Vendetta

by Derek Lambert

  A German spotter plane, the daily prelude to hostilities, droned across the sky, its pilot looking for Soviet re-inforcements that had crossed the Volga overnight. As soon as the pilot radioed back to base Junkers and Heinkels would take off, heavy with bombs.

  Lanz said, ‘How did your father make his money?’

  Not what sort of a father was he? A thief knew his priorities. ‘Perfume,’ he said.

  At least he had succeeded in surprising Lanz. ‘Perfume?’ Lanz placed his fingers on his skull-cap baldness and rubbed the flesh backwards and forwards on the bone. ‘You mean we still made perfume while we were re-arming?’

  ‘You’d be surprised how much we produced.’ He could hear his father telling him how much. Felt the scratch of his grey-threaded beard against his cheek as he kissed him goodnight and turned his face away from his cigar-smell.

  ‘I hope you didn’t wear it.’

  ‘No, but the whole house smelled of it. My father used to bring samples home from the factory and ask my mother to give her opinion. Then she gave them to the maids and they swamped themselves with it.’

  ‘Maids! National Socialism was all right for some.’ Lanz chewed the core of the apple, then ate the skin. Why had he bothered to peel it? ‘Is your old man a member of the Party?’

  The question invited an apology and Meister was grateful to the Russian gunners who opened up on the other side of the river making conversation impossible for the moment.

  His father was a Party member and many of Hamburg’s leading Nazis had visited the tall, gabled house in the centre of the city. From his bedroom Meister had heard the murmur of dinner conversation, rising in volume as the meal progressed, and the toasts to the Führer and, occasionally, martial songs, although these were muted and short-lived when his mother, purveyor of unspoken but aristocratic reproof, was present.

  Once or twice Goebbels had been present. Small, lame, unprepossessing, he had become transformed when he spoke, words like cascading stars lighting the future.

  Before dinner, while drinks were being served in front of the log fire, Goebbels, still in uniform after the Party rally, swastika on his arm, had talked to Meister.

  ‘And how do you propose to serve the Fatherland?’ he had asked.

  Meister, fifteen at the time, determined only that he wanted nothing to do with perfume, told him that he hadn’t made up his mind.

  ‘Do you enjoy reading and writing? Theatre, cinema? Do you read the newspapers?’

  Meister answered affirmatively although the scope of the questions made total honesty elusive. He told Goebbels that he had written an essay about the years of waste after the Treaty of Versailles.

  ‘I’d like to see it. Maybe I’ll find a job for you one day.’ Goebbels smiled conspiratorially; on the other side of the fire his father gazed at them speculatively. ‘It’s been said before – “The pen is mightier than the sword” – but never forget that it’s words not bullets that win wars.’

  At the time that had sounded neat and wise and Meister might have joined Dr. Goebbels’ propaganda machine if he hadn’t won a trophy involving bullets instead of words.

  That night, after the guests had departed, wives carrying gifts of perfume, his father, breath smelling of violet cachous, had come to his bedroom and questioned him about his conversation with Goebbels.

  ‘So, what did the good doctor have to say?’

  Meister told him.

  ‘Was that all?’

  Sleepily, he tried to remember if Goebbels had let slip any other pearls of wisdom; he couldn’t understand why his father wanted to know.

  ‘He seemed quite happy with everything here?’

  ‘Quite happy, Papa.’

  ‘Did he mention me?’ voice suddenly very casual.

  ‘Not once.’ Meister yawned.

  ‘That’s all right then.’ He couldn’t tell whether his father was pleased or disappointed. ‘A very able man, Dr. Goebbels. Even though he doesn’t come from very good stock.’

  As the big guns stopped firing, leaving a buzzing in Meister’s ears, a soldier on a bicycle pedalled onto the platform. ‘For you.’ He handed Meister an envelope. ‘Lucky bastard, I haven’t had a letter for weeks.’

  ‘You’re not a star turn,’ Lanz told him.

  Meister glanced at the envelope. Elzbeth’s businesslike writing. He ripped it open.

  ‘I’ll get some coffee,’ Lanz said.

