Translated from the original Russian
by M. A. Ashot
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Vladimir Lazar - Director & Produser & Publisher
Offis: USA 1-414-665-7212 & 1-415-806-4402
E-mail: waltv 2000@yahoo.com
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PO BOX 16374
San Francisco,
CA 94116-0374
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1
The bitter smoky summer of 1944 enveloped Karelia in its shroud.
A young soldier, seventeen or so, wearing enormous, beat up shoes over the standard canvas leg and foot wrappings, in a formerly white uniform shirt shot full of holes, that had been handed down repeatedly from one slain comrade to another, darted relentlessly between the white tents of a military field hospital, leaping wildly to and fro like a hare on a mission. A dented, dirty helmet that had seen and connected with bullets and shrapnel kept trying to slide off the boyish shaven head and onto his animated grey eyes. He pushed it back with one hand, while the other grabbed at the sleeves of passing nurses and field medics, as he bombarded them in turn with his urgent question, speaking rapid-fire and accentuating the vowels in the manner of his countrymen:
“Have you seen Masha Sokolova? Where’s Masha Sokolova? We’re from the same village. We were seatmates in school! Masha, Masha Sokolova, where are you?”
“Over here, Shurik!..”
A tall, comely girl emerged from one of the housing tents.
* * *
The Russian North never skimped on beauty or tenderness, when it brought forth the unique beings that are the young girls and women of the woodland communities. Long meandering hunts for mushrooms in the dense forests; warm, steamy milk frothing with freshness; grandmother’s sweet cheese pastries to complement that milk; all the luscious berries in the world; slumber in haylofts; the songs of the long evenings; the mischievous tingling frost; the indescribably pure and luxurious air of the forest – all these elements combined to instil the women of the Russian north with a rare, radiant, untainted beauty; and endowed them with their unsurpassed health, a kind, easygoing nature, and a loving, affectionate heart. Masha Sokolova was no exception. Everything about her exuded solace, cheer, encouragement: and she was beautiful to behold. The military uniform emphasized the feminine charms of her body: the neatly pressed uniform shirt, cinched at the waist with a belt; the navy blue, form-fitting skirt; the tall, trim boots with their canvas tops; the short haircut all made soldier Sokolova look more like a dancer from a song and dance unit sent to entertain the troops, than a worn-out field nurse at the front.
He rushed at her and collapsed at her feet, on his knees:
“Maaa – shaaa! Sweetie, sweetheart! Light of my life! I found you, oh, my darling girl!”
“What’s the matter, Shurik? Get up! Come on, is that really you? You’re embarrassing me,” Masha whispered. “Don’t go acting all crazy! You’ll turn me into a laughing-stock!”
“So let them! You listen to me! Hear me out! There’s a war on! I only have two hours! Understand? We’re going into battle today, crossing the Svier, to the other side, you know…” Shurik waved in the direction of the river. “I might not make it back alive. Can’t we just go inside your tent together, you and me? Can’t we just be together I’ve loved you all my life, since I was just a kid! All those times I was just afraid even to go up to you. Funny, isn’t it? See, now I’m not scared anymore. There’s a war, what’s to be scared of? Me… You know, I’m ashamed to tell the other lads, I’ve never even been with any girls yet. See, I might die like this, get killed, and never even know, what it is that the other men fight over, even stab each other for. In wartime, it’s those crazy bullets we have to worry about, not how love works, not how we’re afraid of being alone with a girl…”
“But I love you, too, Sasha, more than life itself! You know that! Come on, get up! Come on, let’s go, come on in, I’ll take you inside my tent!”
* * *
Maria bent low over Shurik. With motherly care, she slid her arms under his and lifted him up onto his feet. He pressed hard against the palms of her hands, and nearly shouted with relief:
“Oh, what an idea! Goodness! So you love me, too? And is this what war does? God, what joy! You were always my dream, the impossible, unattainable dream, the girl I couldn’t possibly hope for! If it weren’t for this war, you would have walked straight past me, probably wouldn’t even have paused to spit in my direction. You’re so beautiful! It was my dream to marry you! And if they don’t kill me today, I swear, I’ll marry you, I will! Will you marry me?”
“I’m already marrying you, my love…”
* * *
Their eyes filled with tears. Maria pressed up against him with her whole body, choking back tears, covering his wet face in a flurry of kisses:
“I’m your wife from now on, Sasha: your wife! That’s my heart telling you!”
“And I’m you husband, Masha! I feel it! I know it, I know God meant for us to be together!”
“Come on, Sasha! Let’s go! Come on! You’ll live, you’ll make it back… I’m your true love, your soulmate! I’ll be yours forever. Come on, come to me, my love. Let me comfort you, like your true lawful wife, let me hold you, caress you, kiss you all over! Only, I beg of you, in God’s name, darling, come back alive from the battle. I’ll be waiting for you right here, with all the love inside me…”
* * *
Maria snuck Alexander into her tent. Her girlfriends considerately left them alone, went off a little ways from the ‘connubial tent’ and stood watch, a kind of honor guard of women keeping outsiders away. None of the other soldiers or officers were allowed to wander into the vicinity og the field shrine to love:
“Mashka’s only allowed two hours with her husband from the advance forces, who got leave to see her before the big push!” was what they told their comrades who came strolling by. The men understood, and quietly envious, made a sad detour away from the ‘love station.’
