To his left side it was very hot, to the right cold. He moved his left hand but Misha, hanging on, said: ‘Don’t, you’ll burn yourself.’
He shut his eyes tight, opened them wide. The stove beside the stretcher was incandescent. He moved his right hand and touched wet earth studded with stones; like fruit in a cold plum pudding, he thought. He smelled hot metal and spent explosives. He heard growling voices.
He tried to raise himself on one elbow but his head was too heavy. It sounded as though there were an insect inside it. He turned so that he was staring at the grey sky. Razin’s face came into view again, in duplicate.
Two mouths said: ‘For God’s sake don’t say, “Where am I?” I’ll tell you. In a dug-out on the banks of the Volga near the Barricade factory. In a pocket 400 by 700 metres surrounded by Fritzes on one side and floating slush on the other.’
Antonov tried to ask what had happened but his tongue filled his mouth. A recurrent dream came back to him: he was standing on a platform trying to read a poem he had written but his lips were frozen.
A wave of Stukas flew overhead. He could feel the ground shaking with the wounds of battle.
Razin, face focussing into a single image, was speaking. ‘… owe everything to Misha. I misjudged him.’
Antonov tried to concentrate as Razin, corrected from time to time by Misha, told him what had happened after the Katyusha had exploded. But the words had wings and flew away.
He closed his eyes. Ah, better. The words returned and formed pictures. He saw himself lying beneath the hesitant snowflakes, saw Misha stand up, then Razin; heard them conversing in ragged whispers.
And they were dragging him into the ruin of Gorki Theatre, beneath the stage, Razin’s flashlight picking out props – a harlequin costume, a carousel, a backdrop of a city skyline.
Now Misha was running and he was looking down upon him as he navigated tunnels, trenches, cellars, sprinted through devastated streets, dodged German sentries shivering beneath snow-dusted helmets.
Once a sentry fired a shot and Misha fell, gashing his shin on a shard of broken glass. Antonov, eyes still closed, stretched out a hand and touched the boy’s arm.
Razin’s voice continued uninterrupted as Misha struggled to his feet and, keeping low, dodged between humps of masonry. The sentry fired again; Antonov cried out but no sound issued from his lips.
Finally Misha reached the thin Soviet lines stretched along the Volga. He was challenged by two sentries, gave the password and was escorted to a command-post where the duty officer for the night was a young lieutenant flexing his authority.
The lieutenant was at first reluctant to call Chuikov on the field telephone. But Misha could be both persuasive and threatening. He knew General Chuikov, he told the lieutenant. And the general would be very angry if the sniper pitted against Meister was allowed to die beneath the stage of the Gorki Theatre in German-held territory. And who in Moscow, Misha asked, voice breaking with effort, had instructed Chuikov to make sure that Antonov was given every assistance in his duel?
The lieutenant, knowing the answer, called Chuikov. Back came the answer: assemble a civilian storm group and bring back Antonov.
The lieutenant mustered a group, one of the units formed to infiltrate the German lines during darkness when the battleground wasn’t laid bare to the enemy reconnaissance planes.
It consisted of an assault party armed with sub-machine-guns, grenades and spades sharpened for close fighting; a back-up group carrying mortars and explosives; a couple of snipers to give covering fire.
The storm group was commanded by an engineer named Gordov. His nose was flat, his eyes sunken and bloodshot, his brown beard embroidered with grey. Antonov, observing from above, sensed that the mission didn’t appeal to him: his job was to kill Germans, not to save one pampered sniper.
Misha led the group back to Gorki Theatre where Antonov saw himself lying beneath the wrecked stage beside the carousel. It had stopped snowing and occasionally moonlight, finding windows in the clouds, shone through the floorboards.
The back-up party, four of them, strapped him to a stretcher and set off towards the river while two scouts went ahead and two snipers brought up the rear.
They would have made it to the command post if a German patrol hadn’t spotted them 100 metres the wrong side of the Russian lines. And they then might have been decimated if the Germans, aware of the reputations of night assault parties, hadn’t opened fire prematurely.
