Everything Gerhard had once thought about Erich Lorenz’s inability to smile turned out to be wrong. For Lorenz was smiling broadly now, revealing his teeth and two large dimples on either side of his wide mouth.
“I heard what a great job you did for von Amrath, so I made certain that you landed with us.”
He was beaming with pride. Gerhard shook his hand mechanically.
“You should be proud; it’s an honor to work here,” Lorenz said, offering him a seat.
As Gerhard slowly overcame his shock, he remembered the last time he’d seen Lorenz. Now he’d been promoted to Sturmbannführer and had been made the master of life and death. The days Gerhard had spent in a cell thanks to Lorenz suddenly seemed like nothing compared to the suffering the prisoners were subjected to in this place. Thousands of people died here each day. And Lorenz was responsible for that.
He gathered his courage. “I’m not interested in working here,” Gerhard said hesitantly.
“It’s not a question of whether you’re interested or not.”
“I would like to request an immediate transfer.”
“You do that.” Lorenz grinned amiably.
Near Tuapse, Russia, October 18, 1942
Seventeen hundred feet, maybe seventeen fifty.
He was at least a thousand feet from the burned-out Bobik, and from there it was another eight hundred to the German observation post.
Seventeen fifty was about right.
Yesterday had been a good day for Dmitri. He’d killed four Germans, including two officers. Makarov called him the snipers’ Justitia. He didn’t know what that meant, so he wasn’t sure whether the commissar was making fun of him or not. He simply felt he was doing his duty. The Germans were going after the oil refineries in Tuapse, and he would defend them tooth and nail. He knew the battle wouldn’t determine the outcome of the war, but as the saying went, the only good German was a dead German.
Today was shaping up to be a good day. The two Germans in the advance position—one of whom manned a machine gun, while the other served as an observer—had no inkling he was there.
The armored reconnaissance vehicle BA-64—the Bobik—had been overturned, blackened by the merciless fire that had ripped through every flammable scrap. Around it lay the corpses of three charred Russian soldiers. Russia looked like hell these days. Dmitri recalled the hot summers when villagers used to work the harvest together, reaping the grain with scythes, then threshing it with flails. At the end of the day, they celebrated—and did so every night until the harvest was done. He thought of the girls with their white shawls around their chubby cheeks, and about Lena. Plump, beautiful Lena. Her father considered Dmitri a simpleton, a good-for-nothing whose future was as bleak as the Russian night sky. Back then he’d surely been right, but maybe the 148 dead Germans would change his mind.
He’d been hiding here for hours, having taken his position under cover of darkness, well camouflaged by his plash-palatka, a versatile cape that not only provided protection against the rain but served as a good hiding spot for a sniper. He’d wrapped his Tokarev rifle in strips of burlap and tied them down with yarn to ensure that the sun wouldn’t reflect off the barrel and give him away. Your chance of success was greater if you eliminated every uncertainty.
To be a good sniper was, for him, a matter of common sense. What’s the distance to the target? How will gravity influence the bullet across a given distance? What are the wind conditions? Is the target moving and, if so, at what speed? His brain assessed all of these factors instinctively. Many believed it was all about having the best rifle, but Dmitri believed that being an effective sniper came down to three things. First, the sniper himself. He needed to have the instinct. If he didn’t, he would never be a good sniper. Second, the rifle’s scope. It must be precise to ensure that he hit his target where he expected to. Third, the rifle. He needed to understand the weapon he held in his hands the way he understood the old Berdan he’d hunted with as a boy, before the army provided him with a slightly better weapon.
Before the war he’d earned his keep as a carpenter—not an especially good one, according to the people in the village—but now he’d found something he excelled at. It was so easy, so logical, so poetic.
I am like the wind: present, then gone the next instant.
I am like sound. By the time you notice it and try to capture it, it’s too late, because by then it’s already gone.
