He stopped walking. Tania and Yuri halted also. The rippling echoes died.
“It’s called ‘The Washing River.’ It’s one I seem to recall quite clearly at the moment. I don’t know why. I’m in a goddammed sewer and I’m scared out of my wits. But here it is.”
He began in a whisper, in a voice oddly reverent for the surroundings.
“Her hands open rich and furrowed,
hard as the rocks she crouches near.
I have walked with her, smelled her
breathing on our way to the river.
Mist clings to our faces.
We unload thick, soiled clothes.
The slap of soap and river runs through my bones.
Dirt wrings through her red fingers,
back to the quiet water.
Light flashes through her flushed tenderness.
I watch the trail of clustered suds melt downstream.
We pile up the heavy rags into our baskets and stare hack at the blueness.
Her clean cool hand rests on my neck, and for a moment there is no work.
Where are you, Mother, as I lift my palms to my face?
As I read their lines and ache?
I hold my crouched body.
I hear the dark slapping.
You run through my bones in this place.”
Fedya cleared his throat. “Well, there you are.”
Tania was stricken by the poem; she felt his voice woven directly into her. The poem, singular in the sewer’s darkness, had become for its few moments the lone reality of her senses. She’d been isolated with the words. Now, with the poem finished, it echoed inside her, slapping against her memories, the rocks in her heart.
Yuri sloshed to Fedya and clapped him on the back. “Why do you poets always hate your own work? That was beautiful. It made me miss my own mother.”
“I don’t hate it. Why do you say I hate it?”
“I had to twist your arm to tell it to me.”
“Yuri, for God’s sake. We’re in a sewer!”
“That’s our poet,” Yuri laughed. “Misses nothing.”
Yuri moved closer to Tania. He found her with his hand. “General Tania. I can drag my hand along this nasty wall almost as well as you. With your leave, I’ll take the lead for a while.”
She smiled, though Yuri could not see it. “Yes, of course. Thank you.”
She listened to the farmer’s footsteps splashing away. Fedya’s feet slogged behind her. Tania waited for him to approach. The big lad’s hand touched her, nudging her forward. She held steady against his fingers and let the touch sink into her ribs. She closed her eyes and felt the hand with her woman’s senses, almost forgotten. Something inside her, a twinge, a twist, pushed back against Fedya. She caught it, held it, and breathed once for it. Then she hid it.
They walked in unrelenting blackness for another hour. The watery echoes of their steps hurtled into the dark, scraping along the walls. Tania began to feel she was falling into an endless shaft. The stench seared her nostrils. She was light-headed; a gagging nausea choked her.
Once, her balance reeled. She reached into the dark to cross Fedya’s path. Her fingers brushed his chest.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes. Just exhausted. Every breath, it’s like sucking in a garbage heap.”
“Why haven’t we seen any manholes? I’m sure it’s dawn by now.” Perhaps he believed she knew the answer.
She exhaled, looking into a darkness so total it seemed eternal in expanse instead of half a meter above their heads.
“They’re probably covered up with debris from the bombings,” she said. “Come on. We’ll find one ahead.”
Tania took another wretched step. “Fedya,” she called out, “you go in front. I feel like following for a while. All right?”
Fedya squeezed her arm. Tania pulled herself forward.
Minutes passed. Suddenly, Fedya’s voice shot out.
“Yuri!”
Tania slid a hand against the muck of the wall to keep her balance; she held the other hand outstretched to find Fedya and Yuri. She came upon Fedya struggling in the mire. She laid both hands on his wet back. He was trying to lift Yuri from the sewer floor.
“Yuri!” he cried, his voice frantic, “Yuri, get up! Tania, he’s fainted! What do we do?”
“Quick, lift him up!” Tania helped Fedya haul Yuri out of the filth. The old man’s shirt and hair were soaked in water and excreta. Holding him close to lift him, Tania wrestled down her revulsion while her own clothes became caked.
“He’s passed out from the fumes,” Tania panted. They propped Yuri against the wall. “Damn it, he seemed fine.”
“He was,” Fedya insisted. “He is fine. He’ll be all right. He just needs a moment to wake up.”
Tania put her hand against Yuri’s wet chest. His breathing was shallow. “Hold him.” She stepped away from Yuri, measured the distance with her outstretched hand in the dark, and slapped him across his slumped face. Nothing. She slapped him again. Dampness sprayed from his cheek, sprinkling her eyes. Yuri made no sound.
“You’ll have to carry him,” Tania said. “Can you do that?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Tania thought of Fedya laboring in this sewer, with Yuri a yoke across his shoulders. It would be only a short time before he, too, would succumb to the treacherous air.
“No, wait. Let’s drag him. Put his arm around your neck.”
Fedya and Tania hoisted Yuri’s arms over their shoulders. They staggered on with Yuri’s legs limp. Tania listened for any sign of consciousness from the old farmer’s mouth.
After ten minutes of exertion and rising fear, she’d heard nothing from Yuri. She jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. His breath jumped in an unconscious wheeze.
