Good wine on your table

     I hadn’t seen Arthur for eight years. Last time we had met, he came home on two-week leave from the army and there was a girl with him, his bride. The two of us – Arthur, tall and stout, four years older than I, and myself, rather petite by comparison - had been next-door neighbors and good friends from the time we could first remember ourselves. There would be so much to talk about, so much to remember.

Sitting in my living room on the autumn-colored sofa behind a small, wooden table, we tasted wine ("What kind of host are you," says an old proverb, "if you don’t have good wine on the table?") and shamelessly left good, roasted coffee to cool off, we looked through the photos of Arthur’s younger brother’s wedding.

  Here they were – the family. Dressed in a black tuxedo was an awkward-looking boy of 18 years old, who I had known as a naughty neighborhood kid. Beside him, his wife, a fluffy country girl, looked scared and happy at the same time, and behind them was Arthur, his wife, Ann, and his mother, Auntie Maria.  

 "Did your father take those wedding pictures?" I asked him. "Why isn’t he in any of these?"

Uncle Dani, Arthur’s father, had always been part of our games. I easily recalled those days when we went fishing together, played soccer, children against adults, or pursued domino matches until dark.

"Remember," I began certain that Arthur cherished those memories, too.

He interrupted me harshly. "Those days are long gone." Then he added, "We missed him at the wedding." There was a taste of bitterness in his voice.

Missing his son’s wedding? It didn’t seem as though Uncle Dani would do something like that without a reason. I wanted to know more, but then I noticed Arthur’s hands shaking.

He finished his wine in one gulp and put the glass on the table. "My farther is dead," he said, his voice low. A solitary tear slipped down his cheek. Big guy, my buddy, and a role model in good and bad was crying.

 It seemed the stream of Arthur’s future would be a clear and bright one. No hidden rocks were expected. Like every other boy in the Soviet Union, ready and proud to perform his holy duty he had been drafted into the army at age 18. By the time he graduated military school, the nation’s almighty ship had turned into floating pieces in a stormy sea.

As an officer of the new Russian Federative Republic based on the Ukrainian peninsula, Arthur felt himself in exile. Those were the times of great changes, when former sister republics denounced their family relations and shut the doors to their rooms. Such slamming doors shook the house, and when a house, dismantled from the inside, falls apart, when its inhabitants only add to the destruction, how can you hold bricks together intact?

  Waves of fire and madness had swept over Moldavia, a small, sunny, green country full of baskets of ripe, juicy fruits, green hills covered by vineyards, beautiful songs heard all over, guest rooms "Casa Mare" decorated in rich, bright colors, and hearts opened toward every guest. In this country where Arthur was born and grew up, those who lived on the left bank of the river Nistru, the very same river ancient Greeks called Tiras, didn’t believe in new rules; those who lived on the right bank struggled for the new venues. And somebody pulled the trigger …  

"It felt so sweet to be home, well, close to home," Arthur said helplessly.

For about two weeks, as a part of the Russian peacekeeping forces in the region his division had been patrolling the left bank of the river, the opposition’s stronghold. It was in the wee hours of a summer day, the sun just beginning its journey across the sky and an early rooster spreading its wings, when Arthur was awakened by one of his privates and brought to the hospital. Three bodies, covered by a bloodstained blanket, were lying at the curb of the road. An awful smell arose all around.

"Those fools burned themselves," a soldier responded to Arthur’s unspoken question. "We saw the fire and rushed to their side, but we were late," the soldier explained further.

Arthur lifted the corner of one of the blankets. It was a horrible view - a hardened crust of burned skin and clothes covered most of the corpse. There wasn’t much hair left on the scalp, but the face was intact. It was the face he instantly recognized.

"Stretchers! Somebody, bring the stretchers!" Arthur had ordered. Burst of pain and anger washed over him.

Kneeling to the ground, he slowly pulled the blanket back. "What a fool you are. What a fool you were."

Exchanging suspicious looks, the soldiers couldn’t help but wonder who their commander was talking to.

 "He is my father," Arthur managed to say after a long pause.

  The story Arthur told me, the one he was told by a local man, was as heartbreaking as it was absurd. Uncle Daniel and many others had volunteered to guard bridges across the Nistru River during so-called zatishii, short periods between battles when both armies were resting and recovering their forces. As old workers and peasants, they believed they can save their country and were thankful for the promised earlier retirement benefits, additional food, and heating supplies for the winter.

They were not warriors by any means, but pooghalah or "scarecrows", the nickname given them by left-bankers. Granted with one gun for three men, they didn’t have to kill, but only scare the marauders or anyone else trying to cross the front line. Both sides knew that, although nobody was willing to risk his life senselessly.

Long, lonely nights, boredom and fear, oil lamps and bouteilles of sveclomitsin, unpurified beet-based liquor – a dangerous invention by somebody’s restless mind – were these people’s realities. It was just as an old proverb says: "What kind of host are you, if you don’t have good wine on the table? And if you don’t have the wine, don’t worry. Anything else would work as well." You lit a cigarette, take a sip, fall asleep and never wake up.

Two hours passed by unnoticed as Arthur and I visited. We were sitting on the sofa with a TV playing in another room when I asked him, "So, when will I see you again?"

There was no need for condolences or mourning, we both knew that. And we both knew why. The days of childhood were gone, and with them all illusions. Who or what will you blame for what happened to Uncle Dani? Civil war, the most absurd invention of humankind? Or, maybe, a disease called drinking, or man’s spirit trying to fight whatever it can summon?

Arthur shook his head. "I leave tonight. Annette and the baby will stay with my Mom. I miss them very much, but I would never let them go with me. Never."

I was afraid to ask, "Where?"

    "Chechnya," came his answer.