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The Woman in Black
The eleven men were led towards the back of the white building. There, they were
permitted to stop, sit, lean, wait up against the wall. The plaster was falling off in large
flat sections, revealing old red bricks and white mortar. The glass was out of the
windows. Puddles of rain collected from the drizzle. It was March.
Two of the prisoners sat in the mud, looking into their laps, one hand raised, tied tightly
with heavy rope to the next man standing up. A woman in black stood silently watching
from behind a cart. She was a hundred metres away. The horse stood unhitched, its rump
against the wind, its tail waving. The woman tied the horse to
the handle of an old well in the center of the village and walked towards the prisoners.
The ten soldiers of the winning side and their captain were as drenched as their prisoners.
Their red uniforms were water-stained purple, dark like blood. Most had revolvers, hand
guns, some only had rifles leaning against their sides. The captain had a yellow epaulet on
his left shoulder, on the other it was torn, revealing bare skin and a gash. The woman in
black approached him. She was alone.
The villagers had long ago left Rosdorf at the start of the shelling and
fighting. The village consisted of about twenty small houses, a church with an orthodox
cross and a small silver dome, the water well, muddy streets. No other woman was within a
hundred kilometers. The captain had watched her over the days, keeping her distance,
leading her horse and cart.
"Tovarich," she said as she approached. The captain looked at her. In her black coat and
wide flat boots she was not pretty. Her feet protruded out of one boot showing blackened
nails and twisted toes. She shared one glove between her hands, warming her against the
cold winter rains. Her head was covered with a rag. Her eyes, as black as her boots, were
framed by deep circles.
"That one," she said pointing, "doesn't belong here. I will take him home. I've brought the
horse. He's no trouble."
The captain looked down at her feet and turned away. Get ready to line up he said to his
soldiers.
"He doesn't belong," she said again. "He's not like the others. He's a Russian like me. My
husband!"
The captain kept his back to her. He didn't acknowledge her. "Line up and each one
of you aim at the head of one man", he said to his men.
" I've been following you for five days, he doesn't belong. He's a poet," she said in Russian.
The captain still kept his back to her. The men were lining up in single file. The routine of
the troop alarmed the woman. She looked at her husband, second from one end of the
roped line-up of men. He was standing, the only one not leaning. Both of his arms were
pulled straight towards the earth by the others as they either lay or sat on the ground.
Some were sobbing, others were praying, a few like her husband were on their feet, silent.
With a sense of controlled urgency she spoke in Croatian, Hungarian, Austrian, Slovakian,
Russian and Prague Czech. She thought she detected a movement when she said:
"He doesn't belong to you," in Slovakian, so she continued.
"That man was helping both sides. He has no guns. He provided medicine and alcohol for
treatment to both sides. He's a pacifist. He only got caught on the other side by you and
your troop by circumstance, by bad luck. He isn't the enemy, tovarich."
The captain continued sitting with his back to her. She dared not approach him. Not to
touch him. She continued to talk:
" He saved many on your side and also on the side of your enemy. He would run across the
lines like the fool that he is with the alcohol and treat the wounded. When his horse was
killed by a mine, he continued to run on his feet. I followed him over the mountains. He
wanted to stop the killing and the dying, the fool. He's a poet not a soldier. Here, here are
his poems," she said, and gently shuffled over to the side of the captain and placed down
beside him, in the mud, a packet of paper with scribblings of words, streaked or washed
away by tears or rain.
The captain with the one epaulet stood up and as he walked away his boot pressed the
poems into the mud. He walked up to the man, her poet, her lover, her fool, her life. He
pulled his revolver out of its holster and shouted to the other ten men to do the same
behind each prisoner. The woman in black watched as he barked the command to execute
and saw the enemy soldiers fall. She only saw the captain and his gun and her husband.
When the blue smoke hung over the bloodied group, her man remained standing.
Let's get out of here said the commander to his men.
What about him. They asked.
Leave him, he said.
The woman in black hitched her horse to the two-wheeled cart and walked to her man. He
was kneeling when she came up to him. She cut the rope that bound his wrists and almost
carried him towards her cart. Once there she helped him up and slid him onto its floor.
The soldiers were just disappearing over the hills, the dead men lay at the side of the
clean white stucco wall of the house.
She climbed up into the cart and turned towards her husband and put her arms and legs
around him and took in the smell of his urine and shit. They both cried, muffling the noise
in each other's shoulders.
A few years after the war had ended, he died of pneumonia and she lived alone
during her many remaining days.
Mike Florian Mike Florian is an active business owner located in North Vancouver, British Columbia.
He writes in the middle of the night when things are calm and quiet.
His work has been published previously in The Oddville Press and Word Riot.
Email: Mike Florian
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