Third time’s the charm for the storyline that refuses to stay dead, Part II (Why the Minnesota setting has run its course)

Just as in real life, sometimes too the places fictional characters call home naturally run their course and are outgrown. It’s not a personal insult or done deliberately and maliciously, but just something that happens as they journey through more of life. That turned out to be true for the Konevs and Minnesota, a state I admit was pretty much randomly chosen as their future home.

Like Ivan, I also had a romantic, idealistic, fantasy daydream of someday living on my very own self-sufficient, 19th century-style farmstead. I idealized the farming lifestyle I read about in so many historical novels, and didn’t understand how much hard work is involved. I also didn’t understand how much farming began to change after the mid-20th century Green Revolution. Even small family farms use modern equipment, and they’re not sitting around the fireplace reading to one another, playing boardgames, and putting on plays when they’re snowed in, nor do they fill their spare time with barn dances, taffy pulls, and quilting bees!

While writing Dream Deferred, it finally dawned on me why Ivan latched onto this dream of becoming a farmer in the Midwest. It wasn’t driven by a genuine passion for either that region or profession, but rather an escape from his abusive father. Midwestern farming country also represented a place where he could keep his family safe from the ugly, cruel reality of the outside world. They only have to interact with one another and their dearest, closest friends out there.

I can’t believe I never realised how unhealthy and creepy it was for their three families to not only all live on the same piece of land, but also build houses for their adult children to move into as soon as they rush home from university with degrees they have no use for as career farmers in the middle of nowhere. That’s like a cult compound!

For whatever reason, I got the idea many years ago that Minnesota has a very high Russian population. I knew there were lots of Swedish and Norwegian immigrants, but thought there was also a large group of Russians. North Dakota would’ve been a far more realistic place to relocate based on that criterion.

Even without that being the reason, Minnesota always felt like a random state that could just as easily have been Ohio, Kansas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Wyoming, Indiana, or even a more rural place in New York State. I never did any worldbuilding about the fictional town of Firebird Fields other than mentioning the church and a few stores, and one scene at a skating rink. It was a self-contained world for the Konevs and their friends.

In The Twelfth Time, Minnesota is a healing escape from the poverty and tenements of New York, as difficult as it is to leave their extended circle of friends and Lyuba’s family behind. They needed that radical reset, particularly to save Lyuba and Ivan’s troubled marriage. It might be boring and cut them off from everyone back in New York but for strategically-planned visits when necessary, but all they can think about is that it’s a chance to start over properly.

In Dark Forest, Minnesota represents a safe beacon of refuge from the ugly, cruel outside world, a reliable place the Konevs can always run to when things in New York or California become too painful. It feels like a violation of this safe space when that outside drama invades and refuses to go away.

In Dream Deferred, the Konevs’ experience in another small town opens their eyes to how out of step they are in that kind of milieu. They’re seen as radical invading outsiders ruining the established local culture with their mere presence. Yet when they relocate to the Twin Cities, they choose St. Paul over Minneapolis because it’s smaller and sleepier. They still can’t shake their emotional attachment to small towns.

But before long, it becomes obvious they’ve outgrown Minnesota and that next-youngest child Sonyechka in particular feels stifled. Every time they visit New York for family celebrations, it feels so much more comfortable. I had plans to introduce three kindred spirit families (Czech, Greek, and Hungarian-Jewish), but what are the odds 1950s St. Paul or Minneapolis would have anything close to the intellectual, artistic concentration of NYC in that era? Sure such people existed, but there weren’t huge clusters of them.

Most cities in this era were built around one or two major industries (e.g., railroad, mills, mining, shipping, meatpacking). This wasn’t an era of choosing what city you wanted to move to based on the arts scene, restaurants, bars, a cute downtown, or historic architecture. If you wanted to connect with lots of other artists or intellectuals, you went to a city like New York or Boston, not St. Paul!

The idea of a large academy combining progressive pedagogy with prep school and European gymnasium education in 1950s St. Paul also now seems a bit unrealistic. The idea came to me to make Stefania Wolicka a New York school instead, when writing about Platosha Lebedeva-Teglyova’s high school graduation. She attends a progressive prep school for girls.

It’s also really expensive and inconvenient to constantly travel 1,000 miles back and forth for weddings, milestone birthdays, baptisms, and graduations. Other special events are missed entirely. If they’re all in the same place, it’ll save a lot of money and time.

And by 1952, Lyuba and Ivan have outgrown the reason they came to Minnesota. They no longer need to hide from the outside world, and they’re very eager to finally rejoin the intellectual, artistic society they were born for.

To be continued.

Celebrating Valentino-related snippets from my books on Rudy’s 97th Jahrzeit

To mark Rudy Valentino’s 97th Jahrzeit (death anniversary), I decided to feature some snippets from various of my books where he’s mentioned. One of the Easter eggs you’ll find in just about all of my books set in the 1920s and afterwards is at least one reference to Rudy. He was such a special person, beautiful both inside and out, and taken from that lifetime far too soon.

You can read longer excerpts from Chapter 23 of The Twelfth Time, “Death of Valentino,” here and here.

Sparky inspected the posters. “I’ve seen some of these people at the movies, except the man in the headdress. He has very deep eyes.”

“You haven’t seen him because he’s been dead for almost twelve years. This is Rudolph Valentino, a famous moviestar from the Twenties. He died when he was only thirty-one, before movies had sound. I was born on the anniversary of his death, and my middle name would’ve been Rudolph had I been a boy. My aunt Lucinda gave me my middle name. She still wanted to honor him in some way, so she found another seven-letter name that started with R, Rebecca.”

“Can you help me find some sheet music, Sir?” Cinni asked. “I’m interested in songs about Rudolph Valentino from the Twenties. He’s my namesake, and I like collecting stuff related to him.”

