““She wandered moodily about the clearing, kicking at the grass, then bent down and picked something up. It was an old steel helmet, thick with rust, a jagged hole in the side. You still find these all over the woods, she said. I'm not even sure whether it's Russian or German. She turned it slowly over and over in her hands, crumbling more of the rusty metal off. Then she hurled it away and brushed the rust off her hands. The helmet hit a tree, bounced off in a shower of rust and fell into a bramble bush where it perched on a a branch, bobbing up and down like some great brown bird alighting. Raya seemed to be abashed by the ridiculousness of it, and picked it out of the bush. They sat down side by side on a fallen tree trunk sodden, like everything else, with the stored wetness of winter. Raya turned the helmet over in her hands again, feeling its texture curiously. Poor old helmet, she said, Manufactured and issued and worn and punctured and lost and rusted by the forces of historical necessity. Found and touched and lost again by Raissa P. metelius, lecturer.””
