The Krakatuk Nut

Verdun, December 1916.

In the former nave of Saint Nicholas Cathedral, it smelled not of incense, but of sweet rot, carbolic acid, and stale sweat. The stained-glass windows had long been blown out by blast waves; instead of the faces of saints, the gray, indifferent sky of Picardy peered through the openings. Ober-arzt Drosselmeyer was making his rounds. He was not a kind godfather, but a mechanic of the flesh. His pockets were stuffed not with sweets, but with the "gifts" of war: hinged prostheses, glass eyes, and ampoules of morphine.

— "Here is your new leg, soldier," he threw a rough piece of wood onto the cot. — "And for you—oblivion." He injected a dose into a screaming artilleryman, and the man went quiet.

Drosselmeyer was the only one here who understood: sometimes a person cannot be fixed, one can only gift them a different reality. In the corner behind a screen lay Marie—the daughter of General Stahlbaum, caught under the shelling of a hospital train. Gangrene was rising above her knee. Sepsis was blooming black flowers along her veins.

Nearby, on the adjacent cot, sat Lieutenant Nicolas. A shell fragment had taken off his face. Drosselmeyer had fastened the remnants of his jaw with a complex mechanism of silver and rubber. A tight spring kept his mouth closed, and with any attempt to move it, a dry sound rang out: Crack-crack.

Act I. The Battle for Sanity

At night, Marie's temperature spiked to forty-one degrees. The boundary between worlds grew thin. The cathedral walls expanded. The Christmas tree (in reality—a pile of bloodied greatcoats and camouflage netting) grew to the heavens, reaching the stars. Shadows crawled from the corners. A rustling was heard—either the sound of thousands of tiny paws or the steps of orderlies in shoe covers.

Approaching Marie was the seven-headed shadow of Doctor Ratte ("The Rat King"), dressed in a gray smock, with a respirator mask on his head resembling a rodent's snout. Behind him was a retinue of "mice" with gleaming needles and scalpels.

— "We are losing pressure," sounded hollowly from under the mask. "Urgent resuscitation. This is going to hurt now, Fräulein!"

In Marie’s world, this was an attack. They wanted to drag her into the basement, into the dampness, into pain.

— "Nutcracker!" — she screamed, and Lieutenant Nicolas stood up. In reality, he knocked over a table of instruments in his delirium, but for Marie, he drew a saber. Tin soldiers—legless cripples from neighboring cots—rose on the flanks. The battle began. The clashing of steel (instruments), screams. Ratte loomed over Marie, raising a needle-spear. Marie grabbed a heavy water carafe (her slipper) and threw it with force at the gray mask. The glass shattered. Ratte recoiled, wiping his face.

— "The pulse is thread-like! She is slipping into a deep coma!"

The doctors retreated. The hospital walls crumbled, scattering like powdered sugar. The Nutcracker, tall and slender, in a gold mask hiding his injury, extended his hand to her. — "Let us go, Marie. To where there is no pain."

Act II. Symptomatology (The Land of Snow and Sweets)

They walked out of the cathedral ruins. Large, gray, fluffy snow fell from the sky. Marie laughed, catching it with her mouth. A waltz of snowflakes swirled them around. The music was beautiful, cold, and unsettling. 

Marie did not know that this was not snow, but ash driven by the wind from fields where hundreds of bodies burned. She walked barefoot on scorched earth, but felt only the coolness of marble. Marie mistook the cold of death for peace.

Marie and Nicolas entered Confiturenburg. It was a sterile-white space, an absolute void. There was no pain here, but no life either. Only the rhythms of Marie’s fading body and consciousness, turned into dances, reigned in the city.

Suddenly, a dry, crackling rhythm tore through the silence, as if invisible castanets had burst from a ribcage somewhere. Tra-ta-ta, tra-ta-ta! Marie grabbed her heart: the clatter of castanets was not coming from outside—it was her own motor beating in agony, trying to push thickened, poisoned blood through her veins. A hot, burning, frenzied fever covered her head-on. She spun in this mad rhythm, mistaking the deadly heat of sepsis for consuming Spanish passion, and danced, literally burning alive.

