Revenge

There was nothing left of the village that I once left behind. Absolutely everything was shattered, a fog mixed with the dust that kept swirling. There were still hot ashes in the air, like hopeless fireflies, flickering desperately. Along this phantom ground littered what remained of the bodies ... dismantled, shredded, a nauseating odour of putrefying viscera. Death had taken hold of all those souls, no more signs of life or perhaps faint moans that died away in the distance. War had raged in Volgograd; our village had been the scene of heavy fighting during the Russian Civil War, initially in the hands of the Bolsheviks. Our village was one of the deadliest battles of Stalingrad in history, during which it was virtually wiped out. On June 13th, 1919, I was just about twenty years old, I was called; лександра Михайловна Коллонтай; Anastasia Poltrovich, supposedly I would have been the great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria! I had been taken by mistake as a nurse, for me this had been for certain clemency from the good Lord. The victim at 11 years old of forced marriage, beaten and raped, you will certainly understand this sort of mercy. My almost transparent skin always attracted men, besides I was the crush of all the soldiers, they called me ‘sunshine’ with an accent that sounded like ‘son chat’ in French. Fortunately, my almond-shaped blue eyes couldn't bear witness to what they had seen, you could almost see through them the scarred images of human hinges also the smells still stuck in the depths of my thin nostrils. One thing was certain I took care of my blonde and wavy hair that I braided and hid under a cap with the initials AP, a big frock and white apron hid thankfully my body, we were those white angels who were supposed to take care and comfort the soldiers. Chin high despite my small height, I was gradually given the responsibility of the pharmacy and so I began my own battle, revenge by administering deadly painkillers to wounded Russian soldiers. The physical appearance of Russian women was not the deciding factor when it came to attracting men. Russian women had something more that helped them to win men's hearts not only in Russia! This precious thing was a "mysterious Russian soul" according to загáдочная рýсская душá. So let's just say that I had become the angel of death dressed in white. I had tattooed on my breast just above my heart 'to correct an injustice, requires great efforts'. I was a resistance fighter who had to avenge her own. 

 Naïad