by JV Love
Katya thought of Felix briefly and how he'd taught her to dance the waltz. "A little," she said. She felt something strange in her chest. It was like something punctured one of her organs and all of the organ's contents were draining out. She tried to change the subject again, asking what front he'd been on. She knew from experience that wounded soldiers generally liked to talk about two things in particular: how they got wounded, and what the fighting had been like.
He took her hand in his. "Thank you for staying to talk with me," he said. "It's been a long time since I've seen a beautiful woman. It feels good."
She tried to force a smile, but couldn't.
"We were sent to Tikhvin," he said. "It's a complete slaughterhouse there."
The air was stale. It smelled of body odor and chemicals and she couldn't bear it much longer. She had to get away.
"Do you know about the other guys from my unit?" he asked. "How are they doing?"
She arranged the blanket so it covered him better. "I don't know," she said. "You'll have to ask one of the other nurses."
"Well, could you check for me?" he asked. "I'm in the Volunteers. First Division."
A flush of adrenaline rushed to her stomach. "You're in the Volunteers?"
"Yeah, what's left of us anyway."
"What regiment?"
"The Second," he said.
The room wanted to spin and Katya had difficulty stopping it. "You wouldn't happen to know a Felix Varilensky, would you?"
He stared straight ahead at the ceiling for a few seconds. "No," he answered, "don't believe I knew anyone by that name. What platoon was he in?"
"I don't know," she said. "I know he joined in early September though, if that helps any."
"Hmm," he said. "There were only three platoons then and I knew everyone from the 1st and 3rd Platoons. He must have been in the 2nd . . . poor guy."
Katya felt nauseous. "What do you mean?"
"Well, last time I saw them was when we moved up together during the failed offensive of September 9th."
"September 9th," Katya repeated. "That was the day he went to the front."
"The 2nd Platoon was the one that didn't fall back," he said.
She pulled her hand out of his. "I don't understand," she said.
"We got orders to fall back to our previous lines because we were overextended and the Germans were counterattacking," he said. "But the 2nd Platoon didn't fall back. They stayed where they were at."
"And then what?"
"And then the Nazis reclaimed the territory," he said.
The room started spinning.
"I'm sorry," he added. "They fought heroically that day. They really did."
Katya held onto the bed to keep from falling. "What are you saying?! You don't know that they're dead? They could have escaped or the Germans could have taken them prisoner."
"There was nowhere to escape to," the man said. "And the Nazis stopped taking prisoners on that front long before that."
The nausea rose to her throat and she swallowed to keep it down.
The man winced and gritted his teeth. "My leg's starting to hurt again," he said.
Katya turned away and started walking down the hall toward the exit.
"Wait," he called after her.
She kept walking.
"Wait!" he shouted. "Can't you check my leg for me? It hurts again."
Katya looked back at him over her shoulder, but kept walking. He was struggling to sit up.
Just before she reached the door, she heard a scream like no other she'd ever heard. It echoed down the hallway and penetrated her like the bitter winter wind. "My God! My leg!! It's gone! They cut off my fucking leg!"
She ran the last few steps down the hall and flung the doors to the outside open. The cold air hit her like a pile of bricks and she stumbled backwards, grasping for something to hold onto. Her hands found a cold, uneven wall and it stopped her from falling. She leaned against this strange wall for a second, trying to catch her breath. Then she saw what the wall was made of - corpses. Dozens of them were stacked like firewood, one on top of the other.
She backed away, staring at the frozen blue bodies, then fell to her hands and knees and vomited in the snow.
When Katya got home, she collapsed into her bed without taking her boots or coat off. It was a little past noon and she could hear Petya in the kitchen talking to somebody. When he came into the room a minute later, she realized he was alone and had been talking to his 'voices' again.
"Do you have any of that vodka left?" she asked him.
"No," he said.
"Any cigarettes?"
"No, they're all gone too."
"Maybe you can tell me where you got them, so I can go buy some," she said.
He came closer and sat down across from her and she wondered what kind of lie he was going to come up with this time.
"Katya, I have committed a grave sin." He said the words slowly as if he was unfamiliar with them. "Shostakovich sent a package to you and Guzman and I stole it. The vodka, cigarettes, and caviar were all meant for the two of you." He took a deep breath. "I'm very sorry for what I've done. I know it was wrong and I'm asking for your forgiveness."
Katya felt the puncturing sensation in her chest again. It was the same as at the hospital, except this time it didn't feel like anything was draining out. It was empty.
"Katya? Did you just hear me?" he said.
Instead of being full of anger and fury like she expected if she found out she was right about him stealing the package, she felt hardly anything at all.
"If you need time to think about this, I understand," Petya said. "I know it must be quite a shock to you."
She tried to concentrate on her breath as it flowed up her nose, down past her heart, and filled her lungs. The air seemed dark and heavy and weighed her down. "No, I don't need any more time," she said.
Petya exhaled loudly. "Thank you," he said. "You don't know how hard that was for me to say. Bless you for having the heart to find forgiveness. If anyone's going to heaven for sure, it's you, Katya."
