Kyiv (Spoils of War)

by Graham Hurley

  She shook her head, ashamed, wondering whether to beg water from one of the nearby shops, and at that moment she knew she’d never watch another carnival in her life without remembering this endless river of broken bodies. Some men had walked until their feet were swollen and bleeding. Now they limped barefoot, with their boots slung over their shoulders. Others had no shoes or boots at all, and staggered past in a crazed rattle of tea cans hanging from their belts.

  Yuri had one eye on the sky. Earlier, Bella had caught the whine of an air-raid siren, but no aircraft had appeared. This time there was no warning, but the soldiers, alert to the sounds of the battlefield, were following Yuri’s pointing finger. Bella shaded her eyes against the glare of the morning sun, searching the depthless blue. Then she saw a neat line of planes, gull-winged, high cockpits, peeling off, one after the other, into a near vertical dive. She watched, fascinated, until it began to occur to her that their targets were these men, hundreds of them, thousands of them, and as the planes howled ever closer, releasing their black little eggs, she took Yuri’s hand and began to run.

  ‘Stukas,’ he said. It was almost a whisper.

  The soldiers were running, too, scattering in every direction, swarming onto the pavements on both sides of the boulevard, desperate to find shelter. Then came the first explosions, and the raw punch of the shock waves, and men falling left and right, cut to pieces by the flying shrapnel. Yuri had pushed Bella into a shop selling flowers, and Bella found herself face down in a display of roses, shaking uncontrollably as the Stukas walked the bombs ever closer. The last one exploded on the boulevard outside. Cobblestones erupted and shards of glass were everywhere from the shattered window. One of them had caught Yuri high on his thigh, and he was staring at the blood beginning to seep through his torn trousers.

  ‘Here,’ the woman who owned the flower shop was offering a towel.

  Bella widened the tear in Yuri’s trousers. The wound was only skin-deep. She pressed the towel against it, letting the shopkeeper extract a rose thorn from her cheek. We’ve been lucky, she thought. This could have been so much worse.

  Then, like a passing shower of rain, the Stukas had gone and the sky was clear again. Everywhere soldiers were picking themselves up, brushing themselves down, checking for damage. Some of them were bleeding, caught in the hail of shrapnel, and one man propped against the base of a lamp post seemed to be in shock. His eyes were glassy, and he had trouble keeping his head in one place. He looked drunk, totally incapable, and when another man stooped to offer help, he tried to push him away.

  Moments later, Bella turned to find Yuri staring at a body in the gutter. The soldier must have taken the full force of a bomb blast because an arm and a shoulder had gone, and the side of his face had been ripped off, exposing his jawbone and a line of yellow teeth beneath. Bella stared at him for a long moment, aware of the yells of the Commissars, and the shuffle of the men forming up again on the broken cobblestones, and the column beginning to shuffle slowly away. They’ll leave him behind, she thought. There’ll be no one to give him a name, no one to bury him, no one to mourn his passing.

  She lingered a moment longer, then returned to the flower shop. The woman who owned it had been watching her at the kerbside. Bella had no money, but it didn’t matter. The woman selected a single rose, gave it to Bella, gesturing towards the body in the gutter. Then she cut more stems, at least a dozen, until Bella’s arms were full.

  ‘The planes will be back,’ she muttered. ‘Hurry.’

  The woman was right. Yuri and Bella returned to the church, after laying the roses on body after body along Khreshchatyk. Yuri disappeared, limping across the graveyard, but Bella hung on beside the gate, hearing the muted roar of engines in the far distance, then staring up at the formations of bombers flying low over the city. These were bigger aircraft, twin-engined, and there was nothing but a couple of hundred metres between themselves and the targets below, no anti-aircraft fire, none of the big barrage balloons she’d seen in photos from London, nothing to disturb whoever was responsible for releasing the bombs.

