WHOLE LIVES, CHAPTER 25: ALPHONSE AND THE GREAT DEVOTCHKA HUNT

By the Binary Alchemist 2012

July was just around the corner when Roy finally heard from Izumi—indirectly.

He'd gotten into the habit of talking into the evening with Pinako once the children were asleep. There hadn't been any more rounds fired at the Palace and the there had been a slight cooling of the media firestorm that followed the leak that the shells retrieved from the grounds were of Aerugoan manufacture. Still, the people were uneasy. Public statements from both Roy and Prince Claudio affirming cordial relations and denying any attempts to bump one another off helped some, but there was yet a rumbling undercurrent that neither leader could completely squelch. So Roy continued to camp out on the chaise and sleep between Nina's crib and Maes' cot, and once the children had dozed off the two grownups might share a glass of limonchello or Stray Dog and over time any awkwardness vanished, at a point neither one of them could pinpoint.

She was remarkably easy to talk to. There was something refreshing about talking to a little old lady who was immune to his charm. She didn't hang on his every word or get flustered or blush or, like a certain Colonel who served him, he didn't see unrequited yearning hidden in her eyes. Like Aunt Chris, she'd call him an asshole in a heartbeat, call him out if she thought he was wrong—and judged him only as a man, not a legend.

"She has an apprentice who's taken sick—that's what she told me when she called. Says she and Sig are needed and she knows the kids are in good hands and are well protected if they are here. Do you mind?"

Roy shook his head. "Does Winry? You know I've invited her here. Told her that any time she wants to come see the children I'll have a private escort bring her to Central and she is welcome to stay here with us."

"Winry told me she may be up in a few weeks. She'd like to see Gracia and Elycia. Says she saw that big color spread on the two of them and that she can't believe how fast Elycia is growing up." A tangy mouthful of limonchello was followed by a bite of one of Chef Ramsay's delicate butter shortbread biscuits that Pinako liked with her tea in the afternoon.

"It's hard to believe how long it's been since we came back from the war and Maes and Gracia got married. Feeling old, I suppose."

Pinako snorted. "You're a boy to me, Roy. I will say this, though—for someone who doesn't know which end of a nappy to pin you're good with kids."

Roy glanced down at Maes, whose head was heavy against his shoulder. He shifted the child carefully and lowered him down onto his cot, tucking the sheet around him and putting his raggedy stuffed kitty on his pillow. "I haven't a clue—that's obvious, I suppose. Never been around kids—not even when I was one. If I was one. My childhood ended the day the told me my father had been killed in Creta."

The old woman mouthed the stem of her unlit pipe. "Tell me about him,"

Roy leaned back against the chaise cushions and closed his eyes. "I was so young—but I was older than Ed said he was when Hohenheim went away. I remember him as being…very kind. He was a State Alchemist but he had his start in the cavalry, just like my grandfather. I remember seeing him ride up in his uniform, looking every inch the proper military officer. I don't remember him every wearing anything other than that blue uniform. He had a very quiet voice and whenever he looked at me, even if he was serious, his eyes were kind. Maybe he didn't act the way Hughes did. Maybe he didn't behave like an idiot and shove my picture in people's faces or that sort of thing. What I do remember was being introduced to his commanding officer and Father calling me his 'little soldier'. I saluted the officer and I remember the commander saying that my father must be proud to have such a fine son and Father putting his hands on my shoulders and saying 'I don't think I really understood until now why we serve. We serve to protect the future. So I can give Roy the best future possible. I want to make him proud of me.'"

The old woman nodded. "He loved you."

"I believe that he did."

"And you loved him."

"Don't recall ever telling him." One scarred hand smoothed back Roy's dark hair from his forehead. "Ed never told Hohenheim. He says that he hated him until …that day. If he feels sad about it he doesn't mention it."

"Still, he put flowers on Hohenheim's grave, as well as Tricia's."

"That's something, I suppose. Better than nothing."

