Songs of Dentistry and Death

Songs of Dentistry and Death
by Bryan Russell


Mitya wanted only a quiet place in the forest to shoot himself.

His hands felt heavy, and his boots. The winter uniform. And his gun most of all. It weighed more than all the bales of hay he had once hauled, all of them together. It weighed more than all the earth he’d plowed beneath his feet.

His breath plumed in the air, and he noticed the strangeness of silence. How long? Always the noise: the people; the voices; the orders; the bullets; the awfulness of artillery shaking him like a bone doll--a filling had fallen out once, rattling right out of his head. He’d tasted it, for a moment, on his tongue.

It was just the start, he knew. Pieces of him would keep falling off.

The trees had lightened, had somehow become more airy, more open. Winter light fell through bare branches. Yet he was deep in the forest.

Yes, somewhere around here. It was quiet. The snow would come, it would cover him. He would forget, and the world would forget him.

Mitya stopped.

There was a piano.

A piano sitting on the grass. A piano, alone and waiting.

Mitya looked around. There was nothing around him. No house, no cabin, no road. No path, no mark of foot or hoof or wheel. Just a piano. Somewhat battered, tilted slightly, as the ground seemed a little uneven.

How had it come here? Who would drag a piano out here?

People, of course, were fleeing the war. Carrying bags on their backs. But none of them were carrying pianos.

Mitya stepped forward. In the silence he thought he could hear notes. Tentative, distant, the hushed tones of memory.

Shostakovich, he thought. Yes. Not one of his great Soviet propaganda pieces. Some minor thing. A personal little piece. Small and forgotten. He didn’t know the name. Just this little snatch of melody, of hushed notes.

His fingers touched the keys. The sound stepped out, clean and good, reverberating off the cold trees. The notes drifted through the forest. He played the Shostakovich, the little bit he remembered. He wasn’t very good; he never had been, really, and he was rusty now, yet the music came out right, or at least it sounded good to his ear. A little plunky, but the notes danced for a moment, before drifting out amongst the trees.

There was another sound, then. The heavy thrumming of artillery, the deep vibration rolling through the earth.

Just drums, he thought. His notes still hung in the air, a fading counterpoint. The earth rumbled. Just drums. Mitya pulled his gun around and marched back into the trees, ignoring the pain in his teeth.