  Watching yet more of the black eggs tumbling from the sky, Bella tried to imagine what it must be like to be up in aircraft like these, spoiled for choice when it came to targets. Would you go for buildings designated on some map or other? Army headquarters? Power stations? Water installations? Or would you be overwhelmed by the temptation of the long brown snake still heading for the river, enemy flesh and blood, dozens of men a single black egg could destroy in a heartbeat? She turned away as the first bombs found their targets and the ground beneath her feet began to tremble, sickened by what she’d seen in Khreshchatyk. The men above her are playing God, she thought. And she hoped God was watching.

  Mercifully, none of the Luftwaffe bombers seemed interested in the old town. Bella found Yuri on his knees in the room that served as his study, his hands pressed together, gazing up at the Christ figure on the wall. His lips were moving in a silent prayer, and he appeared oblivious to her presence in the room. She took a step back, not wanting to disturb him, and her gaze strayed to a note he’d scribbled to himself, lying on his desk. ‘I know there is a God and I see a storm coming. If he has a place for me, I am ready.’

  She stared at it a moment. She knew she’d seen this quote before, but she couldn’t remember where.

  ‘Abraham Lincoln,’ Yuri had crossed himself and struggled to his feet. ‘Just before the American Civil War.’

  ‘And you see a storm coming?’

  ‘Of course. In fact, it’s already here.’ He gestured upwards. The drone of the bombers was beginning to fade.

  ‘And you’re ready? To die?’

  ‘I’m ready for the Germans. It might be the same thing. None of us know. Which I imagine is the point Lincoln was making.’

  Bella nodded. This was a new Yuri, somehow different. He’d told her enough about the last decade to suggest that nothing else could ever surprise him. He’d survived the famine, and the attentions of the NKVD. Thanks to Khrushchev he was still at his desk, still writing, still alive. Yet something had changed.

  ‘Was it just now?’ she asked. ‘In Khreshchatyk? The Stukas? The bombs? The bodies?’

  He shrugged. He didn’t want to answer.

  ‘Are you afraid, Yuri?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘What else, then?’

  ‘I’m resigned. I know what happens next. And I think I know what happens after that.’

  ‘And you can do nothing about it?’

  ‘I can pray.’ He gestured towards the figure on the door.

  ‘And that helps?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Because he has a place for you?’

  ‘Because he has a place for all of us.’

  Bella held his gaze. Then she heard footsteps outside. Moments later, after a soft knock at the door, she was looking at Glivenko. Blood was seeping through a bandage wound around his forehead. He offered her the briefest nod of acknowledgement. His business was with Yuri.

  ‘Done?’ Yuri asked.

  ‘Da.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Da.’

  There was a moment of silence.

  ‘You got caught in the bombing?’

  ‘Da. And so did Larissa.’

  ‘She’s all right?’

  ‘No.’ He touched his own arm. ‘I think it’s broken. They’ll need to set it.’

  He hesitated a moment longer, his eyes on Yuri, then he shrugged and left. Yuri was already at his desk. From one of the drawers he produced a thick handful of manuscript, handwritten. He flicked over a page or two, nodding, then tidied the pile and searched for an envelope big enough to take it all.

  ‘What’s that?’ Bella nodded at the bundle.

  ‘A book. A novel. Beginnings. Maybe more than that. These creatures grow in the making. That’s the magic.’

  ‘Creatures?’

  ‘The book. The characters. I’m writing about the Pechersk Monastery. You know it?’ Be
lla shook her head. ‘It’s down by the river. Way back the monks used to live in caves above the water. Then they built the monastery and after that came the Cathedral. The book’s about the Cathedral. Why it was built, how it was built, what it did for the men who worshipped there.’

  ‘And the Cathedral’s still standing?’

  ‘Of course. It’s survived nearly a thousand years, and maybe that’s the point. Faith lives forever. In here…’ he touched his bony chest, ‘… in the Cathedral of the Dormition, and I hope in here.’ His hand closed around the manuscript.

  ‘So what will you do with it?’

  ‘I’ll finish it. One day.’

  ‘I meant now.’

  ‘I have to hide it.’

  ‘Am I allowed to know why?’

  ‘Because everything will change. Everything. Here. In the city. Everywhere. We love the Russians going, but we should be careful what we wish for.’

