Broken Blades

by Aleksandr Voinov

  Armin stood a few feet in front of him, his posture midway between relaxed but straight and at full attention. When he spoke, his voice was so quiet it barely carried over the crackling fire. “Though the circumstances are regrettable, I must admit, it is good to see you again, Mark.”

  Mark’s throat constricted. “I’d hoped we’d see each other again. Just … not like this.”

  Armin’s right shoulder rose in a stiff shrug. “There are a great many things in this world beyond our control. Especially now.” He smiled, though his expression seemed sadder than anything else. “I’ll take what blessings come to me.”

  “I suppose we don’t have much choice, do we?”

  “No. We don’t.”

  They held each other’s gazes in silence again. Mark couldn’t help but wonder how things might have been different if they hadn’t been so quick to let each other go.

  “We shouldn’t have taken this risk,” the young, vibrant Armin had said. “There is too much at stake.”

  “I’m going back to America soon. We won’t have an opportunity.”

  “I know. It can’t be more than this. We have no other choice.”

  Then he’d walked away, leaving Mark slack-jawed and hurt and disbelieving even though they’d both known there was no alternative. And eight years later …

  “Do you ever regret Berlin?” Mark asked before he could stop himself.

  Armin flinched and broke eye contact, letting his gaze drift toward the fencing equipment lying idle in the corner. “Berlin wasn’t as far removed from today as you might think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean those were dangerous times.” Armin’s gaze flicked back toward Mark. “Just as these are.”

  “What?” Mark scoffed. “There wasn’t a war going on then.”

  “Not yet.” Armin moved his left shoulder gingerly, his lips tightening as if the stiff motion hurt more than he wanted to let on. “But it was coming. The only difference was you and I were young and foolish enough to pretend for a few hours that it wasn’t.”

  “You knew?”

  “My cousin is high up in the air force. He saw the fighter planes. The Reichsmarshall had a photo album of his new airfields, showing them off like family members. All those airfields, all those planes—what else do you need them for? The French were cowed when we took back the Rhineland between the Winter and the Summer Games. It was as inevitable as gravity.” Armin placed his hand in the small of his back. “And while we hoped that America would remain neutral, I’m not exactly known to be an optimist, let alone a fool. But the size and scale of it …” He shook his head. “Seems rather incomprehensible from where I stand now.”

  Carrying that knowledge—that expectation, it was surprising Armin hadn’t been entirely frantic. Though maybe he’d simply gotten used to the weight, had merely grown stronger and more resilient.

  Mark wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Ah. One moment.” Armin went back to the desk and the black telephone on it. He took the receiver off and placed it on the polished wood, then dialed a number, which seemed somewhat laborious as the apparatus was moving around a little as he dialed. Then he put it to his ear and briefly spoke in German. Mark only understood a few words, “Priester” and “ja” and “sofort.”

  Armin ended the call. “The priest will come up from the village.”

  “Thank you.”

  Armin put the receiver back on the phone, and stood next to his desk, still composed and still with the memory of all that grace and speed about him. Or maybe Mark was imagining things.

  “I do promise you, Mark. I’ll do my best to get you through the rest of the war. This isn’t a bad place to outlast it.”

  From anyone else, that might have sounded patronizing, but Mark couldn’t deny he found some comfort in it. There were certainly worse places to spend the war than under Armin’s watch.

  Armin straightened a little. “I suppose you should go. Before the major questions why you’ve been gone so long.”

  “Yeah. I should.” Mark muffled a cough and gestured at the phone. “Thank you again. For the arrangements.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  They locked eyes one more time. Mark was sure he’d been better able to read Armin’s expression through his mask eight years ago than he could just then. Whatever Armin thought or felt, it was too far below the surface for Mark to see.

  “All right, then.” He cleared his throat again. “I’ll, uh, I’ll go.”

  “Very well.”

  Mark turned around. He started toward the door, and he nearly made it, but he stopped, hand hovering over the knob. His heart picked up speed, blood pounding in his ears, and his stomach wound into nervous knots.

