mercy are to be spared, unarmed men are not to be killed, women are not be fought with, minors are not to be touched. To save the bullet, with every shot every soldier must aim at his own enemy, in order to kill him. The blessings of theheavenly kingdom on those of us who are killed, and to those who live – glory! Fear-mongers and cowards must be eliminated on the spot. Follow me into the attack, hurrah! Press on, press on! Attack! Fix bayonets! Rifles to the fore! Stab, shoot, finish them! Drop them where they stand! We’ll kill, drop, capture the lot of them! Chase, stab! Slash, beat! Hoik, skrike, dreck, doom, hell!’
    He broke off to get his breath back, unfastened the button of his collar and walked over to the window. Blotted the sweat off his forehead with the curtain. Took a cigarette case out of his pocket. Tapped a
papyrosa
on the lid. Broke a match on the sodden box. Then another. Lit up with the third. Took a deep drag. Breathed a thick stream of smoke out through the open window frame.
    For a brief moment he had the feeling that all this had happened before: this ink-stained youngster who reminded him so much of his own dead son had sat in this room in exactly the same way. With the milk not yet dry on his lips, and women still seeming mysterious. That long-cold teapot with the broken spout had existed before. Everything was exactly the same as then: this wallpaper with the pattern of small red flowers, like a rash – as if it had caught chickenpox from the draught. This bundle of dried fish hanging on the window latch threaded through their eyes. That man who had just walked past, shuffling his feet, with both of his jacket pockets weighed down with bottles. That sign opposite, ‘ARMY STORES’, which someone had altered with mud, so that it read ‘AMY SCORES’. From somewhere round the corner he heard the rattle of a child clattering a stick along a picket fence.
    Running his hand over his chin, he heard the stubble rustling. That definitely had happened before – him running his hand over it and it rustling.
    He reflected that the secret of déjà vu was probably that in the book of life, of course, all this was only written once. But it cameback to life when someone read a page that had already been read before. And then it all lived again – the stick on the picket fence and the fish that smelled from close up, hanging on the window latch, and the rustling of this stubble and the teapot full of cold, strong tea, and women were still mysterious.
    So it was simply that someone was reading these lines at the moment – that was the entire secret of déjà vu.
    He flicked his butt out through the window and it went spinning through the air.
    He sucked bitter, cold tea out of the broken spout of the teapot. Wiped his lips on his sleeve.
    Carried on dictating.
    ‘In the third place, and perhaps most important of all – do not kill without need. Remember – they are human beings like us. This will be tough, lads. And we’ll have to go a long way, to the ends of the earth. Even further than Alexander the Great went, he only reached the border, where he ordered a marble column to be erected with a line of verse written on it: “I, Alexander, did reach this point”. You don’t believe me? I’ll show you it. The cacti there have prickly pricked-up ears and the people are naked-wise. Alexander the Great was greatly surprised when he saw them and said: “Ask for whatever you wish, I will give it to you!” They