There was a long silence and from his quiet breathing Pinako was sure that Roy had fallen asleep. She moved to take the glass from his hand. His fingers tightened around it, although he never opened his eyes. "Tell me how to be a father, Pinako. I don't understand these children. I try to feel what…I guess I'm supposed to feel…but I don't….I'm not like Hughes with Elycia."

"You're being stupid. Don't you think I'd tell you if you were doing it wrong?" Smiling, she tugged the glass out of his hand. "Don't borrow trouble. Trouble comes fast enough on its own. Goodnight, son."

He didn't stir, but later, after she'd switched off the lamp and the room was warmed by the flickering glow of the night lamp, she distinctly heard him mumble, "Goodnight, Granny."

###

"There goes another one," Pyotir observed drolly, glancing up from the pile of assignments he was grading. As Ed's teaching assistant he was invaluable bridging the language gap that sometimes occurred when Edward would get excited and rattle off faster than his students could comprehend. He also could not avoid noticing the lovely young women—and handsome young men—who became smitten by the wasp-tongued Amestrian professor. Alchemic History, Theory and Ethics was rivaled only by Introduction to Practical Alchemy in popularity. Indeed, the school seemed to divide its loyalties into two factions—those fascinated with Edward and those frankly in love with Alphonse.

Ed didn't glance up from his notebook. "Another what?"

"Another hopeless admirer dawdling past your open door in hopes of catching you alone, Tovarich."

Ed shrugged and slurped his coffee noisily. "So? Door's open. "

"They aren't interesting discussing their lessons. They are interested in…shall we say…private tutoring."

Ed shrugged again. "I've got open appointments. All they have to do is sign up with you, right?"

"Are you truly that naïve, my friend?" Pyotir tossed his pen to the desktop. "You have ladies who would like nothing more than to be alone with you for an hour in your office. They…" he gestured helplessly as he struggled to find the right phrase," see you as…a challenge."

That got Ed's attention. "Challenge? What the hell are you talking about?"

"You are a…a fine…I mean, you are…they find you attractive. And," he stammered on, coloring, "you are…with a man. A very powerful man."

Ed snorted. "Let's not inflate his ego any bigger than it already is. He's Roy. He's no different from any other guy that shits behind good shoes. He's got a big job—but Mustang is Mustang. No big deal." The whole topic sounded ridiculous and frankly Ed didn't want to hear any more of it. "Whatever. Send 'em down to Al's office. Not interested." His fingers slipped down to unbutton his waistcoat and he wrestled with his tie. "Damn. Hot as hell in here."

Pyotir quickly focused his attention on the paper he'd been staring at for the last five minutes. It was upside down. "Da. Very hot indeed."

###

Maxim Petrovsky and Alexi Andreivitch were sitting in the back of Al's empty classroom with their heads together and their voices low. This was a certain indicator that trouble was afoot but Alphonse was being mobbed by pretty young students who wanted to see him transmute the small objects they had brought with them. Smiling, he did as they asked and with each transmutation the oohs and ahhs and ohhhs got louder and more enthusiastic—so much that anyone passing the room would have remarked-

"Alphonse! Are you conducting some sort of perverse orgy in there?" A peevish looking Signor Bacalla stuck his head in through the door, a smear of flour on his left cheek. His class on Known World Cuisine was also hugely successful—owing less to his popularity and more to so many lovelies and gents wanting to learn to make delicious Amestrian dishes to attract the brother's attention. "Can you hold it down before our soufflés collapse? If I have to hand out failing grades today it will be your fault!"

Maxim glanced at Alexi. "See what I mean? When was the last time any of your students flirted with you?"

"Only to get the address of the dacha so they could 'bring him a cream bun', or so she said. Bozhe-moi!"

"Da! And he does not touch them since they are his students, or he would be tasting so many cream buns his tongue would fall off! What is the attraction, Alexi? It is not like the girls have never seen a blond man before—"

"—not that shade of gold—"

"-or such broad shoulders—"

"-Signor Bacalla's are as good—of course he got that way from pounding his own dough—"Alexi snickered at his own joke.

