Basically, what we were waiting for was the moment when our position would end up on the front line. We were waiting to be at the battlefront.
What we called Flat Rock was a hill between two valleys, one of which had a river, and the other did not. The top of the hill had no vegetation and was angled as a slope; it was neither smooth nor flat. The second line went through there, which would become the front line at some point, and then—who knows—perhaps the international border. The right side of the hill, which faced the valley without a river, was rocky, and the slope also had no vegetation near the top, while the left side, which faced the river, was covered in trees, and full of shrubbery, thorns and bushes. Both slopes were difficult to climb, but not impossible, of course. In any case, nobody seemed to need this position, located at the second line, for the time being. And so, we would wait. Suspy would say, “Man, they’ve probably forgotten about us, that’s what I’m sensing . . . ” “Is that what you’re sensing, or suspecting, Suspy?” “Yeah, you said it, I just wanted to diversify my vocabulary a bit, you know?”
The frontline was several kilometers away from Flat Rock, so the main threat we were facing was an unlikely sabotage group, or the remains of groups of saboteurs that had perhaps lost their way in the forest, still wandering in the foliage after yet another failed attempt to penetrate, trying to find a way to emerge, risking elimination. Flat Rock seemed to have fallen flat from our expectations—it was not flat in reality. As Placid put it, the Flatheaded Regiment at Flat Rock, while waiting to become the frontline, was growing more and more suspicious, like Suspy, and more philosophical, like Placid.
And then, one day, a dog appeared, a white mongrel with brown spots. It came and lay down in the trench, right in the middle, exactly next to where Placid would usually light the fuel tablets to make coffee. Of course, all of us took this quite badly at first, because of Suspy’s suspicions. It was an obscure dog with obscure lineage. We were absolutely unable to figure out its origins—it had not come from any of the nearby villages, nor did it belong to any of the guards on duty at other positions. There was a “suspicion” that the dog would make us drop our guard by constantly barking for no real reason, but it surprised everyone that very first night by barking only twice the whole time—the first time was when a guard from a neighboring position came to ours, and the second time was when a stag ran across the slope below us. Stags, it turned out, were funny creatures. They spent the whole night wandering in the forest, constantly coughing like a smoker, a sound like ahem, ahem . . . ahem, ahem . . . And every time Placid heard this sound, he would say, “You shouldn’t smoke so much, man!” And he would light a cigarette. Suspy said, “Now that’s a great dog, it doesn’t bark for no reason. A real guard dog,” he said. “If it barks, then something’s up.” He added, “This is exactly the kind of dog we need, to stay alert . . . Although, it’s possible that . . . ” “What’s possible, Suspy?” “Nothing, something crossed my mind, but it’s not important.”
Placid named the dog Zgon, or “alert” in Armenian. But, by evening, we had modified Zgon into the common Armenian name Vzgo, which we all found to be more suitable.
Vzgo was a big acquisition for our position. At night, when you’re lying in wait, with your only hope being your limited and underdeveloped senses, you realize that human beings are actually very weak creatures—that the alertness of a guard dog, its sense of smell, its boldness and loyalty, can be a real weapon, a real advantage to someone waiting. Suspy would say, “What do we have really? A few AKMs, a PK machine gun, one grenade launcher, a case of F1, and Vzgo . . . Although . . . the PK barrel seems to be crooked, do you see that, or is it just me? Whatever . . . ” Suspy was right: our eyes would play tricks on us at night because they were not meant for nocturnal hunting. In tense moments, our eyes were actually more of a weakness than a strength, because our imagination fueled them to produce distorted images that sometimes caused us anxiety. Our sense of hearing, which was not meant to pick up nuanced sounds, constantly fed us suspicious noises that could arouse panic, while our sense of smell was not worth anything at all . . . As weapons, our senses were weak, and in times of tension and fear, when we were lying in wait, they would conspire to trick and confuse us. Vzgo, with his advanced senses, was a serious help. For those of us waiting, he was like infrared vision, a nocturnal telescope and powerful antenna all at the same time, a motion detector system with sensors all around the position. Vzgo was our hi-tech solution.
