– Okay, this way we’ll end up talking about the weather. – he says. – So, my ink slinger, a jackal of copying machines. Turn on your voice recorder and ask. What if the weather gets worse. See the clouds?
– You have been in the Zone since 1990, right?
– That’s right. Since the 30>th May. Only a few people here are older than me.
– And the regular military service, in fact, you served at the Polygon.
– That was it.
– Tell me about the ”Mother's cracks”.
– And what is that, Shugpshuits?
– What you all call me… Okay. Then tell me about captain Zhitkur.
– Why is that? I don’t know him. How can I know him? This was a legend.
– Vadim, I’m begging you. For real. Stop tricking, since you agreed to talk. “I don’t know this, I don’t understand that…” All the Ten knew captain Zhitkur. The man who walked the city with SMP332 and drove a “Willys”.
– But I didn’t serve in the Ten, my dear world dove. I served… No. I signed confidentiality agreement. For twenty- five years. Let’s say I served where now is the Second Epicenter.
– Okay, and doctor Vyatkin?
– I was familiar with him, of course. He was a doctor in Bezhensk till ninety-five, then he disappeared somewhere. But I knew him even before the army. He was deployed at the same time as me, you can say, we were hanging out together. In my unit. He as a Lieutenant, me as a private. Biennial from Chelyabinsk, doctor. Pediatrician, that is characteristic. Awesome guy, wearing glasses, lower lip dangling till navel, all he was dreaming was his rock collection of seventies… Totally civilian person, he was referring to the Commander of the section as: “Comrade Commander of the section”.
– But wasn’t the “headless Corporal” in your section in eighty-seven, in fact…
– You will not manage to live to the old age, Shugpshuits. Hmm… He was. How did you know?
– And wasn’t Captain Zhitkur raking there?
– I don’t have a clue. We could not leave the barracks. First of all, we were locked up there. Secondly, we ourselves were so scared to come out, that we covered the windows with blankets and would tear up any German.
– German?
– An officer. An officer – German, a goose – a cub, a youngster.
– We didn’t have the same words.
– You served?
– Well… yes.
– Local type of slang.
– Did you see that Corporal in person?
– Yes.