Though he had received a perfectly good Soviet education, Ruslan continues his shamanistic practices, Iliev explained. Like all Buryats.[2]
Exactly. Where we live, in far-off Siberia, there is a sort of communion between the spirits of the taiga and men.
You are a shaman? asked Simonov.
Yes, for seven generations. For my people, shamans are, at the same time, priest, doctor and mage ... We have the power to communication with the spirits and the divinities, to whom we make offerings: food or vodka, for example ... This drink is very prized by Those who live Beyond our World ....
Simonov was taken aback by what he had just heard. For him, Siberia represented the h.e.l.l of the camps.[3] Many people of his acquaintance still languished there. Yet, in this vast country, lived mysterious peoples who fascinated him. He wanted to ask for more details, but suddenly, someone knocked on the door.
Yes, enter! ordered Iliev.
A tall, strapping man, wheat-blonde, saluted his superior and presented his request without losing a second.
Comrade, we"ve made prisoner a German soldier. He is wounded. I just had to hold back my men from killing him. He needs medical attention.
Very good, Sergeant. Put him in the operating room. I"ll arrive at once.
I didn"t know that you helped even the Fritzes! laughed Simonov.
A doctor occupies himself with helping the whole world. And also, contrary to what our superiors would have us believe, they are not all brutes. Here, come with me in lieu of aggravating me ... Ruslan, what are you doing?
I"m coming with you, responded the Siberian.
When the trio approached the prisoner, they immediately noticed that the German was terrified. Iliev leaned over him and observed him with great attention. He decided that the injury had caused significant damage. His verdict was without appeal.
He needs a blood transfusion, without which he"ll croak. Piotr, you can jabber in German, no? You can explain the situation to him?
I can try, Simonov replied nonchalantly.
Simonov had always appreciated the language of Goethe. While he was a student, he had taught at the University of Leningrad. He was then far from imagining under what circ.u.mstances it would serve him ... At that time, the war seemed so far away.
He approached the wounded man and began to explain to him what it would be necessary to do to save him. With a visage pimply and hairless, the other had the look of a kid having barely left adolescence. In his grey uniform of the Wehrmacht, he gave the impression of being in disguise. He listened attentively to what Simonov told him. As the Soviet officer spoke to him, he lost his composure. In response, he cried, eyes rolling: Nein, nein!
Simonov tried to calm him, insisting on the gravity of the situation, but nothing helped.
He categorically refuses any blood transfusion. He doesn"t want Slavic blood. He doesn"t want the blood of an untermenschen a "subhuman", as the n.a.z.is designate us. This man has been brainwashed by the propaganda of Goebbels.
If he doesn"t undergo the transfusion, he"ll die within two or three hours, said Iliev.
I"ve explained all that to him. He doesn"t want to hear any of it.
Ah, well, then, he"s dead. We"re not going to waste any time on this kind of fool ... Leave him.
Wait! I want to try something, cried Solotin.
What do you want to do? asked Iliev.
A sort of experience. Wait for me. I"m going to my office to find something that I need.
With these words, the Buryat left the room like lightning. Iliev and Simonov stayed with the wounded man, who weakened with the pa.s.sing minutes. His voice became less and less audible and his strength progressively abandoned him. He finally lost consciousness.
He still lives, but he won"t for much longer, Iliev said.
And your colleague? He wanted to try what, exactly?
No idea. You know, with that kind of guy, we can expect any ... The Buryats don"t think like us. They don"t have the same cultural references. But wait; here he comes.
In the same fashion that he had gone out, Ruslan burst into the room. In each hand, he carried a bottle of vodka. Around his neck hung an animal-skin bag.
And what are you going to do with all this alcohol? asked Iliev, who was beginning to worry.
Don"t be uneasy, Yuri. I repeat that this is a simple experiment. In any case, this man is condemned. And anyway, he is a Fascist b.a.s.t.a.r.d, no?
All right. As you wish ... Do you have need of us?
