Grenade

The Grenade is Petro’s green hand grenade, given to Sergeyich and later found hidden among the combs of a hive. For months it is both a concealed piece of wartime danger and an increasingly intrusive object in Sergeyich’s ordinary work; when he finally throws it at the hive of grey bees, it destroys the hive but does not kill every bee. Its movement from gift to secret cargo to explosive force binds the practical hazards of Sergeyich’s displacement to the dreams through which he interprets the bees’ presence.

Gift and disappearance

Petro gives Sergeyich the grenade the previous winter. Its return is startling precisely because it has not been part of Sergeyich’s conscious handling of the hives: while working on a hive’s strap, he hears something heavy roll inside. He opens the roof, brushes bees from the top, and draws out combs near the entrance. A shaft of sunlight reaches the object in the space he has made. The green grenade is lodged among the combs, with bees crawling over it.

Sergeyich removes it and blows the bees away. It feels surprisingly warm. He whispers to it as if addressing something that has been concealed and waiting, then puts it in his trouser pocket. Its unpleasant weight presses against him even through the ordinary sequence of work: he replaces the combs, lowers the roof, and fastens the hive strap again. In the car, he puts the grenade on the passenger seat and thinks of Petro, wondering whether the soldier is dead or injured. Sergeyich calls him, listens to the long ringing for a couple of minutes, and gets no answer in that moment.

The hive has made the weapon disappear from view without making it harmless. Bees crawling over the grenade connect the material worlds Sergeyich tries to keep separate: the managed life of the apiary and the violence carried through the war. Its rediscovery does not resolve what has happened to Petro; instead, the unanswered call makes the object a reminder of the absent giver as well as a physical risk.

A burden carried home

As Sergeyich imagines loading his car with groceries, the grenade interrupts the fantasy of a well-provisioned return. He looks toward the passenger seat, where it lies, and loses his grin. After bartering honey for supplies in a roadside village, he puts the grenade in the glove compartment. The same journey that brings food and bees toward home also carries an unaccounted-for explosive through checkpoints.

At night, Sergeyich stops in the open country and sleeps beside the car. Since the car cannot be locked, he imagines a thief opening the glove compartment, finding the grenade, and throwing it at him. The weapon is no longer merely stored away: its possible discovery reorganizes his sense of safety. He gets up, retrieves it, and brings it to his sleeping bag, slipping it under the edge of the bedspread. He falls asleep with his right palm resting on it, as though its presence offers comfort even while it has prompted his fear.

In the morning, with crushed tomatoes beneath the bedspread, Sergeyich finds the grenade again and cannot tear his eyes away. He knows he cannot take it farther: he has already carried it through Ukrainian and Russian customs and checkpoints, and discovery could mean being imprisoned for life. Yet leaving it where someone might find it—perhaps children—seems an intolerable responsibility. The dilemma is not simply whether the grenade is useful. Either choice passes danger on: carrying it exposes Sergeyich, while abandoning it may expose someone else.

Dreams and the decision

The remembered dreams give Sergeyich a way to interpret what to do with the grenade. One nightmare featured a hive from which enormous, hunched warrior bees emerged as if from a tank turret or underground tunnel and set off on a military mission. After recalling another dream of strange figures in a dark wood, he recognizes the figures as the same presence. He concludes that the dreams are not accidental and that God tells people what to do through them.

Sergeyich turns toward the hive whose bees look grey to him—the hive associated with the warrior bees in his nightmare. He loosens the straps and pulls the hive toward himself, remarking on how easily it moves, as though his strength has returned. The object he had been unable either to keep or discard now enters a different course of action: rather than carry the grenade onward or leave it behind, he uses it against the hive that has become entangled with his wartime dream imagery.

Leaving the hive roof off, Sergeyich backs away toward the car and picks up the grenade. It still feels warm, almost alive. He weighs it in his palm, pulls the pin, throws it from about twenty metres away, and throws himself to the ground as he has seen people do in films. He does not see how close the grenade explodes to the grey bees. The blast presses his face into the earth; he hears a whistle and buzzing above him, and something wet lands on the back of his head. He stays still until the thunder subsides into ringing silence.

Destruction and residue

Where the third hive stood, there is a crater, pieces of wood, and a fragment of comb. One bee flies past. Sergeyich thinks that some of the bees have survived, though not all. The result is neither the clean removal of a dangerous object nor an uncomplicated rescue: the grenade has destroyed the hive, and its inhabitants have suffered, while at least one bee remains alive.

Afterward, Sergeyich turns his attention to a bee that has left its stinger in his palm without properly piercing the skin. He scrapes the stinger away and the bee falls onto the grass. Later, back at the Lada, he notices a fragment of the grenade on the seat and throws it away. His thought that the car’s windows are fortunate to be gone registers the blast’s force through another concrete consequence: even after the grenade has been used, its debris remains part of the journey.

The Grenade’s changing place in the story—from Petro’s gift, to a warm and hidden object in the hive, to a feared burden, and finally to the explosive force that leaves a crater—makes it impossible to treat as inert background. It brings the war into Sergeyich’s intimate routines of tending bees, imagining a return, and trying to protect what may be found by others. His decision is guided by the meaning he gives his dreams, but its material outcome remains partial and irreversible: a hive is gone, fragments remain, and some bees survive.