But Vzgo was just Vzgo despite all that, and you always eventually put your faith in that piece of metal that you carried around with you as you pace from one side to the other at the top of this godforsaken hill. In the darkness, when you slip your fingers across the metallic body of your weapon, its coldness burns your soul, because you can sense its loyalty and reliability. You understand that there is nothing dearer to you than the cold automatic rifle close to your body. It is the creator of soldiers, who can always rebuild them, bring them into the world once again, dissect them. The cold automatic of someone lying in wait. Heavy, awkward, pressing hard against the muscles cramped from fatigue and cold—hated, feared, but the only dear thing you have. And, of course, the F1s hanging across your chest and which Suspy called spare balls—when you have these hanging from your body, you rely more on them than on your own balls . . . But could these misfire at a critical moment? No, hardly likely. Placid would notice the contradiction in Suspy’s statements and ask immediately, “Suspy, would you like to have F1s instead of your balls, but be otherwise healthy? You know, take a girl to a hotel room, drop your pants, pull the ring and put your balls between the legs of that Suzy, or whatever she’s called.” Suspy thought about this for a moment, but his face clouded over and said, “I suspect you’re fucking with me,” to which Placid giggled quietly and stepped out to make coffee.
There’s nobody with jokes that fall flatter, or with expressions more cynical or vulgar, than a soldier with nothing to do. Those conversations between soldiers debasing and defiling life, full of discrimination, intolerance, and degradation, going from one trench to the other, are actually like a vaccine that strengthens and vitalizes, because it is impossible to wait that long to die without losing your mind. As Suspy would say: “Man, if I don’t swear now, I might end up shooting someone out of anger right here, I’ll be fucked if I’m lying!”
Placid would tell Suspy, “Girls will fall in love with you. You’re the handsome soldier protecting the homeland," he would say, "the one they see in their dreams, but all you do the whole day is spurt all kinds of words from that mouth of yours.” And Suspy would say, “Nah, I’m not like the guys on magazine covers, nobody’ll fall in love with me—they won’t swoon at my photo or at me in real life. I’m so ugly that they’ll take one look at me and say, ‘I wish he was a deserter so we wouldn’t feel any sense of obligation toward him.’” We all laughed at that and took turns at self-deprecation. One of us said, “I’m so ugly that anyone who sees me would say, ‘He must’ve been the one who handed over Jabrayil, for sure.’” Another one said, “That’s nothing. I’m so ugly that anyone who sees me would say, ‘He must’ve been the one who handed over Hadrut.’” And the last of us said, deadpan and serious, “Guys, I think I’m in contention to hand over Shushi.” We burst out in laughter over this and then got back to our places, lost in thought, so that we could once again perch on Flat Rock, like every other day, and caress our guns, waiting.
It was eight in the evening when we got news from a neighboring position that someone had gone missing. We agreed to be careful, just in case. You never know, he might show up on our side, but then we all agreed with Placid’s evaluation that he would be found at daybreak, sleeping in some bush, so we got back to our regular work. And what we called work was drinking coffee, which was the only joy left to us, the sole thing that gave us a semblance of connection to the world around us. Placid would make coffee and, as he slurped the hot liquid, he would say, “Guys, coffee is the only thing that helps me feel human these days. Normal human beings everywhere are drinking it right now, and so are we, which means we’re human beings too . . . Nothing else we do during the day is normal . . . ” Suspy would say, “You’re right, normal people don’t shit in the forest, hanging above a slope holding on to a tree branch so that they don’t fall into the valley.” And Placid would continue, saying, “Yeah. Normal people don’t live through the day gripping their guns around the clock, in the dirt, in the rain . . . But normal people drink coffee . . . The Queen of England drinks it, the driver of a roller pouring asphalt on a road in Moscow drinks it, an Uzbek selling hot pies in Tashkent drinks it too . . . ” “But do the Uzbeks drink coffee, man?” “Well, Suspy, maybe they drink tea, it doesn’t matter . . . ” As Placid responded to Suspy, one of the other guys would slurp his coffee and sigh, “Even Kim Kardashian drinks coffee . . . ” And we would all look at him in admiration, because he was the first to acknowledge the fact that hot chicks drink coffee too. That would arouse some excitement among us and we would stop listening to the rest of Placid's lecture on the humanitarian aspects of coffee.
