by JV Love
"Alfred!" New Face called out. "Come out from there."
Alfred wasn't coming out. He was dying. He could barely breathe.
He wondered what was at the core of all that bitterness his father had held. A strange idea occurred to him. The thought was that his father's attitude and behaviors had nothing at all to do with Alfred. Perhaps his father acted the way he did because he was suffering. Maybe all his criticism, cursing, and anger were all misguided attempts at satisfying some need of his? Some need for respect, for understanding, for love?
The idea astounded him. For the first time in his life, Alfred had stopped thinking about himself and what he'd went through, and thought solely about his father instead. His father couldn't have been happy. To have acted the way he did, he must have been miserable. I shouldn't hate him, Alfred thought, I should feel sympathy for him. My God, how much he must have suffered to be that miserable!
And as Alfred opened his heart, all the black hate in it poured out and drained into the earth. He wanted to see his father so badly, to tell him that he'd forgiven everything, that he was no longer angry. He wanted to tell his father that he loved him. If he could only do that, then he could die without regret.
But it was getting even harder to breathe, and he couldn't help coughing. He could taste blood in his mouth even stronger now. He could hear men approaching, and New Face urging him to come out with his hands up. But it was too late for that. It was too late for everything. Perhaps in his next lifetime he'd get it right.
He took his last breath, felt the earth with his hands, and as he felt himself float up and away from his body, three words floated along with him. They were like miniature light blue clouds, and Alfred reached out to try to touch them. But as Alfred moved his hand toward them, they only moved further away, floating farther and farther from him until the words - Forgive Me Father - coalesced into a small bright star in an infinite black sky.
~
-- Chapter Three
The Greenfinch's Song
____________________________
I am caviar and fireworks,
and music too loud for your ears.
I am your opiate,
the master of your hopes and fears.
You'll know me when I enter you.
you'll moan with the deception deep inside of you.
Feels so good, between your thighs,
feel the meaning of life explode in lies.
Misha Borisov watched the train go by, hoping it would stop so he could get on, but knowing that it wouldn't. His legs felt like rubber, and every muscle in his body pleaded to lie down and rest. He thought back to the last time his legs had felt like this - that horrible night of his arrest at the airbase. But Misha was not under another one of those attacks that rendered him so relaxed and useless. Misha was exhausted this time because he'd been walking all day long - not only today but for the past six days.
The train was traveling slowly around the sharp bend in the tracks, and Misha noticed that it wasn't well protected. There were no anti-aircraft guns, and only three soldiers that he could see. After the second train car went by, he realized why. Children. The entire train was full of children. They stood or sat with their faces pressed up against the windows and waved at Misha and Igor. Misha waved back - holding his arm up high and swinging it slowly back and forth.
"Where are they going?" Igor asked. He stood to Misha's left and did not wave back at the children. Igor was a twelve-year-old boy with big ears, a pug nose, and in desperate need of a bath and a haircut. He'd begun traveling at Misha's side two days ago - much to Misha's dismay.
"I heard they're evacuating Leningrad and sending children to live on the other side of the Ural mountains until the war is over," Misha replied.
Some of the children on the train were quite young - no more than three or four years old. A few looked to be Igor's age, but the vast majority were between five and ten years old. A group of older boys yelled out the window to Misha and Igor asking where the Germans were. Misha pointed behind himself. "How far?" they asked. "Dolga!" - a long ways - Misha yelled.
Eventually, the whole train had passed by. There was nothing except the clack-clack of the rails as the caboose vanished into the thick green foliage of the forest.
"Why would they leave the city? My father says the war will be short - a few weeks or months at the most," Igor said.
Misha felt uncomfortable whenever the boy talked about his father in the present tense. "The only way the war will be that short is if the Germans win," he replied.
"You're a liar!" the boy yelled. "My father says Stalin will lead the Red Army to victory. He's not a coward."
Misha didn't know if the last statement was meant to refer to the boy's father or to Stalin. It didn't really matter though. Misha wasn't going to argue with him. The boy had been through enough already.
Wiping the sweat from his brow, Misha opened his canteen and took a drink of water. When he finished, he saw the boy holding out his hand and passed the canteen on to him.
Only a few days ago, the boy watched his parents die on the side of the road. The three of them had been living in a rural area in a small house when the Germans came. Igor's father had told Misha how they were forced to stand by while the soldiers burned their crops, stole their animals, and looted their home. When they finished, one of the Germans used a flame thrower to set their house on fire. Igor's father had tried to stop them, only to be laughed at and beaten to the ground with the butts of their rifles. Misha thought that seemed to be the hardest part for the boy to take - them laughing at his formerly invincible father.
After that, Igor and his parents made their way to the nearest village only to find that it, too, had been burned to the ground. Then they resigned themselves to joining the mass of refugees on the roads east, not knowing where they were going nor how long it would take to get there. That's where Misha had met them.
A week into the journey, Igor's father suffered a heart attack and died a miserably slow death in the heat and dust of an overcrowded road. The boy's mother, a soft-spoken woman with acute arthritis in her knees, kneeled by his side and held his hand the whole time. Igor had done his best to make himself useful, offering to fetch water or anything else that might save his father. But nothing could save him and he passed away.
