Es liegt eine Insel im Roten Meer
Voll von Freunden war mir die Welt,
Als noch mein Leben licht war;
Nun, da der Nebel fällt,
Ist keiner mehr sichtbar.
Wahrlich, keiner ist weise,
Der nicht das Dunkel kennt,
Das unentrinnbar und leise
Von allen ihn trennt.
Hermann Hesse – Im Nebel
The Wehrmacht soldiers fought on even though their battle was a losing one. And then, beside the regular troops there were reserves of mostly old men and children attempting to hold the towns. The levels of resistance varied wildly, some fighting to the death, determined to pull as many enemy soldiers down with them, some throwing away their weapons after putting up a half-hearted fight. Sergeant Petrov, who had been promoted to Lieutenant after the February campaign, told them of a squadron of soldiers who had waited with guns at the ready, only to shoot their commanding officer and surrender as soon as the Soviet soldiers came into view. In some places the Red Army were welcomed as liberators, in others they were resisted until the defenders’ last breath, and in most places, the reactions were anywhere between those poles. The only thing that seemed to still unite the Germans was apprehension.
“This is pointless!” Stas groaned and flopped down right there on the ground as soon as they had made it back to camp, not caring how muddy it was. “Just surrender. I want to go home. Ugh!”
“Even if they all were to surrender there’ll likely be an occupation. Besides, when the fighting’s done, that’s when the bureaucracy starts rolling in again.” Lt. Petrov remarked sympathetically to his subordinate, who was currently imitating a starfish judging by the way he’d sprawled out his limbs over the muddy ground.
“I don’t care,” Stas muttered in reply, “I’ve slept maybe seven hours this week. I’ve been fighting damn Nazis for six years. I’m tired. I’m so tired.” He whined, his eyes screwing shut dramatically.
“So tired…” he reiterated softly.
“Just don’t come crying to me when you get a cold from lying in the mud.” Petrov muttered and moved to nudge the other man’s side with the toe of his boot. Just as he was about to, a massive noise sounded, like the deep dark growls and crashes of a thunderstorm released all at once. The shockwave hit just an instant afterwards, throwing him down with force, as it did most in the vicinity. It took a moment for the ringing in his ears to subside enough for his thoughts to sound through, by which time the moment of initial shock was almost over for most.
“Are we being attacked?” Stas asked in a tone that was more resigned than disoriented or even panicked. Petrov gave him a look to the effect of ‘What do you fucking think?’ and picked himself off the ground.
The main tent was still intact, thank goodness – not even singed, just a bit muddier on the bottom than it had been before. That was good; meant the wounded likely weren’t harmed any more than they were before. Already nurses and doctors spilled forth from within. It appeared the shell had hit a good thirty or forty metres away, at the outskirts of the camp where the officer’s mess (a tent slightly taller than the ones meant for sleeping, but otherwise not exactly much roomier) was located. Close to it, Kolya was just struggling to his feet, a shocked expression on his face. At this point, less than a minute had passed since the explosion though time seemed to stretch out infinitely.
“Alyosha is… I was just going to get him for a… for…” Kolya explained helplessly, pointing at the charred remains of the officer’s mess, or rather the crater where it used to stand. Kolya started towards it in the same moment Petrov and Dr Rostov both yelled for him not to. Basically simultaneously, a small round object whistled through the air, landing at Kolya’s feet with a trail of sparks. He stared down at it dumbly while the yelling continued, Stas falling into the frenzied chorus with a panicked ‘Grenade!’. Kolya felt a sharp tug on his arm just heartbeats before the second explosion hit. He didn’t feel the pain until much later, when Dr Rostov was sawing his ruined leg off.
“I was lucky, considering.” Saitchik mused, tapping the end of his cane against the smooth plastic of his prosthetic leg where he had unstrapped it for the time being. It was fairly new, very modern – then again he’d spent most of his life with an artificial limb constructed from metal, and a much cruder design. The first few years, he’d only had a wooden peg.
