The More Loving One

The sun sank slowly behind the city, and lengthening shadows stretched out from the ruined remains of the stucco apartment buildings. Yana watched idly from where she sat as the last few golden rays sank beneath the rubble and ruin. She felt the warm air dissipate and be replaced by the cool, dry air that marked the ending of summer. Clouds gathered above her and obscured the multitude of stars that gazed unconcernedly upon her. Sometime not soon after, a few drops of rain began to fall, sinking immediately into the dry, cracked soil. Yana’s mother had always called them tears from heaven. She didn’t know if she found that comforting or not, but she liked the memory of her mother’s warm voice whispering it to her.

The rain continued to fall, and soon there was a small shower of it falling quietly over the city. It made a pitter-patter noise on the plastic tarp above her before running off the sides. Yana took all this in from underneath her makeshift shelter, which was nothing more than a few blue canvas strips stretched around her like a tent. She took stock of her situation, the cold and wet, plus the dull pain in her stomach, the one she had learned to ignore, and the sharp pain in her leg, the one she couldn’t ignore. After calmly considering her options, she decided to continue to wait. She would wait forever if she had too. And so she sat, and the rain fell, and the ever-present sound of the far-off boom of guns continued on.

After what seemed like years, she saw what she had been waiting for.

He was slightly taller than her, and while he had been fairly fit before, it was clear that any kind of substantial muscle or fat had been used up long ago. He wore a torn up pair of shorts and a pair of tennis shoes that were a size too small, with a small hole through the bottom of the left shoe, as well as an old t-shirt that bared the logo of a foreign clothing company, one she had never heard of. His jacket, soaked with rain, was buttoned all the way up, except for the top slot where the button had been ripped off. He had an old American baseball cap over his dark, uncut black hair, one that an aid worker had given to him a long time ago, before the aid workers had left. His face was shadowed by the hat and the clouds, but she didn’t need to see it to know what he looked like. A tanned, slender face, brown eyes with heavy bags under them from lack of sleep, a small cut above his right eye, and a warm comforting smile that she saw less and less often. Even in this place, he was almost handsome. Without him, she would have surely died months ago. It was hard to scavenge for food when one of your legs was a dull throbbing pain at the best of times, and a screaming agony at the worst. But keeping her alive had cost him dearly, as his gaunt frame showed. He had never abandoned her though, although she had feared that he might, and for that she would owe him forever.

“How is your leg?”, he asked, dropping with a grunt onto the blanket covered ground beside her and leaning his head back against the wall, his tired eyes glancing over her with quiet concern.

“The same as ever”, she replied, putting as much confidence into her voice as she could. It was, in fact, much worse. She had abandoned any hope of it healing on its own long ago.

“You’re as bad a liar as ever. I’ve been able to see right through you since you learned to lie. You should have learned by now that it’s not worth the effort.” The left corner of his mouth went up slightly at that in a bad imitation of the grins that he had, at one point, never seemed to be able to wipe off his face. He sighed then, and looked up at the tarp roof with closed eyes. “There wasn’t any medicine that I could find, nor any that anyone was willing to give me. No food either.”

The statement hung in the air, an unspoken prediction of what was to come. It wasn’t new to them by now. There had been no medicine and little to no food for a long time. Before, there was always something to be found, another hidden can of soup or buried stash of vegetables, to stave off the inevitable for a bit longer. Sometimes there would be aid workers in white helmets there to dispense something nutritious, though tasteless. Recently however they had found less and less. Now there seemed to be nothing left, and no amount of pretending or persuading would let her continue to believe that it wouldn’t be too long before more was found. Their luck, along with their food, had run out three days ago.

Some time passed before either of them spoke again, and she sat listening to the sound of the rain softly pelting the ground in front of her, interspaced by the measured, ragged breaths of the boy beside her.

“Alexei?”, she asked quietly. Shouting or even talking normally didn’t seem appropriate at the moment. So she whispered, just barely speaking loud enough to be heard above the sound of the rain.

“Yes, Yana?”, he replied without turning to look or even open his eyes.

“Do you remember when mother used to tell us stories when it really rained and stormed hard; when the power went out and all we had were candles?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And she would say that the rain was only tears from heaven, and that the thunder was the sound of fireworks?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think, then, that the tears were from people in heaven, crying for all of the people on Earth that they missed?”

“It is possible, I suppose.” They both knew that this wasn’t true. They each knew what rain really was, and what the scientific truths and facts really were. But facts were depressing, and it was, as it always is, easier to indulge a dream world than to face a harsh set of facts that will never change.

“Do you think, then, that mother and father are up there, watching and crying for us right now?”

Alexei grimaced as she finished her question, and he opened his eyes to stare across the rubble at the vast expanse of dark, cloudy sky. It was a long time before he spoke, and at first, she didn’t know if he was thinking, or if was refusing to answer. But when he did speak, it was in a lost and utterly despondent way that he rarely let her see. His veneer of hope and confidence was one that he rarely let slip, but when he did, she knew that she was hearing exactly what he thought and felt. In those moments, she thought, he became wiser beyond his fifteen years.

“Yana, I don’t know if they’re up there. I don’t know if there’s anyone up there at all. No one does, not even those who claim they know that there is. All I know is that I would like them to be up there. And I would like, someday, to meet them there myself.”

