Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 10

Contents
     

    THE WAR AT THE END OF THE WORLD
    by Heidi Belleau and Violetta Vane
    September 1941
    Today, I exist.
    When we were younger, whole days and nights would claw me under before I'd wink back into the world. But now that Joseph's come to this cold land on the edge of nowhere where the sun barely sets in summer, I'm with him every day. Joseph and his long shadow and me, inseparable.
    I'm never sure exactly how I feel about that. It's complicated.
    It's the way this place seems to always be lingering on the edge of winter, I think, that makes me more permanent now than I was before. Winter and death must be linked somehow, bound together in a way that can never be untangled, like you can't have one without the other. Or anyway, you can't have winter without death—bees, flowers, the grasshopper who refuses to work as hard as the ant, they all die at first frost—but you can definitely still have death without winter. Sort of like me and Joseph: there's no me without Joseph—I'm his after all—but Joseph can go years without me.
    Or maybe it's the war.
    I don't know. I'm still working this all out.
    Meanwhile, Joseph's working out one of his war stories. He's leaning up against the Finnish ambulance truck, scribbling into his notebook with his lips pressed tight in a familiar sign of furious concentration. Not even twilight yet, and mosquitoes stream through the pine trees to circle and suck at the resting convoy; Joseph brushes one off without even looking.
    I shouldn't call it a war story. It's a dispatch. He'd prefer to write stories: I've heard him say as much to his two Finnish friends. And sometimes in his dispatches he'll write phrases like this filthy waste of men or Hitler must be laughing or death is like a living thing , and then he'll cross them out and curse in English and replace them with the velvety-bland newspaper speech that his duty demands.
    The world sympathized with Finland as they beat off the Soviet Russian invasion during last year's Winter War. Using battle tactics fit to the icy cold of their homeland, they repelled Soviet forces of vastly superior numbers in order to maintain their independence. A year later, Finland seeks to reclaim the territory lost to Russia: Karelia, where pine boughs bend heavy with the spirits of the dead the land of many lakes and mighty forests.
    The Finns, lacking resources and materiel, have accepted a dangerous controversial alliance with Nazi Germany. Finland maintains a doctrine of "co-belligerence" and does not designate itself an Axis power, but Great Britain remains unassuaged and has deemed Finland to be enemy-occupied territory. Finland still seeks American aid even as despite the fact the Wehrmacht, onward
    I can practically taste his frustration. He's a helpless observer of this war at the end of the world. He's overcompensating. Taking too many chances. He doesn't even have official permission to follow the Finnish front line into the Karelian Isthmus. He's tagging along with the ambulance trucks, relying on the goodwill of drivers and nurses he knows from the Winter War. But if the advance turns, if they have to choose between a foreign journalist and a Finnish wounded, if they have to leave him behind...
    Joseph can walk. He's fiercely, quietly proud of that. But he can't walk far, or fast. And he definitely can't run.
    I imagine I have a mouth, a tongue, lungs to breathe. I visualize them in the form I know best: Joseph's own. I try to whisper in his ear. You have enough for your story. Don't follow. Go back to Helsinki. Please, don't follow.
    The officer with the radio strides to the center of the convoy and delivers the news: "We'll press on to Lake Laatokka to set up a field hospital. Our men have already driven the Soviets back to Valkeasaari."
    The Finns have a truly fearsome war cry—when they gather to chant hakkaa päälle I shiver down to my nonexistent bones—but in other respects, they wage war as unemotionally as if the whole affair was a particularly troublesome spring housecleaning. The nurses nod solemnly and file back into the trucks. The drivers nod solemnly and start the engines.
    No one translates for Joseph. He understands well enough. He tucks his notebook into his inside coat pocket, grips his cane and climbs into the truckbed after the last nurse. His ascent is measured and graceful; his arms, left unravaged by polio, are strong. He doesn't hesitate.
    He doesn't hear me.
    The nurses smile at him somewhat less