The Soul of a Thief

by Steven Hartov

  Himmel suddenly leaped into the air, his left arm slicing out for balance and his legs tucking up like a hurtler’s, and as I saw his boots sail above a twitching corpse I attempted to mimic his grace. Yet my body twisted clumsily and I looked down to see my heel smash into a pale, ungloved hand, and with the horror of flesh and bone crushed beneath my weight I tumbled forward. But someone snatched at my battle harness, and I was instantly up again and running.

  For only the briefest moment, there was a respite from the gunfire, yet it seemed to me that my pounding heart and the ragged spew of air from my lungs would certainly obscure even a cannonade. I reached up to tear my woolen cowl away from one ear, yet the fleshy drum within had already been so pounded that its cottony deadness was little improved. Still, I heard the heavy ringing of bolts as the men around me deftly changed their magazines on the run, and from somewhere ahead came the muffled shouts of calls to arms in Russian. The cathedral’s arcing edifice grew larger, and as we passed the black tunnel of a cross street, I glimpsed another of our elements racing along a parallel thoroughfare.

  We neared the church, and for an instant I fantasized that the company of Russian tank destroyers had in fact abandoned the town. Yes, this small group of men we’d slaughtered was the lot of it, all that was left, and we would shortly gather together in wonder and Himmel would kick the cobblestones in frustration and we would retrieve our wounded and be off to home. And just then, one tall wooden door of the cathedral’s entrance swung open.

  They burst from it in a wave of flying cloaks and weapons whirling about, the red stars on their fur caps glinting as they charged down the wide stone steps. Perhaps there were twenty of them, perhaps more, and without waiting to discern a target they opened fire, forming a ragged arc of men and sweeping across the street before them as they yelled in chorus and their bullets sparked and chunked off shards of building stones. And it was then, as those exploding barrels turned inexorably to us, that I knew it was the end. We were charging into a hornet’s nest, and it was here in the frozen wastes of Asia that I would be stung to death with all the rest.

  Himmel abruptly stopped and dropped to one knee, yet somehow I managed to avoid crashing into him as I flung myself to his right and smashed facedown into the street. The impact crushed my lower lip into my teeth, and instantly a rush of hot blood flowed over my chin, yet I lifted my head and gripped my pistol with both hands, and yes, I began to fire, to live, somehow, if I could. Our element knelt in a ragged line to both my master’s flanks, caressing their Schmeissers to their cheeks and jerking rapid bursts, and as someone’s spent shells clanged off my helmet, my own shells were being flung from my pistol and pummeling some comrade.

  I could not see who I killed, or in fact if I harmed a soul at all, for my target was nothing but a blur of smoke and flashes beyond my squint. I grunted when something thumped into my back, then realized it was the Colonel’s fist as he snatched a grenade from my belt, yanked the igniter from its bottom and hurled it, and he was up again and running before it exploded out there beyond with a heavy thump and flash.

  He was yelling something now, a cry of warning I could not discern, and as I dragged myself up I saw that my pistol slide was open and I struggled to discharge the spent magazine. Yet being left alone was more a ghastly thought to me than any other, and I staggered after our element as I fumbled with the accursed weapon. Half of the Russians lay upon the wide stone church steps in a steaming twisted pile of limbs askew, while the survivors still fired, yet not at us. Just beyond the church and across the way, Lieutenant Schneller’s squad had emerged from an alley, and he stood there flailing away with his machine pistol while his machine-gun crew lay in the street, their MG-42 rattling like a jackhammer, slicing through the Russians and pocking up the cathedral’s face. And then I saw what Himmel had already seen, an open window of the church just astride the large entrance, and from it poked a strangely shaped green phallus. All at once the antitank grenade boomed a spout of flame, and immediately its warhead obliterated Schneller and his crew in a terrible roar of fire and smoke and stone.

