WW2 AU
Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby
They're bringing in new batches of people all the time now, last night he could hear the screech of box cars grinding to a halt outside the compound, the bark of dogs, German cars revving, the faint crackle of a transistor radio.
They lie nearly two deep on a floor strewn with straw, no space to stretch out and no space to curl up. In the corner, Scotty No Pants tuning in to McGuffy. At his previous camp the Germans caught Mikhail Temkin for the same crime; they snapped the antenna in two and stuck it in his ears, half here, half there, so he looked like a ridiculous robot-man, and then they clapped down hard, on both sides. He later died of typhus. Uncle Vanya would contract typhus too, and he died a month ago.
Pavel remembers dragging his uncle to the American medics. With a shrug the French said there was nothing they could do, they were short on medical supplies, that them Russians have been dropping like flies here (and everywhere - Russian lives are less than rubles). It wasn't like the Americans could do any better but there was Doctor McCoy, also called Bones, who watched over Uncle Vanya as he slipped into the hazy fever preceding death.
Uncle Vanya left behind a greatcoat and a watch. The watch Pavel gave to Doctor McCoy as a token of gratitude and the greatcoat he jealously kept for himself.
It is winter.
In the morning the new kriegies are inducted during roll call. The ones they have to make space for are mostly American, carrying packages from the Red Cross, inadequately dressed. Most of them have been shipped over from Sagan, but some of them look like very new prisoners, their skin just starting to come loose over muscle in the stage of early atrophy. Everyone eyes them with a sort of carnivorous envy, as if yearning to strip the meat off their bones to pad their own. It's not just the fact that they look more human than skeleton still, there is an unmistakable swagger and air of smugness so that Pavel realises they must be pilots, flyboys, airmen. Some of them are coloureds, three black and one jap. They find out he's a jap because the camp guard, Junkers, stops and asks for his name.
It is a pretty clever move on the guard's part.
Big-nosed Kolya tells him to talk to the new guys, get chummy, score some food. The barracks was Russian first, only recently housing other nationalities due to overcrowding. He's the only Russian who can speak English well enough to communicate, save for Kravchenko who lives outside in a tent, and some other guys down the other end of the barracks he's never bothered to learn the names of.
"I wasn't aware they let japs like you in the U.S. army now," he comments with a sneer when the pilots, the cocky bastards, decide to take up residence in his room. He stands there with his arms crossed, jaw set, ready to defend his territory. Uncle Vanya's greatcoat is draped on his shoulders, it makes him stand taller and feel stronger.
"You bet your ass they do," the pilot replies.
The other Americans call him George and the Brits do too. It's not the name he gave the German officer. Pavel has seen plenty of Asians on this camp, every country involved in this war is represented, here. Hell, there are plenty of natzmen round these originally Russian barracks, short and dark spouting broken Russian. He's pretty sure this is the first one who's actually American. He doesn't know why but the knowledge doesn't sit well in him.
At midday they have their only meal, three slices of black German bread composed largely of sawdust, some brown sludge, ersatz coffee. The new guys want to know why Scotty No Pants is nicknamed thus, Scotty reenacts the drag performance he put on for Christmas. Everyone laughs.
The room is built for twelve, if you count the beds: triple-decked, four of them. There are perhaps fifty squeezed in here and they're all jostling for a patch to call their own. There are people sleeping on tables (two to a tabletop, in fact), and people sleeping under the tables. The beds have three to a bunk, sometimes more. Pavel used to sleep on a bed until he couldn't stand the itch of fleas and bed bugs any longer.
It's not like the floor is much different. That night they go to sleep as usual, after lights out, the occasional cough echoing in the dank, stale air. They must stink; there is only one water faucet and right now it's too cold to wash, but it is a long time since his sense of taste and smell were cornered into accepting the substandard as normal.
Some idiot is bristling behind him, knees him in the back. Pavel feigns sleep-induced jostling and retaliates with a kick to the idiot's shin. When he turns around to face the malefactor it is Lieutenant Hikaru "George" Sulu, of the 435th Fighter Squadron, 479th Fighter Group, United States Army Air Force, shivering in the cold, dimly blue in the moonlight, unable to sleep. Out of generosity Pavel spreads the greatcoat open, lays half over the other man.
There is something foolhardy about the coloureds, something dauntless, supercilious, just because they are airmen. It draws unnecessary attention to their bunk, and if Uncle Vanya was still around he'd find a way of getting them to keep their heads down without wounding their pride. It is a special gift Uncle Vanya has, to command without lording, it is why the Brits accept them. There is probably no one left in the Red Army like Uncle Vanya.
"Why do you fight?" The camp guards taunt them one day. "Even as you fight here they are lynching your brothers back home."
Later, after the guards walk away, Scotty claps one of them on the shoulder and they have a talk.
"Who are you? I notice you flip through that notebook from time to time."
Pavel looks up. It is Hikaru Sulu. "It's my diary," he answers.
It is not a diary. It is a logbook. In it he writes the kills he has made: the date, time, location, additional remarks. There are fifty-two names, five of them marked with an asterisk - unconfirmed kills.
They were a formidable team, Alyosha and him. They would rotate between being sniper and spotter, though Pavel was just that little bit better at everything, netting forty when Alyosha was at thirty-one, earning a medal for bravery that Uncle Vanya personally pinned on him. But bravery wasn't something he called upon when making a kill, it was intelligence, precision, a cold-hearted concentration that made him as good as he was.
