Andrei Shkarubo - Untrodden paths

Victor : I doubt it. I guess it just wasn’t your time to die.

Andrei : I guess you’re right. Anyway, dashing around the apartment, I, on the one hand, knew that it was death, and I was dying; on the other, I felt some force which wouldn’t let me die. This experience of two opposite forces clashing within me, tearing my body apart, was rather terrible. Yes.

Later that day my parents came and called the emergency. I was taken by our garrison ambulance to the district hospital, where the only thing they gave me was some sedative, for neither the colonel who’d brought me, nor the hospital’s civilian staff, could figure out what the problem was.

Next morning I returned home as if nothing had happened, but later in the day some red rash appeared and began spreading rapidly so that by evening my whole body had become red, with a fever of over 40. Again, the doctors were at a loss for the diagnosis: It didn’t look like measles or anything else they knew.

Victor : It was the poison burning down in your body.

Andrei : Yeah, I guess so. I can’t say how long I had this high fever, nor would I like to go through it again, recollecting all this. Anyway, I survived, much to the confusion and chagrin of this gang.

So they had no option but to take me once again to the prosecutor’s office and give me the same ultimatum: either the army or a labor camp – this time on charges of evasion of military service.

Okay, I said, I opt for the labor camp, but first, you have to conduct the medical check.

They did it, and again the prosecutor offered me to choose: either the army or a psychiatric asylum for criminals. I said how about the five years in a labor camp you promised last time? No, he said; we cannot send you to a labor camp: the medical check shows you have an active form of TB.

After that I had no option but to try, before they did lock me up, to appeal for help to the US Embassy.

That’s what I and my mother were institutionalized for.

Victor : Did you go to the Embassy together?

Andrei : Yes. Luckily, they didn’t keep her there long.

Andrei : In the psychiatric hospital they continued with their threats, promising me a trial by a tribunal for treason and espionage, unless I showed repentance for what I’d done. I said I’d rather plead guilty and surrender the whole of the spy-ring: meeting places, addresses, names – and what names, too.

To forestall such a scandalous possibility, the KGB reported that in addition to the American embassy, there were two or three other western embassies I had tried to get into; in short, that I had an obsession for appealing to foreign embassies, after which they diagnosed me as schizophrenic, and therefore non-composmentis; that is, mentally unable to stand trial for the committed crime – evasion of military service.

Victor : If I get it right, it means that you are a deserter, but they didn’t try you because you happen to be a loony, too.

Andrei : Yes, sir. And they rounded me up for this youth festival period because I’m also a suspected spy as well.

Victor : Small wonder, in light of the fact that you know English and can freely communicate with the enemy in their own language, an ability often beyond their own mental grasp. How long did they keep you then?

Andrei : I can’t say for sure. About three months.

Victor : Just three months? They keep people locked for years in such cases.

Andrei : That’s what they had actually planned, but my hunger-strike must have spoiled everything. They did their best to persuade me not to raise a racket: sit quiet for a year or so, they said, and we won’t give you any injections, only pills, which you can spit or swallow – nobody cares. In a year the scandal dies down, and we let you out.

I wouldn’t listen to their propositions, though. By that time I’d seen enough to know better. Besides, being in a mental hospital and communicating with ordinary guys, like Sasha, I saw that what they’d done to me wasn’t an isolated incident, but a typical example of how this system works. I saw that there were lots of ordinary people actually getting a much harsher deal from this gang than I was. In other words, I understood that dealing with the commies no quarters should be asked, nor given; that they were simply destroying us under various guises, because, I became convinced, sooner or later we’d destroy them. There’s no other option, no.

In short, by that time I hated those bastards so much I wouldn’t talk with them anyway. Besides, they overdid their persuasions: to make me more pliable, they transferred me from the observation ward where ordinary criminals were kept to the ward for the privileged. Apparently they thought a guy from Star City would feel greater kinship for high-ranking thieves rather than the common rabble which was so overflooding their labor camps that they were forced to send some of them to psychiatric hospitals.

I must say that some of the boys were sent there for taking part in mass protests – either by cutting their wrists, or going on a hunger-strike – there was a lot of unrest in prisons and labor camps at the time.

Victor : The Sun was rather active that year, spurring mankind to fight for freedom, not just in our country, but all over the planet. Remember the workers’ revolution in Poland, the tragic hunger-strike of the IRA prisoners in Northern Ireland? They are good examples of this.

Andrei : Of course I remember. Their choice of freedom at the cost of their lives served as an example to all of us who were enslaved for wanting to be free.

Victor : Well, not only to them. It was this summer that I attained enlightenment: the very same freedom at the price of one’s own life.

Andrei : Excuse me, but I don’t understand this paradox or yours. If I can believe my eyes, you are more alive than dead, though maybe not quite free.

