Chapter 31
Afghanistan has been called the Vietnam of the USSR. This is not just because it has gone on so long and drained off so many young lives. It resembles the American experience in Vietnam in another way. The Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan, for the first time in their lives, are exposed to an easy and cheap supply of narcotics. Drugs had never before been a major Soviet problem. The penalties were too harsh, the surveillance too complete. Small boats did not sneak into Soviet harbors by night or light planes steal across its borders with cargoes of heroin, cocaine, and pot. They would have been sunk, or shot out of the sky. Anyway, the Soviet people, like the Russians of the czarist times before them, took to drunkenness rather than dope as a favorite vice. But Afghanistan is changing all that.
Just before Simyon Smin heard that his elder son was under arrest for drug possession, he woke from a troubled dream. In the dream it seemed that he had been captured by fiends— Nazis, camp guards, the Spanish Inquisition — he could not tell who they were, but they had stabbed him in a hundred places and bound him to a bed while infernal machines clicked and hummed and gurgled all around him.
What a pity, he thought, that the dream was no dream. All those things were true. At least the people who had done all this to him were not enemies; they were trying to save his life, not to kill him in agony, but all the same he had needles in his arms and wrists and collarbone; his side was a mass of bruises where it was not blisters or running sores.
His first waking thought was to reach under his pillow to make sure that the schoolboy's pad was still there. His second was his body. With some effort he lifted the edge of the sheet and peered down at himself. His naked body was not merely naked. It was
He did not need to be told that the transplant of bone marrow from his elder son had not gone well. His body told him that with its pain and feverish heat. 'Comrade Plumber,' he called weakly. 'Can you find a nurse? I need a bedpan very badly.'
From the other bed Sheranchuk called back in a troubled voice, 'At once! But your son Vassili is here to see you.'
'Then let him get the nurse,' said Smin, 'and he may come in afterward.'
Sheranchuk tried a reassuring smile at the boy waiting just outside the door. 'You heard,' he said, wondering what new worry it was that made Vassili Smin look so much as though he were going to cry. 'The nurses' station is at the end of the hall, please.'
'Of course,' Vassili said, casting one more horrified glance toward his father's bed. Although the screens were in place, they did not conceal everything. Vassili saw the clamps that looked like long, ugly scissors hanging from tube connections to keep them tight, the orange and white hoses that dangled from plastic bottles on stands — worst of all, the blue-paneled box that clicked and blinked with red lights. When he had found a nurse and returned to the room, Vassili sat resolutely by Sheranchuk's bed, not looking toward his father. Certainly not listening to those ugly, intimate sounds that came from him.
Sheranchuk tried to help. 'Look,' he said, talking to cover the sounds, 'see what the American doctors have brought us.' He displayed a little flashlight, a pocket calculator, and best of all a wonderful small flat box, tiny enough to fit in the palm of his hand, that was an electronic alarm clock. 'Your father has received them too, Perhaps he will give you the calculator.'
But Vassili was not to be diverted from his misety. Alarmed, Sheranchuk said, 'What is it, Vassili? Have you had some bad news that worries you?'
The boy looked at him through tears. 'Yes, I have had bad news, and what worries me is that I must tell it to my father.'
And when Smin heard the news a few minutes later, he sat up straight in his bed, regardless of all the tubes and wires and catheters, and cried, 'Nikolai? Arrested on a narcotics charge? But that is completely out of the question!'
'It's true, Father,' sobbed his younger son, casting an imploring glance at the other bed, where Sheranchuk was scowling blackly as he pretended to devote all his attention to reading a newspaper.
'It cannot be true,' Smin whispered. But as he fell back against his pillow, he knew that it must be. He closed his eyes, cursing silently. This terrible weakness! It was worse than the pain. Yes, to be truthful, the pain was almost unbearable, in spite of everything the doctors could do. His whole body was a mass of stinking, running sores. He could hardly swallow, he could not piss or move his bowels without agony, and yet he must do those things every few minutes anyway. But the pain could be borne, if only he had the strength to act — to get out of this bed, at least. And go to see his son! Or to plead with his son's captors. Or to go to anyone, to do anything, to try to get this matter somehow set aside.
It was at least a mercy that he was having one of the less and less frequent periods of not only wakefulness but even lucidity. 'Tell me exactly what happened, Vassa,' he begged, and listened in misery as the boy explained how the organs had come for his brother. Yes, of course it was the organs; it was a matter of smuggling, after all, and thus under the jurisdiction of the KGB. They had simply appeared and taken Senior Lieutenant Nikolai Smin away. Why had they accused him? Because someone in the hospital had run certain tests on Nikolai's blood or urine or bone marrow — they had endless samples of all of his fluids, of course, to make sure the transplant might work. And that someone had found chemical traces of hashish in Nikolai's sample. . and had reported it at once. 'You must not blame the doctors,' Vassili said sorrowfully. 'It was their duty, of course.'
'Of course,' Smin croaked sourly. 'And how is your mother taking this?'
'She has gone to see what she can do. Grandmother too. She insisted on going along. I don't know where.'
Smin sighed despondently. He roused himself to turn on his side and call to his roommate. 'Comrade Plumber? I must apologize for intruding this unpleasant family matter on you—'
'It is I who must apologize,' Sheranchuk said soberly. 'Forgive me. You are having a private conversation with your son and I should not be here. With your permission I will go out to visit friends for a while.'
'Thank you,' said Smin. He watched Sheranchuk silendy as the man got out of bed, pulled a red-striped pajama top over his bare chest, and. hurried away.
'He is the lucky one,' Smin said somberly to his son. 'I think he will be released soon, while I—'
'Yes, Father?'
Smin did not finish the thought. It was no longer important that he was sure he would never leave Hospital No. 6 alive. 'Ah, my poor Kolya,' he whispered in anguish. 'If only he had confided in me!'
There was a pause. Then Vassili said, 'What would you have done if he had, Father?'
Smin blinked at the boy. 'Why, I would have tried to help him, of course. No matter what!' Smin studied his son, struck by something in his tone. 'Do you think that would be wrong, Vassili?'
The boy said quickly, 'Oh, no. Of course not, Father. A father should help his son.'
There was still that false note, though. Smin scowled, trying to force himself to be more alert, more intelligent; something was troubling the boy. 'What is it, Vassa? Have I done something wrong?'
'Of course not, Father!'
'Then' — struck by a sudden and unpleasant thought—'is it — that is, have you — I mean, is there something you should tell me?'
'No, Father.'
'Yes, Father,' Smin insisted. 'You have some trouble I don't know about, don't you?'
'Really not,' his son said. 'I give you my word as a Komsomol.'
'Then what is it? I don't have the patience for guessing games, son. Is there something you want to ask me, perhaps about the accident, or something I have done?'
'No.'
'Yes!' shouted Smin. 'I have not raised you for sixteen years without knowing when something is troubling you. Tell me what it is!'