He responded in a British accent, though continued looking right at Conny. “Is your name Rudolphina?”

“My middle name woulda been Rudolph if I was a boy. When I turned out a girl, my aunt chose Rebecca as a replacement, since it also starts with R and has seven letters. I have lots of posters and photos of Valentino, but no sheet music yet.”

“Miss, I found four songs for you,” Tom called.

Cinni went towards him and took the sheet music, “The Sheik of Araby,” “That Night in Araby,” “There’s a New Star in Heaven Tonight,” and “We Will Meet at the End of the Trail.” Each had a different picture of Rudolph Valentino on the cover.

Jakob fell onto his knees and hugged Rachel’s legs, resting his head against her soft midsection, the way he remembered Rudolph Valentino doing it in one of the silent films Ruud had taken him to see at the film festivals they used to frequent. He felt like a happy little boy when Rachel gently stroked his hair.

“Isn’t it a regular habit of yours to pine for unattainable men?”

“There’s nothing unhealthy about having a crush on someone.”

“What about these?” The lawyer holds up Anastasiya’s two cosmographs.

Anastasiya gasps. “Where did you get those!”

“They’re not the originals. I have my ways.”

“What normal bachelorette has never had unrequited passion for a high-profile man?”

“It’s one thing to put up posters and photographs of your dream men on your walls, and another to make cosmographs like this!”

“I’m not on trial here! And last time I checked, millions of women are also madly in love with Rudy Valentino, and my crush on Grand Duke Dmitriy dates back to when I was a young girl!”

“Those other women don’t make cosmographs of themselves being kissed and embraced by the two men in question. I think we all know now you suffer from delusions, though your delusions are harmless and not enough to have you put away. You may step down.”

“Anastasiya wanted my head on a platter after I gave a bad review to her belovèd Rudy’s latest venture,” Viktoriya chortles, tossing crème de menthe chocolates down her throat. “God, that movie was so awful. After two years away from the screen, you’d think he’d make his return with something a lot better than an overlong, boring costume drama. I could barely keep track of who was who with all those damn powdered wigs and costumes. I understand he was trying to make a point about being true to oneself and image not being everything, but whatever noble theme he was going for got lost in all that damn wig powder.”

“Who do you like more lately, Dmitriy or Rudy?” Viktoriya taunts her. “I’d pick the grand duke over the actor, after that godawful costume drama I had to suffer through. Who finds a guy handsome in a powdered wig and seventeenth century outfit?”

“You little brat, you’re going to pay for that!”

Viktoriya laughs as Anastasiya gets up to chase after her and trips over her high heels and long skirts. “You’re probably the only woman in America under thirty who still walks around in clothes our grandmothers wore.”

Viktoriya shrieks with laughter as she picks up the form and gets an eyeful of the name Anastasiya printed. Katrin looks over her shoulder and starts laughing too.

“What? So what if I didn’t name him after my father or brother and used Russian names instead of Estonian ones? They’re perfectly respectable names.”

“How did we know you’d do something so silly and embarrassing?” Viktoriya asks. “This poor kid will be teased so much when he enters school and other kids find out whom he’s named after.”

“It’s not like they’re the only two people in the world with those names! And it’s in indelible ink, so there’s no changing the name. All you need to do is file it, and we can move on to finding a priest to baptize him.”

“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Oswald asks.

“Princess Anastasiya named her baby Dmitriy Rudolf Voroshilov,” Katrin laughs. “I’m sure you can guess the namesakes.”

Mrs. Oswald starts laughing too. Anastasiya waves her hand dismissively at them and retreats back to her room.

“Instead of being named after your vanaisa and uncle, your namesakes are Grand Duke Dmitriy Pavlovich and Rudolph Valentino,” Katrin says to the baby, struggling to contain her laughter. “At least your mother had the sense to name you for someone and give you names that mean something to her instead of randomly selecting a name.”

“Lyuba did dream Nastya’s kid was named Dmitriy Rudolf,” Viktoriya says. “She dreamt the kid would be left-handed, and so far he mostly sucks his left thumb. We’ll see over time if the rest of her dream comes true, that this kid grows up to marry a future daughter of hers and that she loses the use of her right arm.”

“In addition to tuberculosis, she also has pleurisy,” Dr. Winter continues.

Lyuba shrieks, flashing back to that mob scene at the Frank Campbell Funeral Home and the tragic sight inside. “Pleurisy! That’s what killed Valentino!”

“I wish you were right, but sometimes people remember things that happened before the usual age of memory if they’re traumatic enough,” Darya says. “My first memory is Rudolph Valentino’s wake a month before my second birthday. I can’t remember any details beyond all those screaming, sobbing women, lots of police, broken windows, and Valentino lying dead in a coffin, so pale, sad, and thin. I swear I really remember this and amn’t just saying I do because I’ve heard our family talking about it or saw pictures.”

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! This year’s Halloween-themed excerpt for the holiday comes from Chapter 95, “Andrey Opens the Door,” from Vol. IV of Journey Through a Dark Forest. It’s set in 1945.

Lyuba frets as Darya shuts her suitcase on Halloween morning and heads downstairs. “Are you absolutely sure you want to go a co-ed party Lika’s throwing instead of enjoying Halloween with your family? Look how nicely we decorated the house! You don’t have anything in common with those co-eds, and don’t know them. If you’re worried about men at an unchaperoned party, I’m sure Andryusha will be the only fellow there. Men are really hard to find on campuses these days.”

“It’ll be nice to meet other people my age and get out to do more things. I have to see what campus is like eventually, since I hope to resume my studies, and I want the school closest to home.”

“What will you do with yourself on Thursday and Friday while Lika’s at class? Walk around a strange, large city you don’t know, or wander around a strange campus? What if you get lost, or someone assaults my darling miracle baby?”

“The worst has already happened. A change of scenery will do me good.”