Placid was making the third or fourth round of coffee that night, crouching over the fuel tablet. Suspy was sitting on a rock a slight distance away dozing off, then jumping awake anxiously from time to time, looking from left to right, scared not so much of the Turks but of us, because we might have noticed that he had fallen asleep. I was leaning against a tree and staring at the sky, looking at the stars, but not because I know any astronomy or because I had a childhood interest in celestial bodies or constellations, red giants and white dwarves, or because the universe has always fascinated my delicate soul, but rather because it was so dark around me that it was only up in the sky that I could see anything. Basically, because there was something to see up there. A couple of the guys were around twenty meters away, whispering in the trenches. There was only Vzgo between me and Placid, lying in the dirt, breathing in and out loudly. We were all sure that Vzgo was keeping watch, so we were relaxed. Placid was focused on the coffee to make sure it did not boil over and spill, but he suddenly felt someone watching him carefully from behind. That someone’s breath warmed the back of Placid’s neck. He thought it was one of us, so he slowly turned around, expecting no surprises. But when he saw who was standing there, he twitched in panic and shock, dropping the coffeepot and, with a scream, he threw himself at the wall of the trench against which his automatic was leaning. We all grabbed our guns quickly and got into position, our eyes fixated on the spot where Placid was just a few seconds ago. A stranger with bloodshot eyes was looking at us in surprise, licking his lips from time to time and continually patting his pockets, as if looking for a cigarette. Before any of us could piece together words to ask him a question, the stranger turned his gray face to Placid, who was stunned with fear in the trench, and said to him, “Bro, you don't look so good, huh? And that coffee is fucked, huh? Did you spill it all?” He finally took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “Who are you, man?” Suspy eventually asked, at which the stranger responded without the slightest note of tension, “I’m Hamo from Hoktemberyan, bro . . . ” “Hamo?” “From Hoktemberyan, bro . . . ” “Yeah, but how did . . . ” “Hamo, bro . . . ” “Man, are you the guy who went missing from the neighboring position?” “That’s rude, bro. Me, lost? What am I, a sheep? I just stepped outside to drink some coffee . . . ” We sighed with relief because we understood that this really was Hamo, the man who had gone missing from the neighboring position. Nonetheless, we exercised a little caution as we invited Hamo to sit down with us while Placid put another pot of coffee on to brew. Hamo was clearly high on grass and found himself unable to explain why and how he had ended up at our position. He kept saying, “Bro, I wanted a cup of coffee, why all the meaningless questions?” Why had he ended up walking a kilometer and a half to the neighboring position, leaving his own fellow soldiers, clambering through the forest at night? How had he walked along the narrow path in the woods when even the locals found this difficult to do at night? How had he found our position? How had he managed to slip up to us unnoticed? This last one, though, was our problem and something that we—not Hamo—needed to explain. After all, how was he to know that we were about to have coffee at that very moment? Anyway, we gave Hamo some coffee and even offered him some candy. We gave him a spot and a sleeping bag so that he could get some rest. We sent news to his regiment that he was with us and was alright. We said we would send him over in the morning. And we got back to work. And what we called work was putting Vzgo on trial. Actually, it was Suspy who took out his gun unexpectedly and declared that he was going to shoot the dog. We were all very surprised at first, then worried, then even angry. We demanded that Suspy provide a rationale for wanting to kill the creature. Placid even announced that he would never allow anyone to harm the dog, and that one could not make demands of animals the way one did of human beings. He was so worked up that he even accused Suspy of falling asleep and voiced a rhetorical question: “Despite that, nobody here is suggesting that we shoot Suspy, right?” This made Suspy very angry and he said that had the dog not been around and had he failed in those circumstances, he should have been shot, it would have been the right thing to do. Then he said that the dog had created a very clear problem. “If he remains with us, we’re going to rely on him whether we want to or not, and he might fail to bark at a much more fateful moment than this one.” Placid said, “It’s a dog, Suspy. Why are you complicating things?” And Suspy said, “Dogs are supposed to bark. Guard dogs are supposed to bark at the right moment . . . ” Basically, Suspy said that having an unreliable guard or weapon in a military post was no joke, that we were waiting and things could get dangerous at our position at any moment. He was no fan of senseless cruelty and he was not thinking of killing the dog based on principle. What was based on principle was that this dog in particular should not be at our military post. Then he paused for a second and added, “This guy has gained access to our post, he’s entered our trenches, had a long conversation with our guards, and has been sleeping all this time. Does he want me to tuck him in as well, for fuck’s sake? If anyone here is concerned, you’re welcome to take the dog and lose him somewhere far from our post when it’s daylight tomorrow. The Turks will arrive here any day now, and he won’t give a fuck. If that dog is still here the day after tomorrow, I’m going to shoot it, and nobody better try to stop me.”
