Fiction Contest

The image above, taken by John Rahill, was lost for 80 years (see Russian Life, July/Aug 2013). It bore the simple inscription “Soldiers at Omsk Train Station,” and it seemed to us to contain huge potential for a short story. It was, after all, taken in late 1918, as Russia lurched from World War to Civil War, from monarchy to proletarian dictatorship. What is this man’s story?

So we held a short story contest. Entries had to be 500 words or less and over 20 stories were received. The two winners, judged on their literary merit and on how well they interpreted or were inspired by the photo, are printed in the two pages following.

Congratulations to the winners and indeed to all those who submitted stories. We were impressed by the quality of all the entries.

– The Editors

A Memorable Day in Omsk

by Eric Severin Peterson

I still remember him – the mysterious soldier – despite wars, revolution, famine, and exile. He had a kind face and weary eyes.

On a cold afternoon in 1918, he was walking by the Omsk railway station. Unlike the other hurrying soldiers, he came to where my brother and I were sitting selling bird carvings. He asked Kolya how much he wanted for the firebird, the best of his carvings.

Kolya sized him up. “Twenty kopeks.”

I looked up at the man and smiled, hoping he would buy it.

“Twenty kopeks,” he mused, holding up the little bird, scrutinizing it in the sunlight, which set its colors ablaze. “Well, it is a fine carving.”

Kolya grinned and stood up straighter. He wanted so much to be a soldier.

“Worth a whole lot more,” the soldier added, looking down at Kolya with a mirthful smile under his mustache. “I will give you a ruble.”

Kolya’s jaw dropped and his eyes widened. The soldier chuckled, handing Kolya a gold coin, which he accepted like a gift from God himself. “Thank you.”

“A firebird,” the soldier said thoughtfully, admiring Kolya’s work. “It symbolizes a difficult quest, blessing, and even doom.”

“That’s right,” Kolya said, clutching the coin in his hand, his fist thrust into his pocket.

With a wink to me and a nod to Kolya, the soldier put the firebird into his coat pocket and began to walk away.

Who was he? Was he going off to war or coming home? Would the firebird be a gift for his wife, a toy for his child, a little decoration for his tent?

He turned back to look at us for a moment. Did we remind him of his own children?

As the soldier regarded us pensively, nearby a foreign man with a camera photographed the bustling street.

Why would he take such a picture? He had not met the soldier. Neither could he have known the story of how two poor children had been suddenly blessed. Yet, maybe he would look at his photograph afterward and remember his own story of what happened that day. Perhaps the photograph, as if lit by a firebird’s feather, would come to light again even after the cameraman’s death.

“Why doesn’t he take our picture?” Kolya asked.

But the cameraman had moved on, just like the mysterious soldier, to a destination only he knew. And we, guarding our treasure, left early for home.

The soldier and the firebird – one moved by forces greater than himself, the other illuminating after great struggle. And I am the babushka who marched through sorrows like flames.

Kolya went to war and died. Misha went to Magadan and disappeared. And I went from city to city and grave to grave, searching for them. I long for them still, carrying memories of beauty and pain tucked beneath my scarf like hair. I want to see my brothers and the soldier and the cameraman again and ask them, “Where did you go?”

Under the Floor

by Sandy Compton

“This was under the floor,” said the workman, and handed Yulia a huge, old Bible. “Things inside might be of interest.”

She got a chill. He looked earnestly at her in the dim light as she took it from his big rough hands, seeking approval for his discovery. She looked away, went to a window, carefully walking around the construction.

This house. Why she was spending the money on it, she didn’t know. It was hardly worth restoring. But her family was tied to it, and now she was, too. At least financially. A dacha a long, long way from Ufa, but still hers.

The trail of her family was traced now: from Surgut to Moscow to Omsk to the camps and finally to Ufa. This was the beginning, on the shore of the Ob in this old, wooden house.

She set the book on the windowsill, lit from outside, and took a deep breath, as if she were about to dive into the river outside. The cover was ornate, decorated with a golden Orthodox cross. She opened it.

Inside the cover, her great-grandmother’s name in Cyrillic; same as hers; Yulia. Yulia Antonova.

A picture. A soldier in a greatcoat standing in a street with other soldiers. A White Army uniform. She turned the picture over. A single word: “Frederick.”

A letter, not faded over all the time it had hidden in this book hidden under the floor.

“Dear Yulia,”

A shiver went up her spine.

“We are waiting for a train east. The Czar is gone and the Reds are advancing. I don’t know when I will be home. You must be brave and tell Alexi to be brave, too.”

Yulia of the present caught a breath. Alexi was a grandfather she never met. He died at Stalingrad and her grandmother Natalia was sent to the camps pregnant with Yulia’s mother Katerina. Katerina was born at Akmolinski because her father died at Stalingrad.

“A man came and made pictures today, of us in the street waiting. I have asked him for one, and he says he will try to bring it before the train comes.

“The sun was shining, and I was thinking of you and the Ob and Alexi and our last time together. It was such a delicious day. Apples and fresh fish and your sweet bread in a basket. Alexi on my shoulders in the field and then later as he napped . . . Ahh, Yulia!”

Yulia blushed and looked over her shoulder. The workman was busy with the new floor. She wondered if he had read the letter.

“Now it is later. The man has returned. Somehow he has managed to make the photo. I don’t know how, but I send it to you. The train has come. I must go. I send my love.”

“Frederick.”

Frederick did not come home. And when the Terrors began, this book and its secrets went under the floor.

Yulia stood at the window and cried.