Vendetta

by Derek Lambert

  Antonov wiped a drop of oil from the trigger of the rifle. He pressed the butt into his shoulder and the rifle became part of him.

  ‘And the cinema,’ Razin remembered, reaching for the vodka. ‘Tarzan and Tom Mix and Charlie Chaplin and, every other week, the Battleship Potemkin. And the smell of the cinema, the Shantser – celluloid and cheap scent and cigarette smoke. Smells, how would memories live without them? And the taste of lipstick.’ Razin smiled, showing yellow teeth.

  Silence except for the muted noise of battle. Was that all? ‘I still don’t understand,’ Antonov said tentatively.

  ‘Because there’s nothing to understand. You think there has to be a reason for everything. Wrong. Things just happen. Sorry to disappoint you.’ Razin swigged vodka. ‘But if you must have a reason perhaps it was happiness. I was too happy.’

  Not good enough, Antonov thought.

  ‘Content, perhaps. And secure. Yes, despite the Revolution and the Civil War, I was secure. I didn’t question anything. I was complacent. Do you know something, Yury? That’s what Communism teaches you, complacency. If you’re not very careful you accept everything it has to offer you, a recitation of values.’

  ‘But you rebelled?’

  ‘Not in the conventional sense. No speeches, no banners, no handcuffs chaining me to railings. I was studying law at the university in Kiev, reciting it, and one day I just got up from my desk, walked out of class and joined the army.’

  ‘It could be argued that you were shirking responsibility.’

  ‘Watch it, comrade, you’re beginning to sound like a commissar.’

  Yury worked the bolt of his rifle; it made comforting, oil-snug noises. ‘If you feel like that about Communism you shouldn’t be fighting for it.’

  ‘Who’s fighting for Communism? Every soldier I’ve met is fighting for Russia. In any case I’m not fighting, am I? I’m nursing.’

  ‘You fought for Moscow.’

  ‘Survival, comrade. And I was shit-scared at Moscow.’

  ‘Perhaps you have to be scared to be brave?’

  ‘Leave the philosophising to me,’ Razin said.

  Philosophising? Nothing that Razin said seemed to have any pattern. But that was the case with any of the philosophers – admittedly few – that Yury had read: they only complicated logic.

  In the confusing light from the river the lines on Razin’s face, cheek to jaw, looked deeper than usual, exaggerated, probably, by the bristles his cut-throat razor had missed while he shaved with cold water and carbolic soap during a bombardment. Razin, the old soldier, kept himself neat.

  He also worried about his health. He suffered from boils and mysterious internal pains but, all things considered, he looked astonishingly healthy.

  Recalling the conversation with one of the soldiers who had jumped into the crater, Antonov asked him about the Ukrainians. Had some of them joined the Germans? Was such treachery possible in the Soviet Union?

  ‘You wouldn’t understand. Your kitbag’s still full of school books. Who am I to disillusion you?’

  An oil-slick swimming with rainbow patterns slid past the tunnel on the muddy water. Boris, belly against the brickwork floor, sat like a dog.

  Razin asked: ‘Which is most important to you, the Soviet Union or your republic?’

  ‘My country and then my republic of course,’ said Antonov who had never thought about it before.

  ‘Ah, but I forgot, your republic is Russia. Stupid of me. But some day …’ With one finger he felt the fur inside a crease on his cheek.

  ‘You didn’t answer my question about the Ukrainians.’

  ‘Didn’t I? You probably won’t believe this but a lot of Ukrainians were praying that the Germans would annihilate the Russians. And why not? The west of the Ukraine was part of Poland until Stalin grabbed it in 1939. And the feeling in the east wasn’t much different. You see the idiot Ukrainians think they have an identity. So what did the Boss do? Stamped upon it, purged it, stole the harvest so that people starved … Do you wonder that some of them opened their arms to the Fritzes. And occasionally their legs? And why?’

  Antonov wished he would stop asking questions.

  ‘Because the Germans promised to let them have their own government, that’s why.’

  ‘Did they get it?’

  ‘They got it all right. For five days. Then the Germans broke it up. Locked up all the hot shots. Killed the Jews and anyone who got in their way. You see the Germans want lebensraum, living space, and what better place than the Ukraine?’

  ‘And that’s the only reason the Ukrainians are fighting the Germans now?’

