Приговор при свечах / Judgment in candlelight - Владимир Анатольевич Арсентьев

on a white motor boat. Notably, the amateur swimmer happened to be the only USSR representative at the competition, because his young compatriots came to their senses at the proper time, refused to fight and fell out of the race right after the start.

A deserter is someone who lived a life not worth dying for, and one who loves nothing more than themselves. This is the mental condition of a man who becomes demoralized right at the start of his moral trial: he regards mobilization as the beginning of his fall, not his rise. Truly standing up, not fearing suffering, and, if necessary, risking death is for people who are capable of loving something more than themselves.[197]

The military court I presided over convicted 152 persons for desertion and other crimes. In fact, about 80 percent of these men were fatherless and proved unable to shoulder the burdens of military service or get along with the male-only collective. Note that in around 63 percent of all such cases I made a decision on the merits as head of the military court within only ten days following the date of referral.

The law school student, alone and exhausted, was just in the middle of his way and couldn’t see the shore. He tried to climb one of the yachts arranged on both sides of the swimming corridor. The yacht, however, moved away from him, while the yachtsman kept shouting, “Los! Hopp!”—waving his arm in the direction of the elusive finish line.

The fight for survival began. Time and space became enveloped by the heavy darkness of the elements. He was swimming through the shadowy world, only wishing to survive. He wasn’t even nineteen, and the trial tempered his will. “Truth is procured not only by intellect but by will and by the wholeness of the spirit.”[198]

“Must” was the Party’s catchword that the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) used to reply to with a “will do.” The determined driver, fighting the elements, decided to move forward. He drove five meters through water at full speed and fell into a hole – a well, in fact. They both were drowning in the haphazard forest lake – the sorry driver diving for his motorcycle, the passenger hoping to catch his case file. Luckily, he saw his tote emerge nearby and managed to grab it before it was swallowed by the turbid roiling waters. As for the motorcycle, it sunk to the bottom of the eroded elemental hole and was quickly overtaken by sludge. That ended their journey together.

Upset by the unexpected turn of events, the senior warrant officer waved his hand, pointing the investigator in the direction of the village, and intended to go back to the colony, expressing himself with gestures and mimics rather than words. The investigator left him to sit glumly by the water as they parted ways. Their cigarette packs, Astra and Prima, turned into mush, and their matches were scrambled. It drizzled from all quarters. The investigator wasn’t used to walking across the taiga after an ice-cold dip in his summer city clothes. Mud sighed and squelched under his feet, and swamp sludge did the same inside his shoes. Trying to find a less watery way, the investigator tried walking on the side of the lumber truck road, but he kept slipping knee deep into the rut, as his shoes had no tread grooves on their soles.

Finally, he came out of the woods – they were still a desolate area at the time – arriving at a village. There was a single bus stop, and a single woman in her best clothes was standing there. She must have just arrived from the city, waiting for someone to pick her up. She told the investigator that the bus had just left. She added that the next bus would be coming from the city at the same time on the next day. Smiling at the young man, she was thinking that he had gotten lost in the woods. Just what was he doing there, she wondered to herself.

The investigator ran after the old little PAZ bus going over the hill. He didn’t give up until the bus stopped for him. As he took his seat in the back, he realized in amusement that his clothes dried out a little in the wind. Even the mud that stuck to his shoes came off while he was running. Still, people were reluctant to take the seat next to him. He searched his memory for the name of the village and tried to figure out if he had enough cash to pay the bus fare. He laid out several soggy ruble bills, smoothing them out against the seat, and counted change in his pockets. The driver grumbled but accepted the money.

The all-round athlete had to walk four stops from the bus station – there were posters in every tram that admonished Soviet citizens against riding in dirty clothes with oversized baggage on penalty of a fine. The first thing the investigator did upon finally coming home was dry up his case file. He used clothespins to hang every sheet on a line in the mud room of his nearly 250-year-old wooden house. Surprisingly, ink stains didn’t render the records illegible.

While the investigator was on the shuttle bus, another story came to his mind. He had traveled that road before; previously, he was coming back from another village – though on a Belarus tractor – to look into theft of chocolate products from the city confectionery factory. He flagged down a KAMAZ truck at the city exit and hitchhiked to the village. The driver reproached him, an officer of the MVD, for using a traffic wand to flag down his vehicle while wearing civilian clothes. And the driver was completely right to do so.

The chocolate trail led to several villages. A local school teacher on a motorcycle with no license plates drove the investigator