Chapter 2: A Walk Among Ruins
For three days, Leonid existed in a state of suspended animation. The missing report was a stone in his gut. He had filed a vague, self-incriminating statement—likely lost during patrol—and endured the sharp, suspicious glare of his superior, a man whose neck bulged over his collar like a sausage. No immediate punishment came, which was worse. It hung over him, a silent axe.
He thought of the report, yes. But more, he thought of the alley. The soap. The eyes.
He began to vary his patrol route. A small, unauthorized detour past the mouth of that narrow alley, then past the hulking garment factory with its soot-stained bricks and barred windows. He timed it for the shift changes, his palms sweating inside his gloves.
On the fourth day, as a sleety rain turned the world into a grey smear, he saw her.
She emerged from the factory’s side door with a stream of other women, all wrapped in drab coats, heads down against the weather. Yet she stood out. The way she walked—a purposeful, graceful rhythm even on the broken pavement. He watched her say a quick word to an older woman, a faint smile touching her lips before it vanished.
His feet moved before his mind could command them. He crossed the street, ignoring the sideways glances from the other workers. He fell into step beside her.
“Jennie.”
She started, a genuine jolt of surprise that pleased him irrationally. Her feline eyes widened, then shaded with recognition. “Leonid. The patrol.”
“I walk this way now,” he said, the lie obvious and clumsy.
She gave him a look that was neither acceptance nor rejection, just observation. They walked in silence for half a block, the only sounds the squelch of their steps and the drip of water from shattered gutters. The ruins around them were a testament to a recent Allied bombing run—the skeletal tram car, the splintered cobblestones like missing teeth.
“You live this direction?” he asked finally.
“I do.”
“It is not safe. Alone.” He gestured vaguely at the wreckage.
A corner of her mouth lifted. “You said this already. But here you are. Making it safe?”
“I try.”
She glanced at him, her gaze tracing the line of his jaw, the tight set of his shoulders. “You look tired, soldier.”
The simple concern, from her, undid a knot in his chest. “The nights are long,” he admitted. Then, daring: “But now, the walking is better.”
They navigated around a crater filled with oily rainwater. He offered a hand; she took it, her fingers cool and light in his, and let go the moment she was across. The point of contact shimmered.
“You are from here? The city?” he asked.
She shook her head, the motion making a few strands of dark hair escape her scarf. “No. From farther east. My family… moved. Before the war got bad.” The explanation was smooth, practiced. She turned the question. “And you?”
“A small town. Near the Black Forest.” The memory was a physical ache. “It is green there. Even now, maybe. My mother is there. She cooks.”
“For soldiers?”
“Yes.” The word tasted bitter. “It is a job.”
“My mother was a teacher,” Jennie said, and the pronoun slipped into the past tense so naturally he almost missed it. “My father fixed clocks. He could make any broken thing tick again.” She said it without visible emotion, a simple statement of fact, but Leonid heard the cavern beneath.
“My father was a carpenter,” he offered, a trade for a trade. “My sister, she wanted to be a painter. Of pictures, not walls.” He swallowed. “They are gone. The war.”
The confession hung in the wet air between them. He never spoke of it. Not to anyone. Why to her? Why now, on a street that smelled of burned wiring and decay?
But Jennie did not offer empty sympathy. She simply nodded, as if acknowledging a universal truth. “It takes and takes,” she said, her voice low. “And we are left to sew uniforms and walk patrols.”
“Yes.”
They passed the shell of a church. The rose window was a gaping hole, the stone tracery like blackened lace against the grey sky. She stopped, looking up at it. “It was beautiful, once.”
“You saw it?”
“I imagine it,” she said, and for the first time, her voice held a warmth that wasn’t calculation. “I imagine the colors on the floor when the sun came through. Red, blue, gold.” She glanced at him, a faint, real smile touching her eyes. “Silly, yes?”
“No.” The word was a vow. “It is not silly.” He was staring again. He couldn’t help it. In this landscape of pure loss, she was imagining color. She was making it. He felt a reckless, desperate need to give her something, anything. “The forest near my home… in autumn, the leaves are like fire. So many colors you cannot name them all. Yellow like butter, red like… like wine. I would bring my sister there. She tried to paint it. She said the trees laughed in color.”
He hadn’t spoken so many words in English in months. They stumbled out, imperfect, childish. He braced for her to laugh.
Instead, her smile deepened, softening her whole face. “That is a good thing to remember,” she said quietly.
Emboldened, drunk on the intimacy, he reached out. His hand, large and calloused, enveloped hers where it rested at her side. He felt her flinch, a tiny, almost imperceptible recoil. Then her fingers relaxed, threading between his. Her skin was so soft. He saw the prominent veins on his own forearm, a map of violence, pressed against her delicate wrist.
He was holding a bird. He was holding a live wire.
She looked down at their joined hands, her expression unreadable. When she looked up, her eyes were dark with a conflict he could not possibly understand. “Leonid…”
A deep, rolling crump sounded in the distance, followed by the shudder of the earth beneath their feet. Anti-aircraft guns began their staccato bark a few sectors over. The world snapped back into focus, sharp and lethal.
Her hand slipped from his.
“I must go,” she said, the seamstress again, the wary citizen.
“When is your shift?” he asked quickly, taking a step closer. “Tomorrow?”
She hesitated. The spy in her calculated the risk, the access, the unbearable ease of him. The woman in her felt the ghost of his touch on her skin. “Tomorrow. Same time.”
“I will be here,” he said. It was a promise to himself as much as to her.
She nodded, turned, and hurried down a side lane without a backwards glance. He stood watching until she disappeared into the gloom.
In her room an hour later, Jennie methodically boiled a pot of water on her small stove. She poured it over her hands, scrubbing them until the skin turned pink and raw. She was trying to wash away the feeling of his hand, the shocking warmth, the gentle pressure.
It didn’t work.
She looked at her transmission schedule. Her next window was in two days. She had planted the seed. He was hooked. The next step was to get inside his world, to see more than just what was on his belt. To make him talk.
She saw his face, lit by the memory of autumn leaves. She heard his clumsy, beautiful words about a sister who painted laughing trees.
Her hands, now clean and scalded, trembled as she poured the wash water down the drain.