Chapter 1: A Snowy Patrol With Ivan
" What is this?" The young man asks. He is tall and thin, wrapped in a long beige coat and green trousers. He has strange piercing violet eyes. His hair, which is so blond it is nearly white, whips round in the storm. He brushes it off his face. Again. It's going to be a long night. He trudges through the snowstorm with a large gun strapped across his back, blinking to keep the white flecks out of his eyes. "Sometimes I don't even know anymore." There is no one there, and he doesn't really know who he is talking to, the universe maybe. He shakes his head.
"Ivan, Ivan, wait for me!" Another voice, calling him from beyond the snow. He turns, the tails of the stained and dirty scarf he always wears dancing in the wind behind him. Ivan blinks again, clearing his eyes of snow, and peers into the white horizon.
"Oh, Matvey. I'm over here." He smiles a bit, as the other runs up beside him.
"For the last time, it's Matthew."
"But Matvey is easier to say."
"Crazy Russian."
Matthew is shorter than the other man, but not small. His blond hair curls around his head, seeming to pry it's way out from under his red and white hat in some desperate escape attempt. His eyes are purple like Ivan's, but softer, closer to a lavender hue, and hidden behind think round glasses that fog up in the cold. He takes them off and wipes them on the inside of his jacket collar.
"You didn't have to come you know," says Ivan. He turns and resumes his trek, Matthew hurrying to keep up, his own firearm bouncing on his back.
"Yes I did." He grits his teeth. "I know how lonely you get when you leave on a patrol by yourself, and besides, only a fool would go out alone in weather like this."
The Russian laughs at this, his breath steaming in the cold night air. "I'm a lot smarter than you give me credit for Matvey; I know the territory, it's you who should be worried." Matthew had arrived at the northern base one week previously, explaining how he had come here, from the distant territory of Canada, to serve his country on the most perilous front et cetera et cetera. He had been, and still was, the most enthusiastic person there, and he had fallen in with Ivan.
No one knew much about Ivan, not even Ivan.
Either way, Matthew had started to accompany the Russian on his night patrols, something no one else had ever done before. The Canadian had become the closest thing Ivan had to a friend.
They walk side by side through the storm. Matthew turns to his companion, "I heard you talking to yourself earlier, saying how you don't know about anything." He looks up at Ivan's face, perhaps expecting some sort of explanation. Ivan just smiles his strange little smile.
"I wasn't talking to myself."
"Whom were you talking to then?"
Ivan is silent. Matthew sees the look on his face and decides not to press the question.
"Well what were you talking about? You said 'I don't even know anymore'"
"Ah," Ivan says, turning away again, and grimacing into the storm. "I really don't know what I live for anymore. What gets me up in the morning? I couldn't say." Matthew frowns a bit: Ivan never seems to sleep, so how can he wake up? The Russian continues, "Maybe it's this," he heaves the gun slung over his shoulder, but doesn't seem convinced. He snorts, "Patrol in a snowstorm, this what I've come to?"
"What do you mean 'This is what I've come to'?" Asks Matthew.
Ivan shakes his head. "You live for the fight when that's all that you've got."
"That sounds familiar."
"Bon Jovi, Living on a Prayer" He laughs at the irony, a soldier quoting a pacifist.
Matthew starts to ask how the Russian knows the song then stops himself. He shouldn't pry, and besides, there are radios t the base. They walk off, patrolling the barbed wire border, and disappear into the snowy night.