Bea West Israel

Webster, English 5th

Making Freedom
-include setting, motif, epiphany, detail/everyday, ten endnotes (cultural/historical significance of an
event/detail/name)

Akilina1 had been a beautiful person. Her hair had been dull and thin, her eyes a nondescript, flat
brown, and people tended to stare at her long chin, her narrow lips. But he had loved her for it
all, as soon as he was old enough to realize that outward beauty wasn't all he was looking for-because she loved freedom and democracy, and asked him what he thought the opposite of love
was, and rolled her eyes when he told her that the opposite of love was himself without her.
"Smooth," she had said idly, giving him a nod. "So what's the opposite of me?"
He hadn't been able to give a correct answer for that--he had tried the devil, rich
Russians2, and rotten eggs--but finally she had let him off the hook and gone back to cooking
whatever obscure recipe she wanted. She was, after all, pregnant--and pregnant people knew
what they wanted to eat.
Because of the pregnancy, though, he had told her to stay home, being at six months, when the
first world war ended and democracy poked its head out in Russia3. He had practically begged
her to stay, had made all kinds of promises, but as soon as she heard about the protests against
the communist Bolsheviks4, she was packing her bags to join them. It was democracy, she said.
It was worth fighting for, and they would tell their child that he or she had been part of a freedom
rally before they were even born. But Akilina, at least, had known that her husband was not
entirely against the Bolsheviks, and so she had let him stay home.

1 Russian form of the Roman "Aquilina," female derivative of Aquila

2 Cossacks are not on good terms with "Russians," or the nobles in the cities, to put it lightly:
Russians steal their land and rights simply because they have more power and money.
3 After WWI, the Russian Civil War started (1917-1922) between Communist Red Army and
Democratic/Socialist White Army
4 Bolsheviks were the communist party of Russia, making up the Red Army

Bea West Israel

Webster, English 5th
"Well, keep yourself safe," he had sighed to her, having already given hugs and goodbyes. She
had nodded, looking excited, going out to meet her brother at the train station.
"I will."
He had dipped his head, attempted a smile, and then closed the door on her.
A week later, the phone had rang, the radio curiously silent. Usually, Lenin was all over
the stations, telling them about the wars, forever emphasizing the strength of the Communists5.
He picked it up, with a grunted, "Hello," into the receiver.
"Ilya?"6 someone sniffed, and vaguely he placed the voice in his mind--Akilina's sister,
his sister-in-law. He shifted, leaning on the wall.
"What is it?"
"Did you turn on the radio?"7 Her voice wavered, nearly broke, and he let out a long,
patient breath.
"No. It's been relatively quiet all morning."
"Turn it on now." She paused. "Please." Obliging, wondering why she couldn't just tell
him what happened, Ilya turned the knob until the static disappeared and leaned on the table to
listen. A crackling, deep voice greeted him.
"Lenin authorized the shooting or deportation of certain select rebels at a recent protest,"
growled the announcer. Ilya raised his eyebrows. "Most of the rebels were democratic or
socialist8, advertising their intent as overthrowing Russia's government. Most were wearing
white, signifying their loyalty to Russia's enemies in the world9, and so their removal was
authorized, similar to the ending of the revolt in August 1918."
"Which protest was this?" he asked into the phone, and his wife's sister took a moment in
replying.
5 Lenin often sent telegrams used to produce "mass terror," such as the one on 9 August 1918
which ordered the people putting down rebellions to "shoot or deport" the "prostitutes causing
the soldiers to drink"
6 Ilya - Russian form of Elijah, also spelled Ilia
7 Radios were often used for propaganda and to spread news, especially because newspapers
were usually inconvenient
8 Often, rebellions led by socialist forces, rather than the democratic "White Movement/Army"
9 White Army - Allied/anti-Bolshevik forces (against Communist Red Army)

Bea West Israel

Webster, English 5th
"The last one, of course." She sounded surprised. "The one Akilina went to...wasn't it?
Ilya, this means...didn't she go to that protest?"
"Is your brother back?" he asked then, aware that Akilina's brother had escorted her to the
city where the rally was to take place.
"They're both dead, Ilya. They were shot." Her voice grew stronger, angrier, in response
to his obliviousness. He was silent for a long moment, and she was about to ask if he was still on
the phone when he turned the radio off and muttered, "But she was pregnant..."
She thought better of replying, sighing finally, "I'm sorry, Ilya. Our mother is home, and
she's devastated--I have to go now. I'll call you back later tonight."
"Wait--" he began, but the dial tone was already droning in his ears, and so he dropped
the phone back into the cradle and turned the radio on, for the next hour and a half struggling
with his denial. He listened to the radio message over and over again, certain that they were not
talking about the same rally as the one Akilina had gone to, and then he sat down and called her
over and over again, checking train stations and hotels and gas stations to see who had passed
through, to see if she had really gone to the rally. At six o'clock, they started droning the death
count, listing names in alphabetical order, and he realized that it had not been a large rally at all.
He sat before the radio with a blank look until both her name and her brother's had
passed, and even then he didn't move. When finally the message clicked off, he got up, moved to
the bedroom, and fell vaguely into sleep with his shoes still on and his tie barely loosened.
Ilya stayed in bed late the next morning, and then tried to go through his usual routine but
found himself stuck at the kitchen table, wondering about baby names, his face blank and
helpless. A girl, they decided, would be named Filippa10. A boy, neither knew. Both wanted it to
be a girl--even he did, the father, because at least a little daughter didn't have to go and serve the
Russian army.
He waded through his day like that, his thoughts perpetually returned to Filippa and Akilina,
even when he went to work in Moscow. He found no peace, none at all, until he remembered the
10 Filippa - Russia, Swedish, Greek, and Italian form of Philip (female)

