Title: Clay Men
Rating: T, for now
Pairing: Sgt. Donny Donnowitz/Pfc. Smithson Utivich
Warnings: Language, of course; slash; pre-fic character death
Summary: The war is over, and Utivich is having trouble finding exactly where he belongs in this new peace. A Jewish mystic helps him find what he's been missing.
A/N: I always do my research; however, there are limits. With my busy schedule, I simply don't have time to read the Kabbalistic texts. If you ever find any inaccuracies, or find my interpretation of cultural identity to be incorrect, please point it out. As for Utivich's job as a journalist, this is true. If you didn't already know, he was working as a journalist in England prior to joining the army. So says Novak.
Chapter One
Coming home wasn't like he'd thought it would be, maybe because New York had never felt like home to him. His mom was reasonably happy to see him. After all, she'd never expected him to survive the war.
It was growing colder now, but the numbness he felt went more than skin deep. The war was over. Hitler was dead. The entire Nazi High Command was dead, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to feel the excitement that infected everyone else.
He shivered in the chilly air as he trekked back to his small studio apartment from a walk in Central Park. Along the way, he had spotted some local kids playing baseball and suddenly found he couldn't bear to stay any longer. He passed a synagogue on his way home, closed to all but the wretched until the Sabbath, and resolved to visit the coming weekend. His mother wouldn't approve. She'd always done all she could to blend in with the goyish crowd. What she didn't realize, what he'd learned, was that, in this world, you were either Jewish or you weren't.
He hugged his coat tighter around him against the wind, eyeing the gray sky for signs of clouds. Freezing weather was approaching quickly, and he was briefly reminded of the snows in France--the hills blanketed, and the trees covered in white powder. It was beautiful while it lasted, even though it was infuriating when the meltwater dripped on their heads.
He turned onto his block and paused a moment to stare up at his solid gray apartment building, so nondescript in this city of concrete and steel. He frowned to himself as he trudged inside. It was late.
He stood on the front steps of the temple, blinking in the sunlight as he decided whether to go straight home. He'd sat dutifully for an hour, and all he'd learned was that he needed to brush up on his Hebrew.
"Aren't you a handsome young man?" He turned to find a stooped, old woman eyeing him speculatively. "I haven't seen you here before. What's your name?"
He glanced at the street impatiently. The deadline for his column was on Monday, and he hadn't even started yet. But his mother had raised him to be tactful, so he put on his best smile--not much of one these days--and answered, "Smithson Utivich."
"Smithson? That's not a very Jewish name."
"My parents' choice," he explained.
The woman nodded knowingly. "That is the way of things."
He edged towards the stairs, eager to leave.
"Will I see you here again, Mr. Utivich?"
His smile faltered. He was still unused to being addressed as "mister" once again. "I suppose I might be back next Saturday."
She grinned, revealing gapped, yellowed teeth. "I'll be waiting for you, Mr. Utivich."
Utivich began attending temple services on a weekly basis. He never experienced any sort of spiritual revelation or received any divine guidance, but he went anyway. It helped him remember, and he needed to remember. When the rabbi spoke, he never heard the prayers. Instead, he listened to the echo of the Lieutenant's chuckle and saw Donny's slightly maniacal smile as he practiced batting rocks at tree trunks. He heard Stiglitz's gruffly muttered German as he packed up his bedroll while the rest of them tried to catch just a few more minutes of shuteye and smelled the hazy scent of Wicki's cigarette smoke.
For that all too brief hour, he was home again.
The old woman was there, too, every Saturday. She frequently sought him out after the service dismissed. She still unnerved him, but she seemed to think of Utivich as her own grandson. For all her creepiness, though, there was something mystical about her. It was as if she knew something no one else understood and was secretly laughing at the world's ignorance. It was this tantalizing air of wisdom, of guidance, that kept him from shying away like a rat from an asp. He knew soul-deep that he needed what she could offer, whatever that may be. And so, he was determined listen to what this strange, old woman had to say, despite the persistent wrongness that prickled at the back of his neck.
"Smithson!" the plump, middle-aged woman called as she bustled over, undoubtedly to embrace him heartily, pluck at his clothes, and tell him how thin he was.
"Good morning, Mrs. Rosenberg," he answered obediently.