His job involved making many decisions. Should he go after the machine gunner or the observer first? The gunner was the immediate threat, but once he fired the first shot, he would alert the observer to his position. He’d be vulnerable if the observer had the presence of mind to get behind the machine gun—which, judging by the mouth of the barrel, was an MG 42—before Dmitri fired his second shot.
He saw the world through his rifle’s scope. Even when he wasn’t looking through it, he could see the black cross, as if it were burned into his cornea. It even appeared in his dreams. Luckily he hadn’t been dreaming of late.
August raised the binoculars to his eyes. There were short fir trees scattered across the landscape, with fifty to sixty feet between each one, and he couldn’t tell if they’d been planted in any kind of order. They reminded him of small, fat dwarfs. Apart from the dwarfs, he had a clear view of the forest about 1,500 feet ahead. The wreck of a Russian vehicle indicated that they weren’t the first German soldiers to set foot here.
They sat behind the remains of a stone dike that had probably withstood wind and weather for centuries. Maybe the dike had been built after a dispute between two farmers who’d disagreed over where the border between their properties was located. It wasn’t like that anymore, though, because the state owned everything.
Though it was summer, it had been a cold night and it had rained. Stanislav had insisted they share a cigarette because he claimed it helped them to stay warm. A foolish decision, but luckily no one had seen them. August didn’t actually like the taste of tobacco, but he smoked anyway these days.
“Your strap won’t do you any good when it’s that loose,” August said, pointing at Stanislav’s helmet.
“It’s loose only because I’ve lost weight.”
“Why don’t you tighten it?”
“I never thought about it.” Stanislav removed his helmet, studied it for a while, and then fumbled a bit with the strap before putting it back on.
“It’s easy. You just need to pull on the buckle a little to tighten it up,” August said.
Stanislav tried again but discovered that he’d tightened it too much when he put it back on. After several attempts, he finally got it just right. August could tell that it was still too tight, because it made a clear white stripe under his friend’s chin, but he didn’t say anything.
“I’m looking forward to going home and fattening up.” Stanislav smiled. “At night I dream that my family is just sitting down to dinner. It’s a Sunday, and my mother has made rosół, kotlet schabowy, and cheesecake for dessert. Then I wake up, and my face is wet with drool.” He laughed a little sheepishly.
“What are those dishes?” August asked.
“Rosół is chicken soup. Kotlet schabowy is the same as schnitzel, just thicker, with braised potatoes and scalloped cabbage.” He closed his eyes, as if trying to transform his daydream into reality. “She makes the most fantastic sernik. It’s a cheesecake that she makes with twaróg, a kind of quark.”
“Stop or I’m going to start thinking of steak and some delicious sauce.”
It would be several hours before they were relieved and could get some rest and a bite to eat. He wasn’t actually hungry. Well, he would be if they were going to be eating proper food, but he knew what was in store for them, so he didn’t have much of an appetite. But he’d learned that you had to eat whenever you had the chance because you didn’t know when the opportunity would arise again.
Dawn had arrived—that eternal optimist—and the sun had slipped imperceptibly into its customary position, illuminating
the once-beautiful landscape. Dmitri’s assignment was simple: since the Germans figured that the attack would occur at dawn, the Russians planned to wait until later in the morning, when the Germans would begin to feel more secure. Around noon, when the sun was halfway through its daily arc across the sky, Dmitri was to neutralize the advance position. That would be the signal to attack.
The lice itched in his armpits and the waistband of his pants. Those tiny devils tormented him around the clock, and it was impossible to get used to them. He wanted to tear off his clothes and claw at his entire body with a few handfuls of gravel, but he remained still, quiet as a sleeping animal, and tried to forget his small, faithful companions.
