"A little war in chechnya" Nick Pici

A little war in chechnya

It was before dinner and there was some time until it got dark during which they could rest. Building the new camp was mechanical but hungry work. The young man was in the mountain snow, and he rested sitting away by himself on a rock ledge. He sat looking over at icy precipices below and at barren hills that rolled along the countryside. He thought the hills made a very smooth contour. Off in the distance, a small town could be made out, the town where the young man grew up. It was burned-out now, houses black and gutted, grasses and pavement scorched, artillery shells and pigs and chickens and friends strewn about. It was very empty. He could see smoke still rising up towards the clouds. It's probably from the school, the young man thought; that was a big building and it will smolder for a long time. Mesmerized by the billowing swells of grays and black, the young man began to think of another time.

           The morning chill of the early summer is sharp but the thick smell of grease and frying pork wakes the young man up. Groggy-eyed he shuffles into the kitchen, teases with mock aggression his two younger sisters seated at the table, and kisses his mother on the top of her head. She speaks an affectionate, firm good morning without having to turn from her chores at the stove. Praising Sundays in his head, the young man turns and sees his father lost in the papers. He finds sudden energy and saunters around the table, grabbing the piece of bread out of his father's hand just as he is about to bite. The boy laughs at his ingenious trickery and sits down across from his father, who gives his only son a look of false anger and pretends a lunge with a rolled-up newspaper held high. He gets another piece of bread and goes back to his papers.
           "Latvia and Lithuania are still strong?" asks the mother.
           "Yes, Latvia and Lithuania are still strong," the father remarks from behind his paper shield that is now hiding upturned eyes. "And the big government does not like that. That is why they will not leave it alone."
           "Then we will not leave it alone either."
           "Yes, I am afraid that we won't."
           "Do not say that you are afraid. Remember who you are."
           The father puts down his paper shield and looks at the boy. "What are you going to do today?"
           "I don't know. Nothing."
           "Good."
           "Good?" retorts the mother. "How is doing nothing good?"
           "The boy needs to be doing nothing every now and then. He starts the university in the fall. He must rest his mind and his body for that."
           His mother turns away from the father to conceal a smile.
           His parents were being very lenient since the boy would be the first in his family, and one of the only ones from his town, ever to go to the university. Besides, his parents and his sisters knew that doing nothing meant being with his kissing friend, as his sisters would call it. And that was a good thing.
           After breakfast, the boy would take a long walk to the bottom of the foothills with a slender dark-haired girl, who would also be going to the university in the fall. She would study dance while the boy would study art history. On their walk, they would talk and hold hands and kiss to keep the chill away. Eventually they would go back to his house where they would wait until everyone was asleep so they could make love on the couch. Then, after he would walk the slender, dark-haired girl back to her house, the boy would lie in his bed, the blankets buffering his body from the surrounding cold, and think about the girl. He would lie on his side and place one arm between the two pillows and under his head because the pillows stayed cold and the cold felt good there and kept his head clear. Time was only in front of him then, and he would soon drift into dreams.

           That was before the shells came. Now, the young man looked around and saw the other troops going toward the makeshift mess tent. Gazing at the darkening autumn sky, he felt time swirling around him and smelled the snowstorm coming. They are good and proud people, he thought, and they were called "rebels" by the outside world, even though all they wanted was to have their home to themselves. The first snowflake danced around the young man's head and fell to the ground. They would fight. The young man told himself that he would fight too. He didn't even like guns, but he wanted to fight. "I will fight," the young man then said aloud. "I most definitely will fight."
           The young man was very hungry now but he did not know if he could eat. All he knew was that the ground was hard and that when he would go to sleep there would be no cool pillows for his head.
           It was really all too much and he wished the falling snow would bury him away until it was over.

© Nick Pici, all rights reserved
appears here by permission

Author Notes

           Also close to flash fiction, "A little war in chechnya" explores multiple themes as well: modern man's rites of initiation; loss (of innocence, hope, loved ones, the sense of self); the brutality and darkness of war -- the subjectivity and vagueness of time; the individual's struggle to filter identity through memory, family and peers, country, ethnicity, politics, and the inner self, and the moral battle between exterior pressures and one's own conscience. This story won honorable mention at the previously mentioned Sinclair College Creative Writing Contest.

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