The Orderly

V

Yule came and went. It was a happier occasion than it had been on previous occasions. People were allowing themselves to hope that what they were now optimistically calling the “thirty-month war” would be over by the spring. The number of people being told that their loved one had been dug out of a ditch with his face blown off, identifiable only by his identity papers, had fallen away, and the papers were full of talk about what would happen to the “ten thousand traitors”, as the pre-war Lenkish population of the two cities was now being called.

Despite seldom leaving his room, Piech was even smoking by the end of the year, and demanded of the sergeant in charge of personnel that Kostya be allowed to see the New Year in with him, toast it with vodka and eat sardines from a tin spread out on bread rolls.

After midnight, the captain rapidly tired, and said to Kostya that he was going to have to decide whether to leave for the front, or to go home. His brother had written again, demanding an answer. ”What do you think? I’m getting discharged within the next week. Doctor Chislenko, gods damn him, says they need the room. I have to choose.”

Kostya didn’t speak. After their intimate conversation a few weeks earlier, they had both dampened down any expectations that something might come of it. For his part, Kostya did not want to hold the captain to anything specific, and had been given leave to go across town to his master to make arrangements about returning to work. Velikovsky made all the right noises, and was thankful that Minerva had spared his apprentice the fate of a lot of others across the city.

Kostya himself wanted to go with the captain, but that was not his choice to make.

“Come on, say something! You were quite enthusiastic the other week. Going back to your master couldn’t have been that good.”

“I-I couldn’t say, sir. I’m not qualified to make that decision for you. And Yuri Fomich was quite an agreeable a man to work with when he was sober.”

“Come on. Tell me what you would do!”

Kostya still demurred, so Piech gave him an order to answer the question.

“I don’t have a family, sir. I’d want to go back and fight, but I haven’t seen any action, unlike yourself.”

“Then you can come with me and I’ll show you a real war.”

“Well, I’d like that. If you’d tell my master.”

“This Yuri Fomich chap – can he get another apprentice?”

“I guess so. Everyone wants to be a brewer’s boy – they think it’s their ticket to… well, you know.” He grinned.

Piech poured out another dram of vodka for them both and raised his glass in a toast. “Then – to the rest of the war! To victory!” He paused. He looked directly into Kostya’s eyes. Kostya found himself unable to tear his gaze away from that of someone who was far higher on the social ladder than he was; it wasn’t done to look into the eyes of even one’s master, let alone a captain from a family as highly-ranked as the Piechowie.

But no such objection was made. The only reason Kostya looked away was through embarrassment. It was the feeling that he had last felt when he looked into the eyes of the attractive young man with whom he’d had a brief romance with back in the workhouse. Such things were punished quite severely when found out. He still had the scars from the beating he’d got for it, seven years after it had happened. He didn’t want to give Piech any cause to report him to the sergeant. It wasn’t illegal, but there could always be unpleasant informal consequences. He really didn’t want to find himself sent to reconstruct the railway in the full teeth of winter.

Piech then leaned across, and whispered something in the young soldier’s ear. And then he kissed it.