Victor : The problem is that your eyes can see no further than the outward form. Outwardly, I, indeed, am alive, though not free. Inwardly, it’s quite the contrary. Such are the dialectics.

Andrei : I didn’t get you just the same.

Victor : Never mind, you’ll learn. So what wrong did they do to you by transferring you from the observation ward to the ward for the privileged?

Andrei : I was one of their own in the observation ward. The guys who suffered a lot from the commies hated their guts – and here they send a guy who dared to go to the US embassy, well, the general attitude was understandable.

Solidarity in general was the norm in the ward, something absolutely alien to this pack of bitches called «socialist society». I remember an incident in our canteen when I was called a traitor and a CIA agent by some bastard who either wanted to show his patriotism to win favors, or was just trying to provoke me to a fight – I don’t know. Anyway, his reward was not long in coming: his first toilet sortie after that incident proved most unfortunate – he slipped and badly smashed his head on the toilet bowl. Yeah, after this none of those bitches dared to show us their fucking patriotism.

So they transferred me to the so-called recovery ward, for the bitchiest bitches, like the deputy director of our local Schelkovo steel-mill, some department head in the Foreign Trade Ministry, the head of some big supermarket in Moscow; in short, all those bossy felons, and a couple of bosses’ sons – one was a deputy principal in a prestigious English language school. The bastard screwed half of his students, undermined his health, and therefore badly needed treatment; the other one was a young sadist killer who knifed a girl in his class, and she bled to death. What surprised me most was that this scum was allowed what they called «leave», and spent every weekend at home. On weekdays they were given vitamins and electric sleep treatment. And in their spare time they lectured me on patriotism, saying that I must love their fucking country, and defend it by serving in the army, instead of selling it out to the US imperialists. The deputy director of our local steel-mill and the pedophile principal whose daddy was said to hold some high post in the KGB were the ones who persevered the most. I don’t know how much patience I had left for listening to those bitches, but luckily, on the fifth day of my hunger-strike, when they saw I was not bowing to their persuasion, they sent me back to the observation ward. And on the seventh, they gave me the hell they had total blackout induced by injections of God knows

promised before. To tell you truth, for me it was a what junk.

Then they released me. Frankly, I still don’t know why. Apparently, they were convinced I wouldn’t last long, with active TB at that, and they simply didn’t want an extra corpse on their hands.

Victor : Yes, I see. Well, nowadays, you look quite healthy, alive and kicking I’d say. I saw you jerk this dumb-bell.

Andrei : Quite right. It may be funny to hear but it was this stint in the mental asylum which spurred my physical recovery. It helped me shed the remaining illusions about our communist pie-in-the sky, giving me such a powerful charge of hatred of our regime and a desire to fight it, that after my release I was improving with magic speed, though I was practicing the very same yoga and herbal treatment which earlier had brought me very little relief.

Victor : It’s not surprising: yoga, first and foremost, is a spiritual practice, not a physical exercise, the effect of which is indeed minute. As soon as yoga becomes a spiritual feat for its practitioner, the magic begins.

OK, never mind. I think you’ll have lots of other miracles ahead of you, now that you’ve become a true yogi. This is not crucial. What is crucial is that you now know that one has to sacrifice, to pay with one’s life for one’s spiritual freedom, integrity, for spiritual values. Now you know that sacrifice is the main law of spiritual development. Like a child, you’ve only made the first step there. You have yet to learn how to walk, acquiring on your way spiritual skill and knowledge for which one also pays with his life.

And, knowing your passionate love for communism, I feel inclined to tell you one secret: the communist pie will soon fall out of the sky.

Andrei : Damn, man, do you think it’s funny?

Victor : I’m absolutely serious. But let’s dwell on it later. The sun is such a treat today that I don’t want to spoil the enjoyment with talk of politics.

Bachkov : Wake up, wake up, you loonies! Everybody here, get up, get dressed, make your beds, wash your f-f-f-asses. Who’s scrubbing today? Victor Vasilievich? Here’s the instrument for the master. Voronin, grab your towel and clear out, quick to the observation ward!

Voronin : What for, Captain?

Bachkov : For too much eating and polluting the air.

Addressing a young man standing with his things in the doorway : Come in, this glutton will clear out soon, and you can settle in.

Voronin to the newcomer : Come in. What’s your name?

Fedorovich, a young man in his early twenties : Victor.

in the locker. What’s this you have, cheese? Can I

Voronin, offering his hand : Valery. Put your things have a little?

Fedorovich : It’s a smoked cheese, I don’t know if you’ll like it…

Voronin : Thank you, I like all cheese, especially smoked. Oh, it’s fresh. Know the story about Red Riding Hood? Well, Red Riding Hood was walking in the woods, and bumped into the Wolf…