No, but you can stay here if you want. Move away and let me be.
The two witnesses did just that and sat on stools that were situated in the back of the room. From there, intrigued, they observed the merry-go-round of the Siberian: He deposited the first two bottles next to the German then poured a part of their contents into a graduated cylinder connected to operating tubes. He also prepared the vials and the syringes. Iliev understood, then, that his colleague was about to effect a transfusion in defiance of all medical ethics.
But ... you want to inject him with vodka? My word! he exclaimed.
Yes, but that is not all. Have a little patience.
I hope you know what you"re doing, Comrade ....
The Buryat did not flinch at this warning. He continued his preparations with seriousness and precaution. Iliev and Simonov attended the scene with apprehension, asking themselves what was going on in the head of the Siberian.
The latter took out his little altar, which he placed on the operating table. He added a small ceramic cup, into which he poured a little vodka. He then lit two candles and a stick of incense. With his two hands, he delicately fanned the grey smoke toward his face, which shone with a sort of ancestral bliss.
The Siberian closed his eyes. While grey vapours enveloped his weather-beaten face, he reached into his sack and extracted a small drum with white skin.[4] Without warning, he began to strike it sharply, at regular intervals, launching a strange litany. He chanted prayers that, for Iliev and Simonov, went back to the dawn of time. The words of the shaman were to them incomprehensible, though Simonov thought they were addressed to obscure Siberian divinities. There, in that far country, on the banks of the great Lake Baikal, spirits had certainly begun a great dance. Before this spectacle of another age, the two men were struck dumb, unable to move and interrupt their comrade in his enigmatic ceremony.
When he had finished his recital, Solotin got up and poured the vodka on the floor. On tiptoe, he returned to the wounded man and, suddenly, stuck a needle in his bruised arm. The vodka began to invade the body of the Teuton. Iliev dared not flinch, but he knew that the experiment was going to be cut short, that without a doubt, the German would kick the bucket in a minute or two! His blood would be poisoned by Product 61, the name given to the vodka brand by the Soviet soldiers because of the rank it occupied in the list of articles with which they were furnished. A product of the first necessity, which permitted the combatants to withstand the h.e.l.l of war.
At first, the Fritz did not move. Then, after a few minutes, came some slight convulsions and, once the vodka had inundated his entire being, there were violent spasms that shook the unfortunate man. He began to bellow like a madman.
Quick! Hide yourselves! Solotin cried, rejoining his confused comrades. They hid themselves in the back of the room. Brusquely, the wounded man got up. He staggered as his entire body was dismantled by fits and starts of unspeakable brutality. His head spun without end. Iliev could not believe it. This man should have died several minutes before because of all the vodka in his veins! Instead, against all medical logic, he had succeeded in standing up!
But, good G.o.d, Ruslan! What have you done? shouted Iliev.
The other man remained tight-lipped. Totally caught up in what he was seeing. Iliev and Simonov, quickly understood that they were in the middle of a.s.sisting in a metamorphosis.
Indeed, the German had only a distant connection with the human that he had once been. His arms were transformed into powerful legs, ending in sharp claws. His skin cracked into multiple scales of a copper colour, shredding his grey uniform into a thousand tatters. Petrified, Simonov never ceased to cross himself and invoke all the saints of Russia. As for Iliev, he trembled like a leaf, searching desperately for a way to flee that accursed place. Solotin, for his part, did not lose sight of what was happening.
The groans redoubled in intensity, when the mutation neared its end. Finally, it gave birth to an infernal hydra. Part-human, part-dragon.
In seeing this monstrosity, the three men experienced an ambiguous feeling, mixing at once the worst of fears and the most unhealthy of curiosities.
They believed their final hour had arrived when the beast"s eyes, yellow and saurian, fell on them. The sight of this filthy being greatly disgusted them, including the thick slime dripping from its reptilian mouth, studded with sharp fangs. The men were medusaed, hypnotised.
