Skybound

by Aleksandr Voinov

  But why? It’s not simply his looks. He caught my eye first when he was standing with his squadron-mates on the airfield. There was Wolff, his Katschmarek, a friendly, broad-faced boy from Hamburg with black hair; and Simon, who sounds Southern, agitated, loud, and gifted with infectious humour. There’s Wischinsky, East Prussian, of course, high cheekbones, pale face with wide blue eyes, aloof, wide-framed, tossing out verbal barbs and ending conversations as easily as Simon starts them.

  And then Vogt, standing just a step apart from the others. It felt like it was an effort for him to really be part of their group. That is how I sometimes feel. Like him, I belong by virtue of my training and my duty; I’m one of the black men, part of an always-frantic brotherhood. Yet just like him, there’s one thing I cannot bridge, cannot overcome.

  He comes closer, leaning in or inching closer, I can’t tell. I’m wholly taken by his eyes and the faint outline of a vein on the left side of his brow. I blink and answer his gaze, which is intent and focused, as if he’s searching the sky for a deadly foe. Or a target. It’s really both, and between us now, too.

  Oddly, I expect him to kiss me. My heart somersaults and then plummets, but it never crashes; that pressure like nausea remains unbroken, until I’m nearly ready to beg him to do something. He lifts a hand and slides his fingers along my temple, as if he were pushing back a strand of hair. But my hair isn’t long enough for that. I stare at him, swallow, then his fingers trail down my temple, that soft, soft skin between cheek and ear, and then track my jawline. At my chin, his fingers change direction and trace the other side of my face. I ’m hypnotised. Entranced.

  “Are you guessing it by now?” he asks, his voice so low, as if there were other people in the room who must never know.

  Swallowing is painful now. I’m busy enough just with breathing. I feel astutely that this is the only opportunity I’ll ever have to risk everything, neck and life and sanity.

  If the world ends tomorrow, how will I go? Without ever having risked anything, or having done the one thing I can’t stop thinking about? His eyes are mild, generous. Is that trust? I take his hand, notice his skin isn’t entirely dry, and neither is mine. I straighten somewhat, then stare at his lips.

  And that’s when I kiss him.

  My heart is still plunging, but the other sensations are strong enough to make me forget about the nausea. His lips are softer than I imagined them. He’s not wrestling for control. Neither is he demanding anything. The kiss is sweet, gentle, out of place. He lifts his eyebrows and puts a hand against my neck; the other hand squeezes mine, and I squeeze back. I’m no longer falling—I’m soaring now, breathless and miraculous, weightless. As if a wide blue sky has opened for me, like in the best moments of my glider training. I can’t believe we’re doing this. He’s holding my hand, touching my neck. Seems reluctant to release me.

  I pull away, clear my throat. I can’t believe I kissed him.

  He smiles and lets my neck go, but keeps my hand in his. “Not something that’s suitable for the airfield.”

  The thought is outrageous, scandalous, and I can’t suppress an amused snort. “I didn’t think . . .” So many things I don’t want to say. It would all sound weird and as if I were making assumptions, when I’m just speechless and overwhelmed.

  “That I’d seen you?”

  “That, and . . .” I want to kick myself for being so tongue-tied. I soldier on, pride be damned. “That you would kiss . . . a man.”

  He laughs, and I decide then and there that I love how he laughs, a short burst of mirth that would look forced or staged on anybody else.

  “My dear Felix, situation allowing, I even find my special friends a decent meal and gifts.”

  Special friends. Is that what he calls such arrangements between men? I’m clueless. It’s not exactly the blood brotherhood of my adventure stories, where men die for each other without ever kissing. “Where did you do that?”

  “There was a boy in Paris. French. He seemed rather experienced in some ways.” Vogt winks at me. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s been five years.”

  I shake my head, put my glass down. “No, I . . . I’ve never had a friend like that.”

  “Never?”

  “I kissed a friend when I was very young, but we grew out of it.”

  Vogt touches my face again. “But you didn’t.”

  “No. I missed him, but I understood that it’s dangerous.” But then, the world may end tomorrow.

