Free The Matiushin Case by Andrew Bromfield, Oleg Pavlov Page B

them what was in store for them: they would be marching to Dorbaz, the military field camp. The officers complained drearily about the crowds of non-Russians that had colonised the regiment. One officer told them confidentially that there was an order to change the situation that had arisen, and that was why they were drafting Russians and Ukrainians to serve in the regiment for the second year in succession, since the commanders had no one else they could rely on – it was enough to make you weep. They all listened to the officer, thinking they were being entrusted with a secret. For a brief moment, this prideful, rather foolish feeling actually made them feel united, which none of them had felt on the journey, when all they’d done was yell and drink, unable even to make out each other’s faces. They were in a festive, jolly mood. They all had red shoulder straps. But the officers had smarter ones – velvety, still brand new, with curly yellow letters. The sergeants who were loitering beside them turned out to be newcomers to the regiment as well and they didn’t know what fate had in store for them either. They’d only just arrived from some place called Karakemir, from a boot camp far off in the mountains, way off on the other side of the world, where they’d been pounded into shape as sergeants. They tried to look tough, putting on a brave face, but it was clear they were having a hard time in the regiment. The officers asked confidentially if they had any complaints and did anyone want to go to the jakes. Then suddenly a little officer came running up and announced that he was the regiment’s Communist Youth League organiser, collected the League members’ cards, still panting, and ran off again.
    They walked through the Tashkent regiment’s desert base in a now fresh, green, brand-new army column, trying to look like soldiers. Acting as its guards, the sergeants strode along at the sides with little flags, and two officers strode briskly at the head of the column, chatting chummily. At the checkpoint, a grubby, tattered, downcast-looking sentry opened the gates for the column, then shouted and pulled threatening faces as they left. The humpbacked roofs of the barracks and the camp’s fences fell further and further behind. The column crushed the silence beneath the clatter of its boots. They strode along a shady street that seemed to have no beginning and no end. Kids they guessed were homeless ran about freely here, playing in the roadside dust. Women who looked like Gypsies gazed out from warm, blossoming yards with little low fences in which the gates were flung wide-open. White-bearded old men emerged from their homes, while behind them the lavish gardens, like bright trimmings round their calm, ramshackle mud houses, exploded brightly into the hot air, resting their light, fragrant branches on the old men’s shoulders. Soon the old town disappeared in the haze and the blueness of the steppe, with its greyish tint of grass and plants, opened up to its full extent – and they strode across that steppeland, scattered, each man on his own, towards some point on the horizon, towards which a line of immense, wide-branching metal pylons retreated, pulling their high-voltage black threads across the sky.
    Flasks were supposed to be issued to them at Dorbaz, so they walked without water and as evening came on they crept into the camp dirty right up to their necks and panting with thirst. Dorbaz was three long, spindly, freshly painted plywood barracks huts. A patchy puddle of rolled asphalt, withered in the dry steppe, was the camp parade ground in front of the barracks huts. The place was empty and dead, but it turned out that the camp was having supper. The new arrivals lined up on the parade ground, and the sergeants came out after supper to join their buddies who had been away for a day. Here in the camp they were more important than the officers, who immediately