A Man Without Breath

‘That’s why we’re drinking, isn’t it? To forget about shit like that. Because life is shit but the alternative is always worse. At least that’s the way it looks to me. I’m in a dark place but the other side of the curtain looks even darker to me. And it frightens me.’

‘You sound like a Russian now. It must be the vodka, Captain Gunther. What you say is quite correct, and that’s why any Russian drinks. We pretend to live because dying is much more reality than we can cope with. Which reminds me of a story – about drinking yorsh, as a matter of fact. That stuff is lethal. Even to those who are themselves lethal. Perhaps them most of all, because they have so much more to forget. Let’s see now, yes it would have been May of 1940 when two senior NKVD officers arrived at the state hospital in a Zis driven by a blue-hat NCO. Because of who they were and the power they wield – the power of life and death – I was asked to supervise their medical treatment myself. I say asked, but it would be more accurate to say that the blue-hat NCO put a gun to my head and told me that if they died, he would come back to the hospital and personally blow my brains out. He actually took out a gun and put it to my head, just to make the point. He even made me help to carry the two officers out of the back of the truck, which I will never forget as long as I live. As I dropped the tailgate I thought the two men had been seriously injured, because the floor of the truck was covered in blood. Only the blood was not theirs. And in fact the two NKVD men were not injured at all, but blind drunk. The NCO was pretty drunk himself. They’d all been drinking yorsh for several days and the two officers were suffering from acute alcoholic poisoning. Also on the floor of the truck I saw several leather aprons and a briefcase that fell on the ground as we carried the men out and burst open: it was full of automatic pistols.’

‘Do you remember the names of these men?’

‘Yes. One was a Major Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin, and the other was a Lieutenant Rudakov – Arkady Rudakov. But I don’t remember the NCO. And really, who they were is not important, because almost immediately I knew what they were. These people are the worst we have, you know. State-sanctioned psychopaths. Well, everyone in Russia knows this type: unlike most people this kind of NKVD man doesn’t give a damn what he says about anything or anyone. And always he is threatening to shoot you, as if it means nothing to him because he does it so often. I mean this kind of a fellow handles guns like I handle a stethoscope. When he wakes up in the morning he probably reaches for his gun before he scratches his own balls. He shoots someone with less thought than you or I would stamp on an ant.

‘If you were to magnify a flea several thousand times you’d have an idea of what these men are like. Ugly and bloated with blood, with thin legs and hairy fat bodies. If you squashed one of them there would be such a great quantity of blood that came bursting out of their bodies that you would see nothing but red. Then there were their uniforms: the blue hats, the double TT shoulder-holsters, and the Orders of the Badge of Honour on their gymnasterka tunics – they would have received those orders from Stalin himself for their service in 1937 and 1938. In other words, one of these men might easily have been the very man who shot my own dear wife.

‘For a glorious moment it seemed that fate had placed these men in my hands, and I felt my Hippocratic oath was no longer of importance besides the exciting possibility of meting out some kind of rough justice to one of them – perhaps to both. I mean I actually considered murdering these men. It would have been easy enough for a doctor like me – an injection of potassium to the heart, and no one would have been at all surprised. Indeed the lieutenant regained consciousness long enough to get up off the trolley he was on and fall down again, and when he fell he hit the back of his head on the floor and fractured his skull. I told myself I would be doing the world a favour if I killed them both. It would have been like putting down a couple of dangerous dogs. Instead I ordered fluid replacement, dextrose solutions, thiamine and oxygen and set about trying to restore them to full health.’ He paused and then frowned. ‘Why did I do that? Was it because I am a decent man? Or is morality just a form of cowardice, as Hamlet says? I don’t know the answer to that. I treated them. And I continued treating them as I would have treated any other man. Even now it seems quite perplexing to me.