A Retired Captain on the Sports Ground

Time does its work. I’m no longer a young man (it feels like childhood was just yesterday, hard to believe). With time have come the inevitable aches and pains. According to all scientific findings, the best medicine is physical activity. Not competitive sports, but manageable exertion. To get the blood pumping, prevent joints from seizing up with salts, and keep muscles from wasting away.

So, I exercise. Not perfectly regularly, overcoming laziness and inertia by light jerks. For this, I go to the sports ground located two or three blocks from my house, about a twelve-minute walk. It’s a branded, excellent facility and, wonderfully, completely free. In our wildly capitalist times, where even a rooster won’t crow for free, this is a rare thing. It has pull-up bars, parallel bars, gymnastic rings, adjustable benches for working the abs at different angles, and various weight machines with adjustable resistance.

I understand the local administration installed all this splendor. Credit to them for it (though there's plenty else they deserve harsh criticism for). The area is fenced and guarded 24/7. There's only one entrance, inconvenient and distant (which is good, as it keeps fewer idle loiterers with cans of beer and bags of sunflower seeds from dropping by). Four guards watch over it, and I’ve gotten to know all of them.

The equipment here is top-notch, labeled "Made in Germany." Designed intelligently and with care. Stainless steel with rubberized handles, weatherproof coating. No roof or awnings needed. Almost everything is in good order and almost always clean (the guards moonlight as cleaners). True, one machine (the exercise bike) is broken, and a couple of the rubber grips on the parallel bars have been stolen. But these are minor losses compared to what I see at the sports ground (or rather, little ground) built by the holy fathers near the Church of St. Sergius of Radonezh in Zarechye.

Their machines (six of them, made at a local factory) are all broken. The only thing not broken is what can't be broken – a tall steel pull-up bar. I tried fixing a few things. I brought steel rods from home and inserted them where the broken factory adjusters should be. But they get pulled out and thrown away anyway. To stop the base of one machine getting smashed by falling weights, I wired a plank to it. Some joker (let’s use the gentlest term) pried off my wire and threw the plank away. Keep smashing that base, then!

I brought a tin of grease from home, lubed the guide rails so the weights would slide smoothly. I left the tin tucked away under a bench for later use. My tin disappeared. Whatever I do, whatever I fix on this church-sponsored "health and fitness" ground (thanks, holy fathers) – it gets broken or disappears. Naturally so. The place isn’t fenced, isn’t guarded (except by heavenly forces), and thus is subject to the impact of the folks who wander through.

The situation is even more pitiful at the ground built by the river. They had kettlebells, dumbbells, a barbell. To prevent theft, they were chained and cable-locked to the posts. But the area wasn't guarded, so not a single piece of equipment remains. Neither the iron chains nor the steel cables helped… Who stole it? A rhetorical question. It makes me think of the UAE. There, you can leave your wallet on a park bench. No one will take it. You can come back and retrieve your accidentally forgotten belongings.

I’m a regular at the branded sports ground. There are other visitors, including women, but I’m probably the most frequent. I’ve gotten acquainted with some of them. Casually, of course. Take Viktor. A tall, broad-shouldered man. Flat stomach, prominent deltoids. He pulls himself up on the bar slowly, without apparent effort. He lies under the barbell and bench presses. Not a small weight, over a hundred kilos. A strong guy. I used to work with weights like that too. But once, deciding after several idle years to get back "in shape," I overdid it with the weights, got a hernia, and ended up on the operating table. So now I restrain myself and don’t get carried away. Viktor, though, seems like a driven guy.

·         “How old are you?” I ask him.

·         “Fifty-five.”

·         “I see you handle the iron pretty well. An athlete?”

·         “Yeah, former.”

·         “What did you do?”

·         “Greco-Roman wrestling.”

·         “And in life, what are you?”

·         “Retired Airborne Captain.”

·         “Seems a bit low for your age.”

·         “Left early. When the democrats came to power, serving became impossible. No housing, no decent pay. Total collapse. Went into civilian life.”

·         “If it’s not a secret, where do you work now?”

·         “What secret! Security service for a retail chain.”

Adding more weight to the bar, Viktor gets under it.
I go to do dips on the parallel bars.

After huffing and puffing on our respective equipment, we meet up again.

·         “What’s happening in Ukraine now?” he suddenly asks.

·         “How do you mean? The Special Military Operation,” I reply.

·         “That’s what they call it on TV. Actually, it’s a war. When two armies are fighting, it can’t be anything else.”

·         “Well, what do you think an ‘operation’ is?”

·         “An operation is done quickly and decisively. This mess has been dragged out indefinitely. Who fights like this?”

·         “How should they fight?”

·         “Get the job done, don’t play games. Look at those apartment blocks. Turn on the artillery, cut off their electricity and water. And the war would end.”

·         “You’re suggesting waging war on civilians?”

·         “I’m suggesting waging war for real, not tickling their balls. Where are they getting their ammo and weapons? Allies supplying them? Take out the delivery routes and depots. We have the means.”

·         “Well, you’re quite the strategist, Viktor.”

·         “I’m not a strategist, just a sensible military man, even if retired. With the current policy, we’ll just get more trainloads of corpses, ours and Ukrainian. Ah!” Viktor waved his hand dismissively and went back under the barbell.

Time passed…. The other day, I was walking home after my workout. I decided to pass by the Church of St. Sergius of Radonezh. Near the church, I saw a crowd, and at the entrance, a large, ornate hearse. People were bustling around, mostly young men in black. A little way off, I spotted Viktor. I walked over to him.

·         “Hi, Viktor. Looks like they’re burying someone important. Influential.”

·         “Yeah, he was influential. Had the honor of knowing him personally.”

·         “Not a ‘brother’, was he?” [Note: "Браток" implies a member of organized crime]

·         “How to put it. A businessman who came up from the ‘brothers’. Anyway, he was a decent man.”

·         “What happened? Taken out in a showdown?”

·         “No. Passed on his own. His heart gave out.”

·         “Haven’t seen you on the sports ground for a while. Slacking off?”

·         “Hardly… I got sick.”

·         “What’s wrong?”

·         “I’ve got cancer.”

·         “?”

·         “Right here, under the throat,” Viktor tilted his chin up, touched his Adam's apple. “Never been sick a day, felt great.”

·         “And you trained pretty hard.”

·         “Yeah. Then suddenly, a lump grew in my throat. Rushed to the doctors. Found a tumor, already stage three.”

·         “Oh dear…”

·         “Yeah, my affairs are shot. From consulting one specialist, I understood I don’t have long. They scheduled surgery at the military hospital.”

·         “I don’t even know what to say…”

·         “Don’t say anything. I’m just hoping for the military surgeons. After that… whatever happens. Oh, looks like they’re starting to bring him out,” he said and headed towards the opening hearse.

I watched him go. A tall, broad-shouldered, fit man. A retired captain.

Translated by AI, lightly edited by Sergei.