  He shot her a look and then picked up the manuscript and asked her to accompany him into the church. In a far corner, towards the altar, he knelt over a paving stone that proved to be loose. He inserted his long fingers where the mortar had crumbled and prised the stone up. Beneath was a void.

  ‘Here—’ he gestured for Bella to hold the stone upright. In the dim light through a neighbouring window, she watched him slip the thickness of the envelope into the hole and then make sure the fit was snug.

  ‘You might be tucking in a baby,’ she said.

  ‘You’re right.’ He reached into the hole and gave the envelope a final pat. ‘Sleep well.’

  *

  Ilya Glivenko took his final swim in the river in the late afternoon. He slipped into the murky brown water fully clothed and waded deeper and deeper until the muddy bottom fell away. In the distance, beyond the island, he could see the endless column of Soviet troops still crossing the faraway bridge, a brown smudge against the yellows and golds of autumn. Smoke from the air raids hid most of the city and every breath he took brought the bitter, acrid taste of dozens of fires.

  He could feel the tug of the current now, and he rolled onto his back, surrendering to the river, just another piece of debris drifting south. Pillowed by the water, he gazed up through the smoke at the blueness of the sky, wondering what the city’s birdlife had made of the attention the Luftwaffe had been paying the city.

  Only weeks ago, before he’d left for England and the real work started, he’d spend his evenings fishing for carp and eels on the riverbank, and part of Kyiv’s magic had been the company of storks, motionless in the shallows, sentries at the city’s gates. They always caught far more than he ever did but he loved the moment when, sated, they eased the stiffness from their legs, and stretched their wings, and flapped and flapped until – improbably – they were airborne. The way they cheated the laws of gravity, climbing slowly into the golden dusk, never ceased to amaze him but today, hard as he looked, he could see no sign of them. Like the soldiers, they’d had enough of smoke and ruin. Very wise.

  The island lay ahead and already he could see movement. A couple of men had emerged from the treeline. One of them, spotting him, began to wave. Vassily, he thought, a Kazakh who’d made his way to Moscow, strong as an ox and good in a crisis. As far as Glivenko could make out, he’d never bothered with formal schooling, but he had a quick intelligence and an astonishing memory. At first, the Army had wasted his talents, assigning him to a mortar section, but men Glivenko trusted spoke well of him and he’d managed to wangle a transfer to the sappers. Nearly a year later, Vassily still regarded wireless transmission as sorcery, but he understood the principles and had mastered the technical diagrams and could wire a detonator quicker than any man Glivenko knew.

  Now he waded into the shallows to help the older man out. Glivenko shook the water from his hair and mopped his face with his hands.

  ‘You look like a rat,’ Vassily was laughing. ‘Be careful, Ilya Ilyanovich. If times get tough, we might have to eat you.’

  The three of them left the riverbank and followed a path into the trees. Vassily stopped to light two cigarettes and gave one to Glivenko. Glivenko sucked smoke deep into his lungs. He wanted to know about the test transmissions.

  ‘They’re fine. They’re good.’

  ‘All of them?’ Glivenko couldn’t believe it.

  ‘All except the Big House. I’ll be back there tonight. I think it’s one of the valves but I’m not sure.’

  ‘And the other lads? The ones who are staying behind? You’ve talked to them?’

  ‘Of course. They’ll keep an eye on everything. They’re saying four days, maybe five. Give the bastards time to move in, make themselves comfortable, then…’ He made a plunging movement with both hands, then grinned. ‘You’re shivering, Ilya Ilyanovich. It must be the excitement.’

  14

  FRIDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 1941

  Moncrieff was desperate for water, for fluid, for lubrication. Moments of consciousness came and went, brief spasms when he surfaced from the depths of oblivion and tried to swallow, coax a little saliva into his mouth, turn his head, lick his lips. But nothing happened. He was naked under the single sheet. His wrists and ankles were manacled to the frame of the bed. His bursting head appeared to be in a clamp of some kind. Unable to move in the darkness, he could only dream of his parched mouth upturned to the rain that pattered at the window. Please God, he muttered, give me water.

