The Zone Read Online Free PDF

the red calico tablecloth.
    Around twelve, Instructor Volikov ran in, shouting, “Guard section, to your weapons!”
    Soldiers gathered around him.
    “There’s a drunken female somewhere in the kennels,” the instructor explained. “Maybe she wandered in from the deportee settlement.”
    The settlement of Chir was located a few kilometres away from the Sixth Camp Subdivision. Deported “social parasites” lived there, mainly prostitutes and black-marketeers. In exile they continued not to work. Many of them were convinced they were political prisoners.
    The boys crowded around the instructor.
    “Dzavashvili has a condom,” Matytsyn said. “I saw.”
    “One?” Fidel asked.
    “Oh look, a scholar!” Volikov said, getting angry. “This one needs his own private condom! You’ll wait your turn.”
    “A lowly condom won’t help,” Matytsyn assured them. “I know these floozies. They’ve got as many gonococci down there as dogs. Now, if it were made of stainless steel…”
    Alikhanov lay there thinking how vile were the faces of his fellow servicemen. “God, where have I landed?” he thought.
    “Brothers, follow me!” Volikov yelled.

    “Are you men or animals?” Alikhanov said. He had jumped down from his bunk. “You’re rushing out in one platoon to some dirty broad?”
    “We don’t lap up politics!” Fidel said, stopping him. He had managed to change into a khaki fatigue shirt.
    “I thought you wanted to get into Paradise.”
    “Hell is all right with me too,” Fidel said.
    Alikhanov stood in the doorway. “We stand guard over every sort of carrion. And you’re all worse than the zeks! What, it’s not true?”
    “Don’t start,” said Fidel, “Why all the noise? Just remember, people call me courageous.”
    “Quit jabbering,” said the towering Gerasimchuk. And he walked out, bumping against Alikhanov with his shoulder. The remaining soldiers followed him.
    Alikhanov cursed, crawled under the blanket, and opened a book by Miroshnichenko called Clouds over Bryansk .
    Balodis the Latvian was sitting on an overturned cooking pot taking off his shoes. He monotonously tugged at his leg. And each time he did this, he hit his head on the corner of the iron bed.
    Balodis served as cook. His chief concern was the larder. Fat, jam and flour were stored in it. Balodis carried the keys on him all day, and when he went to sleep he tied them with a string to his genitals. This did not help. The night shift had twice managed to untie the keys and raid the larder. Even the flour had been eaten up.
    “But I, I did not go,” Balodis said proudly.
    “Why not?” Alikhanov slammed the book shut.
    “I have a sweetheart near Riga. You don’t believe me? Her name is Anelle. She’s crazy about me something awful.”
    “And you?”
    “And I respect her.”
    “What do you respect her for?” Alikhanov asked.
    “What do you mean?”
    “What attracts you to her? I mean, what made you fall in love with her specifically, this Anelle?”

    Balodis thought awhile and said, “I could hardly love every broad near Riga…”
    Reading was out of the question for Alikhanov. He didn’t manage to fall asleep. He thought about the soldiers who had gone to the kennel, imagined the vile details of their bacchanalia, and couldn’t fall asleep.
    Twelve o’clock struck, people were already asleep in the barracks. This was how the New Year began.
    Alikhanov got up and switched off the loudspeaker.
    The soldiers returned one by one. Alikhanov was sure they would start sharing their impressions, but they each went silently to bed.
    Alikhanov’s eyes got accustomed to the dark. The surrounding world was familiar and disgusting. The dark, hanging blankets. The rows of boots wound with foot cloths. Slogans and posters on the walls.
    Suddenly Alikhanov understood that he was thinking about the exiled woman. More exactly, that he was trying not to think about that woman.
    Without asking himself questions, Boris got dressed.