Kolya

The night of June 21st to 22nd, 1941, Brest. It's so quiet you can hear a dog barking a couple of blocks away, and a hackneyed waltz drifts from someone's open bedroom window. Someone's forgotten mug clinks underfoot on the pavement. You're returning from the dance: Kolka, freckled, in a rumpled military uniform, and the girls in light cotton dresses. Kolka never finished playing the accordion—in the darkness, someone playfully pulled the bellows off, and the music stopped.

The night is sultry, smelling of dusty asphalt, girls' hair, and fresh milk—you're holding a bottle corked with a rolled-up newspaper. You're arguing about nothing: who's going to Minsk to study, whose turn it is to kiss behind the barns. The boys are waddling, their caps askew, the girls laughing, holding up their hems. The crickets in the grass are shrieking so loudly that your ears are ringing. And in the west, the sky is strange. The glow is steady, heavy. "The storm is coming," someone says, and everyone nods in agreement.

"Hear that?" Kolka suddenly tugs your elbow, his voice instantly breaking. "Fedka from the border guards swore: the Germans circled over the forest today. Three times."

"Oh, come on," you wave your hand dismissively and thrust the accordion into his hands. "Let's play Rio Rita instead. What's with you?"

Kolka plays with the buttons with his fingers, but does not bring the instrument to his lips.

"I'm serious. There will be a war. Fedka says you can hear the motors from the other side every night. They hum loudly, not like ours."

"What war?" Ninka seemed to burst out laughing. "It's all nonsense. It's all in the agreement, comrades... Who's going to attack us?"

She doesn’t have time to finish speaking, and Kolka hasn’t even managed to exhale the first note.

The blow came not from above, but from somewhere underground. Dull, terrifying, as if someone invisible had brought a sledgehammer down on the city. The pavement shook. That same mug bounced and rolled across the stones. And then a second explosion, closer. The windows behind them exploded into shrapnel, dry mortar flew from the eaves. The glow in the west instantly swelled into a scarlet, living fire, engulfing them in heat. The peaceful silence was over. Forever.

Kolya couldn't come to terms with the fact that the war had started for a long time, but when it did, he became not a wimp, but a real hero.