Suspy said those final words and withdrew his gun, moving off to the edge of the trench. Vzgo remained as he was, curled up in the same spot, as if nothing was happening, as if his fate was not on the line. He really was a strange dog. Our attitude toward Vzgo changed immediately. As we waited for dawn to break, the seed of doubt grew in our minds and turned into a baobab of suspicion. In the morning, when Placid took the car assigned to our unit and carried Vzgo into it, taking him to the village, he was the only one who truly cared that the dog should be spared. We were so cold that we even treated Placid with disdain and didn’t speak to him. The contempt we felt for Vzgo had spread to Placid, because he had taken it upon himself to save Vzgo’s life.
Later that morning, Placid returned in a great mood, shaved, bathed, smelling nice—so nice, it was like he had emptied a whole bottle of cologne on himself. We asked him about Vzgo in an offhand sort of way, of course, and he said that he had given him to someone in the village and, as if fulfilling a command of some sort, we all immediately forgot about the dog. That day went by in silent work. We did a lot of trench digging and cut wood from the forest to cover a small, bunker-like space. We were almost proving to ourselves that we were more responsible than Vzgo. As darkness fell, we seemed to have a strong desire to communicate openly with each other. Placid said, “I think we’re going to lose this fight . . . ” “Why do you say that, Placid?” “Because we and the Turks are fighting different fights, we’re not fighting the same fight . . . ” “Placid, what was people’s mood like in the village? Were they as despairing as you are now?” Suspy had immediately suspected that Placid had been infected by this defeatist mood in the village and, if this was something prevalent at the home front, then it was a very bad sign. Placid said that he did not know what the villagers were thinking, he had his own thoughts, and those thoughts were not optimistic . . . “Placid, time for you to make some coffee and stop blabbing pointlessly.”
Placid did not say a word and got up to light the fuel tablet. Suspy walked to the end of the trench and shouted from there, “Make some noise when the coffee is ready so I can come and get it . . . ” Suspy was demonstrating that everything was under control. That he was much better than Vzgo. Placid rinsed the coffee cups thoroughly, filled four cups and straightened his back, shouting, “Suspy, come get your coffee . . . ” And, right then, he noticed Vzgo lying at his feet. Placid did nothing; he seemed stunned, and simply continued looking up and down at Vzgo, who had curled up in his usual position, sleeping. Sometime later, Suspy was also standing there silently. Placid took his coffee and left. He did not argue, did not try to defend the dog. He gave in.
The next day at noon, Suspy was drinking a cup of coffee he had made himself when we found out that Flat Rock was now on the front line. Our guys had abandoned the position in front of ours and the Turks had taken it over. He took another sip of his coffee, then spread his coat in front of him and began to take his automatic apart. Suspy was cleaning his gun meticulously, because he had no doubt that one’s only hope of salvation was a reliable gun, a familiar piece of metal. Placid thought that Suspy’s perspective of the world was a flat one and that, in fact, there was no hope of salvation at all. We were thinking that Suspy might be right, but, because Suspy’s approach required us to work, and we did not feel like working, we shared Placid’s thoughts, which suggested doing nothing and waiting, because, he said, things were much more complicated and we really had no control over anything. So it seemed that, if everything was complicated, we could keep our own actions simple and do nothing and, on the contrary, if everything was that simple, we would have many complicated things to do. But what we really wanted was for everything to be simple and for us to have nothing to do.
That was the kind of position that Flat Rock was. There was nothing to do there but wait, although Suspy had no doubt that the time to wait had come to an end.
