The Bronze Horseman

by Paullina Simons

  It was just before nine, barely sunrise, the morning sky a dark lavender.

  “Major,” said Marazov, “is your phone working?” He put out his cigarette and stepped up to Alexander.

  “Phone’s working fine, Lieutenant. Back to your post.” He smiled. Marazov smiled back.

  “How many miles of field phone wire did Stalin demand from the Americans?” Marazov asked.

  “Sixty-two thousand,” replied Alexander, taking the last deep drag of his cigarette.

  “And your phone is not working already.”

  “Lieutenant!”

  Marazov saluted Alexander. “I’m ready, Major.” He stepped aside to the Katyusha. “I’ve been ready. Sixty-two thousand miles is a bit excessive, don’t you think?”

  Alexander threw his cigarette butt in the snow, wondering if he had time to light another one. “It’s not nearly enough. The Americans will supply us with five times that much before this war is over.”

  “You’d think they could supply you with a working telephone,” Marazov mumbled, looking away from Alexander.

  “Patience, soldier,” said Alexander. “Phone is working fine.” He was trying to figure out if the Neva was wider than the Kama. He decided it was, but not by much. He had swum the Kama to the other shore and back in heavy current in about twenty-five minutes. How long would it take him to cross the 600 meters of the Neva ice under German fire?

  Alexander concluded he would have to take less than twenty-five minutes.

  The phone rang. Alexander smiled. Marazov smiled. “Finally,” he said.

  “All good things come to those who wait,” said Alexander, his heart soaring to Tatiana and away. “All right, men,” he called. “This is it. Be ready,” he said, standing slightly behind them, his arms positioning the barrel of the Zenith upward. “And be brave.”

  He picked up the phone and flagged the go-ahead command to the corporals on the mortars. The men fired three slow-emission smoke bombs that flew across the river and exploded, temporarily obscuring the Nazi line of sight. Instantly Red Army soldiers poured out onto the ice in long, snakelike formations, one right in front of Alexander, and ran across.

  For two hours the heavy fire from 4,500 rifles did not cease. The mortars were deafening. Alexander thought the Soviet soldiers did better than expected—remarkably better. With his binoculars he spotted a number of downed men on the other shore, but he also spotted many running up the bank and hiding in the trees.

  Three German planes flew low overhead, firing at the Soviet soldiers and breaking holes in the ice—more danger zones for trucks and men to avoid. A little lower, a little lower, Alexander thought, opening machine-gun fire on the aircraft. One plane exploded; the other two quickly gained altitude to avoid being hit. Alexander loaded a high-explosive shell into the Zenith and fired. Another of the planes burst into flames. The last one gained more altitude and was now unable to fire at the ice; it flew back to the German side of the Neva. Alexander nodded and lit a cigarette. “You’re doing well,” he yelled to his men, who were so busy loading the shells and firing they didn’t hear him. He hardly heard himself: his ears were muffled to prevent hearing loss.

  At 11:30 a.m. a green flash went off as a signal for the motorized division to move across the Neva in the second wave of attack.

  The go-ahead was too early, but Alexander hoped the element of surprise would work in their favor—it might if they could move across the ice quickly. Alexander motioned for Marazov to take his men and run. “Go,” Alexander yelled. “Stay covered! Corporal Smirnoff!” One of the men turned around. “Take your weapons,” said Alexander.

  Marazov saluted Alexander, grabbed the handles of the 76-millimeter field gun, yelled to his men, and they started down the short slope and onto the ice. Two other corporals were running holding the 81-millimeter mortars. The 120-millimeter guns were left behind. They were too heavy to transport without a truck. Three soldiers in the front were running with their Shpagins.

  Alexander watched Marazov knocked down by fire, barely thirty meters onto the ice. “God, Tolya!” he shouted and looked up. The German plane was making one pass over the Neva, firing at the men on the ice. Marazov’s soldiers dropped. Before the plane had a chance to reverse and return, Alexander swung the barrel of the Zenith, aimed, and fired a high-explosive impact shell. He did not miss. The plane was low enough; it burst into flames and dead-spiraled into the river.

