Yalta

The birds are hungry today. Little brown birds, they come to the feeder I make from an old can, tapped with nails to make holes to let the seed out. In some places nails are still there for them to perch on, but I wince at their naked scaly little feet gripping the iron nails in the subzero temperature. The sunrise makes the snow and ice go pale sherbet: peach, orange, pink. The birds are welcome company and tell me, life abounds. Life, even in the sharp quiet, flats of snow radiating forever in each direction from this little wood cabin. One hundred miles to Yakutsk, many more to anywhere.

Anatoly shoulders open the thin door, comes in from training. His eyelashes are frozen and his small blue eyes are burned bright red and streaming. I unwrap his woolens in front of the fire, snow and ice in the creases not melting as they hit the floor. Survivable inside, but not warm. I slap my hands together and rub fast. I lay him, face down, on the pallet bed, his pale rear and enormous tree-trunk thighs bulging up at me. Not sexual though. Its not that way for us. I pour a stream of brown horse liniment over his skin, and for such a big man he gives a shudder at the sensation anyway. I rub and rub, fast and light, working the oils into his skin. The skin goes bright red as his capillaries dilate, little steam trails drift up from his blood releasing its heat. Anatoly sighs, but no words. Anatoly is mute, as long as I've known him. By choice or birth I don't know.

Today we leave. We walk, miles and miles, carrying in small bundles all we own. Timing is precious to make sure we come to the next cabin before sundown, and the plunging temperatures. We sleep each night on a different pallet, spooned together, but not sexual. Just for warmth, to survive. If I find a can, and a nail, I bang it and put a little from my seed bag in, hang it by a window or a wall crack for watching. Sometimes the birds find it and come, sometimes they do not. Anatoly goes out for training, simply muscling for two, three hours through the waist-deep snow. Tree-trunk thighs result. The birds are my company while he is out. I have only necessities, what I can carry. Same for Anatoly. Except: me seed for my birds, Anatoly liniment to ease his pains. Even with survival all the time, we make a little room for something more than that.

He hopes for a chance to take this strength, make something of it. Learn a sport, then compete. Make money. A living. I hope for a place to hang a feeder and know the birds. I don't know what kind of birds they are, anywhere we go. Sometime, maybe, we will be in one place. I will learn their bird names, maybe even recognize a certain personal bird, day to the next day. We each have our hope, Anatoly and me. Hopes keep us together, living.

Ten miles each day. Maybe a week then, south and east, to Yakutsk. If the river is flowing, maybe more than ten miles a day. Maybe a month to Yalta. Then, maybe, a little money somehow. We leave the overland route and go over the Black Sea. Overland again, but warmer. No snows. Anatoly dragging heavy things to build his legs now, us still with my birds, his liniments. Then Ankara, and pears, and pale honey, and muscat grapes. Sweet things on our tongues, sliding down our throats. Maybe Anatoly makes a sound of pleasure, and I am there to hear it. Maybe I get Anatoly a fine-boned Angora cat, silky white, a chimera with one blue eye and one amber eye. Soft under Anatoly's rough meat fingers, so he learns stroking, along with muscling.

I think of this in the cold and dark, Anatoly warm and hulking around me. Bringing ourselves to all those Ankara ruins, Byzantine, Roman, Hittite, all mixed together. Taking our own ruin and mixing it in too. Who knows what then. What all we can make of it. I am hoping for it, in the dark, all the birds pressed breast to breast and sleeping in the dark trees, stars very far away and brilliant white, millions, scattered everywhere and over us, me and Anatoly, asleep, and then dreaming.