“The commander sent me.”

“What commander? Commander where?”

“Donetsk. Call him yourself. He’ll confirm it.”

“Confirm what? What are you on about? I should put you in the ground right now!”

“Kabul! Don’t pretend you can’t hear me,” shouted Lena. “You haven’t got time for this, have you? Oh, but when you need your fighters treated or stocks replenished, I’m your little Lenochka?”

“Lenochka dear, I don’t have four men to spare,” said Kabul. He attempted a kindly voice, but what came out was a low growl. “You wouldn’t want Number One to be left unguarded, would you?”

Kabul looked doubtfully at the recruits, and at Gypsy and Shaggy, who were still embroiled in their argument.

“Oi, you two market traders, haggle more quietly, won’t you?” His voice again turned into a pleading whisper. “Lenochka, just look at them. They’ve only just got here. They need to be assigned, trained.”

“I’m a doctor,” said K.

“Shut your mouth, you!” barked Kabul. “Like I give a fuck what you are! And what is that in your passport?”

“A doctor?” exclaimed Lena. “Kabul! You have a doctor and you tell me nothing.”

“I don’t have no doctor,” said Kabul, glaring at K.

“We’re about to start an offensive!”

“An offensive?! What are you on? All you do is sit in trenches,” shouted Shaggy.

“Anaesthetist, and a first-order psychiatrist,” said K.

Lena was furious. Recovering her composure, she grabbed K.’s hand and tugged him toward the door.

“And where are you going?” Kabul swung his huge arms so abruptly that he smacked the soldier standing by him in the face. “No way! Do you know where he’s from?!” He patted the soldier’s back. “Sorry, brother!”

The soldier dropped the passport, clutched his nose. Blood gushed to the floor.

“Maybe he needs help?” K. stood in the middle of the room.

Everyone fell silent and stared at him.

“Come here! Right now!” Kabul beckoned menacingly. “Lena, do you even know where he’s from?”

“He could be from the moon for all I care! My anaesthetist is a drunk.” Lena tugged K. along again, continuing her retreat to the door. “Kabul, you know how badly I need qualified people.”

“You have an entire platoon stuffed to the gills,” Gypsy shrieked at Shaggy.

Lena stopped at the exit.

“Kabul, four men. Just for one day, Kabul. Four. I need them in half an hour at the hospital.”

“Two!” bellowed Kabul. “And the fucking doctor. And on your head be it!”

He wagged his finger, but K. and Lena were already running down the steps.

Chapter 5

Even before the outbreak of fighting, he loved dredging up his old war stories. The tales he saw in his dreams, and the war he lived through with Grandma. It was a feverish mix of memory, fantasy, and visions of the future that he could not quite disentangle.

When the battles reached the outskirts of our city, he rejoiced like a halfwit soothsayer who had lived long enough to see his predictions coming to pass. During that first war, when he was still a child, he had survived and, as he put it, “became a human.”