Alyosha was hit by a grenade in Tallinn, where his legs once were there remained but ribbons of skin and tendons, his uniform had caught on fire, his sleeve quietly smouldering to ashes, flesh burning a smooth pink. They were on the run.
"I'd rather die than be captured by the Germans," he pleaded, blood frothing at the mouth.
Pavel obliged, the pistol shot barely detectable in the roar of explosions and gunfire. He continued running, blindly, having been slowed down, not knowing where the rest of the unit went. He ran straight into Germans.
"I'm a fighter pilot," Hikaru says. "Shot down in a P-51 Mustang on an escort mission, landed in someone's backyard. A little girl saw me, called her parents over. The parents called the police over, the police handed me to the Wehrmacht."
These Americans, they act like you've been friends your whole life. "I read maps," Pavel replies. "I was captured one day."
Hikaru looks at him expectantly.
"In Tallinn," Pavel adds, no more.
"A navigator?"
"Not really."
"Tactician?"
"Something like that."
It is not entirely untrue. Uncle Vanya had been trying to move him into the officer track. You've got your medal now, Pasha, he would say. You know they don't really promote snipers. You're really good at tactics, and I would hate to see your talent go to waste.
They have been in the military for generations, the Chekovs, but they have fallen out of favour. Dimitri Alexandrovich was one of the first to be taken away, when Pavel was fourteen, put on a show trial where he pleaded guilty to every single ludicrous accusation. Ivan Dimitrievich found himself in a precarious position, but he eventually wheedled his way up the ranks, and the family could breathe free once more.
Andrei Dimitrievich was a poet, and hated war. As the Red Army started calling for men and women to join the Great Patriotic War the father-son arguments heated up. First there was a blanket ban on joining the army, then only when he hit eighteen, then only the intelligence division.
Four months past his seventeenth birthday, eight months to his eighteenth, he left an angst-ridden, rambling Letter to his Father on the dining table and ran off to the frontlines. The authorities had been feigning myopia at the ages of new recruits. Additionally, he was the nephew of Ivan Dimitrievich.
In training the instructors wielded fear as a tool. The punishment for theft is death. The punishment for tardiness is death. The punishment for losing your weapon is death. The punishment for getting captured is death.
The Germans have cut their rations. The pool of cans from the Red Cross packages is drying out. New kriegies pour in every day, the tents are spilling over into the football field.
Every night he goes to sleep listening to the soft rumble in Hikaru's belly. The memory of hunger stirs in his brain, but Pavel clamps down on the floodgates. He floats through his days trying to ignore the dull, gnawing emptiness spreading from the middle of his body, distracting himself with whatever he can to keep desperation at bay.
He wants to touch Hikaru, even with a body fast degenerating, compared to the rest of the camp he is resplendent. He wants to put a hand on Hikaru's tummy and quell the rumbling, to feel the hard ridges of muscle under his fingers. Even as he imagines running his hands up and down Hikaru's body the questions he wants to ask but cannot voice swim in his head. Hikaru, tell me, how do they treat homosexuals in the USA? Is there a place for people like me?
To the Germans he is everything they hate, russian, jewish, homosexual. It could only be worse if he were black, but in recent times he's become such a fan of black music, their jazz records so ubiquitous in the camp, sent over from the USA where they failed to sell, that the Germans will probably hold that against him.
Their arms are touching under the greatcoat, they are pressed up against each other in the sea of bodies. He can feel Hikaru's breath on his shoulder. He decides to take a chance - Hikaru doesn't look like a squealer - and slides a hand under his shirt, tracing circles above his bellybutton. Hikaru stirs and grabs his hand, a bit too forcefully. Pavel recoils but Hikaru doesn't let go. They go to sleep holding hands, fingers intertwined, palm against palm.
"Tell me about the picture you hide under your shirt, above your heart."
"She is my mother," Pavel replies.
She is Hanna Dziahileva, descended from a line of landowning peasants in Byelorussia. She moved to Leningrad to study medicine, where she fell in love with Andrei Dimitrievich Chekov. She was jewish, in him the blood of cossacks ran strong.
She believed in science, not God, but when he was young she would tell him about the significance of numbers to them Jews, six the imperfect number, seven the perfect, eight for new beginnings.
Because of her, the landowning family history, her status as a doctor, Pavel was rejected from the Leningrad State University. We are an egalitarian society, they said, and so we must afford the less privileged the opportunity.
"Tell me about your family," Pavel says to Hikaru. "Where are they? What are they doing?"
Hikaru lips twist into a wry smile. He shrugs. "We are from San Francisco. But right now they're at an internment camp in Manzanar."
"Where is that?"
"California. I was there too, but they allowed the men to enlist."
Pavel doesn't know what Hikaru meant when he said internment camps. Was it anything like the camp they were in? The extermination camps the party propaganda keeps harping on about? Were they like the gulags back home?
"I didn't know America had internment camps," he says.
Hikaru shrugs. "It's not as bad, at least. There is food."
That day at roll call the Germans pick out random people to beat. Someone has stolen from the woodpile, and it must be one of them from barracks zwölf, twelve. They ask the offender to confess his crime. They ask Lt. Kevin Riley to point out some Jews, when he refuses they beat him up. They beat Capt. Sean Turner, one of the black airmen. They beat up Hikaru Sulu.
