by JV Love
Approaching from the opposite direction were three soldiers on skis pulling a machine gun on a sled. Behind them was a group of German prisoners. There were six rows of three - eighteen Germans in all - and six Soviet soldiers walked behind and around them with their rifles pointed. The prisoners hung their heads low and when they passed by, Yuri spat at them.
In the second to last row, one of the prisoners was having trouble walking. His face, chubby and childlike, was covered with black and blue bruises and dried blood. He had no gloves and only a thin jacket to protect him from the cold. He held his arms tightly around himself, tucking his hands under his armpits, but shivered intensely nonetheless.
Felix watched him stumble on a slippery patch of the road and realized why he was having so much trouble staying on his feet. He had no boots. His feet were wrapped with pieces of cloth, and not only did they offer no traction, but there were so many layers of cloth that they had no flat surface on the bottom.
A few steps past Felix, the young man fell to the ground and one of the guards rushed over to him. Felix thought he was going to help him back to his feet, but instead he kicked the man in the ribs.
"Get back in line you son-of-a-bitch!" the guard shouted as he struck him with the butt of his rifle.
Felix doubted the German understood a word the guard was saying. The man was trying to get back to his feet, but every time he was almost there, the guard would kick him or hit him so that he fell back down.
The scene transpired only a few yards from Felix, but he saw it as if from a great distance. Something inside of him felt hot and tight, and he was uncomfortable with what was going on, but he didn't try to intervene. Instead, he told himself that the German got what was coming to him. The man had come to Russia of his own accord to kill and destroy. Now he was reaping those seeds of hate that he'd helped cultivate.
After a few minutes of trying to get back to his feet and being beaten back down, the German prisoner quit trying. He laid on the hard snow of the road, curling into the fetal position to protect himself from the blows of the guard.
"You won't get back in line, huh?" the guard said sarcastically and drew a pistol from his belt. Felix looked away. He heard the forest again - that strange sound like someone calling his name. He pulled his hat down tighter over his ears, but it didn't help. The sound was getting louder.
Two shots rang out, then the guard hurried down the road to catch up with the others.
Felix could hear the strained breathing of the cockroach, but he refused to look at it. It got what it deserved, he kept repeating to himself.
He felt an itch just above his stomach, like something was biting him - gnawing at his skin from the inside out. At first, Felix used his tremendous powers of concentration to try to ignore it, but found that he couldn't. He then took his mittens off and reached his right hand under his clothing to scratch it. He scratched long and hard, but it didn't seem to make a difference. The itch wouldn't go away.
And the forest wouldn't shut up.
* * *
The air was so cold that it hurt to breathe it, and Petya wrapped his scarf tightly around his face, leaving only a thin gap for him to see through. There weren't many people on the streets this early in the morning, but he knew there would be a long line at the bakery. People began arriving there well before it opened. He walked slowly so as not to slip, and tried not to think about the winter weather that was the fiercest he'd ever known.
There was a red trolley frozen in place in the middle of the street, and Petya thought back to when the trolleys were still running and how much he'd taken them for granted. He had always been miserable when he rode them, complaining bitterly about how crowded they were. But after having to walk everywhere for so long, he vowed he'd never complain about them again - if only they'd get them running once more.
The streets were slippery in places, and Petya, with his disfigured leg and pronounced limp, had to be especially careful. There was no manpower to spare for cleaning the streets, and every alley and avenue was covered with three to four feet of compacted ice and snow. If the city survived until spring, there was going to be one hell of a mess to clean up.
When Petya made it to the still-locked bakery, there were twenty-three people in line. Of those twenty-three, nineteen were women and four were old men. Petya took his place at the end, arriving a few seconds before a sickly boy who looked to be a year or two younger than Igor was.
An hour later, Petya made it up to the counter. He had two ration cards with him - his own, and Katya's. He presented them both. The woman squinted her eyes at the cards then gave him two hunks of bread. Petya stepped away, with the intention to put each ration and each card in a different pocket. Before he was able to do it though, he became confused and forgot what he was going to do. This happened to him a lot, and he'd learned that if he didn't fret about it and just waited, that it would come back to him eventually.
He overheard the boy behind him who was now at the counter. "It is not expired," the boy said. "Give me my bread. I'm hungry!"
"I told you, I can't give you any," the woman said. "That card is no good anymore. Tell your mother she needs to get a new one."
"Give me my bread!" the boy screamed and started to cry.
Petya finally remembered what he had intended to do, put the bread and ration cards in separate pockets, then started to walk away, pretending he hadn't heard any of the conversation that just took place. He didn't get far before that damned voice in his head told him he couldn't just walk away. There was a right and there was a wrong, and it was Petya's duty as one of God's disciples to set things right. Not that he wanted to. The voice told him he had to.