  He nods and kisses me again. It’s a heartfelt yet tender kiss that makes my pulse race. I reach to grab his shoulder, still reluctant to let his hand go, and he doesn’t free himself. We stand there and just kiss, and with every touch, we seem to explain and apologise, and bridge that gap that yawned between us. After a while, I feel like I know him, and my heart turns to liquid at the thought that this courageous warrior has called me his friend. Who am I to be worthy of him?

  He guides me to the couch, where we sit close together. He pulls my head closer still, and kisses my ear.

  “Go on. You’re safe and sound here with me,” he whispers.

  I calm down. Before long, I’m half asleep against his shoulder. He finds a woollen blanket and we rest together, wrapped up against the cool night.

  I’ve never felt so at peace with anybody, and while I’m bone-weary, I’m alive with him here, our bodies touching with so much ease, so much trust and familiarity. We don’t know each other, but I know we’re not judging one another, not making any demands, just enjoying the moment. I’m dimly aware that he stretches out and takes his shoes off, and soon I’m resting halfway on his chest, feeling him breathe, one arm slung around me. The exhaustion has caught up with me, yet I relish these minutes that turn into hours. I sleep, maybe two or three hours before a touch against my hair wakes me.

  I jerk away with a start, but Vogt tightens his grip against my shoulder and keeps me there. “Easy.”

  I nod and push away with more care, then rub at my eyes. “I slept.”

  “Seemed you needed it, too,” he says. “Let’s move to the bedroom.” We sit up, and I gather the woollen blanket and fold it before I follow him upstairs. Without so much as a glance, he gestures for me to follow him to his room.

  It’s dark apart from some moonlight seeping through the shutters, and I don’t want to switch on the light. I undress, too apprehensive to walk away and dress in my pyjamas and come back.

  We slip into his bed like a married couple. I know he is naked, and the night chill makes me shiver. The bed will get warm soon, though now it feels quite cold against naked skin. He pushes himself up on an elbow and kisses my lips again. Oh. I can’t resist and run my hand down his chest, feel the muscles shift under his skin. I take the sound he makes as encouragement.

  He brushes my leg, and then I can’t hold back anymore and run my fingers through the wiry hair of his groin, where I encounter his prick. Vogt moans against my lips as I touch him carefully, then playfully, and then with more courage. I want to learn his body, find every pleasure it’s hiding. All this reverence and simple awe I feel when I touch him, feel his breath brush my skin. Whatever he calls this, it feels so very precious to me.

  “Felix,” he whispers. “Can I do something?”

  “Anything.”

  I see the outline of his smile in the near dark, and then he touches me, fingers sure on my flesh. I lose myself in the moment, in his touch, push into his hand and kiss him hungrily when he turns my head towards him again. This feels like a gift I barely deserve. Or maybe I do, even though I don’t know what for. I haven’t done anything.

  He rolls on top of me, kisses me again, then manoeuvres himself into position alongside me. His strong hand holds us together, and he moves to pleasure us both. I can’t do much more than thrust against him and cling to his shoulders. I want to feel all of this, to be swept up in the moment, and he lets me. There’s nothing I’m supposed to be doing, merely kissing him and moving with him, feeling all the strength in his body an
d the heat and desire I sense through every jerky movement and every breathless kiss.

  We race towards something so amazing and precious it strikes me dumb with its immenseness. I lose every sense of myself, every thought; there’s just emotion and utter fulfilment.

  We breathe heavily against each other for a long time after, until he touches my face again and gives me another kiss. Then he lies down beside me, offering me his shoulder. I turn and nestle up against him. The bed is much warmer now, although wetness runs off my belly. I’m tired, at peace, and I can’t leave the place on his shoulder, not after I’ve found it.

  “Sleep well,” he murmurs into my ear.

  I just hope he’ll be there when I wake up.

  I’ve never woken to another’s body in the same bed, not since I was a child. There is something about it that makes waking up alone seem unnatural. Man is not meant to be alone, yet men like us (or maybe men like me) appear to be lonelier than others. I watch his face in the morning light, and notice an occasional furrowing of his brow, as if he is focusing on something out there in his dreamscape. Maybe he’s flying even in his dreams, searching the skies for signs of an ambush.

