Cold Motherland

“Two more days, Petrov.” His gravelly voice struck a low baritone. It filled the room, but it sounded tight in the cold air. His breath was thin, and every word spoken required a moment’s respite. The ice, the chill, the altitude… the solitude.

His gloved hand quaked with the red marker. The ink smeared with moisture on the calendar as he crossed left. Then right. His controlled exhale bearing a thousand vaporous droplets. The fog wetting the ink further. The X bled out, becoming a pudgy character on the slick black squares.

Petrov walked back to his chair and clicked the orange button. The coffee machine began to sputter as it attempted to warm to temperature. He was sitting, monitoring the displays, long before the machine worked up the courage to spill forth life. Black. Hot. Bitter. Only one thing in common with Petrov’s assignment. And only one thing in common with his reward.

The instruments worked at a perceptible hum. Cables and cords feeding electric energy to pumps, satellites, radars, and computers. The only life he’d known for 363 Russian winter days.

Bitter. Cold. White snow.

He stood up and went to the door. He’d broken the habit 60 days in. But now… knowing what was coming, he couldn’t help himself.

“Perhaps the snowmobile comes in early,” he commented to the machines as they whirred their disappointment. Human weakness.

He creaked his bones into his chair. Shivering, he reached for the knob. Short wave radio. His elbow cocked to keep his arm close to his body, and with a malformed hand he slowly turned it. The buzz of the amp giving way to the static of the speaker. He kept the volume low, afraid of interrupting the voices of his only companions.

Nothing. He scanned. Nothing.

No one.

The swish of his parka surprised him, and as he struggled to decipher the language he’d heard. The final sizzle of the coffee machine reminded him… there was no one.

Petrov sighed as his heart swelled with warmth. “Right. Good.” he said. If he’d been an observer, could he admit what he’d witnessed? The thought passed, and his subconscious had become skilled in hiding the truth in the veneer of philosophy.

He walked over to the ice box, having long ago exhausted the irony. Opening it up, he stared within. One piece. All that was left. Chocolate cake.

Cold. Sweet. Black. Chocolate Cake.

His stomach gurgled as his heart swelled again, then sighed.

He couldn’t help it as his thumb moved to his ring finger. Imperceptible beneath the gloves, but the most important things can only be seen with the heart. He removed a packed meal. Sputnik must have had the same. He walked back to the desk and his heart directed his eyes.

The woman in the photo gleamed despite her solemn face.

Ivory. Warm. Complex… Beautiful.

Her framed portrait sat atop a book, recently translated. The Little Prince.

“Look up at the sky, and tell me it doesn’t make all the difference in the world,” the book said.

“It does,” Petrov replied, as the frost stung the corner of his eyes.

The beeps and clicks brought him back. The cables coursing with artificial life. “Two more days,” he rasped, short on breath.

He retrieved his map and placed the compass atop. The incessant conversation of the machines played the soundtrack as he plotted again. Northwest. There was no one for 300 miles that direction.

No radio. No radar. No body.

But first. He would eat that chocolate cake. Two more days.

“And when they look up into the sky, they won’t even care if the sheep has eaten the rose, or if the man has eaten his cake. The stars will all be laughing, because the Motherland got her life. And these machines and the war and the rations, they’re all very serious.”