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And you must never forget this, never, wherever you are! All the flight-training staff and I personally, as assistant flight political instructor, promise that we will make Real Men of you in the shortest possible time!”
    Then they showed us our places in the first-year cadets’ barracks, into which we were being moved from the tents, and took us to the mess hall, where the dusty MiGs and ILs dangling on strings from the ceiling seemed like immense flying islands beside the squadrons of swift black flies.
    The dinner was pretty bad: watery soup with macaroni stars, tough chicken with rice, and boiled fruit. After we’d eaten we felt really sleepy; Mitiok and I barely made it to our beds, and I fell asleep straightaway.

The next morning I was awakened by loud groans of pain and confusion right in my ear. In fact, I’d been hearing the same sounds in my sleep for a long time, but I was jerked into full wakefulness only by a particularly loud and piteous wail. I opened my eyes and looked around. The surrounding beds were alive with a strange squirming and muffled bellowing—I tried to prop myself up on my elbow, but I couldn’t, because I was bound to the bed with broad straps like the ones used to tie up suitcases that are stuffed too full: the most I could do was turn my head slightly from side to side. From the next bed I met the pain-filled eyes of Slava, a young village boy I had got to know the day before; the lower part of his face was hidden by a tightly tied piece of cloth. I tried to open my mouth to ask him what was wrong, but discovered that I couldn’t move my tongue, and I had no feeling at all in the lower part of my face, as though it had gone numb. I guessed that my mouth must be bound and gagged too, but before I could feel surprised, I was struck by horror: where Slava’s legs should have been, the blanket fell straight down in an abrupt step, and the freshly starched blanket cover was stained with red blotches like the marks left on cotton towels by watermelon juice. What waseven more terrifying—I couldn’t feel my own legs and I couldn’t lift my head to look at them!
    “Platoon 5!” The words thundered out in a sergeant’s fruity bass, replete with an infinitude of allusions. “To the dressing station!”
    About ten men immediately came into the ward—they were second- and third-year students (or more correctly, cadets in their second or third year of service, as I could tell from the stripes on their sleeves). I hadn’t seen them before—the officers had said they were out helping with the potato harvest. They were wearing strange boots with tops that didn’t bend, and they walked unsteadily, holding on to the walls or the ends of the beds. I noticed how pale and unhealthy their faces were; they seemed to bear the imprint of long days of interminable torment, to have been recast in a fixed expression of readiness. Inappropriately enough, at that moment I recalled the words of the Young Pioneers’ greeting Mitiok and I had repeated with all the others on the distant parade square at summer camp—and I realised just what frauds we’d been, loudly assuring ourselves, our comrades in the lineup, and the transparent July morning that we were “always prepared”.
    The cadets wheeled the beds out into the corridor one after another, with the first-years bound down on them moaning and squirming, until only two were left in the room—mine and one by the window, on which Mitiok was lying. I couldn’t get a proper look at him because of the straps, but I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was quiet and seemed to be asleep.
    They came for us about ten minutes later, turned usround, feet first, and wheeled us along the corridor. One cadet pushed the bed while another walked backwards and pulled it towards him; it looked as if he were backing down the corridor and warding off the bed as it pursued him. We trundled into a long, narrow lift with doors at both sides and went up, the