“Like a pirate!” he was able to grin about it now, at least. “Ah well, it was better than the crutches.”
“Who pulled you out of the way?” James asked, looking up from the sketch he’d made alongside the retelling, reconstructing the place and everyone’s locations from the other man’s words and his own sketchy memories. Saitchik turned his surprised gaze on him.
“You did.”
James stopped short, pencil stuttering across the page. “Me?”
“You saved my life. Thanks to you, that grenade only blew my leg off. I was in shock. I would have stayed there, looking down at it like an idiot until it blew my face off.” His old body shook with the memory, and James was certain that it was still as fresh in his mind as if it had only just happened.
“Oh.” He replied in his usual eloquent way. Saitchik seemed to have gathered himself and broke out into a wide smile.
“Yes, you. Without you I wouldn’t be sitting here now. I’d never have met my Bettina, we’d never have had our beloved children, not to mention our grandchildren. Or their children. Let’s see-“ he tapped his fingers on the armrest, moving his lips near silently as he counted off the younger generations of his family. “-and Tessie is only half a year old, so that’s 27 total, 28 if you count me in.”
James felt as if the air had been knocked clean out of him. There was a literal wall of pictures in the house, just the next room over, with framed photos that spanned seventy years of family history. Twenty-eight lives probably didn’t count much in the end, not considering how many lives he’d ended as Hydra’s asset, but for now he’d take it. He managed a smile as he got up to get more tea from the kitchen. After refilling both their cups, he sank back into the couch cushions and took up his notebook again.
“And then what?”
Mrs Wilson is a resolute woman with wise eyes and a warm, mischievous smile that her son obviously inherited. Mr Wilson was exactly what one would expect from an elderly gentleman who had worked hard all his life and was determined to enjoy his retirement now, in the midst of the family he loved. It was exactly the kind of warm and loving home-life you’d always yearned for growing up and now, sitting on the Wilsons’ back porch with a glass of wine and a piece of utterly delicious berry pie to celebrate the birthday you almost shared with Sam, you felt as though everything you’d dreamt of while you were a child had come true.
It was so utterly kind of Sam to invite you along, and of his family to have you. It was, without a doubt, the best birthday you had ever had (not even your real birthday, just the day you’d been found behind that dumpster as a newborn, so the actual date might as well have been that 22nd of September back in 1988).
In fact, Sam hadn’t so much invited you along as he had been waiting on your doorstep for you to get home from work that Tuesday, cajoling you into his car which he then proceeded to drive all the way to his parents’ house, where a small surprise party had been prepared for you. Somehow you’d held it together all through the early dinner (Sam’s sister was visiting with her little kids and husband), but now, as you watched Steve losing a truly ferocious game of frisbee against an eight-year-old and his six-year-old sister, the floodgates were just about ready to fully burst.
“Those better be tears of joy.” Sam observed, plopping down next to you with a beer in hand. You laughed and leaned into him, resting your head on his shoulder while you wiped at your eyes.
“You’re the actual best, you know that?” you said. He grinned, winking at you and clinking his bottle against your wine glass. Out on the lawn, Steve was being obliterated by the two little kids. He fell to the ground dramatically, clutching his side where the frisbee had barely grazed him, and Sam’s little niece and nephew made a show of trying to tug him back up. It was pretty adorable. And Sam’s sister and her husband were glad to have a moment to themselves, one could tell.
“No really Sam, this is one of the sweetest things anyone’s ever done for me. Thank you.”
“Hey, what are friends for? Happy You-Didn’t-Die-In-A-Dumpster-Day!” he cheered and you snorted.
“Well, I mean, how many other people do you know who get birthday cards from retired nuns?”
“Nuns can retire? I thought the whole point of that was that it was a life-time deal!” you snorted again, endlessly amused by him.
“It is, it is. They retired from working at the orphanage, not from being nuns.”
“To be honest, I could have worked that out on my own,” Sam looked pensive for a moment, watching a flock of birds soar by overhead. “At least I’m sure I could have two or three beers ago.”
