Vendetta

by Derek Lambert

  ‘And fight they will,’ Paulus said. ‘Like animals defending their young, dying with snarls frozen on their faces.’ He lit another cigarette; his hands shook. ‘So when do you propose to kill Antonov?’

  ‘As soon as possible, Herr General.’

  ‘Not soon enough. I had a message this morning from the Führer in Bavaria. He can’t understand why you’re taking so long.’

  ‘Because Antonov is good.’

  ‘Better than you?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Have you taken a shot at him yet?’

  ‘One,’ Meister admitted.

  ‘And you missed?’ Paulus was incredulous.

  Meister explained about the smoke.

  ‘Has he taken a shot at you?’

  ‘It’s his turn, Herr General.’

  ‘Then we must pray for more smoke. After that it will be your turn again, Meister, and this time you mustn’t miss. Understand? Because I’m not concerned any longer about the people back home, the Press, the radio, I’m concerned about my troops staring into winter. They need your victory: that’s worth more than a battalion of re-inforcements. If you killed Antonov today they’d take what’s left of this Godforsaken city tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, Herr General.’

  ‘Good.’ With one finger Paulus tried to arrest the tic beneath his eye. ‘And then perhaps we shall be able to turn our attention to those arrows,’ pointing at the map on the table.

  To Meister it seemed as though the arrows had become sharper but that, of course, was his imagination.

  ***

  The motor-cycle and sidecar taking Meister back to the centre of Stalingrad stopped in a hamlet a mile down the road. Wooden cottages with mossy roofs, picket fences, a log road leading to a square with a water-pump in the middle.

  The scaffold was also made of wood.

  The motor-cyclist, young with acne-scarred cheeks, said: ‘It looks as if we’re going to have some fun’.

  Meister, steel helmet cradled in his lap, peered out of the sidecar. Soldiers armed with rifles were posted round the square; near the scaffold stood a group of peasants, women wearing headscarves, men peaked caps or fur hats with spaniel ears. They seemed indifferent to their fate, as though suffering were a fifth season of the year.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he asked the motor-cyclist.

  ‘Wait and see. But I can tell you this – these bastards are lucky. When partisans blew up a bridge near Sevastopol we burned down a whole village and shot anyone who tried to escape.’

  Meister who had heard such stories and dismissed them as the fictions of war said: ‘Did you actually see this happen?’ and when the motor-cyclist admitted that he hadn’t, allowed himself a mature and indulgent smile.

  A cold, mud-smelling breeze nosed its way into the square. Away to the east castles of cloud were assembling. The peasants remained mute, motionless, garbed with forlorn dignity.

  ‘Look,’ the motor-cyclist pointed down the log road on the opposite side of the square. Meister saw a youth and a girl approaching; their hands were tied behind their backs and hanging from the youth’s neck was a placard: WE ARE PARTISANS AND WE HAVE KILLED GERMAN SOLDIERS. AS WE ARE CIVILIANS WE KNOW WE MUST PAY THE PENALTY. Behind them walked two German soldiers and an officer brandishing a pistol; with his long greatcoat and boots and shiny-peaked cap he cut quite a figure.

  A corporal wearing steel-rimmed glasses and a forage cap that was too small for him slung two ropes over the cross-piece of the gallows, made them secure and tied two nooses. Then he rubbed his hands together, a man who knew his job and liked appreciation.

  Meister noticed two children in the silent group. A small boy with ragged trousers flapping round his shins and a girl of about twelve wearing a white shawl. The boy held the girl’s hand. Meister saw trust flowing between them; their parents had been killed; he knew that.

  He wanted to leave the square but he had to stay in case it didn’t happen. In case humanity was given a reprieve.

  The ropes, braided red and white, looked like bell-ropes from a church.

  Meister turned to look at the youth and the girl approaching the gallows. They, too, looked like brother and sister. Her hair was cropped, figure boyish; she reminded Meister of Joan of Arc. The boy wore a big, white cap with a small peak protruding from beneath it; he wore it at a jaunty angle, smiling with tremulous ferocity. The girl stared ahead expressionlessly.

