I worked with a man from Stalingrad that was fluent in English, This man, Stefan, ran the largest machine in the shop. After working on the shop floor for a time, this Russian was seen as the heartbeat of the shop. Stefan was always moving, lubricating, adjusting even while the huge machine was running.
There was quite a bit of noise from the machine as it worked and no one talked much to one another. Stefan hardly spoke to anyone except Bob, the foreman. He was the first person I had ever met from a mysterious country. The impressions of Grade School duck and cover from nuclear war did not seem to fit this man. He was a man with a good job.
A simple man, obviously of some means, Stefan wore old white dress shirts and woolen trousers. In the summers and the winters. He didn’t socialize but did share lunch with the men. The only heated room in the whole building was the bathroom, so that was the lunchroom too. Running water was handy and it was a welcome break from blowing snow and gloves that made assembly hard. This factory made power poles and cross arms that held insulators for the wires.
There was a loneliness from Stefan and it was expected when you saw him. Perhaps it was because of the war and his time at the battle in Stalingrad. Rarely did he speak of these things but myself being an introvert, set myself to be a servant to him. Reading Russian classics gave me the way to treat a Zek or prisoner. It can be seen from Dostoevsky’s writing of the mid nineteenth century. ‘The house of the dead’ is a good place to begin reading this literary trasure.
As a new guy in the factory, I knew I could attach himself to Stefan as servant to a lord. Small things like bringing in some sweet rolls known as Vatrushka or smoked fish to share. It is the way things are done when men are together in the prison of work. I had a friend on the East side, a great violinist, that knew the places to go for authentic foods. Kulich sweet buns and such too. I was intrigued with Russian culture and now, at hand, was a fellow worker that lived those things. It was a path to a desired friendship.
Gradually, Stefan began to understand my respect of the way Dostoevsky wrote of those things. There was even hot tea for break time and the very young man and the very old man began to talk. Drinking tea by sipping through a sugar cube. The deeper personal things that bond and enrich life. There was so much depth to Stefan. Indeed a man of the world and holder of the highest Soviet war medal, The Orden Pobeta which translates to ‘The order of Victory.” It is the rarest order in the world. Sometime later, Stefan showed me the actual medal. It indeed was beautiful. To actually touch and hold this badge of honor, given to his new friend was humbling indeed. It was at Stefan’s simple west bank house in an old cigar box.
They sat and sipped tea from the samovar and Stefan shared his story with this young man who understood a path that creates trust with humility and service. Not patronizing. Sharing lives.The childhood trauma of my story went deep into Stefan and a calmness of respect unfolded between young and old. They were now just men in our broken world. Talking about life.
That life unrolled before me and it was a whispered call to him. A knowing that told me to listen closely to a story that was pivotal to him too. The story was about a job that Stefan had when he first came to America after the second world war. Stefan spoke of that war. A war that began to end exactly two months to the day before I was born. D-Day, June 6, 1944 After that war ended and Stalin learned from his generals who the man was that inspired courage and determination to the people of the land to stand against overwhelming odds. Stefan was that man. He learned to shoot at his fathers side hunting wolves. A revered soldier.
As a national hero of Russia, Stefan could write his own ticket to life and he chose America. The allied country of the war and the land of freedom. Russia had created the gulag and incredibly, mirrored the Nazi methods within. They had learned from the masters of war well, and now knew the intoxicating aroma of political power. It’s in all of us really. The open door of power that seems so right, did God really say not to do this? It’s our history over and over again. Stefan could see this coming and did not want to stay in mother Russia and watch it unfold.
All veterans of war can envision the minds path that intrudes and dictates behaviors unwanted. Often, or not even recognized as what has became the feeling of fear and escape. That pathway that is felt many times and triggered by a noise, a phrase or a gesture, often by a loved one. He began to explain these things and I began to see the world. It seems no one knows your pain that is hidden in plain sight. A personality that shocks and comes out of nowhere from someone you know and perhaps deeply love. Anger and rage from nowhere suddenly appears. Trauma. A pool of darkness that has always been available to us if we grasp it. Everyone has been through hell, everyone. We hide it, often believing it is the way things must be. Always.Stefan was brilliant and had more than anyone’s share of these pathways. He still does have them. There is no way to be rid of them. They are tree stumps in your path that cannot be seen until it seems to be too late to avoid the stumble. He shared with me a way to unbuckle the reaction of fear. Take a deep breath to discard reacting to that stumble and decide on a true path to clear the mind’s storehouse one more time of the of the death visions. In a way that firing a weapon requires steadiness and release of breath and tension.
As you can surmise, this friendship was beginning to blossom between the old warrior and the young man. The introverts began to trust one another with their secrets.
