by JV Love
Felix watched them pick up the corpse in the street and throw it on top of the others, only to have it come tumbling back down to the ground. They tried again, pushing the arms and legs back behind the gate. Felix still didn't think it would stay, but the men were able to walk away without it falling. Before they got back in the truck, they poured something where the corpse had been lying. A second later, Felix smelled turpentine stronger than ever, and realized they were using it as a disinfectant. That was why the whole city smelled like it.
It was after five p.m. now and the sun had set. The city was usually quite busy at this time as all the workers headed home for the day. But there were no masses of people walking the sidewalks. There were no streetlights, no trolleys running, no cars going up and down the street. It was dark and quiet, and the moon shined its pale light on the plump, gray anti-aircraft balloons that hovered at varying altitudes.
Felix was still having trouble recognizing where he was. Not only were familiar buildings no longer there, but there were no street signs or block numbers. They'd all been painted over.
Nearly everywhere he looked in this part of the city, he saw corpses - on the sidewalks, the streets, in the doorways of buildings, even sitting up on curbs, frozen in place. At first, he kept count of them, but stopped after he passed fifty.
The thought came to him that Katya may have suffered the same fate. Perhaps she had already starved or froze to death. Or been a victim of the relentless German bombing. For a second, he felt foolish for thinking otherwise. What proof did he have that she was still alive? He hadn't received any letters from her, had heard nothing from anyone to suggest that she was still living and working in Leningrad. The rational conclusion was that she was dead.
But he knew somehow that wasn't true. He couldn't name it, but he was certain that she was still alive and that he had to go to her. This strange sense was very strong in him lately - this knowing of the truth of things that he couldn't otherwise prove.
He heard a squeaking sound that he recognized as coming from the runners of a sled, and it brought back fond memories from his childhood. He stopped for a second and looked around for the sled, expecting to see a young boy pulling it. Instead, he saw a gaunt, elderly man with the rope in his hand. There was a small blue body on the sled. It was wrapped in a blanket, but the young girl's long brown hair spilled out and trailed behind in the snow.
The man passed by Felix as though he wasn't even there, then stopped at a park bench. Felix thought he was going to sit down to rest, but he didn't.
From an alley in front of Felix, a man emerged wearing a blue militia coat. He started walking right at Felix. "Halt!" the man yelled, taking his rifle from his shoulder.
Felix froze in place. There was nowhere to go. His heart and mind started racing as to what to do. Then, to his surprise, the militiaman walked right past him. He was heading toward the man who'd stopped at the park bench. Felix turned his head and saw what the man with the sled was doing. He was tearing planks from the bench, presumably for firewood.
"Halt!" the militiaman said again. "You are destroying government property."
Felix breathed a sigh of relief and resumed walking.
He noticed that all the apartment buildings he passed - even the ones still intact - looked deserted. Not a light. Not a sound. Where were the two and a half million inhabitants of this city?
He came upon a tremendous fire that lit the surrounding area like it was still daytime. There was a crowd of people gathered around the apartment building, but no one was trying to put the fire out. Instead, they had formed a chain and were handing possessions out of the building: a samovar, a kerosene stove, blankets . . ..
Felix had heard about the scourge of fires that tormented Leningrad. It wasn't just the Germans and their incendiary bombs, hardly any of the makeshift stoves people had were installed properly. Every month, these stoves started hundreds of fires that burned down hundreds of buildings. There was no water to put the fires out.
Felix asked one of the persons at the fire which way the Kazansky Cathedral was. The person gave him a strange look, but then answered and pointed the way. It was only after hearing their voice that Felix could determine that the person was a female. He couldn't tell by sight alone whether these walking skeletons with their skin stretched tight over their faces were male or female.
As he headed off in the direction the woman had directed him, he noticed more people coming toward the fire. They were all carrying pails, except there was nothing in them. Felix looked over his shoulder as he continued on and saw that the fire was melting snow and ice and the people were gathering the precious water into their pails to take home with them.
After a few more blocks, his surroundings started to look more familiar. Part of that was because the bombed buildings had been covered over with plywood and painted to look as though they were still intact.
It took him nearly three hours from the outskirts of the city to finally reach the Kazansky Cathedral. Katya's apartment building wasn't far beyond that. Felix looked over his favorite cathedral and was pleased to see it undamaged. Its two giant wings remained resting on the ground, and Felix thought that if it hadn't flown away yet, it never would.
The moon was still shining and he expected to see its light glimmering off Kazansky's shiny cupola, but the top of the cathedral had been painted a dark color as camouflage. Felix couldn't remember if the cupola had been painted when he last saw the cathedral or not. Everything in the city looked so strange to him, like he was an unwitting character in a science fiction story. Everything that was once familiar to him looked mysterious and foreboding. It was both the city he knew so well and a strange place full of ruins and corpses and un-humanlike people.