  Meister was amazed at their composure. Their lives were about to be switched off. No world. Nothing. And they’re younger than me. Meister searched their faces for their childhood and saw his own and smelled perfume. His hand went to his throat; he hoped they believed in God.

  The officer pulled the ropes with gloved hands, testing them.

  Meister concentrated on the youth’s cap. He must have been very proud of that cap when he bought it.

  The girl’s lips were moving. Praying? The boy’s smile broke into fragments, re-assembled fiercer than ever.

  The cap. Look at the cap. Perhaps he had kept his money in it. Taken it off with a flourish, produced a soiled rouble note and bought his first girl a rose with silver paper round the stem.

  The cap. Concentrate on the cap. He had probably experimented with it, turned it back to front and imagined himself at the wheel of an open tourer.

  The cap fell to the ground and on the breeze funnelled along the log road where the boy and girl had just walked the smell of perfume was strong.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The rain came from the east, a last cleansing before winter. Scattered drops at first that coaxed dry scents from the dust and rubble; then a sustained drizzle reaching back into Siberia.

  Antonov, crouching with Razin in a shell hole near the Barricade gun factory, smiled at the coldness of it on his cheeks. Very soon now it would turn to snow.

  All morning they had hunted Meister but, with nine-tenths of the city in enemy hands, the German had the advantage, free to wander the yawning acres of devastation and concentrate on the Russian pocket in the north – unless one of the civilian storm squads operating in the ruins got him.

  By early afternoon Antonov had decided that the best strategy was to wait for Meister to come for him and, with Razin’s assistance, he devised a trap. When they knew Meister was close Razin would raise his helmet on the end of a stick; if Meister put a bullet through it Razin would rear up screaming; Meister would show himself and Antonov would shoot him.

  It was, they acknowledged, a hackneyed ploy – and Antonov had seen it in a silent film about the Civil War – but, with their backs to the Volga and the stricken factories where the Soviet pocket had been cut in two, there was no scope for originality.

  They wore rubber capes but the rain found its way inside them and Razin worried about his lungs which, he insisted, had been weak since an attack of pleurisy in his childhood. From time to time he coughed discreetly but irritatingly, in fact Antonov found that the cough, and the soft tap of rain on his helmet, were more distracting than the thunder of battle a few hundred yards away. After a while he took off his helmet and put on his forage cap; it quickly became sodden.

  ‘You’ll catch a cold in the head,’ Razin told him.

  Antonov shook his dripping head. ‘We don’t get colds in the head where I come from.’

  ‘Spoken like a true Siberian? You know something? You Siberians are a pain in the ass.’

  ‘Siberians saved Stalingrad.’

  ‘According to Red Star Rodimtsev and the 13th Guards saved Stalingrad.’

  ‘They fought well. But so did Zholudev’s 37th and Gorishny’s 95th and all the others.’

  Sometimes Antonov felt wiser than Razin; this dated from the night he had returned from the east bank of the Volga.

  ‘And the 112th. What about them?’ Razin demanded. ‘They fought like demons but they haven’t been given Guards status. Why? Because they’re hooligans, criminals, that’s why. Worse, political agitators – the worst crime in the penal
code. No, they won’t get any medals: doubters can’t be heroes.’ He brushed a drop of rainwater from his sagging moustache. ‘Have you ever doubted?’

  Doubted? Razin made belief sound shameful. What he didn’t understand, or had forgotten, or had never known, was that in childhood doubt doesn’t arise, trust prevails. What is there to doubt? He wanted to explain this to Razin but instead he said: ‘Yes, I’ve doubted,’ although the doubt had only been with him for a few days.

  ‘Doubted what?’

  ‘Values.’

  ‘Did you know that when the Germans first attacked Russia our army was run by a bunch of amateurs because Stalin had purged all the professionals? And when I say purged I mean shot. They say he got rid of 35,000 commanders.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that?’

  Razin shrugged. ‘I don’t care what you believe. But I do know that the greatest crime is naïvety.’

  A Russian 50 mm mortar opened up. Antonov waited for the explosion in the German lines, wondering if he could distinguish it from the all-encompassing din of battle. At first the noise had sent needles of pain shooting through his skull; now he was indifferent to it, although at dawn, before the daily bombardment began, his head ached. A heap of bricks erupted where the mortar shell had fallen, but he couldn’t identify the explosion.

