Absolute Zero

by Artem Chekh

Standing there with her I thought, for the first time, that I was living somebody else’s life. And from then on, I would have somebody else’s dreams. And occupy somebody else’s place, to become a hero, or a coward. Or die. One way or another, each of us would have new dreams.

I try to banish this image by thinking about what will happen to me in a month or two – with a short haircut, suntanned, with flaky skin on my face and my hands dirty from cheap machine oil. I will be sitting on a stool near a tent, watching the new arrivals. I might even be spitting from time to time. My new uniform will fade into a light ochre color, my combat boots will be permanently gray from dust, my feet will become calloused. Ahead of me there will be new trials, my regiment called to active duty, probably to war. I may even be maimed or killed... but at this point I am so new, I smell of fresh sweat and Givenchy after-shave.

These first thirty minutes of the new day are not kind to you, as the demons of doubt and fear unleash themselves upon you while you are still drowsy. But as soon as I have breakfast and endure the humiliating routine of morning formation, the fog in my head dissipates, and everything settles.

We talk about our previous jobs, past experiences, the tragedies we lived through, the boundaries crossed, and, of course, about weapons and their characteristics. Though truth be told, weapons, with abbreviations instead of names, hardly speak to me. And how could they, if I was one of those few at school who always skipped the chapters about war in Tolstoy’s War and Peace?

They teach us to shoot. Some of the experienced men say that they teach us all wrong, that at the front nobody shoots this way. They teach us to crawl and to dig trenches. And they teach us to run, a lot, as if all we’ll be doing is running away from death, or chasing it.

“These are The Two Hundred! – this is military slang for dead. – They are the fuckin’ dead! To hell with them! Let’s run, boys!”

Beyond the training field is regular civilian life which they have already grown unaccustomed to like to an old lover, but memory makes them excited, and they smile nervously hearing the word “LEAVE.”

And then it feels like a special kind of chic to ride in a marshrutka, a crowded minibus that is the only means of transportation in some areas of the city, while half-drunk, wearing a uniform, ignoring the disgusted looks that the passengers throw at you.

The city terrifies, fascinates, and excites the soldiers who are not used to it. Long-forgotten feelings surface, something nostalgic, foggy, from childhood. And there you are, a child, after spending three weeks at summer camp situated between a narrow river and newly planted pines, returning home, walking through the town, recognizing and recalling it, gazing at the buildings that were most significant to you… People wearing civilian clothes surprise you the most. “You exist? Thank you, I like looking at you.” In a coffee shop you go to the bathroom and see yourself in the mirror for pretty much the first time that week. “Hey man, is it really you? You’ve changed.” On the streets, you break the habit of spitting onto the ground or blowing your nose through one nostril. You step back gasping when bicycles go by and you watch out when crossing the street. It takes so little: a smiling waitress wearing plastic earrings, two Americanos, a pastry called “Tenderness,” fifteen minutes in a bookstore, half an hour in a park, two pounds of strawberries, the restless sounds of the city.

They are afraid to let us go on leave. The natural instinct would be not to return. They are afraid that you will stab or shoot somebody on your way home. Or rape. Or you’ll eat somebody’s chihuahua. Or you’ll shit under a monument to a revered artist. Or you’ll arrive drunk. Or you won’t arrive at all, just like Vovchyk from Verkhovyna.

A little bit of time outside of the training field gives you strength, lets you feel like a civilian, and that means free. The army is trying to make you get used to a routine and discipline, but at first, this is a lost cause. In a month, one cannot achieve this; there is no way to break one’s will or to compensate for its absence. Eventually the soldiers do grow accustomed, of course. They make peace with the circumstances, become integrated into the system, become its part, though not an inherent part, and sometimes even redundant. They sit on the benches near their tent, smoke, tell jokes, anxiously think about the eastern front, hope to return home, and despair about death. But not today, for sure, not today.

Even if we both return alive. Even if we return in victory, I’ll never see him again. Dima is not one of those whom you could casually meet in the metro or at an Odesa beach. You can’t meet him in Munich airport running between gates or in a Nizhyn commuter train. Dima, and those like him, return to their villages in the Chernivtsi region, get into an old tractor, and work hard on the fields and gardens until retirement age. And those like me will never travel to that village to visit those like him.

Who’d have known that in three weeks I would manage to love them. To love them and to accept them. In the way in which people love and accept their own children, with all their shortcomings and transgressions. They are now almost family. Though this love must still be tested by time, but we don’t have time.

A few feet from me several of our soldiers are so drunk that they can barely stand on their feet. The lieutenant pleaded for us not to drink, he practically begged us. Well, so we put the drunk soldiers in line on the floor of the waiting area.

A new community means attention and a scrutinizing look. This is not just distrust due to social class, this is distrust in general. All encompassing, on the level of such concepts as life and death. How can they be sure that you, who are so calm and quiet, will not unload your gun’s magazine into them at night? Or maybe you are a separatist to begin with. Whom am I looking for? Whom am I fishing for, like a fisherman at a pond? A friend? A “brother in spirit?” A human whose jokes I will be able to get? A person whose vocabulary will not expose him as an ex-criminal? In my search, I am pragmatic. I need protection. I need trust. Maybe experience, too.