  Dearest Karl,

  I love you and miss you and think about you all the time. As if she wanted to get the formalities over and done with. And perhaps it won’t be long until we are together as we read in the newspapers that Stalingrad is on the point of surrender. Did she really believe that or was one of Goebbels’ minions standing behind her? You have become quite a celebrity here and we’re all very proud of you and all the other girls are very jealous of me. No, this wasn’t Elzbeth; by now the real Elzbeth would have cut him down to size. They – who? – tell me that when Stalingrad falls you will be allowed leave. And who knows, a decoration?

  Meister folded the letter and replaced it in the envelope because there was no point in finishing it: Elzbeth, who didn’t even know of Antonov’s existence, was being used to urge him to finish the job.

  Lanz returned with some foul coffee and a tin of corned beef he had found under a pile of rubble in the refreshment room.

  ‘Well,’ he asked, ‘how’s everything back home?’

  ‘Ticking over. How’s the battle?’ Lanz always returned from foraging missions with the latest news of the fighting.

  ‘We’re still winning. Surprising how long it’s taking considering we’re winning every day. We’ve taken the Tractor Plant and cut the Russians in two again and we’re within 400 yards of the river between the Barricade and Red October factories. God knows, we might even advance another couple of yards today.’ He opened the tin of corned beef with a clasp-knife. ‘Everyone wants to know when you’re going to kill Antonov.’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘Take your time.’ Lanz handed him half the tin of meat.

  ‘The trouble is we anticipate each other all the time.’

  ‘You anticipated him in front of the toy factory?’

  ‘He anticipated me.’

  ‘You should have shot his head off.’ Lanz ate a mouthful of meat from the blade of his knife.

  ‘We’ve got to find fresh cover. Antonov knows about the factory.’

  ‘A cemetery?’

  At that moment Misha arrived. It was the second time he had visited them.

  He had brought a bucket of water, raw potatoes and a cucumber. He told Meister who had taken Russian at college that he had the latest dispositions of the Soviet troops to pass on to 6th Army headquarters. The Russians, he said, were in a desperate position in the industrial north: one more push and Paulus could claim victory.

  ‘If we had the reserves to push with,’ Lanz said when Meister translated.

  ‘The Germans are within a few hundred yards of Chuikov’s headquarters,’ Misha said.

  ‘Then what’s stopping them from taking it?’ Meister asked and Lanz, getting the gist, said: ‘Russians.’

  Lanz poured water into his mess-tin and drank from it, spilling some on his grey-green tunic, carefully wiping a drop from his Iron Cross. He said to Meister: ‘Ask him why he’s so anxious to help the Germans?’

  ‘Why not?’ Misha protested. ‘They’re winning.’

  ‘No one is as callous as that,’ Lanz said. ‘Not even me.’

  ‘All right,’ Misha said to Meister, ‘the Russians took my father to Siberia. I never saw him again. My mother cried every night. Would you want the Russians to win?’

  ‘Ask him why they took his father,’ Lanz said.

  ‘He doesn’t really know,’ Meister said when the boy had finished. ‘His father was in the army. It’s possible, the purges …’

  ‘I think he’s a liar,’ Lanz said. ‘It takes one to spot one. Ask him if he knows of a good place to hole up before w
e go looking for Antonov again.’

  Misha smiled and the war left his face. Meister noticed that he had one tooth missing; it made him momentarily defenceless. He also had a graze on one knee – there had never been a time in Meister’s own childhood when one of his knees hadn’t been grazed – and burrs on the socks collapsed round his ankles.

  ‘I know just the place,’ he told Meister.

  They walked warily through the ruined streets in the direction of Tsaritsa Gorge, the 200-foot deep ravine where the Soviet headquarters had been earlier in the campaign. Lanz, pistol drawn, suspecting a trap, walked beside the boy: Russian civilians, in radio communication with the military, were still used to lure Germans down streets covered by Soviet gunners: when the guns opened up the civilians disappeared into the subterranean depths of the city.

  A cold wind had sprung up but it didn’t disperse the smell of rotting corpses.

