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we have fought in this war for seventy years, we were taught that life is a fight
but according to latest intelligence data, all this time we've been fighting ourselves
The man by the window seemed like a black gap in space.
It became clear why, on the way from the train to the main entrance of the staff headquarters, the lieutenant seemed to be more nervous than Luka himself. His hands were shaking, beads of sweat glistened on his forehead despite the crunch of snow underfoot.
"New to the post, huh?" Lukа said just to annoy him.
"Shut up!" The lieutenant shook him by the shoulder. So he was new.
Rumors about the general varied in their degree of monstrosity, but the general picture was clear. Usually, the more rumors there were, the more unfounded they were, but something told Luka: not this time.
He saw the bags on the way to headquarters. They swayed on the lampposts, already covered with ice. One could understand the lieutenant: they said the general had shot his predecessor on the spot for some minor error.
The general's staff headquarters were located inside the railway station. The once spacious main hall was now completely occupied by the staff officers of the Southern Army Corps. The lieutenant led Luka further into the hall, past the tables covered with portable stoves, field telephones, typewriters, maps with flags and papers, and signallers shouting "Se-vas-to-pol!" into their phones, to where the buffet had once been, where a tall figure stood by an unusually large window. The busy hum of the staff hardly reached the buffet corner, as if the entire station was afraid to even speak in that direction. The frozen glass glowed with the electric blue of the lanterns and sometimes flashed, as if enflamed, with the reflections of passing trains. The figure did not move.
To tell the truth, Luka was scared.
He had escaped so often all to be caught so stupidly. What was he going to do? What did it cost him to abandon a couple of privates, him, with his best flying squadron? Where did it take him, why? Luka stood and considered the options — what could be done, how it could be done... tactics, manoeuvres... to hell with the tactics. He had no regrets.
"So it was you who blew up the "Star," said the man by the window, finally turning to face him.
They said that the general had been poisoned by chlorine during the German war. Perhaps his voice had once been resonant, but those days were gone. He spoke as if someone had scraped a nail across a school blackboard, only lower and harsher, turning into a rasp.
His face was not visible, and Luke was grateful for that. It was almost completely hidden by a mask, but not like the ones made abroad for those disfigured in the war. The craftsmen made the masks by hand, painstakingly painted the eyes and mouth, added eyelashes and eyebrows, even twirled the moustache. The general's mask had only two cutouts for the eyes. It was not covered with paint, exposing its metal with no attempt to pass for a human face.
"A rather disappointing way to get caught," said the general. There were no insignia or badges on the black overcoat; Luka did not even know if the general was really a general, or if it was a nickname that came with ‘beast,’ ‘hangman,’ and ‘devil.’ "We do not even have your name yet."
"Couldn't leave my men to you. Everyone knows what you do to them," said Luka.
"We interrogate them," said the general, almost melancholically, "Or hang them, nothing special. Do you think I personally tear off the prisoners' legs?"
"Will you tear mine off?"
"We will see," the general nodded towards a chair. "Sit down, we need to talk."
Luka glanced warily at the chair.
"The legs have not been sawn," the general remarked and let out a dry laugh, although it sounded as if his lung had burst.
Luka sat down. The legs were indeed intact. Now the general loomed even larger, looking like a two-metre-tall black cut in the chilly station hall. Only now did Luka notice his breathing, wheezy yet steady like an automation. If these were truly the effects of a chemical attack, it was a miracle that the general could still breathe, let alone talk or give orders.
He didn't want to notice all these details. What difference did it make who gave the order to shoot him, who hung him from a lamppost? Go ahead with your conversation, intimidate, torture, tear off the legs, or whatever you do to prisoners, especially the one who blew up the Star. But Luka couldn't help himself: he was drawn to the general like to a mirage in the desert, itching to catch up with something nameless, something that was only visible out of the corner of his eye. Wanted it as much as he wanted to put a bullet in the bastard's head.
The Crimean Devil, that's what they called him. The Hangman. His brief, ruthless bulletins from the front were secretly read even among the Reds.
"Now, boy. Is this yours?" The general raised his hand, and the coveted pin flashed in his black glove.
Luka had fallen asleep clutching it in his fist for so many nights that he could recognise it blindfolded or among thousands of others. A white star on the blue enamel, the longest of its rays ending in a sharp blade. All that remained of his father. When it was confiscated during his captivity, he missed it more than his knife or his revolver.
"It's none of your business," Luka said through clenched teeth.
"Then I shall throw it away."
The black hand reached for the window, and Luka couldn't help but cry out.
Slowly, the general moved away from the window and toward Luka, coming so close that Luka could smell the snow and wool from his overcoat. His pale blue eyes peered like the barrel of a rifle, intent and unnerving.
"Who sold it to you? I hope you did not steal it. Is such dishonour common in your ranks?"
Luka's throat burned with anger.
"Dishonourable? Me? Like you don't know who it belonged to!" That bastard clenching the star in his heavy fist, as if it weren't because of him... twenty years alone, twenty years… The heat of the Karakum desert hit him in the face like an exhale of a great beast.
The general's surprise hung in the air with an almost physical weight. He narrowed his eyes and turned his head slightly, suddenly appearing unnerved for the first time during the entire interrogation.
"What does it matter to you?"
"Me? You killed him!"
"Who?"
Mere mockery, or had he really forgotten amid the string of corpses?
"My father," Luka squeezed out, trembling with rage. "You put a blade under his ribs and left him to die in the trench!"
The general clenched his hand into a fist so tightly that Luka feared the pin would break. He could hear the leather of the glove creak in the sudden silence.
"Your father," the general said very slowly.
Behind the wall, the station clock struck six in the evening. Luka closed his eyes, noticed in the corner of his mind a waltz somewhere in the distance. Before October came to wash the old away, cadets in military academies probably danced to such waltzes, their polished boots shining, kissed the hands of ladies... Did his father dance? And the general? What nonsense was going through his head. Soon they shall hang him from a lamppost, and he shall dance.
"Surname?" The general's voice grew weak, and part of the word disappeared altogether: "Suh-na."
Luka gave his surname.