He’d had a dog once, Yerik. It too had been faithful. Yerik had been a mongrel, a mixture of the elegant, long-legged borzoi, the pointy-eared, narrow-eyed West Siberian Laika, and the handsome, powerful Siberian husky. With those breeds running through his blood, it could have been an attractive dog, but it had inherited the least desirable characteristics of the three and had therefore been an object of derision in the village. It didn’t help when the dog had developed a limp. Dmitri had found Yerik down by the creek one day, a few hundred yards from his father’s farm. The poor animal lay in a thick pool of blood, its pelt soaked through. When Dmitri picked up the dog, he noticed that one of its forelegs was missing from the knee down. Yerik had come upon a ravenous stray wolf that had been driven from its pack. So Yerik had walked with a limp from that day forward. But he’d been a good dog and remained a faithful companion until he grew so old and feeble that Dmitri’s father put a bullet in his head while Dmitri pressed his face into his mother’s lap in tears.
He scratched gently at an armpit. The night was cold and clammy, and he’d watched the two Germans share a cigarette. Tobacco-hungry soldiers made for easy prey for snipers; the best shooters needed no more than the glow of a cigarette to pinpoint their target.
His fellow soldiers claimed that Dmitri was colder than a Siberian winter, but that wasn’t true. He wasn’t like that at heart, but he needed to be to do his job. The others didn’t understand war. They didn’t understand that you had to be cynical to maintain your sanity amid the mad and pointless chaos. He reduced his thoughts to the bare minimum: Am I tired? Am I hungry? Am I cold? Do I have more ammunition?
He was, in fact, hungry. For the past few hours, a large, gaping hole had gnawed at him, growing bigger and bigger, until his growling gut made it impossible for him to ignore what he’d been trying so hard to suppress. Just a few more hours; then he could eat. His bladder had also begun to send urgent signals, though he’d relieved himself before taking his position.
A bird hovered silently in the air above him, instinctively calibrating its tail feathers and wings as it flew into a headwind. To the naked eye, it appeared as though it weren’t moving at all, but he knew that—like him—it was straining in every fiber of its being. Because they were hunters, and hunters could never allow themselves the luxury of relaxation. Time had stopped, and like a taut bow and arrow, they remained at the ready.
It was a golden eagle. His father had told him that the older an eagle grew, the more its color faded; this one had vivid dark-brown feathers, so it had to be young. Its gaze was alert, on the prowl for prey just as he was. The only difference was that the eagle’s quarry was other birds, rabbits, hares, and squirrels, while his was people. Hares and rabbits had once been his preferred target, too, but now it was German soldiers.
The two in front of him would become his next prey. He watched one remove his helmet and fiddle clumsily with the chin strap. He put it back on his head, removed it again, and fumbled a little more with the strap. After repeated attempts, he finally seemed satisfied and settled it back on his head for good.
Dmitri tried to imagine the two Germans as hares; in his mind he saw himself as a boy in the forest behind his father’s small farm, with his old Berdan rifle. The old rifle was crooked, he knew, and for every fifty yards the bullet deviated a half yard from its original course. He also knew that the hares could feed his family for days, so he couldn’t miss. If he did, it meant yet another meal of cabbage and potatoes.
He shifted the scope from one eye to the other to give his good eye some rest. Though he was right-handed, he always sighted with his left eye. If he used his right, he always shot wide. He located the Germans again.
Half an hour or so remained until the sun reached the point when he would have to shoot, and his bladder was now about to burst. It felt as if it contained all the water in Lake Baikal, but he didn’t dare empty it, and pissing in his pants seemed shameful.
Some time passed, and Dmitri was relieved when he glanced up at the sun. Finally. He listened to his breathing as he tried to quiet his pulse, which knew what was about to happen and had therefore intensified. He emptied his head by focusing on the stillness all around. The silence meant he was ready, ready to do what he was good at. A final deep breath, and then . . . three, two, one. He counted slowly to himself and squeezed the trigger the rest of the way as soon as he reached the end of his count. He exhaled deeply when the rifle gave a terse, sharp report. The bullet traversed the 1,750 feet and penetrated one of the Germans right between his eyes. Dmitri saw the soldier’s head jerk backward, but the soldier remained seated—as if trying to defy the reality of what had just happened.