The matronly woman patted his cheek with gusto, her diminutive husband trailing after her submissively. "How is your mother?"
He answered her bombardment of questions simply without elaboration, asking after her family in return, going through the motions of polite conversation. He barely managed to keep his plastered-on smile from turning into a grimace as he suffered through hearing about her precious son, the doctor, and his new, bouncing baby boy. Deep in the dark recesses of his mind, he cursed the ease of her life, the lack of sacrifices she'd had to make, and her happiness that came without effort. He transferred this dark coil of jealousy into an amused chuckle at the most recent tale of her grandchildren's antics. How trivial their lives were, he though bitterly.
"You can tell, can't you?" the old woman asked, suddenly beside him, as the Rosenbergs left. "She's not Jewish."
He stared down at her quizzically. "What do you mean? Of course, she's Jewish. Why would she come to Temple if she wasn't?"
"Oh, she's Jewish," she replied cryptically. "But not really. You know what I mean, don't you, Mr. Utivich?"
And he did. Mrs. Rosenberg wasn't Jewish in the same way he wasn't Smithson Utivich the journalist. They were both going through the motions. She wasn't Jewish just like he wasn't happy. It was more than the rest of his family could claim; at least Mrs. Rosenberg pretended. And that was something too.
"If you pretend long enough, does it make it true?"
She studied him calculatingly. "You tell me, Mr. Utivich."
No, then. He wasn't okay, that much he knew. He had hoped if he went through the motions, if he pretended Smithson Utivich—the real Smithson Utivich—wasn't still stuck over there in the forests of France, eventually he would be. It was a fruitless hope. He knew somehow that he would never be the same man he was before, either before. He felt no different having lost that hope.
When he didn't answer, she took him by the elbow and led him towards the back of the synagogue. "Come. Let's discuss this elsewhere."
The pair wound their way through wood-paneled corridors until they reached a vacant room that appeared to function as a small library, filled with several book cases and a pair of high-backed chairs alongside an equally uncomfortable looking couch.
"Here. Sit," she ordered, nudging him towards one of the chairs. She pressed into his hand a cup of fragrant tea poured from a while porcelain pot into his hand, poured from a white porcelain pot he could have sworn was not on the coffee table a moment ago. "Now, you tell Grandmother all about it."
And something—whether it was the heady aroma of the tea, the silken smoothness of her voice, the wrinkled hand resting comfortably on his knee, or some combination of them all he didn't know—loosened his tongue, and everything came tumbling out all at once. How he despised this city and its human filth; how every time he got pissed off his fingers itched to grab the boot knife he no longer carried to remove the temptation; how he slept with the window wide open even in the middle of December, because it was just too stifling in his cramped apartment when he was used to no walls at all; how he tried chewing tobacco, because it reminded him of the Lieutenant but had to stop for the same reason.
But mostly he talked about Donny.
Donny had always looked out for him, from the moment the Basterds first picked him up back in London. He supposed it was probably because of his smaller size; though, Utivich wasn't that much shorter than Donny. Utivich had first thought the other man's constant pestering and teasing was some sign of a bully's ill-will, but he learned, eventually, that that wasn't the case. Donny was like that awkward schoolboy pulling the pretty, young girl's pigtails—not that he considered himself to be anything like a pretty girl.
Donny simply didn't know how to handle himself around someone who wasn't a buxom woman or a quick, back-alley fuck. Not that they hadn't done their fair share of that, too. Beneath his acerbic and nit-picking exterior were a rough-handed affection and a desire to keep Utivich safe.
Donny'd gone positively ballistic that time he'd been shot…
He liked winters best. They gave him an excuse to burrow close to Donny at night in a shared bedroll. Donny never said as much, but Utivich knew he liked those times too from the way he'd wrap his arms tight around Utivich's waist and drag him close. The cold air of the New York winter made the empty, man-shaped space in his bed that much more unbearable.
"What would you give up to bring him back?" The scratchy voice beside him startled him out of his reverie.
It took him a moment to realize she was speaking in a human language and another to comprehend what she'd asked. There was no question of his answer. "Everything." Anything.
"Even the end of the war? Would you give up that?"
Would he? Would he really give up all the lives they had saved for something so selfish? "No…"
She grinned toothily, a twinkle in her eye that spoke of untold mischief. "Good, good."
That was how it began.