Ch 27 It Is Joy To Live
"She is in love, except that she doesn't know." Ivan's pondering eyes followed his sister away.
"Perhaps she knows, just doesn't want to admit…"
His hand placing beneath Wang Yang's palm tightened:
"Why?"
The locking hand on Ivan's wrist slowly unfolded.
"In the time of war, perhaps love brings people much more pain than the happiness it can give."
"War comes on its own and so does love." His eyes passed the crowd and remained at the blazing campfire, "When they want to come, nobody can stop them."
"When the war broke out, we instantly know to resist it to the end." Wang Yao suddenly withdrew his hand, stood up and walked away. "…...but love?"
The sudden emptiness next to him forced him to follow Wang Yao till they reached the end of their base. When the black silhouette of poplar woods emerged before his eyes, Wang Yao suddenly turned around. He couldn't stop his step and almost bump into him. Through the starlight—in stead of the campfire left far behind—Ivan was able to read Wang Yao's face for the first time tonight.
This was not the helpless man who he poked fun of in the poplar woods during the day; or the man who meekly allowed him expressing his affection in the Rogachevo—Bereza's snow field; nor the "good friend" Wang Yao whom he appreciated and admired before they poured their hearts out to each other. An extraordinary quality almost made this face into a different person. One year later when Ivan discovered that he had survived the battle of Stalingrad with all his limbs still intact, he finally realized that only people who was pulled out of the death's gate and just recently join back to life could possess such a face.
But for the moment, all he could do was placing both hands on Wang Yao's shoulders, "Don't be like this!"
"I thought you would go talk to Natasha." said Wang Yao, obviously not addressing the question. "As a man, I know perfectly well how to control myself. But girls are different."
A sense of loneliness looming into Ivan's heart, he found out that Wang Yao's mind wasn't on him at all.
"Let Natashenka grow on her own. If it's like before, as a brother, I'll allow her be spoiled. But this is wartime…She herself is in the army, too. There'll be more cruel things waiting ahead of her."
The line between Wang Yao's eyebrows was almost like a groove cleaved by saber, and, along with his solemn voice, quickly widened and elongated, almost like the grooves on the snow trodden by tank tracks.
"Vanya…Before Natasha came here, we had another nurse. I remember very clearly—the day was October 19. None of the men in our company was shot, but instead she, a little girl, died…When we were digging her grave on the muddy ground, this thought had haunted me." The pair of eyes like the dark night suddenly looked at Ivan in the eyes, as though to engulf him entirely. "In the future when I'm old, if someone come and ask me, 'how come a man like you survived but those girls whom you're supposed to protect were killed or let their youth wasted on the occupied land?' By then, how do I answer…"
These words made Ivan wanted to pull Wang Yao in his arms. But he didn't dare to, despite their intimacy earlier. He was thinking too about those girls who should had been happy: his sister with all sorts of emotions welling up in her heart, the fiancée waiting anxiously inside the besieged city, the former nurse of the infantry unit dying in the autumn field…If he could see through Wang Yao's whole mind, then he would hear another girl's crying: "But where are you people? Why haven't you come yet? I'm not strong and I can't bear the sufferring, but what's there for me to believe that you will strike back?"
He was speechless. In that short period of time unknown to him, Wang Yao quickly grew up. He felt that all he could offer to him was a pair of listening ears.
"Looking at your sister, I often thought about our Chunyan…When she couldn't even read many characters, she could already recognize the sound of Japanese bombers and know when to lie down." An expression of tenderness and torment instantly surfaced onto Wang Yao's face, "By the spring, she will be twelve. I often dream that perhaps when I return home, peace would come to my war-ridden homeland; if not, then I would rather carry this gun for a few more years. As long as my sister grow into a big girl without seeing another war, a brother is willing to do anything…"
"…perhaps when I return home…"
Until this moment did Ivan suddenly realize one thing that, in the past several months, had been overlooked—deliberately or otherwise—by his unnamed apprehension…
Wang Yao came here—and to his side—from a foreign country faraway. One day, Wang Yao would return to his country.