The boy was kicking the front of the counter and refused to move away. There were a dozen people in line behind him, but none of them said a word nor attempted to intervene. Petya went up to the counter and addressed the woman. "Let me see the card," he said. The woman handed it to him, and he saw that it was indeed expired. All cards had to be renewed from time to time in an attempt to stop people from using stolen or forged cards, or cards that belonged to the dead. When Petya had his ration card stolen, he'd had to wait until the next renewal to get another one. Going without a ration card for eleven days had been beyond difficult - it had very nearly killed him.
"Can't you give him some for today and he'll get it renewed for tomorrow?" Petya asked the woman.
She stared at him blankly in response, her pale, gaunt face framed by a fur hat and dark scarf. Just when Petya didn't think she was going to answer, she replied in a weary, well-rehearsed voice, "Comrade, I am accountable for every slice of bread. If I give any to people without the proper authorization, then I could face the firing squad."
Petya knew it was useless to argue with her, not only because what she said was true, but because she couldn't very well bend the rules with so many people watching.
He took out his own bread ration, broke off a quarter of it, then handed it to the boy, who immediately started stuffing it in his mouth. Petya led him off to the side and announced to the rest of the people in line, "If anyone else would like to help by giving him a piece of your ration, we'll be waiting here."
After ten people had gone to the counter, five of them stopped by afterwards and donated some of their ration to the boy. Once he had eaten all he wanted, Petya took him by the hand to take him home.
"It's dangerous for a young child like yourself to be walking around alone," Petya said. He wondered where the boy's mother was and why she'd let the card expire.
After a few minutes, they came to an intersection thick with snowdrifts, and the boy led them down the street to the right. The block seemed to be deserted and Petya was surprised at how few footprints there were in the snow. "What's your name?" he asked. "I'm Petya."
"Kolya," the boy answered.
Petya had noticed that the boy - like many Leningraders - had swollen and bleeding gums. "How is your mother doing, Kolya?"
"She's tired," he an
swered after a few seconds. "She's sleeping right now."
Their conversation, with long pauses and few words, was typical for the times. It took too much energy to speak.
The sun glared off the ice and snow, and Petya had to squint to see. At the next intersection, the boy took his hand away. "Our building is down there," he said, pointing to the next block. "Thanks for the bread."
The boy crossed the intersection, glancing suspiciously over his shoulder at Petya every now and then. Petya pretended to keep walking in a different direction, and when the boy stopped turning around to check on him, he changed course and followed after him.
After a short distance down the block, the boy turned down an alley and disappeared from Petya's sight. At the alley's opening, there were three abandoned cars piled high with snow, and Petya took out the long kitchen knife he now carried with him at all times.
The boy's tracks curved around the first car and in between the second and third. Petya followed the footprints to a partly demolished building and a small hole in the wreckage. He was quite sure now that his previous suspicions were correct. The boy was an orphan and living on his own. His mother had probably died of hunger or else in one of the bombings, and his father was likely at the front. There were orphanages all over the city to care for the multitudes of children like him, but many wouldn't go there voluntarily because they were afraid they'd never see their parents or any other members of their family again.
Petya made his way through the rubble, down a set of snow-covered stairs, and to a warped red door that couldn't be closed completely. He pushed the door, but it only opened ten inches before it got stuck on something. Putting the knife in his coat pocket, he pushed hard on the door with both hands until it opened enough for him to squeeze through.
"Kolya?" he called out in the darkness. "It's me, Petya."
No answer.
"Kolya, I know you're here. Come out."
"What do you want?" Petya heard a voice say, though he couldn't tell where the boy was at.
"I want you to come over to me so we can talk," Petya said. He didn't understand how the boy could possibly live here. It was so dark and cold. A snowdrift five inches high angled in from the door.
"About what?"
Petya squinted his eyes to try to see where the boy might be hiding. "About something of considerable significance to you," he said.
"Huh?"
Petya rephrased it. "About something important," he said. When he still didn't hear the boy coming toward him, he added, "If you come out, I'll give you a piece of candy." He didn't really have any, but hoped the trick would work.
He heard some shuffling coming from the far corner, and a few seconds later the boy appeared in front of him. "Where's the candy?" he asked before moving any closer.
"It's here in my coat," Petya said. He stuck his hand inside his pocket and pretended to struggle to get something out. The boy walked up closer. When he was a few feet away, Petya lunged at him and caught him by the arm. The boy cried out and struggled to get away, but Petya was too big for him.
He dragged the boy, kicking and screaming, from the basement to the outside. "What do you want? Where are you taking me?" the boy yelled.
Petya kept a tight grip on the boy's arm as he led him to the nearest orphanage. His intention was to put him there for his own welfare. He wouldn't survive on his own.
The closer Petya got to the orphanage, the more memories came back of what he went through when he was in an orphanage, all the taunting and outright ridicule he'd received. He thought of the only friend he'd had there - the other smart kid, Alexander - and how one of Alexander's distant relatives from Kamchatka had come and taken him away one day, leaving Petya all alone to fend for himself once again. He'd cried for three straight days after Alexander left.
When they got to the orphanage, Petya took one look at the dismal brick building and knew that he couldn't do it. He couldn't leave him there. He didn't want the boy to have to go through what he'd went through.