  ‘Not the only reason. Mother Russia has a broad embrace.’

  Antonov said: ‘One last thing. Why didn’t we know that Germany was going to attack?’

  ‘Do you remember the days not so long ago when Hitler and the Boss were like this?’ Razin entwined two fingers. ‘Well, they were both buying time, trying to fool each other. But Stalin needed more time …’

  ‘I think,’ Antonov said, ‘that I’d better throw those school books out of my kit-bag.’

  He looked at Boris but the rat was asleep.

  ***

  Misha arrived half an hour later bringing boiled water, warm bread and makhorka. Razin took some of the coarse black tobacco and rolled himself a cigarette with a strip of Red Star.

  ‘So,’ Razin said, ‘how’s the battle going?’

  ‘We’re fighting for every inch of ground,’ Misha quoted. Losing, thought Antonov, flexing his new awareness. ‘Zholudev’s guards are fantastic. They’re tall and very straight and they wear paratroop uniforms and they fight with daggers and bayonets.’

  ‘The best,’ Razin agreed.

  ‘I saw them go into a cellar and kill all the Fritzes inside. One of them threw a body over his shoulder on his bayonet as though it were a sandbag.’

  Misha’s eyes were dark and bright in his pale face; the skin on his cheekbones had a transparent quality about it and his knees below his short trousers were like little fists; but he was full of importance.

  ‘Where are they fighting now?’ Razin asked.

  ‘In the Tractor Plant Stadium.’

  ‘Shit,’ Razin said.

  ‘When the Guards die they shout: “For country and Stalin! We shall never surrender!’”

  ‘And do you know what units are fighting there?’

  ‘Oh yes, I know.’

  ‘But you’re not going to tell us?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ Misha asked.

  ‘We’re supposed to be on the same side,’ Razin said.

  ‘Can I have a cigarette? A real cigarette.’

  Razin gave him a papirosy.

  Misha lit the cardboard-tube cigarette and drew on it inhaling deeply; like most Russians he made a meal of a smoke.

  ‘Don’t you trust us?’ Antonov asked.

  ‘I was told not to tell anyone about the German units until I got to headquarters.’

  ‘Then you must do what you’re told.’

  ‘I suppose you’re different,’ Misha said. ‘The 94th and the 389th Infantry. Fourteenth and 24th Panzers and the 100th Jäger.’

  ‘And Meister?’

  ‘That’s why I came here. He’s in the toy factory.’

  Remembering the lessons about war he had learned at school in Hamburg? Antonov wondered what Hamburg was like. Not much different, perhaps, from Novosibirsk. Or Stalingrad as it had once been.

  He took out his wallet and extracted a photograph of Meister taken from the German forces magazine Signal. He looked very sleek and sophisticated standing beside a poised blonde, smiling over his trophy; but the smile was borrowed and it didn’t fit his face. In that moment Antonov the hunter glimpsed uncertainty in his prey.

  ‘How did you get warm bread?’ Razin asked Misha.

  ‘It’s old bread heated on a primus. I like the smell of warm bread. It makes me think of early mornings before the Germans came.’

  ‘Did you help
in the bakery?’ Antonov asked.

  ‘During the school holidays. With the cakes. Sometimes I make a small one for myself. We made lots of cakes on national days. My father said national days were a baker’s icing-sugar.’

  Antonov knew what he meant. Stick a pin in a calendar and you stood a good change of spearing a national day. New Year, Lenin’s death, May Day, Young Pioneers, Komsomol, the Revolution … In his patch of Siberia the bakers made rings of pastry symbolising the sun for Maslennitsa, the end of winter.

  ‘Papa made lots of jokes,’ Misha said. ‘He used to make biscuits with currants in them and he called them fly-biscuits. He was small and neat and his hands were always very clean when they weren’t covered in flour. When he dipped his hands in flour he looked as if he was wearing white gloves.’

  ‘Did your mother work in the bakery, too?’

  ‘Sometimes, if there was a rush. A lot of people getting married in the Palace of Weddings perhaps. She was taller than Papa and she used to tell him not to be silly when he made his jokes but often when she turned her head I saw her laughing. She used to help me with my homework. She said she wanted me to become a doctor. I didn’t want to become one: I wanted to be a soldier.’

  ‘No brothers or sisters?’

