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The ground is as cruel to his knees as it was back then — when he was called “Governorate”, walked around in a maid dress and dutifully laughed when Ivan joked about “Lithuanian” being a curse word.
The poppies don't grow well. The soil is exhausted. He thinks Ivan tried to grow food here — Olga says it all got frozen dead when summer was too cold. Cursed land. He still tends to it.
He gets up, grunting. His thigh shakes under his slight weight. He stumbles, slowly, to the patch of vegetation.
Tomatoes took, finally. Bell peppers — too. Too early to say. He crushes a bit of cinder in his hands, mixes it well with the soil at the roots. His fingers are stained black — he wipes them on his pants.
Ivan cleaned the buckets. Finally. Screwed the new, sturdy handles on. Tolys has them full. The right one splashes more — onto the paved path, Tolys's pants, everywhere. Tolys waters the plants with a ladle.
“Was it the Germans?” Natasha asks out of nowhere. She stands behind him, her bare toes buried in the early clover. Her dress is inside out. “Or Vanya?”
She knows everything. She probably smelled blood and rot with her beastly nose.
Tolys scoops the water out. There's a fat bumblebee in it — he lets it out with a swish.
“I don't remember,” he lies.
Natasha studies him with her beautiful, dreamy eyes. Him — and then the sky. “The eastern front”, they called it. Natasha always guards the west. He wonders if the girl who clung to his clothes is still alive — the one who cried when he rode away with her, back when he was still in power.
“If you die,” she says, “I'll bury you. I know how.”
At least she is talking now.
She disappears when he starts to pick the slugs off the cabbages. A busybody — here one breath, gone the next. She used to carry around crowns of chamomiles, she carries a knife now. Tolys wisely keeps the distance, firmly stuck among the dill and cabbages.
He has lunch with Raivis and Olga. Just soup today. It's hearty and hot and full of meat. He prays — in his head, because God's name should never be uttered aloud under this dilapidated roof.
“We need someone in the right wing today,” Raivis says apologetically. “There's a leak and my hands are full.”
He eats strawberry jam straight from the jar. Tolys suspects his tea has more than a dash of vodka. Tolys prays for him too.
“Sure,” he says, because what else can he say?
The right wing is climbing the stairs, full of memories of hushed whispers and laughter and juicy rumours, wiped out with German artillery. Straight through the roof and down. There were paintings on the walls — all destroyed, or stacked away like rubbish. Ivan isn't used to looking back.
Tolys's thigh throbs somewhat terrible. He has to pause, twice, to catch his breath. Stairs creak under him — they never did before. There was always someone to fix them.
His room was here before. Before the revolution. Before the war. When he still lived here, a part of the prim and proper crowd in white aprons, armed with soup trays and brooms and clean linens.
Ivan rebuilt it from the rubbish. Of course there is nothing left inside.
The ceiling leaks, indeed. The roof isn't fixed yet. Big fat drops thud loudly, falling into a lopsided basin. Tolys sweats and shakes and climbs the ladder to the attic.
No rain for days, but the attic is cold and sweaty. Tolys mops it slowly, letting the quiet and mundanity hold. He hums a bit. Something silly. Something about not being home for long. “Fly, you soldier’s soul, to the kindest girl.” He tries to remember something else, but can't, not really. “I'm in love and embarrassed in front of you.”
All Soviet. All war songs. La-la-la, Moldovan partisan squad. Funny nothing of his own stayed. Probably burnt with his archives.
His thigh feels hot and swollen. He makes his way to his bedroom just in time — his knee buckles a bit and he grinds his teeth tightly. The pain will pass. It always does.
He breathes in and out, tests his weight a bit. There is no point in collapsing now. He has things to do.
“Have…” he says, “have you eaten yet? Haven't seen you at lunch.”
Ivan — a burning dot of his cigarette in the darkness — makes a non-committal sound Tolys's doesn't exactly know how to interpret. Ivan's boots are on Tolys's table. His ledger is pushed away.
“Drop your pants,” Ivan says curtly. His breath rattles in his throat.
Tolys does.
Ivan sweeps Tolys's papers off. His books, his pens. A photo in a painted frame. He grabs Tolys's arm and drags him to the table, making him sit. Tolys's thigh flares up with pain — it escapes his clenched teeth, it escapes his dry eye. A single tear rolls down his cheek.
Ivan doesn't mind. He cuts the wet cloth away — the stench is sweet and sick and warm with fever. The cloth is off and Tolys feels movement.
They are fat and white and wet. They move slowly. Ivan pushes them away to inspect the edge of the wound, and a couple of them roll off Tolys's thigh, wiggling on the table surface.
“They are just eating the dead bits,” Ivan says. “You are still alive, Tolya.”
Tolys doesn't want to look. He doesn't. He sees them moving — mindlessly, mundane, just picking at the infected, inflamed flesh. They are deep in the gash. They are so natural Tolys doesn't feel them crawling over him. He turns away. Let Ivan see.
Ivan scoops them out with a rag. He isn't rough about it, but neither does he stall. He bothers the wound and Tolys sobs soundlessly. Sweat rolls off his temples. Maggots roll off his thigh.
There is a glove at his mouth.
“Bite down,” Ivan says, so Tolys does. The thick leather of the glove smells like fire and tastes like machine oil.
Ivan splashes his wound with his flask and Tolys breathes through the pain and tears.
“It's okay,” Ivan says, finally. His pale eyes are clear like a winter sky. “Hold on.”
He gives Tolys his hand to hold. Some of his fingers still miss nails. Tolys holds for dear life, and yowls, when hot iron seals his flesh shut.