Back in the apartment, Petya found Katya in her usual spot - sitting in her chair facing the front door. She rarely moved from there, no matter what convincing argument Petya or Oksana came up with. Her journal was in her lap and she was pensively tapping a pencil to a page. That meant she was writing poetry, Petya knew.
She looked up at the boy.
"Katya, this is Kolya," Petya said.
She looked confused for a second, but then smiled and said hello.
Kolya looked back at her. "Hi," he said meekly.
"I found him living by himself in the basement of a destroyed building. He's going to stay with us now," Petya said. He saw a brief look of surprise on her face as he led the boy past her down the short hallway. He thought she would ask him some questions, but she didn't.
Kolya came to a stop next to the coffee table, looked briefly around the room, then returned to staring at his feet.
Petya patted him on the head. "Don't worry," he said. "I'll take care of you. You'll like it here."
Kolya shrugged and sat down on one of the beds.
The apartment was dimly lit but it should have been completely dark, because Petya had barricaded the window last night in an attempt to keep the trees from messing with him. He went over to the window now and saw that his barricade had been tampered with. The blanket was pulled to the side and sunlight was streaming in.
He turned toward Katya. "Did you do this?" he asked.
She shook her head no without looking back at him.
Petya's thinking started to get jumbled again and he sat down to sort out the onslaught of thoughts. Once he regained his focus, he asked her who did it.
"You know who," Katya said.
Petya did indeed know who - the trees. Damn it. "Did you see them?"
She shook her head.
"Well, did you hear anything?"
Again, she shook her head.
Petya was amazed and frustrated. "How the hell do they do it?" he muttered under his breath. He'd spent two hours constructing that barricade, even adding a series of tin cans on a string that would rattle as an alert to any attempted tampering. How could they have done it and Katya not heard anything?
As he started fixing the barricade, a familiar voice resounded in his head. "This is not necessary," it said. "I will protect you. The only defense you need against these demons is faith in me." Petya knew there was no point in arguing with the voice of God. It always won. It had drowned out all the other voices and Petya felt powerless to challenge its decisions.
He obeyed the voice and took the barricade down, and the sun's hazy light filled the apartment once more. The walls, black and dingy from the smoke of the stove and koptilka, had been stripped clean of their wallpaper. It had been made known that the glue holding wallpaper up was partially edible, and Petya, Oksana, and Katya had torn down all the wallpaper in the apartment and made glue soup.
Petya poured himself a cup of water that emptied their last container. He still had difficulty accepting that the water wasn't poisoned, but the voice of God assured him it was all right to drink it. It assured him of many things: that Katya was not (indeed, never was) trying to kill him, that the war with the Germans was a pivotal part of the Apocalypse, and that Petya was a good person - a sinner no doubt - but still a good person at heart.
Holding his breath so he wouldn't smell, Petya took a sip of the brown water. It tasted awful, but getting enough fluids was an absolute necessity in these times. He took another drink, then divided the rest into two cups. He gave one to Kolya and took the other over to Katya.
As usual, she ignored him, so he set the cup down on the floor next to her chair. "You need to drink more," he said. "You're the one who was always telling me that."
Her skin, once so smooth and alluring to Petya, was now dry and scaly and stretched tight over her face. Her eyes, once so mesmerizing, were now fantastically large and unnatural. Her whole body was wasting away. In any other time one would guess she had some deb
ilitating disease. But her only sickness was hunger, and its devastating consequence, malnutrition.
Two weeks ago, Petya had spied on her as she gave herself a sponge-bath. He remembered how her ribs stuck out and her breasts were shrunken to the point of non-existence. He'd experienced no lust whatsoever in watching her. But then he hadn't felt any sexual drive at all in at least two months. That, too, was a victim of hunger.
Petya retrieved her bread ration for the day and held it out to her. Setting her pencil down, she took the bread and immediately began scraping some crumbs off the edges of it into her hand. Then she picked up a small saucer from the floor, wiped the crumbs onto it, and set it back down next to a small hole in the wall. A skinny mouse lived inside the hole. Katya had nicknamed it Prince Myshkin. It would come out in the late afternoon to eat the crumbs, and Katya would talk to it. With Igor no longer around, it seemed to have become her closest friend and confidant.
Katya rarely acknowledged Petya's efforts, though he'd been getting her rations for her for the past week - ever since she tripped over a corpse in the stairwell and sprained her ankle badly enough that she couldn't walk. Petya felt tremendous pity for her. Her prospects for getting a job and regaining her health didn't look good. He knew she'd checked every hospital in the city. None of them would take her, no matter how understaffed they were.
Petya believed that some people deserved what they got, himself for instance. He was a horrible person. He was selfish. He lied. He judged people harshly. And he was paying for it now. But Katya? No, she was a good person and didn't deserve this.
"Are you sure you don't want to lie down for a while?" Petya suggested to her. "It's best if you keep your ankle elevated. Sitting in this chair all day long isn't helping."
She didn't respond right away, but Petya had learned to wait. Reaction times weren't what they used to be.