  I contemplate the prospect of breakfast. I’m ravenous, but this is a strange place and I’m not sure where the shops are, or his ration card. Snooping around the house does not seem as enticing as watching him. Eventually, I lean in and kiss him on the lips, just to confirm I still have the nerve for it.

  He smiles and wakes with a stretch, then opens his eyes. “Have you been awake long?”

  “No, just a little while.” I don’t know, don’t particularly care about timekeeping outside the rhythm of work on the airfield.

  He runs the backs of his fingers down the side of my face. The touch is sleep-warm, a little clumsy, as he drags himself awake.

  “Look at that, it was no dream.”

  For that, I kiss him again, and he pulls me closer. I look down at him, thrilled that we are both naked.

  “I promised my aunt I’d visit her when I’m home,” he says, interrupting all considerations of what to do with the morning that doesn’t involve getting up. “She’ll feed us, too.”

  “Does she know you’re bringing a friend?”

  “By now, people know. It’s a small town.” He gets up and gathers his clothes, taking them to the bathroom as he leaves. “You’ll have to call me by my first name, or she’ll ask questions,” he says over his shoulder.

  His name puts me in mind of Ragnarök, the end of the world, again—Baldur, the god whose death sets the spiral of destruction in motion that none of the other gods can stop. Baldur the bright, Baldur the brave. It feels like a bad omen.

  When he’s done in the bathroom, I go in to get washed and dressed and shaved, taking my time, unlike in the mad rush of duty. I remember all too well cutting myself badly one morning when I was too bleary-eyed to do a good job of it. Christensen laughed at me, but still sent me to get patched up so I wouldn’t bleed on the engines. The scar is noticeable enough to remind me not to be hasty around blades.

  Baldur is wearing his dress uniform when we go down the street and turn left, left again, straight on, to his aunt’s house.

  It’s a large, handsome farmhouse with a well-tended garden in the front. His aunt is much older than I expect; his uncle is gruff and lost a leg in the previous war against the French. I understand he is Baldur’s blood relation—his aunt has married into the family.

  Baldur speaks of the airfield, but not candidly. If I believed his words and didn’t know better, I’d be left with an idea of adventure rather than war, or challenge rather than danger. She looks at him with a haunted expression, and his uncle, a retired officer, calls the Führer a “criminally insane lowlife upstart,” once, under his breath, yet nothing comes of it. There isn’t even real ire in those words; it is an argument that has long since been won, and Baldur’s uncle states it merely as a matter of course.

  There is much admiration, however, for Baldur’s decorations (I still struggle to call him that, after months of “Leutnant Vogt”), and I feel oddly proud although I haven’t won a thing and never even helped him win them.

  Nobody speaks of the end. I assume they are heartily sick of the subject, or push those thoughts far away. Baldur’s aunt once wipes her hands on her apron and mutters, “Well, well, nobody could have foreseen it would come to this,” with a tone halfway between indignation and apology. I keep mostly silent unless Baldur requires a nod or a confirmation for his own short anecdotes—nothing too grisly or honest, just the silly little things that seem to happen on an airfield regardless of how the war is going.

  I feel like a sad clown when we finally take our leave, having barely fended off an attempt to foist more food on us. We will be leaving tomorrow; Baldur is fine, and neither of us has any excuse to not be at his post.

  We do attack the cognac when we get home. Baldur takes off his gloves and sits down at the piano. After not having been played in a while, some notes might very well be off, but I’m more entranced by the man in the uniform who begins fluidly, then falters, trying to remember a passage. He takes off his hat and places it on the piano to try again, from the start, with gusto.

  I pour more cognac for both of us and stand near the piano with my glass and the bottle, watching his face as he struggles through playing a classical piece. His half-closed eyes and bared teeth make him look fierce and absorbed in the task, and I imagine that is what he looks like during a complicated manoeuvre.

