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Zagros Mountains, Iran, July 1942
If I had been in front of a typewriter, I would have been composing an ode to the freedom of the desert wind that whistled like a death-scream in my ears. Stopping for neither manmade nor natural barrier, I would have written, it rampages, moving mountains grain-by-grain with persistence known only to gods, mothers, and tax collectors.
Yet, regrettably, there on the roof of a rogue train car rocketing downward towards a dead-man’s curve over a nearly dry riverbed in the Zagros mountains of Iran, there was not a damn typewriter in sight.
I had caught a flashing glimpse of Vera’s skirt as she stepped off the ladder and up through the hole in the boxcar’s roof. I fought my way across the car, which gained even more speed on the long downhill approach to the curving bridge. Upon reaching the top of the ladder, I stuck my head through the hole, and met the desert wind. I blinked back wind-drawn tears and watched as Vera displayed superhuman balance.
She stood atop the car, her arms outstretched as if offering an embrace to the infinite, and rode what she must have assumed to be her last ride with glory and aplomb.
The desert wind scratched at my cheeks, and its hands pushed me back down the ladder, but I fought the fight of the righteous. I too would have my ride of glory. I too would look Fate in the eyes. I forced my body up into the wind, watching the curving bridge approach in slow motion, and centimeter by centimeter, fought to stand. In the end, I was a man triumphant. I looked unafraid into the eyes of nature’s power, and would have spit in them had the desert wind not threatened to return my gift of moisture with geometrically stronger force. I felt as if I’d left behind my regrets over Igor, Viktor, Jacek and—yes—even my betrayal of Danuta.
The train plunged downwards, its wheels screeching metal. I squinted against wind-borne sand, watching rocks and track slide by in a blur below me. The wind’s wild scream sounded like the Stuka dive bombers I’d fled from in terror on that terrible night in Warsaw. The bridge, and imminent derailment, seemed only seconds away. I reveled in the immortality of the moment.
Then, as if received via cosmic message, a sudden awareness of our mortality overcame both Vera and myself simultaneously. As the car’s formerly rear-facing wheels crossed the threshold between earth and sky onto the brown stone arches of the bridge, we threw ourselves forward, landing face-down and hugging the roof of the boxcar. Our hands clamped, vice-like, on the safety of the roof’s handholds. In stark contrast to the epic bravery of the seconds before, we surrendered to our humanity at the exact moment of our demise—not with literary bravado, but with clinging whimpers brusquely swept away by the desert wind’s cynical guffaws.
The car lifted hesitantly skyward, then slammed back onto the tracks. It writhed, shimmied, and squirmed, eager to break free of its earthly encumbrances but held back by the curse of gravity. It gave a final unearthly screech, metal searing metal, lifting one last time in hopeful triumph, and... slowed as it ascended the hill beyond the bridge.
We remained facedown for some seconds, unsure if this was life or death. The car was still moving fast, but it soon became clear that it was gradually slowing. The wind’s shriek softened. I looked up and found Vera’s incredulous face. Then I sat up, pushed myself to my knees, and glimpsed the bridge receding behind us over the edge of the car’s roof.
Vera did the same.
The car moved farther from the bridge, and slowed to a safer speed. Vera and I struggled to our feet and stared dumbstruck at the trickle flowing through the riverbed far below, which we had tacitly assumed would be our final resting place. The sun scoured the valley and glinted off the brown water, creating sparkles that looked like joyful aquatic fireflies. Above, a blue sky flowed by, cloudless and warm. This majestic landscape, in a divine world, momentarily dazzled us with the beauty of life itself.
Yet Fate is an intimate bedfellow. She knows more than we admit to ourselves, and ultimately extracts payment for every favor. She was intimately aware that I had caused the deaths of three innocent friends. She was intimately aware that I had betrayed Danuta. She was intimately aware that I would likely take any of these actions again, given another chance to choose self-preservation over nobility.