As it was the two scouts were hit and the stretcher-bearers were forced to veer away from the command post. Then the back-up gunners started shooting and the stretcher-bearers escaped.
‘Misha will tell you why we’re here,’ Razin said. ‘He knows about these things.’
‘The Fritzes made another last-ditch attack,’ Misha said. His voice had shrunk since Antonov last spoke to him, but it was still sharp with flints. ‘They reached the river and cut us in two.’
‘For the third time,’ Razin said.
‘We’re with Lyudnikov’s division to the east of the Barricade factory. He’s only got 500 men left and his 650th Regiment is down to thirty-one men. To the north of the German bridgehead Gorokhov is holding out.’
‘Just,’ Razin said.
Antonov opened his lips and, like a man trying to conquer a stutter, attempted to mould words.
Razin held a tin mug to his lips. ‘Here, this might help.’ The water was cold and sweet. ‘Sugar,’ Razin explained. ‘Part of our rations. Five grams of sugar and a couple of rusks. Very fortifying.’
Water dribbled down Antonov’s chin. Was he paralysed? But some of the water oiled his tongue. When he spoke the words rolled out slowly like marbles. ‘Last-ditch … Why last-ditch?’
Misha said: ‘Because we’re about to counter-attack to the north-west and south-east of Stalingrad. They say we’ve assembled over a million troops right under the noses of the Fritzes and their allies, Rumanians, Hungarians and Italians,’ he explained. ‘I heard that we’ve brought up 900 tanks and more than 1,000 aircraft,’ he added casually.
‘And here in Stalingrad?’ The words came more easily and Antonov enjoyed them. ‘How many troops?’
‘Not many. Forty-thousand perhaps. Five hundred in this pocket. But we’ll hold out until the counter-attack comes.’
Razin said: ‘We’re holding onto the west bank of the river by our bootlaces. And when the counter-attack comes we’ll still be here encircled with the Germans.’
Another voice intruded, the deep voice of a man fortified by a beard. Antonov stared into the frame of grey sky and saw that Razin had been joined by a man who had to be Gordov. His face was pale and dirty but the black-and-grey beard looked freshly combed.
He perceived the beard as the man’s pet and decided that the flesh beneath it was very soft.
Gordov said: ‘Don’t be so defeatist, comrade. When the attack comes the vermin will have to turn and meet it and the pressure will be off us. Then we’ll get supplies, guns, ammunition.’
‘How? Through the ice floes?’
‘From the air. In any case the Volga will freeze soon.’
‘From the air! Everything they’ve dropped so far has fallen into the river or into the German trenches.’
‘You don’t have much faith, comrade. What’s your name?’
‘Winston Churchill,’ Razin said. ‘What’s it like holding a gun instead of a screwdriver?’
Old soldier versus civilian. But Antonov knew Razin was wrong to antagonise Gordov. Gordov had been invested with authority through battle: war had made him and he was brave with it. Lying there in the dug-out surrounded by battle Antonov knew many things.
He managed to turn and smile at Misha. Don’t take any notice of them, the smile said. Misha smiled back.
Gordov combed his beard, his pet, with his fingers. ‘What’s it like being a wet-nurse? Why don’t you nurse some of those poor bastards over the top?’
Misha explained to Antonov: ‘There are 400 wound
ed lying beside the river. They’ve been there in the rain and snow and they can’t get across to the other side because of the ice floes.’
‘And because of an MG 34 mounted over there.’ Gordov pointed. ‘We’ve tried getting them across in row-boats but that bastard opens up and sinks them every time. But don’t worry,’ he said to Antonov, ‘we’ll do our best to get you across,’ although he didn’t sound enthusiastic.
‘I don’t want to go across,’ Antonov said. ‘I want to stay here.’
‘Chuikov’s orders,’ Razin said. ‘According to the medic you’ve got a suspected hairline fracture of the skull. You can’t hunt Meister with a broken head.’
Razin had two faces again. A Stuka came in low, Jericho siren screaming. Its bombs fell close by, the earth shuddered, stones rattled into the dug-out.
Gordov said: ‘Those fell among the wounded.’