"—or eyes that—well, maybe not. They are very strange eyes. Odd like a wolf's."

"Ah! I think you may have it," Alexi nodded emphatically. "With Edward, it is the long hair and the fact that he sleeps with a man that makes him unattainable. This is irresistible to the ladies, we know. But our friend, Alphonse—he is so ordinary! It must be the wild wolf's eyes that make the girls shiver—"

"-and get wet—"

Alexi shivered. "Da! And to my horror, what did I see last Sunday? MY Nataly—my delicious Nataly—offering her sweet cream and butter to that upstart Amestrian. She told him he could come to the milkhouse and watch her churn her cream and then if he liked he could…lick her dasher! " His hands curled into fists. "Nobody can like Nataly's dasher but me!" His teeth gritted in frustration as he thought of running his tongue slowly and thoroughly over every inch of the dripping dasher while Nataly watched, and if her hand wandered under her apron and her face became quite flushed by his skills it only encouraged him to more inspired swirls and flicks and flourishes. "One of these days…she will even let me kiss her…I hope!"

Maxim stared at his comrade. "Before engagement?"

Alexi nodded. "So we must put a stop to this, my friend." He glanced over his shoulder. "I think it is time," he whispered, "for us to take Alphonse Tovarich hunting…."

###

A flicker on the walls. Stone walls, riddled with bullets and splashed with blood. Shadow moving—wait—it's moved again…there!

Shadow on the wall. Something inhuman moving through the streets of an Ishballan village.

They know this shape. Their mothers had told them to run-run-run, run for their very lives if this shadow is seen in the noonday sun. "You must not wait for the flash. If you see the flash then it is too late to run and you must quickly whisper a prayer to our god that He will carry you to His side and that you will not feel the pain when the end comes."

The only ones left alive to tell the tale are those who were on the outskirts and already running before they saw the shadow. "Their eyes melted in their sockets" the villagers were told, oozing and bubbling down their cheeks seconds before their flesh began to crisp and the hair burst into brilliance.

"He is coming."

The monster would cast his shadow on the walls—on the faces of the children who screamed and were too frightened to run. They sobbed. They wet and soiled themselves and squirmed and huddled and pressed themselves into the corner of the rubble, too afraid to remember the prayers they were supposed to say when Death came for them.

And the winds would come and the flash would come and their flesh fused to the flesh of the other children, making them one people just as Ishballah had wished, and between the next heartbeat and the last breath they were reduced to drifts of greasy ash and bits of charred bone.

The shadow would move on, and move on, and move on.

And eventually there were no more children left to scream.

The shadow of a monster with the shape of a man—

He was screaming. Jacknifing up into a huddled tangle of arms and legs and he was screaming screaming screaming and they were screaming, the children of Ishbal were screaming in his ears, right in his ears and he couldn't get away and he couldn't stand it anymore and-

And Pinako slapped him. He woke up.

"Shhhhh. It's all right. Uncle Roy had a very bad dream, Maes. Nina, it's all right. It's all right. Everybody calm down." She switched on the light and pulled Nina out of her crib, jiggling her and patting her back. Roy looked terrible. If I had memories of the war like the ones he's told me about, I'd scream too, I guess. "Roy. Are you awake?" His Excellency, the Fuhrer President of Amestris, blinked at her, wild eyes and drenched with sweat. He swallowed hard and nodded.

Maes crawled up onto his lap. He held out a stuffed cat to Roy. "Kitty help." Roy nodded. The child curled his arm around Roy's neck and Roy almost flinched. I burned children like you and Nina and Elycia.

Pinako saw the terror in his eyes. Deliberately, she placed her great granddaughter in Roy's arms. "No more running, son," she told him firmly.

Nina looked terrified. Roy didn't know what to do. He stared helplessly up at Pinako. "Tell me what to do."

"Rock her. Sing to her."

"But I-"

"Sing to her. Sing her a lullaby."