In a burst of lucidity, Simonov grabbed his pistol and shot at this thing which faced him. At the same moment, two armed soldiers, alerted by the cries of the beast, entered the room. They were instantly roasted by a wave of fire. The beast spat anew and grilled another soldier who had just come in. Others followed, their guns rattling. Then the fire broke out, charring, burning, carbonising everything in its path.
Several bullets pierced the armour of the dragon, whose blood flowed purple on the floor. Entering into a maddened rage, he vomited new flames, deadlier than ever. In one bound, he escaped, breaking the gla.s.s of the windows in the room. In an instant, he had vanished in the dark. Outside, they heard gunshots and cries of terror. Then silence fell upon the plain.
d.a.m.nation, what is this circus, Ruslan? bawled Iliev.
I wanted ... Let"s just say that I wanted to practice ... something that my master-shaman had taught me, explained the Buryat, hanging his head.
What?! You"re mad! My word!
Of course not. It was the curse of the man-dragon. I took the opportunity to test it ... and it worked beyond my expectations ....
It"s not possible, lamented Iliev, raising his eyes to the ceiling. We"ll have to find him and eliminate this demonic creature at once! Then I don"t know what canard we"ll serve the NKVD. If we tell them the truth, it"s the firing squad for us! At any rate, they"ll never swallow this unlikely story!
It"s going to be easy to find, said Simonov, who was leaning out the window. His wounds left traces of blood in the snow. We mustn"t lose one minute!
Indeed, the monster was quickly located. He was hiding near the hospital, in the ruins of an old school. Illiev had commandeered a score of men to lay siege around the lair of the beast. They circled the place carefully with several batteries of machine guns placed at regular intervals. Each waited for the release of the prey, fingers poised nervously on the trigger.
While snow fell in fat flakes, cold tore the flesh of the combatants. And in this atmosphere frozen by ice, everyone could hear the rattle of the creature.
It"s dying, said Simonov.
Yes, it"s suffering like a martyr, added Solotin.
Oh, you"re unfeeling, Ruslan! May I remind you that this thing was human not so long ago! And that, without all your bulls.h.i.t, we wouldn"t be where we are, Iliev snapped.
The Siberian clenched his teeth, but refrained from answering.
Be on your guards! If this trash raises its nose, shoot it! We"re waiting for reinforcements before the attack. Be ready, Iliev ordered all the soldiers.
When I tell this to my wife, she"s going to think I"m nuts! Simonov said with amus.e.m.e.nt.
I am truly sorry, Solotin said.
You got lucky this time, my friend! I just learned tonight that the NKVD guys aren"t here. So, we can arrange everything as we like, Iliev rea.s.sured him.
The voice of the medical officer was then smothered by a rattling noise coming from behind the line of soldiers. An enormous machine that crushed everything in its path appeared from the shadows.
The T-34![5] We can say that they haven"t slacked off with reinforcements! Iliev cried, delighted.
With that, we will polish our friend"s scales! cheered Simonov.
Solotin, alone, remained silent, as if absorbed in internal, abyssal meditations.
The chariot came and stood with them, the barrel aimed straight at the shadows, where hid the man-dragon. His growls were now interspersed with ferocious outcries.
Come on! Finish it! Fire! cried Iliev, dropping his arm.
And the tank fired at its mark. An explosion took out almost all of the pile of stones left over from the school. In unison, the machine guns began to vomit their deadly poison. The wounded creature could not hide and, with the energy of despair, tried to force a way out of the blockade. His flames carried off some unfortunates, but his body was soon riddled with bullets. Too handicapped to advance, he stopped and continued to defend himself with his hard skin. While his scales were now purple with blood, the beast still gave some blows with his claws until, in a last rattle, he sank into the fresh snow, lifeless. Iliev immediately ordered a ceasefire.
They all approached with extreme caution, before realizing that their adversary was definitively no longer a threat. A circle was being formed around the body when Iliev spoke: Comrades, look well, because you will never again see anything like it ... Needless to say, what happened this night must remain between us. Anyway, who would believe you? No one! They"d send you directly to the madhouse. In the meantime, I can guarantee you that any tattletale will have to deal with me. Any questions? All right, burn that!