For the rest of the week they will have to go on forced marches. Their allowance of hot water is halved. At night they hear B-52s roaring on their way to Munich, they hear bombs dropping on nearby Moosburg town, they can smell the acrid smoke from here; it lifts camp spirits a little. The explosions are loud, brash, priapic. Pavel thinks of the Katyusha rockets that do a half-arsed job, their signature whine, and he resents them, a little. Everyone sleeps on the floor now, the beds have been systematically broken into fuel for the fire.
He nestles up against Hikaru under the greatcoat and presses his lips to a bruise under the left eye. Hikaru doesn't do anything so he moves on to the one near his shoulder, slipping a hand past jutting clavicles to tug aside the collar of the grimy ex-white t-shirt. Hikaru's skin, now parchment-dry, hangs limply off his skeletal frame, still baffled by the drastic loss of flesh.
Hikaru's fingers graze his hip, and a frisson of sexual energy darts through him. It feels quaint, unfamiliar, like the return of a long lost pet. He shifts his body to line up against Hikaru's.
He knows that some of the other guys do it too, hands sneaking down waistbands for noncommittal jerkoffs. He's heard the tiny, restrained gasps at night, like exhausted little puppies. He knows that there are those who don't keep their hands to themselves, those with hands that roam to feel up any adjacent body as they pump mechanically at their dick longing for some sort of release.
Hikaru trails a finger down the length of his cock and Pavel jerks his hips forward, reflexively. He can feel Hikaru's breath blowing past his ear, down the nape of his neck, warm and misty.
Hikaru rubs a thumb around the tip of his cock, finding no foreskin, he proceeds to swipe across the opening slit. Pavel thrusts forward into Hikaru's open palm as Hikaru's fingers curl around his cock, drawing trails of precome. He buries his head into Hikaru's chest to stifle a moan, he hopes to death he hasn't been making any audible noises because there are guys who will sell you out for an extra slice of bread. He slides a leg between Hikaru's thighs and rocks back and forth, not caring now, hoping that people will attribute the rustling of the coat to normal sleep movements. He drags his left hand haltingly down Hikaru's back, coming to rest on a butt cheek, which he squeezes appreciatively. With his right hand he reaches out to cup Hikaru's face but he's lost his focus and ends up smothering him. He mouths an apology into Hikaru's skin. Hikaru tongue flicks across his palm and Pavel sinks his tongue into his mouth, wet and smooth, soft with shifting flesh. He pulls his thumb out to trace Hikaru's jawline and the next two fingers slip in, the heat and the slickness of his mouth nearly sending him over the edge. He pulls his arm down and wraps his fingers, glistening with saliva, around Hikaru's hardened cock and begins a slow thrusting rhythm. He hopes to god no one notices them, no one is noticing them, because he can't muster the extra effort to pretend like he's not in the midst of fucking the fist of the guy next to him. Halfheartedly he tries to pull the coat up over their heads but it slips again, he gives the coat another frustrated tug as Hikaru's grip tightens around him and he comes with a violent thrust, jaw slackening, the world around him melting. He isn't in Moosburg anymore, he's not a prisoner of the Germans, he's not trapped.
He finds himself panting into the nook of Hikaru's chest, he finds he has been gripping Hikaru's arm with too much force and he has forgotten about Hikaru's dick. He relinquishes the grip on the arm and resumes work on the dick. Hikaru winds an arm around his shoulders and presses his lips to his forehead. Pavel hears Hikaru's breath hitch as he comes quietly, in warm spurts, into his palm. Pavel is mad enough to think about eating the come, mad and hungry and desperate.
Juden, Juden, Juden, the Germans called, rattling the barbed wire fence behind them. They prowled the border like jungle cats, ravenous and hungry for prey.
They brandished loaves of soft, white bread before them, to get people to speak up. Do you know anyone who is a Jew? Point out at least one Jew to me. They would walk past with a Torah and get everyone to spit on it. They would ask them to pronounce a word with the 'r' sound in it, like a shibboleth, they would pull out the ones who pronounced it with a guttural voice, send them through the barbed wire and get them to dig holes in the ground, graves into which they fell as bullets entered their brains.
They called out Uncle Vanya and made him pull down his trousers. They seemed surprised to find he wasn't Jewish. For a while Pavel worried that they would shoot him anyway, but they told Uncle Vanya to take a step back. He was next. The camp guard stood over him, eyed him up and down, appraising his dark blond hair and blue eyes. He looked the guard straight in the eye, not wavering. The guard moved on.
You're lucky, Pasha, Uncle Vanya would say. Four months later they got even luckier as they marched through kilometres of country rain and snow to arrive at an Allied POW camp. The Allied POWs, they cling to the Geneva Convention like it means something, and the Germans have a modicum of respect for Britain and the USA they do not hold for the USSR. They are lucky they weren't sent to a Soviet POW camp, a concentration camp, or an extermination camp. Since Alyosha and Uncle Vanya died Pavel doesn't think there is anyone left on the camp who knows about his jewishness.
Spring is here. The fleas and bedbugs and lice are out in full force once more, having laid dormant during winter. Scotty tells them news from McGuffy that the Germans are facing inevitable defeat, it is only a matter of time.
The Red Cross parcels are coming in a flurry now, they have even returned to full parcels, the first time in half a year. Medical attention is lavished on even the most diseased of POWs. Compared to the brutal winter they are living like kings. The Germans must be fattening them up for when the Allied forces come to take them out of here, to make it seem like the camp was in strict compliance with the Geneva Convention, Scotty suggests.