“At least I have some sort of idea. When Skye got into the system she was already a few months old and nobody could really tell when she was born, or where.” You stopped yourself, your previously joyful mood starting to dissipate again. Somehow the mixed emotions you’ve acquired about what at least formally counts as your birthday have become even more muddled now. You think of this day all the years before, your childhood and the seemingly endless carousel of orphanage and foster homes, then college and your early work life when you didn’t really celebrate because you’d had no one to celebrate with. You think of that fateful evening when you, freshly graduated and only just getting into the swing of business and all alone in the big city, had made your way to a seedy bar up in Hell’s Kitchen that somehow ended with you raising hell with two law school graduates who were in the same boat as you, only just getting started with their careers by interning in a big law firm downtown. That ranks among the top birthday experiences for sure. Your thoughts slip to the following years, to settling into the life you’re making for yourself, advancing in your job. Your cheating bastard of an ex had never seen the point of putting much effort into celebrating with you, and that was among all the other big little things. Looking back now you cannot for the life of you tell what you ever saw in him. The only truly gratifying thing had been the outpouring of support from nearly everyone you knew when you’d finally ended it. It was like The People vs Shitbag and they were going for the highest possible sentence, no deals, no appeals, no probation. Last thing you heard he’d moved to Montana or Nebraska or something. You hoped he was miserable. You hoped he’d freeze all his toes off.
So overall, if one were to draw up a scale and measure the parameters, this today would doubtlessly have to count as the best damn birthday of your life so far, and it is, too, and yet you can’t fully enjoy it because half the people you love aren’t here with you. And even buzzed as he is by now, Sam still picks up on it. It’s like he has a sixth sense that makes him see right through the fronts people put up.
“So, who else writes you cards instead of being here?” he asks, and you turn to rummage through the purse at your feet to show him the one that loudly proclaims ‘Live long and prosper!’, which is from Skye and into which she actually tucked four handwritten pages (double-sided) and a flash drive you haven’t looked into yet. You got one from James, too. On it, there’s a drawing of your living room in loose strokes, with the cat curled up on the couch. In it, there’s a folded map of the world and the direction to mark every place you want to see. You’d mentioned, during one of your lazy evenings watching some sort of documentary, that you had never really travelled the world. Let us go there, you and I (if you want to, that is). Just re-reading it now had you in tears again, which prompted Sam to put his arm around your shoulders for comfort. Overwhelmed, you closed the card, revealing the postscript on the back. PS. And tell Steve that he owes me 3 $ because aliens ARE real.
You put the cards away again and took a moment to calm down, Sam’s quiet, reassuring presence helping tremendously. Sam was good with that, with reading people and analyzing how they needed to be handled. He also had a talent for pulling them out of their heads (probably why he was so successful and popular at the VA). Like right now he was asking you about work, as you had been whining about it on and off over the past week or so.
“No really, I love nothing more than arguing with suppliers for days on end.” You were just unloading onto him. “It’s just so… you know how we mainly do research and development, but we also have to do production to generate some revenue, which is basically what guarantees our continued existence. So we do high-end, order-by-order production. You don’t need a whole lot of materials for that, or the research, so we can only buy in small quantities. It’s all very expensive for reasons I don’t even want to think about and of course, it isn’t allowed to be. In fact, I am already looking forward to my annual scolding e-mail from Mr Pyke.” Sam was looking very (unduly) amused now and his brother-in-law, who managed supply chains for some large firm whose name you could not recall, made a noise of long-suffering agreement in the background.
“And Mr Pyke is…?”
“Mr Pyke is head of accounting at Stark Industries and if you spend too much you will get a very long, very displeased e-mail. For someone who is also in charge of purchasing, that man really does not want to spend money. It’s either the worst characteristic for that job or the best. Point is, I’m annoyed and I am going to be even more annoyed when my annual ‘you spend too much and don’t earn enough’ report comes in.”
“Sounds like someone who, in their own best interest, should really not work for Tony Stark.”
