Ascent

Twenty million countrymen died in the Great Patriotic War and his whole family was among them. His bare feet left footprints in the dirt as the men led him from the farm. Then they set the ruined buildings alight. What had been his life to this point vanished into smoke. Rain began to fall. The boy watched it puddle the dirt. It obliterated his footprints and, while he waited, the wheels of passing carts and trucks cut swaths in the muddy road, but in time the rain also wiped these away. He traveled to the ruined city in a farm lorry with his only possessions in a sack. From factories came the pounding of metal. The noise passed up from the earth like a groan. By the time they reached the orphanage, night had fallen. The other boys watched him being led into the mess hall. He was big for his age, so therefore a target. There was only time for a bowl of broth, then it was lights-out. Frost glistened on the window panes, but the oil ration went to the factories so the stoves at each end of the dormitory remained unlit. He was accustomed to the silence of the countryside, but in the city the pounding of machines continued through the night. There was so much to repair, so much to rebuild. As soon as he fell asleep, two of them held down his arms while a third jumped on his chest and beat him about the face. The other boys expected him to cry himself to sleep, but he was done with crying. In the morning blood stained his pillow, one of his teeth lay on the floor, and his sack was empty. At inspection the warden paused at his bunk. "New boy?" He nodded. "Name?" "Yefgenii Mikhailovich Yeremin." "What's all this, then?" The other boys stared straight ahead. None would ever admit having seen or heard a thing. Yefgenii remained silent so he was deprived of breakfast and instead made to scrub his own sheets. That night they left him alone but that was part of their game. They dragged another boy out of his bunk and buggered him over the stove that was unlit for lack of oil and Yefgenii curled up and tried to sleep. Being sent here was like being flung down a well. No one cared that it was cold and dark and no one cared if he ever climbed out. Often the boys were made to work as unpaid laborers. A bank of mist and drizzle rolled off the Volga, making some of the boys stiffen in the cold, but Yefgenii kept on. He was strong. He was used to hard labor. There was soot in the air that made his spit turn black. The rest of the time they were given schoolwork. In the main they were taught the history of the October Revolution and the facts proving that no nation had sacrificed more than theirs in the defeat of fascism, but they also practiced arithmetic, some trigonometry, sometimes a little algebra. They chanted multiplication tables. Babak chanted the loudest. He was the one who'd given Yefgenii his beating on the first night. When the teacher asked a question, no one's hand went up but his. This seemed to be the protocol and, though he often knew the answer, Yefgenii was wise enough to conform. Afterward there'd be a fight in the yard. Babak's two comrades were Pavlushkin and Boytsov. They'd stand by while Babak picked an argument with one boy or another and, whether the boy answered back or not, it always led to a battering. Sometimes it was concluded in the yard. Sometimes Babak finished it in the dormitory after lights-out. One day the schoolmaster called out Yefgenii's name. Yefgenii stood to attention. "Yeremin, your mathematics is exemplary." He'd scored full marks in arithmetic and had advanced to the top of the class in trigonometry and algebra. Babak glared at him. The other boys stared straight ahead as they did at dormitory inspection. The master set the boys a quadratic equation. Almost at once Babak claimed to have the answer but he'd made a mistake. The master called on Yefgenii and he answered with the correct solution. In the yard the oMercurio, Jed is the author of 'Ascent ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780743298223 and ISBN 0743298225.