A
platoon of Russian servicemen were the only other guests in the
restaurant. Their table was piled high with glasses and bottles. They
were all late thirties and forties, short-haired, muscular. They were
clinking fresh glasses of beer and shouting over each other.
O
and I had just arrived in the little town of Sisian, the last stop on
our tour of southern Armenia, and had managed to walk a hundred yards
in the midday heat to the only restaurant in town.
We
were just tucking into my khachapuri and his tabbouleh when we were
interrupted by a shout of, “Rebyata!”
(“Guys!”). One of the Russians came over and gave us
warrior handshakes.
“What
are you doing here, you’re tourists?”
“Yes,
tourists.”
“Where
from?”
“From
England and Germany.”
“But
how come you know Russian?”
He
was lanky, but his neck and shoulders were thick. His face was thin
yet puffy and creased, and he had dark rings under his eyes. It
struck me that he looked like a sloth. Yet his head twitched,
tic-like, and his movements were short, impulsive.
I
asked him, “Are you with the peacekeeping forces?”
“Not
really.”
Two
of his friends joined us. They all wore similar clothes: plain
t-shirts with large sweat patches, and camouflaged trousers. The
largest of the trio wore a wife-beater, with tufts of armpit hair on
show. He was as broad as he was tall, a huge slab of muscle, his face
was roughly hewn, and he had sparkling, delicate blue eyes. He looked
similar to my best mate from home’s dad. The other was the
spitting image of Vladimir Putin. He strutted across the room with a
lazy right arm kept close to his pocket, he was pale and small, had a
fine nose and prominent cheeks, V-jaws, and a set of steely eyes, and
his hair was fair or grey and cropped to within a millimetre of the
scalp.
He
drew up a chair and shook our hands. His eyes were liquid and blue.
Staring at him, I saw him sitting at his desk in the Kremlin. The
fate of nations hung on his mood. Then he was a teenager moping at a
little kitchen table in a little apartment five storeys up, his
mother in a flowery dress is serving him bliny
with jam and tea with honey, and in the corner on the floor is a
crate of vegetables and conserves from the dacha,
and the sunlight comes lateral through the window, cutting across the
tablecloth.
“We
in Russia have fought three world wars,” says Putin. “The
first world war was against Napoleon. Do you know what he did to
Russia?”
“We
fought and won three world wars. You wonder why we don’t trust
anyone!?”
There
was spittle and the sweet stench of beer in his delicate vowels.
“I’ve
been to war, I’ve seen what it is. Do you know what war is?”
“And
the English destroyed Russia, just like the Germans. In 1855, after
1917. The British and the Americans wanted Hitler to conquer Russia.
We paid very dearly for it. And today as well, look at NATO. We don’t
have missiles in Mexico, or in Ireland. All you want is to
destabilise Russia. You wonder why we don’t trust anyone? Were
you invaded by Napoleon and Hitler?”
He
sat and talked and burped beer, and on the beer were unintelligible
sounds and some familiar enough to make sense from, he was wavering
drunk and it was pouring out in intense stench, his vision, his
world, his hopes which burnt in his heart ten pints down.
At
his side my friend’s dad’s lookalike and the sloth looked
on.
“Where
are you guys serving?” I asked.
Their
answers were vague and ill-enounced.
I
prompted: “In the Lachin corridor you are serving?”
Again
confusion; the sloth retained his bearing, for a moment snapped out
of his drunkenness, and said to me politely and clearly, “I’m
sorry but we can’t tell you where we’re serving.”
“Have
you been here long?”
It
was the same story as a pair of lads I’d met elsewhere: they
didn’t know when they would be returning home.
The
sloth went on. “Before this we served in Syria.” He
showed me his phone. It was a photo of him and some comrades on a
runway in front of a fighter jet.
“That’s
my plane.”
“You’re
a pilot?”
“I
am; these two are shturman.”
I’d
heard of the rank shturman
before but I wasn’t sure what it was. Since then I’ve
learnt it’s a co-pilot or navigator in a two-seater aircraft.
“Before
that we were in Africa.”
In
the photos, he and his comrades were posing alongside African
militiamen, weapons akimbo and holding flags and banners on red-dirt
tracks with jungle behind.
“Is
that in the Central African Republic?”
“I
can’t tell you, but it’s in Africa.”
Then
the sloth and my friend’s dad’s lookalike went away and
we were left with Putin. He blinked tired. Again his belching breath
of beer, his cropped hair, and his tiny eyes.
“Do
you know what war is?”
I
was embarrassed. “No.”
“You’ve
never been to war?”
“No.”
“I’ll
tell you what war is.” He burped. I breathed in his ethanol
breath, his face had grown red, his eyes fixed intense, his lips
rigid, his finger pressed into the table top. His voice was full.
“I’ll tell you what war is. I’ve seen it.”
Then his voice cracked, his face melted, his eyes flashed red and
were wet. “War is a thousand mothers crying.” The pools
in his eyes broke and the tears flowed down his cheeks. “A
thousand mothers crying. That’s what war is.”
He
wiped his eyes. Then he said:
“Do
you know what the main thing in life is?”
I
answered, “Nyet.”
“Samoe
glavnoe v zhizni – mama.”
(“The main thing in life is mum.”)