You only groaned in response and let yourself fall back against the warm wood of the patio, enjoying the view of the migrating swarms of birds up above.
“Okay, I get it – enough work talk.” Sam concluded and flopped down next to you. The flight of the birds was mesmerizing, like a huge organism that shifted and flowed with a single mind.
“Those are starlings, I think.” Sam murmured softly after a few minutes of content silence on your part. You gave an interested hum, which Sam took as his cue to continue. “Did you know that they only need to keep track of the seven closest birds to make these patterns?”
“I always wondered how they manage not to get in each other’s way.” You murmured.
“Is my brother giving you his ten best bird facts? You know he used to do bird watching when he was a boy.” Sam’s sister, Sarah, called over gleefully, which caused you to giggle and him to rub both hands over his face in annoyance.
“Stop saying these things; I’ve just convinced my new friends here that I’m cool.” He whined, at which his sister gave hearty laugh.
“You are a nerd and you have always been a nerd, as I’m sure they’ve noticed by now.” She concluded.
“Whatever, birds are cool.” Sam muttered, emptying the last swig from his bottle. You felt a timid tug at your sleeve and looked up to find Sam’s little niece by your side, looking up at you with big brown eyes.
“Oh hey, what is it sweetie?”
“Steve says you used to play baseball.” She started earnestly, absently fidgeting with one of her adorable little braids.
“Yeah, I did. I played Little League. Do you like baseball?”
She nodded, rocking back on her bare feet. She seemed a bit shy now, quickly scuttling over to your other side where Sam had sat back up, where she scrambled up on her uncle’s lap and grasped onto his much larger hand with her two little pudgy ones.
“Have you ever played yourself?” you continued in what you hoped was an encouraging manner.
“A few times with Daddy, but he isn’t very good.” She scrunched up her nose and dropped her voice to a conspirational whisper. “Daddy likes ice hockey better.” She confided. Sam was fighting to keep a straight face at this point, but you ignored him.
“D’you wanna play with me? I could show you a few tricks.” You replied just as conspirationally. Her little face lit up like fireworks and she beamed up at you. “Yes! Yesyesyes please!”
Somehow all the necessary equipment was procured and somehow a rudimentary team had assembled around you and little Jody. You played until the onset of darkness by which point the kids were all but falling asleep standing up. Sarah and her husband collected their kids and excused themselves, and shortly after the senior Wilsons did the same, leaving only you, Sam, and Steve on the porch.
“Best birthday ever!” you declared, supressing a yawn as you snuggled further into the blankets that had been brought out. Beside you, Sam disentangled one hand from his own blanket cocoon and high-fived Steve.
It was the lack of singing in the evenings that finally drove the point home that Alyosha was gone. Before the war, he’d been a student at the conservatory in Leningrad. His voice was a gift, at once clear and smooth, with a warm timbre. No one could do Puccini justice like him, his teachers had agreed, but Alyosha’s real passion had been folk songs. He’d collected them regardless of language or meaning and shared his repertoire freely. What was left was silence. They didn’t have too much time to dwell on it, seeing as the Soviet troops were still advancing towards Berlin, and there were not enough resources to send a single man back home, even if he’d lost a leg. Kolya spent a few days in a feverish haze and descended into blithe apathy as soon as his mind cleared. But war has no care for the suffering of individuals and raged on around them.
In their rag-tag little camp, comprised of remnants and drifters, they were mostly left alone by higher-ups. So it came as some sort of surprise when a car arrived the day after they’d set up a good way east-north-east of Berlin in mid-April. From the car, an officer emerged who outranked them all and whose uniform was completely unblemished. He seemed somewhat put out at not being greeted by more than suspicious stares, but quickly recovered and made his way to the half-open tent that now served as wardroom.
“Who’s on charge here?” He barked. Petrov got up and introduced himself, and Dr Rostov did the same. The officer game his name as Polyakov and sneered.
“I am looking for 8th company.” He declared importantly. Lt. Petrov regarded him coolly.