There is news that the Russians have broken through to Berlin, and the Russian camp is moved to lord this over the rest of the nationalities, that Russia is going to be the one that saves them from this hell. Somewhere, deep down in his heart, Pavel knows that this prediction will not come to pass.
The Kolyas corner him one day, as they settle down for their midday meal. We've been watching you, Pasha, and you've been getting very close to that jap, Big-nosed Kolya says. Are you such a whore that you've become his bitch? Freckled Kolya asks.
"No," Pavel replies, in a matter-of-fact tone. "I'm the one who's fucking him. I'm the one fucking an air ace, a pilot with seven confirmed kills." He is the German-killer, Luftwaffe destroyer, Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu of the 435th.
Big-nosed Kolya looks suitably impressed. Freckled Kolya frowns and punches him in the arm. "Don't get too close," he warns. For a moment he looks about to bandy the t-word, traitor.
The Germans blast their propaganda all over the camp, but there is an irrepressible wave of renewed optimism. The reconnaissance squadrons overhead make an extra pass over the camp, swooping low, rolling left and right, to the sound of loud cheers. In the next compound the Indians are playing their music and putting on a dance, they are cheered on by everyone else.
In their compound a band has likewise formed, playing jazz standards, Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman, to drown out the German propaganda. Rumours of an armistice float through, some men go wild and taunt the guards.
Hikaru pulls him into a dance, and fuck if these rations aren't going to last them, they shimmy and jive with no thought for tomorrow, only for a future that seems bright. Capt Turner compliments him on his dancing, Pavel beams in reply. Hikaru stretches out a hand, and he takes it. There is a brief tussle over who plays the girl, but they agree they'll both do it, Hikaru first, spinning into his arms to be dipped down low. Scotty applauds them.
The Germans set the dogs loose, and they scramble back into the barracks. The next day their rations are cut. A calisthenics program is started, intended to make them hungrier. The rumours of the armistice prove false, the latrines overrun into the parade ground. They are forced to put up footdrill displays for the camp guards, even through the icy rain. There is the palpable fear that the Germans will begin marching them south as hostages. But the seeds of hope planted in spring grow strong, there is a reserve of strength the Germans cannot touch now.
"What will you do, after the war?" he asks Hikaru.
Hikaru smiles. "Finish university."
Pavel laughs at him. "And after that?"
Hikaru shrugs. "What are you gonna do?"
"University, too," he lies.
The Americans are coming. There is a fear in the eyes of the camp guards not present before. Short-range planes fly overhead. The rumour, and they're not going to be fooled again but this one seems really convincing, is that Pike's Third Army is just fourteen kilometres from the camp. Hikaru tells him to expect Shermans any day now. Between the two of them they have hoarded enough food, in the form of a half loaf, to tide them through a few days, in case the Germans abandon the camp. Inwardly Pavel rejoices that it is the Americans who are coming to save them, not the Russians. He knows his country well enough. He wants something different.
What will happen after the war?
Will the human race stumble into a new era of peace and rebuilding? The Americans will come. The Americans will take them to France where they receive food, and medical attention. They await dispatch back to their respective countries. When Big-nosed Kolya and Freckled Kolya and the rest of the Russians aren't looking, Pavel will hide amongst the US forces. Or he will surrender himself to them, plead political asylum. Tell them that if they return him to the USSR he will face death. Maybe they will take pity on the fact that he is jewish, and decide to give him a chance elsewhere.
He will follow Hikaru Sulu back to San Francisco, California. Hikaru will return to find his family is all right and the internment camps were like a resort. Pavel will write a letter to his parents, and he will find a way to bring them over.
He will finally be able to get a place in university, who knows? He will study astrophysics and use his knowledge for the betterment of mankind. San Francisco becomes the ideal place for people like them, homosexuals, and they can live together undisturbed.
Maybe the Russians will hunt him down, because they can't stand the idea of losing one of their brightest to America. But it will not matter, because Hikaru Sulu will be there to beat the shit out of whomever they send to assassinate him.
"What are you smiling about?" Hikaru asks him, gently. Reality comes into focus and his fantasies tunnel away.
"Nothing," he replies. He is a realist, he is both Russian and Jewish, he cannot be anything but. This is what the future has in store for him:
The Americans will come. The Americans will take them to France where they receive food, and medical attention. They await dispatch back to their respective countries. He returns to Russia. Stalin orders that they be sent to gulags, because they, the POWs, have been fraternising with the Western, capitalist enemy. They must be broken with hard labour until their minds are as one with the party. He learns that the extermination camps are not party propaganda and his family is dead.
Hikaru Sulu will return to the USA. He finds that his family has been treated badly in the internment camps. He returns with his family to San Francisco, where they find that their house, and his father's barber shop, have been burgled and looted. Everyone in their neighbourhood will hate them for being Japanese even though Hikaru is an American war hero.
They lead out lives devoid of the good they fought this war for.
That night as they go to sleep Pavel leans in on Hikaru, presses his ear to his chest, listens to his heart beat. There is a request he wants to ask but cannot voice. Take me to America, he mouths, cradling the half loaf of bread they have saved for just in case. Take me to America, where you japs can be war heroes and war heroes come home to find their brothers lynched. Take me to America, where I can be Russian and Jewish and homosexual and be none of those at all, where traitors like me can find a home, for I will betray my country and my country will betray me.
Dawn breaks with a Piper Cub chugging across the horizon, followed by two P-51s. In the distance, the deep rumble of Shermans from beyond the hills. The Americans are here.
originally posted here.