  ‘It will snow soon,’ Misha said. ‘And that will help the Russians. You must be quick.’ As he talked he nibbled sunflower seeds, cracking the husks with his teeth and dropping them on the ground.

  They passed sagging signs offering cherry jam and apples for sale and picked their way along ruptured tracks where shabby trams had once run. Finally they came to a shell-torn wall. ‘Here,’ Misha said.

  They went behind the wall. ‘It was my school,’ he said.

  Of the school there was nothing left except the shell of a classroom containing crippled desks and chairs and a wall-clock lying on its back but still working. Its fluttering hands pointed at 12.30 but they were wrong.

  The playground, a square of punished grass and frozen mud, was untouched by debris.

  Meister took off his steel helmet and walked round the square. One patch of turf was completely bald – ‘That used to be the goal,’ Misha explained – and in a corner stood a pear tree, a couple of withered fruit hanging from its branches.

  ‘Every kid’s dream,’ Lanz said, ‘to have his school demolished.’ He had put a chair on the grass and was sitting smoking a cigarette. ‘I wonder why he was lying.’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t.’ Meister sat on the grass. It was like holy ground; even the gunfire seemed distant, the accompaniment to someone else’s battle. He plucked a blade of grass and nibbled the cold stalk.

  Lanz fished in the breast pocket of his tunic and produced a soiled sugar almond – Lanz’s pockets were lucky dips. He handed it to the boy; Misha, sitting under the pear tree, sucked it experimentally.

  Lanz said: ‘Ask him if he knows about Antonov.’

  Misha said he did, everyone did.

  ‘Ask him if he knows you’re Meister?’

  ‘Of course,’ Misha said, cracking the sugared almond with his teeth, surprised at the question.

  ‘Do you think he’ll kill me?’ Meister asked.

  ‘It depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  Somewhere a dog barked, a lonely sound in the chilled sunlight. A rifle shot and the barking stopped.

  ‘We had a dog,’ Misha said. ‘It was called Druzhok. It disappeared in the fighting.’

  ‘Ask him where his mother is,’ Lanz instructed Meister.

  Misha jerked his thumb downwards and spoke rapidly.

  ‘I think,’ Meister told Lanz, ‘that she’s hiding in a cellar or a sewer. Apparently there are thousands of refugees underground.’

  ‘Does she know what he’s doing?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I just don’t believe a kid like that would want to help us.’

  ‘A lot of Ukrainians joined us.’

  ‘That was before Kiev. Then they fought us with only five bullets apiece, fought with Stalin’s voice booming over the loudspeakers. And when they had used their five bullets they still fought.’

  ‘Were you there?’ Meister was curious about Lanz’s Iron Cross but the thief never discussed it.

  ‘I’ve been everywhere.’ Lanz pinched out his cigarette. ‘Ask him where Antonov’s hiding.’

  Misha was wandering about the wrecked schoolroom poking about in the debris. He found a grey exercise book and riffled the pages. They were filled with crayoned drawings, children with beetroot faces, ships on pointed waves, bears with huge paws, all beneath strips of blue sky.

  ‘I asked you a question,’ Meister said.

  ‘I don’t know where he is.’

  ‘He’s lying,’ Lanz said.

  ‘You think everyone’s lying.’

  ‘Even to themselves. Ask him again.’

  The boy turned his back and stared at the clock.

  ‘He knows,’ Lanz said. He delved into one of the lower pockets of his tunic.

  What now? A white rabbit?

  The gold watch lay in the shiny palm of Lanz’s hand imprisoning the sunlight. Lanz called Misha’s name. ‘Look.’ He swung the watch on its chain. ‘Come here.’ He beckoned with his other hand. ‘Listen.’ After a moment the watch chimed, a tiny silver noise inside the gold. ‘Tell him he can have it if he tells us where Antonov is.’

  Meister hesitated.

  ‘What’s the matter? You want Antonov to find you?’

  ‘I don’t like using the boy.’

  ‘A sniper with a conscience! Jesus Christ!’

  Lanz turned to the boy. Dangled the watch. Pointed at it and pointed at Misha. ‘Antonov?’ he asked.

  The watch swung like a pendulum.