  Razin said: ‘You must have heard how the peasants were massacred because they didn’t want to work on collective farms?’

  Only whispers over the vodka bottle when his father entertained. But they had contained little substance and he had. bracketed them with jests which took on an uncharacteristic coarseness half way down the bottle.

  No, the only injustice with which he had been regaled by his teacher, who always wore black and combed her hair into a polished bun that looked like a doorknob, had been the tyranny of the Czars until Lenin and then Koba, the Indomitable, Stalin, had come to the rescue of the downtrodden masses.

  ‘Millions died,’ Razin said.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘So that you know what you’re fighting for.’

  ‘For peace,’ Antonov said.

  ‘Cosy.’

  ‘What are you fighting for?’

  ‘What might have been.’

  ‘You’re fighting because you’re a Russian,’ Antonov said. ‘Just like the other Ukrainians you told me about.’

  Razin smiled his yellow smile. ‘That too.’

  Another mortar shell exploded, closer this time. Antonov wiped the lenses of his field-glasses with a handkerchief and peered over the rim of the crater. A German Panzer III tank was approaching, a prehistoric monster foraging uncertainly in another age, so any moment now Russian PTRS anti-tank rifles would be barking. Through the field-glasses Antonov saw a Death’s Head on the tank’s turret.

  He swivelled the glasses and gazed at the remains of a small house, staircase still clinging to a green-painted wall. He imagined generations of a family climbing those stairs, children’s fingers trailing on the green paint as they raced down them, early for play or late for school. A movement. As slight as a blink but positive. A rat, a cat, a wounded man, a sniper … He handed the field-glasses to Razin. ‘Can you see anything?’

  Razin concentrated on the ruin. Then: ‘You know what I think?’

  ‘Meister?’

  ‘Who else would be holed up in No Man’s Land opposite our crater?’

  The rain thickened. Water streamed off Razin’s helmet veiling his face.

  The Panzer III turned and headed for the crater.

  Razin said: ‘Look at it this way. Either he,’ pointing at the ruined house, ‘gets us or,’ pointing at the tank, ‘we get crushed by that or,’ tapping his chest, ‘we die of pneumonia.’

  ‘The trap.’ Antonov wasn’t as enthusiastic as he should have been. ‘Here, use my helmet.’

  Razin balanced the helmet on the end of a length of picket-fence, and Antonov thought: ‘This isn’t the way it should end.’

  ‘Ready?’

  Antonov nodded.

  ‘Got bullets in that thing?’ pointing at the Mosin-Nagant.

  Antonov shook his head.

  ‘You should be a comedian.’ Razin raised the helmet over the lip of the crater and the crack came immediately and the helmet leapt from his perch splashing into the puddle in the bottom of the crater, and Razin was rearing up screaming and Antonov, gun-butt pushing into his shoulder, was peering through the telescopic sights at the house and hoping that no one would fall for such an elementary ruse but there he was, head and shoulders making a beautiful target, but it was too easy. Stupid, he tried to kill you. He squeezed the trigger knowing that it was the worst shot of his life. The head and shoulders became a body, arms upraised, rifle falling, and above the sound of battle Antonov heard his scream.

  Later, when the tank had passed, when the shooting had become sporadic, they made their way to the house. They found him lying beneath the exposed stairs, still alive, the wound in his shoulder instead of between his eyes. For a sniper of Antonov’s skill it was a very bad shot; but in a sense that was irrelevant because the wounded man, middle-aged and unshaven, wasn’t Meister.

  ***

  The rain was turning to sleet as Antonov and Razin returned in the late afternoon to the tunnel, taking a mine-free route two sappers had shown them. Fires burned in the shells of factories, three Stukas, songsters as the troops called them, made a last sortie over the beleaguered Russians. A corn-cob, a Soviet bomber made of wood, limped back to the east bank, wounded by Messerschmitt 109’s or anti-aircraft guns. Fish stunned by shells and bombs floated on the Volga, silver bellies bared to the sleet. Antonov and Razin’s long boots sank ankle-deep in new mud.

