Stalingrad post #3 [Video] [Potential violent content]
[The Video opens with Ivan standing on top of a building. It used to be one. Now half of it is missing. Now the walls are falling apart, brick by brick. The roof is pockmarked with shells. Part of it has collapsed. It looks like a skeleton of a building, with all the life long gone. Now only ghosts remain, ghosts of his people, pockmarks of red on the walls and streets and stones. And every single block is a battlefield, and every single building has become a trophy, and every single moment a step is taken. One step forward. Two steps back. And the nights are cloudy with smoke and fog and grey, and the days are not much clearer. But still, as Stalingrad unfolds before him, Ivan stands on top of a building, looking forward. Not down.]
[He's waiting for something. Something intangible, in the ruins, in the dust. No one else can feel it, what he feels, a shiver, a minute shift in the wind. A smallest drop in the temperature of an already cold day. But Ivan knows this feeling, knows the shiver, knows the gravelly voice down the back of his spine. It's just a change in the Mercury, a subtle shift, that any other person would ignore, would get back to the battlefield that used to be a city with his people in it. It's just a shift in the wind, an increase in the gusts, so that Ivan's scarf billows out behind him, but only for a moment.]
[It's all that Ivan needs. He smiles, into the biting air, the same smile that he always shows at times like this. It's all too bright for such a dim, dark place filled with people dying. It's a smile with a shiver behind it. He still faces forward, into the west, where the sun went down. Where Berlin is waiting for him. He smiles for quite some time, as the wind bites and howls and as the temperature drops a fraction of a degree. Until at last he turns and faces the laptop, smiling like a ghost into the camera. This is not an accident, he seems to be saying. But he takes a breath with hope in it, and simply speaks above the din surrounding him.]
Winter is coming.
[No more. No less.]
[He's waiting for something. Something intangible, in the ruins, in the dust. No one else can feel it, what he feels, a shiver, a minute shift in the wind. A smallest drop in the temperature of an already cold day. But Ivan knows this feeling, knows the shiver, knows the gravelly voice down the back of his spine. It's just a change in the Mercury, a subtle shift, that any other person would ignore, would get back to the battlefield that used to be a city with his people in it. It's just a shift in the wind, an increase in the gusts, so that Ivan's scarf billows out behind him, but only for a moment.]
[It's all that Ivan needs. He smiles, into the biting air, the same smile that he always shows at times like this. It's all too bright for such a dim, dark place filled with people dying. It's a smile with a shiver behind it. He still faces forward, into the west, where the sun went down. Where Berlin is waiting for him. He smiles for quite some time, as the wind bites and howls and as the temperature drops a fraction of a degree. Until at last he turns and faces the laptop, smiling like a ghost into the camera. This is not an accident, he seems to be saying. But he takes a breath with hope in it, and simply speaks above the din surrounding him.]
Winter is coming.
[No more. No less.]