Tania asked Fedya, “How do you feel?”
“I can go on.
Tania walked on and thought, I can’t. I’m exhausted and I want to throw up. Another few minutes of this and I’ll be on my knees, if not my face, in the shit. I’m sorry, Yuri.
She pivoted Yuri to the wall and took Fedya’s hands off him to let him slide to a sitting position. She held Yuri’s head up.
“Take off his shirt,” she said.
“Why? So he can breathe better? That doesn’t make sense.”
“No. Under his tunic he’s wearing a farmer’s longjohn. Take off your army shirt and put it on.”
Fedya snapped back. “We’re leaving him here? To die in a sewer? No! No! I can carry him! You’re not leaving him!”
Tania leaned against the opposite wall. Fedya, she thought, you’ll die here, too. So will I.
She was spent, too tired even to vent her frustration at ending her life beneath the streets of Stalingrad, in the dark and filth instead of out in the light, in the sound and heat of battle. Or I might have died old and in bed, surrounded by my children. Dying is blackness. Dying smells rotten, too. Look at me, where I am. Maybe I’m dead already.
She walked past Fedya, listening to her own stumbling footsteps. Her senses careened. She caught herself against the wall. Her stomach convulsed and she vomited on the wall. The sound of the spasm flew off like bats into the emptiness.
Tania righted herself and a weakness ascended in her legs. She recognized it as her death knell. Without intending it, she turned from the wall and walked, at least to die moving. The weakness tried to trip her. From behind came the splashing of quick footsteps. A hand appeared and held her up. The grasp bore her with a strength she thought could no longer exist in this hole. She reached to take Fedya’s arm and felt that he was carrying Yuri’s undershirt.
Tania walked in silence, unaware of time. She forgot her notions of traveling for more hours to reach any particular location in the city above. Her steps were measured now against her remaining strength. Her only goal was unfettered air, sunlight, and unechoed sound. Her feet grew leaden, and her breath came slow and labored. She walked stiffly with Fedya for her crutch; her concentration
was focused in her calves and thighs to resist the coming end of her power. She dragged herself onward, as if in leg irons, and clung to the arm around her middle. The blackness of the pipe threatened to infect all of her, blotting her out of consciousness, completing the darkness. She stumbled on, ticking off the list of her departing senses: I can no longer smell the tunnel, she thought. I can no longer feel my hands or Fedya’s arm. I can no longer hear my footsteps. I can...
Something gleamed in the blackness ahead. My death, she thought. There it is. At least there will be light.
She lunged away from Fedya. A white spear twinkled ten meters ahead, shooting down at an angle. Tania thrust her face into the shaft of light as if it were a gushing fountain. Puffs of dust danced inside the beam, wandering slowly through it, tiny ballerinas floating across a spotlighted stage.
Tania heaved her chest against the wall to feel feverishly with her hands. She leaped to the other side.
“Here it is!” she croaked. “A ladder! It’s a manhole.” Fedya lurched forward toward the ladder. “Let’s go.” She felt him ready himself for the climb, and she reached out to stop him. The touch of the ladder, of salvation, had rekindled some of her strength.
“No. Put on Yuri’s shirt,” she whispered. “Calm down. We’re going to be all right. But I . . .” she smelled the foulness of her surroundings as if for the first time. She reeled and steadied. “I must go up first.”
“I suppose I’m not to argue with you about these things, am I?” he said, pulling off his Red Army tunic.
“No. I’ll signal you to come up. Walk away from the manhole. If I find Germans up there, they may climb down to see if anyone’s with me. Stay silent. If you hear them coming down, lie flat. They’ll fire soon as they drop. They certainly won’t chase you down here. Find another manhole and try again.”
Tania laid her hands on the ladder’s rungs. She climbed two steps. Fedya touched her leg.
“Tania.”
“No. Walk away.”
She waited for him to move beyond the ladder. She climbed to the manhole cover and shoved it aside as quietly as she could.
Daylight pushed in on her eyes. She ducked her head below the level of the street and blinked until she could see.
When her eyes adjusted, she raised her head slowly. They had been lucky. The manhole was shielded on all four sides by ripples of rubble. The facades of a row of large stone buildings had teetered into the street here and crumbled on all sides of the manhole, somehow failing to cover it. Tania clambered out of the hole and lay on her belly in the debris. She gulped the morning air. She heard nothing but the faraway pops of rifle fire. She hung her head into the manhole and said softly into the dark, “Come up.”
Fedya climbed onto the street. He inhaled in great grateful swallows. She saw how filthy Fedya was, how scabrous was the front of Yuri’s longjohn shirt. He wore the boots and olive khakis of the Red Army, but she hoped the longjohn and the overall condition of his dress would hide him from scrutiny. She looked at herself lying in the dust, coated like Fedya with a brown, rusty crust. She was just a young girl covered in shit.