They're bringing in new batches of people all the time now, last night he could hear the screech of box cars grinding to a halt outside the compound, the bark of dogs, German cars revving, the faint crackle of a transistor radio.
They lie nearly two deep on a floor strewn with straw, no space to stretch out and no space to curl up. In the corner, Scotty No Pants tuning in to McGuffy. At his previous camp the Germans caught Mikhail Temkin for the same crime; they snapped the antenna in two and stuck it in his ears, half here, half there, so he looked like a ridiculous robot-man, and then they clapped down hard, on both sides. He later died of typhus. Uncle Vanya would contract typhus too, and he died a month ago.
Pavel remembers dragging his uncle to the American medics. With a shrug the French said there was nothing they could do, they were short on medical supplies, that them Russians have been dropping like flies here (and everywhere - Russian lives are less than rubles). It wasn't like the Americans could do any better but there was Doctor McCoy, also called Bones, who watched over Uncle Vanya as he slipped into the hazy fever preceding death.
Uncle Vanya left behind a greatcoat and a watch. The watch Pavel gave to Doctor McCoy as a token of gratitude and the greatcoat he jealously kept for himself.
It is winter.
In the morning the new kriegies are inducted during roll call. The ones they have to make space for are mostly American, carrying packages from the Red Cross, inadequately dressed. Most of them have been shipped over from Sagan, but some of them look like very new prisoners, their skin just starting to come loose over muscle in the stage of early atrophy. Everyone eyes them with a sort of carnivorous envy, as if yearning to strip the meat off their bones to pad their own. It's not just the fact that they look more human than skeleton still, there is an unmistakable swagger and air of smugness so that Pavel realises they must be pilots, flyboys, airmen. Some of them are coloureds, three black and one jap. They find out he's a jap because the camp guard, Junkers, stops and asks for his name.
It is a pretty clever move on the guard's part.
Big-nosed Kolya tells him to talk to the new guys, get chummy, score some food. The barracks was Russian first, only recently housing other nationalities due to overcrowding. He's the only Russian who can speak English well enough to communicate, save for Kravchenko who lives outside in a tent, and some other guys down the other end of the barracks he's never bothered to learn the names of.
"I wasn't aware they let japs like you in the U.S. army now," he comments with a sneer when the pilots, the cocky bastards, decide to take up residence in his room. He stands there with his arms crossed, jaw set, ready to defend his territory. Uncle Vanya's greatcoat is draped on his shoulders, it makes him stand taller and feel stronger.
"You bet your ass they do," the pilot replies.
The other Americans call him George and the Brits do too. It's not the name he gave the German officer. Pavel has seen plenty of Asians on this camp, every country involved in this war is represented, here. Hell, there are plenty of natzmen round these originally Russian barracks, short and dark spouting broken Russian. He's pretty sure this is the first one who's actually American. He doesn't know why but the knowledge doesn't sit well in him.
At midday they have their only meal, three slices of black German bread composed largely of sawdust, some brown sludge, ersatz coffee. The new guys want to know why Scotty No Pants is nicknamed thus, Scotty reenacts the drag performance he put on for Christmas. Everyone laughs.
The room is built for twelve, if you count the beds: triple-decked, four of them. There are perhaps fifty squeezed in here and they're all jostling for a patch to call their own. There are people sleeping on tables (two to a tabletop, in fact), and people sleeping under the tables. The beds have three to a bunk, sometimes more. Pavel used to sleep on a bed until he couldn't stand the itch of fleas and bed bugs any longer.
It's not like the floor is much different. That night they go to sleep as usual, after lights out, the occasional cough echoing in the dank, stale air. They must stink; there is only one water faucet and right now it's too cold to wash, but it is a long time since his sense of taste and smell were cornered into accepting the substandard as normal.
Some idiot is bristling behind him, knees him in the back. Pavel feigns sleep-induced jostling and retaliates with a kick to the idiot's shin. When he turns around to face the malefactor it is Lieutenant Hikaru "George" Sulu, of the 435th Fighter Squadron, 479th Fighter Group, United States Army Air Force, shivering in the cold, dimly blue in the moonlight, unable to sleep. Out of generosity Pavel spreads the greatcoat open, lays half over the other man.
There is something foolhardy about the coloureds, something dauntless, supercilious, just because they are airmen. It draws unnecessary attention to their bunk, and if Uncle Vanya was still around he'd find a way of getting them to keep their heads down without wounding their pride. It is a special gift Uncle Vanya has, to command without lording, it is why the Brits accept them. There is probably no one left in the Red Army like Uncle Vanya.
"Why do you fight?" The camp guards taunt them one day. "Even as you fight here they are lynching your brothers back home."
Later, after the guards walk away, Scotty claps one of them on the shoulder and they have a talk.
"Who are you? I notice you flip through that notebook from time to time."
Pavel looks up. It is Hikaru Sulu. "It's my diary," he answers.
It is not a diary. It is a logbook. In it he writes the kills he has made: the date, time, location, additional remarks. There are fifty-two names, five of them marked with an asterisk - unconfirmed kills.
They were a formidable team, Alyosha and him. They would rotate between being sniper and spotter, though Pavel was just that little bit better at everything, netting forty when Alyosha was at thirty-one, earning a medal for bravery that Uncle Vanya personally pinned on him. But bravery wasn't something he called upon when making a kill, it was intelligence, precision, a cold-hearted concentration that made him as good as he was.
