Nikolai

The next day, our third on the train, our much-beloved Pasha came into our room about the time we were finishing our breakfast of yabloko (apple) oatmeal and Earl Grey tea and told us he had met another young soldier returning from Chechnya. We followed him to his coupee and found a boy with a blond buzz haircut listening to a walkman and nursing a beer. He was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt and black jeans and a thin rectangular piece of polished silver metal on a thin black rope around his neck.

He took the headphones off when we came in and introduced himself as Nikolai. We told him our names, and I asked him about his necklace. He put his hand over it and said simply, “Moy talisman.” He sometimes put his hand over the necklace while we spoke, and we couldn’t get him to say much more about it. When I asked him how old he was, and he said 19, I was shocked. He was just a boy, younger than I was. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so shocked, because boys younger than he are living in war zones all over the world, but it is not something I have gotten used to. He said he had been conscripted and sent to Chechnya when he was 18 and had been there for eight months. Liz tried to record what he said on her machine, but he often motioned for her to turn it off. He was easier to understand than Dmitry had been, though, so we understood more of what he said.

Probably because he was younger and newer to it, he was more emotional than Dmitry had been when he talked. He showed us a little notebook full of disturbing notes and drawings that he had kept. He showed us his smertnik (death token), like Dmitry’s but with a different number etched across the bottom. We asked him why they still said “CCCP” on them, the Cyrillic letters for “USSR.” He said they were leftovers from the war in Afghanistan (which is often called ‘Russia’s Vietnam’ because it went on for ten years without a victory, was appallingly costly and demoralizing, and commonly involved Russian soldiers killing Afghan civilians).

Nikolai said he thought the war in Chechnya was wrong and should be ended, but Moscow would never give up. Unlike Dmitry, who was in the Special Forces, he was only a young recruit, an eighteen-year-old conscript. “Dead meat,” he said. He told us he was drafted against his will, but a lot of Russian boys volunteered for duty because the money was so good relative to what else was available. He said that many Russian women joined the Chechen side as snipers and could get $100 for killing a soldier and $300 for killing an officer. “Money money money,” he said in English with a sad smile.

After we had talked for a while, we decided to give him a break and let him listen to his Nautilus tape, but it wasn’t long before he joined us in our cabin. It was easier to talk now that Pasha wasn’t interrupting with some nonsense every five minutes. We found out he likes tennis and reading, especially Tolstoy. He has an older brother also in the army and a mother waiting for him back home in Vladivostok. His father killed himself when Nikolai was five.

Talk eventually turned back to where he had been the past eight months, and Liz asked him how it felt when he was in Chechnya. He said there were no emotions there, only shock. At first, he said, you didn’t understand what was going on or what you were doing. But later on it was different. We asked him when he was most scared, and he said he was once shot at with a bazooka. He thought it was the end and thought of his family. The blast injured him and allowed Chechen rebels to capture him and put him in a prison camp where he spent three months.

He talked about being beaten close to death almost every day, about never getting enough food, about fellow soldiers being sold into slavery to the Taliban in Afghanistan, and about Chechen rebels torturing prisoners, pulling out fingernails, and cutting off fingers and hands and feet. He was often close to tears while he spoke. He said he lost about 30 pounds while in the prison camp, and he was very skinny now. The Russians had taken him for dead and sent his tags and a coffin to his mother in Vladivostok, and I wasn’t sure if she knew even now that he was alive and heading home. He was eventually released in a POW exchange. He said he’d probably have to go back to the army after his brief time at home, and he hoped they’d send him to Yugoslavia or something, anything but Chechnya.

When we got to Novosibirsk, it was Pasha’s turn to get off the train. While we were saying our good-byes out on the platform, he had me in a drunken sort of headlock tearfully kissing my cheeks and saying good-bye until the provodnitsa was about to close the train car door and I had to peel myself away. But I sure was grateful for all the people he introduced us to. He added a lot of character to our four days on the Rossiya.

Nikolai hung out in our room most of the day, and we talked about music and other things. I once asked him if he had any pictures, and I meant pictures of friends or family. I guess he thought I wanted to see scenes around Chechnya, because he shook his head and said, “Nel’zya,” forbidden. He asked me if I had any, and I brought out some pictures from around Stigler, Oklahoma, my hometown. When we got to the picture of my house and it’s 2.5 acres of green grass and a minivan, it struck us both how far apart our worlds were. He asked if he could keep the picture, and I said sure and asked why. He said something like, “So I can come visit you sometime.” He sighed and leaned his head on my shoulder, and I leaned my head on his.

He winked at me as he left the cabin, and at the next stop he came back and said, “Poidyom?” (Let’s go?) “Poidyom,” I answered. Out in the snowy moonlight, I was suddenly reminded of the first Russian phrase I had learned on my own: Lunnaya belochka. It means “moonlit squirrel,” and I learned it reading Russian candy wrappers and looking at the pictures. He laughed in surprise and said, “Belochka?” I tried to explain that I was just talking nonsense, but he kissed me before I could finish.

We talked a lot that night, about normal things and things no teenager should know about, and we held each other sometimes. Late into the night we retired to our respective cabins.

Day 4--Sasha from Blagoveshchensk and a Sad Good-bye

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