The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02]

by David L. Robbins

  She undoes her ankles from behind him. He tilts forward to put her feet on the grass. She lowers her arms to his thinned biceps. He’s leaned out from months of nerves and bad sleep. Bandy hasn’t noticed how much he’s dropped overseas until now, with his wife against him, with her familiar shape and size to measure against. She kisses him with a tender mouth, not the passionate devour he’s longed for over every inch of his three-day journey home from Europe.

  She looks up the road, at the disappearing green staff car.

  “You pass anybody on the road in?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “No one knows you’re here?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Inside.”

  He has to double back for his duffel bag.

  “I want to hear all about it,” she says, heading for the screen door with him closing at her heels. She says this to mean she wants to hear about his trip home and the war and everything that was not in his letters, later. Hurrying through the long yard lugging his bag, Bandy lets his eyes gather in his home. The tobacco barn is empty, the sun shines through the slats to show him the Fordson tractor’s out. His dad or an uncle is on it, he thinks he can hear it down the hollow. The fields are prettiest this time of year, the barley and vetch cover has been plowed under, the raw earth is harrowed and smoothed. It’s all anticipation and preparation right now. Spring. The seedlings will go in soon, Bandy and his clan on their knees in the soil.

  Victoria gets up the porch steps in front of him. Bandy follows the bare patches of her, which are familiar to him like nothing else in the world, but right now are exotic and driving. Elbows, arms, and neck, exposed outside her dress, are naked just for him. Her calves and Achilles tendons stretch and relax with every stride. She looks over her shoulder to check and grin, he feels on his lips her profiled cheek. Bandy in his mind connects these common places of his wife into a nude whole. He’s come back to his land and his wife and in his excitement they blend, her back is fretted pond water, her hair is loam, the spring-minted oak trees swish in her skirt. He’s home.

  Bandy’s house thrills him like his wife, familiar and wanting to leap into his arms. But objects can wait to welcome him. Victoria leads him up the stairs.

  In the bedroom he drops his duffel. Victoria halts in front of the bed. She turns on her heels to him, arms at her sides. Bandy does not break stride. He pushes her shoulders to the mattress and tumbles on top. The bedsprings bounce and when the two are motionless enough to not knock teeth they kiss as if to drink from the other.

  In the kiss the question arises if they will take each other’s clothes off or if they will remove their own. Bandy tugs at Victoria’s buttons, but clumsily; she answers the quandary and takes care of it herself. This sends Bandy snatching at his own pinnings. In under a minute they are flesh and did not stop the kiss to do so, with smashed lips and married giggles at the haste and mess they make of undressing.

  Their lovemaking is no different from their greeting minutes before in the front yard. Victoria wraps her husband in arms and legs, she pulls him to her so hard he can’t move well at all. For Bandy, he doesn’t notice any strictures on him. His wife’s embrace and aroma is wide open, even the pillow filling his vision is a vista of cool green. There’s time and peace and a free world now. He’s in his own country and this is his bed and his woman, and they’re all gripping him, begging him to plunge deeper, as deep as he likes, and stay.

  Bandy finishes quickly. This leaves him a little desperate and confused, but Victoria holds him her tightest. She whispers, “Oh, Charley,” and acts like he has given her a great gift. Everything slows. He lies in her clasp, what more can he need?

  Two days ago flying out of Germany, he knew once he got home he’d never leave again. He’d rejected it all, figured he’d done his stint for fame and history, he’d wallowed long enough in every vomitive thing war and glory could spit out. Now, barely set foot in his own house, he looks inside himself expecting to see more of the same absoluteness, anticipating the same comfort from inside that crosses his skin from his wife and the warm mussed sheets. After all, he’s home, just like he wished. But it’s not there. He’s not so sure. Damn it! he thinks. He feels burgled. This rises out of nothing Victoria’s done wrong, nothing he can point to. Everything is perfect. He wants to bang his head against the pillow but that would look stupid and he’d have to explain it so he stays limp. He looks at his wife; he is just too damned used to seeing her as someone to love and come home to, to rest beside for the upcoming journey. It’s his nature, and man relies on nature. Seeds, if you plant them right, will always grow. Babies are made just like this, no other way. Christ, everything’s nature, even when it’s something a reasonable man would do everything in his power to change. Bandy can kill. Bandy can leave this woman and this land again. His nature. But can’t he take a break from this knowledge, can’t he have a rest? Does it have to report to him right now, in bed, just done?

  Christ, he thinks.

  But the phone doesn’t ring and nothing sends him out of his wife’s arms. Hitler is finished. Japan can kiss his ass, he’s not going, not even for the big finale. Bandy will tend his crops here in Tennessee. They can start a whole new war, for all he cares. Though they probably will. He makes Vic that promise. He’ll try to stay, try as hard as a man can. It’s all he can do. It’s not much, but he’ll try to stick. The desperation in his loins fades. He feels honest for the moment.

  In his head Bandy sounds confident—but it’s the same voice that told him he would never leave once he got back to Tennessee and he knows not to trust it.

