***
Olivia had a small room for a field-expedient lab. Often of an evening, she could be found there, when she was not knitting or sparring with Major Malinovsky, repairing one of her younger drones or sensors, or dissecting an older one to learn its flaws or autopsy the battle damage. The door was usually open. Sometimes, Suslov would sit quietly, almost silently, with her, watching her, handing her a part or holding another for her, listening to her when she spoke, which was very rarely. When she was thinking hard, words were an encumbrance, not an aid. Suslov had learned to ask her simple questions that she could answer with Yes or No, a gesture of the head or hand, questions he often refined down to a part proffered, or a quizzical look. In its own way, theirs had become as peaceful and calm as her relationship with Major Malinovsky.
Not that night. The light was on, the door firmly closed.
“Doctor Tolchinskaya?” No answer. Suslov gathered the mugs of tea in one hand and let himself in, shutting the door just as firmly behind him.
Olivia was sitting with her back to a wall, her chin resting on crossed forearms braced against her knees, her uniform tunic stiff with dried blood, her right arm bandaged neatly from wrist to elbow, where a bullet had furrowed her almost down to bone. She’d gotten most of the blood out of her hair and off her face. Beside her was her pistol. From the scent, she’d cleaned it. Wordless, she looked up at him.
Suslov handed her a cup of tea, then sat down on the floor facing her. From her eyes, he could see that she was very reasonably on morphine for the pain and still somehow entirely present. She sipped the tea, letting the sweet, spicy warmth flood her.
He had long ago ceased to worry about her. But this was different.
Suslov silently held her eyes with his own, his very direct gaze unusually gentle. After a minute or so, she opened her mouth to speak. No words came. More silence, then another failed attempt. After her third attempt, when language no longer seemed like a brutal intrusion, Suslov spoke, his voice very low and quiet. “You learned something about yourself today.”
“Yes. You knew it was there, all along, didn’t you?”
“I thought it might be.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Suslov exhaled. “If you know, words aren’t needed. If you don’t know, none can help you understand. This is how we think about killing. The first man you killed meant nothing. It was simply something that happened. But this…you enjoyed.”
She let out her breath. “I did. I am enjoying it still.”
“Go on.”
“I do not like to speak of myself.”
“This time, you must.”
Olivia felt the relief of a great weight lifting as she spoke. “I am feeling, I am thirty-six. I have worked very hard to build my life as an engineer and a scientist and it has made me happier than any other person I know or have known. But today I wasn’t ‘happier than,’ I was happy. The full, complete emotion.” Her vivid blue eyes were brilliant.
“What were you doing when you realized that?”
“Helping load Warrant Officer Simonov’s body into the BMD. There wasn’t much left of his face and chest. I was stunned by how much, after it was over, I wanted what I had done.” Then she offered a small smile, full of grief, for Warrant Officer Simonov and the young wife he had left behind. Olivia hoped he had gotten her pregnant. “So. I loved it.”
“What will you do with that knowledge?”
Olivia paused, then reached for the honesty that was now inside her. “I’ll always want it. I’ll always want more. But I’m not a soldier and I’m not going to become a war addict, any more than I’m a drug addict. However much I want it, I may never experience it again. I’ll do it again if I have to, and I will love it. But I won’t seek it out.”
She was silent for a while then, and he let her be, waiting for the question she was going to ask him. “How do you feel about killing? And about combat?”
He chose to answer the second question first. “In Afghanistan, I felt the same way you did. Had I been just a conscript doing my two years, I could have given into it. The need that makes everything else a price you pay gladly. But to give into it as an officer would have been to break faith with my soldiers. The young ones, especially. They need officers and sergeants who don’t live for blood. They need officers and sergeants who will remind them that our memories have no statute of limitations. Armies need officers, especially senior officers, who can enforce that perspective because they have lived it, or combat becomes no better than slaughter. Nations need such officers in charge of their young men because the survivors are going to come home to be husbands and fathers. So this monster, if indeed it is a monster—I’m sometimes unsure—is always inside me, as it always will be in you. But it’s not in command. As much as I would sometimes like to let it be, I won’t tolerate it.”
“This pain you carry in your soul must be like the pain I have in my body.”
“And now you have it in your soul too.”
“But you’re a soldier, I’m not, and since you have spent nearly your life at war or getting ready for war, it must be in some ways worse than what I know in my body.”
He shrugged. “I don’t believe in comparing pain like that. Also, we do other things at war, things we do because we love each other. There are other reasons, but love is the most important reason. Love, and the honor that comes with loving bravely and well. We do it, no matter how stupid or criminal or corrupt our leaders. So I think you were starting to wonder if enjoying killing meant that you were on the road to being one of the Kristiniches of the world.”
“I was.”
“Tell me, Doctor Tolchinskaya, who loves Major Kristinich? And who does he love?”
“I don’t know that he understands that word.”
“He doesn’t. And so he is alone here. Whereas you, quiet as you are, have a gift for friendship.”
