Part 25: The Letter

The Letter

by Aleksandr Pyotrovitch K________

I do not know how many days I have been here. There are no calendars, no clocks, no pocket-watches. There is only time, stagnant and heavy, like a mud-filled river. We work and we rest: when we work, we long to rest, and when we are at rest, we desire work. At all times, we desire food and warmth and good company. But these things begin to seem to us like mere dreams. We have forgotten them. We remember only that they are good, that they are something to want.

The letter came one day. I don’t know when it was, except that it was the day the letter came. It drifted down with the snow. A small, brown envelope with a red seal on its backside. I was walking alone when I found it. It could have been anyone else who found it. But it was me. I picked it up and tucked it inside my coat, like a cherished gift.

I opened it alone, too. We are so rarely alone. And yet we are always alone. I was very careful when I opened the letter. I felt that it was a precious thing that I must not destroy. So many precious things had already been destroyed. Let me save just this one, I thought. But my hunger to read the letter was also great.

It was written in a language I did not know. But I studied it anyway. Whenever I could be alone, I studied the letter, longing to know all its secrets. It was a letter from a woman to a man, I decided. The woman felt uncertain about something. Maybe the man had proposed marriage and the woman was unsure. She was thinking as she wrote the letter. There were marks of hesitation all over it.

She expected a reply, but she would not get one. Maybe the man was dead. Maybe he was in another camp like this one. Or maybe he was somewhere far away, in a nice, warm room, sitting by a fire, waiting for her letter to come.

I grew to love the woman, and the man as well. They became the only real people in my life. And knowing them made me more real, too. I felt my insides start to thaw. I remembered what life was. Life was a woman and a man who didn’t know what to say to one another. Life was sending out a letter and waiting forever for a reply. Life was crushing a wine glass in your fist next to a warm fire.

Life here is not life. There are jokes and work and food, but there is no life. This is the part of God’s creation that He has forgotten. We do not exist in His image. If we did, we would try to escape. We would break down the fences. We would refuse to work. But we do none of that. Not even who have the letter. I keep it to myself, selfishly. It lives in my coat pocket, where no one will look.

I imagine what I would say to the woman and the man. I would say I was sorry for interfering in their lives. I would tell them they deserved better. I would wish them a lifetime of ignorance, for only when life becomes not-life do we understand its truth, and I would never wish not-life upon anyone.

I will remain here until I die. But once, I lived. I do not remember it, but I know it. Now that life has become not-life, I can see that life is beautiful. Life is love and love is life.