2
In the morning, at dawn, Alexander landed on the other side of the Svier, on the banks held by the foe, as part of the storming battalion of the infantry marine of the Lake Ladoga flotilla. Not all the marines made it across the flood meadow and as far as the edge of the woods. They were mowed down dead, their bodies slamming into their native earth, with machine gun crossfire from enemy positions; they were shredded with shrapnel from mortars; their feet were blasted off with anti-personnel mines – but they had yearned so long for the welcome counteroffensive that would drive them further into their lands, reclaiming their place all along the Karelian front, that even the fear of death could not diminish the force of their assault. Sasha raced into the woods alive, even unscathed. The thirst for freedom was greater, mightier than death. It was his own childhood woods. He had come here often before the war, with Masha, to pick mushrooms or berries.
Combat in the forest turned into hand-to-hand fighting. Everything became chaotic: no one knew who was where, who was who – enemy, or friend. Shells and mines from both sides, your own, the others’, walloped the tall trunks of the mast-length pines, exploding over the heads of the soldiers; in the trenches, in the woods, men who had never met before ferociously tore at each other’s flesh, rending their counterparts asunder, turning bodies no different from their own into bloodied piles of human flesh, using knives, bayonets, their own teeth and jaws; heads were bashed in and skulls cracked with rifle butts; noses were smashed and eyes knocked out with fists and boots and bits of metal; throats were sliced through with small field shovels, as they drowned in blood and strangled curses in one huge explosion of enraged and savage hatred.He fought as if in a dream. At some point, he lost his hearing and all sense of fear: a large mine went off very near. He was saved from certain death by having, seconds before, tripped over the corpse of a German soldier, and rolled headlong down a steep incline into a well-like ravine.
He worked like a robot that was out of control, spinning like a top, miraculously dodging bullets and bayonets. Mechanically, without thinking, he kept on shooting at everything that moved; kept on throwing grenades, for a few minutes more, until another mine went off right next to him. Shurik went flying up, his body spinning around itself several times in the air, and then came slamming back down into the ground. He could not feel any part of himself; stunned, deaf, blind, concussed, Sasha kept trying for some reason to jump up again, to run, until a fragment of shirt-front grenade blew open his chest….
* * *
The back of his head rested on the trunk of a charred pine tree. His eyes were wide open: unseeing, they stared up at their own familiar northern sky. The grey irises were imbued with the look of his first and last and only love, now permanently etched.
3
A week later, the field post brought Maria Sokolova the death notice.
The postman averted his eyes as he handed her the small envelope, without a word. The envelope contained a photo of her taken before the war. On the other side of the photograph, Alexander had written, in his own hand: “This is my wife. I love you, Maria!”
Dark traces of blood stained the picture. Her face almost black with emotion, Sokolova charged into the secure command most of the hospital chief:
“Comrade lieutenant colonel of the medical service!” Her voice trembled. “I’ve lost, I’ve lost my fiancé, that is to say, my husband. Here’s the death notice. We didn’t have time to get the marriage registered before he died. Help me get it registered!”
* * *
The lieutenant colonel had already been informed of Shurik’s visit, and also of his death:
“That’s impossible, Masha. Go, my dear girl, have a good cry, rest a bit, drink some vodka. There are no city halls at the front where we can hold weddings, solemnize marriages. Here, bullets rule. How can you expect me handle weddings, marriage licenses? I had ten combat officers die on my operating table today. All of them were young, healthy men. They had their whole lives in front of them! And how many others lost arms, legs, feet today? I’ve stopped counting. They crossed the Svier under fire. There was nowhere to retreat, no cover. Who was luckier – the ones who died or the ones who survived with wounds? I have no idea. Go, Mashenka, go sleep a while. Go cry your heart out! It’s good for you, crying over it, my dear girl… I have a daughter, just like you… You know… Well, and she died of starvation in Leningrad, because of the blockade – and here I am, still here, amputating the legs, the arms, the hands, the feet of healthy young men…”
* * *
Stumbling, staggering, as if in a fog, Maria barely made it to her tent, and collapsed into her bunk. She found the flask with the medicinal alcohol in the space under her mattress. It burned her throat; she downed what remained in one gulp: the leavings of her wedding celebration. Her head began to swim. Her body still remembered the intensity of Alexander’s passionate lovemaking…
All at once, Sokolova began to keen and wail like a common peasant woman, like one of the crones from her village, uttering visceral lamentations that sprang up from somewhere deep within… It was the way all her ancestresses had mourned, all her long-gone foremothers, and her grandmothers, losing their men, their lovers, their sweethearts, their husbands, their friends, their sons in Russia’s interminable successive world wars:“Granddad was killed in the first great war; Father died in the Finnish campaign… And now Sasha, here… My darling! When will all these deaths finally come to an end?”
* * *
Maria leaped to her feet; she paced frantically back and forth along the narrow aisles of the hospital tent, like some beautiful captured lynx in its prison cage; her whole body shook and once more she collapsed into her soldier’s blanket, trying to stifle her own voice with her shirt, with a towel, even her fist – just to be able to stop, somehow, to quell that unstoppable torrent of ancient, primeval, eternal sorrow that had come crashing down all about her, and could never be contained.