  Marazov continued to lie motionless on the ice. Watching him helplessly, Marazov’s men hovered by the field gun. The river was being pummeled by shell fire. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Alexander ordered Ivanov—the remaining corporal—to man the Zenith, grabbed his machine gun, jumped off the slope, and ran to Marazov, yelling for the rest of the soldiers to continue across the river. “Go! Go!” They grabbed the field gun and the mortars and ran.

  Marazov was splayed on his stomach. Alexander saw why his men had watched him with such helplessness. Kneeling by him, Alexander wanted to turn him over, but the soldier was breathing so painfully that Alexander was afraid to touch him. “Tolya,” he said, panting. “Tolya, hang on.” Marazov had been hit in the neck. His helmet had fallen off. Alexander desperately looked around to see if he could find a medic to give him some morphine.

  Alexander saw a man appear on the ice, carrying not a weapon but a doctor’s bag. The man wore a heavy woolen overcoat and a woolen hat—not even a helmet! He was running to the right of Alexander to a group of downed men near a hole in the ice. Alexander had just enough time to think, what a fool, a doctor on the ice, he is insane, when he heard soldiers behind him screaming at the doctor, “Get down! Get down!” But the gunfire was too loud, black smoke was clouding all, and the doctor, standing erect, turned around and yelled in English, “What? What are they saying? What?”

  It took Alexander an instant. He saw the doctor on the ice, in the middle of enemy fire but—more important—on the edge of the trajectory path of shells from the German side. Alexander knew he had one quarter second, a splinter of time to think. He jumped up and screamed at the top of his lungs in English, “GET THE FUCK DOWN!”

  The doctor heard immediately and dropped. Just in time. The conical shell flew a meter over the man’s head and exploded on impact just behind him. The doctor was propelled like a projectile across the ice and landed head first in the water hole.

  With clear eyes Alexander glanced at Marazov, who, with fixated pupils, was spurting blood from his mouth. Making the sign of the cross on him, Alexander picked up his machine gun and ran twenty meters across the ice, fell on his stomach, and crawled another ten to the water hole.

  The doctor was unconscious, floating in the water. Alexander tried to reach him, but the man was facedown and too far away. Alexander threw his weapons, ammo, and ruck down onto the ice and jumped in. The water was a piercing, frozen deluge and then an instant whole-body anesthetic, numbing him like morphine. Grabbing the doctor by the neck, Alexander pulled him to the edge of the hole and with all his strength hurled him out with one hand while holding on to the ice with the other. Crawling out himself, he lay breathing heavily on top of the doctor, who came to and groaned. “God, what happened?” In English.

  “Quiet,” said Alexander in English. “Stay down. We have to get you to that armored truck on the wooden boards, do you see it? It’s twenty meters. If we can get behind it, we’ll be safer. We’re out in the open here.”

  “I can’t move,” said the doctor. “The water is freezing me from the outside in.”

  Feeling the wet bitter cold himself, Alexander knew what the doctor meant. He scanned the immediate ice. The only cover was the three bodies near the water hole. Crawling across on his stomach, he pulled one body to the doctor and lay it on top of him. “Now, just lie still, keep the body on you, and don’t move.”

  Then he crawled and retrieved another body, throwing it over his back, and picked up his ruck and his weapons. “You ready?” he said to the doctor, in English.

  “Yes, sir
.”

  “Hold on to the bottom of my coat for your life. Don’t let go. You’re going for an ice skate.”

  As quickly as he could with one dead man on top of him, Alexander dragged the doctor and the additional corpse twenty meters to the armored truck.

  Alexander felt as though he were losing his hearing, the bursting noise around him filtering in and out in fits through his helmet and his conscious mind. He had to make it. Tatiana made it through the blockade, and she didn’t have a dead man covering her. I can do this, he thought, pulling the doctor faster, faster, faster amid the black, snarling clatter. He thought he heard the whiz of a low plane and wondered when Ivanov was going to shoot the fucker down.