  Later, he’d no idea when, his eyes opened again. They felt gummy, congealed, no longer part of him, and the pain in his head had intensified. Every heartbeat, achingly slow, sent the agony to every corner of his body, jolts of intense pain that he began to dread. Most frightening of all, he had no recollection of what had happened, of how he’d arrived at this place. His memory had gone. It simply didn’t work. And no matter how hard he tried, he could coax no logic from events. Someone must have attacked him. But where? And how? And why? Days ago, or maybe weeks ago, or maybe even longer, he’d probably been in perfect working order. Now, he could barely remember his name. The Tam Moncrieff he’d always taken for granted appeared to have packed his bags and left, and now he’d become a vagrant, a stranger, a man with no story, no past, no future, squatting in the remains of his own body.

  He drifted off again, numbed. Nothing awaited him, no dreams, no nightmares, no visions, just an intense shade of black, formless, all-enveloping, that began to soften the pain in his head and ease the yearning for water. This must be death, he thought vaguely. How strange.

  Then came a voice, male, maybe English.

  ‘Here. Drink.’

  He opened his eyes again. He could feel a straw gently inserted between his lips, and he sensed a stripe of pale light between the curtains at the window. The face hanging over him was masked by a black balaclava. The eyes were watching him. The mouth was slightly open. Death, he thought again. My guardian angel.

  He sucked greedily at the straw. Expecting water, he found himself trying to swallow something more viscous, with a faint edge of bitterness. A spasm of coughing threatened to choke him. He spat the liquid out, fighting to breathe, and he felt the pressure of the head clamp ease.

  ‘Sit up.’

  He forced himself into a sitting position and began to vomit. The face above him didn’t move. Then came the straw again.

  ‘More. Drink more. Good for you.’ Foreign, not English at all.

  ‘No,’ Moncrieff shook his head.

  ‘More,’ the voice insisted. ‘Better this than the needle.’

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘Good for you.’

  Moncrieff eyed him, dimly aware that there were questions he should be asking, protests he should be making, but his mind – untethered – refused to work. Pain he could cope with, just. It was, after all, the crudest evidence that he was still alive. But the emptiness, the void where his brain had once been, was beyond explanation. Not only had he lost the ability to think, and to remember, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Zombie, he thought, settling back again
, the reek of vomit in his nostrils. Moments later, or perhaps minutes, or maybe longer, he felt a prick in his upper arm and a faint burning sensation.

  Then he was gone again.

  *

  Kyiv. The first German units burst into the city as the sun rose through the morning mist, column after column of Panzer tanks, their engines roaring, their tracks grinding over the cobblestones, each commander erect in his open turret. The streets were empty and within hours the swastika was flying from the citadel.

  Bella and Yuri had been out since dawn. Larissa had been taken to a makeshift first-aid post off the Krillovskaya, a major street in the city centre near the offices of the newspaper, and Bella found her at a table with a group of other injured, her arm in a makeshift splint, staring at a bowl of kasha. Yesterday, she said, she’d been out in the streets with a photographer. Forewarned about the approaching Stukas, they’d been hunting for pictures when the first bombs began to fall.

  The photographer had ignored Larissa’s pleas to take cover and had been trampled underfoot by Russian troops flooding off the boulevard. Larissa, with the help of a policeman, had done her best to drag him to safety but the third bomb to fall had killed him. Larissa, in her own estimation, had been lucky. A broken arm and lacerations. Nothing more. This morning, the doctor in charge at the first-aid post was sending her to the city’s main hospital to have the break properly set. Thankfully, it was her left arm. She could still write with her other hand.

  ‘You’re going back to work? Afterwards?’

  ‘Of course. What else would I do?’

  Now, past noon, Bella and Yuri were watching an endless procession of Wehrmacht trucks and marching soldiers choke the streets around the city centre. The air was blue with exhaust fumes and the stink of cheap petrol, and houses and shops emptied as people came out on the streets to watch. Uniformed motorcyclists danced through the traffic, machine guns bolted to their handlebars, and the heavy guns that had been pounding the Red Army for months ground across the cobblestones, dragged by huge workhorses.