Another Green World (64 page)

After that, nobody fired from either side. Ingo was a perfect target, big and slow, but he might as well have been carrying the Hammer and Sickle in one arm and the Stars and Stripes in the other. He crossed the meadow in an unbroken march, the longest of his Wandervogel existence. Something about the heedlessness with which he did it, as if no one were left in the world save himself and a few scattered corpses, must have flipped some switch in the collective Soviet-American mind. By the time he reached…

No, not yet. Take a breath, slow down, let the world catch up. Russians were crawling out of their vehicles. Americans were climbing down from the wall. He heard Marty's voice, somewhere behind him.
Wait up, damn it.
He heard the gate swinging wider, then more voices. Now a Russian was coming up from the other side—cautious but friendly, holding out his hand.
You are American? Call me Bo.

All right. Go on.

*    *    *

Isaac lay on his back. It was a terrible thing to look at, but you had died already, so what was the threat? You were kneeling beside him. You were touching his unlovely but still loved skin.

Regrets, dreams, sorrows, laughter. Memory and thought. His crooked smile, jokes you learned from him, questions you would never ask, then, now or ever. The warmth of his mouth. The danger in his sideways glance. Whom had he betrayed, how many, why? Sun on the water. Blood on the rock. A night sky, the mountains—adoration, yearning, stars overhead. His freckles. The smell of warm hay in the sunshine. His green marble eyes.

People have gathered around you but now stand back, or maybe they simply cannot come this far. You and Isaac are alone, away from winter, far from 1944.

Only one person can follow you here. Only one is able to brush past you and reach Isaac, touching his dead face with its tiny fingers. But when you look down, you see it is no person at all. It is a tiny god, a being who belongs in this frozen world no more than Isaac, no more than you. The godlet moves in someone's arms, but then the arms withdraw and you're holding the magical being yourself, as one might hold a small planet. The incredible limbs move and the dark eyes flash; the mouth opens, round as a button, to speak in a language only you can interpret.

Yes
, you tell the little god, for you have understood its question. You feel its life squirming in your hands, its densely concentrated holiness.

Yes
, you say—and that answer becomes a promise, a sacred vow. Yes, I will save you. Yes, I will protect you. Yes, I will tell you stories someday, funny stories about your daddy, each with a happy end. Yes, I will make your daddy live for you. I will live for you myself, to make it all come true.

Yes. I will take you away, to a place where nothing can hurt you, no one can threaten you. And you will be free there, you will have everything, you will know love and your love will be returned. And never will winter come again, and never loss, and never sadness. And there you will live forever, as we too still live—far, far away, in that magical country.

Another green world.