#That Night

Brunette in Grapes & Other Russian American War Stories

Written By Adler S Walt

Dedicated to Natalia Abashkina

 

Characters:

Valera Adonaev, a Chechen patriot, Dasha Andreavna, courtesan of Penza, Benny Adonaev, Spanish smuggler, Viktor Dragan, East German spy, Valentina Stanovova, a Russian architect, Salvatore Caminiti, Sicilian gladiator, Natalia Abashkina, expensive supermodel, Dmitry Khulushin Koch, a villain, Avinadav Debutelier, Commander of the Resistance in Israel, Polina Mazaleava, a singer in Nizhny Novgorod, Oleg the Bear, Ukrainian Israeli photographer, Maxim Oztap, a smooth operator, Rafael Contreras Lynch, Peruvian revolutionary, Lauren Ayers, an American! Liana Zavulonova, Bukharin Princess. Valera Arefyev, a mystic, Mickhai Dbrisk, Jamaican paramedic, Rachael Rambo, an attorney from Fort Laughtrerdale, Daviti Koreintelli, Georgian arms dealer, Philip Rybalnik, Ukrainian hooligan, Jefferson McIntyre of New Orleans & Guyana, Stacious McKenzie, Trinidadian Special Forces

Mr. Ersatz, a real fucking villain.

 

 

 

 

Prelude

 

 

Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.

 

 

Sometimes, old friend, I cry from own weakness. I bash my Jew face against various mirrors around town angered by my own lack of force, lack of seed, and lack of ability to carry my band more truly into glorious and successful battle. I beat my frail fists on concrete walls which always win! I ask my God why it untrusted me with anything at all. For I am so small and so unable it seems to be a good fighter, an adequate lover, or a good leader, or a good son, or a good husband to Adelina, a good much of anything. I started the game with such a strong position but have not leveraged that to advance my people and cause, even protect those I loved the most!

 

And then I remember my actual role, not the role my mad ego ascribes. I am but one single partial partisan. One isolated man with such true friends.

 

I am commanding, a funny word “commanding”, more appropriate term coordinating for can one even give orders to a volunteer? A force that numbers at any given time no more than ten to maybe twenty women and men. And no God nor man nor foreign government gave us marching orders; well at times a Russian woman gave me some directions, but only when at most desperate and bleak junctures, I had to no council to turn to. But, I brought almost all this chaos upon my house unaided! But this is hardly a wide conspiracy. But looking into my own soul I am not doing this for God or man, I am not simply avenging my losses, nor am I simply working off a duty to act. No, no; I am self-propelled and highly lucky. I am doing this because my eyes see fire. I am doing this because I have seen the view from the top of the Mountain, I have seen the killing fields too. I have a great empathy with my kind. I wish good to triumph over callous and well planned evil.

 

And the responsibilities that were impressed on me by the old leadership, they were small bits. And I say to myself that if our little band with no weapons and no training and no funding and the protection provided us only by our passports and various skin tones could do so much! Still we did accomplish a range of small things in the Americas and beyond. We took over buildings, and organized demonstrations, built unions, operated a substantial underground press. If we could build youth brigades and lay cells across four continents; if we could operate clandestine supply chains, raise tens of thousands in equipment and supplies, conduct hundreds of underground political trainings, infiltrate major city civil service organizations, if we could smuggle activists and trainers into distant countries uninvited and opposed by government. If we could do all of this with no outside support and do it with keeping all our partisans out of long term prison, and have only buried three men in seventeen years of war under questionable circumstances. Well perhaps we are all still young and the war shows no sign of being over. Perhaps we have a small latent talent for freedom fighting and if not killed or imprisoned could with a little guidance grow more professional.

 

And we have not killed one single person in seventeen years, in fact we have with our own hands saved the lives of thousands and counting.

 

“I’ve always said he has a fucking ton of potential! For good, for self or for evil, wherever his own heart ultimately sends him,” Daria once declared.

 

So, really as was explained to me then in 2011 before the uprising in Brooklyn by my confidant Dasha Andreavna; I could either surrender, collaborate or be utterly destroyed. But as she gauged my nature was highly American, she guessed correctly I would never tolerate a life of collaboration, so thus death or some impossible victory were the only moves coming.

 

I have been imprisoned twenty times. My brothers and sisters have never allowed them to take me for long. Each time they have chained me to beds, administered electricity, loaded me with drugs, asked millions of stupid questions to attempt to make me alter my perspective, denounce my own logic.  I have observed members of the band lose their very homes and their livelihoods and their freedom and their health. I have seen men thrown through Plexiglas glass windows. We have been held in cages and also tortured. The deaths of Mcgaffey, Becker and Black were all sudden and violent and unexplained. I remember little Paul behind bars, I remember harassment and humiliation of Comrade Vik, I remember how much was sacrificed vainly in the name of this struggle. This struggle which absorbs my beingness as though it were the love of a woman, but I am a zealot. I am not good for anything but this. I am in love with my entire people and I have resolved that it would be better to be killed, to lose my privileges of skin and class, than to live in a world where a tiny vile few make the lives of the many, the lives of all I know and love a wretched grinding torture. Truly a half-life.

 

I cry sometimes, no longer in the presence of any others. Dasha mocked me so each time I failed to be a man. I cry because the horror is so vast and the injustice so great. And I have but ten to twenty partisans, several with wives and children. I worry that I am not going to be able to shoulder this struggle, that I lead my closest to sedition and doom. I worry I have not the moral fortitude, the calm patience of humble leadership, the organizational skills the funds we will need, the weapons, the uniforms, the petrol, the Planes, the will. For I am a man and I am seduced sometimes by wanting more good life, wanting to walk away. This is not your fight, she said, no one asked you to struggle!!

 

Friends, they torture me once a year. They tell me I have an unstable mind. They drag me away over and over and over again. I am grateful for such friends as you, who refuse to accept surrender. Who know that we can win the war. I wanted to tell you all, see what we do with just ten women and men. You have that many fighters too. Here we all are at the top of the mountain, assembled in the ghettos encircling the Isle of Man.

 

I loved her so much. Maybe only one or two of you know what I’m talking about. They took from me the only thing a man should care about.

 

I’m thankful for the resistance. I’m thankful for our little Otriad in Brooklyn. For the cells in Chicago, Philly, Baltimore and DC. The underground in Moldova, Cambodia, Haiti and occupied Israel. Thankful for Commander Reed in Mosul, Commander Bonhomme in Port Au Prince. Inspired deeply by the teachings of Solomon and Debutelier. I love my family and my wife, I hope this is the year we go pro.

 

She is a million miles away, but she can hear me. She can see me. She liked me better before I found communism, liked me better before I rediscovered my religion. She even liked my used suits better than the grey uniform I wear now.

 

I raise glass to the East, for there somewhere out there I hope she is waiting for me, waiting for us to win. I raise my glass, I look my men and women in the eyes when I toast, “Long live the resistance, God protect the blood line of the prophets and the Mossiach and the Mahdi. God keep us moving along the straight path, not the path of those who are cowards, or those who have been lost and lead astray.”

 

For those of you who are joining us from home, for those listening from the trenches, from the fields or from the big house, or as servants in the towers. This is just a love song.