  “Something wrong, Captain Driscoll?”

  Mark lowered his hand. He turned again, pivoting on the heel of his boot, and faced Armin. “You never answered my question.”

  “Your …” Armin lifted his eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

  Mark retraced his steps, and when he stopped this time, he was closer to Armin. Still beyond an arm’s length apart, but closer than before. “I asked you a question.”

  “I believe I answered all of your questions.”

  Mark shook his head. “Not quite.”

  Armin shifted his weight, his furrowed brow as likely from irritation as curiosity. “All right.”

  “Do you regret Berlin?”

  “I told you—”

  “No.” Mark advanced half a step, not sure what to make of the way Armin retreated slightly. “Not because of Germany or America or the war.” Another advance. Another retreat. “Two men. Do you regret it or not?”

  Armin stared at him, looking for the first time ever as if he was truly off guard. “What difference does it make?”

  “It makes a difference to me.”

  “Why?”

  Mark’s heart was going a hundred miles an hour now, the way it did during bombing raids and fencing matches. “Humor me.”

  Armin seemed to regain his footing a little, not taking a single step but still seeming to advance. “What is the result? If I tell you I regret it, or if I tell you I do not, then what?”

  “If you regret it, then now I know.”

  Armin swallowed. “And if I don’t?”

  Mark had never struggled so hard to hold any man’s gaze, least of all this one. “Do you?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I’m still waiting for an answer to mine.” Mark advanced again, narrowing the space between them to just inches. “Do you regret Berlin, Armin, or don’t you?”

  Come on, Armin. Attack? Parry? Retreat? Riposte?

  Armin set his jaw. “It was a foolish, dangerous thing to do.” His Adam’s apple bobbed once. “But no. No, I have never regretted it.”

  “Neither have I.”

  Mark grabbed the front of Armin’s uniform and kissed him.

  Armin stiffened in his grasp, quite possibly gathering his wits to push him away, but Mark kissed him harder, though he met determined resistance of clenched teeth when he tried to get more.

  Then Armin slung his arm around Mark’s shoulders, and Mark thought he probably felt the absence of the other hand just as keenly as Armin did. When they parted, Armin staggered back, looking so stricken and shaken that Mark was tempted to catch him before he fell, but he didn’t. Armin steadied himself against his desk. He seemed confused, as if Mark had just torn off the mask that had almost always been in place, and they both knew it.

  Mark licked his lips, still tasted him, a smell of shaving soap in his nostrils, and a taste that reminded him of Armin eight years ago. He’d never really forgotten that taste, or what Armin’s lips felt like. What his breath felt like on his face.

  Armin sat down heavily on his chair, stared at Mark, and maybe there was a bit of satisfaction in the jumble of what Mark was feeling.

  So this time you couldn’t just push me away, could you? And: Now I can see what it
cost you.

  “Chandler …”

  “I know.” He had to go, had to leave, but there were so many open questions, so much he didn’t know. But this time, it was all different. None of them could simply leave. Mark was a POW, and Armin was imprisoned by duty just like every single one of them. Ahlenstieg was his prison, too, and while it was cold comfort to Mark as he finally managed to leave the office, it was something.

  What he felt now wasn’t hatred. His emotions were all shaken loose like eight-year-old rubble that needed to be cleared away before he could see what actually lay underneath. But at least he’d seen that Armin was in the exact same position.

  Again, they were evenly matched.

  Chapter 10

  All life had gone out of Armin’s legs. If a bomb had taken them off, it wouldn’t have felt any different. The shock of that kiss, that primal, terrible, looming pain and loss and horror, all tumbling over other feelings that he could barely name because he wasn’t sure he was capable of them anymore—

  He couldn’t even think. Couldn’t ponder the meaning of those words because whatever they’d said, it had all been blown to smithereens by that kiss. Demanding, a little desperate. It wasn’t a friend’s kiss, or a wife’s kiss, or a kiss of friendship. It was a kiss like a broken blade slipping in right under the armpit or going straight through the visor and into the eye. A killing blow, and he was caught in limbo, as if his body still hadn’t realized it was dead. And he couldn’t find his way out. Could only touch his lips with a finger and look at it, too confused by the fact it wasn’t bloody.

