EXTRACT

EPISODE 1938

– Whore, – whispered the woman. – Right under my mother's roof... with a Bolshevik.

Now she pressed her other eye to the keyhole, as if hoping to see a more acceptable picture in the dark room. But ​again, she only had silhouettes of naked bodies in front of her. She bit her lip angrily. Then she slowly launched ​herself. Her gaze fell on the glittering ornaments hanging from the Christmas tree hanging above the kitchen table. It ​occurred to her that one of the balls might fall from the end of the twig. She moved it. She crossed the dark room to ​the bench but did not sit down. She was looking at the bedroom door as if it were a border. However, she did not know ​whether she was not allowed to cross this important border, or, on the contrary, she had to.

After a while, she returned to the door with a few brisk steps. But the moment her fingers gripped the doorknob, she ​hesitated again. She slowly withdrew her hand and wiped it on her apron, as if she had touched something impure. She ​crossed the kitchen again and slid down onto the bench. The wood creaked. The woman looked intently at the door, but ​when it did not open, she threatened it with her fist and hissed in disgust:

– Animals in heat. Nothing will disturb you.

She shook her head and sighed.

– But this is my house, – she said almost out loud. – And my daughter.

The girl ran her face over the man's chest. Stiff hairs tickled her mouth. She inhaled a sharp male scent. When she ​reached her armpit, she pulled away:

– We must figure out how to bathe you so that mommy doesn't notice anything.

- One hundred? – asked the man.

– I'll give you a bath. I will wash.

– Change to wash nada? – laughed the man. – I'm getting snow...

– Where is the snow! I will bathe you in warm water like a baby.

– Baby? – repeated the man.

He raised himself on his elbow to look the girl in the face. He looked at her in the white moonlight that penetrated ​through a small arc.

– When the war ends, so will the child.

The girl turned on her side and clung to the man. She put her bent leg on his stomach.

– And when will the war end?

– Every day we will kill all the Germans!

– I guess not all of them! There are also Germans living down in the city, and they are good people.

The man kissed her. But suddenly he got up and pressed his face to the arch.

– Germans! – he shouted.

He opened the window and crawled out naked. The girl behind him stuck out a machine gun.

A split second later, the door opened, and the mother ran into the room.

– Shut up, you fool. The Germans are coming!

But the girl just stood there. She clasped her hands, and her lips were already whispering the first words of prayer. ​The mother pushed her away, jumped to the arch and closed it. She hastily collected the scattered parts of the Russian ​uniform.

– Halt! – came from outside.

Immediately there were shots and commands in German. The girl pressed her face to the arch, but her mother pulled her ​away again:

– Shit, put on a shirt and lie down! Pretend to sleep. You never saw him. We have nothing to do with this.

The shooting did not stop.

The naked girl was kneeling on the bed with her head resting on her knees and mechanically praying.

– Mother of God, hear me and help. Mother of God, hear me and help. Mother of God, hear me and help, she repeated.

Her mother, with her arms full of military clothes, was staring at her bare back.

– Will you listen to the sinner and help the Bolshevik?! – she said angrily.

Their eyes met. Both realized at that moment that the shots were no longer being heard.

– Mom, they killed him for me, – whispered the girl.

– Get dressed and lie down. You can't help him anymore, either he ran away, or they caught him, - ordered the mother.

Slowly, like a child realizing her helplessness, the girl lay down. The mother sat on the edge of the bed and covered ​her daughter's nakedness with a thick quilt.

Spakruky caressed her cheek:

– The Germans can come at any moment. They will interrogate us. You know nothing! You were woken up by gunfire. I ​throw his clothes in the trash. And finally get dressed, bro!

At dawn, the mother went out into the yard. She took a shovel from the shed and started shoveling snow. It fell a ​little during the night, but the tracks under the arch of the daughter's room were still visible. She dug a few times ​with the shovel until she reached the ground.

She pressed her face to the glass. The daughter was still kneeling by the bed and praying.

The woman then started following the tracks. She alternately shoveled snow or piled it into small piles. She went ​through the yard and garden to the fence. One slat was rolled out. The woman picked her up and with all her might ​swatted at the big pile of sawed wood near the barn.

– We've had this hole in the fence for a few years now, Herr Offizier. No and no to fix it. You know, when a woman is ​without a man, you can tell on the farm. A dog's life, officer. Hundeleben, Herr Offizier. Frau ohne Mann... Der Frau ​ohne das Mann... - she was preparing what she would say to the Germans.

She threw a few shovelfuls of snow from the garden onto the tracks behind the fence. Then something on the hillside ​caught her eye.

– My God, – she whispered, – let me just have fun.

In the distance, something blue was sticking out of the snow.

The cottage stood on the edge of the village. It was quite possible that apart from her and the German soldiers, no ​one else knew about the dead body in the snow yet. The hillside could not be seen from other yards, and it was now ​forbidden to go into the forest for wood. The woman told herself that if the Germans didn't take him away by noon, she ​would go to the parish priest and ask him for help. After all, burial matters are his concern.

He won't say anything to his daughter. She forbade her to leave the house and will do it again. And he must turn away ​anyone who wants to go to the corpse outside their windows. He will protect his daughter. She is still young; she will ​forget in time. She overslept, but that happened to others too. The war will soon end, and the girl will look into ​another. He will find someone who knows how to forgive. And all this will remain only in the most secret memories, ​hidden as under the snow.

The woman took one briefer look at the hillside, but a distant rumble of thunder now caught her attention. The storm ​in December surprised her. Then it thundered again, and she suddenly realized that this was the rumbling the women had ​been talking about yesterday after mass. Cannonball. The queue is approaching. The woman blessed herself.

X X X

The sun was still weak, and could not even dry the ground soaked by the night's rain until lunchtime. Zuzana was ​kneeling in the wet grass. She held an open book in her hands, although she already knew the prayer for her dead ​husband by heart. Her red eyes from crying were fixed on a large pile of recently piled earth.

Even after much persuasion, the German command did not allow the parish priest to bury the Russian partisan in the ​consecrated ground of the cemetery. The guys from the village had to dig a hole in the frozen ground just below the ​mountain, right where he was shot. They wrapped the body in a tarpaulin and buried it in a hastily assembled coffin ​made of rough boards. But the priest consecrated the grave anyway. Bolshevik or National Socialist, before God we are ​all equal, shouted a protesting guardsman who was overseeing the burial.

When the line passed, Zuzana's first thought was that the grave should be properly walled up. She knew that her mother ​would not give a penny for it, so she decided to go to the people from the new national committee. She was only ​worried about whether they would want to take Alexei down to the cemetery or perhaps even to the Soviet Union. She was ​close to him here under the mountain. She could visit him every day, sometimes three times. Of course, the mother was ​angry, she was worried about what people would think when Zuzana publicly mourned her Bolshevik lover like this.

But Zuzana didn't care. In a few weeks, everyone will see that she is expecting a baby anyway. Little Alexei. It will ​be a boy. Alexey Alexievich. Zuzana had been looking for the words to tell her mother for a long time.

When Zuzana was returning to the house by the hillside, she noticed that three men were walking towards her from their ​garden. Two were Soviet soldiers, the red shoulder pads on their uniforms shone in the cold March sun, the third was a ​militiaman, a civilian dressed in village clothes with a red armband. Just so that they don't want to take Alexei away ​somewhere, crossed her mind again.

– Are you Zuzana Lauková? – asked the militiaman when they met in the middle of the meadow.

– Yes, you know, – answered Zuzana.

The man pursed his lips contemptuously:

– You must give an explanation on a certain matter; you will come with us.

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