New, 1970, I met in the barracks. I was then a cadet of the combined-arms command school. In general, we, senior cadets, were usually allowed to go home for the New Year, but this time we were left in the school as punishment for being AWOL. We are me and my friends: Vasya Varenika, Kolya Burmistrova and Mark Ershov.
On December 16, we were caught in the dormitory of the local pedagogical college by a “patrol. In short, a fly, and the most fearsome. Then there were ten days of the guardhouse and the punishment in the form of New Year's sitting in the walls of the school, which was empty for the holidays. So the chief ordered - Colonel Grigoriev Alexander Pavlovich. The colonel especially warned us that if we get drunk on New Year's Eve or decide to go for the girls again, we will not see the summer vacation either … He warned us and went to our parents in Omsk, but we stayed …
I must say - it was dreary. There is absolutely nothing to do. The officers on duty did not pester us with either drill or snow removal on the parade ground - apparently, they sympathized. We spent whole days in the barracks: Mark read, Kolya and Vasya played chess, I pulled weights: I always respected iron. It's December 31st. There was almost no one in the school. We look out the window - people are dragging Christmas trees behind the fence, all kinds of supplies from the market are getting ready for the holiday.
And we are not a holiday. We even decided not to indulge in champagne, although we could, of course, get it. Well, how will the attendant spot? Then we'll definitely not go anywhere in the summer. We met the New Year harshly - clinked glasses of tea in iron mugs and went to different corners of the barracks: Mark - to read, Kolya and Vasya sat down to chess, and I went to my kettlebells. At about two in the morning the front door creaked. I also thought that it was the duty officer who had come to sniff us. It turned out - not on duty.
Mergen came - the local stoker. What kind of person this is - Mergen - no one knew, and was not particularly interested. Either he was a Kalmyk, or a Tuvan, or a Buryat from Asians, in general. In years - over fifty years: then he seemed to us an ancient old man. Mergen lived in a small outbuilding behind the parade ground. I saw him only near the entrance to the basement, where the boiler room was located - with a shovel, Mergen loaded coal into a wheelbarrow and rolled it down the boards laid along the edge of the stairs. For three years of study, I did not hear a single word from Mergen - he answered the greetings with a nod of his head, and if someone began to pester with questions, he just turned around and left. This time Mergen was more than talkative.
- Hello, soldiers, - his voice was powerful, deep. Mergen spoke without any accent.
“Great, coal man,” Mark said for everyone.
Mergen sat down on one of the empty bunks. It seemed to me that he was a little screwy. Maybe he really gave up on the occasion. Mergen fiddled with springs creaking, and then asked:
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“We’re bored,” Vasya and Kolya said in unison.
- This is not the time to be bored. Today is a special night - the Adya grass is blooming. Anyone who wants can know their future.
Of course he was talking complete nonsense, but we became curious. I left my weights alone and went to the bunk on which Mergen was sitting:
- Where does it bloom, this grass, under the snow, or what?
- Not under the snow. It blooms in distant lands, it's hot there now.
In what lands - the stoker did not specify, and we were not very curious. Why talk to a drunk …
And then Mergen suggested:
- Want to tell each of you the future?
- Our future is known, - Kolya laughed, adding up the chess pieces after the next draw with Vasya, - troops, guards, officers' hostel.
“Don't tell me,” the stoker smiled again, and for the first time I noticed how lively and expressive his eyes are, “you can look further.
- Well, if further, then drop in. For twenty years can you look? -I sat down next to Mergen.
- I can. Today I can. One day like this - today I can do everything.
We were completely intrigued. Five minutes later, at the bottom of the uniform with earflaps, there were four metal buttons with a star - each of them ripped off one at a time from his hebashka - so Mergen ordered. For a long time, the stoker carried his hand in a hat, black from the coal dust that had eaten into the pores, and muttered something under his breath, not in Russian. Then the stoker pulled out one of the buttons and turned to Vasya:
- You, Varenik Vasily Ignatievich, on January 1, 1990 at three o'clock in the morning, you will sleep in your house in the city of Zhitomir, because you will drink a lot of vodka at the New Year's table.
- Excellent prediction! - we laughed. - Would think of something more interesting.
Mergen paid no attention to our cackle - again fiddled with his hat and pulled out the next button:
- You, Mark Hirsch, on January 1, 1990 will command a company during the assault on the village of Marukh-er-Riya. At three hours seventeen minutes Moscow time you will be informed that the enemy is withdrawing.
- What kind of Hirsch is this, - I interjected with a question, - and where is this village with such a wonderful name?