“Congratulations, you’ve found them.” He retorted with a sweeping gesture over Stas and absolutely no one beside him. The officer’s chin and eyebrows went in opposite directions so fast and far it was comical.
“That is just one man!” he exclaimed in the tone of a person clearly expecting to be the victim of a prank.
“If you had come last month I would’ve still had two.” Petrov went on in as if in pleasant conversation.
“I was actually re-assigned from 14th company, if that helps.” Stas remarked, knowing full well it didn’t.
“14th was wiped out completely more than a year ago.”
“And every day I thank my lucky stars that I get to continue to serve our beloved Soviet Union in this great struggle against the evil of fascism.” Stas replied drily.
“How may we help you, Colonel Polyakov?” Petrov interrupted. Polyakov reigned in his rising hackles.
“I have order to replenish the ranks of the 478th Rifle Division. We have intelligence that the Germans are gathering for a last offence nearby, which is ridiculous since Berlin is almost fully ours, but if these were reasonable people none of us would be here.”
“I see,” Petrov replied carefully. “I agree with you, but I must urge you to consider that if you reassign me and my man here there’ll be no one left to guard our wounded and those who care for them here. We’ve been under constant attack same as any fighting companies.” Rostov nodded along.
“Besides, will two people really make that much of a difference? No matter how that battle goes, you’ll have need of medical care afterwards.”
“Are you trying to talk me into disobeying a direct order, Lieutenant?” Polyakov asked sharply, looking exceedingly annoyed.
“No, not at all. I’m merely stating that if you leave this field hospital defenceless and open to attack, it might not be there anymore when you need it. Consider that we are deep in enemy territory. Our situation is precarious at best, even if the Germans were to surrender tomorrow. All I’m saying is that me and Private Malenko here would be far more useful remaining here. That was also Major Gruzinski’s reasoning when he assigned us here after the rest of our unit was killed.”
There was a tense beat of silence during which a vein on Colonel Polyakov’s forehead started ticking dangerously. He regarded them with deadly silence while his face grew darker and darker until he looked like a kettle on the verge of boiling over. Then, he started screaming.
“I don’t care! I know what’s being said about you lot here; you’re nothing but subversives and degenerates, spared only as long as your usefulness still exceeds your faults! Your days of weaselling around regulations are done, Comrade Petrov. I have my orders, and I obey them. So I don’t care whether there’s two or twenty of you, I don’t care whether your words have impressed Major Gruzinki or even Marshall Zhukov himself; you’re going to Finow! In fact, you’ll be coming with me right now! Pack your gear! You have ten minutes!”
“Colonel Polyakov, I really…”
“Five minutes!” he roared. Lt. Petrov met his gaze evenly, and seeing that the other man would not be moved, he straightened and resigned himself. Stas followed him reluctantly, muttering that he’d ‘survived Stalingrad for the sake of fuck’ and how this was ‘a great big barrel of goat shit’.
They never came back from that battlefield. Kolya got worse seemingly in the same measure that Yasha improved. Even though physically he healed well, it seemed that mentally he was descending into a dark and lonely place. Not even the victory celebrations after the German surrender on May 8th could pull him out of it. If possible, it only gnawed away more at him, sapping away his will to live steadily. At first, it didn’t help that he wasn’t allowed to return home. Apparently there was always someone more deserving or in greater need, always someone worthier. Their little camp was dissolved at the begin of the occupation, the wounded – Kolya and Yasha among them – reassigned to a big field hospital in the south of Berlin. There was a big lake within walking distance. Yasha tried tirelessly to make Kolya accompany him, to distract him from wallowing in his dark thoughts. In the beginning, Kolya just went along in order to escape the constant nagging that would ensue if he declined, hopping along miserably on his crutches. There was nothing for them to do really. No one had much use for two cripples, one of whom was still struggling with the language.
Somehow they killed the time all summer long, settling into an uneventful routine. By September Yasha was basically fluent in Russian, though still frustratingly void of any recollections of his life before his fall, and Kolya seemed to be on the mend. They even interacted a bit with the locals, after a good while of either side observing the other warily from as far away as possible. There was, for example a middle-aged widow who took a shine to the both of them specifically. Perhaps they reminded her of someone she’d known and lost.
