The Death of a Soldier Told By His Sister by Olesya Khromeychuk

Author:Olesya Khromeychuk [Khromeychuk, Olesya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800961197
Publisher: Octopus
Published: 2022-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

Harvest

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

‘Mama,’ cried a man as he fell down.

‘Mama,’ whispered another as he looked up at the sky for the last time.

‘Mama,’ thought a woman as she struggled to breathe and watched her plaited blonde hair turn red with a sticky fluid.

‘Mama,’ and then silence forever.

The noise of war can be very loud. It drowns everything else out. No one heard their last words. Not even Mama.

‘A time to be born, and a time to die.’

My hands shaking, I opened the folder that contained the photos on your phone. I didn’t know whether you had taken them or whether they had been sent to you. There were pictures of the landscapes of eastern Ukraine, the beautiful steppe I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing with my own eyes. Weeping willows reflected in a lake. A boat resting by the lake’s shore. Coffee brewed on a makeshift fire. Venus shining brightly at night. A lonely cloud against the blue sky. An explosion on an otherwise enchanting horizon. A piece of shrapnel on a path. An empty trench. And photos of this.

An open mouth. An awkward pose, prostrated on the ground. One leg twisted unnaturally to the side. Another in the position of a runner at full speed. Both arms above the head, as if waving to signal: ‘I am here! Don’t leave me! Take me with you, alive or dead, but don’t leave me on my own! Not here. Not forever.’

In the tranquil fields, near the lake: fruit is born out of war. This region is very fertile. Whatever you plant in the black earth is accepted graciously and then, the following year, the lush soil produces a plentiful harvest.

‘A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.’

Let’s take a closer look. It’s not a pretty sight and not something people want to witness, although, sooner or later, it happens to us all. It just takes a different amount of time for different people. For instance, a corpse that is left in the open air decomposes four times faster than one that is buried in the ground. But what has just died very quickly comes to life. Perhaps it doesn’t even die at all. Perhaps one form of life simply transforms into another.

Moments after death, as soon as the process of decomposition starts, a whole ecosystem appears and flourishes. What happens is a sort of self-digestion. When the heartbeat stops, and there’s no more oxygen in the cells, they start to break down. This process starts in the liver, continues in the brain, and eventually takes hold of all the tissues and organs. The temperature in a corpse comes to match that of its environment. As rigidity envelops the body from the face down through the neck, into the limbs, deprived of energy, the corpse is locked motionless.

And that is when a new type of life begins. The immune system stops working, and the bacteria get down to business.

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