by JV Love
As the crowd dispersed, Felix returned to the campfire and tried stretching his now aching back from side to side. The young woman who had spoken up in his defense came up to him and told him what bullshit it was that he was punished and not Yuri and Dima. "Why didn't you say anything?" she asked.
Felix had seen her for the first time only a few days ago. He didn't even know her name yet. "You wouldn't understand," he answered.
"Try me," she said, smiling.
Felix stopped trying to massage his back, and looked up at her. She was cute, with short brown hair that curled inward at the ends and green luminous eyes the color of emeralds. Felix liked how she scrunched up her nose when she smiled, the way a baby does.
"Comrade Leminskaya," Olga yelled from the door of her tent. "Come here, please."
It was strange for Felix to hear Olga say please. He couldn't recall her ever using that word before. The young woman put her hands on her hips and shifted her weight to her left leg. "If you want me to walk on your back later, let me know," she said. "I've been told I'm pretty good at walking over men." She winked at Felix, then added, "And after that, you can tell me all about this stubborn streak of yours." She turned and walked away, and despite the heavy clothes and long coat, Felix could tell she had a seductive way of moving.
When she reached Olga, Felix overheard Olga warn her "to stay away from that troublemaker."
Misha took a drag from his cigarette, then blew the smoke into the fire. "I think Natasha likes you," he said.
"Who?" Felix asked.
"Natasha. That little temptress you just talked to. She joined last week. Apparently her whole village was burned to the ground by the Nazis." Misha offered Felix his cigarette, but Felix waved it away. "Oh, that's right," he said. "I forgot you don't smoke. Anyway, Olga seems to have taken a liking to her."
"To who?"
"To Natasha. What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing," Felix said. "Just lost in thought, that's all." He couldn't get that look that he'd seen on Dima's face out of his mind. It had to have been a mistake. Perhaps he'd imagined it. Others might have the look and die, but not Dima. It couldn't happen to Dima.
"Well, a roll in the hay with her will clear your mind," Misha said. "She's sweet and innocent and trusting - not to mention a great body." He finished his cigarette and threw it into the fire. "Exactly the way I like 'em," he said. "Except every damn time I get her alone, she just asks me about you - where you're from, why you're so quiet. I think she's crazy about you. You should let her give you that backrub sometime. If you're lucky, she might stick around afterwards and give you something else too."
"I don't think a backrub is going to do any good," Felix said. "Something feels out of place in my spine."
"Damn it all, man. That's not the point," Misha said. "It doesn't matter if your back is really hurt or not. The point is getting her in bed, and a nice arousing backrub is a great way to start. Boy, I've got so much to teach you."
"I already have a girl," Felix said.
"So?" Misha said. "What's that got to do with anything?"
Felix took a sip of tea from his tin cup.
"Oh wait," Misha said, "you're not talking about Anna, I hope. Listen to me, you don't want anything to do with her. I learned that the hard way."
"No, not Anna."
"Well, who then?"
"She's in Leningrad still."
"Your girl's in Leningrad?" Misha said incredulously. "Well you've got to move on then. This is war. Who knows if you'll even be alive tomorrow? You might as well have some fun while you can. That's what booze and women are for - to make life bearable, to have a little fun. Tell me, when's the last time you saw her?"
"Right before dawn on September 9th."
"Are you serious? It's the middle of October now. You've got to move on with your life. I'm sure she's moved on by now. If there's one thing I know, it's women."
"No," Felix said. "You definitely don't know her, and you've never met anyone like her."
"I know women," Misha said, using his index finger to tap the side of his head. "When the rooster's away, the hens will play."
The fire crackled and popped, and Felix finished the last of his tea. "I'm going back to Leningrad as soon as I can," he said. "I can't stand being without her for so long. It's killing me."
"You want to get in to Leningrad? Are you crazy? The whole city is starving. The Germans have it blockaded and nothing gets in or out. You're much better off here. We've got food and liquor, and even women like Natasha to keep you warm at night. What more could you ask for?"
