In the frozen field
In the frozen field, the blood-stained snowdrops glisten. He is still there, lying prostrate under the setting sun, or sometimes under the star-studded shroud that falls to the ground in sparkling tatters. He makes to scream into the brittle air to ruffle empty branches in the distance, but he dares not make a sound, nor move, save to unleash frenzied eyes in search of an unseen rustle. No matter how hard he tries, the chest heaves up and down, tighter and faster, like a prisoner who struggles against his restraints...
A sudden in-draw of stale air tickles the back of his throat. His neck recoils backwards and thuds the back of the seat; for a moment he is drowned in the clatter of wheels on the track and the piercing sunlight. It dazzles the back of his eyes, so he clamps them shut, so hard that they begin to throb. His legs begin to ache again, and he presses down on his thighs with loose fists. He is afraid of sinking into the seat again, so braces yellowed teeth onto cracked lips.
A quivering slither of an eyes opens. He sees the ticket-collector plodding along. He has lazy, bovine eyes that roam the carriage, seat by seat. He never looks up. He reaches the seat of the man who looks at him through a slit in his eye, and rests a puffy hand on the headrest. “Proszę bilet”, he whispers. A fleck of spit latches onto the man’s cheek. Both his eyes open, and stare at a frayed sweater as a flimsy roll of paper is silently passed back and forth. The ticket-collector looks back and jerks his head towards the seat. A lithe girl replaces his wobbling frame, to daintily perch a crumpled brown bag on the empty seat beside the slouching man. She smiles at him and as she gestures to the bag, her face is engulfed by the dark of the train tunnel.
He swivels his head round to look at a pair of silent women sat across the aisle, a few seats back. The ticket-collector is looming over them, with the girl leaning against an armrest. The women are laden with large stringy bags, and laden with children who flounder and skip around. They are the same children that he has left behind – only now they should be playing in the labyrinths of little roads, all chipped and splintered, whose scorched borders lead inexorably to gashes in the earth the colour of rye bread. That, or they should be on a coach somewhere, spat out of the fathomless plains like slugs from a shotgun shell.
He feels a wave of drowsiness wash over him. He is scared, so writhes in his seat. A voice flies into his ear like rags of shredded ribbon. It is scratchy and hoarse, and says ‘no, this is my child here. The other one, that one over there, her mother is...still in Kharkiv.” When he hears this, he wrests open his eyes and lurches around to look at the women again. The ticket-collector and the girl are retreating down the carriage; the air left between them is frail, so he dares not breathe. The women glances at the onlooker. He sees shattered, bleary eyes, and shards of green glass whose gaze scrapes listlessly against his own. His head nods downwards; it jerks back up and searches frantically for a headrest.
There is something of Irina in those eyes, he thinks. Perhaps it was actually her, sitting only a few feet away! He makes to jump out of his seat and fling himself at her feet, to kiss her knees and press her head to his chest...but he realises that it cannot be her. In any case, this woman’s hands are too rough, her nails chipped and cut to the quick. “They used to grow their nails long in China’, Irina would always say trotting back from the salon, “it meant that they couldn’t do any housework. It’s your turn to wash the dishes!”.
He wishes, more than he’s ever wished in his life, that the woman with the shattered eyes would lob a plate at his head, or gently smudge his taut cheeks with soapsuds, or run her fingers through his reedy hair...
He can feel the soapsuds in his eyes, and how they slowly dribble down past the edges of his lips and onto the lapels of his shirt. Then he realises the bitterness is not in fact, lather, and like always he tries to stop the little beads from escaping. Like always, they seep out and seal his eyes so that he is bound in the wet darkness. His head throbs with phantom nuzzles, strong arms wrapping around him, faint echoes of a voice that sang of honeysuckle and rivulets...when he swallows it is as if he has lodged a whetted mosaic piece in his throat. He is sinking into the seat again. He doesn’t register the light dancing on the wall of the tunnel, that dispels the blackness and slings the carriage into day again. Daggers of light pierce the thin veil with bursts of yellow and orange and white-hot milk, over and over, unrelenting. They burn the back of his eyes and set fire to his forehead, so that he is grasped by the sunlight and sobs.
He is brought back through the tassels of light to the burning field, surrounded by panting mouths and muzzles that nudge against blades of grass. Imperceptibly the eyebrows contract, the yells form silently on the lips...and surge forward in a wave of shrieks that swell and grind against the throat as if it were sandpaper. He cowers alone under the screech of the wheels; he implores for ghostly hands to caress his nape once more.
The train is braking hard in anticipation. He lulls forwards, and sees a billboard that momentarily catches his attention. A grinning brunette in a jumpsuit floats inside a wind tunnel. Big white words loom above her helmet-donned hair: “Das Paradies is nur einen Sprung entfernt!”. He sees how the brunette’s teeth glimmer in the sun, and he shudders.
The train halts with a jolt at a station with litter gathering below swollen bins. Old men sit on benches, unwrapping ice-creams, watching the tops wilt and melt in the late afternoon heat. The little crowd of passengers ooze out of the doors, and the man is met by a gust of crisp air. He sees a shawled woman dragging a small shopping trolley behind her. He notices how she is making straight for a young girl with a lanyard laced around her neck. He looks around and sees the ticket-collector and the lithe girl, leaning against the carriage and grinning. They all watch from a distance as the old woman tears off her shawl, and throw it in the face of the young girl. “I saw you in Lublin”, she spat, flinging yellow spittle onto the girl’s cheeks. “You gave me kasha and water and a place to sleep – in Varshava you even gave me a coat! At the border you embraced me, and now you are here – why are you following me? Why?!”
She tries to grab the girl’s arm, but she squirms and wriggles out of her grasp, stumbling backwards behind a lamppost. The old woman lurches forwards after her, only to trip and fall to the ground. She presses her forehead to the tarmac and whimpers. A coughing paroxysm resounds through her so that she shudders helplessly, and with every erratic breath the man hears, the crackling ribs snap and splinter into glassy dust. He totters as his forehead prickles again. His legs lower him down onto the chilly ground, and watches as black shoes patter like drizzle towards the quivering bundle of wool and grey hair.
Before he closes his eyes again, he sees how the old men are still watching their cones melt, how the little crowd of people churn and heave. The ticket-collector and the lithe girl have stopped smiling. Instead, their eyes are sparkling, like diamonds under a brittle sun.
You can listen to a recording of this story at: Purple Radio Spotify
Illustrated by Amy Nugent