by JV Love
He walked over to Dima, who was sitting on the ground, busily inspecting the twenty-five year old rifle he'd gotten. Dima had been near the front of the line.
Dima looked up at his friend and the shovel he carried with him. "Good. You got a shovel. You can dig a trench with that. Those guys who took picks and axes don't know the first thing about modern-day warfare. Do they think it's going to be like Vikings doing hand-to-hand combat with their enemies on beaches or open fields?"
Felix sat down next to his friend. He couldn't help but notice that those who were still in line for a weapon all had the same Jewish nose that he did.
"Your rifle looks a bit old," Felix said. "Does it work?"
"It's actually in decent shape. It's pretty much the same rifle my father used in the Civil War, and I feel like I already know everything about it. He used to talk to me for hours about the battles he was in and how his rifle never let him down."
Felix knew that Dima understood a lot about fighting and strategy and such, certainly much more than he did. Dima's father was well known for his exploits in the Civil War, and he had drilled Dima from an early age on the do's and don'ts of battle - everything from how to dress a wound to how to respond to attacks by tanks or planes.
"You know," Dima said, looking at the shovel once more, "you could sharpen the handle and make a nice bayonet out of it."
"Good idea," Felix said, and retrieved the small knife he always carried with him. He sat down beside Dima and began whittling the end of the handle.
The 1st Volunteers Division, of which Felix and Dima were a part, was a motley collection of nearly 11,000 men with little or no military background or training. The average age of the men was much older than the regular army. Some men were approaching 50, while others, like Felix and Dima, were still in their teens. About a third of the division consisted of Party members or Young Communists.
Felix and Dima were part of a company that consisted almost entirely of men from the same furniture factory. Most all of them knew one another, and instead of using military language, those in command would politely say, "I beg of you . . ." or "Please do so and so . . .." Only a small percent of the division's officers had any command experience or formal military training. Some of the men in the division wore uniforms from the Civil War of twenty-five years ago - likely given to them by their fathers or uncles. Most of the division's officers had on regular Red Army uniforms, but not all, and the vast majority of men simply wore their everyday clothes.
The division had only about a third of the machine guns they were supposed to have and hardly any artillery at all. Some of the men, like Felix, had no rifles and carried only picks, axes, shovels, or knives. More than a few men were armed with nothing but their own courage.
Felix and Dima had joined the People's Volunteers shortly after the war started. They went into training the night of July 3rd, and used the playgrounds of the Fifth School on Stachek Prospekt as their drill field. Katya came by every evening with tea, a loaf of bread, and a large hunk of cheese.
They were supposed to receive a month's worth of training, but the rapid advance of the Germans had cut that short and they were now preparing to head to the front to help hold the Luga line. It was the morning of July 10th, and the mood of the men preparing for battle was overtly upbeat. They acted especially macho - making black humor jokes about their weapons and readiness, mixing a vast array of obscenities and profanity into every sentence, and talking much louder than necessary.
Felix, amazed at first at how brave they all acted, joined in with them. But he eventually realized the insincerity of it, and that for the men to honestly admit to the absurdity of it all would be a betrayal. The division was forming into a column now, and a man at the front carried a red and gold banner, presented by the Kirov factory workers. A band assembled behind the man, and within a few minutes they were on their way to the Vitebsk freight station.
The man marching next to Felix had a thick white beard that covered all of his neck and most of his face. He wore a gray jacket with a black belt around the outside of it, and knee-high leather boots. There were five medals pinned to his jacket and a solemn expression on his face. Felix, with his white dress shirt, clean-shaven face and black pants, wondered how he must appear to this old veteran. Probably like someone who'd just finished visiting a museum for the day, he thought.
As the band played and they marched through the streets, crowds of families, friends, and onlookers cheered and waved from the sidewalks. Felix tried, but he could not share in their enthusiasm. Plastered on a building they passed, he saw the now familiar poster of a German soldier with a dour expression and the caption, "A mood of depression rules among German soldiers." The posters had gone up shortly after the war began.
"Dima, have you seen those posters?"
"Of course, they're all over the city."
"What do you think about it?"
"I think it shows how desperate the situation is in the German army."
"But they're winning. There's talk they may even take Leningrad before the Fall."
"They'll never take Leningrad!" Dima said angrily. "Not in a million years will a Nazi boot step on this ground!"
"But Dima," Felix protested, "we're being sent to the front to defend the city and you have an antique gun and I only have a shovel."
"It doesn't matter. It's only a matter of time before the tide turns. The Red Army was simply taken by surprise. Hitler's treachery caught us unprepared, that's all. Once we regroup, we'll drive the Nazis all the way back to Berlin. They're winning now, but it's only momentary. The German soldiers are being pushed to their limit by their bourgeois officers. That's why the Party put those posters up, to remind us what's at the root of this aggression. The German soldiers won't put up with much more. They'll rise up against their officers and demand to go back home. And then they'll overthrow Hitler and his sham government and the Revolution will spread. Things may look a little bleak right now, but trust me, it's just a matter of time before the German army starts to fall apart and the Red Army gets reorganized."