  A sound, words, and he might have said something.

  The door opened, and Mary Shelley’s Schäfer came lumbering in. “Herr Kommandant?”

  Armin found himself unable to respond, but he managed to look at Schäfer. Nothing made sense anymore.

  Schäfer paled. “Should I get the doctor, Kommandant? Are you …”

  “I don’t know.” Armin tried to stand, but his legs didn’t quite obey him. Suddenly he was as ungainly and powerless as he’d been just after—

  He shook his head. “I …”

  Schäfer cursed under his breath, and Armin found himself detachedly musing that Schäfer never cursed in front of him. He was about to tell him that, a dreamy “really, Schäfer?” but the laughter clawing at the back of his throat meant this was hysteria. During these moments, it was best to stay quiet. The last thing he wanted was that people knew just how badly he’d lost his mind.

  “Kommandant …” Schäfer walked around him and slid his arms below Armin’s, bodily hoisted him up and to his feet, then walked him over to the couch to the far end of the office. Sometimes, Armin slept here, mostly when he fell asleep over his papers or reading. Over the last months, the office had become like his living quarters to him. There was a bedchamber farther down the corridor, but some days it seemed like too much effort to get there, and pointless, besides, to brave the cold.

  “Come. Sit.” Schäfer sat him down, steadied him while he pushed a pile of papers to the floor. Armin slumped back while Schäfer took off his boots and lifted his legs up, stretching him out. A folded blanket ended up being a pillow of sorts.

  “It’s the nerves, Kommandant. I know. I understand.” Schäfer’s voice struck Armin as terribly gentle.

  He smiled and closed his eyes, let the man do whatever he thought Armin needed now. Maybe, yes, nervous exhaustion. Shell-shock. Maybe the past was like that—a dam that, once pierced, simply collapsed.

  Mark’s unexpected kiss hadn’t been traumatic, hadn’t been bad in any way Armin could define, but it had opened up the floodgates. Released all the things he’d kept tamped down in the name of maintaining sanity and decorum.

  “I’ll be fine.” Armin silently cursed the way his voice slurred.

  Schäfer frowned over him. “Are you sure you don’t need the doctor to—”

  “No.” Armin waved his good hand. “He’s needed in the infirmary.”

  “The American is quite likely beyond help, Herr von Kardenberg.”

  Armin eyed him. Schäfer rarely called him by that name—without a rank, but still his noble title, though the way he said it was almost unbecomingly personal, as if he’d just called him “Armin.” And he only did that when he’d decided Armin was pushing himself too far and might collapse beneath the weight of his own exertion.

  “My men will abide by the Geneva Conventions.” Armin forced the syllables out sharply and clearly. “Abandoning a man in need of medical attention to tell me I need to rest is unacceptable.”

  Schäfer huffed and shook his head, but Armin let that go. The man meant well. Without his occasional intervention, this madness probably would have overtaken Armin beyond repair a long time ago.

  Schäfer glanced at the door, then back at Armin. “That American, the pilot. He’d just left here when I came in.” He inclined his head. “Did something happen, Kommandant?”

  Oh, yes. Far too much happened.

  It was a kiss, you madman.

  A kiss eight hellish years in the making.

  Armin shook his head. “No. He came to speak to me about his man in the infirmary.”

  “Good.” Schäfer squeezed Armin’s forearm, his bear paw of a hand as surprisingly gentle as his voice. “The prisoners shouldn’t see you like this.”

  Shame twisted beneath Armin’s ribs. He already knew some of the prisoners thought he was weak. “Brittle nerves,” he believed he’d heard Major Chandler mutter about.

  According to those above him, every man in this camp—British, American, and German—should have a healthy respect of him.

  And the truth was, if they pushed him, he’d do what needed to be done. An act of violence would be met with the same. But his prisoners were largely peaceful, and their pranks and escape plans and unsuccessful escape attempts kept his guards from getting bored or lazy.