But as soon as she grew used to this fire, the rhythm fractured, drowning in the viscous, sticky drone of violins, resembling a monotonous Arabian song. Morphine entered the blood. Her body, light a moment ago, filled with lead. Reality swam in oily, rainbow spots, like the film on a cup of cooling coffee. Marie was no longer flying—she waded through air that had become dense like sweet, sticky syrup, slowly sinking into intoxicating oriental oblivion.

Suddenly, the piercing, sharp whistle of flutes cut through the viscous slumber. Marie was thrown upward. Her muscles seized in a cramp; her nervous system was failing, sending chaotic discharges into her limbs. Her arms and legs jerked in an unnatural, broken rhythm, but here, in the kingdom of illusions, this terrible tic of agony seemed like the amusing ritual dance of a clockwork Chinese porcelain doll. She hopped, obeying invisible strings of pain, turning spasms into bizarre choreography.

And then the finale crashed down. The orchestra broke into an unrestrained, rising Russian dance. One-two-three-four! Faster, even faster! The brain fired its last, storm-like volleys of electricity before going dark forever. Marie spun in a radiant whirlwind of a daring trepak, head thrown back and laughing with delight, not feeling how in the distant, dirty reality her body arched on the sheet in a final, terrible convulsion.

Act III. Pas de Deux and Finale

Silence fell, and following it, the majestic music of an adagio filled the void. The Nutcracker Prince approached her.

— "Look at me, Marie," he said. He slowly removed the gold mask. Marie expected to see a face. But under the mask, there was nothing. Only blinding, pure white light. The light of absolute peace. Light in which there is no memory, no war, no "I". She reached her hands out to him, ready to dissolve into this light.

And suddenly, a sharp blow struck her in the very heart, as if a taut string had snapped inside with a crack. The music cut off. The light faded. Marie smelled rot, heard moans. She was lying on the cot again. Bending over her was Ratte—now without the mask, a sweaty, exhausted man with red eyes. He held a syringe with adrenaline at the ready. — "We are bringing her back!" he shouted. "Come on! Breathe, damn you!"

Pain returned. Monstrous, tearing pain in legs that were no longer there. Marie turned her head. On the neighboring cot sat Lieutenant Nicolas. Without a mask. She saw everything: the torn cheek, bared teeth, saliva drooling onto a dirty collar, horror and pity in his single surviving eye. He was alive. He was real and hideous in his suffering.

Pain had returned Marie to real life and brought her to consciousness. Ratte raised the syringe over her again. One injection—and she would remain here. With the pain, with this mutilated lieutenant, in this hell, but alive. Drosselmeyer stood in the shadow by the window and did not intervene. He simply watched her with his single eye and waited.

Marie looked at Ratte. Then at the ugly Nicolas. And then she shifted her gaze to where, in the corner of the ward, the fading, warm light of Confiturenburg still shimmered. There waited the Prince, woven from radiance.

— "No," whispered Marie with only her lips. She closed her eyes and turned away from the syringe, consciously relaxing her muscles. Her body needed air. But Marie exhaled and did not inhale. By force of will, she pushed Ratte's hand away.

Beeeeeeeeeeep... — the device squealed thinly (or perhaps it was just ringing in the ears). The doctors lowered their hands.

— "She's gone," exhaled Ratte, tossing the syringe into a tray.

General Stahlbaum sobbed, burying his face in his greatcoat. And Drosselmeyer approached Marie’s body. Her face had smoothed out. Frozen upon it was that very blissful smile of a doll that has finally made it to the top shelf of the store, far away from children's hands. 

On the neighboring cot, the mutilated lieutenant sobbed terribly, clacking his jaws. He remained in Verdun. But Marie had been carried away in an eternal dance.