Alyosha was hit by a grenade in Tallinn, where his legs once were there remained but ribbons of skin and tendons, his uniform had caught on fire, his sleeve quietly smouldering to ashes, flesh burning a smooth pink. They were on the run.
"I'd rather die than be captured by the Germans," he pleaded, blood frothing at the mouth.
Pavel obliged, the pistol shot barely detectable in the roar of explosions and gunfire. He continued running, blindly, having been slowed down, not knowing where the rest of the unit went. He ran straight into Germans.
"I'm a fighter pilot," Hikaru says. "Shot down in a P-51 Mustang on an escort mission, landed in someone's backyard. A little girl saw me, called her parents over. The parents called the police over, the police handed me to the Wehrmacht."
These Americans, they act like you've been friends your whole life. "I read maps," Pavel replies. "I was captured one day."
Hikaru looks at him expectantly.
"In Tallinn," Pavel adds, no more.
"A navigator?"
"Not really."
"Tactician?"
"Something like that."
It is not entirely untrue. Uncle Vanya had been trying to move him into the officer track. You've got your medal now, Pasha, he would say. You know they don't really promote snipers. You're really good at tactics, and I would hate to see your talent go to waste.
They have been in the military for generations, the Chekovs, but they have fallen out of favour. Dimitri Alexandrovich was one of the first to be taken away, when Pavel was fourteen, put on a show trial where he pleaded guilty to every single ludicrous accusation. Ivan Dimitrievich found himself in a precarious position, but he eventually wheedled his way up the ranks, and the family could breathe free once more.
Andrei Dimitrievich was a poet, and hated war. As the Red Army started calling for men and women to join the Great Patriotic War the father-son arguments heated up. First there was a blanket ban on joining the army, then only when he hit eighteen, then only the intelligence division.
Four months past his seventeenth birthday, eight months to his eighteenth, he left an angst-ridden, rambling Letter to his Father on the dining table and ran off to the frontlines. The authorities had been feigning myopia at the ages of new recruits. Additionally, he was the nephew of Ivan Dimitrievich.
In training the instructors wielded fear as a tool. The punishment for theft is death. The punishment for tardiness is death. The punishment for losing your weapon is death. The punishment for getting captured is death.
The Germans have cut their rations. The pool of cans from the Red Cross packages is drying out. New kriegies pour in every day, the tents are spilling over into the football field.
Every night he goes to sleep listening to the soft rumble in Hikaru's belly. The memory of hunger stirs in his brain, but Pavel clamps down on the floodgates. He floats through his days trying to ignore the dull, gnawing emptiness spreading from the middle of his body, distracting himself with whatever he can to keep desperation at bay.
He wants to touch Hikaru, even with a body fast degenerating, compared to the rest of the camp he is resplendent. He wants to put a hand on Hikaru's tummy and quell the rumbling, to feel the hard ridges of muscle under his fingers. Even as he imagines running his hands up and down Hikaru's body the questions he wants to ask but cannot voice swim in his head. Hikaru, tell me, how do they treat homosexuals in the USA? Is there a place for people like me?
To the Germans he is everything they hate, russian, jewish, homosexual. It could only be worse if he were black, but in recent times he's become such a fan of black music, their jazz records so ubiquitous in the camp, sent over from the USA where they failed to sell, that the Germans will probably hold that against him.
Their arms are touching under the greatcoat, they are pressed up against each other in the sea of bodies. He can feel Hikaru's breath on his shoulder. He decides to take a chance - Hikaru doesn't look like a squealer - and slides a hand under his shirt, tracing circles above his bellybutton. Hikaru stirs and grabs his hand, a bit too forcefully. Pavel recoils but Hikaru doesn't let go. They go to sleep holding hands, fingers intertwined, palm against palm.
"Tell me about the picture you hide under your shirt, above your heart."
"She is my mother," Pavel replies.
She is Hanna Dziahileva, descended from a line of landowning peasants in Byelorussia. She moved to Leningrad to study medicine, where she fell in love with Andrei Dimitrievich Chekov. She was jewish, in him the blood of cossacks ran strong.
She believed in science, not God, but when he was young she would tell him about the significance of numbers to them Jews, six the imperfect number, seven the perfect, eight for new beginnings.
Because of her, the landowning family history, her status as a doctor, Pavel was rejected from the Leningrad State University. We are an egalitarian society, they said, and so we must afford the less privileged the opportunity.
"Tell me about your family," Pavel says to Hikaru. "Where are they? What are they doing?"
Hikaru lips twist into a wry smile. He shrugs. "We are from San Francisco. But right now they're at an internment camp in Manzanar."
"Where is that?"
"California. I was there too, but they allowed the men to enlist."
Pavel doesn't know what Hikaru meant when he said internment camps. Was it anything like the camp they were in? The extermination camps the party propaganda keeps harping on about? Were they like the gulags back home?
"I didn't know America had internment camps," he says.
Hikaru shrugs. "It's not as bad, at least. There is food."
That day at roll call the Germans pick out random people to beat. Someone has stolen from the woodpile, and it must be one of them from barracks zwölf, twelve. They ask the offender to confess his crime. They ask Lt. Kevin Riley to point out some Jews, when he refuses they beat him up. They beat Capt. Sean Turner, one of the black airmen. They beat up Hikaru Sulu.