Thus, as the desert wind’s whistle faded from my ears, I turned to stand proudly with Vera, facing away from our direction of travel and ready to take her in my arms for a triumphant kiss. That was when we both—nearly as simultaneously as our orgasms just an hour before—gained acquaintance as intimate as Fate’s with the side of the mountain, when our boxcar rolled swiftly into a low tunnel.
***
I awoke to the sounds of groaning. Grains of sand danced in the desert wind against my forehead, and the sun, now high in the sky, seared through my eyelids. I raised one hand to brush the dirt from my eyes, relieved to find I could still move. My hand came away gritty and sticky from what I guessed was my own blood. I tried to raise myself to locate the origin of the sound, which I could only assume came from Vera, but the movement sent a wave of white-hot pain through my leg, past my groin, up my spine, and directly into my brain. I cried out and jerked my head around. Over my shoulder, I could see my left knee bent at an unnatural angle. I felt the sickening beginnings of shock settle into my stomach.
Yet the groans persisted, and I forced myself to raise my upper body and look around.
I lay ten meters below the level of the train tracks, and perhaps fifty meters away from the tunnel entrance chiseled into the mountain’s face, into which we’d both smashed so unceremoniously. Behind me, the bridge we’d crossed reclined lazily in the sun, as if content with a job well done. To my right, the boulder that had apparently kept me from rolling down the embankment and over the drop-off into the river below smiled in recognition of my gratitude.
I reckoned I’d been unconscious for several hours, as we’d ridden our last ride of glory in the late morning. Now, the sun had moved past its welcoming morning caress into the daily tantrum of afternoon abuse, and already burned the skin of my neck. I lay my head down and closed my eyes, seeking comfort and escape in the still-cool sand under my face. I longed for the relative cool of my boxcar, for Danuta’s hand on my cheek, for my father’s heavy arm around my shoulder, for anything external to me that could strengthen my precarious, faltering resolve.
The groans grew in volume and intensity, shaking me from self-pity, but not yet spurring me to action. Should I cross the chasm of doubt and self-interest, and go to her? I could survive, even if I didn’t move a muscle. The next train would hear my cries, and stop to help. I would live, even if I looked away from conscience’s accusing eyes—as so many others did regularly, and as I myself had done so recently.
Will I ultimately benefit? I asked myself, and if so, how?
Benefit notwithstanding, I made the decision. Gritting my teeth against the expected pain, I reached to pull my body forward through the sand, gravel, and rocks in the direction of the groans.
Sweat tickled my temples, and the desert wind obligingly kissed it cool. Elbow over elbow, I worked my way laterally up the embankment, every movement pre-calculated to tenderly avoid shifting my bad leg. After awkward initial efforts, I fell into a tediously slow, back-wrenching yet effective serpentine slither. The minutes passed, the sun shone, the flies buzzed, the desert wind sang, and I climbed. Vera’s groans—alternately intensifying and waning—spurred me on.
My face was dust-caked and my arms throbbed by the time I reached the tracks. I placed one hand on the reassuringly manmade steel, already viciously hot from the sun, and looked up and down the rail line. The immotile lump that must have been Vera lay perfectly still fifty meters away from me, towards the tunnel entrance, her body fully in between the two rails. Only her head and shoulders lay draped across one of the tracks, on the side closest to me. Suddenly, she twitched her legs in an apparent attempt to move, but then groaned piteously.
Between us lay a field of rough-cut rock fall, strewn viciously along the sides of the tracks as if to thwart any crawling thing’s hope of progress. How could I possibly reach her?
The desert wind kissed my ears, then momentarily faded. Free of its incessant singing, I heard another sound over Vera’s groans—the faint yet distinctive chug-chugging of a steam engine laboring up a steep grade. Its sound echoed from the mouth of the tunnel. It was the next southbound train! In the rush to supply the Soviet Union with war materials, the British ran trains at minimal intervals, several a day in each direction, closely timed and coordinated to avoid collisions on the single track.
