The Russian Snow

My darling Natasha,

The snow is falling again. Here, in the foothills of the Carpathians, June brings not summer but a strange white silence that settles over the trenches like a shroud. The men huddle in their greatcoats and speak of home. I sit in my corner of the dugout, a candle burning low, and I think of our orchard — the cherry trees you loved, how they blazed white every spring, how the petals would drift across the table where we took our tea. I can almost taste the jam you used to make, the one your mother taught you. It is absurd, what a man remembers when he may be about to die.

This morning the guns fell quiet for an hour, and in that stillness I heard a bird singing. It was a small thing, a finch perhaps, and it perched on the edge of a shell crater and sang as though the world were not on fire. I thought of Turgenev, of the lines he wrote about the Russian countryside — how even in the midst of suffering, there is a terrible, stubborn beauty that will not be silenced. I have carried a volume of his stories in my pack since I left home. The pages are soft with damp now, and I have read them so often that I know whole passages by heart. When I close my eyes, I hear his voice, and through it, the voice of Russia itself, ancient and enduring.

I cannot tell you what we are doing here, Natasha. I cannot give you a grand purpose for this war. I have seen the villages we have passed through — burned, abandoned, their inhabitants fled into the forests. I have seen the faces of the men I command, boys mostly, who look at me with eyes that have aged a century in a year. I try to speak to them of duty and of God, but the words feel hollow. What I feel instead is a vast, crushing sadness — for them, for us, for the world that will emerge from this slaughter. I think perhaps the only truth I still hold is you. You are the fixed point in a universe that has spun off its axis.

Do you remember the afternoon we lay in the grass beneath the largest cherry tree? You had your head on my chest, and I read to you from Pushkin, and you fell asleep in the warm sun. I watched your breathing, the rise and fall of your shoulders, and I thought: this is happiness. This is what the poets mean, what the philosophers spend their lives chasing. It was not passion or triumph or achievement. It was simply lying in a field with the woman I loved, a book open on my chest, and nowhere in the world to be. I have held that afternoon like a jewel through every dark hour of this war.

The orders have come. We are to advance at dawn. The Austrians are dug in across the valley, and the artillery has been pounding their lines for three days, but I know — I know — what awaits us. I have read the dispatches. I have seen the casualty lists. I am not a naive man, Natasha. I am a soldier, and I have learned to look at death the way a farmer looks at weather. I am not afraid for myself. I am afraid for you — for the life we will not have, for the children we will not raise, for the cherry blossoms we will not see again together.

If this letter reaches you without me, know that I removed my wedding ring and placed it inside the envelope. It is the only thing of value I possess. I want you to have it. I want you to wear it or sell it or hold it in your palm when the world feels too heavy. It is not much — a band of gold — but it has been next to my heart for nearly two years, and it carries all the love I could not fit into words.

I hear the priests beginning the liturgy. The men are crossing themselves. I should join them.

Forgive me. For everything. For leaving you. For the sleepless nights. For the life we will not share. And thank you — for the cherry blossoms, for the poetry, for the afternoon in the grass, for every moment you were mine.

If there is a God, He will let me see you again. If there is not, then I have had enough heaven in your arms to last an eternity.

Your Dmitri