Nicola Pierce - City of Fate

It was a noble performance, the boys smiled and nodded as their parents, siblings, grannies and anyone else waved gaily, each doing their best to convince the other that all was as it should be. Only the teacher stared straight ahead, determined, no matter what, that he would not look back, and, in doing so, he accidentally obeyed Stalin’s order, ‘Not One Step Back’.

Astatue of six children: three boys, three girls, laugh, sing and dance their way round and around, in a merry circle that can never be broken. In the centre of the Barmaley Fountain is a large crocodile, an alarming sight to be sure, but the children take no notice of him nor his long jaws of sharp teeth. Maybe that’s how to stay safe: keep laughing and dancing no matter what. It had certainly worked for the statue since it was the only thing for miles around that had not been destroyed by the German bombs.

Peter leads Yuri to the Barmaley Fountain every day, or as close as they dared to get to it. It sits in front of the city’s main train station or what’s left of it now. The building was the location for many a prolonged battle, which sometimes the Russians won and sometimes the Germans did. This was war: bits of concrete space being fought over again and again. At the height of the fighting, the train station changed hands fifteen times in five days.

Yuri was fascinated by Peter’s reverence for the silent children, stuck forever in a state of supreme delight. Their flamboyant poses jarred with the destruction around them. At least, that was one way of looking at it, but a more positive interpretation was that they were wonderfully defiant in the face of so much destruction.

Every day Peter made the same comment, ‘They are still playing, Yuri!’

Did he really expect them to be doing anything else, or maybe he expected them to be gone, like his mother and his apartment block. ‘Yes, I see them,’ said Yuri, as usual.

Yuri’s thoughts were on food. Allowing Peter a few minutes to stare solemnly at the fountain, he looked around, wondering where best to try find anything at all to eat. Some days, when Yuri was feeling a little low, he resented Peter for not knowing that they needed to eat, that they needed constantly to find food and shelter. At times like this Yuri actually envied the boy having someone older like him around. He would not have considered himself to be big-headed or egotistical but still, there it was, as far as Yuri was concerned, Peter was very lucky indeed.

The shooting sounded as though it was a few broken streets away from where they were. At some point they just stopped listening to it; the noise had become like a dog that barks the same boring bark for hours and hours. It drives you demented for the first hour but then you hardly notice it after that.

‘Come on, Peter. It’s time to go. Say goodbye. Keep your head down, alright? The guns are close by.’

All these orders were too much for Peter; he felt he had to make a stand, ‘I know that!’

Yuri didn’t bother to apologise for stating the obvious. He found it comforting to keep talking while wondering what to do. They headed away from the fountain and the shooting, walking for a while before reaching an area where bits of houses still tottered. There had to be something to scavenge; every little bit of food couldn’t just have disappeared.

They stopped in front of the first one. Peter looked bored while Yuri cast his eyes around for anything of interest, quickly spying something that made him say, ‘Let’s try in here.’

The boy didn’t say a word but allowed himself to be helped over the smashed-up garden wall. Bits of torn, dirty flowers, pinks, yellows and purples, peeped out here and there from beneath the rubble of tiles and shards of glass. Feigning disinterest, Peter, nevertheless, glanced quickly all around him.

Meanwhile, Yuri approached a lone apple tree that was still in one piece. The lower branches had been plucked bare but above them, quite a bit above them, he could see apples, enough to make a climb worthwhile.

As Yuri stared upwards, Peter found half a charred bench to sit on. ‘It’s nice here’ was his only remark.

Playing along, Yuri took the time to see what he meant by this. The house was in ruins, with most of its walls sitting in uneven piles all over the garden. ‘Well, it used to be,’ Yuri said, not wanting to lie. ‘Look, I’m going to climb this tree and get those apples at the top there. You just sit here and don’t move, unless you see soldiers. If you do, go hide in those bushes there. Just don’t shout out my name. Okay?’

‘I like apples!’ announced Peter agreeably and gave his friend a quick smile.

Nervous about whether he could do this, Yuri simply nodded as he took off his jacket and said, ‘Mind that for me, and, if you have to go to the toilet, don’t wee anywhere near it.’

Peter was dumbfounded, as if he would ever do something like that, ‘I’m not a baby!’

Yuri had his doubts about this but had no time to argue the matter. He could have reminded Peter that he had, during a particularly bad night, peed all over their shoes.

Returning to the foot of the tree, Yuri reached up to the nearest, thickest branch and hung on it while he hoisted the rest of his body towards it, using the shredded trunk like a ladder, walking his feet unsteadily up it. Actually, he was a pretty good climber, in spite of his bad leg, and had regularly won climbing competitions against Grigori and Anatoly because he took his time. Anatoly always raced ahead and then got himself stuck while Grigori was much too lazy to go beyond a couple of branches. Anatoly would tell him he was too fat to climb, at which Grigori would sulk, until Yuri won, and then they’d go and find something else to do.

Yuri hadn’t thought about his friends in a while. He’d lost sight of them that day the planes came, believing they were somewhere in front of him as they ran into the city. They surely went to find their own mothers and, in doing so, missed out on having a slice of his birthday cake. He, his sister and his mother had eaten it in little pieces over the next couple of weeks. Yuri hoped his friends were okay somewhere and that they’d get to play with one another again. Anything that had taken place before the bombing seemed so very far away now. Sometimes he couldn’t remember what they looked like. But they had to be okay and maybe one of these days he would bump into them and introduce them to Peter… maybe?

As he moved further up the tree, escaping into its foliage, Yuri began to relax. Hardly realising it, he felt relaxed because he felt safe. Nothing had changed in the world up here. Ants, flies and spiders carried on living their perfectly normal lives, as if Stalingrad had never been attacked. Imagine being an insect for a day. No matter what was going on beyond this tree, they continued to run up and down the branches, and nibble on leaves; there were plenty of them up here. One particular ant caught Yuri’s eye. He had trailed away from his fellow ants and was racing around, inspecting every bump in his path. He knew nothing about bombs or soldiers, and probably knew nothing about being afraid. His life had not been affected in any way by the war, the lucky thing.

The smell was intoxicating. If peace had a smell, it would be like this: fresh, green and full of promise. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could build a tree-house here? thought Yuri. It would make a great fort; I’d be able to see the soldiers coming and would know when to hide, but… what about him? He instantly pictured Peter smashing to the ground, either having rolled off in his sleep or slipped when climbing. He remembered Anatoly trying to outdo him once, and falling when a too small branch refused to take his weight. His arm had bent back the wrong way, the sound of the bone snapping had made Yuri feel sick.