DEATH OF EUGENE

I came home upset that night. It was raining again, my satellite dish got broken and my wife couldn’t find a receipt from Canadian Tire, so I couldn’t replace that battery charger. Then… then I spotted this article in the popular Russian newspaper.

WARNING! Don’t read any further, if you have A heart CONDITION. You will be shocked and stressed by THE cruel, inhuman reality, which takes place NOW.

Recently, a documentary was shown on Russian TV. Rebels in the Southern part of Russia were killing Russian soldiers.  The first two got bullets in their heads and died instantly. The third one got his throat cut and left to die. Then they slowly, for the video and for fun, cut the throat of the last soldier, named Eugene. After which his blooded head was lifted and shown directly to the lens of the camera. 

Eugene and his friends were kidnapped by rebels a few days before this tragedy. But nobody from military brass even tried to search for them. Instead they sent an official telegram to … Eugene’s mom who lived near Moscow, two thousand miles away.

“Your son left his military base. Please, take all measures necessary for his return.”

She sent nine (!) telegrams back. My son isn’t a drifter, she said, something bad happened to him. Please, find him!!!

Of course, nobody tried to find those soldiers, even knowing at that moment that rebels had captured them. So the mother went to the battlefield herself. She stood on her knees, begging generals to find her son, but nobody even listened.

She spent her last money on copies of her son’s picture and put them on every fence with a cry for help. It didn’t work. She had nothing left to do, but apply directly to the rebels. They beat her and the father of another soldier bitterly, suspecting those older people spies. They killed that poor man and left Eugene’s mother to freeze to death in the winter night. But she survived and again continued the search for her son, dead or alive.

The same people who killed her son agreed to show his grave for… $10,000 (compare to Eugene’s mom’s monthly earnings of about $40 per month). She asked the government for help and they provided her with… $50. So she got the “small” balance by selling her and her husband’s only place to live, a tiny apartment. To make things even worse, her husband went to the hospital after a heart attack.

It was deep night when a middleman brought her to the grave. Despite everything she still believed then that her son was alive, it was just a mistake or something else. Her baby, her son, couldn’t be killed. He was so kind to everyone, even to small kittens or his dog, whose picture he always carried with him.

Then the grave was opened. Her son’s decapitated body was on the very top. She recognized Eugene instantly by his slim neck with birthmarks, and a small cross on his neck she gave him. She didn’t cry at that moment, she just aged tens of years. The same night she was shown the videotape of the death of her son.

You think the biggest horror of this tragic story was already behind? NO!!! After all these circles of hell the mother went through she wasn’t allowed to at last bury her son! The famous Russian bureaucracy created a unique letter, which would make Machiavelli jealous. “Your son’s (!) body is short of the head, so you can’t be granted his death certificate. His scull is needed.”

It’s hard, almost impossible to believe in something like that, but I know that country (you can call it Russia or Soviet Union; it’s still the same) well enough to know it’s true!

The biggest horror of this story is not even the cruelty of the rebels. It was actually the Russian government who started that war years ago and brought on that land a lot of cruelty itself. The real horror is that hundreds of millions of people continue to live under a regime, which forces poor mothers to pay murderers of her son to find his dead body and even his scull.

 Yes, she paid again to get his scull, which was smashed into four parts. After that she got her son’s body and brought it to their small town, where she didn’t have either a place to live anymore, or money or a job. Nobody but neighbours helped her to bury her son. He was buried on his 22nd birthday. On the next day on this grave died his father.

Eugene, a few months before his death. He is giving an oath of faith to the country, which betrayed him in life and death.

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 So I read this story. Then I hid the newspaper with it from my wife, took a long look at Eugene’s picture and drank a shot of vodka with a small piece of brown bread, according to a Russian custom. For a few moments, I looked at my 16-year-old son with his slim neck.

Then… then for the millionth time in the last few years I thanked God for my life and my problems here, in Canada.