"I don't know any. I never heard one."

"That explains a lot of things, son." Pinako nodded. "Sing something else, then. Softly."

After a long time, a low, soft baritone began to sing a song that was popular on the old wind-up phonograph in the parlor of Madame Christmas' brothel back when her dashing brother had just been cut down in the field, leaving a very frightened and very lonely little boy to her care:

"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy,
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother's darling boy?

Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,
It's time to lay the sword and gun away,
There'd be no war today, If mothers all would say,
"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier." *

###

"What the hell are those two idiots up to?" Ed glanced around side of his wing chair and nodded in the direction of Alexi and Maxim who were heading out the door with a great deal of whispering and nodding, hauling a bundle and a very large empty burlap sack.

Bacalla stuck his head out of the kitchen. "I don't know, and I'm not interested in being enlightened. I will observe, however, that whatever they're up to involved ransacking my pantry—and that is simply not on."

" 'My pantry' he says." Ed rolled his eyes. "What—is the Sunshine Ambassador out of cookies and milk for his tea party?" He made a simpering gesture. "I suppose you could make do with teething biscuits and lemonade or-" he noted the withering expression on Pyotir's face and stopped before things escalated any further.

Pyotir tossed him a grateful smile. "What is gone, Pio Tovarich? I can run to the market in the morning if you like."

"Well," the older man sniffed, "I had a box of salted herrings-and there is a bowl of borsht missing from the ice box-"

"Yum, yum," Ed snickered. "Eat borsht and take a crap and it looks like your insides just fell out. No thanks. So what the hell do Alexi and Maxim want with herrings and borsht?"

"More to the point," Bacalla grumbled, "what do they want with borsht and my herrings—"

"-and Alphonse," Pyotir finished. "I suppose," he sighed, "we'd be better off not knowing."

###

"Now then, it is important to follow the time honored tradition for hunting devotchkas," Alexi intoned solemnly.

"Time honored, da," Maxim affirmed. "You must disguise your human scent. Devotchkas do not like the smell of humans…and they are very fond of fish-"

"—sometimes they smell a bit like fish, if they haven't been washed enough—"

"—exactly so! So you will rub yourself down with the herrings—like this."

Stripped to his undershorts, Alphonse scooped up a slimy handful of the pungent fish and rubbed them briskly all over his chest. "Okay, now what?"

So wide-eyed and innocent, our friend! Alexi thought wickedly. Let us see how popular you are after this adventure! "Your color—your hair, so bright! You will attract the wrong attention to yourself. Now, devotchkas only see in three colors—black, white and purplish-red. Like pussycats, I understand, although it is not altogether certain what…pussies…can perceive. So it is best, my friend, if you rub this borsht in your hair so that the devotchkas will see you and become interested."

Once he had toweled the last of the grated beets and broth out of his hair the soft thatch had been tinted a vivid magenta. "What's next, Maxim?"

"You drink three shots of vodka for courage—it is custom, so you must do it—and three shots of this oil of the cod's liver, one after the other—"

Al flinched at the thought of drinking cod's liver oil under any circumstances. "Is that really part of the tradition?"

"Da!" his friends affirmed. "It is a test of manhood," Alexi added. "And you must sing! Here, I teach you the hunting song—it is not in Drachman, not as you know it. It is one of the old country dialects. It roughly means, 'oh, you lovely devotchkas, come and feast with me! I have herrings, lots of herrings that I will give to you if you will come and feast with me.' Now listen and repeat after me:

О вы, замужние, о вдовы, (o, you men's wives and widows fair)

О девки с целкой наотлёт! (or maidens with your cherries there intact!)
Позвольте мне вам наперёд (let me tell you a humble fact)
Сказать о ебле два-три слова (about the fucking out there)

Итак, тебе не заплачу я: (and so, I will not pay you)
Но если ты простая блядь, (however, if you are a maid of simple mind)
То знай: за честь должна считать (I will give you an honor)
Знакомство юнкерского хуя! (and introduce you to my prick!)