Just another half hour and I can go get some sleep, August thought. They’d been sitting there half the night and most of the morning, too, and it had been as quiet as a cemetery. He knew why he and Stan had been assigned to the advance post and why they’d been forced to stay for so long. It was punishment. They were always the ones sent on hopeless patrols, or to outposts, or to form the rear guard—for the simple reason that Falkendorf detested them. August because he was a bad soldier and Stanislav because he wasn’t German.
August closed his eyes. He would count to ten and then open them again. Just rest them a moment. He began to count, but by the time he’d reached the number five, his thoughts had begun to wander the way they usually did before he fell asleep. At seven he opened his eyes again, but he didn’t know whether it had taken him two seconds or ten minutes to get from five to seven.
He shook his head and blinked rapidly to chase away the sleep. He hated that he couldn’t control his sleeping. Sometimes it was as if his head played no part in the decision. In fact his head might resist with tooth and nail, but his consciousness just switched off like a light. He hadn’t even noticed that his eyes had slid shut again, but then he forced them open once more. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Stanislav’s head jerk back hard, accompanied by a dull thump.
“Are you falling asleep, too?” August asked.
Stanislav didn’t respond.
“Stan, are you asleep?”
August looked at his companion, who was leaning his cheek against the butt of his machine gun. A stripe of blood ran from a coin-sized hole in his forehead down his face, split by his nose like a forking river. Another trail of blood trickled out from under his helmet down the nape of his neck. His eyes appeared alert, as though he were still keeping watch for enemies.
If he hadn’t tightened his chin strap, Stan’s head would have been scattered across a Russian field, August managed to think, before he began screaming uncontrollably. He screamed until his lungs were racked with pain. He screamed until his scream became a howl; he screamed until only a whistling sound remained in him.
He hadn’t heard the shot that killed Stanislav, and he didn’t hear the next shot, either. It wrenched his entire upper body, knocking him off his feet. Instinctively he crawled to the stone dike and sat with his back against the cold stone. He heard a heavy chuffing and glanced at Stanislav, but discovered the sound was coming from him.
The wound in his chest sizzled and bubbled, and a thin billow of smoke spiraled out of a hollow in his uniform jacket. His body grew warmer, and his head felt heavy, as if it had been hanging upside down for hours. His shins began to sting, just
as they had when he ran through nettles as a boy. Then silence.
In a house near the Alster, a boy wakes. It’s his birthday. His family is waiting for him down in the living room. He smiles because he knows they have gifts for him. He’s turning six. He sneaks soundlessly down the large stairs and sits on the third step from the bottom. From here he can see into the living room, where his mother is setting the table. His father is raising the flag. His big sister is helping, and she laughs at something his father says. She’s still wearing her nightgown, so he knows now that it’s Sunday.
He’s holding a wounded bird as gently he can, just enough to ensure that it doesn’t fly out of his hand. He thinks it’s one of the cuckoo chicks. He cautiously unfolds one of its wings. It’s broken. He can tell that, beneath its layer of down, it’s shivering with fear. He puts it carefully down on the ground.
He falls, cracking through ice. A hand clutches him and yanks him up through the hole his skates and his body made in the ice. His lungs celebrate as they are reunited with oxygen. It’s his father. They are lying on their backs on the frozen lake, and August gasps like a fish on land. Karl picks him up, and he clings to his father’s belly. His father dries him off in front of the villa’s big fireplace.
August enjoys hearing and watching his father play the piano. He doesn’t want to learn how to play; he wants only to listen. To learn to listen. He hears his father improve, and he learns to love Chopin and Debussy. His father’s face is peaceful when he’s sitting at the piano, and he looks like someone in another world, a parallel universe of notes.
“Where do you go when you dream, Dad?” asks the ten-year-old August.
“I dream I’m in the very place we are now.”
“But that’s here,” August says after a long pause.
“Exactly,” his father says.
The Russian soldiers ran right past August. He could almost have touched them if he stretched out his arm, but he couldn’t move. Several of them noticed him but continued on toward the German position. They came in waves, gushing over the landscape in great numbers; he figured his companions couldn’t hold their position for very long. He dozed off.
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