The T-34 on the Plinth

The T-34 stands on its plinth by the river, barrel elevated at nothing, a veteran of 1944 promoted to civic furniture. Every town in this region has its tank; Tiraspol's is better kept than most driveways, green as the day it was repainted, which was recently.

The number 1 trolleybus goes to Suvorov Square, and on a Sunday I walked instead. Monuments may be photographed here without argument, so I circled the plinth twice and took my frames. The veteran of 1944 is the town's own line: the region's history portal, which I read later, calls it a myth. It puts the corps this tank served with north of the city on 12 April 1944, near Grigoriopol. The tank came out of Hungary instead, and its commander died at Balaton in January 1945.

I stood below it with my arms crossed and let my skepticism and its confidence regard each other. The tank won, as tanks on plinths always do, by having nowhere to be and nothing to prove. Children climb it in summer, I am told. The eternal flame burns twenty meters away. War as memory, memory as furniture, furniture as playground: the whole cycle in one small park, and nobody but the visitor finds it strange.