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On the lush green lands in the southernmost corner of Suzdal, a man walked home, holding the hand of his only child, a boy just about to have his growth sprout burst onto the surface. His father’s powerful paws held onto him, almost dragging him along as they made their way home from their small farm.
There were furrow lines on the face of the older man. Lines that spoke of his enormous worries and his varied responsibilities. He has two kids to care for, a mother who is completely reliant on him and a bedridden mother-in-law. The weight of his responsibility felt like brick walls balanced precariously on his shoulders, weighing down on him, pressing him into the earth. But each day he stands tall, pushing against the wind.
“Papa,” his son called.
“Yes, Ivan.”
“Why do the beds fly that way whenever we are coming from the farm, in the morning, they were going the other way, but now, they are going this way,” the little boy stopped, his hand still in his father’s staring into the dome of the distant temple. The billowing trees framed the towers of the temple and the birds hung right above the dome, like a painting.
“They are returning to their nests, just like we are doing,” he said, turning to take a good look at the vista, catching the same image his son had caught. An artist will have too much beauty if he were to stand at this spot, at this very moment. Nature paints the best picture, there is a certain symmetry to it, the wildlife, the plants, and the small human input by way of temples and domes. No man would have been able to dream up this combination if nature had not first dreamt it.
Another artist, standing a few feet from the father and son might be able to get them into this elegant scene, placing them side by side with nature’s undaunted excellence. The father with his thick head of brown hair in contrast with the son’s deep black hair. It wasn’t the only contrast, there was the height and the heavyset body of the man contrasted against his son’s smallish frame and short frame. All of that is just down to age, he will sprout with time but it is safe to say he will never be as huge as his father or as tall but he is already keeping his chin high like his father.
“Come on now, your mother might have finished dinner,” he said, taking his hand as they walked down the road towards their home at the edge of the village. The boy broke free of his father and ran down the valley, bouncing on his feet as he went down. He was excited, the evenings are spent in the front of the house after dinner, with everyone sitting together to share an interesting piece of news from their day. Sometimes, papa told them about the motherland, with her wings spread far and wild and her resilient people who had stopped an evil man from penetrating their home in his bid to conquer the world.
At other times, he told them about younger people, kids like themselves who stood their ground when the motherland needed them. His father’s favorite is the story of the Moskva brothers both 11 and 9 respectively who had secretly carried food to soldiers during the Soviet-Afghan war. Konstantin and Grisha, are little boys living just beyond the Moskva River with their parents. While other kids hid under their mother’s apron, these two hiked up to the river carrying and refilling the soldiers’ water bottles. There is nothing else braver than a man who goes into battle without a weapon which is what the kids had become.
Konstantin will die one evening when he got hit by an errant bullet, but Grisha survived. The country remembers, no one will ever forget the sacrifice of the little boy beyond the Moskva River.
As they neared their home, they could both see smoke rising from their home. It is a sign that Freya, his wife, and the boy’s mother were hard at work in the kitchen, getting their meal ready except that today, there was more smoke than normal. He could tell something was wrong even before they turned the corner. He freed his son’s hand and tore into a run, almost flying down the valley towards his home. It was all over before he ran in, his son bringing up the rear. There were a ton of people within the compound, but the hurdle of people was the one he made for, hoping that the circle was protecting what remained of his family.
When he broke through the circle, he found her lying there, burnt beyond recognition. Someone pulled him away, tugging on his arm but he brushed them off, turning his eyes to the house.
“My daughter? Eva!” he called out, turning to make his way to the building, hoping there was at least one life to salvage but as he turned, the futility of hope dawned on him. There was nothing but ashes left.
“Papa?” Ivan called, running into the house. He swung around quickly and saw him walking towards the huddle of men. He rushed, pulling him by the hand and steering him away from his burnt mother. There was no answer, nothing to help the boy make sense of this senseless tragedy. All he had was the helpless tears that fell from his eyes as he stood watching the ruins of his home.