As he approached Katya's neighborhood, a giant cloud moved in front of the moon and all became pitch-black. At first he had to feel his way along a nearby snowbank, but then his eyes adjusted and he could make out the edges of things. After he turned down Katya's block, he was devastated to find her apartment building lying in rubble.
He stood there staring at the dim outline of the ruined building, wondering how he could have been wrong. Wondering what to do next. Then the light of the moon returned and he saw that he was on the wrong block. Katya's apartment was one block farther still.
He hurried there and was relieved to find her building intact. It hadn't caught fire or been bombed. Giant icicles clung to the edge of the roof and there were dark streaks down the side of the building. The streaks weren't from smoke, Felix knew. People didn't have the energy to take their slop and garbage out. Instead, they threw it out the window into the street. It was going to be one hell of a mess come springtime.
Felix lit a match for light and walked up the stairs. The building, like the entire city, was eerily quiet. The only sound Felix heard was his own footsteps. He felt queasy and short of breath the closer he got to the third floor. He was so afraid to see how thin Katya must have become, but his biggest fear was not seeing her there at all.
The third floor hallway was pitch black. Felix's match was getting dangerously close to his fingers, so he blew it out and dropped it to the floor, walking the few last steps in darkness. Taking a deep breath, he prepared to knock on Katya's door, but saw that it hadn't been closed all the way. The door was open a crack and he could hear a man's voice inside. The person was speaking in a low whisper and Felix didn't recognize the voice.
"None of this is personal you know," the man said. "I don't even want to be doing this, but it's necessary for me to be able to continue."
Felix opened the door quietly and walked into the apartment. It sounded like the man was having a conversation with someone, but Felix never heard anyone answer.
"There is one thing I want to apologize to you about," the man whispered. "I'm not quite sure how to say it though."
The hallway of the apartment was dark and cold, but Felix could see candlelight coming from up ahead. He moved slowly and silently until he could see arou
nd the corner into the room that the hallway opened up into.
The room that Felix used to know so well was barely recognizable to him now. There was a stove in the middle and three beds circled around it. The walls were stained black and had no wallpaper, and a stovepipe snaked through the room to one of the windows.
The man had his back to Felix and was leaning over someone lying in bed. Felix couldn't tell what the man was doing, but he saw that the bed was covered with blood.
"Who are you?" Felix demanded, stepping around the corner. "What are you doing?"
The man, wrapped in layers of blankets from head to toe, stopped talking and moving. He seemed frozen in place.
The light from the candle flickered and Felix repeated his questions.
"It's all right, Felix," the man answered and turned to face him. "It's God's will . . . all part of the mission."
That the man knew Felix's name frightened him because he had no idea who he was talking to. Felix moved closer so he could see the man's face better. The man lunged at him with a bloody knife. Felix caught his arm in the air and easily flung him down onto one of the beds. Then he grabbed the knife out of the man's hand and threw it across the room.
He turned to the thin, bloody corpse on the bed with the blanket covering its face. A large section of the person's right thigh was missing, and Felix didn't want to find out who was under that blanket.
The man continued lying where Felix had thrown him, making no attempt to get up or even roll over. "She waited for you, you know," he said.
"Who waited for me?" Felix said. Everything was swirling about him. Nothing made sense. Who was this man speaking to him? Who was this corpse under the blanket?
"She never gave up on you," the man continued. "Even when they told her you were dead. She sat in that chair staring at the door every day - just waiting for you to walk through."
Felix had to end the madness. He stepped over to the bloody body, pulled the blanket off, and stared at the face.
He didn't recognize the person. "Who is this?" he asked.
"You don't recognize her, either?" the man said.
Felix went back to the man, grabbed hold of the blankets wrapped around him, and lifted him into the air. "Enough of your games!" he yelled. "Who did you kill?"
"I didn't kill anyone," the man said. "That's Oksana. She was already dead when I got back."
"And who are you? Where is Katya?"
"It is I, Felix," the man answered. "Petya."
Felix looked closer and saw the man had a little black mole on his cheek just as he remembered Petya had. The man's vaguely familiar voice now became fully recognizable. "Petya?" Felix repeated. His hands started to tremble.
The man nodded. "Yes," he said. "I didn't think we'd ever meet again."
"Where is Katya?"
Petya didn't answer, and Felix lifted his limp body up higher into the air and looked him in the eyes. "I said, where's Katya?"
"Hopefully in a place far better than this," he said.
"Damn it, Petya! I'm not going to ask again," Felix said. "I'll throw you across the room if you don't answer me. Now where is she?"
"Gone," Petya said.
"Where?"
"To find you."
Felix let go of his grip and Petya fell back onto the bed. "She went to find me?" he said incredulously. He stumbled backwards a step, like the words were arrows that had pierced his chest.
"When I got back an hour ago, I found this," Petya said, holding up a piece of paper.
"Give it to me," Felix said, grabbing it out of Petya's hand.
Petya,
By the time you read this, I'll be gone. I've decided to go across the lake to find Felix. I know he's out there somewhere and that we'll be together again. I took the brown sled. Please say goodbye to Igor for me and give him the letter I wrote him.