Having listened to Dima, Felix felt more confident and upbeat. He was reassured by Dima's words on how things would turn out. He saw the poster again on another building and wondered about the man in the picture. Felix heard that the man had deserted to the Soviet lines and he admired that. He admired the man's courage and thought that if the situation had somehow been reversed that he would not have been able to do the same. Felix could never leave the loves of his life - Russia and Katya - behind. He was much too attached to them. He wondered how many more German soldiers were like the man in the poster, how many more felt the way he did?
* * *
Back in his cell, Alfred dropped onto his bed like a dead man. He was hungry and tired, and wanted nothing more than to sleep. But he couldn't help thinking about his fate. What were they planning for him? Did they mean for him to give some sort of public speech denouncing Germany and the capabilities of the German army? What would happen if he didn't cooperate?
He stared up at the ceiling and contemplated the light in his cell that seemed to hang in the air, floating up toward the ceiling rather than dispersing in equal measure throughout the room. The pungent smell of his sweaty clothes permeated the air. He dozed off for a few minutes before the two familiar thumps on the door announced the arrival of the guard who served his late afternoon meal - a combined lunch and dinner.
"Nazi criminal," he said in Russian. "I have your dinner for you."
He was a skinny man, probably around 55, and did everything at the pace of a snail. He spoke in slow, lazy Russian that made it quite easy for Alfred to understand him. He liked to ramble on about things, and most of the time held complete conversations with himself - asking questions and then providing the answers as if someone else had asked it. Though Alfred was never sure why, almost every day the man would test him in some small way to see if he understood any Russian.
As the man shuffled in the door, Alfr
ed looked up at what he'd brought. The well-worn wooden tray held a large bowl of something steaming, the usual stale black bread, and a glass with a small crack that descended like lightening from the top to the bottom.
"Here's your food." The man set the tray down on the bed next to Alfred. "That little commissar has made me bring you beef stew and English tea. It's better than I eat, and yet you, an enemy of the people, get it." He leaned against the door frame and looked at Alfred. "But what do I know? I'm an old man putting in my time until they let me die."
He always came unarmed and alone - unlocking the door, bringing in the food, then waiting until Alfred finished so he could take the tray and its contents back with him. The last several times he'd come, he'd spoken at length about how poorly the war was going for the Soviets. Alfred didn't understand how someone like him could know so many details about the war, but he found himself believing the man and his strange stories.
"General P__ complained again that his tanks on the front are all quite old and in need of repair," he said. "'And the planes ain't much better!' he yelled. They didn't like that none. Complaining don't ever go over too well."
Alfred sat on his bed and listened, all the while staring at the wall or the dusty floor and pretending as if he didn't understand a word.
"And what happened to those twenty-five front-line divisions?" the man asked, glancing over at Alfred.
"I'll tell you what happened to them," he continued, "they've been obliterated by the Panzer tanks and the Luftwaffe - those demons from the sky. Tell me, how is it that the great Soviet army is being routed? How is that possible?" he asked.
Alfred turned his attention to the food on his tray and noticed that the bread wasn't moldy or stale for once, and the stew looked quite fresh. He simply didn't know what to think about the tea. He usually just got water.
"Perhaps it's all a lie," the man replied to his own question. "Perhaps some of the reports sent in from the front are the work of German propaganda. Or maybe provocateurs." Then the man rejected his own theory. He leaned against the wall, watched Alfred drink the tea, and patiently explained how many of those who had been in command at the start of the war had already been replaced.
While Alfred listened to him ramble on, he looked beyond him at the hallway. It seemed that it would be so easy to escape - break the man's neck and run down the hallway to freedom. But he knew there was nowhere to escape to. There was the locked iron gate at the end of the hallway, and even if he somehow got the keys or picked the lock, there was still the pistol-clad guard stationed on the other side. If he made it through the door and managed not to be shot dead, there was still no place to go. The entire building was surrounded by a fifteen-foot wall with barbed wire, and of course there was that guard tower and its search light.
Alfred doubted that the building, the entire complex really, was ever meant to be a prison. In fact, he'd never seen another prisoner. Perhaps he was the only one. If the complex was not a prison, that would explain the rose bush, the lack of a slot in the door to his cell, and the fresh mortar holding the bars in place on his window. The security seemed quite lax to Alfred. Why, for instance, didn't an armed guard accompany the man serving his food? Alfred sometimes wondered if it wasn't some game they were playing with him. It seemed that they were constantly playing little games to which Alfred hadn't been taught the rules.
The man watched Alfred eat the bread. "Hey German, you want in on a little secret?" Alfred ignored him, and prepared to take a bite of the stew. He thought the man was testing him again - trying to catch him off guard. "That stew's been poisoned," the man said and stared at Alfred.
The spoon was already on its way to Alfred's mouth when the man said it, and Alfred knew he had to think fast. Was he serious? Or was this another one of his tests? Or maybe he just had a strange sense of humor? If Alfred didn't take the bite of stew, or even if he paused, then he would give himself away as understanding Russian.
Perhaps it was time to die, Alfred thought. Poisoning shouldn't be too painful. Perhaps he'd just fall asleep and never wake up. He'd be okay with that.