“I do not feel the need to talk promiscuously.”
“When you like people, you make them things. The things you make are the words you don’t speak.”
“I didn’t realize that until now.”
“We all see ourselves differently than others see us. You and I are very alike in that we seek mastery, first and always of ourselves. We will have that at all costs. And then we seek a real meaning for what we do. We love our abilities, our accomplishments, but other people have to get some good from our work or it’s incomplete.”
She was silent for a long time, sipping her tea. “Many words, Comrade Colonel. And true. You are a wise and honest and perceptive man.”
“You usually need silence from me. Tonight, you need language.”
“Also true.” She studied that idea for a few moments. “I’ve noticed you’re very kind to your soldiers. Usually.”
“It is what is needed. Usually.” He inclined his head to her. “Supply will issue you fresh uniforms. Those need to be burned. You can never get out that much blood.”
“No, I suppose not.”
There was a long silence between them, full of promise. Then Suslov rose in a single fluid motion to his feet. Olivia tried to do the same, but could not. She began to rise in an awkward series of moves. Suslov stepped over to her, did not take her hands and pull her to her feet, but offered her his hands for her to brace herself against, letting her control her own motion.
They were standing now very close together. He could smell the iron and the copper of the blood and burnt cordite scent of expended ammunition. He was afraid that if he touched her, he would not stop until he had found all the ways she liked to be touched, and she had sampled all the many pleasures he intended to offer her in order to find the ones she enjoyed. “I know you are unmarried. You do not, I think, have a lover in Moscow.”
“If you mean Borodkin, of course not.”
“I mean Borodkin. I am unable to determine what he thinks of you, what he wants.”
“He does not think of me. Nor does he want anything from me.”
&nb
sp; “Do not be so sure. If he held to the simple desires of honest men, you would have known it by now. More complex desires, those of degraded men, do not come out so honestly.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I have noticed him in the company of Major Kristinich often enough to know that he, Borodkin, is the kind of man who is often attracted to a Kristinich. Timid, resentful, afraid. Borodkin is not, I think, himself a Kristinich. But a Kristinich can make him feel more alive than he might otherwise. Think of it, Doctor Tolchinskaya. What brought you to life and what might bring him to life.”
“I would rather not,” she said, remembering Simonov.
“Then we shall not discuss him. May I ask if you left a lover in America to come here?”
Olivia exhaled. “After my accident, the orthopedic surgeon told me I most likely would never walk again. Not properly, like a human being. But I had seen the x-rays, so I told him that if that was the best he could do, I didn’t need him. Two weeks later, I was in rehab. Two weeks after that, I was at home.”
He let her pursue the thought. Then he asked again. “And your lover?”
She exhaled again. “The injuries bothered him a great deal. I suspect he would have been repelled by the scars after they healed. He didn’t stay to find out. He took one look in the hospital and fled.” Suslov felt himself choking on his disdain. “The accident was four years ago,” she went on. “Until now, I did not particularly care to remember the experience. When scars signify pride and courage, not simply wounds…”
“Then those who flee them are cowards.” It was a long time before Suslov dared speak again. “I hope you do not think me vulgar or coarse for saying that had I been so fortunate to be your lover, I would have been delighted to tend to you, even while you were in hospital.”
She remembered needing that very badly, to be touched in ways that offered pleasure sufficient to get beyond the pain. “Thank you for that. And your wife?”
“I was shot, seriously wounded, during my first tour in Afghanistan. I married the civilian surgeon who saved my life. Yes, it happens. The fact that so many men might think they want that, deters all but the serious. She was there doing her ‘internationalist duty’, as they called it. I loved her very much and wanted to have children with her. She could not. A botched abortion when she was younger: she responded to that by becoming a superb surgeon. But between two more Afghanistan tours and what we called ‘internal security duty’ I was extremely busy. I often put her in the position of being alone and waiting to be widowed.” He smiled briefly. “That much I could understand. At the time, though, I did not understand why she could not understand that there are some people who simply need to be killed. Now, I look back and know I was very stupid. I thought our very real love for each other could bridge two fundamentally different ways of looking at the world and relating to people. I also thought that because I was faithful to her, that mattered more than her loneliness. It did not. I thought that fidelity could matter more than her knowledge of the things I had to do to our own people. It could not. Still, we ended decently.”
“Why did you divorce her?”