  I froze then with that vision, of helmets tumbling through the air, of shards of winter white anoraks with blackened frays, floating down like smoking goose down, the twisted red-hot barrel of a weapon spinning off to clang against a roof eave. And I thought this madness could not possibly be multiplied, yet with my feet rooted to the street I watched our command element fall upon the remaining Russians like an enraged pack of wolves. Behind me horses screamed with fresh punctures from the cross fire, and before me German muzzles barked so close to Russian flesh that sprays of bone and blood shot upward with the ricochets. I saw the shoulder of Lieutenant Gans’s anorak punch up and out with the impacting Makarov bullet of one Russian survivor, and even as he twisted and fell, two of our own clutched their SS daggers in their fists and butchered that last defiant one.

  A swooning dizziness came upon me then. The adrenaline coursing through my quivering limbs gripped my bowels, and I placed my hands upon my knees and bent over and a torrent of steaming bile stung my splayed lips. And as I watched the boiling ooze sink through the snow at my feet, I thought I heard my name.

  “Brandt!”

  I looked up. Himmel stood in the very center of the thoroughfare, his left fist cocked against his hip like a fencer, his right hand extended and his pistol barrel aimed at the cathedral window. Just beyond him, our troops kicked at the Russian corpses and shed them of their weapons. Near his feet, Lieutenant Gans lay writhing, rolling from his back onto his left shoulder, then back again as a medic bent over him and fought to thrust a bandage into his wound. From somewhere to the rear of the cathedral came an intense and continuous chatter of gunfire.

  “Brandt!”

  It was my master’s voice, and I managed to straighten up and hobble to him in my profound weakness, and just as I neared him another antitank grenade poked from the window and Himmel fired five quick shots and the device clattered and slid away. The Colonel turned to me and calmly slid another of my grenades from my belt, popped the fuse, and I covered my ears and folded up like an infant as he waited, and waited, and finally spun the explosive into the window. Immediately after the incredible burst, I looked up at him to see him unmoved, his cheek split by a shard of something and a stream of blood dribbling over his collar.

  From somewhere just within the cathedral doors, a high-pitched voice called out in Russian. Himmel turned to it, tucking his pistol into his belt and lifting the Schmeisser that hung from his neck. The urgent babbling grew louder, and then a man stepped out onto the cathedral steps. He was bald and quaking from his knees to his hands held high above his head. He was wearing a brown woolen monk’s robe, tied at the waist with a heavy rope, and upon his feet were a pair of open galoshes. He glanced about and continued to entreat in a string of pleas and prayers, and all of our men lifted their heads to him and I thought this tableau of piety meeting perniciousness could not be real as Himmel grunted.

  “Hier sind keine Priester. There are no priests here.” He shot the father with a burst that flung him from the steps, though I did not see the priest fall, as my eyes were slammed shut. I clutched at a sob that made to escape my throat, knowing that here and forever ended all roads to salvation, with a deed that could never be prayed away.

  “Noss!” Himmel called out. “Rope the doors and arm the satchels!”

  Corporal Noss came on the run with his demolition team hauling the packs of explosives, while a thatch of men swung the church doors closed, muffling shouts from inside, and they bound the heavy latches with turns and knots of assault ropes.

  “More magazines, Shtefan. From my pouch.”

  I moved to Himmel’s back as I jammed my pistol into its holster, and I fumbled with his leather satchel buckles, managing to extract three Schmeisser magazines. He quickly loaded one and began to fire short controlled bursts into the shattered church window, as my cheeks and eyes
flinched with each concussion. Someone trotted heavily past us, carrying a limp form across his shoulders.

  “Where are the rest, Sir?” I managed to yell, little that I cared but more so to discover if I still had a voice.

  “The rest of what?”

  “Our men, Sir.”

  “They’re behind the cathedral. Can’t you hear them?”

  Yes, of course I could hear them; they had been firing all along. And I realized that our element’s purpose was to drive the balance of the Russians to the rear of the cathedral, where they were being slaughtered as they sought their last exit. Himmel began to walk backward now, firing at the window more intensely and in longer bursts, and I remained attached to his flank, more scuttling like a turtle than moving like a man. Urgent shouts rose up from within the building, and Himmel moved more quickly and he switched magazines and fired continuously now.

