"Mikhail Evstafiev. Two Steps From Heaven " - читать интересную книгу автора

than everyone else. His craftiness was expressed in his refusal to accept
medical methods of treatment. Having done his share of dashes to the
latrine, Pashkov realized that the microbe would not just go away but had
taken up firm residence in his guts. So Pashkov acquired a three-litre jar
of pure alcohol, locked himself in the store-room and did not emerge for
three whole days. Drinking himself stupid, he would snore like a pig,
whistling, snorting and grunting.
Nobody dreamed of bothering him, simply every so often they would knock
on the door and offer to bring him some tea. True, some of the soldiers
maintained, and lieutenant Sharagin personally attested that, at night, when
everyone else was asleep, Pashkov would emerge from the seclusion of the
store-room and wander around the camp like the ghost from "Hamlet", heading
in the general direction of the latrine. He didn't recognize or even seem to
see anybody, did not react to human speech, and bore no resemblance to the
real senior warrant officer Pashkov, the terror of the troops.
Everybody felt sorry for Pashkov except the company commander.
Morgultsev knew Pashkov from service back home, so when lieutenant Sharagin,
suffering dysentery himself, remarked that it was a pity about poor old
Pashkov, looks as though the bug could kill him and wasn't it time for him
to be shipped off to hospital, Morgultsev snapped:
"The fuck he's sick! He's just gone on a bender with the booze! Happens
with him regularly, once every quarter! " Calming down, he added:
"Still, it happens even more frequently with some of the warrant
officers - just like women's monthlies..." Morgultsev left Pashkov alone -
he knew that he would come around and cure himself soon. Just like a wounded
animal going off alone to hide in the forest, Pashkov had hidden himself on
the store-room and closed himself off from anyone, fighting the illness or
depression.
On the third day, an explosion shook the store-room. The explosion was
not all that big, it sounded rather like the detonation of a fuse, but the
whole company took fright, thinking that maybe Pashkov had gone off his head
from too much drink and had decided to finish off not just the germs in his
intestines or the depression which tortured his mysterious Russian soul, but
himself as well.
The door was broken down. Inside they found the senior warrant officer
in the grip of dementia tremens and an empty three-litre jar.
Pashkov was half-sitting, half-lying on a pile of kit-bags and
greatcoats, whiskers quivering and his eyes rolling around madly. He was
pointing at a small crack in the floor from which, he maintained, scorpions,
phalanges and snakes were crawling out to get him, and that he had disposed
of some of them by throwing a lighted grenade fuse down the hole. Just in
case, he was gripping a Makarov pistol in his hands to shoot down any
"creeping bastards" that might venture near him.
"Take the gun away, and get him out of here! Cured himself, has, he,
stupid moron!" rapped out Morgultsev.
By some miraculous means the raw alcohol helped Pashkov get rid of the
Afghan bug and depression, so that a week later he was vainly trying to
convince his commanding officer that he had not been malingering, that he
really had been ill and -God forbid! - should comrade captain succumb to the
same curse he, Pashkov, bore no ill will and would help and explain, as a