For the rest of the week they will have to go on forced marches. Their allowance of hot water is halved. At night they hear B-52s roaring on their way to Munich, they hear bombs dropping on nearby Moosburg town, they can smell the acrid smoke from here; it lifts camp spirits a little. The explosions are loud, brash, priapic. Pavel thinks of the Katyusha rockets that do a half-arsed job, their signature whine, and he resents them, a little. Everyone sleeps on the floor now, the beds have been systematically broken into fuel for the fire.
He nestles up against Hikaru under the greatcoat and presses his lips to a bruise under the left eye. Hikaru doesn't do anything so he moves on to the one near his shoulder, slipping a hand past jutting clavicles to tug aside the collar of the grimy ex-white t-shirt. Hikaru's skin, now parchment-dry, hangs limply off his skeletal frame, still baffled by the drastic loss of flesh.
Hikaru's fingers graze his hip, and a frisson of sexual energy darts through him. It feels quaint, unfamiliar, like the return of a long lost pet. He shifts his body to line up against Hikaru's.
He knows that some of the other guys do it too, hands sneaking down waistbands for noncommittal jerkoffs. He's heard the tiny, restrained gasps at night, like exhausted little puppies. He knows that there are those who don't keep their hands to themselves, those with hands that roam to feel up any adjacent body as they pump mechanically at their dick longing for some sort of release.
Hikaru trails a finger down the length of his cock and Pavel jerks his hips forward, reflexively. He can feel Hikaru's breath blowing past his ear, down the nape of his neck, warm and misty.
Hikaru rubs a thumb around the tip of his cock, finding no foreskin, he proceeds to swipe across the opening slit. Pavel thrusts forward into Hikaru's open palm as Hikaru's fingers curl around his cock, drawing trails of precome. He buries his head into Hikaru's chest to stifle a moan, he hopes to death he hasn't been making any audible noises because there are guys who will sell you out for an extra slice of bread. He slides a leg between Hikaru's thighs and rocks back and forth, not caring now, hoping that people will attribute the rustling of the coat to normal sleep movements. He drags his left hand haltingly down Hikaru's back, coming to rest on a butt cheek, which he squeezes appreciatively. With his right hand he reaches out to cup Hikaru's face but he's lost his focus and ends up smothering him. He mouths an apology into Hikaru's skin. Hikaru tongue flicks across his palm and Pavel sinks his tongue into his mouth, wet and smooth, soft with shifting flesh. He pulls his thumb out to trace Hikaru's jawline and the next two fingers slip in, the heat and the slickness of his mouth nearly sending him over the edge. He pulls his arm down and wraps his fingers, glistening with saliva, around Hikaru's hardened cock and begins a slow thrusting rhythm. He hopes to god no one notices them, no one is noticing them, because he can't muster the extra effort to pretend like he's not in the midst of fucking the fist of the guy next to him. Halfheartedly he tries to pull the coat up over their heads but it slips again, he gives the coat another frustrated tug as Hikaru's grip tightens around him and he comes with a violent thrust, jaw slackening, the world around him melting. He isn't in Moosburg anymore, he's not a prisoner of the Germans, he's not trapped.
He finds himself panting into the nook of Hikaru's chest, he finds he has been gripping Hikaru's arm with too much force and he has forgotten about Hikaru's dick. He relinquishes the grip on the arm and resumes work on the dick. Hikaru winds an arm around his shoulders and presses his lips to his forehead. Pavel hears Hikaru's breath hitch as he comes quietly, in warm spurts, into his palm. Pavel is mad enough to think about eating the come, mad and hungry and desperate.
Juden, Juden, Juden, the Germans called, rattling the barbed wire fence behind them. They prowled the border like jungle cats, ravenous and hungry for prey.
They brandished loaves of soft, white bread before them, to get people to speak up. Do you know anyone who is a Jew? Point out at least one Jew to me. They would walk past with a Torah and get everyone to spit on it. They would ask them to pronounce a word with the 'r' sound in it, like a shibboleth, they would pull out the ones who pronounced it with a guttural voice, send them through the barbed wire and get them to dig holes in the ground, graves into which they fell as bullets entered their brains.
They called out Uncle Vanya and made him pull down his trousers. They seemed surprised to find he wasn't Jewish. For a while Pavel worried that they would shoot him anyway, but they told Uncle Vanya to take a step back. He was next. The camp guard stood over him, eyed him up and down, appraising his dark blond hair and blue eyes. He looked the guard straight in the eye, not wavering. The guard moved on.
You're lucky, Pasha, Uncle Vanya would say. Four months later they got even luckier as they marched through kilometres of country rain and snow to arrive at an Allied POW camp. The Allied POWs, they cling to the Geneva Convention like it means something, and the Germans have a modicum of respect for Britain and the USA they do not hold for the USSR. They are lucky they weren't sent to a Soviet POW camp, a concentration camp, or an extermination camp. Since Alyosha and Uncle Vanya died Pavel doesn't think there is anyone left on the camp who knows about his jewishness.
Spring is here. The fleas and bedbugs and lice are out in full force once more, having laid dormant during winter. Scotty tells them news from McGuffy that the Germans are facing inevitable defeat, it is only a matter of time.
The Red Cross parcels are coming in a flurry now, they have even returned to full parcels, the first time in half a year. Medical attention is lavished on even the most diseased of POWs. Compared to the brutal winter they are living like kings. The Germans must be fattening them up for when the Allied forces come to take them out of here, to make it seem like the camp was in strict compliance with the Geneva Convention, Scotty suggests.