Felix stood up and turned to go.
"Let me introduce you to Natasha later," Misha said. "A night with her will lift your spirits and make you forget all about this girl from Leningrad."
"No, you don't understand," Felix said. "I don't want anyone else."
He walked to his tent and found Dima fast asleep and snoring loudly. Felix took off his muddy boots and laid down on his own bunk. He noticed a sense of hopelessness in the back of his mind, a deep concern that things were stuck and were never going to get any better.
After several minutes, he closed his eyes, and in that space where you're no longer awake yet have not fallen asleep, he saw Katya. It was a gray winter day and she was dressed in a white fur coat and hat. She was walking contentedly in the park, as beautiful as he'd ever seen her. It began to snow - big fluffy flakes gliding lazily down to earth. She stopped and lifted her head toward the sky and caught a snowflake on her tongue.
There was a strange, dark figure approaching from behind her. It was neither man nor beast, and it kept getting bigger as it drew nearer. Felix called out to warn Katya, but she didn't hear him. It was as though Felix didn't exist for her.
When the figure was almost upon her, Felix tried to scream, but instead woke up. He stared at the ceiling of the tent for a second, then closed his eyes again to try to return to that place where he was with Katya. He longed to feel the touch of her skin, hear her childlike laugh, taste her lips on his. But try as he might, he couldn't return to that place. There was an unbearable tightness in his chest and back. The pain consumed him and he felt powerless to struggle against it. But neither could he accept the pain. He dwelled in that place in between and hated every second of it.
He had to get away. He had to get back to Leningrad to be with Katya. Her birthday was tomorrow and it was going to be a long day knowing he had to spend it without her. If only he could know that she was getting along all right, he'd feel better. At first, they told him to wait because they said the Germans were going to overtake the city any day. Now that that hadn't happened, they told him to wait because the Red Army inside the city would be breaking out soon. Felix had his doubts about that happening, but saw little choice except to stay where he was at for now.
He heard some movement and turned his head just in time to see Dima taking his pocket watch from his hiding place under his bunk. Felix pretended to be asleep while Dima looked around suspiciously before slipping out the door. Then Felix put his boots back on and decided to see just where Dima was going with his most precious possession.
He saw Dima walk hurriedly into the woods, obviously not so drunk anymore as he nimbly ducked under and then around the branches of a cluster of evergreens. Felix followed him from a safe distance, wondering where Dima could be headed without his rifle.
Felix followed him all the way to Lestovo, and watched as he disappeared into the house of the old farmer who sold the homemade booze. When he came back out, he was smoking a cigarette and had a large glass bottle in his right hand.
* * *
Dima never saw the fallen branch which was to have such a grave impact on his life. He stepped on it awkwardly on his way back to camp and fell hard to the ground. His ankle throbbed with pain and he had to bite the edge of his coat sleeve to keep from screaming.
After the pain subsided somewhat, he checked the bottle of booze he'd gotten to see if it had broken. It hadn't. He then ele
vated his ankle as he deliberated what to do next. He was a half mile from Lestovo and one mile from camp. He doubted he could manage to walk to either.
A pine cone was poking him in the back, so he moved over a few inches to get more comfortable. The forest floor was covered with snow, but just an inch or two underneath it was a layer of brown leaves, pine needles, and acorns. A woodpecker battered a tree in the distance. Other than that, all was quiet.
After a minute or two, Dima heard someone walking his way and wondered if they were friend or foe. When the person drew nearer, he could see that they were both friend and foe. It was Felix, and Dima thought it appropriate that Felix should be the one to enter his life at this particular moment.
"What happened?" Felix asked as he approached.
"I twisted my ankle on that branch," Dima said and pointed at it. The branch laid there innocently, unaware of its role in the game of fate being played out.
