Zinky Boys by Svetlana Alexievich Page B

were nowhere to be found and nobody had seen them. I started crying and carrying on. Suddenly, out they crawled from the big box our new television had been packed in. We hadn’t got round to throwing it away! They’d laid the table, made the tea, and while they were waiting for us Sasha had an idea for one of his surprises — hiding in the box. They’d got in the box and then fallen asleep!
    He was unusually affectionate for a boy. He loved kissing and cuddling me, and after he went to Afghanistan he became even more loving. He loved his home, but there were times when he’d just sit there, saying and seeing nothing. At night he’d jump out of bed and pace up and down his room. Once he woke me up with his shouting. ‘Explosions! Explosions! Mama, they’re firing!’ Another time I was woken up by crying. Who could it be? There were no small children in the house. I opened his door. He was holding his head in his hands and sobbing.
    â€˜Why are you crying, my love?’
    â€˜It’s horrible, Mama, horrible.’ He wouldn’t say another word, to me or his father.
    His leave came to an end and off he went. I baked him a suitcaseful of his favourite nutty biscuits, enough for him and all his friends. They missed home cooking over there.
    He spent the following New Year with us too. We originally expected him for the summer. ‘Mama, make lots of preserves and jam. I’ll eat the lot!’ he wrote. He postponed his August leave until September because he wanted to walk in the woods and pick the chanterelles, but still hadn’t arrived by November. Then he wrote to say he’d like to come for New Year, for the Christmas Tree, for his father’s birthday in December and mine in January.
    I spent the whole day at home on 30 December, reading his latest letter. ‘Mama, bake lots of your special blueberry dumplings, cherry dumplings and cream cheese dumplings.’ When my husband got home from work he waited while I rushed to the shop to buy a guitar we’d ordered and which had just come in. Sasha had asked for one. ‘Nothing too professional,’ he’d said.
    By the time I got back he’d arrived.
    Oh, and I wanted to be here to welcome you’.
    â€˜What a beautiful guitar!’ he said when he saw it. He danced round the room. ‘I’m home. How lovely it is! I could smell that special smell downstairs in the street.’
    He said we lived in the most beautiful town, and the most beautiful street, with the most beautiful acacias in our courtyard. He loved this flat. It’s hard to stay in now — everything reminds us of Sasha. And it’s hard to go out — he loved it all so much.
    He had changed, though. We all noticed it, his family as well as his friends. ‘How lucky you are!’ he told them. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are. Every day’s a holiday here.’
    I went to the hairdresser and came home with a new hair-do. He liked it. ‘Have your hair done like that all the time, Mama. You’re beautiful!’
    â€˜It’s expensive, dear.’
    â€˜I’ve brought money. Take it all. I don’t need it.’
    A friend of his had a baby son. I remember the way Sasha looked when he asked to hold him. Towards the end of his leave he got toothache, but he’d been scared of the dentist ever since he was a child, so I had to drag him by the hand to the clinic and wait with him until it was his turn. He was literally sweating with fear.
    If a TV programme about Afghanistan came on he’d leave the room. A week before he was due to go back his eyes became full of real anguish, that’s the only word for it. Can it be that I’m imagining it now? But I was a happy woman then. My son was a major at thirty and this time he’d come home with a Red Star, awarded for valour. At the airport I looked at him and couldn’t believe that this handsome young officer was really