“How very bourgeois of you,” Kolya answered in Russian. “Or is it me being bourgeois? Standing here and talking to you while I am possibly digging my own grave… and you there, shaking your spear at me!”
Vasily glanced up at him, to see whether Kolya was being insolent or clever. The young intellectual seemed to be doing neither and both. More so, it seemed that he was merely in love with the sound of the words. He waited again for a response from Vladimir, but only got a threatening snap of the gun against the brute’s side in response. Then the gun and the brute walked away and made their way down the line of graves, stepping gingerly around the series of body bags laid out near the holes.
Kolya bent his nose down to look at Vasily over his glasses and winked. He gave a faint little whistle and then took his shovel in hand and slowly began to press himself into service. As he did, Vasily looked up at the black bag in front of him and noticed the hastily scribbled name on the surface of the bag, shimmering in white against the black of the bag in the light of the moon and the snow.
Volkhov.
He felt a grip of grief and looked over quickly at his mate to see if the older youth had noticed, only to give a short dumb smile before he went back to his digging. He heard a grunt from the hole next to him and the plop of earth land at the top of that heap, followed by the shushing of the tiny aggregate as it separated and began to roll slowly down the small hill, willy-nilly.
There is a feeling of finality, mixed liberally with the morose recognition of the vibrancy and vitality of still being alive, when one is digging a grave for another human. Eyes peer into other eyes and declare firmly to one another that “we are still alive,” and answer back to one another without words the old question, “Why is there existence, rather than the lack of it?”
I dig and therefore I am.
Digging graves is an effective antidote to the most foolish of philosophies. Denying existence is for men who’ve never dug a grave for a friend.
They finished the digging part as the night settled into the a.m., and wearily climbed out of the graves and stood around waiting for whatever was to come next. They assumed the un-digging part would come next—the burying of the dead—but that part would have to wait.
What came next was the figure of Mikail, walking quickly across the snow, calling out to Vladimir who met him halfway along his path. The group could faintly hear what seemed to be an argument emanating from the two men as they approached. Vasily stood near the back of the group, farthest away from the two men, and watched as Mikail waved his hands at Vladimir’s head-shaking. Not from any words he could hear, but from the image of the two arguing, Vasily got the word picture of violent reason butting heads with reasonless violence.
As they drew closer, the argument ceased, and Vladimir commanded the youths to follow him. “We have to go to the church to address a disturbance,” he said, as if that statement fully briefed the group to his satisfaction.
Vasily began walking in the direction of St. Olaf’s, only to feel a hand grab his arm, his sleeve riding up on his shoulder, and when he turned, he found Mikail standing behind him.
“Stay with me a while,” said the stocky young man, pleasantly, and in Russian. “They’ll be back in a moment. I have no doubt that Vladimir will be persuasive.”
He led Vasily to one of the graves and indicated with a wave that they should have a seat on the pile of earth next to it. Vasily sat down, and Mikail sat beside him in an almost friendly way, as if they were old friends just relaxing on a break from their labors.
They watched the group of youths in the distance, trudging across the snow with Vladimir at the head, and Vasily reflexively inhaled the night air, waiting for whatever Mikail had planned for him. There has to be a plan. Mikail wasn’t here sitting with him next to an open grave just to chit-chat. Idle conversation was not the bulldog’s forte. Since they’d been boys, Vasily had come to expect that, while he could almost never predict what it was, Mikail always had a reason or a plan for whatever he chose to do. So when he finally spoke, Vasily was surprised.
“Did you know that I had a brother?” Mikail said, matter-of-factly, reaching down into the cold dirt with his bare hand and letting the soil sift through his fingers.
Vasily looked at him, his eyes indicating that this was new information, and puzzling at the sudden weariness in Mikail’s voice. He waited for him to go on, and in time, he did.
“Yes, comrade,” the bulldog said, nodding his head. “You and I, we have something in common… we’ve both lost loved ones. You, with your father when you were young… and me, with my brother when I was younger still.”
Vasily didn’t answer. The subject of his own father’s death to disease was common knowledge in Warwick, as was the fact that he’d been raised by a single mother until she, too, had died, but he didn’t even think about it much anymore, and he certainly didn’t speak of it.
Vasily never suspected that Mikail was anything but an only child—raised by a man with a love of drink and a woman without even the most basic of motherly instincts. He’d always thought this to be the root cause of Mikail’s aggression. Even as a boy, Mikail was known to lash out at everyone around him, probably because he’d never truly felt love at home, but maybe that was just more of the world’s philosophy that would disintegrate in the presence of an open grave. It just seemed to make sense to Vasily that, being treated like a bastard child by his parents, Mikail had inevitably become a bastard.
“Yes. It’s true. I had a brother. A twin. Not identical, but a twin nonetheless. My brother was born dead, after me, with the umbilical cord tight around his neck.” Mikail took a handful of dirt, and stared closely at it as he let it tip from the side of his hand. It shushed down the incline of the pile.
“I don’t think my parents ever forgave me.” He sighed. “They treated me as if I strangled him myself…” Mikail grabbed another fistful of dirt before continuing. “… And maybe I did. I don’t have the luxury of any memories of the time.”
Vasily looked over at Mikail and suddenly realized how small this bulldog was in stature, despite his obvious attempts to build himself up. He was heavier than Vasily, muscular and fit, but about the same height, and both were much smaller than almost every other youth in their circle. He had a tiny red scar at the base of his forehead, just above his left eye.
“My brother’s death was the reason my father began to drink,” Mikail declared with certainty. “Did you know that at one time my father was one of the most promising candidates here at the charm school?” Mikail lifted his eyebrows as if the thought of it was surprising. The dirt slid from his hands yet again. “Oh yes! Such potential lost to empty bottles. And my mother… well… I’m told she was lovely. Not loving, perhaps, but lovely. But that was back before the bottles began to fly.” Mikail scooped up two handfuls of the cold, cold dirt and rubbed them together in his hands.
“Then I came along, and then my brother did not, and somehow my parent’s whole world fell apart, and mine did as well. It was a shame, you know? To be born in amongst the pall and aroma of death, and to have life cut down in front of you before it’d even begun. Surely you know something of that.”
Mikail fidgeted with his hands, which were now empty of dirt, and contradictorily he now began picking at a string that had come loose on his shirt.
“It’s the reason I have to be so tough, you know. Being small, like you, like me, one has to fight all the time. Just to get people to pay attention, you have to throw a fit and raise hell.” Mikail punctuated this statement with a fist, clasped tight and brought up before his face.