Three miles further up the road, Igor's mother was struck by a truck that veered off the road. Before she too died, she asked Misha - who had already been traveling next to them for several days at that point - to take her son to Leningrad where he had an uncle. She gave Misha all the food and money in their possession, kissed the boy on the cheek, then took her last breath.
Misha still couldn't get that image out of his mind, of the boy pounding on her lifeless body with his tiny fists, tears streaming down his face as he kept asking, "Why? Why?" Misha didn't have an answer for him back then, and was still looking for one now.
Igor tugged on Misha's pack. "How long before we get to Leningrad?" he asked.
"I don't know."
"Some Soviet you are," Igor huffed. "My father would know."
Misha could have said no to Igor's mother's request. Several times already he wished he'd said no. He got especially irritated with the boy's constant questions. But Misha said he would take care of Igor and get him to Leningrad and he was intent on honoring that no matter how much Igor annoyed him.
Misha thought again about what the boy had said about the war being short, that the heroic and mighty Red Army would push the German invaders out in short order. That was certainly the official position of the Party. Misha didn't buy it. He'd seen first hand how inept the resistance had been. He'd seen how organized and fast the Germans were. He'd seen the roads jammed with refugees and retreating Soviet troops. He'd been on those roads himself, walking alongside young women carrying newborns, elderly and crippled with their walking sticks, dogs and cows and horses and confusion. Misha had evidence walking along next to him of who was winning the war.
Igor tugged on Misha's pack again. "How many Nazis have you killed?" he asked.
"Enough," Misha said and ducked under a low lying branch.
Igor ducked as well but then grabbed the branch and bent it back until it broke. "You can never kill enough Nazis," he said.
Sometimes Misha found it hard to believe he was only seven years older than Igor. He felt at least a decade more mature. He looked at Igor now. The index finger of his left hand was up his nose and he had a furious expression on his face. The two of them had nothing in common, but Misha appreciated that the boy hated the Nazi invaders just as much as he did. Misha couldn't comprehend the point of burning a peasant's house and crops or bombing a tiny village. Did these things count as military victories? He shuddered to think what life would be like with the Germans in power. Would Misha and Igor even be allowed to live?
"When we get to Leningrad, I'm going to join the Red Army and kill a thousand Nazis," Igor said. "Stalin will give me the Order of Lenin."
Misha was convinced that things couldn't get any worse militarily and so held out a sliver of hope they would eventually get better. The big question in his mind was whether or not the improvement would come in time. If the Red Army finally became the fighting machine it was supposed to be as the Germans marched through the streets of Leningrad and Moscow, then it would be far too late.
"Let's just hope we make it to Leningrad before the Nazis do," Misha said.
He wasn't going to Leningrad solely to place Igor with his uncle. Misha's mother also lived in Leningrad, and he wanted to get her out before the Germans overtook the city, and by his estimates he didn't have much time.
His mother was the only person he cared about in this world. The only person he loved. But it was a love built on sorrow, on pity. Fate had not been kind to her, taking her husband shortly after Misha was born, and inflicting disease after disease on her ravaged body as she grew older. Her physical and mental condition regressed to the point that Misha stopped going to see her. The pain and grief he felt were too much to bear. Every moment spent with her simply watered seeds of resentment and bitterness in him toward the world.
"Look!" Igor shouted and ran off toward a large fallen tree. He got down on his hands and knees and started gathering something from the ground.
"What the hell are you doing?" Misha asked.
"There's mushrooms over here!"
"They're probably poisonous. We can't eat them."
"No, they're not! Don't you know how to tell good mushrooms from bad ones?"
A city-dweller since birth with a cosmopolitan mother, Misha had no idea how to tell which mushrooms were edible. He sat down on the ground to wait and surveyed his surroundings. He was on a small treeless hill, surrounded by fields and forests. Up ahead of him was a grove of birch trees and he looked forward to walking through them.
Misha had decided not to travel on the roads anymore. Not only was the going slow because of the vast numbers of soldiers and refugees, it was also dangerous because Misha could be caught again. He left his initial posting at the airbase after it had been annihilated by the German Luftwaffe. Then he'd been rounded up along with other lost soldiers and forced to fight with another division. He'd narrowly escaped with his life when the new division was also annihilated by the Germans, this time by hundreds of Panzer tanks.
He'd heard a rumor that Zhdanov had issued a decree on July 14th stating that anyone leaving the front regardless of rank or responsibility would go before a field tribunal and be shot on the spot. Misha wasn't sure if it applied to him though. The front had been following him every step of the way toward Leningrad.
Two gray planes suddenly zoomed over Misha's head.
Igor ran back from where he'd been picking mushrooms. "Are those our planes?" he asked.
Misha had seen the black iron crosses on them. "No," he said. He guessed they must have broken off from their formation to search for targets of opportunity.
"What are they doing out here? Are we near a military base?"
Misha was just as puzzled as Igor. There was nothing that he knew of out here but young trees and old foxes.
The sound of the planes' machine guns filled the air. Misha watched them loop around for another strike.