“Since when do you want to go to university so soon? You insisted you couldn’t bear to do that, and now you’re envisioning a near future as a co-ed?”

“It’s not healthy to only interact with family and close friends. I need more outside interests and friends. Whoever heard of a well-adjusted twenty-one-year old still living at home, without a real outside life? Even if I never marry, I deserve my own life.”

Lyuba gently smiles. “Don’t discount the thought of marriage. I once spurned the thought of marriage and motherhood myself, as a reaction against what happened to me, but the right man healed my heart. Perhaps your own future husband is closer than you realize, and he’ll wash away those disgusting memories of that degenerate on the train. After what you went through, you deserve a loving husband, a beautiful wedding, and darling children.”

“No, I’m quite sure I never want any man touching my body.”

“If it’s the right man, you’ll want him to touch you. Trust me on this.”

Darya shakes her head and continues out the door to the waiting wagon. She smiles at her father, and doesn’t attempt to contradict him when he goes on and on about how she’ll miss their family while she’s away for five days, and that she’s not cut out for campus life, or life away from her family period. Once his mind is made up, it’s very hard to convince him otherwise. If he happens to be right, the worst that can happen is Darya will decide campus life isn’t for her, and return home none the worst for wear.

***

Darya pulls into the depot at 3:00, on-edge from travelling by herself on a train for the first time since that incident with the degenerate. She’s shaking as she grabs her suitcase and rushes off the train in search of Andrey and Anzhelika.

“Over here, zaychik,” Andrey calls. “How do you like me in uniform?”

Darya smiles when she sees Andrey in an old Army dress blue uniform. Anzhelika is dressed as a milkmaid. A lot of people are smiling at Andrey and saluting him, blissfully unaware this is a Halloween costume and that he got out of the war without a scratch.

“I got it at a consignment shop the other day. It’s from between the wars, when uniforms were a bit more fancy. I really feel bad for not serving and doing my part to save you and Liivi.”

“You look very nice in uniform, though I hope you don’t wear it everywhere to trick people into giving you better service and more respect. Eventually, decent people will have to realize not everyone was meant to be a soldier.”

Darya follows them onto a streetcar and lets Andrey carry her suitcase when they unboard near campus. She looks around in wonder, absorbing all the sights and sounds. This is nothing next to the Sorbonne, but it’s a big university.

“This is my home, Sanford Hall,” Anzhelika says, indicating a Colonial-style building. “Andryusha lives in Pioneer Hall. I suspect we’ll have to find an off-campus apartment when we’re graduate students. Andryusha will be safer from mean comments in his own home, and for all the new students will know, he’s a returning GI.”

“Lika’s house mother knows you’ll be staying here for a few days,” Andrey says. “She doesn’t know you have tuberculosis.”

“Good. Someday that damned disease will disappear.” Darya steps into the building and identifies herself to the house mother sitting behind a desk, then signs herself in as a guest.

“You’re friends with the draft-dodger?” the house mother asks disdainfully.

“Of course. We’ve been neighbors our entire lives, and I’m only three months younger than Andryusha and Lika. He’s too much of an intellectual to survive the military. It’s a marvel his father survived seven months in a Siberian labor camp, since they’re so similar.”

The house mother makes a dismissive face as they continue on to Anzhelika’s room.

“I hope you’re not too disappointed there won’t be any guys but Andrey at this party,” Anzhelika says as Darya looks around and starts unpacking. “Men are hard to come by here. I’m sure Andryusha isn’t the only fellow with a student deferment, but the only other guys I know of are 4-Fs, much-older students, fellows with families or important jobs, medical students, and guys in the V-12 Navy program.”

“Oh, no, I’m not interested in men. Just between us, as much as I want children, I’ll probably be an old maid, or have a celibate marriage and adopt kids.”

“You’re not interested in marriage?” Andrey tries to put on his best poker face. “Perhaps we can talk about this in psychotherapy. I hope you’re not scared off marriage because someone hurt you worse than we already know about.”

“It’s not important. Something bad happened to me a long time ago, which I don’t want to discuss. It’s too personal and upsetting.”

“Of course. I hope eventually you feel safe enough to bring it up when I’m counseling you. I hate the idea of our zaychik being hurt like that.”

After Andrey is gone, Darya takes out her Halloween costume, a dark blue Victorian-style gown sweeping the floor, with long sleeves, a high neckline, a four-tiered skirt, buttons up the back, and a wide sash. Only a serious, modest costume will do.

“I can’t believe I have the body to wear this,” Darya says as Anzhelika helps her into the dress. “Six months ago, I was a bag of bones, an ageless, sexless hag. Now I look like a woman again.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a boyfriend? It’s been so long since you were abused on that train, and the right man won’t force anything on you.”

“Even if that hadn’t happened to me, there’s still the last few years. Who’d want such damaged merchandise? Normal men want normal women. Don’t try to use the example of my parents. They were both scarred inside.”

“You never know. The right man might surprise you and appear when you least expect it.”

***

Darya holds Anzhelika’s hand as they set out for the campus center that evening. As they’re walking, she keeps imagining this campus becoming her campus and starting her university education all over again, better late than never. She has no illusions about her Sorbonne classes transferring, since she never completed that first semester. True to Anzhelika’s word, there are very few men apart from professors and employees. This could almost be Tatyana’s alma mater Barnard.

The room in the campus center is decorated with die-cut skeletons, lanterns shaped like devils, black cats, jack-o-lanterns, and skulls, candy containers in the shape of scarecrows and jack-o-lanterns, cut-out bats and spiders on the walls, a display of Halloween greeting cards, a die-cut orange moon with owls and leaves in the forefront, and streamers with black cats, pumpkins, and skeletons. Anzhelika’s friends include a clown, witch, American Indian, pirate, Renaissance princess, Pilgrim, fairy, and Bohemian. Darya lets Anzhelika introduce her to everyone, grateful Anzhelika isn’t telling them her true story. All these women know is Darya was in Paris during the war, studied at the Sorbonne briefly, and had her education interrupted by the Nazis.