- Katya
As soon as Felix finished reading the letter, he realized why that fur coat he'd seen on the person heading toward the lake had looked so familiar to him. It was Katya's father's old coat - the one he'd bought from the fur trader outside Archangel, the one he used to wear before he'd gotten a new one last year. Because of the fur coat, Felix thought it had been a man pulling the sled. Now he was sure it was Katya. He'd just missed her!
He turned and ran out of the apartment and down the stairs, crashing into the door to the outside. He could barely breathe, and ran into the night grasping at his chest, trying to get some air into his lungs before his heart burst.
He ran back the way he'd just come. Running and running until his legs were exhausted and forced him to slow to a walk. Dark, heavy clouds were converging on the city. The streets were empty.
* * *
Katya watched her companion fall to the snow-covered road for the second time in less than ten minutes. She stopped a few feet away from the woman, hoping her companion would be able to get back up again. Katya knew that she herself didn't have the strength to help her in any way. It was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other and not fall down herself.
Katya didn't know the woman. They just happened to both be heading to the lake and decided to accompany one another. The woman was hoping to make it to the south, Katya had learned, where she had a sister.
The sun had just set and the temperature was dropping, although Katya didn't notice any difference. Twenty degrees below zero and thirty degrees below zero felt the same to her.
After much effort, the woman made it back to her feet. "I'm so damn cold," she said.
"Why don't we trade coats?" Katya suggested. "I'm warm enough for now, and we can switch back once we reach a shelter and you're able to warm up a little."
"Are you sure?" the woman said.
Katya took off her fur coat and handed it to the woman to take. It made her feel good that she could help out in some way.
The woman took her ragged old coat off, gave it to Katya to wear, then pulled Katya's large fur coat tightly around her. "My goodness," she exclaimed. "It's so big."
"It was my father's coat," Katya said.
Once they had finished trading coats, they continued walking along the road. The trucks coming from the lake came at them in an endless stream. Trucks going the same direction they were heading were few and far between. Katya didn't bother waving for them to stop anymore. She'd learned that she didn't possess anything they wanted, and none of them would give her a ride for free.
It wasn't even another five minutes before Katya's companion fell again, this time into the thick snow on the side of the road. Katya pulled her sled up close and sat down next to her.
"I can't make it any further," the woman said.
Once off the road, the snow was very deep and Katya knew she couldn't possibly help the woman out. "I can't help you up," she said.
"I know, dear," the woman replied. "I don't expect you to. This is where I'm going to die."
Katya didn't argue with her. She'd thought of doing the same thing herself a few times already.
"Those truck drivers should have given us a ride," the woman said bitterly. "I worked as a schoolteacher for twenty-seven years and not once did I ever ask for a pack of cigarettes or a loaf of bread to teach a child."
Katya thought the woman shouldn't be dwelling on such things while on her deathbed, but it was her death she realized. Who was she to tell the woman how to spend her remaining time?
For the next ten minutes, she listened to the woman's persistent rant about how the truck drivers should have offered them a ride. Then the woman stopped talking altogether and closed her eyes. Katya took out a piece of bread and ate a few bites as the wind picked up and it started to snow.
The woman opened her eyes after a minute and looked at Katya. She seemed very calm, almost peaceful. "You may as well get going, my dear," she said. "You've got a long journey ahead of you."
Katya agreed with her. There was nothing she could do.
"Bless me before you go," the woman said.
Katya made
the sign of the cross and said a short prayer out loud. The woman thanked her, then closed her eyes again. Her breathing was very shallow and Katya had an idea that she would be dead within a few minutes. Katya wanted to get her fur coat back, but realized it was too late now. The woman couldn't take it off, and Katya was much too weak to get if off of her. It was only with great effort that Katya had even been able to stand up again.
She grabbed the rope of her sled and started walking. She had no idea how much further it was to the lake but hoped she was at least past the halfway point.
The only way she'd made it this far was by focusing solely on the next segment of her journey. She thought only of reaching the next destination. To think of her final destination or the entire journey was too much - too daunting of a task. If she focused on the next one hundred steps, or just reaching the next intersection, then it was doable.
Katya saw corpse after corpse alongside the road. They had no effect on her. She never thought she could be so indifferent to death, but after you saw so much of it, you just stopped reacting. It became a normal part of one's daily life.
She had a strong desire sometimes to join them, to lay down in the thick, soft snow and close her eyes. Death didn't seem so bad at this point. She imagined it would be a lot like a deep, restful sleep.
She'd realized before she even left the apartment how much risk this trip would involve. She knew this could very well be the last journey she ever made, but it was worth gambling for. Something had been calling her for a long time. Something she had heard but been too afraid to answer. It was ironic to her that the final push she needed to answer the call was an even greater fear of staying. She knew if she stayed that she would die in that apartment. Either Petya would take that final plunge below the ice of sanity and murder her or she would simply give in one night to the cold and the hunger.
