Entry I
Entry I
Date: August 5, 2013
Location: Leningrad Military District Barracks, St. Petersburg
Time: 22:14
The air in the barracks is thick enough to chew. It smells of floor wax, damp wool, and the nervous sweat of sixty men who are trying too hard to be silent. I am sitting on the edge of my bunk, the metal frame biting into the back of my thighs. The spring under the thin, stained mattress groans every time I shift my weight—a sharp, metallic protest that feels loud enough to wake the Colonel in the next building over. I’ve tried to find a position that doesn’t make it scream, but the bed is as tired as I am.
Today was our eighth day of training here. They had us running tactical drills in the mud on the outskirts of the city until my boots felt like they were cast in lead. My hands are stained deep with carbon and CLP from cleaning the AK-74 for the third time today. Sgt. Volkov says if he finds a single speck of dust in the chamber or a smudge on the gas piston, he’ll make us sleep in the yard without blankets. He is a man who enjoys the power of small, petty miseries. He watched us today with his arms crossed, his eyes following every fumble, every slow reload, like a hawk waiting for something to die.
I tried to write a proper letter to Elena tonight, but the words felt clumsy and heavy in my head. How do I tell her that the hardest part of being a soldier isn’t the rucksack or the endless marching? It’s the way the silence in my head gets filled with the sound of Misha’s laugh. I can almost hear him running across the linoleum in our kitchen back home, his little socks sliding on the floor. I wonder if he’s grown in the two weeks I’ve been gone. At three years old, they change every hour, and I feel like I’m missing a thousand tiny lifetimes. I keep his photo tucked inside the back cover of this journal. In the picture, the sun is hitting the golden hair at the back of his neck while he plays with a wooden truck. It’s the only thing in this room that isn’t a shade of grey or olive drab.
We’re supposed to be here for another week of "readiness exercises," but the atmosphere has curdled. The older NCOs, the ones who usually spend their evenings playing cards and shouting, are huddled in the corners of the smoking pits. They speak in low, jagged tones that stop the moment a Private walks by. Usually, there’s more joking, more complaining about the watery cabbage in the mess hall. Now, everyone is just… waiting.
A massive shipment of crates arrived at the depot this afternoon. They were unmarked, painted that dull, matte green that seems to swallow the light around it. I watched from the window as the forklifts moved them into the high-security hangers. They didn’t look like food or clothing. They were heavy, moved with a deliberate slowness that suggested something volatile inside. Sokolov, who sleeps in the bunk next to mine, whispered that he saw a shipment of live ammunition being moved to the motor pool—thousands of crates.
I’m exhausted, but my mind is pacing like a caged animal. I keep thinking about the civilian life I left behind such a short time ago—the smell of the bakery on the corner of our street, the way Elena looks in the morning when she’s trying to be quiet so Misha can sleep five minutes longer. Here, I am just a serial number, a set of boots, and a rifleman. I find myself staring at the ceiling, tracing the cracks in the plaster, wondering why a "readiness exercise" feels so much like a countdown. I hope the training ends soon so I can go back to being a man. I don't like the person I become when I put on this uniform; I feel smaller, yet more dangerous, and it scares me.
End entry.