  ‘I had a brother once but I never saw him. My mother went to hospital with him inside her but she came back without him. She said it was God’s will but after that she never talked about it. I remember the first day Papa came back from hospital. He went to the bakery and threw away a cake he had baked. It had a little silver cradle on it. The bomb fell on the bakery when my mother was taking my father his breakfast,’ Misha said. ‘Eggs and cold sausage – he couldn’t stand bread.’

  He turned his face away from them puffing furiously on his cigarette. After a few moments he said: ‘You could get Meister now. From behind the factory.’

  Antonov didn’t know how to explain but it wasn’t right to shoot Meister in the back and he knew that was stupid, a target was a target.

  Misha said to Antonov: ‘Shouldn’t you be out there looking for him?’

  ‘We have been,’ Antonov said.

  ‘Yury nearly got his head blown off,’ Razin said.

  ‘You mean the svoloch missed?’ Misha’s sharp features registered disbelief.

  ‘Don’t swear,’ Antonov admonished him. ‘No, he didn’t exactly miss: I anticipated him.’

  ‘Anticipated?’ Misha thought about it. ‘You mean you ducked?’

  ‘Anticipated first. There’s no point in ducking when someone’s shooting at you. It’s always too late. But when you hear the crack then you know you’re okay because the crack is caused by the vacuum behind the bullet.’

  Misha wasn’t interested in vacuums. ‘He is good, isn’t he?’ and Antonov realised that as far as the boy was concerned it had to be a battle between aces. As far as the Red Army was concerned, come to that. And the Soviet people.

  ‘The best,’ Antonov said.

  ‘No, you’re the best. You’ll get him.’

  ‘With your help.’ Antonov smiled at him.

  ‘Then why don’t you go after him now? He won’t be expecting you.’

  ‘Want to bet?’

  Misha shrugged. You know best, the shrug said, but I think you’re wrong. Nipping out his cigarette, dropping the butt in the top pocket of the grey jacket that he had outgrown, gathering his importance around him like a cloak, Misha disappeared down the tunnel.

  ‘I suppose he’s right,’ Antonov said. ‘We’d better go and get him before he finds us.’

  ‘He won’t find us here.’

  ‘We can’t spend the rest of our lives in a sewer.’

  ‘How long will our lives last out there?’

  ‘Longer than they would at the Red October or Barricade factories.’

  ‘True.’ Razin stood up and stretched. ‘Come on, follow nanny.’

  ***

  Two days later Antonov was summoned to 62nd Army headquarters. The sergeant who found him in the tunnel said: ‘Misha told us you were here,’ a flake of disapproval in his voice.

  General Vasili Ivanovich Chuikov, forty-two, was waiting for him in his bunker in one of the ravines on the west bank.

  He was a chunky man with a soft bush of black hair, a boxer’s face and a mouthful of gold teeth. His skin had erupted in sores caused by nervous strain. Not only was he responsible for the besieged army, he had been besieged himself – by fire. German bombs had hit a cluster of oil tanks and burning fuel had swept through the dugouts on its way to the river; the torrent of flames continued for three days but Chuikov and his officers stayed put. When the Germans poured shells into the HQ they moved 500 yards to the north.

  The troops respected him: he was one of them, a frontovnik, a front-liner, and a peasant, and when he first arrived he kicked the asses of the officers who fought campaigns far from the sound of battle. Rumour had it that there was no love lost between Chuikov, commander of the 62nd Army, and General Andrei Yeremenko, overall commander of the Stalingrad Front.

  Two officers sat on either side of Chuikov. One was Antonov Krylov, chief of staff, the other, squat with a head made for butting, exuded aggression, but not even Razin, chronicler of gossip and rumours, knew who he was. Their faces were lit and hollowed by a kerosene lamp.

  The chief of staff dismissed Razin and the officers lit cigarettes, Kazbecks. The cement bunker reeked of smoke. Antonov coughed; Chuikov offered him the packet; Antonov shook his head. ‘No thank you, Comrade General.’

  ‘So you don’t smoke. Or drink?’ Chuikov’s voice was as hard as winter, but frayed with fatigue. And when Antonov shook his head: ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Kill Germans, Comrade General.’ Antonov was startled by his words: they had a ring of impudence that he didn’t feel; nerves, he supposed.

  ‘We all do that, in our different ways.’