Mergen did not answer right away, answered with some annoyance - like a teacher explaining the simplest things to a repeater:
- In twenty years, Mark Ershov will be Hirsch. This settlement is in Galilee …
I wanted to ask about Galilee, but Mergen already had the third button in his hands.
“You, Nick Boer, will spend New Year's Eve 1990 with your mistress at the Parker Double Three Hotel, 17 miles from Santa Barbara, where your wife, Mrs. Olga Boer, will catch you at three forty-five minutes. Do not be afraid - she will forgive you … But you will have to part with your mistress …
Kolya was already perplexed:
- What other Boer? Where is this Santa Barbara? What is Olga? Kolesnikov, perhaps, from a parallel class?
- Kolesnikova, - Mergen nodded, - to whom you last summer, when you came to your Syzran, gave glass beads, and said that crystal beads … You will get married soon …
- I was told at the bazaar - crystal … - Kolya began to make excuses. - How do I know that they are glass ?! They cost, by the way, like crystal ones!
Mergen did not listen to him - he took out the last, my button.
- You, Sergei Aleksandrovich Kopeikin, on January 1, 1990, at three hours fifty-six minutes Moscow time, you will be wounded by a fragment of a mine right through under the town of Keren. You will immediately remember your brother Fedor and save his life. All … I have to go, otherwise I will freeze the pipes …
I didn’t have time to ask what kind of town Keren was. Mergen got up and, without saying goodbye, went to the exit of the barracks.
After that incident, we tried many times to get an explanation from the stoker about his incomprehensible words, but he looked at us as if we were insane and only brushed it off - they say, what are you talking about …
We rummaged through the entire military-political encyclopedic dictionary that Mark liked to read, found that Santa Barbara is a city in the United States, read about Galilee and about Keren, a settlement in Ethiopia.
Of course, we all laughed at the predictions of Mergen, but everyone (it could be seen) still thoughtful. There was something to think about, agree! How, tell me, could an illiterate stoker know about Galilee and Ethiopia? Even more interesting - how can we get there? In the end, Varenik summed up: "Apparently, the USSR will conquer the whole world." On that, they decided, and after six months they stopped remembering the predictions of Mergen. Once they only remembered when Kolya Burmistrov, who returned from his Syzran, said that he had married Olya Kolesnikova, with whom he had been in love at school. That, perhaps, is all … Then we graduated from college and went to different garrisons. At first they corresponded, but soon they stopped …
On January 1, 1990, I, Colonel Sergei Aleksandrovich Kopeikin, military adviser to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, was wounded during a clash between government forces and Eritrean separatists. Needless to say, when a mine fragment tore my shin, I remembered Mergen. Remembered and … lost consciousness. Not really, really, I lost it - my brain was working: I saw my younger brother, Fyodor Kopeikin, an investigator of the prosecutor's office, standing in the kitchen window of his apartment on the first floor of house No. 8 on Dubninskaya Street in Moscow and smoking.
At that moment, a hand with a gull tattoo on the back of the wrist stuck out of the bushes. In my hand was a Walther pistol … At this the vision broke off - I woke up in the back of a truck that was taking me to the hospital.
Before going to the operating room, I demanded to connect me with Moscow, with my brother. I was sure that his life was in danger. The duty captain did not object, but he looked at me with regret when I yelled into the phone: “Fedka! They want to kill you from Walther! I know for sure! The stoker said! On the wrist, a seagull!"
On January 5, 1990, recidivist Boris Valentinovich Chaikin, born in 1940, who escaped from prison, was detained in Moscow. They confiscated a Walther pistol, a cartridge clip and a piece of newspaper with the written down home address of my brother Fyodor. I must say that it was through the efforts of Fyodor that Chaikin went to the Mordovian camps five years before the events described. That time he was added another ten years …
And five years later I met in the Israeli city of Haifa with my old friend, a colonel of the Israel Defense Forces, Mark Ershov. Now his surname is Hirsch. Actually, she was like that even with his grandfather Mark - a shopkeeper from Berdichev. After moving to Israel with his family in the late eighties, Mark became Hirsch and went to serve in the IDF. Mentally we sat down and drank and, of course, remembered Mergen. Mark showed me the Medal of Courage, which was awarded for the victory at the village of Marukh-er-Riya in southern Lebanon. What's wrong with Kolka and Vasya - whether Mergen's predictions came true, Mark and I do not know. But we think that they have come true … More precisely, we are sure that they have come true …
S. A. KOPEYKIN, Vyborg (Editorial note: the names of the characters have been changed)