Нина Ягольницер

Отрывок из военной прозы “Half Cloud and Ears ”

It was pitch dark, and Romka’s teeth were chattering from the cold, while he desperately feared stepping on a dead body. Should he turn on the flashlight? No, he shouldn’t. They might see it from the basement and take it away.

Approaching the ruins of the fourth entrance, Romka clamped a bundle of rags in his teeth. A bowl of porridge swayed within it. He tied a blanket around his waist, muttered a prayer in the only manner he knew, by vigorous cuss out, and began climbing up the pile of burnt concrete, twisted reinforcement bars, and debris of furniture.

The iron rods snagged onto the blanket, his jaws clenched from the tension, and his hands grew numb from the snow-dusted stones. No matter… The snow marked Romka’s previously trodden path with white blots, and in his gloomy childhood, he had often climbed through dilapidated abandoned buildings from the Soviet era, where it was equally convenient to hide from the police and older hooligans.

Slipping a couple of times on melted plastic, Romka reached the second floor. What was left of the room cut off by the explosion was just a perch less than a meter wide, bristling with charred parquet. Huddled against the peeling wall sat Leshka, small and quiet, like a freezing titmouse by a window frame.

Hoisting himself up, Romka sprawled over a heap of broken concrete and settled on the perch next to the child. With a sigh of relief, he unclenched his teeth and placed the bundle with the porridge against the wall, then wrapped Leshka in the brought blanket.

«Here he sits,» he grumbled, untying the bundle. «And here I am crawling to him like a…» Romka paused and finished, «like an idiot. I brought you something to eat. If you’d listened to me, you’d be eating something hot, but now choke on it cold, got it? Little dork…»

Leshka didn’t respond. He greedily shoveled the sticky porridge into his mouth, licking his dirty fingers, and Romka stopped grumbling, looking at the child with grim pity.

Romka unraveled the mystery of Leshka’s disappearance quite accidentally, when he climbed up the ruins, hoping to find something worthwhile among the debris. A crumbled fragment remained from the edge of the building, and there, on the second floor, Romka found the missing Leshka, who somehow had managed to climb back into his former apartment. A charred patch of curtain still fluttered on the broken-framed window, its rings creaking softly. Leshka sat by the wall, which had been gnawed by the explosion, and at first, Romka thought the child was simply afraid to come down. However, at the very first attempt to pick him up, Leshka silently started fighting back with unexpected strength and ferocity, causing the teenager to almost lose his balance. This made him utterly furious, and he was ready to give the kid a slap in the face. But as soon as Romka withdrew his hands, Leshka indifferently returned to his previous spot and pressed against the wall, as if completely forgetting about the newcomer.

«Why are you sitting here?» a confused Roman asked directly. «It’s cold.»

Leshka raised surprisingly clear and stern eyes to the teenager and answered quietly, «There are clouds and the bunny here.»

Romka blinked. Perplexed, he spat and crouched against the wall, peering at the charred paint. The remnants of a drawing were visible there. Apparently, just a few days ago, a bunny in a summer meadow had been depicted on the wall. Now, amid the patches of crumbling plaster and black smudges, only one and a half chubby clouds and bunny ears remained, one of which was cheerfully sticking up, while the other bent into a triangle.

Romka scratched his nose. «So what? Well… the bunny doesn’t care anymore, and you’ll freeze here.»

«That’s what my mom drew,» Leshka replied sternly. «I want to be with my mom.»

Romka was ready to tell the kid everything he thought about his holey brains, and then go back, because he didn’t know how to mess with psychos and didn’t intend to. But he did not say anything, changing his mind at the last minute, just silently climbed back onto the pile of ruins and went down. But for some reason Leshka, with his stupid ears, couldn’t get out of his head, and already in the evening Romka was again on the charred parquet perch with a bottle of dirty water and half a dry bun.

…He was forced to talk about Leshka to Katerina Borisovna. Otherwise, she would have ventured into the ruins herself, and would have definitely disappeared there. Romka didn’t hold a high opinion of the abilities of any grannies to climb over protruding rebar. But the teacher, despite being nagging and tedious, had complete trust in Romka and intentionally saved a portion for Leshka.

This went on for another three days. The meager supplies in the basement were running out, the soldier in the lockers room finally died, heavy and prolonged snowfall covered the dirty pathways in the courtyard, turning the blackened ruins into a huge slain beast.

In the basement, there was increasing talk of the necessity to escape and run away anywhere, taking only warm clothes. There was nothing else worth taking. Every day, the ground trembled from explosions, sometimes terrifyingly close, other times faceless and distant, but the apathy of the first fearful days subsided, replaced by determination.

It acted upon the captives in the basement like a sip of brandy, instantly tearing through the stifling cobweb of stupor. Vitalik actively began to craft a cat carrier out of the remains of a folding bed, Pavel Grigorievich was patching his demi-season boots with scraps of blankets, and only Olga sat gloomily in her corner, looking lostly at the common fuss.

Everything happened suddenly. On its own. As all the best and the worst things happen.

They were almost ready, they had almost made up their minds, they had even agreed where to go and where to meet, getting lost along the way.

But at dawn, the remnants of glass tinkled as usual, and the cat darted under the cot with a guttural growl. Familiar nasty coldness tightened their insides in anticipation of the low «wooooof» that would be followed by an explosion, whether close or distant.

It happened. It had thundered so close that the ears were blocked from a low, heavy groan, and then a roar struck… The world at once shattered into shards, splashed with dust, stone chips and glass groats. The floor danced underfoot, and the half-darkness was suddenly filled with a terrible, cold, littered light from the broken ceiling. Children squealed desperately in the crackling and roaring, and someone frantically cursed, breaking into tears.

«Outside, everyone outside!!» Pavel Grigorievich in a disheveled, bloody coat was lifting people huddled up from the floor, «we will all die to hell, let’s all go upstairs!!»

In the clouds of dust and the roar of cannonade, the captives rushed to the stairs, Vitalik dragged his grandmother, stunned almost to the point of fainting, with one hand, clutching a screaming cat with the other. Oksana, with a bloodied face, carried two children in the armful at once, someone coughed, someone prayed, someone just breathed hoarsely, slipping on the very edge of consciousness.

Morning drifted with smoke and snow, something huge, inanimate, and horrifying lay in the middle of the courtyard, clumsily cocking its tail. Among the wreckage some shreds were visible, into which it was impossible, in no case it was impossible to peer.

Katerina Borisovna, calming the ringing in her ears, hobbled along, led by someone by the arm.

«Roma!!» she shouted, and her voice broke off with a hoarse wheeze, «Roma, where are you?!»

But in the rumble of the tormented sky and the hodgepodge of sobs and cries, she herself did not hear her hopeless call…

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