There is news that the Russians have broken through to Berlin, and the Russian camp is moved to lord this over the rest of the nationalities, that Russia is going to be the one that saves them from this hell. Somewhere, deep down in his heart, Pavel knows that this prediction will not come to pass.
The Kolyas corner him one day, as they settle down for their midday meal. We've been watching you, Pasha, and you've been getting very close to that jap, Big-nosed Kolya says. Are you such a whore that you've become his bitch? Freckled Kolya asks.
"No," Pavel replies, in a matter-of-fact tone. "I'm the one who's fucking him. I'm the one fucking an air ace, a pilot with seven confirmed kills." He is the German-killer, Luftwaffe destroyer, Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu of the 435th.
Big-nosed Kolya looks suitably impressed. Freckled Kolya frowns and punches him in the arm. "Don't get too close," he warns. For a moment he looks about to bandy the t-word, traitor.
The Germans blast their propaganda all over the camp, but there is an irrepressible wave of renewed optimism. The reconnaissance squadrons overhead make an extra pass over the camp, swooping low, rolling left and right, to the sound of loud cheers. In the next compound the Indians are playing their music and putting on a dance, they are cheered on by everyone else.
In their compound a band has likewise formed, playing jazz standards, Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman, to drown out the German propaganda. Rumours of an armistice float through, some men go wild and taunt the guards.
Hikaru pulls him into a dance, and fuck if these rations aren't going to last them, they shimmy and jive with no thought for tomorrow, only for a future that seems bright. Capt Turner compliments him on his dancing, Pavel beams in reply. Hikaru stretches out a hand, and he takes it. There is a brief tussle over who plays the girl, but they agree they'll both do it, Hikaru first, spinning into his arms to be dipped down low. Scotty applauds them.
The Germans set the dogs loose, and they scramble back into the barracks. The next day their rations are cut. A calisthenics program is started, intended to make them hungrier. The rumours of the armistice prove false, the latrines overrun into the parade ground. They are forced to put up footdrill displays for the camp guards, even through the icy rain. There is the palpable fear that the Germans will begin marching them south as hostages. But the seeds of hope planted in spring grow strong, there is a reserve of strength the Germans cannot touch now.
"What will you do, after the war?" he asks Hikaru.
Hikaru smiles. "Finish university."
Pavel laughs at him. "And after that?"
Hikaru shrugs. "What are you gonna do?"
"University, too," he lies.
The Americans are coming. There is a fear in the eyes of the camp guards not present before. Short-range planes fly overhead. The rumour, and they're not going to be fooled again but this one seems really convincing, is that Pike's Third Army is just fourteen kilometres from the camp. Hikaru tells him to expect Shermans any day now. Between the two of them they have hoarded enough food, in the form of a half loaf, to tide them through a few days, in case the Germans abandon the camp. Inwardly Pavel rejoices that it is the Americans who are coming to save them, not the Russians. He knows his country well enough. He wants something different.
What will happen after the war?
Will the human race stumble into a new era of peace and rebuilding? The Americans will come. The Americans will take them to France where they receive food, and medical attention. They await dispatch back to their respective countries. When Big-nosed Kolya and Freckled Kolya and the rest of the Russians aren't looking, Pavel will hide amongst the US forces. Or he will surrender himself to them, plead political asylum. Tell them that if they return him to the USSR he will face death. Maybe they will take pity on the fact that he is jewish, and decide to give him a chance elsewhere.
He will follow Hikaru Sulu back to San Francisco, California. Hikaru will return to find his family is all right and the internment camps were like a resort. Pavel will write a letter to his parents, and he will find a way to bring them over.
He will finally be able to get a place in university, who knows? He will study astrophysics and use his knowledge for the betterment of mankind. San Francisco becomes the ideal place for people like them, homosexuals, and they can live together undisturbed.
Maybe the Russians will hunt him down, because they can't stand the idea of losing one of their brightest to America. But it will not matter, because Hikaru Sulu will be there to beat the shit out of whomever they send to assassinate him.
"What are you smiling about?" Hikaru asks him, gently. Reality comes into focus and his fantasies tunnel away.
"Nothing," he replies. He is a realist, he is both Russian and Jewish, he cannot be anything but. This is what the future has in store for him:
The Americans will come. The Americans will take them to France where they receive food, and medical attention. They await dispatch back to their respective countries. He returns to Russia. Stalin orders that they be sent to gulags, because they, the POWs, have been fraternising with the Western, capitalist enemy. They must be broken with hard labour until their minds are as one with the party. He learns that the extermination camps are not party propaganda and his family is dead.
Hikaru Sulu will return to the USA. He finds that his family has been treated badly in the internment camps. He returns with his family to San Francisco, where they find that their house, and his father's barber shop, have been burgled and looted. Everyone in their neighbourhood will hate them for being Japanese even though Hikaru is an American war hero.
They lead out lives devoid of the good they fought this war for.
That night as they go to sleep Pavel leans in on Hikaru, presses his ear to his chest, listens to his heart beat. There is a request he wants to ask but cannot voice. Take me to America, he mouths, cradling the half loaf of bread they have saved for just in case. Take me to America, where you japs can be war heroes and war heroes come home to find their brothers lynched. Take me to America, where I can be Russian and Jewish and homosexual and be none of those at all, where traitors like me can find a home, for I will betray my country and my country will betray me.
Dawn breaks with a Piper Cub chugging across the horizon, followed by two P-51s. In the distance, the deep rumble of Shermans from beyond the hills. The Americans are here.
originally posted here.