Ch 20 Lerika
"My home is ShanGanNing*, and I am a good girl of this home. Riding white horse, carrying my gun, wearing an iris flower on my hair…"
Little sister Chunyan jumped around him, joyously singing a tune she just learned. A freshly picked iris flower was braided into her pigtails, loveliest thing in the world. His sister turned around like a little fairy, then suddenly her black pigtails turned into chestnut and the iris into geranium flower, "Let me tell your fortune and you'll be guaranteed to find a good lover." He regretfully declined because he was heading to the front. Everyone else had relatives and friends seeing them off excpet him. He felt sorry for himself when suddenly a girl more beautiful than Chang'e* goddess descended from the sky and tucked a delicate pouch into his hand with eyes full of tears. He mustered up the courage to kiss her when suddenly a burst of smoke whirled away the girl and the pouch, leaving between heaven and earth only eyes of tremendous pain. The violet ones seemed to be of Vanya's and the dark ones—those were mother's eyes…
"Mama…" Wang Yao murmured.
The old mama knelt down beside him, putting his head on her knees. Warm fingers brushed through his messy black hair and put cool water to his dry cracked lips. And then, all the pain vanished. Only mama had such power…
"From your look, you're not a child from around here, arent' you?" asked the mama with a voice heard by only the two of them. Before he replied, she continued as if talking to herself, "But I know you're a good kid. How could they have beaten you like that! I could hear it from the kitchen…How old are you? About the age of my Vanya—no, no, about my Natasha's age at most. I dreamed for my babies to come home, day and night. I dreamed and dreamed, only to have a bunch of thieves coming. The commander and his mistress take the house, me and the old man have to wait on them. Alas, if only that woman was a German! But she's a Russian girl…"
"Mama, good mama." Wang Yao called out gratitude in his heart as he drank the water greedily. Then, he heard some shouting from outside. After a moment, the guard sent old mama Braginsky out. A luxuroiusly dressed young woman entered the room in quick steps with her head low and shut the door behind her.
The whole world swirled in front of his eyes into sullen gloom. There was as if a red hot iron stamping a mark of her lovely face onto his heart.
"Why was it you…" She threw herself on him, her teary blue eyes gazing at him, like the way when she rushed to the train station and tucked the sweat-soaked pouch from her squeezing little hand into his.
"Why was it you…Lerika?" He mindlessly repeated her words until that flower-like name rushing out of his mouth did he came to his senses from a throbbing pain in his chest. He even attempted to sit up, to place the knees before his chest as to prevent her from seeing his ragged clothes and body of bruises…
"Why was it you?" She sobbed softly, "I just saw that pouch on the table. If I knew it was you, I would never had screamed when I saw the shadow behind the house last night…"
He had his eyes wide-open like a blind man, trying to comprehend every word coming out of that little mouth. But her words were like a cluster of flies, buzzing around his ears and making his head dizzy and eyes dazzled—"Yao, you don't need to worry that someone might hear us. I lied to Mr. Fritz, ah, no, the major that I could let you talk. So he allowed me in. He always listens to me—" then, she suddenly noticed Wang Yao's expression and quickly changed, "—he's out for some work. The guards don't know Russian. You can say whatever you want…"
"…What else could I say?" said him laboredly. Whether it was the injuries or the coldness, that deep brown curly hair and rosy cheeks blurred in his vision. However, in a split second he suddenly remembered the heroic stories of espionage agents. Then, he struggled up bearing the stabbing pain and moved his body towards her.
"Tell me, Lerika…that you are a scout like me; but, only that your task is more dangerous. You are working within...right? Is that right? Please answer me…"
Hearing his earnest, almost begging words, Lerika forced a bitter smile, twisting her slim fingers uneasily, "Why would I lie to you…I'm the most ordinary person. How could I have the courage to fight…"
"…But why are you with that major…He beat you? Or did he threaten your family?"
Lerika suddenly covered her face with both hands—when she felt sad at school, she would act in such way. In the everlasting dizziness that haunted him, if it wasn't that his both hands were tied back, he would almost gingerly pat that slender shoulder and say something comforting to make her laugh, like they did back then in school.
From between her fingers escaped the hoarse, repressed voice.
"Nobody made me. I did it voluntarily… I was in Rogachevo to visit relatives, but the Germans came… Life wasn't easy and, I thought, maybe there would be some support by staying with them. It has been two months…"
Cold, dizziness, anxiousness and severe pain from the wounds all vanished in a flash. Wang Yao was calm. No hatred, no disgust, just boundless emptiness and indifference.
He moved his body so he could sit with his back against the wall. Even though this movement could only bring more pain, he could no longer feel it.
"You sold me out voluntarily, silly girl."
If it wasn't this silly girl's screaming last night, he could had safely returned with Vanya to their own people. When he was tortured by this silly girl's German lover, he was actually missing her. It was her who danced waltz with him at the prom night. It was her who sang "Katyusha" as she seeing him off to the front that made him into believing himself as the soldier guarding the lovely girl, like in the song. It was her who gave him the handmade pouch in teary eyes that he used to save his precious diary and kept in front of his chest. It was her face wandering in his heart that when Vanya's image dashed into his heart, he even felt guilty to her!
"Vanya…Vanya! Forgive me!" he said with a faint, almost undetectable voice, then lowered his eyes.
ShanGanNing: An abbreviation of an area of mid-west China comprising of the provinces of Shan'xi, Gansu and Ningxia.
Chang'e: Goddess of the moon in Chinese mythology. She was a woman on earth, one day stole her husband's elixor of life and flew to the moon. She regreted it terribly but was foreverly bound on the moon, living eternal life of loneliness.