A snowflake hesitated over the dug-out, dying as it got near the stove. Turning his head, Antonov noticed four or five other members of the assault group warming themselves round the glowing haunches of the stove. They wore shapki with the flaps pulled over their ears and knee-length boots and their faces were bleak with exhaustion. They were passing round a mug and smoking thin cigarettes rolled from newspaper. Occasionally one of them glanced dispassionately at Antonov. Razin joined them.
Misha, following Antonov’s gaze, told him that the night before the rescue Gordov and his men, armed with pistols, knives and spades, feet muffled with sacking, had crept up to a German observation post, a wall of rubble in one corner of the devastated Red October Plant, and killed all the occupants in two minutes.
‘Night is our time,’ Misha said. The skin was tight across his cheekbones and his eyes, almost black, were deep in their sockets.
‘And day is the German’s time? Meister’s time?’
‘Day is your time too,’ Misha said.
‘We wouldn’t have found Meister in the school, would we?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. He might have been away looking for you.’
‘We wouldn’t have found him because you would have found a way of warning him. Why, Misha?’
Misha didn’t answer for a moment. For one startling moment Antonov saw ancient wisdom in his eyes. Then he said: ‘Because he’s like you.’
And Antonov felt like confessing that he was glad he hadn’t reached the school because he didn’t want to kill Meister but he couldn’t because boys must have heroes but he was glad he had confessed to himself.
But why don’t I want to kill him? he asked himself. And then it occurred to him that not so long ago none of the millions of Germans and Russians engaged in combat had wanted to fight. That they set about killing each other simply because they were told to, taking lives without compassion because they were strangers to each other.
But not Meister and I. We know each other. If I kill Meister it will be a sort of suicide. But just supposing – and here Antonov began to suspect that he was feverish – that all the men fighting to the death over the lip of the dug-out knew each other. Would the fighting stop?
He patted Misha’s hand. ‘You and I know each other don’t we, Alexander.’
‘Who’s Alexander?’ Misha asked but Antonov didn’t answer because his eyes were closed and there was a snow-smelling breeze reaching him from the black earth of the steppe and wolves were singing in the taiga and the lighted windows of the wooden cottage were beckoning him home.
***
Antonov surfaced again at dusk as they discussed the plan to knock out the German machine-gunner dominating this stretch of the Volga.
He distinguished Gordov’s bearded voice. ‘We’ve got a couple of men from Lyudnikov’s 179th Engineers to finish the tunnel. That should take three hours. We hit the vermin at 2200 hours. Any questions?’
No one questioned him, this leader re-fashioned by circumstances. ‘Don’t use guns if you can help it, we’re down to twenty rounds per person. Don’t worry about grenades – we haven’t got any left.’
How were they going to kill the machine-gunners? With sharpened spades? With their bare hands?
Antonov looked for Misha; he was asleep under a filthy blanket. He could see slits of darkening sky between planks placed over the dug-out to hide the glow of the stove from the Germans. He heard German bombers returning to base leaving the sky free. He felt frost nosing down the sides of the dug-out; in Siberia the permafrost stayed a few metres below the surface forever.
‘After they’ve fixed the MG 34,’ Razin said to Antonov, ‘we will be taken across the river in a row-boat.’
‘And have beds, and plump nurses to keep you warm,’ Gordov said, towering over the stretcher. ‘But don’t think we’re knocking out the machine-gun just for your sake: we want to get the wounded over to the east bank as well.’
In the lull after the day’s fighting Antonov could hear them sighing.
‘You must take them before me,’ Antonov said.
‘You’re more important,’ Gordov said without meaning it. ‘Chuikov says so. Moscow says so.’
Razin said to Gordov: ‘Why are you in charge? Why not the military?’
‘Because we know Tsarytsin. Its tunnels and its cellars, its secret places. Because it’s our city. Because we care.’
‘And we don’t?’
‘You might care about the Soviet Union, not about Tsarytsin. The old name for Stalingrad,’ he explained. ‘Derived from the Tartar words for yellow sand. It was built to protect the Russians from what was left of the Golden Horde. And it has been fought over many times. In the Civil War the Reds defended it against the Whites.’