"You may not understand the words, Tovarich, but believe me, if you sing it loud enough at midnight, beating a drum, smelling of herrings with borsht in your hair you will certainly…catch something."

###

It was half past one, and down by the river Alexi and Maxim drained the last drops of vodka from their bottles and flung the empties aside. "You think we will have enough kopeks to bail him out?"

"Nyet. There will be no need. The constable knows we will be playing this trick on an Amestrian and so he will not make us pay to get him out." He burped drunkenly. "He knows it is all in good fun."

"Da! And Alphonse will not be angry at us for long, you think?"

"I am thinking that Edward would have killed us if we tried it on him."

Maxim nodded. "Edward would have never gotten past the herring. But our friend Alphonse is more…?"

"Gullible?"

"Trusting, I would say. Come, let's bring him home with his empty sack."

"And we will make him wash off the stinks in the river?"

"Without question. Can you stand up?"

"Only if I have you to lean against. Chert vos-mi! My head! Ohhh…let us make this quick so I can turn in before to long!"

###

"A Drachman is never drunk so long as he can hold onto two blades of grass and not fall off the face of the earth"

It might be true but anyone who could see Maxim and Alexi swaying down the street, arms around one another, would have doubted it. In the middle of the dirt road, between the bakery and the green grocer, they found an empty burlap sack that reeked of herrings. Other than that, there was no trace of Alphonse Elric. "Let's try the Constable's house," Alexi advised, and they swung off down the lane, roaring out a chorus of "Three Prominent Bastards", a song Major Havoc had taught them in Central:

My father was a gentleman and musical to boot

He used to play piano in the house of ill repute

My mother was the madam and a credit to her cult

She liked my father's playing—and I was the result

My mother and my father are the ones I have to thank—

'Cause now I'm in the army and I hold a Gen'ral's rank!

"Ohhhh…our parents for got to get marrrrrried-our parents forgot to get weddddd—" Maxim howled at the top of his lungs.

"Tch! Your Amestrian is atrocious! Nyet, it goes like this! 'when wedding bells chimed they were never in liiiiine-my parents were upstairs in beddddd!"

"You started in the middle! You want to sing, we sing from the top!"

"You start from the top and I will punch a hole in your head and pull your feet through it!"

"Sosimoihui,sooka (suck my dick, you whore)!"

"Poshyol-ty (fuck you)!" Alexi snarled back. He leaped on Maxim's back and began pounding him with his fists. Maxim dropped like a stone and the two of them were rolling furiously in the dirt and the horse dung and the mud until a single shot fired over their heads made them separate. Constable Sergei sighed, recognizing the two young professors and grabbed them both by their now filthy collars. Covered with mud and filth, he would not lock them up in his nice, tidy jail. No, he would shut them up in the pigsty and ring for Lobachevsky to come bail them out in the morning.

###

"Did you hear a gun?"

Alphonse peeked out from under the hem of Nataly's petticoat. "I wasn't paying attention."

Liking the dasher in the dairyhouse had been fun. Licking the devotchka who worked in the dairyhouse was even better. She had smelled him before she saw him and realized that he had been fooled. She'd led Alphonse to the washtub and scrubbed him clean and explained to him that devotchka meant…well…something unique to a lady. He told her sadly that he'd been told that a devotchka was something you could eat—a small creature with beautiful, soft fur that smelled occasionally like fish and was very juicy. Nataly shyly lifted her skirt, laid back on a bale of hay, spread her thighs and showed him that he was not precisely wrong after all.

…TO BE CONTINUED…

SONG CREDITS:(lyrics to "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be A Soldier" by Alfred Bryan, 1915—a clip of this famous song of WWI can be heard at .com/features/march_to_. Russian bawdy lyrics taken from "A Holiday in Perterhov" by Mikhail Lermontov 1834 and from "Luka Mudischev" by Ivan Barkov, 18th century. "Three Prominent Bastards" lyrics by Ogden Nash (adapted))