We collect our first aid kits, little by little, piece by piece. It very well may be that some are working on their will. Our battalion is so ill-equipped that we could pass for a guerilla unit. Not all soldiers have enough uniforms, most have not received their salary for at least a month and a half. It is three miles to the closest store, and cigarettes are already a universal currency.

Yet we are ready to be at war. Even barefoot. Let them throw us to the front as soon as possible. Waiting is more unbearable and pressing. Everybody feels the danger that creeps after each of us like a loyal dog, but we take it lightly, jokingly. If we must be at war, then so be it. And if I kick the bucket, well, then, I do. It is most important to have enough cigarettes. And cheap noodles.

Soldiers are not interested in the war, and their need for it is even less than their interest. The same is true about their families, or the inhabitants of Donbas, passers-by in big cities, farmers in the Kherson region, fishermen in Odesa, shepherds in the Carpathians, electricians in Rivne, teachers in Nizhyn, chemical plant workers in Cherkasy…. But surely there must be those who are interested in this war? And, most importantly, those who need it?

The men want to go east, to the front lines. To sit here in the reserve is shameful, and to squander time doing nothing is impractical. Some invent the front lines for themselves right here and now, guided by their inner pain, disregarding the locals and misunderstanding the civilians.

But my almost total integration into the system does not let me evaluate the situation critically, or to see the absurd and disturbing for what they are. Whatever could send me into a stupor or shock in my civilian life, I now see as normal.

The limits of cruelty are inevitably becoming broader, just like watercolors on a canvas. One starts to feel less and less pity towards fellow humans, and display more and more callousness and rudeness.

Later I realized that I was ready to finish the poor animal off. I was appalled at myself. Instead, we took the kitten to the doctor. The doctor did what he could, manipulating the animal’s spine. It seems like the kitten will live. This little episode suddenly showed me with astonishing clarity that with time I will probably not be able to write adequately about what I felt and saw. One cannot be a detached observer here: objectivity is latent, subjectivity distorted.

Of course, I’m still capable of feeling surprise or rage. I still can’t accept some things. At times I feel like talking about these experiences, making them into a finite narrative, but I restrain myself just in time from writing the superfluous, from implicating my friends and comrades, from busting the system in which I’ve been living, and from exposing too much.

Our country is at war. And we must steer the information war, we can’t just talk shit about our army on Instagram.

This is the duty of our deputy platoon leader – to lecture us on betrayal and our Instagram. This is what he is here for, and our obedience and dedication to pain, hunger and thirst are his daily bread.

The collective and the private. Manipulations, distortion of the facts, devaluing the truth, instant translation via Google Translate and hundreds of comments from the same IP address. This is all the manifestations of them, the betrayal and the victory, they march step in step with the soldier who has an Instagram account.

Ninety days of military service. I hadn’t been home in a month. This is not too much and not too little, but enough to grow unaccustomed to the civilians and to forget a civilian version of the self: how you dressed in shorts and sneakers, how you ran around the city’s streets and lived an uneventful life, taking to heart your everyday troubles and the angst of writing.

My first impression of Kyiv, when I returned from the training field, was very negative. I failed to perceive the most usual and logical things, as if I had a thick fog in front of my eyes. Why aren’t all men wearing uniforms? Aren’t we a country at war, aren’t soldiers dying on the eastern front? Instead, all you see are billboards with the ads for a new hamburger place.

“O Kyiv, I understand you, but I do not accept you. For now… Perhaps, some time should pass for me to forget the barrack humor, the smells of the field kitchen, the dust, and the drunken shenanigans of my army buddies?”

A few days after my return I could not even muster the strength to leave the apartment. I could not look at the people in supermarkets and the metro. I had a problem with their carefree attitude. The bearded hipsters in lumberjack shirts irritated me. I thought of expensive cars only in terms of their potential use for my platoon.

Light August wind, pleasant music and tasty cheese from the supermarket – all of this is also here. Everything is as it always was. Just as it was when these soldiers had already been drafted, when they sat in dugouts and died, and I was still interested in new burger places and the hottest rhythms of the summer. Everything is as it has always been. But every night now I dream about the army.

No matter how many volunteers would come and inspect our squads, the human factor will always prevail, that one that is a destructive force, a regressive drive, a lever of betrayal, an avant-garde of sabotage.”

Where to exactly? The Captain doesn’t even know. We weren’t informed. They didn’t tell us, they just threw us into the situation: to go to a populated spot in Volodymyrivka. And then? Who are we relieving? Where is it we are supposed to go? What is waiting for us? Who will die first?

By the second day at absolute zero we aren’t bothered by crossfire from adjacent positions, and even the realization that you can die at any moment becomes ordinary.

By the way, about the weapons. There are enough. Enough to do battle. Without a doubt, everyone is tired of the war. Especially those who have spent eight or nine months under fire. And those just taking their turns on the battlefield.

But it’s not for the commanders that we stand. We stand because retreat is not an option.