The two climbed to the top of the rock pile. To the north was a line of Germans holding tins in front of a mess tent. Fedya stiffened at the sight of the Nazis as if he wanted to duck back into the debris. Tania hissed at him to stay straight up.
“No sudden moves. We’re behind enemy lines. We can’t run or crawl out We’ll have to walk out.”
Fedya met her eyes. She smacked her dry lips once.
He grabbed her hand. “No, Tania. You’re kidding.” She shook loose his grip. “Tania,” he pleaded, “nobody is that crazy.”
She scrabbled down the mound, raising a dust cloud. At the bottom she called up to Fedya, frozen with his hands out from his sides, “Come on!” She waved him down with big gestures. “We’ve got to eat. I’m exhausted. I’m starving. This could be our last chance for the next twenty-four hours.”
Fedya held his ground on the rubble heap.
“They won’t know we’re in the Russian army,” she called. “We’re not carrying weapons. We’re walking around in the open. They’ll just think you’re some poor local worker who got latrine duty today and is taking a break for lunch.”
“What about you?” he asked down to her.
“Me?” Tania shrugged. “I guess they’ll figure I’m some whore who’s working with you for food. Who cares? They’ll make up their own stories so long as we keep our mouths shut.”
Fedya slapped his hands on his hips in resignation. He picked his way down with measured strides. Such a large man, she thought, covered in crap and taking such small steps.
Fedya landed at her side. He frowned.
“You’re the devil. Do you know that?”
“I can be. Come on. Say nothing.”
They walked across open ground and took places at the end of the mess line. Impatient soldiers tapped their knives and forks on their plates.
For these sticks to be standing about waiting for mess like this, she thought, we’re far behind their lines. They’re acting like they’re very safe here.
The line moved a few paces. Tania looked into Fedya’s face. He stared at his boots, still caked but now covered in dust. He looked like a peasant from the villages, not a poet from Moscow. “Was im Himmel?”
A Nazi pinched his nose in disgust. He stomped to Fedya and pushed him out of line, pointing for Tania to move also.
The two stood several paces back. They waited for the last soldier to disappear into the tent. They crept forward, obedient looks on their faces. Once inside, the cook tossed them plates and hurriedly scooped up knockwurst and kraut.
Fedya whispered while they walked into the tent, “Let’s eat outside.”
“No, I don’t want to draw attention.”
“Attention?” he said in quiet amazement. “Tania, we smell like camels. What more attention could we get?”
She shushed him and moved ahead. Around them a hundred Nazis sat eating. At each table, heads spun about when they passed. Fingers hurried to noses on appalled faces.
They found an open table and sat quickly. They shoveled the food into their mouths, afraid they would be thrown out before they could slake their hungers.
Midway through their plates, an officer approached. He held a kerchief daintily over his nose and spoke to them through the cloth. His voice became shrill. Tania and Fedya got up slowly.
They did not seem to move fast enough for the officer. The man lowered the kerchief and pulled a leather crop from his belt. He swung the crop across Fedya’s back. Soldiers at neighboring tables applauded and laughed.
The German, his face growing crimson, struck Fedya again, then leaned across the table and hit Tania on top of her head.
Fedya leaped to his feet and shoved him back. “Leave her alone, prostitute!”
The officer regained his balance and looked deep into Fedya’s eyes. He slid the crop slowly into his belt. He unbuttoned the holster for his pistol.
“Ah.” He smiled thinly.
The officer stepped back and drew his sidearm with a dramatic, sweeping motion. He glanced around the silent tent. He raised the pistol to Fedya’s heart and looked around the room again. The hundred faces were still.
The grinning Nazi interpreted the silence of his fellows as their tacit permission. He was justified in the execution of these two incredibly odious Russians.
Tania stepped to stand beside Fedya.
“Da svidanya, Russ,” the German said.
A commotion erupted in the kitchen. The din of pots and pans banging on the floor spilled into the mess tent. The officer turned from Fedya.
A short, chubby man in a greasy apron burst into the mess hall. “Halt! Halten Sie, bitte!” he shouted. The man rumbled through the seated soldiers to jump in front of Fedya and Tania, his arms outstretched. In one hand he held high a wooden serving spoon.
The cook pleaded with the officer in stammering German. He pointed to Fedya an
d Tania, then to himself, and hung his head. The Nazi lowered the pistol and shouted at the cook. The round little man cringed, wrinkling his dirty apron. Then he snapped upright and clubbed Fedya’s chest with the spoon. With his other hand he twisted Tania’s ear, turning her around. He kicked her in the rear and shoved Fedya in the chest again with the spoon to herd them toward the kitchen, hollering in Russian. Over his shoulder, the cook called in an appeasing tone, “Danke. Danke schön, mein Herr. Danke.”
The cook shoved Fedya through the kitchen door and pushed Tania behind him. Still shouting and cursing, he marched them out of the kitchen to a small, garbage-filled courtyard.
Once outside, the cook quieted. He whispered urgently in Russian, “Who are you? What are you doing in my mess hall?”
War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] Page 8