Yaakov's Struggle

Author's Note: This is just part of something I wrote. A bit of background info: This is narrated by Yaakov, a young Russian who is a guard at one of Stalin's labor camps, which were sort of like concentration camps. He actually wants to be a musician; his role at the camp has been requested by the Soviet secret police, and he can't reject. Yatiye is his older sister, and Kristina is a long-time friend who he secretly loves. The other men mentioned are the other guards. I'm trying for a new style: more of a mixture of colorful and simple writing. If you have read any of my other works, please tell me which style is preferred. Thanks!

 “Take her in, and hold her tight

Never give up the fight

For her, her sparkling eyes

Tell her the truth, don’t give her lies

Oh, she lies with the moon tonight.”

“Tonight” descended on my lips, dipping into a low hum. Kristina’s voice fluttered as I shuffled with the sheet music; her words snapped with the closing of the piano lid. I could see her blanketed by the glimmering sheet of moonlight, lying next to me, taking my hand in hers.

“What does that song mean?” Boris asked sloppily, spilling vodka down his suit.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” I said, annoyed. “It’s about being in love with a girl, and not giving up on her, and….Are you just too drunk to understand?”

“Now, Yaakov, don’t get too feisty,” Ivan clapped me on the back. I wanted to shrink away from him. “You got a girl back home?”

“Uh…”

“How about that girl you’ve got a picture of?” Nikolai teased slyly. “The photograph with you and her?”

“Who’s the slut?” Boris slurred. His porky eyes twitched, rippling with greed as he swigged the vodka.

“Don’t call her a slut!”

“What, you never enjoyed fucking the girl, Yaakov?”

“You damned pig, how could speak like that?” I shouted, infuriated.

“Yaakov, quiet down!” Ivan barked.

“I’m sorry if I can’t stand him talking about her like that! You’re the one who sluts around, pig!” I spat. The flames of anger lapped at my insides; my mouth tasted of spicy fury.

“Don’t you understand that a man like me has to have his sexual desires fulfilled?” Boris churned the foul words in his mouth, reeking of alcohol. “Why don’t you try it for a change?”

“Why don’t you speak like an educated man and not a boorish one,” I snapped, and added, “Comrade Stalin only takes into consideration the well-educated.”

“Bah, go and sleep with the whore over there for the night and you’ll awake thinking the right way,” Boris chortled carelessly, gesturing to the girl by the serving table, her freckled face shielded by the tears of golden ringlets. “If you get to sleep at all! That girl’s a good one!”

Ivan’s guffaws curled and twisted menacingly. The girl reddened and turned away, horror stamped onto her lovely face. I clutched the table, inhaling quickly, and turned to leave the dining room.

“Where are you going?” Ivan boomed.

“Bathroom!” I resisted slamming the door. I bent over the sink, panting, gripping the faucet. I closed my eyes, and Kristina and Yatiye each held one of my hands, and their fingers drew the lines that creased my palms. My breath painted the mirror with splotches of grey. Further up in the mirror, I could see a silver curtain rod, resembling a sharp blade, dipping just above the bath. I wanted to tear away the rod and shape it into a sword, and kill Boris and Ivan. I would take the sword and slash through the fence, and the girl could run off in the distance, and all of the others would follow, feet defacing the Siberian wastelands. And then I would walk all the long way to Moscow and run Stalin through with the point. Watch the scarlet patches of his death bloom out from underneath him.

I flushed the toilet so that they would assume I used the bathroom, and switched on the sink. The water’s fractured tongue licked my fingers, enveloping them in cold. I wanted Kristina’s hand tugging on mine. I remembered the marketplace. She tore at my hand, running, and I kept up with her. She bought some rosin for us to share, because Otets and Mat’ wouldn’t even offer a few rubles for the cheap rosin. I scavenged a ruble from the sidewalk and brought her to the stall with the candies. When I asked which candy she wanted, she bought a bag of taffy, and sprinkled into my palm half of the taffies. I told her that I had bought it for her, but she held the taffies to my face.

“You must have half,” she insisted. “Your Mat’ and Otets never give you taffies.”

“But this is for you—”

“No, I want you to have some.” She unwrapped one of the taffies, sticking it to my lips.

“Well, thanks,” I bit into the candy. The peppermint was sweet, and I grabbed her free hand and lugged her through the throng.

“Where are going?” She cried over the footfalls of the people around us, the voices that weren’t ours nor theirs, but the Soviet Union’s.

“To the field!”

She laughed, tripping over my feet. I could feel her clipped breath shuddering with the run. All of the colors were there, hazing, a painting boxing us in, and yet not there at all, and me and Kristina were the blotches of paint interrupting the grey of the canvas. And we ran to the field, and uncased the instruments that we kept there, and our fingers sung.

I gazed into the mirror. I wondered what it would feel like to have the chipped sapphires of my eyes gouged out. I wouldn’t have to see the world around me anymore, and maybe it would be better that way. But I didn’t know if I could play the violin without my sight. And then I couldn’t see Yatiye, her elegant smile slicing her curved cheeks. Or Kristina and her eyes dabbed with shades of green and locks of midnight.

I slipped through the doorway of the bathroom, enforcing the dam in my eyes. Was it fragile, constructed of wood, or secured by cement?

“What’s wrong, Yaakov?” Nikolai was waiting outside of the bathroom on the spindly bench. I remembered the prisoners who had crafted that bench. An old man and a young woman, knifing their way through the wood. The right leg on the back of the bench hadn’t been thick enough, and Ivan shot them. I had seen their unclothed bodies lying on top of all the rest.

“N--nothing.”

“Do you miss your girl?”

“I do, and I hate the way Boris spoke about her.” She leaned in and waved the taffy under my nose. He didn’t know her.

“Yaakov, be careful,” Nikolai warned lowly. “Don’t get into trouble.”

His words failed to reign. They didn’t have the power. My love did.

In the Soviet Union, love is trouble. In the land of the imprisoned, I couldn’t love. I longed to wrench apart the bars. But could I?

Yes, I could. All I needed was the next day. And I would glance around, and I would collapse as the bars struck me. But I could sever the bars.