– 13 –
Gordey
The door closes behind me quietly, without a slam. But inside, it feels like something is exploding.
I walk down the stairs, and with every step my anger grows like a snowball.
Skinny. Pale. Dark circles under her eyes, nothing but bones under her pajamas. She’s a dead ringer for “the happy woman with Seryozha,” for fuck’s sake.
Happy, yeah.
She’s so happy she can’t even look at me calmly, she just spits venom. She has her arms crossed, her chin up, and is stubborn like a goat.
I’m the dog, she’s the victim. It’s simple. Black and white. Just the way she likes it.
Outside, the wind immediately hits my face with wet snow. The air is icy and sharp. Just the thing after such a meeting. Refreshing and sobering.
Damn it, how I hated her then. And I still hate her now. Because I still remember every line of that note. My running around, my sleepless nights, and then that Seryozha’s face.
And yet… How ugly everything is in Varya’s head. To her, the whole situation looks like this: I, a dog, cheated on young Nika, she, therefore, secretly gave birth to my daughter, and I happily run around with my secret daughter, while I keep my pregnant wife with a bad heart in fear, shove “fatal outcome” in her face.
Beauty, mother of yours!
Very convenient. Logical. And most importantly, it’s all my fault. And she’s a holy martyr. She wanted a child, she was ready to lay down her life for it, but somehow life turned around, ran, and easily got rid of the child she so desired…
I slam the car door so hard the metal actually groans, and I catch myself. It’s not the metal that’s to blame.
I get behind the wheel. My movements are jerky and abrupt. I start the engine, wipe the windshield with my palm, and tug the gearshift lever.
“She ran away, had an abortion, found herself a man,” I mutter under my breath, looking at the empty yard, “and, as always, I’m the one left holding the bag.” A classic example of the genre.
And there was this bitch who reported everything.
And all these years I’ve been wondering why I’m a stud in her version of events. It turns out! I went on a spree, screwed Nika, she secretly gave birth, and I, without blinking, went to pick up the baby. It all fits. If you don’t know shit.
I pull out of the yard, catch the red light at the next stoplight, and slam on the brakes harder than necessary. The car jerks nervously.
I haven’t seen her for so long. For so many years I’ve been shoving thoughts of her far away, into the deepest drawer. And now there you are. She’s in my city. And everything I’d so carefully packed away has come pouring out.
I grip the steering wheel even tighter.
Yes, I’m angry.
He’s not just irritated, but roaring loudly in his chest. Angry at her for not taking things into account. For making a decision for two, for three, for everyone at once.
Angry that it’s always easier for her to create a convenient enemy for herself than to delve into what was on the other side of the barricade.
Even now, she doesn’t try to understand what I felt back then. She’s jealous of Nika, of Anya, of someone else’s child, whom I essentially hung around my neck instead of living peacefully. For her, this is all proof of my double life. Even if you bang your head against the wall, it will all be useless.
Oh, this Nika…
I pull over to the side of the road and give myself a minute. Otherwise, I’m thinking about something other than the road, and I might not make it home.
I lean back in my seat and close my eyes. Instead of darkness, before my eyes is an old recruiting station and a skinny kid in a stupid, ill-fitting jacket.
Egor Gorin.
A boy from an orphanage. Eighteen years old, skinny, eyes as big as two spotlights. Clear, bright, without that usual cloudy film that appears on people when life has already run over them a couple of times.
A patriot to the core. He speaks with the right phrases, believes in the charter, the oath, and his elders. He listens, remembers, and does everything without asking unnecessary questions.
I was still active then, not retired. I was the eldest, the most seasoned, the most worn-out. By then, I’d long ago ingrained the cardinal rule: no affection for the soldiers.
No “son”, “brother”, “hold on, I’m worried about you”.
They came, served, and left. Or didn’t leave… And that happened.
It was easier that way.
Don’t dig into their stories about mothers, girls, children, a loan for a refrigerator, and the dream of starting their own business.
They are personnel. Manpower, a resource, expendable, as cynical as that may sound.
You are the one who manages this material: you set tasks, distribute, bring out, cover, but do not get attached.
Cruel? Yes.
At least it’s honest.
When you don’t get used to it, it’s less painful to look at his last name. When you don’t know his mother’s name, it’s easier to sign documents. When you don’t keep his laugh, his idiotic jokes, and his habit of drinking tea with three lumps of sugar in your head, you don’t sit at night staring at the wall and asking yourself, “Could I have done it differently?”
That’s why these rules are invented. So that we don’t end up tearing ourselves apart every time the system grinds down another kid.
Yegor demolished that rule like a tank demolishes a wooden fence. He entered my life and stayed.
He did everything I asked for, without any discounts or whining.
He didn’t skimp, didn’t haggle over every minute of rest, didn’t seek out a “buddy” among his superiors to cover for him. He didn’t seek freebies, didn’t try to get out of work on trivial matters.
When he needed to expose himself to fire, he did so himself, covering the others. He even covered my back once. And that’s something you never forget.
An honest, self-possessing, and selfless guy. “Right” to the point of idiocy.
There were times when I would watch from the sidelines and understand that under different circumstances, such a guy would be studying at the institute, building a career, arguing about politics in the kitchen, but he was here, getting into trouble, covering for those who, in theory, should be covering for him.
