Мария Старожицкая - Навіщо. What For

Veles

I was held prisoner for a hundred days. Then the big prisoner exchange happened and ‘everyone’ was supposed to be released. I was. Until then they forced me to work repairing buildings that had been bombed. They treated us like slaves, slave labour. They gave us porridge once a day. When they made us work in the fields they put something in the food, some kind of mild sleeping pills that made us drowsy, so that we wouldn’t escape. It made me feel like a zombie. One day some guy just started pounding me. His son had been captured and killed. Finally someone dragged him off me. I ended up in hospital with my head practically smashed in. Now I can barely see out of my left eye, and can hardly hear out of my left ear. But I volunteered to fight again, this time with another battalion. They take guys like me even if we’re half blind and half deaf, because we know this war better than anyone. I have no other choice right now. Whatever I do, I’m drawn to the front. That’s where my home is, it’s controlled by the enemy. That’s where my fallen comrades are. Some never got a proper burial. Friends keep trying to set me up with women, they want me to get married. But I can’t. Maybe I just haven’t met my soul mate? I’m not going to get married just to get married. That would be dishonest. I’ve already spent too much time being dishonest with myself. I wanted to be a pilot but became a policeman. I loved Tanya but married Valentyna. I was honest with the state, and for my efforts ended up with no apartment. Oh well, any way you slice it, I’m alive. And that means I might still be useful for something. I want a son. ‘Samolot’ used to say that volunteers should collect and freeze their sperm before going to the front. That way, even if they get killed, their wives or sweethearts could still have their children. Or any women who wanted to have brave and handsome children. They’ll be needed once the war ends…

Laurel

I’m the only one who made it out in one piece. Or, actually, picked up by a guy driving by who took me to safety. He saw me on the river bank. I’d crawled out and was just laying there. Watching the clouds drift by. One of them looked like an airplane. And I remember thinking, ‘that’s Samolot sending me a message.’ This guy was driving past and saw me. He took one look at the insignia on my fatigues, and without saying a word, he picked me up. And drove me through all the checkpoints, explaining that I was a volunteer who’d made it out of the Ilovais’k Cauldron. I was in no shape to talk. This guy drove me all the way to Dnipropetrovs’k, to the military section where I was supposed to surrender my machine gun. I was just carrying it, it didn’t have a strap anymore. I asked them to pry my fingers away from it, they seemed to have fused with it. Taking off my uniform was equally hard. It was stiff with blood, from when I was lying next to the Poet. Even the river hadn’t washed away that blood. And then Nastya appeared. She looked to bright, so happy. I took her hand, pulled her towards me. Then I thought, wait, she’s so clean and here I am reeking of war, death, horror. Something’s wrong here. Or, maybe, it’s finally right? I wanted to find that guy who guided us out of the Cauldron, Theseus. I called to thank him, but he seemed a bit icy on the phone, so I didn’t push it. Strange guy… It’s like he felt for us, but maybe not… This past year seems like one long movie. Like a big hallucination. Some of our guys went into politics, ran for office in the election. We all stuck together. Demanded prisoner exchanges so that the rest of our guys would be released. Asked that the bodies of those killed would be found and given a proper burial. We kept saying, ‘One for all, and all for one.’ And for a while it was true. Then people started finding jobs, getting married, having children. Others began drinking... It’s so important that they didn’t die in vain. That we do transform our country. We have everything we need to make that happen. Everything… Yet fewer and fewer people are talking about this now. The establishment, the government, seems to have gone completely silent on this. All they do is hand out little medals and some money to families of those heroes. It’s like they’re paying them off for the betrayal at Ilovais’k, for the memory of the volunteers that they can’t seem to shake off. Me and Nastya… Nope, I won’t say anything. We’ll see what fate has in store for us. We’re not together. And we’re not apart. One day when a dark cloud was hanging over me I asked her why she saved me. Maybe I’d be better off with the guys who didn’t make it, Bani, Red, Samolot.. Maybe it should have been me not the Poet. I’d be turning flags right side up in the sky. So that the yellow remains above the blue… You know, things usually work out for me, but not in the way things happen for others. No matter how many people say that Nastya and I are just too different, I know that we come from the same place. I just need to sail solo for a bit longer. I know everything will turn out OK. That the war will end. And that someday, Nastya and I will have kids together. We’ll have three, two boys and a girl. The boys will have dark hair like their mother, and the little girl will be blonde. Or maybe, the other way around. Either way, it doesn’t matter. We’ll have a house by the river, I’ll build it myself, out of wood, with a real fireplace. I’ll sit and stare into the fire… Fire. Water. The meaning of life. What Strilka never understood…

The Poet

There’s a legend, or a story, that before World War II someone scribbled, “If I was a real poet, I’d know how to stop the war,” somewhere on a wall. The wall was in Italy. Or was it in Germany? If I was a real poet, and not just called that by my army buddies, I’d know the magic word that would make the killing stop. I’d be saying it over and over. Believe me. When I was still alive, that is. Although it seems that officially my life seems to be continuing. The enemy dumped whatever was left of my body into a common grave near Chervonosil’sk, along with the remains of my army buddies. Maybe someday, someone will come looking for the spot where my last remains ended up. But my parents refuse to give a DNA sample to check for my remains. They’re holding onto the news that I’m missing in action, and taking comfort in that. They keep telling themselves, ‘maybe he’s in Chechnya, a prisoner. Maybe he’s become a servant in a rich family. Being well fed, respected. He’d phone if he could… Or maybe he crossed the border, picked up the documents and took on the identity of some dead soldier… And as soon as the war is over he’ll come back’… My mother and father keep inventing stories for themselves. What can I do, the old folks need stories. If I was a real poet… but I don’t have the talent. I could never concoct a story like the one I lived through. Being surrounded on all sides. Betrayal. Hatred. This cauldron. So many different people thrown into it. None of us could have imagined it… . And can you believe it? The year after I was killed, my poetry was published! My friends made it happen. They published all the poems that I wrote while fighting. And after it appeared, some newspaper got a letter from a prison inmate, with one of my poems. A Russian officer sent it in. My killer saved my poem. In his letter to the newspaper he wrote, “This is the Poet’s last written piece of work. By chance, I happen to have it.” But it was by chance that he killed me. And that wasn’t my last poem. Just one that I happened to jot down. Here’s the last one.

The Poet begins to recite. The other fighters join in, and each one recites a few lines.

The Poet

War is a reflection of peace in a crooked mirror.