  In a little while she’s going to see the pink scar an inch below his nuts. That’s when she’ll ask. She’ll pull the covers up, sit against the headboard, and ask.

  She runs a hand down his spine. Her thighs remain strapped around his. She rocks. Bandy sways on her, as though she is his cradle. Victoria begins to hum in his ear, a lullaby.

  ~ * ~

  * * *

  April 30, 1945, 4:00 p.m.

  Charlottenburg, Berlin

  “it’s over,” misha mutters.

  Ilya looks above the ruined structures lining the boulevard where he and Misha walk. The sounds of battle are no longer on all sides of them, war’s pulse is gone from Berlin. Now there is only a heartbeat at the center, four kilometers east, where the Reichstag is under siege.

  To make sure the Red troops fight hard to the end, Chuikov has handed out nine banners to the elite regiments of his Eighth Guards. Whoever waves the Red flag from the roof of the Reichstag will be forever declared a Hero of the Soviet Union. Chuikov has not invited his punishment brigade to participate in the final assault. History will not be made by Ilya and Misha. So Misha says with cigarette smoke, at least for the two of them, it’s over.

  The echoes of Katyushas and heavy artillery rebound through the rubble to Ilya’s ears. Gray clouds ascend from flames and the wrack of speeding metal against brick and concrete. The last battleground is marked by these. Ilya is drawn in their direction, he wants to be in the thick of the fray. The SS is putting up a furious last-ditch defense. Ilya does not wonder why. It simply seems in the course of things. Momentum. Fight is what the Germans and Russians have done for the past four years. Ilya can’t imagine this city, or any place, without these noises and smoke. Until he can, it’s not over.

  He does not recall peace, that time and place without war. He knows he’s lived in it before but cannot bring up the sense of peace, like a long-dead loved one whose face you recollect but not the voice. There was once a home and parents. A garden and school. Games and hunting. Girls, good Russian girls. Rest. But all this is in a vault, locked behind more vivid, riled-up memories. He doesn’t try to reach back to peace. Too much separates him from it.

  The struggle for the Reichstag seethes overhead. Ilya walks beside Misha in this part of Berlin where the little man says the war is over. Ilya is given the chance to compare. Here, soldiers steal and bully. Civilians cower and hand o
ver whatever’s demanded: watches, food, alcohol, jewels, their homes, their wives and daughters. Resistance is punished. Soldiers ride bicycles, drink and stumble publicly, they drag women by the neck into the ruins or drub on doors to be let in. Ilya passes through and longs to take nothing, he’s seen enough of revenge. He feels out of place walking in the open down Charlottenburg’s streets. He’s more comfortable with artillery than this kind of bedlam.

  Misha wants to join in the final fight too, but for a different reason. The little man still wants his officer’s commission back. He’s been stuck a sergeant at the end of the war. He’s angry that there will be no more chances to redeem himself. Misha wants to be career military and is afraid the Red Army won’t return him to his old position if he finishes up no better than he has. He figures he’s done his penance. It’s not fair. He and Ilya could have taken one of Chuikov’s battle flags right to the top of the Reichstag. They’ve gone through worse. He’s mad at Ilya for being made a lieutenant.

  On the avenue, the lawlessness intensifies every minute. Calls of Frau, komm! mewl from the soldiers like from feral cats. There is no authority to curb it. Ilya and Misha, a lieutenant and sergeant, are ignored by the men. Some of those on the prowl are higher ranking than Ilya. The battle beckons both of them away: Ilya, to the familiarity of the only world where he is a true denizen; and Misha, for one last grab at glory and attention. Misha grows surly. His scar flushes when he gets this way, like a thermometer. The power in this vanquished street, the free rein to despoil the defeated, lures Misha, invites his restiveness in place of the battle. So far, Misha has only stolen more watches.

  “Stop looking up,” the little man says, irritated. “It’s over. They’ll take the Reichstag by morning.”

  Ilya shrugs. “Then what?”

  “Then we win.”

  Ilya kicks a brick aside.

  “Then what?”

  Misha speeds his gait to pull away. “No, no, Ilya. I don’t want to play word games. I’m tired. It’s over. We win. We go home.”

  Misha takes several more steps, then stops, hands on hips. This halts Ilya. A soldier jangles past on a beat-up bicycle.

  “All right,” Misha says, flicking away his cigarette. “All right, I’ll play. You want to know then what?”

  Ilya is surprised at the keenness of Misha’s agitation. Before he can mollify the little man, Misha shouts: “This! This is what follows!”

  Misha rams a finger at the city. “Look! This is what you fought for, Ilya. Do you approve? You’d better, because it’s yours. All fucking yours! Take a look.”