“What would you like to do first?” Anzhelika asks. “We have bobbing for apples, fortunetelling, cutting a fortune cake, floating a walnut boat, telling ghost stories, and a Ouija board.”

“Cake, please.”

Darya grabs the knife and cuts into a cake with raspberry icing, trying not to cut an overly large piece so she won’t make a bad first impression. She plunges her fork into the cake until she hits the baked-in charm, a ring.

“Marriage within a year!” Anzhelika proclaims. “Before long, you’ll have your pick of eligible bachelors. All the men will be coming home soon, and it won’t take much to turn their heads after being deprived of women for so long.”

Andrey stands back as his sister and the other guests cut into the cake and discover a horseshoe, penny, bells, fleur de lis, anchor, castle, crown, heart, and kite. He’s left with the last slice, which contains a flower.

“New love is blossoming,” Anzhelika interprets.

“With whom?” the fairy laughs. “Maybe your brother will find a college widow or a sad old maid who can’t get any other man. How damn emasculating, to have to marry a much-older woman. The only younger guy I ever dated was just six months younger, and even that felt odd and unnatural.”

The clown hands out dry crusts of bread, giving none to Andrey. “If you eat this at night, any wish you make on it will come true. And if you sleep with your pajamas inside-out, you’ll dream of your future husband. That’s easier than walking backwards out the door at night, picking grass, and putting it under your pillow.”

Andrey stands back as the ladies proceed with fortunetelling and bobbing for apples. He represses his urge to lecture them on how the Ouija board isn’t scientific, knowing full well they won’t care. He’s only here as a sympathy guest because he’s Anzhelika’s twin. At the end of the party, he hangs off in the shadows as Anzhelika’s friends go off to their various dormitories before curfew.

“Now I see what you meant,” Darya whispers. “It was easy for me to condemn you in the abstract, but not after I saw how all this criticism really affects you. You’re a good person, even if you haven’t served.” She hands him her bread. “You deserve to make a really nice wish and have it come true. I don’t know what I’d wish for other than to be normal again.”

“No, you deserve a nice wish too. Maybe you can wish you’ll find a sweetheart soon. I don’t believe in fortunetelling, but you never know if something might come true. I really hope your fortune in the cake comes true.” Andrey tears the crust in half and gives the other piece to Darya. “Sweet dreams. I hope you get whatever you wish for, and maybe even dream of your future husband.”

Day of All Days

To mark the 78th anniversary of D-Day, I decided to post the full text of Chapter 80, “Day of All Days,” of Vol. III of Journey Through a Dark Forest. My sources for researching this chapter included:

World War II Chronicle, David J.A. Stone et al.
World War II Day by Day, Antony Shaw
D-Day: Minute by Minute, Jonathan Mayo
http://www.military.com/Content/MoreContent1/?file=dday_main
http://www.americandday.org/
http://normandy.secondworldwar.nl/index.html
The Juno Beach Centre
Juno Beach – The Canadians On D-Day
“No Ambush, No Defeat”
“Canadian Participation in the Operations in North-West Europe, 1944: Part 1”
Valour on Juno Beach, T.R. Fowler
D-Day: Juno Beach, Canada’s 24 Hours of Destiny, Lance Goddard

Fedya’s hand is clenched around St. Vladimir so tightly his fingers have turned white, while his other hand rests against one of his prized pictures of his little family of three. On his right, Vasya numbly recites all the most important prayers like a broken record, and on his left, Osyenka stands on his tiptoes and cranes his neck, staring out at the wide expanse of ocean in the dim light. Behind them, Leontiy reads from a pocket-sized prayerbook, softly muttering the Church Slavonic words.

“We’re closer to Dasha and Liivi than we’ve been in years,” Fedya says, his voice shaking. “I hope to God we’re invading in time to save them.”

“You’d better keep low to the ground,” Osyenka says. “You’re taller than most guys, and will probably be a moving target.”

Fedya briefly lets go of the ikon to cross himself, ignoring the odd looks from fellow soldiers. Like his father and little brothers, he’s always crossed himself left-handed. It never made any sense to insist upon the right hand for crossing oneself when it doesn’t come naturally to use that hand. God surely must have better things to do than get upset about what hand people use for praying, particularly since there’s a worldwide war on.

“I hope we’re not gunned down as soon as we start moving towards the shore,” Osyenka continues. “My parents would have several strokes and heart attacks if this is another Tarawa. At least we’re not facing off against the Japanese like those unfortunate Marines.”

“The Germans have no idea we’re coming, as far as we know. The Army, unlike the Marines, knows how to plan a surprise invasion and send out false information. Our people also know more about weather and tides.”

“I’m glad we’re not airborne. I’d panic to death if I had to parachute right into a warzone, no idea what I’d be landing in.”

As they get closer to the shore, the sound of artillery slowly gets louder and louder. Leontiy shoves his prayerbook into his rucksack, while Vasya starts reciting the prayers even louder and faster.