I looked again at Vera. She lay, I realized, just outside the line of shade demarcating the tunnel entrance. This would make her nearly invisible to an engineer’s light-starved eyes as his train exited the tunnel. Moreover, this train, like ours, would likely have no light on the engine. That meant the engineer would never see our boxcar—which had probably stopped somewhere inside the level tunnel. The train’s slow speed meant that the boxcar would not derail, but it would be pushed uncontrollably out of the tunnel ahead of the train, eliminating whatever small chance there was that Vera would be seen before the train was upon her.
The chugging grew louder. I wiped ineffectually at the sweat and dried blood on my face with a dirt-caked hand, and took a deep breath. Time slowed. I was never a competitive man, preferring an ex post facto backstab over a punch in the nose, but I would, I vowed, beat this train. I would save Vera. I would do so now, for I had not done so before. I had not saved Jacek, Igor, or Viktor. I had not saved my parents. I left Danuta to her own fate in Vilnius, and then betrayed her the first chance I had.
Not this time!
I slithered urgently in Vera’s direction. I even tried to use my bad leg, despite the burning swords of pain that the slightest pressure drove into my side. My progress was achingly slow across the rocks that, like burning shards of glass, sliced my hands, belly, and legs. The desert wind had begun to blow in earnest now, as it did every afternoon. Sand whipped my ears, but could no longer drown out the growing noise of the train.
Vera’s legs twitched in agitation. She heard it too, perhaps feeling its thrum in her track-bound head, yet she seemed powerless to move.
The desert wind whistled now, and a voice—previously muted—emerged from its low howl. It should have been you, it hissed, keeping time with the beating heart of the approaching engine. It should have been you. It should have been you.
I crawled to the rhythm of this mantra. I crawled as the desert wind spat sand into my eyes. I crawled as the rocks ripped at the flesh of my torso and chewed my fingernails. I crawled as a metal-on-metal crash echoed from the tunnel—the boxcar, I guessed—followed by an alarmed shout and the ineffectual screech of brakes. I crawled as Vera gave another twitch, this one like the climax of a grand mal seizure—she was facing the tunnel, and could see the train coming.
I could see it now too, the vague sliver of sparks from its locked wheels glowing ever brighter in the tunnel’s ground-level darkness. She was trying, I guessed, to get her head and shoulders in between the tracks, where they would be safe from the tons of metal rushing at them. She was on my side of the tracks, so I could push her to safety in just seconds if I could only reach her.
The desert wind blew at my back now, whistling and urging me forward like a sergeant pushing troops out of the safety of a muddy trench. I heeded its call, now pulling myself up to hobble crookedly on two arms and one leg. The sparks from the brake-locked engine grew brighter, illuminating our boxcar from behind as it rushed out of the tunnel. I was only meters away from Vera.
It should not have been me. It should not have been me.
I changed my mantra now, breathing hard. As I reached Vera, I collapsed back to my stomach. Balancing on my left elbow, I leaned forward with my right hand. Just as the rumbling of the engine broke free from the tunnel and the ferrous beast burst forth, I pushed her head and torso gently off the tracks to relative safety between the rails.
It should not have been me.
Yet Fate had not yet extracted her full payment that day, and she did so with an irony that could have graced an ancient Greek comedy. For how better, truly, to compensate a writer for his narcissism? How more graceful a coup de grace than one that separates a man who lives to put words to paper from his literal means of doing so?
For I paused, you see. I paused to caress Vera’s head reflexively, for a split second. I paused to impart a microscopic measure of comfort to a terrified and grievously wounded girl, who sang like a goddess, and to whom I’d made illicit love just hours previously. I paused and caressed Vera’s head in its train-bound nest, even as the desert wind ruffled my own hair comfortingly, as if it knew what was to come only seconds later. I caressed her head, but I never withdrew my hand. It stayed, gently resting on her head. It stayed, an eternal beacon of comfort that I saw clearly even as the train passed. It stayed, as fate drove the razor-sharp wheels of the boxcar over my wrist, separating it from me as surely as I had separated myself from Danuta.