  He breaks off and slaps the keys. “Damn it. I can’t remember!” He blows out a breath and looks at me. “I haven’t played in six years.”

  “After six years, I’d barely remember which part of the piano to sit down at,” I joke and offer him the glass.

  He takes my wrist instead and pulls me down on the seat before the piano. “Have you ever played?”

  Upon my admission that, no, I haven’t, he puts me through an improvised lesson that is as excruciating as it is funny. The piano doesn’t sound like it approves of my attempts, and by the time we’re through the bottle, we’re reduced to helpless laughter. I don’t even care that we’re laughing at my lack of nimbleness or talent. Just the laughter means elation, a lessening of the pressure mounting on us, a pressure that will have us back tomorrow and the day after and for however long it’ll take. With the things Baldur is facing once he returns, I don’t mind him laughing at me.

  He turns serious and kisses me again, his taste of cognac mixing with my taste of the same cognac, and within moments we’re both stretched out on the Persian carpet, the piano’s leg close to our faces.

  “This would mean some work before we can play together,” he says, grinning.

  Can, not could, I hear, and understand. I rub my eyes. “Since we can’t fly together.” I’m making light of what he said, but I guess I can have my revenge this way.

  “I wouldn’t want you up there.” He looks into my eyes intently. “It’s bad enough that my friends are up there.”

  He doesn’t understand what I feel when I see him take off, then. “Tell me about your Frenchman.”

  “Jacques?” He rolls over onto his back and pulls me to his shoulder. “He wasn’t mine or anybody’s. We met a few times for a while, but he was a hard-working lad from Ménilmontant, one of the poorer parts of Paris. We met on the street one day; he smiled at me, I smiled back, and suddenly he took my arm and we walked for a while. I assumed he was a rentboy, but he wasn’t.” Baldur shrugs. “He was looking for diversion; I was looking for company, though I didn’t expect to find any, certainly not with an enemy. But he was too young to have fought against us and didn’t seem to bear anybody ill will. Then my squadron was moved to the Eastern front, and we lost contact. It was tenuous anyway. Just shared meals and companionship, and little gifts that wouldn’t have bought the attentions of anyone who was looking to receive gifts for favours.”

  It is the most I’ve ever heard him speak. I try to imagine him in his uniform with his
medals and finery—like he is now—trading kisses with a worker lad. “What did you do with him?”

  “I took him cycling outside the city. Or we’d walk in the park. Some evenings, we’d go to a music hall for a drink and to listen to the singers. There was one entertainer—they called him the Nightingale of Paris—who had the most amazing voice. I think Jacques was very fond of him.” Baldur chuckles. “He was very pretty too, but I think one of the high-ranking Wehrmacht officers had already staked his claim. That’s Paris for you—so decadent she even conquers the conquerors with her wiles.” He rolls his eyes as he quotes the official propaganda. “I’d like to go back, though. Nobody cares there what you’re doing, and we could do things much more openly. I’ve heard of many such arrangements.”

  “You mean, after the war?”

  He looks at me, suddenly much more serious. “Maybe in another life.”

  The sense of foreboding presses the air from my lungs. I’m falling again, but it’s not my place to add to his burden with my fear. I grab him and press his face against my chest, and his hands squeeze under my shoulders and hold me close. I don’t know what to do with myself, but at least I don’t cry. Not while he’s still alive.

  Getting home—I mean, to the airfield—takes longer than usual. The Allied bombers have wreaked havoc on a train depot.

  Our train is rerouted, and we pass through a town—I know not which one—that is still burning. Thick smoke rises and lingers like fog. Baldur coughs into a handkerchief as he peers outside, searching the skies above us for attackers. It is harder and harder to ignore the destruction all around us. Especially for Baldur, who’s been tasked to stop the perpetrators before they reach their targets. We both know the Luftwaffe is outgunned. I glance at the book on his lap. Still Herodotus.

  Nervous tension fills me, so I close my eyes and remember how we were together last night. The kisses, the tenderness, the relief, all suspended in time. If only I could fight by his side, I wouldn’t feel as helpless as I do now.