  A radio operator handed Chuikov a message. Chuikov read it aloud. ‘Surrounded. Have a little ammunition. Will fight to the last bullet.’ Chuikov said: ‘He always had a flair for the dramatic,’ but he didn’t say who the message was from.

  He clasped bandaged hands and stared at Antonov. ‘You know the situation in the north is desperate? The Germans have taken the Tractor Plant and our forces have been cut to ribbons. The 208th, the 193rd, the 37th, they’re just numbers now. But God how they fought.’

  The third officer looked from Chuikov to Antonov. He was on the small side but he looked as tough as a ram; and yet laughter had creased the corners of his eyes.

  ‘Have you ever been in the thick of a battle?’ Chuikov asked Antonov.

  ‘No, Comrade General.’

  ‘After a while death and suffering don’t have much impact. Not when your belly is empty and your skull is full of noise. Your senses, you see, are bewildered. You smell mud and cordite and you see it and taste it and feel it. And the man next to you who has just had his jaw blown off seems as normal as a companion on an assembly line. Why, you even welcome the thrust of a bayonet. And death,’ the general said.

  ‘Come, come, Vassili,’ the tough-looking officer said. ‘This young man doesn’t want to hear that sort of thing. Save it for your memoirs.’

  ‘This,’ Chuikov said to Antonov, ‘is Comrade Nikita Khrushchev of the War Council of the Front. He is going to take you across the river.’

  Bewildered, Antonov stared at Stalin’s political emissary. Why did he have to cross the Volga with him? How could he shoot Meister over there?

  But Chuikov wasn’t to be diverted from the point he had been pursuing. ‘I understand the sergeant found you hiding in a sewer.’

  So that was it, Chuikov had no time for prima donnas who didn’t share the suffering of his men.

  ‘With respect, Comrade General,’ Antonov protested, ‘I only take shelter when Meister is looking for me.’ Wrong, that sounded as though he ran away every time Meister picked up his rifle. ‘You see,’ he explained, ‘there comes a time when I’m stalking Meister when he be
comes aware of me. Then our roles become reversed. Then I have to go to ground. It’s the same with him, when he comes looking for me and when I see him, I feel his presence then he takes cover.’

  ‘In a sewer?’

  ‘I don’t know where he’s hiding Comrade General.’ Meister had left the toy factory.

  ‘Then isn’t it about time you found out? The Soviet people are waiting to hear about your glorious exploit. Killing one German! But first,’ his tone wearily disgusted, ‘Comrade Khrushchev wants to take you on a riverboat.’

  Khrushchev said genially: ‘We shan’t be long. One day at the most. I think you will enjoy yourself.’ The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled with merriment.

  ‘May I ask –’

  ‘No you may not,’ Khrushchev said. A Stuka, Jericho siren on its undercarriage screaming, swooped overhead; no one took any notice. ‘I just wish,’ Khrushchev said, ‘that I were in your shoes.’

  ***

  Tasya was waiting for him in a wooden cottage on the east bank near a white church with a green dome.

  Her flaxen hair was braided and her lipstick glistened more brightly than he remembered and her figure seemed more defined.

  ‘Hallo, Yury,’ she said. She held out her hands. They had seen a film once in which the star, wearing a silk gown, lights shining on her hair, had made the same gesture to her lover returning from a foreign land.

  ‘Hallo.’ He held her hands and smiled, then frowned as flash bulbs exploded.

  ‘Now kiss her,’ said a cameraman.

  And she was warm in his arms and her perfume smelled different, more expensive, and her lips were against his.

  ‘Just once more,’ said another photographer.

  ‘Hey, come on,’ said a middle-aged man with bunchy hair to the cameraman. ‘Don’t forget you only illustrate the stories we write.’

  ‘Don’t forget,’ said the photographer, ‘that you only write the captions for the pictures we take.’

  They kissed again.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Antonov asked.

  ‘I came to see you.’

  ‘What was that?’ the reporter asked.

  ‘I came to see him.’

  Antonov looked around. The room, homely with rocking chairs, rush mats, a table with an embroidered runner on it, a stove and Lenin and Stalin on the walls, reminded him of the living room in Siberia; it even smelled of the same polish his mother used. It was a movie set and he and Tasya were the stars. He wished he was back on the other side of the Volga which was strange because the troops there were always wishing they were on the east bank because that was where the war ended.