  The last thing Alexander remembered was a whistling noise closer than he’d ever heard before, an explosion, then painless but severe impact, as he was propelled with frightening force helmet first into the side of an armored truck. Lucky I have a dead man on top of me, thought Alexander.

  2

  Opening his eyes took too much energy out of him. It was such an effort that as soon as he opened them, he closed them again and slept for what felt like a week or a year. It was impossible to tell. He heard faint voices, faint noises; faint smells trickled in: camphor, alcohol. Alexander dreamed of his first roller coaster, the stupendous Cyclone on the shores of Revere Beach in Massachusetts. He dreamed of the sand on Nantucket Sound. There was a short wooden boardwalk, and on this boardwalk they sold cotton candy. He bought three red cotton candies and ate them in his dreams, and every once in a while something would smell not like cotton candy and not like the salt water, and instead of looking forward to a roller coaster, or swimming, or playing cops and robbers under the boardwalk, Alexander started trying to place the smell.

  There were other memories, too—of woods, of a lake, of a boat. And other images—collecting pinecones, stringing together a hammock. Falling into a bear trap. They were not his own.

  Through his closed eyes and closed brain he heard soft female voices, over him, and male voices, too; once he heard something fall loudly to the floor; once the noise of a heartbeat: must be the metronome. Then he was thinking of driving through the desert as a child, sandwiched between his mother and father. It was the Mojave; it wasn’t pretty, but it was hot and the car was stuffy, yet he felt cold. Why was he cold?

  But the desert. For some reason that smell again in the desert. Not cotton candy, not salt, just the smell of—

  A river rushing morning in.

  He opened his eyes again. Before he closed them, he tried to focus. Blurry vision and all, he made out no faces. Why couldn’t he see any faces? All he saw was hazy glimpses of white. But there was the smell again. A shape bending over him. He closed his eyes and could have sworn he heard someone whisper, Alexander. Then metal clanging. Felt his head being held. Held.

  Held.

  Suddenly his brain came awake. He willed his eyes open. He was on his stomach. That’s why he couldn’t see any faces. Blurry again. The shape of something small and white. A voice whispering. What? What? he wanted to say. He couldn’t speak. That smell. It was breath, sweet breath, close to his face. A distinct smell of comfort, the kind of comfort he had known only once in his life.

  That brought his eyes into alertness. Not focus, just a steady Gaussian white blur.

  “Shura, please wake up,” the voice whispered. “Alexander, open your eyes. Open your eyes, my love.” He felt pillow lips on his cheek.

  Alexander opened his eyes. His Tatiana’s face was next to him.

  His eyes filling with tears, he shut them, mouthing, no. No.

  He had to open his eyes. She was calling him. “Shura, right now open your eyes.”

  “Where am I?”

  “At the field hospital in Morozovo,” she replied.

  Trying to shake his head. Couldn’t move. “Tatia?” he whispered. “It can’t be you.”

  He slept.

  Alexander was on his back. A doctor was standing in front of him, talking to him in Russian. Alexander concentrated on the voice. Yes. A doctor. What was he saying? It wasn’t clear. The Russian, he couldn’t understand it.

  A little while later, more clear, more comprehensible. Russian suddenly wasn’t foreign.

  “I think he’s coming out of it. How are you feeling?”

  Alexander tried to focus. “How have I been?” Slowly.

  “Not too good.”

  Alexander looked around. He was in a rectangular wooden structure with a few small windows. The beds, full of white- and red-bandaged people, were in two rows with a passageway in between.

  He tried to look at the nurses in the distance. The doctor was calling his attention back to him. Alexander reluctantly returned his gaze to the doctor, not wanting to answer any questions. “How long?”

  “Four weeks.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “Do you not remember?”

  “No.”

  The doctor sat by the bed and spoke very quietly. “You saved my life,” he said in comforting, grateful English.

  Dimly Alexander remembered. The ice. The hole. The cold. He shook his head. “Russian only. Please,” he added. “Don’t want to be trading your life for mine.”

  Nodding, the doctor said, “I understand.” He squeezed his hand. “I’ll come back in a few days when you’re a little better. You can tell me more then. I’m not here for long. But you can be sure I wasn’t going to leave you until you were out of the woods.”