  “Cover!” he yelled, and peripherally I saw our men hurry from before the cathedral’s face. “Noss! Blow it!” he yelled again, and the corporal and his men rushed forward to the open window, their satchels already hissing with the sparks of rushing fuses. “Go!” Himmel slammed a palm into my chest, but its impact sent me sprawling onto my back. And then Friedrich had me by my arm and we were dashing away, past the cathedral doors, which bucked out now fruitlessly against our ropes as those within sensed their one and only chance of escape. And then the explosives detonated.

  I did not know where I was. I did not know who I was. I lay facedown in the street, and I opened my stinging eyes to a cocoon of swirling, choking smoke. My helmet was gone, my gloves were gone, and as I regained the present, I was certain that the ringing gong within my head could be nothing other than the cathedral’s bells. My spine ached as if it had been hammered, and as I gathered my elbows beneath me and raised my head from the sodden stones, the smoke drifted away and I saw Captain Friedrich. His face was close, a pair of bloody rivers running from his nostrils. His cheeks were bony white, and then his eyelids fluttered, just as I discerned a distant and repeated call, the order of which I’d been dreaming.

  “To the plane!”

  Yes! It was all I had wanted to hear, the only mission that could move me now, and the encroaching patter of more gunfire only spurred my final strength. I came to my knees and I reached out for Friedrich’s battle harness, and then I squatted and groaned and with every twitching muscle I stood up and tried to run.

  “Come on!” I screamed at the dead weight of Friedrich’s form, yet his numbed arms hung loosely and his Schmeisser swung from his neck and struck me, and this obstacle to my survival only enraged me more as I shook him violently. “Come on, damn you!” He jerked his white blond head up then and shook it, his helmet flying from its broken strap and clattering away, and he rose and turned and placed a hand upon my shoulder, and I charged blindly through the smoke, leading him like a cripple’s dog.

  My vision cleared and I reached out to brace against a stony wall, and then we were rounding a corner and all at once there was no smoke at all. The air was crisp and clear and virtually unsoiled, and as we stumbled into an open street, I realized with a slackened jaw that our disoriented state had taken us not back toward the plane at all, but past the cathedral and deeper into Chernovtsky. A squad of enraged Russians was racing toward us.

  Friedrich pushed me violently away and fell to his knees and immediately began to fire his Schmeisser, and as I bounced beside a wall I heard a split of sonic cracks above my head. There was nowhere to go and nothing to save me, and cursing and grunting as I yanked my pistol from its pouch, I did not even feel the bullet whip through my trousers and pierce my thigh. My hands flew up above my head as I lay on my side and I fired madly at the rolling forms and flashing weapons beyond, and then my pistol went dry and I knew I had nothing left. I looked over at Friedrich, who was sitting there now fully on his rump, his legs splayed like a child as he gritted his teeth and ran out of ammunition, and I waited for him to be struck dead.

  Himmel appeared then, rounding the corner, accompanied by Noss and two more men. They immediately crouched and released a murderous endless burst from their weapons, and then Himmel leaned forward and clutched at my battle harness, and I thought that he had gone completely insane, his face split with a grin so improbably gleeful.

  “Have you both gone mad?!’’ he shouted. “I said to home!”

  I needed no further encouragement, but in trying to rise, I collapsed over my wounded leg and someone slung my arm about his neck. I swooned then, and in half a faint I found myself between two SS, sprinting back along the main thoroughfare as if in a school yard three-legged race. I do not remember the final course of that hurried retreat to our airplane, except that I bounced along upon some giant’s shoulders, and in the fog of semiconsciousness, I heard the constant echoes of gunfire close behind...

  * * *

  Somewhere high above Poland, I came to my senses. The rim of a water bottle was touching my lips, and the sting of its cold steel and icy liquid lifted my head from where I lay. Our medic capped the bottle and briefly touched the back of his hand to my forehead. Then he moved away along the fuselage, half crouching like a careful duck. I looked down at my right leg, which was bound at the thigh by a leather strap. The wound itself was numb, but with each beat of my heart a throb jolted from my heel to my groin. Beyond my boot toes, the unharmed men were stuffed like cartoned eggs against the fuselage wall, not one of them awake, their heads drooped and bobbing in a light turbulence. Beside them, the wounded lay in a line from stem to stern, and at the Junkers’s rear I could dimly discern the dead, piled carefully like firewood, their boot soles interlocked like the pieces of a puzzle.