‘So you’re a historian as well as an engineer?’
‘Should I be ashamed?’ Gordov stroked his beard. ‘Are you anything else but a soldier?’
Antonov said: ‘If you’re not going to use guns or grenades what are you going to use?’
‘You’ll see.’ Gordov produced a silver watch from inside his patched sheepskin jacket. ‘Five minutes. They’re putting up a diversionary barrage from the other side of the river. That usually means supplies are being rowed across. The Fritz machine-gunners will be looking for the row-boats, not us.’
The assault party were silhouettes behind the stove. One by one they disappeared. When Antonov looked round Misha was gone too.
***
‘They burned them,’ Misha said later.
‘With a flame-thrower,’ Gordov explained.
‘They were covered in flames,’ Misha said. ‘They rolled on the ground trying to put them out.’
‘They had killed many Russians,’ Gordov said.
‘They were burned alive.’
Misha’s eyes stared at Antonov in the light from the stove. His face was masked with wildness.
‘You shouldn’t have been there,’ Gordov said.
‘Roasted alive,’ Misha said. ‘They were screaming. Calling to God.’
‘It was the only way,’ Gordov said. ‘We had no grenades. We couldn’t have started a shooting match. Not against a machine-gun.’
The bottom half of the mask that was Misha’s face trembled.
Antonov said: ‘Don’t be ashamed of crying. Don’t ever be that. Don’t ever try and be tough.’
And when Misha began to cry he said: ‘That’s it, that’s real bravery,’ and stretched out his hand to the boy.
***
The row-boat slid onto the sandy mud at 2315 hours as a flare lit the river finding grey corpuscles of ice and slush in its dark blood.
German mortars and machine-guns opened up, firing at anything that moved, even ice-floes. But there were no splashes in the water opposite the dug-out.
Antonov, lying on the stretcher beside the small waves, shaded his eyes against the brightness of the flare. The river-smell was strong in his nostrils and the buzzing filled his head again.
Kneeling beside him in the mud, Razin said: ‘We’re taking off as soon as the flare has gone out.’
‘You’re not staying here?’
/>
‘You forget, I’ve got to protect you. And those plump nurses Comrade Gordov was talking about.’
The flare began to fade.
Gordov came up behind them, mud sucking at his boots. ‘We can’t waste this boat,’ he said. ‘There are six others coming with you.’
Razin said: ‘We can’t? Who’s we?’
‘Lyudnikov. If you stay here there’s room for one more casualty.’
‘Orders are orders,’ Razin said. ‘And you know where mine come from.’
‘Not heaven,’ Gordov said and Antonov asked: ‘Can we take the boy?’
‘He doesn’t want to go. In any case he’s valuable to us.’
Antonov noticed Misha standing behind Gordov. ‘No?’
Misha shook his head. ‘I’m needed here.’ He sounded very important.
The flare spent itself. Razin lifted Antonov from the stretcher and laid him in the bottom of the row-boat. Razin and the wounded sat on the bench-seats propping each other up.
Gordov, a silhouette again, pushed the boat with his boot.
Antonov, leaning on one elbow, waved and as the first ice floe ground against the hull, the lesser of the two silhouettes waved back.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Meister, cleaning his rifle beneath the two shrivelled fruit adorning the fingers of the pear tree in the school playground, considered Mankind.
No man is an Island … He had once believed Donne as he had believed everything he had been taught. No longer. Now he questioned.
Countries, cities, villages, men and women – islands, all of them. A man only interprets through his own perception therefore he is self-contained.
But, gazing down the barrel of the Karabiner, Meister conceded that we are floating islands drifting occasionally into each other’s lives. Destiny? Too grand. It was circumstance that navigated those islands; circumstance that introduced husband to wife; circumstance that propelled a young German from Hamburg into conflict with a young Russian from Siberia.
What else could it be? I learned to shoot because, family wealth apart, I had nothing to offer; Antonov learned to shoot because his father was a hunter. Hitler and Stalin went to war and became our patrons and we were matched and that wasn’t destiny, it was circumstance.
Vendetta Page 10