“I would never have. She divorced me.” The look he gave her was heart-breakingly direct. “I was never unkind to her, or struck her or insulted her. I commanded an Airborne battalion that was sent to Sumgait in Azerbaijan to end the 1988 anti-Armenian pogroms. She went in to provide medical relief for civilians. Rather than send in the Army, Gorbachev sent in MVD, Interior Ministry troops, armed for riot control. Totally inadequate. The Azeris nearly beat the MVD to death. So Gorbachev sent us in, Airborne and Spetsnaz uniformed as Airborne. We ended the pogrom. The official body count of twenty-six Armenians and six Azeris is far too low. Maybe six Azeris were killed in the pogroms they started, before we showed up. I myself counted nearly a hundred bodies, all Armenian, and that was only what I happened to see. Some had been burned alive, others had been mutilated but left alive as a warning, or gang-raped as a form of civic murder, also as a warning. And for pleasure. I saw children who had been thrown out of the windows of apartment buildings, women whose faces had been rubbed against asphalt and concrete until their features were obliterated. What can you say to those who do such things? Can you say any words to change them?” He was briefly silent. “So. I gave orders to shoot to kill, which some of my young men had never had to do before, certainly not fellow Soviets. Instead, they shot to wound, then took the wounded in for treatment. To my wife, who had volunteered once again, perhaps this time out of loneliness. It did not turn out well for us. I did not even know she was in that hospital. She did not know I was there, either, until she saw me in the hospital courtyard with my troops. I was extremely unhappy about the indiscipline and I ordered my soldiers to finish the work themselves there, in the courtyard. She saw me, she heard me give the order.”
There was no need for Olivia to ask whether or not he had been obeyed.
He was silent for a long time, standing so close to her that their chests were almost touching. “I looked that night very much like you do tonight. As a surgeon, my ex-wife is one of the wonders of our world. I took the trouble to understand what her profession requires of her. It never occurred to me that she had not done the same. Not really. Until that night, she had never known, had never even thought, that part of her husband might exist. I terrified her and she never again looked at me without fear and—even worse, far worse—disgust. By the time we left Sumgait a few weeks later, I knew our marriage was dead beyond any hope of resurrection, so I agreed to a divorce.”
“This is why you waited so long to address me.”
“Yes. We are long past the point that anyone would call you a whore for taking a lover in the brigade or accuse me of forcing you into concubinage.” He was being extremely delicate. “I wanted you to know this about yourself, which means I also wanted you to know this about me. I wanted you to be unable to hide from yourself or from your knowledge of me.”
“We both reek.” She politely drew back. “I somewhat worse than you.”
Not moving any closer, he started to extend his hands, then realized what he was doing and put them down along his sides. When he spoke again after some seconds of silence, it was in a voice she had never heard from him before, the midnight voice of a beckoning saint. “We only ever get one first time with each other. I don’t want to waste that with you. You know the brigade is changing command. I hate to leave it now. But my time here is nearly done. We can all feel the Chechens planning an offensive for later in the year, but you and I are also both tired and worn.”
“Where will you go next?” she asked, experiencing the same sensation she’d had with Getmanov when she realized that what he would say next would change her life.
Suslov smiled. “A rest tour of sorts. Also a kind of finishing school. I’m being sent to the Voroshilov General Staff Academy.”
“Where is that?”
“Moscow.”
Olivia reminded herself that human beings required oxygen, so best she start breathing again. Suslov went on, “It has not yet been announced, but I have been selected for promotion to major general.”
“Congratulations,” Olivia answered softly. It was the best she could do. “What will you teach?”
“Teach? Nothing. I will learn. I will be a student, along with other very senior colonels and very junior generals. Nearly all will be in need of rest and a time to think. Unlike your Army, where generals are presumed to know everything because they are generals, we still go to school. The promotion itself will happen at the brigade change of command. There will be a final party of sorts before I leave, but I want no celebration of promotion. My men paid for that promotion with their lives and I find it indecent to celebrate such things. I would like to…be with you after we leave this place. I can only assume that your comments at our dinner with General Trimenko enhanced my career potential.”
Olivia smiled, for the first time warmly. “I will not ask what you two discussed after I
left.”
“Oh, the usual.”
“Explain, if you would.”
“He asked me if…no matter. I shall soon enough be able to give him the answer he wants.”
“Was he making a shiddoch in my absence?”
“No. Your previous panic demonstrated your lack of desire for such.”
“The thought of marriage…in this context…does not bring out my rational self.”
“So I have observed.” Unbidden, he followed her thoughts. “I understand why. No, he was not making a shiddoch. But he was not forbidding one, either. We both have leave coming. My country is not all devastated cities and drunks. I know and love the cities of Old Russia. Moscow, Novgorod, Voronezh, Kazan, Bezhetsk, Yaroslavl and Kolomna and, yes, Saint Petersburg. Forgive me, but I love even their names, just as I do Riga and Vilnius in the Baltics, and Kiev in the Ukraine as well as the cities of the Silk Road: Fergana, Bukhara, Tashkent, Samarkand.”
He remembers cities as I remember perfumes.
“We have lost some of these places that I love and for which I have shed blood. A Russian must be a fool to think that the old Soviet Union could be held together forever as it was, or that it should return as it was, just as a Russian must also be heartless not to mourn its passing. Will you let me show you what remains of this land I so love?”
“I can imagine nothing that would make me happier.”
“Then, as you Americans say, done deal.”