Without a word, the troop obeyed and, when all was finished, the men dispersed. On the horizon, bursts of artillery streaked the sky, as if the war wanted to recall their good memory.
With heavy steps, Iliev, Simonov and Solotin reentered the hospital together. Silent, grave, they thought back to those moments they had just lived through. Simonov decided to lighten the mood.
And what do you say to a little vodka to celebrate? he asked.
The laughter of the three companions went up into the starless night and resonated until dawn.
Meddy Ligner was born in 1974 in Bressuire, a small town in the western part of France. He spent his first 18 years there. He goes back frequently to see his family and to play baseball with the famous Garocheurs. He studied history and afterwards, he taught French abroad in Finland, Russia and China. Since 2003, he has worked as a teacher of history and geography in Poitiers, France, where he lives with his wife, his daughter and his son. His website is: ***
[1] The secret police of the USSR, who purged the Soviet Army repeatedly through the 30s and 40s.
[2] A semi-nomadic Mongolian group of tribes from southeastern Siberia. They are the largest surviving Siberian ethnic minority. The actor Yul Brynner was Buryat.
[3] The Gulag prison system made famous by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.
[4] The signature instrument of the Siberian shaman. The NKVD murdered shamans throughout Siberia during the 20s and 30s, taking special care to confiscate and burn their drums.
[5] A Soviet medium tank, the most common design produced during WWII.
The Ascent.
By Berit K. N. Ellingsen.
Some say screaming is embarra.s.sing and shameful, but under the right circ.u.mstances, or perhaps the wrong circ.u.mstances, screaming is actually very liberating. Because there are times and places when you would really like to scream, when you would absolutely love to scream, and feel a great and pressing need to do it, but you can"t.
One of those places is at the bottom of the swimming pool, when you"re lying there behind the wetsuit that"s too tight in all the wrong places, and the round, white swimming goggles that make you look perpetually startled. You"re trying to relax, trying to stay calm, trying to maintain that delicate balance between the need to breathe and the greed for another breath-hold record. All while your lungs ache for air, your throat swallows for the same, and the muscles in your body, down to tiny little flexors you didn"t know you had, burn from lack of oxygen, and the only thing that"s silent is your mind. Because this is mind over matter, brain over muscles and you over water. After the initial few minutes of hypoxia, the acute need to breathe vanishes, and you enter a free-floating state where it feels like you can go on forever.
Of course, you can"t; it"s just a question of how long your body can remain conscious on the small amount of oxygen you brought with you from the surface. In order to stretch the breath-hold time as far as possible without fainting, you have become intimately familiar with the signals from your body that say it"s about to black out: the pins and needles starting in your fingers and toes, like cruel little whispers, like the warm sun being momentarily obscured by a cloud. The p.r.i.c.kly sensation invades your hands and feet, and slowly creeps up your wrists and ankles. There"s a round orb pulsing behind your eyes. For every contraction, the sphere changes colour, from deep electric blue, to warm glowing gold, back to blue, again. It doesn"t go away, even when you blink. The edge of your vision is framed by a moving spindly black, like a ma.s.s of dark spiders crawling around your eyes, only you can"t feel them. As the blue orb pulses slower, the black cloud starts to eat its way towards the middle of your eyes, the spiders multiplying. That"s the true signal, the body"s black flag of unconditional surrender to oxygen deprivation. You know exactly when to break off, when to push hard away from the blue tiles at the bottom of the pool and stick your head out of the water and breathe.
Sometimes, the surge of air rushing into your suffocating lungs and brain and muscles is so sudden and liberating that you black out, anyway, but then you"re caught by friendly hands and the record is still yours.
You think the static breath-hold records are a little stupid in themselves, a child"s play at the bottom of the pool. But despite that, you are proud of them. How many people can hold their breath for more than eleven minutes?