"It's going to be dark soon," Felix said. "If it's going to take longer than usual, we'd better get a start now. Let me help you up."
"No," Dima said, refusing Felix's outstretched hand. "I think I broke something. It's never hurt this bad before."
"Then, let me see if I can carry you," Felix said. He tried to lift Dima over his shoulder, but groaned in agony and nearly collapsed to the ground himself. "I can't carry you," he said. "That blow to my back earlier today threw something out of alignment."
"How ironic," Dima said.
The sun was low on the far horizon.
"What time is it?" Felix asked.
"I don't know," Dima said.
"You don't have your pocket watch, huh?"
"No."
"Yeah, I didn't think so."
Dima noticed Felix looking at the full bottle of liquor lying next to him. "You want some?" he asked sarcastically.
"I'm surprised you haven't opened it yet and started drinking again," Felix said.
"I'm through drinking," Dima said.
"Ha," Felix scoffed.
Dima didn't say anything in response, but instead made his way to his feet and carefully began shifting his weight to his hurt ankle. When he got to about thirty percent, he shrank back to the ground, cursing and whimpering all the while. "Damn it, that hurts!" he said. "I can't put any weight at all on it." He held his ankle in the air again. "This is the story of my whole pathetic life. Just when I decide to try - to really give it my all - the world conspires against me."
"Damn you!" Felix said, glaring at him. "What the hell is wrong with you? You think this is some kind of game? You'll freeze to death if you have to spend the night out here."
Dima shrugged his shoulders. "Probably," he said. "But what is to be done? I guess what is meant to be is meant to be."
Felix crossed his arms across his chest and kicked at the ground with his boots - a sure sign that he wanted to say something, but wouldn't allow himself to for one reason or another. "What is it?" Dima asked.
"Nothing," Felix said.
"Come on, what is it?" Dima persisted.
"It's you," Felix said. "What's happened to you? Where's the Dima I once knew? The one who refused to give up? The one who laughed and danced and told jokes? The one with those big ideas and big ambitions?"
It was a fair question, Dima thought. Felix had a right to know. "I'll tell you what happened," Dima said as he pulled out a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. "All my life I've been waiting for that time when I would have everything together - when all the pieces of my life would fall into place." He struck a match and lit the cigarette. "And they did. Everything came together when the war started. I felt comfortable, confident. I knew my place in the world."
"And so?" Felix said.
"So," Dima said. "Then everything fell apart again." The wind picked up snow from the ground and blew it in circles. "It's not supposed to happen like that," he said. "I always thought that once you got everything together, it was supposed to stay together."
Felix squatted down next to Dima. "You know what my dad always used to say to me when I was feeling like you are now? He'd say, 'The dog who always feels sorry for itself will try like hell, but never catch a fox.'"
"What the hell does that mean?" Dima asked.
"He'd never tell me," Felix said and laughed. "He'd just say, 'Don't you forget that.' And I haven't!"
Dima laughed, a brief, exhaled "ha."
"But I've thought about it for years now," Felix continued, "and I think it means that having sympathy for yourself, instead of empathy, will bring you nothing but sorrow. That you'll never get what you really want - no matter how hard you try - unless you first learn to be a true friend to yourself."
Dima inhaled deeply on his cigarette and then blew the smoke over his head. "I wish my father had given me that advice. You know what he told me when he gave me the pocket watch on my sixteenth birthday?"
Felix shook his head. "No, what?"
"He told me, 'You're a man now. Go make a name for yourself.'"
Felix took a drink of water from his canteen and looked at the setting sun once again. "That was all your father knew," he said. "There's no rule that says we have to repeat the mistakes of our parents."
"Too late for that," Dima said. He finished his cigarette and shoved the butt into the snow. "I think you should go."
"Where?"
"Anywhere," Dima said. "You should just leave."
"Why?" Felix asked. "Why do you think I should leave you?"
"Because I'm already dead, that's why."