The perfect job Stefan was offered on his emigration to America was by the U.S. Coast Guard. They know what it is that makes a man ideal to be a lighthouse keeper and he was such a man. Tough and experienced and willing to be alone. An introverted man with the drive to do a job well. Learning the ways of clockworks and rotational precision was second nature to him. The tractor factory had many types of machines that required those skills. As a youth, boating on the Volga was also an experience that added to the requirements of the job, along his being a strong swimmer.The Coast Guard, new to managing the lighthouses of the country, also was well aware of the publicity of hiring a world hero and the ideal placement would give Stefan the peace he wanted.The lighthouse Stefan was sent to was in one of the world’s largest fresh water lakes, Lake Superior. It was to the an Islands lighthouse he was sent. It has a 3rd order Fresnel lens for the light. It has a 90 foot tower. It stands alone on a rock. Isolated and quiet. Few visitors.
There was however, no peace for Stefan when he arrived at his dream job. The real dreams kept coming and there was no place or way to hide for him. Just a lonely tower in the middle of a lake that had no meaning to him. The peace he thought he would find was pushed aside by his past once again. Pounding up that ninety food stairway gave him a bit of respite as all he could do was breathe and climb. Up to the top to look out upon the empty water, now alone and filled with only his panting breath and his medal of victory below decks. It was worthless now, just a bauble of his past struggles which had returned with him.
He was once again back to the tractor factory, spotting for Vassili Zaitsev and struggling for food and ammunition. The seemingly unstoppable Wehrmacht troops delayed somehow for a time. His comrades determined to defend their families. The captured Germans could have cared less about the propaganda speeches they were given, survival and those men close to them were only on their minds. Each side had to fight. General Khrushchev told them this was the pivotal struggle of the war.
What music to play today and which instrument to use. He brought his old French Minel viola along with and played now and then in a melancholy mood. He played a lot in B flat and the minor notes were beautiful and sad. Not even the fast dance music worked. His old fingers tried to build a concert of gaiety and, once again, the time signature changed and the fast tapping feet became another man’s that was walking with five others, carrying a sad wooden box. As the cigar box that he now carried with him with the medal inside. The cigars were smoke now. the box still carried the odor of their passing.
Now there was no need to find a hiding place, behind something, out of sight and for a moment, out of danger. There was no one on the island but him but the threats and violence of his life were there. The wind would blow and the storm surf would crash and his dreams roared on with the flash of another night in the ruins. Thunder indeed. The German sniper Major Konig was always searching and aching for his mirror flash on a spotting scope.
There were moments at his job that brushed away the past and gave him drive to make certain the beacon of light would reach far beyond his eyes. A clear danger signal to the ore boats steaming through the waters of Superior. Loaded, cutting the angle of the waves but still, the forward hatch dogs giving way to the astonishing power of water. Sending men out on deck to once more, secure the ships cargo bays. Stefan knew that fear too, it was no doubt similar to his own death looming large, just beyond sight, but out there. Waiting for weakness and powerful.
Those battle thoughts were oddly comforting, familiar. They gave reassurance to one man standing in the breach of the storm, a role as a defender. Holding the signal of danger with a beacon of light. The lighted path. These thoughts, bright as the lightening would shock him and one time brought a memory of an old story of a man that was brought to his knees with an incredible light. A story his mother had read to him. She was the true motherland for him. She knew many stories, ones of the old days, of mystery and valor. Books printed in Slovenia way before this war. Books that were not popular with government and it’s tight grip.
She told Stefan of another warrior from Eisleben that fought for truth, from Germany of all things. His name had been used to describe someone that created beauty out of fine wood. A lute player and builder. This man did indeed create beauty that caught young Stefan’s spirit by surprise. He would remember these moments. His musical mind was so powerful that he could hear a song for a short time after it had ended. Audibly. I have this odd gift as well and the two of them shared songs that still endure, heard now in their minds.
They remained friends long after they both left the cross arm factory. They both enjoyed my MGA convertible, driving out to obscure Russian enclaves with attendant coffee shops and restaurants. It was a solid friendship that they both needed.
One day, as they both sat near the Mississippi river with their tea, they began talking once again about the early days of their lives. The real early, pleasant days, fishing times. Stefan on the Volga and me in Northern Wisconsin. Both with their fathers, alone in good waters and catching fish that were plentiful and delicious. Old leaky boats and different sorts of fish that fresh, were the best. Tenderness remembered before the world’s darkness began to intrude on quiet and safe lives.
The age difference now between the old Bohemian and the young Swedish man was the same but they didn’t notice it and people they occasionally met assumed it they were father and his son. Somehow they went along with that too. “Kind of old to be your dad, isn’t he?” Idiott. Russian word. Seems to translate well.
The dreams still bothered Stefan and I finally was told by my very best friend of all to tell him about Jesus, the best friend of all. He was drawn the the story. I had never told him of the drugs and miracles I was delivered from. It was time to share, introverts and wounded man to man.
The story of deliverance went deep into Stefan and the war was eclipsed by the promise of war defeated. The light of the explosions and lightning was flowing into him along with the long ago story of the man delivered by blinding light. The story once again told by me that was the same one Stefan’s mother read to him when he was a boy. It went deep and deeper still till they both began to shed tears of the truest friendship anyone can have. Stefan and Norm now were together with a bond that will now last forever.
(many real events and and then woven together with dreams in a fabric of truth) Jack Gator
