# Prelude in White

Илья Энглин

Prelude in White.


He lowered his hand with contemptuous ease, and six rifles barked in the crystal cold of the dawn. A body clad in black tunic shuddered and slid down the grimy brick wall. He raised his revolver and fired into the bald forehead.


Vapour of their breaths lingering in the cold, the soldiers picked up the body and dragged it into the courtyard. Expensive leather boots scraped the ground, leaving parallel tracks in the fresh snow. He replaced the revolver and walked out into the empty street.


Powder fallen overnight sounded under his steps. December's relentless gift covered the city with a thick white mantle, piling up on the roofs, obscuring fences and burying the traces of autumn slaughter beneath the naive purity of its bluish white hue. Amid fragile dawn, a myriad of crystals reflected the sparse sunshine into the empty sky, their silent joy a sharp contrast with recent carnage.


Cursed Motherland.


He walked past shop windows, glass panels long shattered and boarded up in vain attempts to protect the worthless contents. A cat stole across the street; he watched the shivering skeleton upholstered with patchy fur slide between faded boards barring entrance to a deserted mansion.


How much blood can wash away blood?


The guards snapped to attention as he walked past them into the sudden warmth of the vestibule. Scaling the spiral stairs once trodden by long-forgotten aristocrats, he opened the door to face Colonel's secretary battering a decrepit typewriter.


"You are expected, Captain," she replied to his glance.


"Always on time," he shook the hand Toll extended without raising his eyes from the paperwork. The colonel slowly folded the document along its worn edges and reclined in the chair, hands clasping the faded brass buckle with a symbol of a bygone regime.

"Snowstorms." he pointed to the window. "A little bad luck. Have you heard from the front?"


"Yes."


"There's more. An armour train blew up and blocked the rails last night. Just out of Rova."


"And the front?"


"No supplies since. You are taking a reserve detachment to Rova. Use the villagers to clear the track."


He stood up, indicating the end of the briefing. They shook hands.


"I trust you, Victor," said Toll. "You know what happens if we lose."


****


Victor jumped into deep snow as the locomotive struggled to a halt. The soldiers followed, their olive-gray uniforms prominent in the white infinity of the field.


The sight of the faded church on the hill stopped him in his tracks. He looked at the copper dome backed by pale sky and the graveyard overgrown with apple trees, metal fence just visible above the snow. Cold air bit into his cheeks as he looked at the past he never thought he'd recover.


Victor barely remembered his father- a tall man exiled to a remote village. Victor was born there, his mother dying shortly after birth. When the gendarmes escorted his father to an east-bound train, Victor was put into an orphanage, never to be told his real name or where he came from.


He stood at the foot of the hill he ran up as a child, recalling the tender sunshine of the northern summer and the stretch of the ripe fields now blanketed by show. Then his gaze caught the railway tracks, disappearing into the frozen horizon.


They marched up the hill, weapons clattering to the rhythm of their steps. An eerie silence disrupted by occasional gusts of wind filled the clear air. Victor looked back to the locomotive- a small square amid the tracks, its dying black breath carried by the wind towards the distant forest.


Guns ready, the soldiers burst into the huts, driving out their occupants. The early morning came alive with shouts, as half-dressed people wore pushed into the show. The ring of bayonets contracted, forcing the crowd closer until Victor was staring at a dense wall of frightened and hateful eyes, fenced in by glittering steel.


"Ten miles away..." started Victor. The noise escalated, and he pulled out his revolver. The shot reverberated in the empty air, and the voices fell silent.


"Ten miles away our forces are fighting the reactionaries," he continued. "You don't want to be pillaged and killed if they get here." There was no reaction. "Our supplies are blocked by a derailed train. We must clear the way."


As he spoke, he noticed the direction of their glances shift to a short man in a black cloak walking down the hill. Long beard extended to the large crucifix on his chest. His blue eyes glowed beneath the tall, wrinkled forehead. The ring of bayonets had parted, as soldiers stepped back involuntarily. The priest approached the crowd and swiveled a deep gaze, which made Victor squirm.


"We won't touch your track, you milksop," said quietly and finally. "The army kills collaborators. And they will be here sooner than you think."


Victor impatiently nodded. Two soldiers rushed up to the priest, twisted his arms and dragged him away from the crowd. But as the chain of bayonets closed behind them, the formless mass of men pressed after him in a slow, solemn procession. Safety catches clicked, yet the soldiers started to edge away from the human tide.


The men scaling up the hill with the priest sensed the danger of the sudden silence and turned around. They dropped their prisoner at Victor's urgent signal. The priest lumbered to his feet, and the crowd stopped.


"You have until dawn to come to your senses," said Victor slowly and deliberately. Then you'll all be shot."


"We will be anyway!" shouted someone from the crowd. There was a soft flurry of murmurs.


"Get them into the church," said Victor briskly and pointed to the priest. "Bring him to me."


******


Dim light came through the window almost buried by a snowdrift. Victor sat, elbows resting on the soiled wooden table, listening to the logs crackling in the stove. The priest faced him steadily, his tall cheekbones aglow with the flickering fire, long nose flared in defiance. Cold blue eyes scanned Victor with contempt and stared past him.


"You can't hope to hold out," said Victor after a prolonged pause.


"You will be out of here tomorrow."


"Perhaps." Victor involuntarily shifted in his seat, realizing how true this could be. "But so will you."


The priest looked at him and chuckled.


"I don't think you understand," explained Victor. "I'll do it! You don't have a choice."


