TWO LIKE US

CHAPTER 4: STEPHAN

Upon hearing the numerous voices coming from the nearby enemy trench, he understood that the time had come to withdraw.
That boy had something interesting about him but he was still the enemy, I couldn’t indulge too much in provocations or useless debates.
I returned to my part of the trench; I slipped out, exactly as I had entered; during previous training, even before the start of the war, the number one rule that was taught by superiors was to never leave the trench, for any reason that was not related to fighting and acting as a sentry. But I hated the rules and I am still convinced that I would have ended up like those who died from a self-inflicted bullet in the head, if I hadn’t gone out sometimes, at night, to relax and think.
I headed towards the corner where I slept with my companions, towards our “room”; then we would have to go to the headquarters where there was supposed to be a meeting that morning to decide on the movements of the following night, when the truce would end.
“Is it possible that you can sleep even where it would literally be impossible to do so?”
I looked at Josh perplexed, we had known each other for a few years now and we had had the opportunity to leave on several military expeditions together, each of these meant sleeping in completely run down, dilapidated places, where it was more possible to die from a sudden collapse of the ceiling, than from a bomb or an ambush; yet he had managed to sleep peacefully in all these places.
“When someone works hard and doesn’t mess around in territory they shouldn’t set foot in, it’s easy to fall asleep, Stephan”
He knew it. At first I didn’t really know what to do, what to say, we were friends but I wasn’t sure if I could really trust anyone in this situation; so I did what came most spontaneously to me: minimize.
“We are in a period of peace, if I remain on the surface for a few minutes nothing will happen”
“Stephan, you are my friend and I adore you, that’s why I won’t say anything to the generals, but what you are doing is dangerous and terribly irresponsible, we are not on holiday, we are at war and unfortunately there are no rules or justice in war , even in peacetime the enemy could attack and you would find yourself completely alone against an army of well-trained men.
“There is no need to worry about me, I can take care of myself, besides on the other side there are no men but children, inexperienced and perhaps sent to die without even basic training”
Only after saying those words did I realize I had said too much.
“Stephan, we are snipers, we see the war from the trenches, from below, it is literally impossible to see the faces of the soldiers we kill so close as to be able to define the age of the fighters”
Shit. He slept everywhere but when he needed to think he was the smartest person on the face of the Earth.
“Okay, you found me, this morning I went out, I wanted to go for a ride in no man’s land but there was a small, very small snag, someone else had the same idea as me; he was a kid, he could have had the maximum 20 years old, he was short, he had black curly hair, he had such an innocent look… and that uniform definitely shouldn’t have dressed his little body, compared to me he looked like a child”
“David and Goliath”
Those words of Josh made the image of that figure flash in my head who, although younger and smaller, had managed to stand up to me and even destroy one of my provocations; I don’t know for what stupid and absurd reason I imagined him with a rifle bigger than him that he couldn’t hold in his hand or couldn’t balance with. I smiled like I hadn’t in years. I still had a few hours before the meeting and I intended to dabble with a few pages of the book I was supposed to read once it came to the surface. I put my hand in my uniform pocket and only then did I discover a bitter truth. The book was gone.