  The boy’s eyes moved from side to side.

  ‘Antonov?’

  Misha stretched out one hand.

  Lanz withdrew the watch.

  ‘Antonov?’

  The boy swallowed.

  Very slowly, Lanz moved the watch towards his tunic pocket.

  Misha told Meister that Antonov was hiding in a sewer on the banks of the Volga.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Later that morning Meister was summoned to the presence of Paulus who was conferring with his commanders at 6th Army headquarters, a cluster of farm buildings at Golubinskaya, forty miles west of Stalingrad on the banks of another river, the Don.

  But the general was alone, warming his back in front of a log fire in the farmhouse overlooking a mutilated cornfield, when Meister arrived. He looked older and Meister who until now hadn’t considered subtleties of age – only young, old and very old – couldn’t quite make out where it showed.

  Paulus, theatrically spruce – he was said to wear gloves on the battlefield – was absent-mindedly tapping a cigarette on a silver case when Meister entered the room. He stared at Meister and through him, a tic fluttering beneath one eye. Eventually Paulus told him to stand at ease.

  He lit the cigarette and turned to warm his hands and Meister got the fleeting impression that he was preparing himself for winter because it wasn’t that cold. Winter … They were supposed to have taken Stalingrad in August!

  Meister glanced at the table separating him from Paulus. There was a bottle of schnapps on it, Korn, and an ashtray heaped with cigarette butts and yet another map scored with arrowheads; but these arrowheads, probing from the south and the north had question marks beside them and suddenly Meister realised they were Russian.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ Paulus asked, noticing that he was studying the map.

  Think? Think about what? Ah, the map ‘Is this where you think the Russians will try and counter-attack, Herr General?’ It hadn’t occurred to him that the Russians had a counter-attack left in them.

  ‘It’s a possibility. And if they do …’

  Paulus didn’t elaborate. The pouch under one eye quivered. Why should a general discuss tactics with a soldier? Thinking aloud probably. Debating possibilities that he couldn’t broach with officers? It was a flattering proposition.

  ‘It’s getting cold,’ Paulus said. ‘Soon it will snow. The Russians love snow – it’s their ammunition.’

  Meister said nothing because no reply had been invited but a word that he had considered fluttered like a snowflake into his consciousness. DEFEAT. But that was preposterous.


  ‘At first,’ Paulus said, ‘cold is good. It freezes the mud and we can move our trucks and guns. But that’s only cold as we understand it: it isn’t Russian cold. When the Russian cold makes its début the earth becomes concrete three feet deep and the wind blows the temperature down to minus forty and soldiers wear anything to keep it at bay, even towels and bedclothes, but even then, they lose their arms and legs and when a horse is frostbitten to death there’s a celebration because there’s meat to eat. I only know,’ Paulus said, ‘because I had a friend at Moscow.’

  A half-track trundled past the window on the rutted road. Between the pink and blue fretted eaves of the farmhouse it looked as though it were crossing a stage. ‘Re-inforcements,’ said Paulus; Meister detected a sardonic note.

  Paulus kicked a log with the toe of one polished boot; ash fell softly, a strip of bark caught fire.

  ‘Tell me, Meister, is this how you envisaged the war?’

  ‘No, Herr General.’

  ‘How then?’

  ‘Just victories. Like Poland and France. Stupid of me, I suppose.’

  ‘Not so stupid,’ Paulus said. ‘It was what you were brought up to believe. What do you think went wrong?’

  ‘Nothing I suppose. Things had to get tougher.’

  ‘Before final victory?’

  ‘Before final victory, Herr General.’

  ‘And you’ve never doubted the final outcome?’

  ‘Never, Herr General.’ Not until now.

  ‘The Führer is a great man.’

  Meister nodded.

  ‘Without him we would still be nothing. The Thousand Year Reich, an inspired concept.’

  Meister could find nothing to add to that.

  ‘If only we had the reserves … Do you know you’re an old man, Meister? They’re sending us seventeen-year-olds now. Children.’

  ‘I’ve heard,’ Meister ventured, ‘that the Soviets have brought in tailors and cobblers, sailors even, to fight here.’