DAILYSOMETHING

The Sokolovs

The Sokolovs always seemed to me like the toughest family. The grandfather was a colonel, but I never saw him. Akeksandr, my cousin, always resorted to fists when I’d out-talk him in one kid arguement or another. His dad was tough and always chased us around with his gaze and voice alone. For years I’ve thought that they were an angry and bitter bunch. But when I heard the story about Sasha, the dad’s brother, I couldn’t quite figure them out anymore.

Sasha fell in love with Lena, a beautiful girl that kids from all the neighboring villages knew about and worshipped. There was no fights because she just fell for him and the summer that followed was wild by many accounts, but his brother knew more about it than anyone did. They were consumed with each other and they would do it anywhere - underwater in the river, in his house with the parents sleeping in the same room, when they kissed windows broke and that was everywhere they went. They were so filled up with each other’s want, passion, when they parted and walked toward their villages you could see too long streaks of red through the grass, tied up at the place they last touched. He left for army duty on September 1st, when she had her first day in 11th grade.

Given his inability to put feelings to words his first two letters were short after which he stopped sending them whatsoever. She wrote often and told him how she yearned for every part of him. After two years she only wrote to reply to his short notes and when he came back in 1954 only his brother showed up at the airport to meet him.

It was late fall and, though not visible, the grass took on a frosty hardness. He ate at home with his parents and the relatives, drank vodka in moderation and when the music started playing and voices started to get louder he left the house to stand outside. He looked through the trees at the direction of where her house would be, 18 kilometers through the thin forest, smoked, and started walking. He walked for three hours as the dusk outlined the shapes of trees. Their wet bark made them stand out and the last of the smells of life and summer was concentrated on the dying leaves. He saw her house from a distance, it was alone on the far end of Nekrasovo. The lights from the windows casted strange long beams of light on the grass and bushes. He felt his chest tighten as he went to the door and couldn’t knock. When he looked in the window he saw her playing with another man.

Sasha took the three hour walk back to his home, took the colonel’s rifle, and started to walk back to Lena’s house. It was dead dark and almost morning by then, but he could smell his way to the house and the moonlight showed brighter through the leafless trees. Somewhere halfway it started to rain. He stopped and turned back, stopped again, took a deep breath, stuck the barrel in his mouth, and shot himself.

Lena followed him soon after - jumped into the river a day before it froze.