“And so, you’re cold? That can’t be! Everything is within the norms. Something isn’t right with your sense of temperature, soldiers.” So, if it’s not right, it’s not right. We’ll try to change our sense of temperature. We really have a problem with that. And our stomachs are also not standard.

The commanders can reduce the norms. For example, give out only one pair of socks for every two soldiers. Or, let’s say, instead of a liter and a half of water a day they give us a quarter. And one hundred fifty grams of bread with sawdust. It’s so that we don’t get too much. Clearly, too much of the good stuff leads to sickness.

And somehow suddenly I felt so grateful that I had the chance to experience this. Precisely this. Together with my friends who are delusional religious believers. With this young chaplain to whom, I am sure, this seems like a military dystopia where he blesses weapons and killing. A blessing – is a placebo, the deep inner belief that the enemy’s bullet will not find you and your weapon won’t let you down. The world around narrows into a single place: the road, the dugout, the deployment, the field.

Some become very anxious, curse the truce, and some wait for orders to attack. They don’t need anything except mortars and grenades. And there are those who totally doubt whether their stay here is worthwhile. They are usually silent, but, when they began to speak, they open their souls and confess that they just don’t understand why there is a war and who is fighting whom.

Why are we here? Because someone must be here. Whether there is a truce or not – it’s not about that. We are here so that it doesn’t go any further. It’s not very important who: the locals or professional soldiers from the Russian Federation. They have arms and so they bring nothing but destruction. And let these territories be three times that of ancient Donbas, they are and will remain Ukrainian.

The IED that accidentally went off in the bush can disturb the whole platoon for an hour or maybe two. Chaotic shooting from the other side or from various positions confirms that this is an outright military offensive. Especially at night. That’s why the news of the ceasefire is viewed with skepticism: not everyone has nerves of steel, and the arrangements in Minsk or Paris are like Plexiglas through which you can see only the contours of completely optimistic hopes. Here they are still laboring in the mines and no one is safeguarded from the stupid fire opened by the drunk.

I know, soldiers are needed to suffer through adversities and have the opportunity to defend their country. And then the soldiers don’t give a damn about this decorative shit that makes the cities beautiful and the inhabitants of the cities happy. They don’t give a damn until they go on vacation. Let’s say they go to the capital. For about two weeks. And if in the first days you remain an old soldier, who doesn’t know how to express love, at the end of the stay in the big city you will soften, your soul will melt, and in your head a strange thought will appear: maybe I should go to a smoothie bar.

“Why am I drunk? Sweetie, why wouldn’t I get drunk here? At night I dragged Styopa, who had a head wound, through an enemy outpost.” Sweetie bursts into tears, sits down, her hair turning gray. The spicy scent of Corvalol, a heart medication, in a benign plume, reaches all the way to the staircase. The neighbors try to comfort her. They don’t say anything to the children. Just so that he comes back alive. Even without hands, even without legs, but alive. Our Kolinka. Our defender. The defender runs to the closest village for additional supplies. Styopa waits at the checkpoint. After two days of deprivation, everything is falling apart. Will you lend me fifty kopecks until the fifteenth? I’ll give it back, I promise. Another has been burning wagons and civilian wheelbarrows for two months near Izum. He got lucky – he lives in the café, at the outpost there is an oven. Cigarettes, drinks, constant amounts of money flow into his pockets. Yes, it isn’t as safe as the National Guard, but you can live. It’s just sad somehow. Sadness poisons the soul. At home, in dear Starkon, Natasha waits. He calls her, crying: “Yesterday they demolished part of the platoon, showered it with bullets. A sniper. Am I wounded? Yes, but no. I have a contusion. Two contusions. I love you, pray for us. Oh, and send me some sausages. Kisses.” My friend the beekeeper Sanya B. only told his sisters where he is. His mother believes that he is still studying on a training base in Mykolaiv. Why should I wo...

Why should we walk? With whom? About what? We have already said everything. And we have already given up everything, the only thing left is silence.

And he was lying there. While we here, in the dirt, in the thaw, in the frost, were sawing wood, digging ground, shooting at those who shot at us; while we went on vacation and treated our winter depression with Nutella; while we were thoughtlessly rotting in our bunkers and finishing the tenth season of Supernatural – he was lying there. Half-eaten by foxes.

We joke: rotation is for the weak. But most people want to go home. Just so that they can rest, catch up on sleep, so that they don’t forget that they are not just a soldier, but also a human being, who can wash the dust and dirt of many long months off your skin. And then they can come back. Many plan to re-enlist, for many war has become a part of their lives, for some – the reason to be alive.

But they will return, and she will be waiting for them, she who loves them more than her two kids, she who understands their pain and treats their depression and emotional instability.

I saw him for the last time during the Orange Revolution. By then he was a complete drunk, he hung out near the Central Market, for a bottle he moved baskets of vegetables. He didn’t wash his clothes, shaved once a week, and often slept in that very market among the tents. Is he still alive? I don’t know… And so now, with my own war in my head, with my own experiences in this filthy trench epic where I clearly saw the “game of war,” I understood Pylyp in a way that I didn’t understand him before. He became closer – as if I had the chance to crawl into his head and see his war, to accept it and in some measure like it.