Frau Weiland was her name and she supported herself by helping with the camp’s laundry. She lived alone in a small cottage on the way to the lake. As often as they’d stopped there on the way back, they’d even picked up some German, though the language barrier was still intimidating. It was towards the end of October, the last few truly warm days of the year. There had actually been work found for them at camp, so they hadn’t made it around to Frau Weiland’s little cottage for the last few days. She waved at them as soon as she saw them approaching from her garden, excitedly chatting away as she ushered them into a couple of rickety wooden folding chairs. After ensuring that they were all set, she motioned for them to stay put and vanished into the house.
“Did you get any of that?” Kolya asked. Yasha shrugged.
“I think she wants to show us something. Not sure. She speaks very fast.”
Wordlessly, they settled into a few of the mundane tasks around the house and garden before the woman could return to object. Kolya picked up the sock she’d been darning until their arrival and Yasha picked up and filled the watering can to tend to the small vegetable garden. They’d only been at it for a couple of minutes when a noise that somehow managed to convey indignation, confusion and cautious disapproval all at once caught their attention. The source of it was a young woman, almost still a girl, at the garden’s low gate. She looked malnourished and pale, her clothes had seen better days, and her dark hair was mostly hidden beneath a washed-out cloth that was starting to come loose. Her grey-green eyes were full of distrust as she eyed them in their uniforms.
“Na ihr zwei seid ja’n Pärchen wie Max und Klärchen.” She muttered, more to herself than to them. Kolya gave Yasha a blank look, not having understood a word. Yasha shrugged, the sentence too colloquial for him to be able to decipher it’s meaning. The girl looked doubtful and seemed torn between trying to make herself understood, just pushing through without sparing another glance at them, and turning on her heels.
“Gute …uh, gute Tag …Fräulein?” Kolya chanced, smiling shyly. With somewhat more grammatical coherence, Yasha starts explaining that they’re just visiting to help the older lady that lives here, but before he can really make himself understood Frau Weiland re-emerges from her little house, promptly dropping the basket she’d been carrying. As fast as lightning, the girl has pushed open the gate, run between the two men and is flying into the older woman’s arms with a sob. They start talking quietly among each other in rushed German, seemingly unable to let go.
“We should probably leave.” Kolya said quietly, setting aside the sock and grabbing his crutches. Yasha nodded but stayed rooted to the spot watching the two women cling to each other. They had to be family. They had to be. Kolya didn’t have much left in the way of family, and hadn’t heard from them in almost two years. A couple of aunts and cousins, his parents long dead and his only brother fallen at Kursk. Yasha didn’t know who or where his family was, or if they were even still alive, but suddenly he was filled with a deep longing that clenched his stomach and pressed the air out of his lungs. He swallowed hard and tore his gaze away.
“Yes, let’s go.”
“It took the old lady almost ten minutes to notice we’d gone, but she came running after us immediately. Luckily we hadn’t made it that far away yet.” Saitchik explained with a nod to his missing leg. “She insisted we come back so that she could introduce us to her niece.”
“Your future wife.” James remarked. Saitchik smiled softly.
“Yes, that was my Bettina.”
“I took you only about two weeks to fall hopelessly in love with her.” James reminisced. It was one of those diffuse memories that existed as shapeless facts in his brain, inaccessible until tickled forth. Saitchik’s eyes grew a bit dewy.
“I was, and I was very bad at hiding it. She wasn’t very impressed though. It took until much later the following year that she even deigned to give me the time of day. Of course, it was very difficult for women then. She was called all kinds of disgusting things simply for talking to me.”
“You must have convinced her that you were worth the hassle.” James said lightly, and Saitchik smiled wryly, absently twisting his wedding ring.
“You know, there were times I doubted that, when I thought it would be better if I left, but I couldn’t. she was the love of my life. If that isn’t worth fighting for, then what is?”