"I don't forgive you," she said.
His mouth fell open. He looked like a ghost. "What?" he said dumbly.
"I said I can't forgive you. You've written my tombstone."
"No I haven't!" he protested. "You're going to make it through this. God told me to make it up to you, and I will."
"And how will you do that?"
"I don't know," Petya said. "But I will do it. I'll make it up to you. Just say you'll forgive me."
"I can't," Katya said. "I can't forgive you. I can't feel anything."
He was quiet a moment, then said, "I never expected this from you."
Katya saw the color gradually come back to his face. It turned red and he curled his lips in and bared his teeth.
"You remember," he said, "how I told you nothing happened when you got drunk on your birthday?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I lied," he said. "Fact is you couldn't keep your hands off me. You begged me to make love to you." He stood up and started thrusting his hips back and forth in a rhythmic motion. "And we did it all night long."
The words sliced through her like a bayonet.
"Do you feel something now?" he said sarcastically.
Katya wished she felt the way the soldier at the hospital had when he discovered his left leg was gone. But she felt the opposite of that.
Without saying anything or looking at Petya, she left the apartment and went outside. There was a slippery spot on the sidewalk where someone from an apartment above had thrown their garbage, and she slipped on it but managed not to fall.
She walked slowly, aimlessly, through the devastated city. Nothing had any color. Everything was only a lighter or darker shade of grey. The sun was menacing. It glared off the snow and stabbed her in the eyes.
She walked past a cemetery with its dozens of bodies piled up outside the front gate. Many had no coffins and were wrapped only in rags. The dead were piling up faster than they could
be buried. And yet the earth continued to spin. The world didn't stop.
It didn't even seem to care.
She heard her grandmother's voice in her head saying, "Don't be afraid, Katya. God is always with you." But was he? She was usually so sure, but now doubt filled her mind. It was all so hard to take in. She'd been denied her old job - and its life-saving ration card. Petya had betrayed her in the worst way she could imagine. She was cold, starving, and trapped in a city on the brink of absolute disaster. And she'd been told that Felix - the love of her life - was, in all likelihood, dead.
Inside of her, she had moved to that place beyond anger, beyond outrage. Faith and compassion were nowhere to be found, and her thoughts wandered without direction in that cold bitter place where neither love nor peace existed.
She found herself passing through a park that her parents used to bring her to in the summer to feed the ducks. She recalled how cute the ducks were as they waddled out of the Neva river and took the bread from her tiny outstretched hand. She looked at the bench where her parents used to wait for her and saw there now a corpse covered in snow. It was frozen in the sitting position, looking out at the river whose water did not flow. The Neva was silent and still. It, too, was a prisoner of Leningrad.
~
-- Chapter Nine
The Coldest Winter
____________________________
My love is like a shadow
forever following you.
There, behind you
around you,
I always surround you.
Look for me when winter dances with your heart,
And steals your warmth
Because it's what you most need
To visit that place where the ice stops you.
Do not fear the fall.
You'll find me there, but do not call
My name
Is written everywhere.
I'm always there,
a baby's breath away,
the sun of May . . .
There, behind you.
The charred remains of the destroyed German equipment were like dead animals littering the side of the road. Felix and the partisans walked from one piece to the next looking for anything they might be able to salvage before they headed back behind enemy lines. It was unclear whether the vehicles and equipment had been destroyed by the Germans retreating from Tikhvin or by the rapidly advancing Soviet forces.
It was December 12th and it had been an eventful month thus far. With fresh troops from the far east, the Red Army had mounted a successful counter offensive on the Moscow front. Around the same time, the troops on the Leningrad front managed to retake Tikhvin and were hurriedly putting the Leningrad supply route back together.
Felix lit a cigarette and leaned against one of the burned-out vehicles. It was a grey day and the sun hadn't been able to completely melt the fog that had been as thick as a storm cloud earlier that morning. The fog had painted all the trees and bushes white, and if it wasn't the middle of a war, it would be beautiful.
He leaned his head back and exhaled cigarette smoke into the frigid air. As he put the cigarette back to his lips to inhale, he heard that haunting sound from the forest again. A tiny shiver went up his spine and he tensed his shoulders as he strained to block out the words. It had been happening more and more of late. He would hear something - that no one else seemed to - that sounded distinctly like someone (or something) calling his name. It was just as unsettling to Felix as looking into another person's eyes and knowing that they're going to die soon. Whatever it was, he didn't want to hear its call. He didn't want to hear it, because he knew somehow that if he did, he would have to answer it.
Misha wandered up the road, stopping when he got to Felix, and sitting down on the front tire jutting out from the vehicle.
Felix scanned the forest once more for a clue as to the strange sound. Finding nothing, he turned to Misha. "What time is it?" he asked.
Misha pulled out a pocket watch. "It's almost noon," he replied.
In mid-December in Leningrad, the sun set before four o'clock in the afternoon. Felix began calculating how much more ground they could cover in the few remaining hours of daylight.
Misha pulled out a cigarette and lit it. "Did you hear?"
"Hear what?" Felix asked.
