Gypsy music in the distance.
Two guitars.
I used to hear this as a child.
It seemed to be emanating from the enemy encampment.
It sat high on the hill, but we had anticipated this, and we had tunnelled beneath the hill before the immediate exchange had even begun.
There were networks everywhere...
Both theirs and ours...
Everywhere...
To ensure the efficacy of our warring.
We had the upper hand, though the enemy would never have known it...
And now likely never would, thanks to...
The ceasefire.
All around...
Above and below...
There were sounds of interrupted warring.
As if the world itself gasped for want of reprieve.
There were also the muffled groans of the wounded men in our own contingent.
Some of them shot multiple times...
Some of them maimed simply for having strayed too near a mine...
Or for having taken-up a fighting position at a grid coordinate chosen for bombardment.
In any case, the ceasefire should give us time to heal...
To mend...
As human beings.
I suppose I wanted to be able to think about people...
About my comrades...
But all I really cared about in that corridor of time was the music.
It awakened me...
It moved me...
It conjured distant calls to mealtime and warming hearth...
To former and forever faded comfort and...
Family.
It tantalised me in my hole.
Despite the proclaimed ceasefire 6 days earlier, we were still reeling.
Both sides.
Commanders with no commands to issue, or to see executed...
Soldiers with no enemy to kill...
According to the terms of the ceasefire.
"We shall give diplomacy its chance," one of our officers had belched into a megaphone.
"We shall try our hand at peace," he'd said to the sound of rapturous applause.
"Finally we can lay our weapons down!
Finally there is hope...
For the future!"
More applause.
The sky remained as it had been amid the most brutal exchanges of the conflict...
Majestic, but...
Pallid...
Indifferent to mankind's malaise.
And the days rippled on...
Stillness...
But not calm.
What do soldiers on the frontlines do when all of a sudden they are ordered to simply wait...
To no longer do...
Anything.
It was a parallel circle of hell to that of war itself, I supposed.
I focused on the idea of the music for a spell longer before I decided that I needed to rise.
I shuffled myself free from the nest I'd fashioned from the blood soaked garments of fallen comrades and sprang forth from the trench as if reborn into hope.
Two guitars.
I hastened unto the sound of the music in my head like a man possessed.
I passed between columns of soldiers languishing in an abbreviated state...
A half-reality.
Some of them cleaned their weapons...
Sharpened their bayonets...
Wrote letters home.
Others dressed wounds...
Stared at the sky...
Or tried to sleep.
The expressionlessness of the sky was an insult.
There was no sense of any connection to our chaos...
Our conflict.
There was no promise on the horizon...
It didn't matter whether day or night...
It was just...
War.
But...
No longer a war that could be acted upon.
No longer man's native and desired state.
I came unto the end of the column that opened up unto the slope of the hill...
There sat the last of our lines...
Silvio...
He had a gas mask sitting on his head...
Both his hands bleeding through bandages hurriedly applied for need of more...
Fighting.
He held a cigarette clumsily between fingers just barely extended beyond the bandages.
He dragged it and gazed off into the nothingness of sky.
I paused before I passed him.
"Do you ever see it," he asked.
"The colour beyond the pale?"
"No," I replied.
"I hear music."
He looked up at me.
"What kind of music?"
"Gypsy,"
He grinned.
"I heard you're not supposed to call it that anymore.
Now they call it Roma,"
"Go fuck yourself," I said.
He tossed his cigarette away and lowered his gas mask down over his face.
I could just see his bulging eyes through the plastic panes.
"Better tread lightly now..."
His voice and his humanity mitigated by the filter inside the mask.
"Ceasefire," he cautioned whimsically...
"Kinder, gentler times, they say."
"Crazy motherfucker," I muttered.
He grunted at me through the mask...
Like a rabid creature.
I moved on...
Towards the music.
I could swear that I heard gypsy music...
Somewhere...
Over the hill...
There existed some remnant fit for feeling...
Some abstraction of the scene in which...
A soldier could feel at...
Peace.
I hurried as I could along the frozen earth in my bare feet, and I...
Shirtless and covered only by my shorts.
"Yeah, and Silvio's the crazy one," I laughed as I muttered to myself.
Sky swirled in disinterest as I came unto a plateau.
Here was a seemingly abandoned enemy stronghold.
There were fixed fighting positions, trenches, and a few shelters.
The music resounded in my head.
I was mired or elevated in some nostalgic dream state.
I felt no hatred towards the enemy...
I felt no compulsion to kill, to dominate, or to impose my ideals...
On anyone.
And yet...
There was movement.
Somewhere near and deep within...
The hill.
I was searching everywhere for the source of the music.
I know it was in my head, but something else had brought me there to the hill...
Amid the ceasefire...
Something else was required of me.
I saw all around me places and positions from which soldiers could defend and fight.
I looked unto the east and as if the sky had been playing with us all it puffed a trace of crimson into the colour of a sunrise none of us had seen for months.
I sighed and for a spell believed that it was for this purpose...
To witness this sunrise, that the music had brought me there to that place...
At that moment.
As I lost myself in the image, I felt a hand clasp my shoulder.
I turned with a start and raised my arms to defend myself.
The enemy was there...
Smiling.
There was nothing in his eyes but a glimmer or optimism and the desire to greet me...
As a human being.
I lowered my arms...
Music singing in my head.
A memory from childhood.
The man standing before me opened his mouth to speak, but just then a black metal blade abruptly emerged from his neck at his throat.
His eyes lost focus...
Shocked...
Curious as to...
Why.
The man fell to his knees and then...
Forwards...
Onto the frozen earth at my bare feet.
I stared at him for a spell and then I looked up...
To see masked Silvio standing there...
His eyes bulging with fervour and delight...
Behind the inhuman...
Plastic...
Panes...
Of his gas mask.
Before I could even think to speak, or to ask...
He held one of his bloodied and bandaged fists up to my mouth and whispered through the mask,
"Shhhhhhh...
Ceasefire."