"…Yes, you will return to your own country." He finally pieced his words into a sentence. "And nobody can stop you!"
Ivan always thought himself as a man of happiness, because whatever he wished to do could all be done. But right now, he came to realization with childly envy and anguish that the thing he used to take pride in would be used to describe someone else.
He felt that Wang Yao gently burried his face onto his shoulder.
"Please forgive me."
He brushed Wang Yao's chin, lifting the pale face, and said in the most natural voice he could:
"Why would you say that? When my country is at her hardest time, you stand by her…Every Russian people shall thank you…" He could no longer suppress the fervent emotions that his voice was almost out of tone. "Do you know what I think? If I wasn't able to save you then, by your words, then shall I let people question me in the future? 'You're the son of Mother Russia. How come you let this young Chinese man sacrifice his life for her and you survived instead?'"
Wang Yao's face trembled in his hand, but he smiled with agitation and continued:
"Come to think of it, I shall thank your country too…She sent the best of all her sons to my side. In the future, when she needs you more than I, do you think that I would be so ungrateful to hog you and not return you to her…"
Wang Yao broke loose of his hand and covered his eyes with his own hands.
"Vanya…Vanechka! Allow me to say something that has nothing to do with country. Just one." Wang Yao suddenly took off his hands, out of the night-like eyes shone the radiance like day light. "You have read War and Peace, haven't you? Do you remember the words Pierre said to Rostova? 'If I were not myself, but the handsomest, cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this moment ask on my knees for your hand and your love!'"
"This is what I should say." Ivan shook his head, "I am the unfortunate Pierre, and you are Rostova."
"Don't say it like I'm a girl. I am a scout of the Soviet Guards!"
These words were spoken with an entirely playful voice like those unfettered conversations in the woods during the day. Ivan felt some sense of relief, although he clearly understood that the present atmosphere was different.
"I never think of you as a girl. Never!" Ivan said in all seriousness. "Where could I find a girl in the whole world that's as good as you!"
As they walked towards the crowd by the campfire, Wang Yao heard Ivan singing at the back.
This song was not "Don't Touch Us", or "Far Across the River", nor "Chapaev the Hero"—those songs echoed during the years of 1918—1921. This was an old Russian folk song that, back then, the cavalry rider Ivan Braginsky was singing when he galloped towards Wang Yao in that golden evening.
"Cossacks rode on horses, to a dreadful river of Terek.
There were together, 40 thousand of us.
And the bank was covered, and the field was covered
With hundreds of cut bleeding bodies in the grass."
"Our leader knows everyone in rows.
The squadron got on horses but forgot about me.
They acquired freedom and the Cossack's kindom,
But the dusty burning earth remained now for me."
The entire base started to sing along except Wang Yao who didn't know this song, listened with complicated feelings. The Cossack song of soldier's destiny! When it first came into his ears, he said, "A walking man could not have sung in such exuberance and melancholy. Only a rider could have a voice as expansive as the field itself."
And now, Ivan lost his horse and joined the infantry. The soldiers' gallant and grievous singing was like a fast horse, carrying the entire base and galloping into the sky.
"…Ah, the first straying bullet, the first straying bullet,
Ah, the first straying bullet, wounded knee of tired horse.
Ah, the second straying bullet, the second straying bullet,
Ah, the second straying bullet, hit my heart to my remorse…"
Compared to listening to Natasha's letter, a deeper and broader sorrow heavily pressed on Wang Yao's heart. This song was Ivan and his comrades' new year gift to him. He had no way to refuse and nowhere to hide. Any trench in the world could not hide him away from this sorrow.
"…It is joy, my brothers, it is joy to live!
With our lucky leader, we will never have to grieve.
It is joy, my brothers, it is joy to live!
With our lucky leader, we will never have to grieve."
"Enjoy, Brothers, Enjoy" (Любо, братцы, любо)
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