"About the Americans?"
"What about them?"
"The Japanese bombed one of their ports in the Pacific - sunk just about their entire fleet."
Felix took a long drag on his cigarette. "Good," he said. "Now we shouldn't have to worry so much about our eastern border. The Japs will be busy fending off the Americans."
Misha nodded and blew smoke out his nose. "I guess they're our allies now - the Americans," he said. "Think they'll help us march on Berlin?"
Felix quoted a famous line from War and Peace, but substituted 'America' for 'Austria.' "Oh, don't speak to me of America. Russia alone must save Europe," he said.
Misha grunted. "That's what I think too," he said. "But there's all sorts of talk about them sending us troops and supplies."
"I'll believe that when I see it," Felix answered.
"You don't think they'll help us?" Misha said.
Felix flicked the butt of his cigarette into a snow drift. "We've been fighting a couple million Nazi troops for half a year now and they haven't lifted a finger to help us," he said. "Seems to me they're content just to sit over there in their protected kingdom and watch. You know how they love to be entertained."
A Soviet infantry patrol with dogs marched single file down the road in front of them. The men were dressed in white camouflage, and even the dogs had swatches of dirty white sheets wrapped around them.
"Find anything?" one of the men called out to Felix and Misha as he passed by.
Misha shook his head. "Nothing."
The dogs were exceedingly thin and had strange devices strapped to them. Felix guessed they must be the 'suicide dogs' he'd heard so much about - the ones who were trained to run under German tanks, detonating the explosives on their backs.
Felix loved dogs. Only a few weeks ago he would have been outraged to see them being used in such a way. Now he looked at them with a practiced dullness, deciding that ethics and morality were luxuries in times of war.
The unmistakable buzzing of a plane filled the sky, then the plane dropped below the thick clouds and began to approach. It was a rare sight these days as most German planes had been grounded because of the bitter cold. Men started to scatter - taking shelter behind the destroyed vehicles or lying flat on the snow-covered ground. Felix was the only one who didn't make any attempt to hide. He stayed where he was at, lighting another cigarette, and watching the plane draw nearer. It was small - a fighter plane - and it opened up with its machine guns when it was within range. The bullets struck all around Felix as it reached him, but he didn't flinch. Instead, he leaned back and blew smoke over his head at the plane.
The pilot didn't circle back for another strafing run and eventually everyone came out of their hiding places. Natasha was the first to come up to Felix. "Why do you do that?" she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. How could she possibly understand?
"Don't you care if you live or die?" she asked.
Felix looked her in the face, admired her green luminous eyes the color of emeralds. He knew she was fond of him - not because he noticed it himself, but because Misha kept telling him so.
"No, it's not that at all," he said. "It's just that if I was meant to die today, then I'll die. No use fighting against it."
He was surprised at her response. She smiled mischievously, scrunching up her nose the way a baby does. "Maybe you just need a good reason to live," she said and winked at him.
For a quick second, it dawned on Felix how sexy she was. She had a thin seductive neck, and despite all that clothing, Felix could tell she had a great body. But he found the thought distractive and pushed it out of his mind. Anything that didn't have to do with defeating t
he Germans was superfluous to him.
Walking to the middle of the road, he motioned for the partisans to move out. He wanted to cover another four miles of the road before they called it a day.
The partisans gathered around and trudged forward, forming an oblong circle with Felix leading the way. If it weren't for the rifles, one wouldn't be able to tell them apart from the countless masses of fleeing refugees. Both groups moved across the wintry wasteland with a distinct weariness, a palpable numbness to the death and devastation around them. Stepping around bomb craters and frozen corpses in the road was not only an everyday occurrence, it was mundane.
Felix's partisans had earned a name for themselves in the battle to retake Tikhvin. They had performed exceptionally well under his leadership - providing crucial victories against the Germans' left flank and suffering a mere two casualties for their efforts. They had performed so well, in fact, that they weren't broken up as Felix expected they would be. The lightning fast victories the Germans had compiled in the early months of the war had thrown the organization of the Red Army into chaos, and it was often the case that Soviet field commanders siphoned off members of partisan units who weren't officially 'on the books.'
It was no secret that the Soviet leadership wanted to strengthen the partisan movement in order to wreak havoc behind German lines. As part of this initiative, Felix was made a lieutenant and his partisans were fully recognized. In addition, they were assigned a political commissar to provide 'guidance' and 'motivation.' Comrade Volkhov was a short, thin man who wore wire-rimmed glasses and was disarmingly sincere considering the work he did. His surname, Volkhov, meant wolf and didn't fit him at all.
The partisans came to a German cemetery next to the road and stopped to look at the rows and rows of wooden crosses marking the graves.
"It's nice to see the fruits of our efforts, huh?" Volkhov said to Felix.
Felix didn't feel pleased at all. He'd heard about the mass graves they were digging in Leningrad. They dumped bodies - one to two thousand per day - in them as a matter of routine. Yet these revolting cockroaches each got their own individual graves. If he could, Felix would dig them all up. They didn't deserve to be buried in sacred Russian soil.