“We had Last Rites yesterday,” Fedya says. “If we’re going to be killed, no amount of prayers in the world can change our fate. But I’d like to think—”

A loud blast tears through the air, and the Higgins boat is knocked slightly off-course. A few minutes later, a second blast reverberates, and the boat is knocked about again. This time, Fedya feels cold water rapidly swirling underfoot. The next thing he knows, the boat has come to a standstill on the sandbar, and the ramp goes down. He has no time to react or say anything before he instinctively begins moving as fast as he can through the knee-deep water, through the sand, and towards the nearby hill. It’s not easy with so much weight strapped to his person, but he makes pace to the best of his ability. Many times, he has to step over dead bodies from the earlier first wave of the invasion. He loses sight of the other three as bullets whiz around him, the sky lit up like the Fourth of July. For the first time, he fires his rifle at real combatants, though the enemy’s too distant for hand-to-hand combat. Most of the gunfire seems to be coming from the looming cliffs. He hopes he’s aiming at the right people and not accidentally shooting his own. He can’t afford to stop or turn away every time someone nearby goes down, though he has to stifle his overwhelming urge to vomit when he sees all the blood, guts, and gore, particularly from exploded body parts. All these guys were so alive and hopeful just moments ago, and suddenly they’re no more. If he were in a different spot, or had been in their position a moment earlier or later, he might’ve been the one blown to smithereens by a mine or shot down like a sitting duck.

“We made it so far,” Vasya whispers to him as they take shelter and assemble their weapons at the foot of the hill, throngs of other soldiers around them. “Let’s hope the landing was the worst part.”

“I knew I’d make it,” Osyenka says as he loads his rifle. “I’m the most special only son and child of old age who ever lived. God wouldn’t give me to my parents if I were meant to be taken away after only twenty years.”

“I don’t think we’re with the right group or in the right place,” Leontiy confesses. “I don’t recognize any of these other guys, and this location doesn’t seem like it matches the place on the map.”

“Join the club,” another G.I. says. “My buddies and I got lost too.”

“My surviving company seems to be all here, but this isn’t the place we were told to fight,” a lieutenant agrees. “I don’t think anyone will get in trouble for getting lost, considering almost everyone seems to be very confused and didn’t land in the right places. They’d have to court-martial everyone, and that wouldn’t help us win the war.”

The several commanding officers who’ve landed among this crazy quilt of different units, companies, divisions, and regiments eventually give orders to start up the bluffs. Fedya hates having to go back into the direct line of fire again so soon, but he’ll be off this damned beach and closer to the center of action. From this distance, his rifle can’t reach most of the enemy forces. He keeps as low to the ground as possible as he crawls up the bluff, no time to give thanks when bullets whiz off his helmet instead of striking the unguarded parts of his body. It’s maddening to be unable to see exactly who’s firing at him, and to fire back.

2

“I don’t want to go back to England so soon after I finally got into combat. Just patch me up and send me back out there.”

Yuriy pours saline over the wounded soldier’s shoulder, where a fairly large piece of shrapnel is lodged. “If you insist, we won’t send you to England, but you should rest up for at least a day. You can’t defend Canada very well if you’re too injured to fire a gun or throw a grenade properly.”

Another medic pulls a sheet over a badly maimed soldier. “It’s too bad we can’t save them all. These boys waited so long to get into combat, only to be killed before they could really start fighting.”

“Why aren’t you removing the bullet?” a soldier demands of the third medic. “Do you want to kill me?”

“It’s usually a bad idea to remove anything that punctures the skin unless there’s a real, known emergency, contrary to what the movies show, and what a lot of otherwise intelligent doctors think. It could make the bleeding even worse if you pull out a foreign object. That foreign object could be the only thing keeping you from immediately bleeding out and hemorrhaging.”

Yuriy ties a makeshift tourniquet over the arm of the next wounded soldier carried to him. “Don’t try to move your arm until we know for sure the bleeding stopped.” He injects morphine, and then the soldier is carried to the recovery area.

“You’re lucky you got up here without a scratch,” the next patient says. “Medics should be allowed to carry guns. If you’re wounded, you can’t do much to help us.”

Yuriy pours saline into the patient’s right knee. “I have a pretty penpal to survive for. She could never be more than my friend, but I’m looking forward to seeing her in person again. She writes such nice letters, and is prettier in every picture.”

“What, does she have another fellow?” the second medic asks. “I wouldn’t let my girl exchange letters with another guy, unless he were a lifelong friend who truly didn’t see her as anything more.”

“No, she’s a single co-ed. She’s too young for me. She’ll only be twenty this month, and I’m twenty-five. We met when she was barely eighteen. I’ve never told her I fell for her. Plus, she’s in New York, and just went to live with her father’s family two years ago. I doubt they’d be happy if she left them to live in Toronto after barely having any time to get to know her.”

“That’s not so much younger,” one of the patients says. “This life is so fragile. Why not tell her as soon as you see her again? Maybe she’s meant to be your wife, and you’ll never find a woman you like so much again. We all deserve pretty girls to come home to.”

Yuriy dives to the ground as a loud blast reverberates and shakes the tent. He curses his red hair as orders are given to evacuate and move to a somewhat safer location. These damned snipers probably can’t see his armband from this distance, but they will see that red hair, even under the helmet he’s mercifully been permitted. The wounded soldiers able to walk evacuate with the medics, though they move much slower. Yuriy wonders why he bothered to try to help them when surely at least a few will be killed anyway. If this invasion goes even more badly, there might not be any Allies left alive by the end of the day.

3

From the ditch on top of the bluff, amid continued fire raining down from the cliffs, Fedya can see Omaha Beach laid out like a horrific panorama. The beach and water are littered with dead soldiers; abandoned, destroyed tanks and weapons; Higgins boats and Navy boats, many also blown apart; and fresh waves of soldiers continually coming ashore, only to be met with the same unabated, intense German gunfire. If he makes it to a safe place and there’s enough of a break in hostilities, he’d like to draw this scene and others from memory with the set of seventy-two colored pencils he got from the Derwent company while he was stationed in England. If he has to take several years off from university to fight, he might as well keep his artistic talent nurtured when he can.

“Turn around,” Vasya whispers. “The Germans are up there, not down on the beach.”

Fedya maneuvers his way around and mutely accepts an order to load a machine gun, then goes back to lying low and waiting. When Wehrmacht soldiers approach, he grabs his rifle and aims, while many other soldiers nearby do the same. He smiles when he sees each Wehrmacht man falling to the ground. They surely have families who’ll miss them, but these are the same people who let Darya and Oliivia be taken away. No further Germans approach, and he goes back to blindly firing up at the cliffs, almost numb to the constant barrage of noise.