  On an evening such as this the tunnel was home.

  It was certainly drier than the world outside and Razin had furnished it with a shabby red carpet, a couple of straw mattresses, mugs and plates, pots and pans, two boxes that had contained rattles – boxes of anti-infantry grenades the Luftwaffe sometimes dropped instead of bombs – a primus stove and a packet of yellow candles. On the wall he had stuck a German leaflet calling on the Russians to lay down their arms.

  When they climbed into the tunnel through a shell-hole fifty yards from the riverbank they found a candle had been lit. In its light they saw Misha sitting on one of the mattresses. He was eating sunflower seeds and Boris the rat was watching him keenly.

  ***

  Sketch-map in hand, Lanz led the way through the sleet. ‘It’s over there somewhere,’ he said, pointing in the direction of the Red October Plant. ‘At the foot of some shallow cliffs near a stony beach.’ He peered at the map on which Misha had marked the site of the tunnel with a red crayon.

  They made their way through a park gouged with craters towards the Volga. It wasn’t dusk but already there was cruelty, as distinct from the brutality of battle, abroad; Meister could feel it in the sting of the sleet, smell it on the stale scents of distemper and spent explosives, feel it in the gaze of unseen watchers in the ruins. In some countries dusk was known as the time between dog and wolf; in Stalingrad that time was now, a brooding interlude between day and night conflict.

  A sentry challenged them from the shadow of a signal box. They gave the password, Pandora, and identified themselves. The sentry, young with a wound cobwebbed with stitches on his cheek, was impressed. ‘Are you looking for Antonov?’

  ‘That was the general idea,’ Lanz said.

  ‘I hear he’s shot a hundred men. How many have you shot?’ he asked Meister.

  ‘A hundred and one,’ Lanz said. ‘What the hell are you guarding here?’

  ‘Regimental headquarters.’ The sentry pointed at a group of sheds across the track. ‘The Ivans tried to take it this morning. A special squad of fifty NKVD militia. They must have crossed the river overnight.’

  ‘Obviously they failed.’

  ‘But Christ, could they fight. They came at us howling like jackals but we mowed them down with an MG 42. Well, most of them.
’

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘Out there somewhere.’

  ‘Between here and the Red October Plant.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ the sentry said. ‘That’s where you’re heading for?’

  Meister said it was.

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘Better now than in broad daylight.’

  ‘They don’t fight like ordinary men. They’re …’ He searched for the word. ‘… possessed.’

  Lanz said to Meister: ‘Sure you want to go ahead?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Don’t forget I outrank you.’

  ‘I’m sure Paulus would be interested to hear you were scared of a few fugitives. Hitler too …’

  ‘He doesn’t want you dead.’

  ‘Which is why you’ve got to take care of me.’

  They left the sentry staring uncertainly at them and made their way into the gathering darkness where the dogs were now wolves.

  ***

  ‘He gave you this?’ Razin swung the gold watch on its chain; it had uttered a fragile chime from Misha’s pocket and Razin had fished it out.

  ‘In exchange for food.’

  ‘They’re hard up for food but not that hard up.’

  ‘Bread,’ Misha said. ‘Warm bread like the bread I gave you. And a little cheese.’

  ‘Have you got bread for us? Or are we having sunflower seeds?’

  ‘I’ve got something better,’ Misha said. ‘A better place to hide.’

  ‘We’re not hiding,’ Antonov told him.

  Misha frowned uncomprehendingly. ‘A much better place than this,’ as though nothing could be worse.

  ‘Why is it so much better?’ Razin asked.

  ‘No rats.’ Misha looked at Boris.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘It’s better placed for killing Meister.’

  Misha looked from Razin to Antonov and back again and his face was quick with sharp wisdom.

  Razin asked: ‘And how could you know that?’

  ‘Because I know where he’s hiding.’

  Razin looked at Antonov. ‘Where?’

  ‘I will show you.’

  ‘Does he know you know?’

  Misha shook his head. He threw the rat a husk of a sunflower seek, baked and salted, according to the packet, in Kharkov. The rat grabbed the husk but, finding no sustenance inside, discarded it and, whiskers twitching, continued to follow the boy’s movements.