Liberation Movements

Peter
1968

The foreign soldier’s beers settled his frayed nerves and helped him drop into a deep, dreamless sleep for hours, until he was woken by gunshots outside. He blinked in the darkness, at first only hearing Josef snoring in the other bed. Peter crawled to the foot of his cot and peered out the window. Down on Pod Stanici, against the silhouette of another building, he saw a tiny burst of flame and heard another rat-a-tat. He couldn’t make out the figure with the gun, nor the intended victim. Boots crunched against the sidewalk, and as he waited for another gunshot he remembered that same sound just outside eske Bud jovice. A field, a shouted order from the road, then all three of them running westward through the stumps of harvested corn. Toman ahead of him, Ivana just behind. Toman was cursing- Fucking Peter, fucking goddamned Peter — beneath the rat-a-tat. Peter looked back in time to catch Ivana’s beautiful heavy-eyed face suddenly seize up. Then she fell forward, as if she’d tripped. Toman, ahead, was no longer shouting words, only long, painful notes, and Peter realized that he’d passed Toman’s writhing body in the stalks. But he kept on running as the rat-a-tat stopped and he heard one of the men at the road shouting at another in Russian. Though he knew Russian, he couldn’t make out the words.

“What is it?”

He turned back to see Josef’s face emerge from the gloom. “Gunshots. Outside. But I can’t see.”

Josef rubbed his eyes. “Took days before I could sleep through it.” He climbed back into his cot and pulled the sheets to his chin. “Peter?”

“Yeah?”

“How did you get caught? I didn’t think there’d be a problem getting across.”

Peter looked out at the street. “It was my own fault. I wanted to start a fire.”

“A fire?”

“It was cold. We were in a field, and I was cold. Nighttime in the countryside. I hadn’t brought a good coat. They told me not to start one, but they were asleep and I was so cold. I didn’t think anyone would see.”

“But they did.”

“The worst luck,” said Peter. “A Russian jeep came along the road. And we were woken by the bullhorn. It was morning then. The jeep, it had…it had a machine gun on it, and when we ran they fired at us.”

“Savages.”

He cleared his throat. “We scattered. I can only assume they made it. I went south, and the Russians followed me. They picked me up in the town.”

“You were incredibly stupid.”

“I know.”

“But at least you didn’t get anyone killed.”

“Yeah,” said Peter. He took a breath. “I’m thankful for that.”