"That doesn't matter," replied the priest. "Whatever we do, we suffer. You are short of time and ammunition. The army has plenty of both."


Victor stood up with his fists clenched.


"We've had enough," explained the priest. "You can't do what you like, but it won't be with our help."


He walked along the wide street strewn with clothing. A tangled multitude of footprints led towards the church, where the last of the villagers were being herded inside. Still unbelieving, he watched the heavy doors shut, two soldiers bolting them down and turning towards him. Watched from the distance, he started walking to the church. As he got closer, he saw contempt in the faces protruding from upturned uniform collars.


The church interior smelled of damp, its golden inlay covered by the grime of long neglect. It was packed with people, and Victor abandoned the idea of pushing through to the altar. He stood up on an empty bench near the entrance.


"Listen!" Silence fell, hostile faces turning towards him. "I don't want to harm you."


He drew his breath and surveyed the crowd. Nothing changed- the same hostile faces stared at him from the steamy depths of the church.


"We are fighting for you," he continued with desperation. "So you can lead your lives in peace without hunger or poverty. You must help us!"


There was a tense silence, then an imperceptible whisper; heads turned away from him and bowed. The powerful notes of an ancient hymn reverberated on the low ceiling. Victor stepped off the bench and left.


As he walked, he felt the soldiers' stares. White expanse broken only by protruding thistle covered the distant fields, their almighty silence mocking him loudly. The wind had all but stopped, small undercurrents caressing the earth and raising minute whirlpools of glistening powder. Far below stood the cold locomotive, its smokestack empty and dead. Enraged, Victor clenched the gloved fists. A tide of primeval anger swelled up inside him into a bubbling tide of murder.


He tried to look for the house where he was born but recalled nothing distinctive and sat down on a log pile, thinking about his childhood. His roving gaze caught the locomotive, and he abruptly rose to his feet resolved.


The prisoner blinked in the bright light as he emerged from the cellar. He was barefoot, the pallor of his bony face reflecting the cold of past hours. Yet his eyes were still hard, the stance still firm against Victor's stare.


"It's cold down there," observed Victor.


"You didn't get far, then."


"Just what are you trying to achieve?" asked Victor in amazement.


"I'm trying to do the best thing for my people," answered the priest blandly.


"If the army finds them doing your dirty work, they will kill us all."


"I can order that now."


"You won't. Even if you did, your rabble won't obey you."


Victor slowly nodded and stepped forward absent-mindedly. His fist crashed into the stomach just beneath the cross, and the priest collapsed on the floor without a sound. Victor knelt on his chest and grasped the throat with both hands, staring at the blue eyes as they faded.


He slept badly, thinking of the stationary locomotive as he lay on the hard bench, eyes partly closed. Every now and then he heard the thunder of distant artillery, the ground trembling lightly as shells landed on distant targets. He jolted with each ominous sound.


At dawn he reluctantly left the warmth of his bed and pulled on his uniform, eyes straining against the bright light. Uncertain hands found the revolver in its holster. He checked the chamber.


Stirred awake by his curt voice, the soldiers unlocked the church. Shouts filled the air as people were pushed out into the cold. Victor faced them, arms folded across his chest in an attempt to mask his helplessness.


"I can't waste any more time," he told them almost apologetically. "I will count to five. If you don't start moving towards the track, you'll all be shot."


"One," he nodded to the soldiers.


They formed a semicircle, cocking their rifles.


"Two."


A gust of wind tugged at the ragged clothes and sprinkled them with dry snow.


"Three."


Victor felt the grip of panic, unable to avert what he set in motion.


"Four."


Men faced each other across gun barrels, the infinite serenity of snow-clad fields stretching behind them towards the horizon.


"Five."


Bursts of thunder, vision ablaze with red, shuddering cries, the clatter of reloading rifles. A mass of dying flesh, stumbling, crawling and quivering, blood spreading in the deep snow.


The soldiers killed the wounded with bayonets and reformed, awaiting Victor's next order.

****


"Of course I read your report," said Toll. "You must be careful, Major."


He nodded significantly.


"This breast-beating has a habit of catching up to important men later, when they least need it." He tossed Victor's report into the fire. "I've never heard of any mass executions. There was a reactionary atrocity in a peaceful village. Period."


He got up and strode around the desk, his gait uncertain.


"Enough about that," he said expansively. "The real news is that you are transferred to the capital."


"After... Rova?"


"I called it a slight tendency to procrastinate in command," recited Toll. He stood behind Victor's chair. "Perfectly excusable at your age. What counts, though, is you made the right decision."


He slapped Victor's shoulder and swung him around in the chair.


"But the front was without supplies!" appealed Victor.


"We didn't need them for a week," Toll shook his head with amusement. "No one can fight a modern war in five feet of fresh snow." He knelt in front of the fire and looked the younger man in the eyes.


"We need men like you," he explained. "Soon we'll need a lot more, too."


Victor sat motionless, seeing the blood spreading in the snow.


"Never look back on your mistakes," said Toll. "Remember our slogan: destroy the past, then build the future. We do the easy part, anyway."


He chuckled drunkenly. Victor sat still, his eyes fixed on Toll's.


"And besides," Toll continued, breathing expensive liquor into Victor's face. "What does a manure pit of a village matter when you're about to build a whole future?"


Victor looked at him, frozen by the realization that Toll was sober. Not a muscle twitched on Victor's face.


"Nothing at all," he replied.


IBE

1981

Created on 16/10/1996 21:31:00 Prelude in white.doc


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