  Misha’s finger flits and pauses, aiming at one then another shard of evidence. An ancient city is bombed and burned to bring down the empire of it. There. And look! Across the street a Russian soldier tips a vodka bottle, drains it to the last, then throws it at his feet to splinter and satisfy some need in him to bash it. A German corpse lies uncollected in the gutter. Some broken glass settles on the body. Misha turns a circle, aiming his finger like a white rifle at a hundred targets of proof. Over there! And here! Misha’s finger builds the case, he has all he needs in plain view from where he stands. The last place his finger lights is on Ilya.

  “Yours, Ilya. And a thousand times this. All right? Now leave me the fuck alone. I liked you better when you never talked.”

  Ilya answers slowly.

  “It’s not mine.”

  “Oh!” Misha throws up his hands. “What did you think, Lieutenant? That every one of those bodies you made was going to stand up, dust himself off, and go about his business when the war was over? Did you believe all these buildings we shot up were going to be like new when we were done with them? Look at what we did, man! Look! And what about the men, Ilya? Do you think they can get to the end of a war without any damage to themselves? Just because you did?”

  Misha takes a step as if to walk on and be done with his tirade. Ilya holds his ground, what he has done under every onslaught. Misha stops and turns. His voice is milder.

  “Ilyushka, every man wants war to end. You’re not special, you know. Everyone hates it. But you. You’re the only one in millions who thought he could personally make it stop. I watched you. You never fought for Stalin. You didn’t even fight against the Germans. You were in a battle with war itself. Who do you think you are? Tell me the truth. Do you really have some idea that it’s up to you to figure all this out? To lead us to the end?”

  The answer is yes. Ilya does not say it.

  Misha spits. “You think you’re so fucking special. Who knows, maybe you are.”

  This does not call for an answer. He’s kept this little man alive. Misha should think that is special.

  “Well, this is the end you led us to.”

  Misha approaches. He pokes his reedy finger into Ilya’s chest.

  “You, Ilya Shokhin. God of war. You’ve done everything in your power to make it worse. And you’ve got some weird kind of power, I’ve seen it. Everybody gets killed on both sides and you run right through it. You figure there’s got to be some stopping point and you’re the one who can take us to it.”

  Misha throws both flat palms at his own breast. The gesture is comic, mimicking a frantic man patting himself for bullet holes.

  “And me? Following you every damn step of the way. I never could figure out why I’m not dead too. I ought to be.”

  Misha’s finger goes to the sky. The Reichstag battle is up there in fumes and fury.

  “But now I know. It’s so I could be here today to tell you. That’s been my job all along. The little sergeant. My friend, listen to me. If you’ve learned nothing else in the last four years, remember this. There is no stopping point. War doesn’t end.”

  Misha lowers his finger to Berlin.

  “It just becomes this.”

  Misha drops his hand with a slap to his thigh. He seems angry when he mutters again, “Who do you think you are?”

  Misha walks off.

  Ilya stays still. He winces.

  Is that true?

  Is this the conclusion to his search for answers?

  That he’s been that transparent? A fool? Self-styled god of war?

  Mulling profound thoughts. Stargazing, weighing morals on his own scale.

  Even praying like an equal to heaven, making bargains.

  Killing and destroying, all the while giving them different names. Why? In order to bear them? Make them palatable, part of a greater good?

  Making war to end war.

  Misha says this can’t be done.

  Is he right?

  The little man has gone a block ahead. Ilya follows.

  Misha stalks down the middle of the street. From behind he doesn’t seem to Ilya so small anymore. There’s no battle to make Misha bend and scurry. The man walks upright through the city and people with some confidence and swinging arms.

  Ilya tails him around a corner, into a smaller street where there is less wreckage. Here are undamaged homes and shops. Fewer Russian soldiers prowl this lane; the men seem to prefer the larger lanes where they can congregate and harass the Germans in numbers. Misha stops at the lip of a deep crater in the road. Ilya halts farther back. Misha stands looking down, until a woman emerges hauling a metal bucket sloshing water. Climbing out from the pit, she keeps her eyes on her feet, turning away from the Russian sergeant staring at her. The woman wears a long overcoat that is too heavy for the spring weather, men’s pants, high mud boots, and a kerchief over her hair. Misha lets her get far ahead of him, then moves. Ilya stays to the rear. Passing the hole, he sees in the bottom a broken water main.

  The woman leads them three blocks on. Ilya can’t tell if she’s aware there are two soldiers in her wake; she walks awkwardly with the bucket but seems to hurry. Misha is not furtive but casual, he strolls.

  She lugs the bucket to a row of stone-faced homes. There’s been fighting on this street, some of the houses bear the marks. She enters a door in the center of the block. Misha advances to the foot of her steps and pull
s up. He considers the dark door.

  Standing at the foot of the steps, Misha rolls up the sleeves of his coat. One by one, he peels the pilfered wristwatches from his arms. He drops them, two dozen or more, on the sidewalk.

  Ilya arrives beside him.

  “Go away, Ilyushka.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t need your company.”

  He could order Misha away from this door. He is an officer. But the little man has run through as much hell as Ilya has. He won’t give Misha any more orders.

  Ilya says, “That’s a first.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Perhaps I need yours.”