Fedya is too relieved to have the cognizance to erupt into cheers like most of the other soldiers when several American tanks drive by, unscathed from the barrage on the beach. Without waiting for an invitation, he, Vasya, and Osyenka volunteer to ride on one of the tanks, their rifles still at the ready. He feels like a great conquering hero as he climbs up, and infinitely more protected than he was in the ditch or on the beach. Every time he sees a Wehrmacht soldier, he immediately shoots.

“Aren’t we supposed to secure the beach and nearby bridgeheads?” Fedya asks as the tanks start moving again, the rest of the crazy quilt marching in formation alongside them.

“We’re probably not going out of this immediate vicinity,” the soldier commanding the tank says. “It’s easier to sweep through the area like this. Maybe tomorrow we can start going through houses and businesses to root out any Nazis. If only we could swiftly beat a path to Berlin. This war will probably still be on for at least a few more months.”

Osyenka grins from ear to ear as he fires a rifle grenade in the direction of every pillbox he sees, while Leontiy is put to work assembling Bangalore torpedoes and cutting through barbed wire. Fedya and Vasya continue throwing grenades and firing their rifles. Gradually, the cacophony from the cliffs starts to taper off.

“The bastards must be running out of ammo,” Vasya says. “Had to happen sometime. This beachhead will be ours soon.”

Fedya smiles at the sight of dead and wounded Germans littering the ground. “I can’t wait till every single Nazi is dead and cold. I wonder if Dasha and Liivi know such a big invasion has been launched to rescue them.”

“They’re not the only people we’re saving. I bet the French will be really happy to see us, and might help us. Once we root the Nazis out, it might be easy sailing to go from town to town.”

“We’re not taking any POWs, are we?” Osyenka asks. “These Krauts don’t deserve to live after what they’ve done. We should kill them all while we’ve got them in our sights.”

“Not on our watch,” the tank commander says. “Even if they pretend to surrender and want peace, we can’t be sure they’ll keep that promise. I don’t want to find myself and everyone else murdered by Krauts we took pity on.”

Fedya smiles even wider and continues firing at every single pillbox and German in his line of vision. “That’s for kidnapping my sister and her best friend, you worthless wastes of oxygen.”

4

Yuriy’s commander storms into a house pointed out by several teenagers in the French Resistance, while the medics and twelve other soldiers follow him, carting the wounded. The wounded who survived the earlier bombardment in the hospital tent have mostly crawled and been dragged here.

“We have it on good authority this is a Nazi house,” the commander shouts in German. “You’re going to leave right now and give up your beds to the Canadian wounded, or you’re all getting a bullet to the brain.”

The husband begins to babble in German-accented French, which makes the armed soldiers pull their guns on him. One of them paces up to him and rips off his left sleeve, revealing a Gothic A in black ink.

“Imagine that. A dirty Kraut was lying to us. You can’t lie your way out of a damn SS tattoo. Who the hell else gets this kind of tattoo in exactly that spot?”

The commander pulls his trigger, and Yuriy flinches at the sight of the blood and brain fluid splattering out of the maimed head. The three children run screaming, while another soldier shoots the wife.

“Good riddance. If only every Kraut were this easy to dispose of, we could get to Berlin in a month.” The commander kicks the dead man. “I want people posted as snipers and lookouts from every window and door while someone moves these bodies outside. Then we can start moving the wounded inside.”

Yuriy is slightly jealous of the soldiers who get to have guns, while he’s stuck as a medic. Even if he’s training to be a veterinarian and actively volunteered himself as a medic when he enlisted, it’s not as fun and exciting as killing Germans, leading charges, and shouting orders. The soldiers he’s treating are the real heroes, the ones who’ll have the exciting war stories to bring home. He’ll have to make do with telling his family about pouring saline in wounds, injecting morphine, dispensing pain relief pills, tying tourniquets, setting bones, plastering casts, and amputating extremities. But for Inga, he’ll tell the infinitely more exciting story of how he survived the onslaught of carnage at Juno Beach.

After all the wounded are toted inside, Yuriy is assigned to a patient with a gaping, bloody wound in the lower right leg, with bits of shrapnel riddled throughout. He looks off to the side as he pours saline over it.

“Did you already have morphine?”

“Yes, but I’d like some more.”

“I’d love to give you extra pain relief, but we have to be careful about how much we give each man. We have so many wounded, we can’t afford to give extra doses to every single guy.”

The next patient has four fingers on his left hand blown off, the stumps oozing sickening, constant blood. Yuriy is queasy as he ties a miniature tourniquet on each stump. Even after each stump is tied off, he still feels queasy looking at the mutilated hand.

“Am I a pansy for not continuing to fight? I still have one good hand.”

“It depends on the injury and your personality. Some soldiers continue to lead charges and fight after they’re shot several times, but this isn’t a minor flesh wound. Depending upon your prognosis, you might have to go home, or back to England. The Army might be so desperate for guys in uniform they’d still have you, provided you can get along with only one complete hand.”

Once all the wounded have been brought inside and treated, and no further patients seem immediately forthcoming, Yuriy walks around to each one, on all three floors, to check on their progress. Several have since had the ominous white sheet pulled over their faces. Yuriy makes the sign of the cross over each dead man.

“Should I go back out there to help the latest wounded? I don’t want to feel useless just sitting here twiddling my thumbs while more guys are getting wounded.”

“If you’d like. Just remember, lay low to the ground and don’t get too close to the front lines. You’re a combat medic, not an active duty soldier. Let the other guys be heroes fighting the Nazis, while you focus on being their hero by helping them.”

