A Little Light in the Dark

The doctor told him to accept it, but Maksym didn't even look at him. The hospital stood on one hill, their house on the opposite one. Between them the little town glimmered in the night. Of the house, only black walls remained. And in that darkness, where their window had once been, a small light flashed three times: short, short, long. Maksym sat up in bed. That was how Leia always spoke to him from afar: "I see you, my love."

Leia loved looking at the town after sunset. She said that by day people see each other far too well, and at night only the lights in the windows remain. She could sit by the pane for a long time, counting them and imagining who lived behind each one. If Maksym was ever late past nightfall, she would set a candle on the windowsill and cover it three times with her palm: short, short, long. Their silly "I see you." Once he found her on the roof and laughed.

"At least tell me when your wings will grow in, so I can stop being afraid for you." She smiled: "I'll show you when they're needed." On the last evening Maksym embraced her from behind and felt something unfamiliar under his fingers. "Hold still." He brushed the hair from her shoulder. Near her shoulder blades, two thin lines showed through. He knew her body by heart. Yesterday they hadn't been there. "What is this?" Leia quickly let her hair fall back. "Nothing."

Maksym smiled: "So the wings do exist after all?" She turned, kissed him and whispered: "When they're needed, I'll show you." The next night, a shell hit the house. Maksym remembered the fire in pieces. Smoke in his lungs. Glass under his bare feet. Her palms on his face. "Look at me, my love." "Will we get out?" "You will get out." The stairs had already fallen; two floors of fire lay between them and the door. They found him on the cobblestones, unconscious but alive.

Leia they never found. The "you" instead of "we" he only truly heard years later. Then came days he didn't count. Two plates stood on the table. He would clear one away and a minute later set it back. When he first went outside, the baker was quarrelling, a woman was picking out apples, boys were laughing. He couldn't understand how they were allowed to live. He hated them all for having a tomorrow. And in the evening he went again to the hospital hill.

To look at their house from afar. There, their "I see you" happened again. Short. Short. Long. The light hung in the darkness at the height of a window that no longer existed. And then a silhouette appeared in it. Maksym ran down through the town and up the opposite hill. The wall with that window lay in a heap of bricks. There was no roof. From the height where neither floor nor beams remained, a voice came down: "I see you, my love."

Only one person in the world had ever called him that. He decided he was losing his mind. The next night he came to the burnt ruin again and waited for their "I see you." But instead of the light he saw a staircase. By day Maksym brought two workmen there. They cleared the rubble down to the very foundation. Now steps climbed upward before him. He set his foot on the first one. It held. He shifted his whole weight onto the second. Then the third.

At the top there was a corridor, a door and a room with a white ceiling. Below, beyond the window, lay the little town, and on the opposite hill the hospital showed white. It smelled of Leia's hair and of the smoke of a just-blown-out candle. By the window, her back to the door, sat Leia. When he touched her, he felt it: she was alive.

Maksym repeated it afterwards many, many times. Alive. Leia smoothed his hair with a familiar motion and called him by their tender pet name of home. On her back, where the two thin lines had been, there now lay two fresh scars, where something had been torn out by the root. He touched them with trembling fingers. "Leia... where are they?" Leia kissed him and whispered almost into his lips: "You're breathing with them, my dear." "Could you have saved yourself?" "Yes."

"Why didn't you?" "Then you wouldn't have made it." By then Maksym no longer cared about those words. Unable to stop the hysteria, in tears he shouted at her for the first time in his life: "I didn't ask you to! I don't want to wake up without you! I don't want to live in a world where you aren't! Why are you so cruel? Tell me..." And then his voice broke completely. He pressed his forehead to her palm. "I don't know how to go back to where every morning begins without you."

Maksym begged her to let him stay with her. "You love me, don't you." Leia touched his cheek. "That's exactly why I won't keep you, silly. I gave everything I had. Don't sacrifice the years I left you." Maksym wept in pain. "And what am I to do without you?" "Live. So long and so well that I won't regret the wings." "Will you wait?" "As long as it takes." "Even a whole lifetime?" "Even an eternity. Only live so that we meet after."

The sun struck his eyes; Maksym woke among the ruins. In his fist lay two white bits of down. The wind took them the moment he opened his fingers. The staircase never appeared again. And he began to live. He rebuilt people's ruined houses, travelled, laughed. Every spring he came to the town centre to watch the girls perform their dance. Sixty years later he came, completely grey, to the hotel where he had once stayed with Leia. He took a room with a white ceiling.

Maksym sat by the window for several hours. "Tonight you can see every light," he said, and closed the window before sleep. In the night his quiet voice sounded: "Leia, I still want to be with you." After a long silence another answered. A woman's voice, and very young. "Now you may, my love." In the morning the window stood open.

Maksym lay on the bed, calm, eyes closed, with a faint smile. On the windowsill lay two white bits of down. One the wind took at once. The other lingered in a ray of sunlight. And then it rose. And flew after.