But the world drops on me first, a shell that rips the air and swats me sideways like a swipe from some massive clawed beast. I have time, feeling myself flung up among the clods of earth and shards of trees branches to think No, no, not wounded again—
But I am. Which I realize when the veiling cold brings me back to full consciousness, when I blink the blood from my eyes, and finally come back to my torn body in the falling grip of night.
THE FIRST THING that really came into focus was my rifle. My Mosin-Nagant with her shining lines looped in camouflaging layers of garland thorn . . . the wooden stock was cracked in half, the barrel bent, the telescopic sight shivered into splinters of metal and glass. She’d never fire another a shot, my lovely rifle who had sung to me so sweetly, and I pulled her shattered body against me and began to weep numbly. I could move my arms but nothing else—the crown of an acacia tree overhead had been torn loose by shellfire and plunged down to pin me against the ground. The pain stabbed between my spine and my right shoulder blade; I couldn’t tell if it came from impaling branches or mortar wounds, but I couldn’t rise or wriggle or reach around to stanch my own bleeding. I could only lie in the mud clutching my broken rifle, icy twilight falling softly around me like a pitiless mist, and feel blood pooling under me as the daylight faded. My undershirt and tunic were drenched.
So quiet. The trees rustled almost noiselessly; the tide of battle had clearly swept on toward the next sector—I could hear shellfire echoing from somewhere distant. My platoon, I thought, my regimental mates—how many were dead this time? How far had the Fritzes managed to push? If the Germans found me here, I’d never be able to put a bullet through my brain before they took me—I couldn’t reach down past my own shoulder; the TT pistol at my belt might as well have been in Moscow.
This is where I die, I thought, still clutching my useless rifle. Trees tossing overhead against the winter sky, stripped black and leafless from mortar fire, casting strange shadows on the ground in front of my blurring eyes . . . I saw my mother leaning toward me to smooth the hair off my face; then the twist of shadow turned into my father, saying sternly, Belovs don’t retreat! I wanted to tell him I’d tried, that I was still a Belov even if I had to drag Alexei’s Pavlichenko behind me like a poisoned anchor—but my father was gone before I could tell him, and it was Slavka who now stood before me. My little walrus in his red Young Pioneers kerchief, turning toward me with his hands full of all the dried leaves and flowers I’d sent him. Mama? No more plump walrus cheeks; the bones of his face were coming through to show the adolescent he’d soon become, but I’d never see it. I’d never see him, not in this life. I was bleeding out.
“Slavka—” I managed to get through my blood-gritted teeth, but when I blinked he was gone. He was gone, and I saw a man’s dark shadow, the sun’s last shiver of daylight touching a gleam off his helmet. Lieutenant Kitsenko, an overcoat over his uniform and a submachine gun slung over one shoulder.
“Mila,” he was saying. “Mila, tell me where it hurts—”
Everywhere. Soldiers behind him, but they were just shadows helping shift the splintered acacia. Don’t bother, I wanted to tell them, I’m done. Maybe I’d finally get a medal, something posthumous my son could remember me by.
“Don’t talk horseshit, you’re not allowed to die yet.” Kitsenko again, turning me over and sliding his arms under my knees and shoulders. “You haven’t submitted the necessary paperwork to your company commander, and that’s me, so dying’s going to have to wait. Hold steady—” and he was lifting me up, carrying me back toward the trenches.
“Fuck.” Lena Paliy’s tired exhortation came at me the same instant I felt shears slitting seams down my back, my coat and undershirt peeling away like a bloody carapace. “It’s dug clear down her back—”
“I can have her at the medical battalion in twenty minutes. Fighting in my sector’s lulled.” Kitsenko again. “I have Dromin’s car.”
“That prick lent you his car?”