He never recovered. He drank more, smoked more, and did nothing but sit and stare into blank spaces. That little boy was left to fend for himself more or less. That summer, when he was sure nothing could be done for his father, at least, not by him, he left Suzdal. In retrospect he knew what his father needed was professional help but he couldn’t get that for the man that had given all of himself to his family, to the ones who depended on him.
No one could tell him how that fire started. At first, he was too young to know, too young to understand. But he wasn’t too young for the pain or the nightmares that plagues his sleep from that day through the rest of his teenage years and down to the early parts of his twenties. No one asked if he was old enough for the trauma, they just let him have that but when it comes to answers, everyone became aware of his age and kept mute so that for a very long time, he struggled with the dark, with an image of a charred body and a group of people huddled around it.
He never saw his father again until over ten years when he passed with a bottle of vodka in his hand while his pain stayed deeply etched into the smile lines on his face and in the wrinkles that furrowed his brows.
He stood by the graveside after everyone else had left, watching the mound of earth that is all he is left with after the shells around his back break off and die. He stands beside a mound of earth, staring at the heap that reminds him that the earth holds something that belongs to him.
“Papa, you spoke of courage, of the kind of man we have to be. Strong, unbreakable, impervious to the vagaries of the wind and the weather elements. But you weren’t the kind of man you wanted me to be. They broke you, shattered everything that held your pieces together, and left everything bouncing around the hollow that you have become.”
He dropped the bottle of vodka on the mound and turned away. He had other words, but even as he spoke, he realized there was no need for words. He knew why they broke his old man, he knew what he had to do so he would never be broken in his life.
In the years that followed, he traveled to Moscow, completely erasing the memory of Suzdal, the small scenic village where it all began for him. He didn’t retain anything, not memories of his father, or the image of the charred body or the birds flying back and front above the domed temples, not his grandmother with whom he had lived until he left. He blocked memories of the time, completely forgetting all of it.
His father was broken because he had opened his heart, allowing vestiges of love to seep in. He cared for his family and took care of responsibility. It wasn’t the burnt house that broke him, it was his wife, his daughter, the two things he couldn’t get over. Ivan hated everyone. Nothing could penetrate the thick cloak he had spent time building for himself. It was simple, this life and the people within it, nothing meant anything except for the tangible values of ones and zeros.
He bagged a scholarship to study at the University in Minsk. A mind as mechanical as his was easily the best in his class. By the time he graduated at the age of twenty-three, he was absorbed into a sterile job, the sort of job he really liked, something that helped his nation. Some of the people he worked with came here as a stepping stone to something bigger, but he came because he wanted to help, to be a big cog in the engine of mother Russia.
Ivan, like many patriots, loved it when the Soviet Union broke up. He celebrated it alone, in his college room, with a bottle of vodka and a plastic smile than hung on the side of his face like a mirage until it disappeared. It was the only time he had let himself drink vodka. He never indulged in those wild things young people of his age liked very much.
The one time something akin to a romantic relationship cropped up on his path, he swept it away so fast, even he was amazed at his own efficacy. It was Marilyn Harper, an exchange student from America. She had begun to appear everywhere he went, in class, the library, in the hallways, the cafeteria. She was virtually everywhere and he couldn’t seem to shake her off. She tried to talk to him even though he wouldn’t say a word in response.
When she poured out her heart to him one evening, hinting at a desire to visit him at home, he knew he had to take other measures. He would have loved to strangle her when she invited herself to his room that evening but he knew a missing exchange student will raise too much dust so he warned her.
“Don’t ever come looking for me, Marilyn. If you see me along the hallways or in class, look away, otherwise, I will strangle you and make sure they never find the body,” he had said without expression. Then he smiled when he was done before closing his door on her. She never came looking for him or tried to talk to him again. He had started researching ways to murder a person without a trace after that incident.
His life is a straight line, has been since that evening several years ago in Suzdal. He doesn’t regret any of it, they are part of what makes him the man he is today. When he permitted himself to remember what happened to his mother and sister, it was to try and figure out how it had been done and more effective ways of carrying out the same task.