I didn’t spare myself, but with someone like him… I didn’t even notice how I started to keep an eye on him.
Everything seemed to be according to the rules: comments, assignments, inspections. But my eyes kept catching one name on the list.
He arrived and I suddenly started checking in with myself: “Where is he now? What task is he on? Who is he going with?”
His first business trips, where the probability of not returning was higher than the chance of winning the lottery.
I kept him with me, in my company, under various pretexts. I clung to him, pulled him off the lists, moved his name down, and replaced him with others.
I didn’t want to lose the guy, honestly. I didn’t want to lose anyone, but especially him.
This is the army, not kindergarten. There, no one will endlessly play “leave him alone, he’s good.”
He barely turned away, and the list had already gone up. Gorin was ultimately sent into the thick of things.
It’s funny. The officer who taught everyone not to get attached suddenly started picking on a specific soldier.
I ran from office to office, swearing, howling at my superiors, writing reports on the advisability of keeping Gorin on duty. Only…
An order is an order.
And then… a short summary. The usual, dry one.
“While carrying out a mission… he found himself in a zone of heavy fire… contact was lost… following search operations… he is listed as missing in action.”
A couple of lines, signature, seal.
This incident, no matter how you look at it, was one of those that undermined me from the inside.
I didn’t break down in hot spots, I didn’t break down under bullets, but here…
Suddenly I caught myself sitting at night, looking at this piece of paper with the word “missing” and thinking not like an officer, but like… who the hell knows who.
Not about how to redistribute people, but about how he stood there, how he looked, how he said his eternal “yes.”
I broke down when I realized I’d broken the “don’t get attached” rule myself. That the people around me were no longer just names in the ranks. Especially people like Yegor.
While I was retiring, signing tons of paperwork, taking off my shoulder straps and putting my uniform away in the closet, learning to live in a world where rent is more important than the blast radius, Yegor continued to hang around in the documents like a ghost…
I remember that day like it was yesterday. An ordinary weekday. Nothing special. Or so I thought then.
Until the phone rang.
“Rykov Gordey Vladimirovich?” the voice on the other end was tired, smoky, and female.
“Yes,” he responded automatically.
– You are listed as the contact person and the child’s father.
I didn’t even immediately understand what she just said.
“What?” he asked like an idiot.
I immediately decided it was some stupid prank. Or a mistake.
Ideally, you should have calmly sent: “Error. Wrong number. Sort it out yourself.”
Any normal man, even with a pregnant woman at home with a diagnosis, would have done the same. He’d have saved his nerves, maintained his balance. He wouldn’t have gotten involved.
But my heart sank. It was so familiar, so disgusting. You don’t joke around with things like that for no reason.
And I went. Nika met me with a pink package in her hands. Pale, with dark circles under her eyes, and her lips bitten.
A typical person who hasn’t slept for several nights and is more afraid not for himself, but for that little ball on his chest.
“What is this?” I asked, although even an idiot could see what it was.
“Yegor’s daughter…” Nika had just started and immediately burst into tears. So ugly, out loud, the way those who have no one left to support them cry. “I… I didn’t know what to do. He… he left your number. He said if… if anything happened or was needed… to call dad. He gave us all your contacts. You… you won’t abandon us, right?”
Your mother…
My conscience began to gnaw at me from the very first second. Like rust on metal. Dismissing Nika would have meant more than just not helping. It would have been a slap in the face to the memory of the boy who had run into fire more than once because he believed his superior wouldn’t betray him.
For me at that moment, turning Nika down was like saying out loud, “Egor, you’re wrong. I’m not a dad. I’m just doing it for show.”
And then the question: how was I supposed to explain this to Varya? And most importantly, when?!
“You know, honey, here’s the thing. I’ve been lecturing you for three months about the risks of pregnancy and how you shouldn’t give birth, and now I’m about to go to the maternity hospital to pick up someone else’s baby. Because I had a soldier, a kid without a family, who believed I wouldn’t abandon him. So move over, I have a different mission now.”
It sounded like mockery. Like betrayal.
And yes, I couldn’t figure out how to tell her this. I couldn’t think of the right words. So I kept quiet. I decided to put it off: “I’ll explain later, when things calm down a bit.”
But fate has its own plans and when I returned home I found that note.
Since that day, I’ve been dragging Nika and Anya on my shoulders…
I set off. Soon the headlights pick out a familiar turn from the darkness. Varya and I used to have a house there. The lights are on in the windows. But for the first time in a couple of years, I don’t want to go there.
I turn off the engine and remain in the darkness. Varvara is in the same city…
She walks the same streets as me. She breathes the same air. She looks at me like I’m an enemy and has no idea how I felt when I saw her so thin, so pale, in those stupid pajamas.
I just want to shake her: “Where were you? Why were you silent? Why did you decide everything for both of us, and now you’re pretending that you’re the only one with the truth, and I’m a textbook scoundrel?”
And here’s the paradox. She’s a stranger to me now. According to the documents, according to her own wishes, according to her note.
Divorced, everyone free, each living as they please.
But thoughts of her remain in my head like splinters, preventing me from living a normal life. As if nothing had happened.