The rain continued to fall unabated, and Yana chose to believe that they could be tears if she wanted them to be. She could hope that they were. That was all that anyone could ever do.

And so, she began to cry too. And the boy put his arm around her and drew her into him. At first, she thought that he was shaking from the cold, but then she realized that he was crying too.

She cried for herself, and for all the people crying in heaven, and, she thought, if there was only one crying in heaven, or none at all, then she would cry for that reason too.

She cried for all the other people in her city, all the ones who were stuck here like her, and for all the ones who had once been happy here like her. She even cried for the people who fired the guns, who kept her here, and who were even now fighting and dying. They had families too. They had secret passions and loves, and they all clearly had something they were willing to die for, whether it was an idea, a country, or a soul mate. She pitied them as she pitied herself. They were, after all, just people, even if they were, in their blindness, pretending to be something inhuman; to be butchers of their fellow man.

She did not even spare the leaders of the slaughter from her tears; they too were too human. They fought to protect a nation they had been raised to protect, as corrupt and tyrannical as it was, or they fought to raise a new and better nation from the ashes of the old, one that would be founded on blood. The ends, for them, justified the means. A few dead now would save hundreds in the future, they thought. This is the way things are and this is the only way to affect things, they thought. History and circumstance compel me to do these things, and I must, can, and will do them, they all thought. No man is ever a villain in his own mind, and no action perpetrated by any man is ever thought to be purely for evil’s sake. Therefore, she cried for them, even as they killed her.

The rain finally began to abate, and for the first time that night she saw the beautiful stars in the sky above her. They hung in their millions throughout the black expanse, each tiny pinprick of light a silent, stalwart sentry set to watch the planet below them, each returning to duty night after night and season after season with predictable and reassuring regularity. She knew, however, that not even one of these fiery spectators cared at all for her. The sight reminded her of a poem she had once had to translate, back when there had been a school and classmates and such things as poems.

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

The stars, those silent watchmen of the night, all seemed to her at that moment like spectators visiting the ancient colosseum, uncaring visitors who, like many, heard the news, saw the destruction, and moved quickly on to something else with a shake of their head and a shrug of their shoulders. What could they do? They were like the stars, many miles away, with their own concerns and worries. She did not blame them any more than she did the men who were here, fighting and killing. If each were in the others place, if the man far away was fighting and the fighting man was shaking his head, then still nothing would have changed. They were each capable of the same things, so why blame one for doing what the other had not, but would, do? Still, if only all men could be indifferent towards others, and not only some, then maybe there would be no need for fighting or shaking of heads at all. But what kind of world was it where only indifference could end suffering?

“Alexei?”, she asked as she watched the moon crawl overhead.

“Yes, Yana?”, he replied, his voice heavy with weariness. She wondered for a moment if she had awoken him, but one glance at him showed him to be staring attentively at the moon as well.

“Do you think the war will end soon?”

“No, Yana, although I hope that it might. It will only end soon, though, if one of the sides gives up without being forced to. And I don’t think that will happen. There’s still a lot more blood that can be spilled.”

She was quiet for a bit after that. He had answered her honestly, even if his forecast was grim, which was something he usually stopped short of doing. She may not have known how to lie to him, but she at least knew when he was lying to her. She didn’t blame him though; he did it only to try to comfort her. A lie told for someone else isn’t ever really that much of a lie at all. A lie only becomes an evil thing when it’s told for the benefit of the person telling it.

“Do you think that the war will ever end?”

Again he paused before answering her, and this time she knew that he was thinking.

“If you mean will this war end, then my answer is yes. All wars end eventually. But that doesn’t mean that new wars won’t be fought exactly like this one was. One war always seems to lead to the next until the reasons for all of it become very confused. This piece of land is so-and-so’s, or this religion isn’t the right religion, and so on. People must be crazy; we make war so much it’s almost as if we like it.”

Yana could see why he would think that. She had seen many people since the war had started, alive and dead. All of them had been involved in the war in one way or another, that much was true. But she had never seen any of them look like they were enjoying it.

“Do you ever think things will get better?”

“That’s… a difficult question. A realistic type of person might say no, because things have been this way forever. A pessimist would say no and give up. I have to say yes though, as much as I want to say no. I have to believe that things will get better, not because the alternative isn’t great, or because I’m blind to reality, but because I know that things can get better. That people can be better. Before the war came here, people would say that our leaders were war hungry, that the enemies our country confronted were ruthless, mindless, emotionless machines of rape and destruction, and that the foreigners were worse than all that. But father would never hear of it. He simply didn’t believe that a whole group of people could be all bad. He used to say to me, ‘look for the helpers. Every time there is a problem, there are always people who will come to help.’ And I think he was right. I think that there will always be rescuers. And I hope that someday, the whole world will be full of only rescuers, so that no one will ever need rescuing.”

Yana sat and thought about what he had said, and she stared with him at the bright night sky above, a place far removed from the rubble that surrounded them. She clung to the boy and he clung to her, and together they clung to each other. She hoped that he was right, and that some day the world might be full of rescuers, and that the tears in the rain would then be happy.

And in the distance, the guns boomed on.