  “What were you thinking . . . going out on the ice?” Alexander asked. “We have medics for that.”

  “Yes, I know,” said the doctor. “I was going out to save the medic. Who do you think you put on my back as you dragged us to the truck?”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. It was my first time at the front. Could you tell?” The doctor smiled. A good American smile. Alexander wanted to smile back.

  “Has our sleepy patient come awake?” said a cheery nurse with black hair and black button eyes, coming up to his bed, smiling, bustling, and feeling his pulse. “Hello there. I’m Ina, and aren’t you a lucky one!”

  “Am I?” said Alexander. He did not feel lucky. “Why is my mouth full of cotton?”

  “It’s not. You’ve been on morphine for a month. We’ve just begun to cut you back last week. I think you were getting hooked.”

  “What’s your name?” Alexander asked the doctor.

  “Matthew Sayers. I’m with the Red Cross.” He paused. “I was an idiot, and for that you nearly paid with your life.”

  Alexander shook his head. He looked around the ward. It was quiet. Maybe he had dreamed it. Maybe he had just dreamed her.

  Dreamed her whole.

  Wouldn’t that be something? She was never in his life. He had never known her. He could go back to the way it had been. To the way he had been.

  What was that way? That man was dead. Alexander did not know that man.

  “A shell exploded right behind us, and a fragment hit you.” Dr. Sayers said. “You rammed into the truck and fell. I couldn’t move you myself.” His Russian wasn’t very good, but he continued. “I was waving for help. I didn’t want to leave you, but . . .” The doctor glanced at Alexander. “Let’s just say we needed a stretcher for you immediately. One of my nurses came out onto the ice to help.” Sayers shook his head. “She is something, that one. Actually crawled out. I said to her, ‘Well, you’re three times smarter than me.’ “ Sayers leaned into Alexander. “And not only that, she crawled out pushing the box of plasma in front of her!”

  “Plasma?”

  “Blood fluid without the blood. Lasts longer than whole blood, freezes great, especially in your Leningrad winter. A miracle for wounded like you—it replaces fluid you lose until we can get a transfusion into you.”

  “Did I . . . need fluid replacement?” Alexander asked.

  The nurse patted him cheerfully on the arm. “Yes, Major,” she said, “you could say you needed fluid replacement.”

 
; “All right, nurse,” said Dr. Sayers. “The rule we have in America is that we don’t upset the patient. Are you familiar with that rule?”

  Alexander stopped the doctor. “How bad was I?”

  Sayers said jovially, “You weren’t looking your best. I left the nurse with you while I went—crawled,” the doctor corrected himself, smiling, “to get the stretcher. I don’t know how, but she helped me carry it. She carried the end with your head. After we got you to shore, she looked as if she could have used some plasma herself.”

  Alexander, wanting to make the doctor feel better, said, “Crawling or not, if the shell hits you, you’re done for.”

  The nurse said, “You were almost done for. A shell hit you.”

  “Did you crawl out onto the ice?” Alexander asked, feeling grateful, wanting to pat her hand.

  She shook her head. “No, I stay far from the front line. I’m not with the Red Cross.”

  Sayers said, “No, I brought my nurse with me from Leningrad.” He smiled. “She volunteered.”

  “Oh,” said Alexander. “What hospital were you with?” He felt himself starting to fade again.

  “Grechesky.”

  Alexander couldn’t help it, he groaned in pain. He couldn’t stop until Ina gave him another dose of morphine. The doctor, watching carefully, asked if he was all right.

  “Doctor, the nurse who came with you?”

  “Yes?”

  “What is her name?”

  “Tatiana Metanova.”

  A wretched sound escaped Alexander.

  “Where is she now?”

  Shrugging, Sayers replied, “Where isn’t she? Building the railroad, I think. We broke the blockade, you know. Six days after you were hit. The two fronts joined together. Immediately eleven hundred women started to build that railroad. Tania is helping out on this side—”

  “Well, she didn’t start right away,” said Ina. “She was with you, Major, for most of the time.”