Cinderella & Her Sisters

iii

Novak sees her first. He’s certain it’s her. He’s sitting near the window, under a canopy of flags and shadows, with a blanket thrown across his lap and a book in his hands. He’s wearing a wide-brimmed fedora, low against the light, and his face is lost in the darkness for a moment as Anna comes out of the shadows. He sees the light filtering through her hair like a halo and thinks she looks like a dream he once had. He calls to her—coughing slightly—but still thinking it’s a dream, when she turns to look at him, her hand blocking the sun, before she smiles.

“Milan!” she cries out, dropping to her knees in front of him, the sunlight in her face. She wraps her arms around him, not noticing the missing fingers of his left hand. She draws back, a hand held up against the sun and sees the horror of his face; the look she greets him with is impossible to hide, even as she forces a smile. The patch on his eye is shock enough, he supposes, while the scar — still pink and fresh — is like a scarlet blossom, pulling the left side of his face into a grimace.

“Hideous, I know,” he says, and looks away, turning the good side of his face to her. “I don’t own a mirror. Never saw the sense of it,” he adds thoughtfully.

“Hideous?” she smiles awkwardly. “I’ve seen worse on men far more handsome than you,” she adds with forced laughter—but she’s obvious about it, and he wonders if her strained effort is an attempt to hide the revulsion she feels when she looks at him. “It’s the shock of seeing you here, more than anything else. You’re the last I person expected to see. We’d heard—I mean…you were missing. Presumed dead. That’s what we told ourselves. We told everyone we thought you were dead. But here you are. It’s like running into George.”

“George? You saw George?” he asks, looking at her, quick and furtive before turning away. “Is he here?”

“He was.”

“The bastard’s obviously spying,” he says through another cough. “Who better to send? The man speaks five languages.”

“An obvious choice,” she smiles.

“What’s wrong? Why are you laughing?”

“The war’s over—for the both of you. He lives with us. He hunts, and has trap lines out all over the place. He does what he can to help in the garden with the boys—”

“The boys?”

“Have you forgotten you have sons, Milan?” she says softly. He waits for her to say more. He likes the sound of her voice. “Your wife and sons are here.”

“My sons?”

“And your wife.”

“My wife and my sons?”

“Yes.”

“When can I see them?” he asks through another cough; longer and more intense this time; it takes a lot out of him, and he looks at her with his sheep eyes.

“Why are you here?” she asks.

“They say they’re afraid I may have come down with something more than just a cough. I can’t have it though. I haven’t been near anybody. It’s just a cough—and maybe a touch of the gas. They should be worried, though—I’ve seen what it can do. It’ll kill you in a day. It’s gotten to the point where they think any little cough, or sneeze, is a symptom. Some say the Americans brought it. That’s why they’re calling it the Flanders Flu. I thought you could only get it in the Western trenches, though.”

“You can get it anywhere. They’re calling it the Spanish Flu.”

“I thought you said the Americans brought it?”

“The Spanish were the only ones to report it. It killed thousands a day, all over the Front. None of the General Staff would admit it.”

“How many here have it?” he asked, looking around the ward.

“More than half,” she said. “Two out of ten men die. It’s a horrible death.”

“Two out of ten? The dead must be piling up faster than you can bury them.” He smiles through a cough.

“Worse than a battlefield.”

iv

Taking Novak home is a lot easier than she thought it would be; the doctors are busy working on a vaccine; they’ve heard others are trying and more than willing to release him. They make a soup mix of blood samples and mucus--extracts from dead victims--shooting it into the arms of incoming patients, convinced it will work. The arms swell up for a few days and then go down--a sure sign it is working they tell themselves--and then the patient is forgotten. The doctors begin to wear masks all the time now, and advise everyone else to do the same—nurses and patients alike.

Anna helps Novak into the automobile, and Death follows them home.

v

Collette’s the first one to see them, and drops the hoe she’s digging with. The boys follow her, as well as the Countess, while George watches Anastasia staring out at the approaching automobile. He walks over to her and puts an arm around her shoulder, startling her, and she shakes him off quickly, forcing a smile as she apologizes.

“What if he wants me to sleep with him tonight, George?” she asks, her eyes growing wide at the thought of it, fear creeping into the edge of her voice.

“You will,” George says. “It’s what a wife does. It’s expected.”

“Like you expect it with Annette?"

“Even if you have to pretend," he says after a moment.

“I don't think I can do that. Not tonight. It’s just too soon."

“Maybe it might be better if you talk to him first? Get to know each other all over again?”

“I would think that you of all people, would know what sort of man he is. Talk to him? And tell him what? ‘I’m sorry dear, I haven’t been honest with you? I let myself get raped by four men’—”

“You didn’t let them rape you—”

“Oh, yes I did,” she says, turning to look at him. “I did whatever they wanted. I just wanted to live. When that man put his rifle to my head and pulled the trigger, I thought I was going to die; a piece of me died there.”

“And you think that’s too hard for him to understand? I’ve seen men rape women and get shot for it; but only when they’re caught. I’ve seen children raped—boys, girls, old women, dead women…don’t you think he’s seen the same thing?”

“You know as well as I do that it’s what he would’ve done himself? You know what he was like with his mistress and then there are the prostitutes. What if he thinks he deserves it? What if he takes it—forces me?”

“Takes it? Takes what? Men like him change, Stacey. War has a way of doing that to you,” George says with a sigh, watching a one legged Novak hobble out of the automobile with his crutches. The children jump up and down, vying for his attention, and then stand mute as they realize he’s not the same man. He looks down at them, leaning on his crutches, and lets himself be distracted; but he is looking over top of their heads, across the garden to Anastasia.

“War has a way of doing that,” George adds.

“What? Turning men into animals?”

“He’s your husband, Stacey,” George says. “You have to allow him that much of a chance—even if it's just a slight one."

“I’ll do what I have to,” she says flatly. “Whatever it is.”

George looks at Novak beside the automobile. He’s certain Novak’s changed because of his experiences on the Russian Front; any man who’s spent the last three years out there will certainly have compromised whatever principles he ever had, George thinks. It’s human nature; the nature of the beast, as they say. War’s a skill—a kill or be killed attitude where you seldom get a second chance.

He used to think of Novak as a toy soldier—one of the Imperial Guards used more for show than anything else—but Novak made it through harsh Russian winters with little more than losing a leg: a testament to the man’s fortitude, new found or not. George thinks Novak was probably assigned to a command post somewhere along the Front—one more underling in a long line of underlings—and did not stand in the frozen trenches facing Cossacks—but still, he lost his leg somewhere, George tells himself; and you’ve lost an arm.