But he wasn't ready to die just yet, and he knew it. His mind and body both told him that there was some last step that he had yet to take. But what could he do now?
Alfred decided he'd put the spoon down and end his charade, but then he looked at the man and somehow knew that he was bluffing. He couldn't explain it, but he knew without a doubt that it was a trick. He took the bite of stew. It tasted a little funny, but then everything he ate in this country tasted funny to him.
"So you're going to eat it anyway, huh? That's the problem with you Germans - you're too trusting."
Alfred continued to eat the stew, and found - much to his surprise - that he enjoyed it immensely. If it was the last thing he was ever going to eat on this earth, he might as well enjoy it. He closed his eyes and ate slowly, chewing every bite thoroughly before picking up his spoon for another bite. He wished he'd eaten every meal of his life this way.
The man wiped his nose with the back of his hand and looked at the bits of plaster that had fallen to the floor behind the door. "I remember," he continued, "we had about a dozen of you Germans pinned down in the last war, and my commander - Kalinovich - told you to put your weapons down and surrender, which was a joke because there was only five of us. Somehow he got you all believing that we were a full battalion and had you surrounded. And every damn one of you believed him. Damn fools. As soon as you all walked out into the open with your hands up, Kalinovich ordered our machine gunner to fill you full of bullets. Still makes me sick, every time I think about it - seeing all those bloody corpses lying on top of one another. After it was over, one fella was still alive, had his guts hanging out of him and screaming at the top of his lungs. It took four more bullets to finally shut him up. And that smell! I'll never forget that as long as I live . . .."
The more Alfred ignored the man, the more he talked. He rambled on and on about anything and everything. Even after Alfred had finished eating and went to the corner of the room to take a piss in the can, the man continued talking.
"That little commissar is going to eat you up, you know. He's probably got your trust already," the man said, shifting his weight to his other leg. "Yes . . . he's very disarming in his thoughtfulness. Everyone knows about him though. Well, everyone but you, I guess. He ain't got no friends I hear, but he sure does seem to know everybody. Don't like to joke none - I know that for myself. No, the only time I ever heard him laugh was when I told him that story about Kalinovich shooting all the Germans after he'd tricked them into surrendering."
"Comrade Surikov!" a voice yelled from down the hall, "What is taking you so long?" Alfred recognized the voice as Stern Face.
"Nothing comrade," the man replied. "I'm leaving now." And with that, he took Alfred's tray and closed the door behind himself.
Alfred listened to the man's heavy footsteps fade away. He moved his bed away from the wall and carefully removed the four bricks that he'd already managed to loosen and set them off to the side. He was halfway done - another four bricks and he'd be able to squeeze through the opening to the outside. The mortar was very old and had been done carelessly. Alfred had little trouble coaxing the bricks out of it with the long rusty nail he'd pulled out of the bed frame.
As he dug and chiseled and pushed and pulled on the remaining bricks, he thought of many things. But more than anything else, he thought about his father. He remembered a particularly violent spanking he'd received from him because his mother had told him to do something and he'd said no. It had all happened so suddenly. He'd been in a bad mood because he'd had to work all day. And then, just after dinner, when he thought at long last he'd get to play, his mother told him to do something. Alfred couldn't remember what it was, but it didn't matter. He was sick and tired of working. When he said no, he hadn't really meant it. He knew he had to do whatever his parents told him. He'd said it to be rebellious. As soon as he'd said it, his father flew out of
his chair, grabbed him, ripped his pants down to his ankles, and beat his bare buttocks with all his might. And when it was all over, Alfred choked back his sobs, pulled his pants up, looked his father straight in the eyes, and said, "I hate you." He'd braced himself for another blow, but it never came. Instead, his father said, "I don't care if you do or not, but you'd better do what your mother and I tell you to or you'll be sorry," and then turned and walked away.
Alfred finished his work on the hole in two hours, and then laid down to take a break for a few minutes. He wanted to work on his escape plan, but he was so incredibly tired. He was so tired that he wondered if maybe they really had poisoned the stew. He decided he'd rest for just twenty minutes or so, and then get to work.
Within thirty seconds of this decision, Alfred was fast asleep. He had strange and vivid dreams. In one dream, he was a clerk in charge of filling out racial purity forms for SS officers who wanted to have children. After he had finished interviewing each officer and had filled out the form, one of his fingers would fall off, only to somehow grow back and fall off again after finishing the forms for the next officer.
In another dream, he was a young boy, six or seven at the most, who was a soldier in the German army. He had three legs - the third one was small and without bones and hung limply from the middle of his back. He spent most of the dream trying on different uniforms that he hoped would somehow hide the abnormality, so he could be just like everyone else. But no matter how many he tried on, the lump on his back was obvious. He eventually gave up trying to be like the others, quit the army, and went home. In his little bedroom on the second floor, he laid on his stomach and cried his eyes out and beat his fists on his pillow. His father opened the door, but instead of comfort and words of encouragement, he was told he'd better stop his crying because crying was for sissies and girls. To drive the point home, his father clenched his fist and shook it at Alfred.
