He is glad to see me, too, and he points to the vodka left in his tin cup, the ration dispensed by our commander who sent us to fight the German tanks. “There’s more,” says Seryoga and waves in the direction of the commander’s dugout.

I down what was left in his cup. The vodka burns its way to my stomach, warming every centimeter of my gut on its way, then shoots up to my head and makes it light. Seryoga hands me a chunk of bread and stands up to bring more.

We drink and get drunk because there is nothing to eat except for two hundred grams of bread and because we want to erase what we’ve seen from our memory.

“I did what you told me,” I say.

“What?” Seryoga asks and hiccups.

“You told me to toss a grenade into the ass of the tank,” I say. “Remember?”

Seryoga looks at me with glazed eyes and shakes his head.

“And then I shot the two Fritzes when they scrambled out.” The words feel heavy in my mouth, and it takes extra time to send them into the air. “The one on the right first, then the one on the left.”

Seryoga nods. “Molodets. Good for you.”

We drink more, which isn’t nearly enough. I still remember the two figures jerking when my bullets hit them, then going limp and collapsing on the field.

“They didn’t kill you, so you killed them,” Seryoga says. “It’s war.”

Seryoga is right. It is that simple: we won because they died and we didn’t. I take another gulp from the mug, but it still does not convince me that I won. I don’t feel like a winner. The vodka may have cleansed my insides, but on the outside, I reek of exploded guts, shattered bones, and dried blood. I feel like a butcher.

When she finishes reading and the images fade, Andrei enfolds her, pressing her face into his neck, her shoulders twitching and her pale lips trembling, just like Turgenev’s Lisa in Lavretsky’s arms. Their embrace smells of damp soil and Andrei’s father’s filter-less tobacco. Her face is so close to Andrei’s that his features have blurred, but he lets her know where his mouth is when she feels it on her lips. He tastes like the bittersweet cough medicine Sasha had to swallow when she had bronchitis, one gulp of which made her feel delirious and silly.

She slides her fingers over Andrei’s face, and he slides his fingers over hers, as if they needed to add another sense to what they already know about each other: a sense of touch, without which, from now on, no understanding could be possible between them.

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