The moment Yuriy crawls outside, the thunderous roar of gunfire becomes even louder. The Germans are finally running out of ammo, so the Allies will soon have control of Normandy. Fifty feet away from the house, he comes across several fresh corpses and one wounded soldier by a Bangalore torpedo. The vicinity is strewn with other dying and dead soldiers, too many of them to do much to help. Yuriy feels the bile rising in his stomach at the sight of bloody, dismembered hands, fingers, arms, feet, and legs. He hopes he never, ever has to see a decapitated head or half a body. He was uncomfortable enough when he saw the movie Freaks at thirteen, though he’d far prefer to be confronted with dwarves, conjoined twins, living torsos, and other sideshow performers than these maimed remains and wounded soldiers. Sideshow performers are otherwise healthy and able-bodied.

“Will the war be over soon?” a soldier asks as Yuriy rips open his shirt to put pressure on a gunshot wound in the stomach.

“After today, I really doubt it.” Yuriy injects morphine, his hand violently trembling. “All we can do is hope the rest of this battle is as swift as possible, and that we won’t be fighting next year at this time.”

5

Lyuba lights five candles in church, then has a seat in one of the relative few chairs available. She misses having a church which used to be Catholic and thus came with plenty of pews.

“Fedka and the rest of our boys have to be fine,” Ivan says numbly, taking the chair next to her. “Fedya was our miracle baby, my first blood child, our firstborn son. God wouldn’t give him to us only to take him away so soon. Mira needs a husband, and Felya needs a father. He has to come home. God wouldn’t have given Vasya to my aunt as her second chance at motherhood only to take him away either, and Osyenka’s one of the most special only sons who ever was created. Lyonya needs to come home to Dora and Olik, and Yura has a lovely family who can’t wait to have him back. All five of them will be fine.”

“You don’t know that! Our beautiful little boy could be lying dead on the beach right now, and Vasya, Osyenka, Lyonya, and Yura along with him! Yura isn’t allowed to have a gun, and can’t defend himself!”

“I should be over there too, being useful,” Nikolay rants as he lights his own candles. “Are you sure my stupid draft deferment can’t be lifted now that the invasion’s finally begun? They’ll need lots of replacements to take the place of all the guys getting killed. Everyone will look at me suspiciously since I wasn’t there.”

“You’re a farmer, not a soldier,” Tatyana reminds him. “We’re helping to feed the military and the people working in war industry jobs. We wouldn’t be expecting our second baby if you’d enlisted.”

“There are plenty of other farmers who can help with providing food. We can have children any time, but the war won’t be on forever.”

“Yes, but we wouldn’t have this particular child. We’d have a different child, just as I wouldn’t be here if Boris hadn’t manipulated and forced my mother into what he did.”

“You’re lucky you’re at home,” Novomira says. “I hate having my husband away at war, never knowing what’s going to happen to him. Maybe this makes me ungrateful and unpatriotic, but I don’t agree with all these people who are so happy and excited to send their husbands and sons off. If he wants to enlist, fine, but I won’t pretend it’s a wonderful, beautiful sacrifice I’m making. If he’s killed, I won’t consider him a martyr and hero. He’ll just be another soldier who was killed, a soldier who happens to be my husband.”

“You know how it is during wars,” Lyuba says. “The jingoistic majority drowns out the people against war, or who don’t paint war as a wonderful, glorious adventure and noble, manly sacrifice. Thank God my Vanya wasn’t taken for the last war when he turned eighteen, since he was still in gymnasium.”

Edik wrinkles his nose. “I can’t believe how unpatriotic and ungrateful you people are. If the war’s still on when Marik and I graduate, we’re enlisting immediately. I can’t live down the shame of my older brother refusing to serve and getting a grotesque deferment to go to university. University can wait, but the war can’t.”

“Keep your voice down,” Kat warns him. “There are other people here who don’t want to hear our personal business, and it’s rude to talk too loudly in church. Andryusha’s doing his part by helping at USO events.”

“How, by serving drinks and cookies, clearing tables, and playing records? The real men, the guys going off to war, must be so disgusted when they find out he’s a pansy who won’t serve. The WACs, SPARS, WASPs, WAVES, and lady Marines are more manly than Andrey.”

“Pozhaluysta, watch what you say about Andryusha. He’s always been such a good big brother to you and Marik, and would never dream of speaking so meanly of you, particularly not behind your backs.”

“At least some men in our family are doing the right thing,” Nikolay says. “Those five guys over there are heroes, alive or dead, and the sooner they help to end the war, the sooner Dasha and Liivi can come home. Someone has to fight, unless you like the idea of never seeing Dasha and Liivi again.”

Lyuba crosses herself. “It’s been almost five years since I saw our zaychik, and since Katrin saw her Liivi. If God is just, we won’t have to wait even one more year to see them again.”

6

Darya grips Oliivia’s right hand and Halina’s left hand as the Kumiegas’ secret radio broadcasts the news from the Polish government-in-exile in London. Over the last year with the Kumiegas, she’s picked up a rather serviceable command of Polish. It also doesn’t hurt that Polish is rather similar to Russian.

“The Allies are finally here,” Halina breathes. “They’re on their way to save us. We won’t be Nazi prisoners forever.”

“How long will it take them to get to Berlin?” Maja asks. “I hope they have quick, successful battles in every single town along the way, so the war can be over by autumn. Maybe we can be home for Christmas.”

“We’ve been so lucky so far.” Darya runs a hand through her hair, which has been allowed to grow back since she’s an indoor laborer. “Our luck has to continue to hold long enough for the Americans to get here. I hope the Nazis don’t murder everyone first.”

“I won’t let anyone murder you,” Oliivia declares. “You have to live long enough to go home with me. Maybe they’ll have a cure for tuberculosis in the near future, and you can go to the best American hospital for drugs or surgery.”

“I am cured. When was the last time I showed any symptoms?”