  They could view him as a kind Kommandant, a reasonable one, but not a weak one. Certainly not one driven to hysteria.

  And absolutely not one driven to hysteria by a damned kiss.

  “Herr von Kardenberg?” Schäfer nudged his arm. “Should I bring you something? A drink?”

  Twice now. He’s really concerned. “No. Thank you, Hauptmann. I think I’ll just sleep, and tomorrow I’ll be fine.”

  Schäfer frowned again. “And if the men ask for you? If Chandler or that Englander wish to see you?”

  “They can wait,” Armin said coldly.

  At that, Schäfer chuckled, and patted his arm. “That’s the spirit, Kommandant.”

  Armin laughed.

  “Shall I go, then?”

  “If you wish.”

  Schäfer stood. “I’ll let you rest. You won’t be disturbed.”

  Except by all the ghosts in my head, yes?

  “Thank you, Hauptmann.”

  Schäfer left the office, and Armin closed his eyes. He rubbed his forehead, thankful that his pounding heart had slowed to a less panicked beat. Looking back, his near collapse over a kiss seemed ridiculous. However …

  He rested his arm across his stomach and kept his eyes shut. He thought back to that kiss. Thought back to that first one so many years ago. He and Mark had both suffered and faced death. They were still in danger. And yet for just a moment, they’d been young, unscathed, standing in the crammed bedroom in the Olympic village.

  For eight years, he’d wanted to go back to that moment.

  And today, he had.

  Chapter 11

  Mark wandered aimlessly through the castle’s corridors. Though his body was stiff and sore, demanding rest so his bones and muscles could mend like Rubble’s never would, he kept walking.

  He was sure if he stopped, his legs would drop out from under him, and he’d spend the rest of the night on his knees beside a cold stone wall until a guard came along and dragged him back to his rack. That, or he’d stop and realize how badly he was shaking, and then he’d have to think about all the reasons why he felt just like he had after the
crash. Or a few years ago, after he and his brother had walked away from their father’s burning Studebaker. Heart pounding, stomach twisting, trembling with leftover fear and the desperate need to be sure he really had survived.

  His lips tingled from that kiss, and he swore he could still taste Armin’s mouth—both today and eight years ago.

  Armin may have been his lover during a brief interlude in Berlin, but he was his captor now. The Kommandant who could have him or any other prisoner punished any way he saw fit.

  I shouldn’t have walked away from his office.

  I should be in the hole. I should be dead.

  I shouldn’t have to keep reminding myself not to go back.

  He went by the mess hall, where the men were still playing cards. Maybe poker, maybe another game now; he couldn’t focus enough to tell. Someone invited him to play, but he declined. Maybe another night. They’d rob him blind while he held a royal flush, and he’d never know the difference.

  At some point, he returned to his rack, and he was tempted to lie down and just think. Instead, he gingerly knelt beside it, the stone floor cold beneath his sore knees.

  He lifted the mattress and found the few possessions he’d hidden under there. He eyed the ring—“Finally won yourself a gold, eh, Mark?” his brother had ribbed him on his wedding day—but didn’t touch it. Instead, he withdrew the folded letter.

  Then he sat on his bunk and just held the letter between his hands, letting the heat from his palms warm it, though he wasn’t entirely sure why.

  After a while, he unfolded it. He didn’t read the words. He knew them by heart anyway. He knew every place she’d crossed something out or where the neat handwriting was straight and flawless while she said things she’d probably rehearsed a dozen times over, and where it seemed to stretch out as if she’d been writing quickly, straying erratically above and below the lines, as if her hand couldn’t keep up with her thoughts.

  This time, he stared at the writing without reading the words, searching the loops and slants for some taste of her. For some reminder of something he’d once felt for her. He thought he’d been happy on their wedding day, just as he thought he’d been devastated when this letter had come. And he supposed he had been, but perhaps not in the way he should have been. He loved his wife. But did he love her and grieve her the way a husband should have?