Bea West Israel

Webster, English 5th
family he had living in the fringes of the country, the Cossack lands, where the tribes of nonRussian Russians ran free and drove their cattle and grew their wine grapes. No complications,
no civil wars between Bolshevik and Anti-Bolshevik, no wild craze for freedom11--and right
then, he had no energy to deal with anything more than living life, and so making the journey to
a simple Cossack village sounded exhausting but well worth it, if he never had to move again.
So within two months his house was sold and everything in it, save for his transportation and
winter clothes. In something of a haze, he slipped into the seclusion of the Cossack lands, and no
one heard from him in Moscow again.
So Ilya's years passed--quietly, tiredly, unbothered by life, content with watching the violet
mountains in the sunrises outside his window and the gleaming Terek River slithering along
behind the reeds. He still missed his wife, sometimes, but it faded, and with it he also stopped
telling himself stories about who his daughter would have been. He was half a person, a husband
without a wife, but gradually he was growing older and it was beginning to matter less and less.
But not once did he make a new relationship, or go through the stages of grief save for
that first day. He went out in the mornings and hunted, came back and sold it or made it edible,
and then went to bed and repeated.
"Hey, Uncle12!" a young man called one cold evening, waving his rifle from atop a guard
post. Ilya looked up. "You're from Moscow, huh?"
"I was."
"So what'd you come here for?"
"I stopped liking the city." That was true enough. The young man laughed, his lips pulling
back to display a full mouth of teeth.
"And you figured you'd like it here?"
"It's not as confined, here. Freer."

11 The love of democracy rose after WWI, when anti-Bolshevik forces revolted in the Russian
Civil War; however, Bolsheviks won, later becoming the Soviet Union
12 Russians call each other, in their language, by familiar terms

Bea West Israel

Webster, English 5th
"You running from someone?" When he was met with a quizzical look, the young man
shrugged, licking his lips and waving the rifle vaguely. "That's why most Russians come here.
We kick 'em out unless we like them." He gestured. "Come on up, Uncle, and tell me the story.
I'm bored of watching the river."
So, with nothing much better to do, Ilya negotiated his way up the guard tower, old joints
creaking, and finally settled comfortably with his back to the central pillar. The young Cossack
soldier settled in diagonal to him, effectively dropping his guard duties, and the old man told him
the story he wanted--his wife, his unborn child, all fragments of a past he had never gotten over.
"So you came here for freedom? Y'know, from what reminded you of them and all."
"Something like that."
"Well," the young man snorted. "That's a pretty dumb way to go, Uncle, even for one of
your kind. Russians." He waited to see if Ilya was insulted, and then continued when it was safe,
"See, my older brother's been all over, and he's fought in a good many wars, and you know what
he says? That all anyone ever wants is freedom. Your sweet soul13, your wife, whatever you want
to call her--she loved democracy 'cause it was free, or it's supposed t'be. You came here because
you wanted to be free, but I'll bet you're not. Not when you nearly cried just telling me that story,
huh?"
"It's not that I'm not free," Ilya argued finally, not meeting the other one's gaze. "It's that I don't
have any way of moving ahead. I don't have a plan for what else to do in my life, but live like
this until I die."
"But you think things'll get better?"
"Not really, no."
"That sounds miserable."
For a moment before he replied, Ilya thought. Hope was what he lacked, he knew--it was
the reason his life had fallen to this, because he had never thirsted for it to be anything more. And
he was hopeless, because...his wife had died? Because he had simply become a sad old man?

13 Cossacks, however, call their mistresses "sweet souls"

Bea West Israel

Webster, English 5th
"Brother," Ilya said finally to the young man across from him, turning a clear gaze up to
the other. "Would you say that hope is a choice?"
"Uh-huh," came the nondescript answer. "I would."
"And freedom? Is that a choice?"
"Well...my brother used to say that freedom was a state of mind." He paused. "That...you
could choose to find your own freedom in your circumstances. So oppression wasn't really
oppression, but a bunch of angry people throwing temper tantrums." His lips twitched, laughing
a little. "'Cause...I dunno, he said that life goes on. So, if you spend all of it waiting for freedom
to come to you, you waste most of your life. But if you make your own freedom happen, you can
control it."
"So you hope when there is no hope."
"Yeah, I guess."
"Because life goes on, whether you're living it or wasting it."
"Right, that's what I always got out of it."
Ilya finally dipped his head, beginning to get to his feet once more with a sigh. "Well,
brother..." He paused. "Thank you. You have showed me a little of the way to go."
The young man smiled, looking clueless on what exactly he did, and offered a handshake.
"You're welcome, Uncle." He nodded back toward the village. "I hope you find what
you're looking for."