Free Night Soldiers by Alan Furst Page A

his head. For a bare instant, he stared at Khristo. His face appeared to have somehow shrunk, and his eyes looked enormous. Then the two men hoisted him into the back, as Khristo caught a brief glimpse of other people inside the trucklike compartment. One of the men slammed the door and dropped the steel bar into its bracket. The whole street could hear the clang.
    Just at that moment, the door on Khristo's side of the car was swung open by the man from the passenger seat. He nodded toward the building entry. He was apparently forbidden to speak, but the look on his face, a smile without mirth or pleasure, made it clear that they had wanted him to witness this event. The winding trip home had been simply a matter of timing.
    Khristo, his arms wide for balance, the peaked cap still pulled down on his head, tip-toed carefully across the ice into the building. Irina Akhimova awaited him just inside. She took him to the small parlor off the dining area, sat him down at a table, and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. Very slowly, he took off the hat, unwound the scarf. Set them on a chair beside him. Stared vacantly at the wall. It was unpleasantly silent in the room; he could hear himself breathing. He desperately wanted to fall asleep, and he swayed in the chair and bit his lip when his eyelids drooped.
    “None of that,” Irina Akhimova said from the doorway. He came to with a snap. “Soldiers must not sleep at the post.” But the words were somehow tender and there was kindness in her tiny eyes. She beckoned him, led him into the kitchen.
    In an iron pot, she was making pelmeni , ground pork and onions wrapped in dough and boiled. The air in the kitchen was fragrant; there was a glass of thin, freshly made sour cream set by a plate, he could smell the vinegar in it. Akhimova's enormous back was bent studiously over the pot as she prodded and poked the floating pelmeni with a long wooden spoon.
    She served him. Filled his plate at the stove, then tilted it over the pot to let the steaming water run off. Placed it before him. Moved the sour cream closer, filled a tall glass with strong tea.
    “Will you not join me, comrade Lieutenant?” he asked.
    She made a dismissive noise, just the way the older women in his own town did, meaning that it was his moment for grand food, not hers.
    It was his victory they were celebrating.
    The pelmeni were delicious, garlic laid on with a broad lick, the way he liked it. He resisted a powerful urge to gobble, took his time, was spartan with the sour cream until, smiling broadly, she waved him on. He felt the meal bring his soul back to life. Despite the world, despite Marike and Ozunov, despite himself. His body, his heart as well, took the food to itself, became warm and grateful.
    And, since the day was meant to be an exemplar, a homily on life as they wished him to perceive it, there was yet one more lesson in store.
    “News from home,” she said solemnly when he had eaten as much as he could. She laid a sheet of cheap brownish paper in front of him. He stared at it, perplexed. Nobody in Vidin could have the faintest idea where he was. “Brought by friends,” she added in explanation.
    He recognized his father's schoolboy letters, each one labored over with a stub of pencil:
My Son,
I greet you. I am happy to hear that you are with friends. Mama and I are well. Last Sunday, at the St. Ignatius church, your sister Helena took wedding vows with Teodor Veiko, the son of Omar Veiko the landlord. I know you will join us in wishing them prosperity and long life. It was a fortunate match. Life here will now go on more smoothly. It is my hope that you are studying your lessons and obeying your teachers, making something of yourself, and that the time will come when you may come home to us.
That my blessings find you in good health,
    He had signed it “Nicolai Stoianev” with ceremony, a man who had written very few letters in his life. To Khristo, the message between the lines