“You’re not cured. All your skin tests show up positive. I’m glad it’s latent instead of active, but don’t kid yourself about being completely better. God knows if it’ll come back eventually, worse than last year.”

“Pani and Pan Kumiega, can we stay at your farm till the war’s over?” Maja asks. “I don’t want the Nazis to get mad about losing the war and take us somewhere else.”

Pani Kumiega crosses herself. “Only God can decide that. We can only hope the occupiers won’t decide to murder everyone as punishment and revenge. If we stay as relatively lucky and safe as we have so far, the war will end well, and we can resume our lives like nothing happened.”

Darya nods. “I’m not telling my parents I had tuberculosis or was in a death camp. They’ll never see the ugly number on my arm if I only wear long sleeves, and if my tuberculosis stops being latent, I can pretend I’m only getting it then.”

“It’s a very long way from Normandy to Poland,” Matviyko says. “So many innocent servicemen will have to die before they get anywhere close to us, and possibly the Soviets will get here before the Americans and British. It’ll be a miracle if anyone’s left alive by the end.”

7

The day after the invasion, Yuriy picks his way among the reeking, disfigured corpses and dying strewn over Juno Beach. It’ll take forever to catalogue and bury all these soldiers who were so alive and hopeful just yesterday morning. The relative few who haven’t succumbed to their wounds yet are probably too far gone to be helped. He smiles each time he sees a German body mixed in among the brave Canadian dead. The entire beach is pervaded by an eerie, unnatural silence, as though yesterday never happened. He still hears gunfire, but it’s slightly farther away. The Allies now have a toehold in occupied Europe.

Copyright Jebulon

“Am I in trouble for not trying to join back up with my company?” one of the wounded asks as Yuriy unwraps a leg tourniquet made from the soldier’s torn trousers fabric. “I was too confused and scared, so I played dead and stopped the bleeding myself.”

“A lot of guys got lost yesterday and ended up with the wrong companies, or in the wrong places. They’d have to court-martial almost everyone. A lot of companies lost so many men, they’ll have to bring in replacements immediately.”

The soldier winces as Yuriy pours saline over the wound. “Is there a way to tell if it’s infected?”

“I assume you had a tetanus shot after you enlisted. The worst is probably avoided. But I’ll give you an ointment just in case, and to help with healing regardless. I’m not looking forward to going back into the line of fire.”

“Are you a doctor from before, or just an Army medic?”

“I’m actually studying to be a veterinarian. I have a bachelor’s degree in biology, and took one year of vet school before I enlisted. My parents wanted me to have at least one year instead of enlisting straight out of university.”

The soldier faintly smiles. “I don’t really care your normal patients are dogs and cats instead of humans. All that matters is you’re helping me.”

“Oh, I had a very nice human patient two years ago.” Yuriy looks up and gazes across the ocean, still swamped with empty Higgins boats and destroyed tanks. “I might not be getting all the glory like you, but I’m fighting to stay alive for her.”

“You need luck more than me. It’s too bad medics can’t carry guns.”

After Yuriy finishes with this soldier and finds several others to treat, he picks his way over to the sandbar and wades in, averting his eyes from a Higgins boat piled with maimed corpses. On one side, an entire ocean separates him from Inga, while on the other side, the Germans are waiting to kill everyone. There’s no easy way to get home from here. Even if he makes it home alive, there’s still the battle to decide whether to let Inga know his real feelings, or keep it secret and watch her marry someone else.

But first things first. First the war has to be won, and that means defeating an enemy refusing to go down easily and peacefully.

WeWriWa—Diana and Pamela’s first Christmas

Welcome back to Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday, weekly Sunday hops where writers share 8–10 sentences from a book or WIP. The rules have now been relaxed to allow a few more sentences if merited, so long as they’re clearly indicated, to avoid the creative punctuation many of us have used to stay within the limit.

Since it’s December, I’ve switched to Christmas-themed excerpts (even though my own winter holiday is Chanukah). This week, the snippet comes from Chapter 90, “Cruel Christmas,” from A Dream Deferred: Lyuba and Ivan at University, the fourth book about my Russian-born characters. It’s set during January 1951.

Diana (Dee-AHN-ah) and Pamela (Pah-MEL-ah) Zotova, newly turned eight months old, are staying with Lyuba and Ivan’s family in St. Paul while their mother Raisa and aunt Lyudmila, Raisa’s twin sister, are hospitalized. Raisa and Lyudmila realized too late they chose terrible husbands just to escape small town life and move to Minneapolis. They recently found much better future second husbands, but they first have to figure a way out of their unhappy current marriages.

Diana and Pamela smile big smiles at Irina as she unwraps the presents Raisa and Lyudmila got them, which Filaret delivered on Saturday. From their mother, they have a brightly-colored ring-stacking toy and stacking cups. Their aunt got them toy drums and rattles with cat heads at either end. Diana’s rattle depicts Siamese cats, and Pamela’s has red tabbies. Out of fear of Gustav’s wrath, Filaret set up a savings account for them in lieu of physical presents.

“They’re so cute,” Tamara says. “Can we keep them? I want little sisters. Everyone else in our family has younger siblings.”

“They’re Raya’s babies, not ours,” Lyuba says gently.

The ten lines end here. A few more to complete the scene follow.

“She’ll be very sad if we don’t give them back.”

“They won’t be happy to go home,” Sonyechka says. “Gustav is a very bad person. He doesn’t treat Raya or his babies very nicely.”

“That’s not our affair to meddle in,” Ivan says. “If Raya’s the good, sweet person we remember her as, she’ll come to her senses eventually and leave that mudak. If I’ve read the situation with the count correctly, Raya has her second husband waiting in the wings.”

“Speaking of future husbands, why doesn’t Toma open her gift from Marek?” Sonyechka holds up a jade green package.