The sun set another inch on the horizon, and the wind picked up and blew snow flurries around the forest. Felix stood up and sighed. He folded his arms across his chest and kicked at the ground with his boots for a minute, then walked away without another word. Dima watched him leave, the sound of his departing footsteps burning his ears.
Furry, brown squirrels dove from branch to branch, tree to tree. A nearby owl watched them intently, but didn't move from its perch. Dima checked his ankle again, surprised at how swollen it had become. He'd sprained his ankle before, but it had never gotten this big. It no longer hurt, but it didn't hurt because both of his legs were now numb from the cold.
He leaned back against the tree, propped his injured leg up on a nearby rock, and watched the snowflakes do their exotic dance as they floated down from a single, large gray cloud above his head. He hadn't paid so much attention to falling snow since he was a kid. Ever since he'd come to the understanding that what was important in life was what other people thought of you, he'd forgotten how neat snowflakes were. He caught a few with his gloves and was mesmerized by their intricate design - so mathematical and yet so beautifully simple.
The cloud moved on and he saw the stars. All those hundreds of thousands of stars. He'd forgotten about them too. The vastness of the sky astounded him. He could see straight above himself for miles and miles. No, he corrected himself, for millions - even billions - of miles. The sky was full of little bright dots and Dima didn't think he'd ever seen so many stars in his life. His grandmother had told him once that each and every star was a guardian angel for someone, and he tried now to pick out which one was his. Was it that bright one in the Ursula Major constellation? No, he decided, it had to be that faint one in the thick fog of the Milky Way - the star whose light appeared to still be shining, even though it had probably burned out a thousand years ago.
It seemed to Dima that reality was always playing catch-up to history, not the other way around. He heard the unmistakable sound of twigs being snapped and dead leaves being crunched under the snow and was relieved that Felix had come back for him. "Over here," he shouted.
There was no reply. The twigs stopped being snapped and the dead leaves stopped being crunched. Dima peered through the snow-covered forest, but couldn't make out anything in the dim light of the moon. "Felix," he called out, "is that you?"
Again there was no response, but the sounds of movement did begin again. As they drew nearer, Dima could hear not one, but two sets of
footsteps. Then he heard whispering, but it wasn't the barely-above-a-whisper, strangely poetic way that only Russians could speak. It was gruff and stilted. It didn't flow. Then he distinctly heard the German word, "slowly." Dima knew that word well from his days spent as a German prisoner of war. His interrogator always said slowly when commanding a subordinate to burn Dima's skin with a cigar.
Dima felt his neck and shoulders tighten. He strained to hear every noise the forest made. Snap, came a sound from his right. Crunch, came a sound from his left. The Germans were converging on him from opposite directions. He could make out one of them - a quarter of his body stuck out from the trunk of a tree. Then he heard the one on his right side sprint from out of the dark to within twenty-five yards.
So it was time to die, Dima thought. He never imagined it would be like this - so lacking in glory, so all alone . . ..
He was breathing very quickly now, trying to think what he should do before dying. When he was a small boy, his grandmother had made him memorize the Lord's Prayer. Should he recite it? No, he didn't want to do that. He didn't believe in heaven. If he was going to die, he was going to that place where one was neither dreaming nor awake, the place where nothing existed - not even himself.
Dima heard the encroaching shadow on his left speak clearly in German to the other shadow, and it destroyed Dima's last, tiny bit of hope that the strangers might still be Russian. He expected to hear any second the sound of a grenade rolling through the leaves and snow. But that sound never came. They were being quite discreet, and Dima guessed that they didn't want to make any noise that might draw attention to themselves. Perhaps they were afraid of the partisans, whom they had to know operated in this area.
Whatever the case was, they kept moving from tree to tree, getting closer and closer, until they were no more than ten yards away. Dima could see them quite clearly, but he had neither gun nor grenade and so couldn't defend himself. He tried to remember some words of German he'd picked up, but none of them made sense together.