  I looked to my left. Captain Friedrich lay close, upon his back, yet between us in the steel troughs of the floor ran thick rivers of frozen blood, like flows of lava blackened on a glacier. He turned his head and smiled weakly.

  “In the future, Brandt,” he said, “I’ll thank you not to order me about.”

  I tried to smile at his quip, yet nothing in my face would function, and I looked away along the vibrating tunnel of carnage.

  “Eight wounded, and five dead,” I heard Friedrich say. “But we are all here.”

  I closed my eyes. No, we were not all here. I was not here. I had moved on into another of my worlds, where such notions as a light wound to impress a maiden were now foolish and selfish and blasphemous. There was no such thing as a light wound, for the nature of its making would never recede, the event could not be healed like sutured flesh. I shivered, and I felt the squeeze of tears leave the corners of my eyes, freezing on my face before they reached my ears.

  And I slept.

  VIII

  IN APRIL OF 1944, I slept at heaven’s gate.

  For nearly two weeks I hovered in a semiconscious state, lingering at the precipice of my own mortality. The wound that had at first appeared to be merely a tunneling of my flesh, had in fact nicked a transverse branch of the femoral artery, and by the time the Junkers landed once more in France, my purpling thigh had ballooned to twice its size. The duration of the flight had allowed a sepsis to encroach, and the Wehrmacht surgeons declared that only the extreme cold had prevented me from bleeding out as well. My body temperature had soared, and I babbled feverish ramblings as the chloroformed mask was set upon my face, and thereupon I was sliced open nearly from knee to groin. The doctors extracted the Russian projectile, along with some chips of bone, then did their best to suture up the furrowed damages and left the rest to fate and meager medicines.

  I dreamed of Vienna, for as my form lay fitful and battling its infectious demons, my mind sought refuge in my purest childhood, and I sailed into an ecstatic vortex, swaying to the strains of Strauss. The spires of the city reached into a robin eggshell sky, and I hung once more upon the caboose of a tram, my smile broad in the summer sun and my cap waving gleefully from my hand. Horse-drawn carriages clopped alo
ng the banks of the Danube, the sails of skiffs snapped in the breeze, my mother called to me from the balcony of our flat, laughing as she hung white bedsheets from a line, and I could feel the soft leathers of my lederhosen against my suntanned thighs. The tastes of her Schnitzel and Weisswürste lay upon my lips, the scent of her perfume in my nostrils, and my heart once more fluttered with gasping laughter as my father’s coarse hands snatched me up and his fingers tickled me mercilessly. My eyes rose again in wonder at the secrets of the gargantuan museums, the grace of prancing horses in the Prater, the bunches of rainbow fruits and piles of sweets in the market, and I felt again the very first touch of my fingers to the slim waist of a schoolgirl with a shy smile and glossy hair as I danced my first waltz.

  The purest streets of the districts then darkened with winter clouds, and a black rain swept the city into night, and hundreds upon hundreds of boots marched behind thumping snares. My neck ached in its arch as I looked up to watch a strange man haranguing thousands from a hotel veranda, and soon the fires began and they did not stop, and the thunder from the skies flashed close to me and I flinched as images flickered faster, and faster. A beautiful young woman kissed my eyebrows, her delicate fingers unbuttoned my shirt, and when her sweet mouth neared mine it turned blood red and widened like the maw of a fish. And then, an avalanche of murderous snow hurtled toward me, carrying upon its white tidal wave a tumble of steel helmets and amputated hands and rolling pirates’ heads. And then, the blurred face of Friedrich hovered before my eyes as they streamed with helpless tears, and I knew he was dying even as he whispered comforts to me, and I could only grip his hand with all of my strength as I cried out to him, begging him not to leave me, and I sat up hard and with the force of all my soul I screamed.