"What are they bombing?" Igor asked.
"I don't know," Misha mumbled. Was there a small village buried in the forest? A secret military base that he didn't know about?
"I bet they're shooting up that train," Igor said.
"That's ridiculous," Misha replied, "the train's full of children. Why would they attack it?" Then Misha had the thought that the German planes didn't know what, or even who, was on the train. Igor was right! They were attacking the trainload of children. Oh God, no!!
Misha screamed. "No! Stop!" he cried. But he knew they couldn't possibly hear him.
"Do something!" Igor pleaded. "They'll kill all those kids."
"Shut up!" Misha snapped. "What the hell can I do?!"
"Shoot the planes!" Igor shouted. "Shoot the planes down!"
Misha knew that trying to shoot the planes with his Mosin-Nagant rifle was futile. He estimated his odds of hitting a plane at one in a hundred and his odds of causing any significant damage, if he did hit it, at one in a hundred. So overall, his odds were one in ten thousand.
The planes were completing their loop and settling in for another strike.
"You're a Soviet soldier!" Igor yelled. "You can't just do nothing. If my dad were here, he'd shoot them."
You don't have a chance, Misha told himself, but he agreed that he had to do something. He began silently reciting a short prayer, just as he used to do as a boy, but then caught himself. Stop it, Misha! You know you don't believe in God.
Misha aimed his rifle at one of the planes as it approached for its second attack. He held his breath as he squeezed the trigger. The bang startled Igor and he stumbled backward a step. Misha then fired again, and again. He shot three times at the plane, but nothing happened. Both of the planes completed their attack and began to circle around for another strike.
"You missed them," Igor said dejectedly.
"Igor, shut up. You're an idiot," Misha said. He felt powerless to do anything about the attack on the train. Right then he hated Igor and his ridiculous big ears just as much as he hated the Germans. "It's nearly impossible to hit a plane from this distance and do any damage," Misha explained.
"My dad would've hit them. He could shoot a rabbit from over two hundred yards away."
Misha wanted to yell at Igor that his father was dead and to get over it, but he didn't say it. He held his resentment and leveled his rifle on his left arm.
When the planes descended again, Misha fired three more times at the plane on the left. Again, the planes completed their attacks and began to circle around. But then, the plane on the right - the one Misha had not shot at - started spewing black smoke from its engine. The smoke thickened quickly, and both planes aborted their strike and ascended to the safety of a higher altitude.
"Hoorah! Hoorah!" Igor exclaimed, jumping up and down. "You did it!"
"Not bad, huh?" Misha said.
"How did you do it?"
Misha glanced over at Igor and felt pleased about the smile and awe on the boy's face. "I shot its engine," he said. "It's the only place where they're vulnerable."
They watched the planes fly higher and higher. The damaged plane spewed out more black smoke by the second. Before long, it started to lose altitude. As the other plane continued to fly away, Misha and Igor watched the pilot of the damaged plane jump out and launch his parachute. His plane continued to lose altitude until it eventually disappeared from sight and crashed with a loud thud in a far off field.
Misha took his cap off and held it out in front of him to shield his eyes against the glare of the hot sun. He'd gotten the cap from a fallen comrade several weeks earlier. In addition to protecting his head from the sun and rain, the lieutenant's insignia on it had come in handy a few times. He watched th
e German pilot drift through the sky toward the ground, an early autumn leaf. A gust of wind caught his parachute and pushed him slightly toward Misha and Igor. In the distance, humongous gray and white smoke clouds ascended from the train, slowly dissipating into the atmosphere.
Misha tucked the cap inside his pack and began running toward the pilot, pausing every once in a while to allow Igor to catch up and to look up through the treetops and adjust his direction. When the pilot finally dropped from sight behind the pine trees over the next little hill, Misha and Igor were less than a hundred yards away.
When they arrived, the pilot was still struggling to free himself from the large oak tree he'd landed in. Misha raised his rifle to shoot him but then decided it would be too hard to search him if he was stuck in a tree.
Pine cones and brown needles covered the forest floor, and the whole area was infused with the sweet, fresh scent of pine. The oak tree the pilot was stuck in was old and dying and was also the sole non-evergreen tree around. Misha kept his rifle on the pilot as he waited for him to untangle himself and make it down to the ground.
Igor tried grabbing Misha's rifle away from him. "Let me shoot him," he begged. "Let me shoot him for my pa."
Misha pushed the boy to the ground. "Don't you ever grab my rifle," he yelled.
The pilot wore a brown leather jacket. A pair of goggles hung from his neck. As he made his way down the tree, he glanced at Misha and Igor and said something in German. When he swung from the last branch down to the ground, he smiled and raised his hands. Igor took a step behind Misha, and Misha again aimed his rifle at the pilot, preparing to shoot him.
The pilot stood a head shorter than Misha and was probably twice Misha's age. He had thin blonde eyebrows that were barely visible against his pale white skin. His face had a certain natural sereneness and harmless quality to it that Misha found galling. Misha jerked the barrel of his rifle upwards, and the pilot raised his arms from his chest level to up above his shoulders.
