Vendetta

by Derek Lambert

  And now, islands that have barely touched, we are drifting apart. He sensed it and was surprised at the eddies of emotion. Regret and relief. We didn’t know each other but we knew each other well.

  ‘You look as if you’ve lost a mark and found a pfennig.’ Lanz handed Meister a mug of coffee. ‘Don’t let the date get you down.’

  It was Friday, November 13. Two days earlier Paulus had launched a frenzied attack on the factories to the north of Stalingrad, Red October and Barricade in particular, splitting the remnants of the Soviet forces. But everyone knew that the attack had faltered; that the 6th Army was a bloodied bull, head bowed in bewilderment. Everyone, that was, except strategists in faraway places.

  Lanz said: ‘It looks as if Antonov has laid down his arms even if Chuikov hasn’t.’ He thrashed his arms against his sides; the Russians’ ally, the cold, was on the rampage and their bodies ached before its assault.

  Lanz took a cigarette from a green packet and lit it, inhaled like a man struggling to stay alive, and coughed ferociously.

  ‘That’s all a sniper needs,’ Meister said, ‘someone beside him coughing like a machine-gun.’ He leaned his rifle against the pear tree and wrapped a scarf under his chin and over his head to protect his ears; Lanz wore a Russian shapka with ear-flaps; he had offered one to Meister but Meister didn’t want to wear dead men’s clothes.

  Lanz threw more schoolbooks onto the small fire he had built, a cadet version of Das Kapital among them. According to the wall clock on the floor it was lunchtime but the clock was two hours fast.

  Lanz, cigarette in one hand, mug of coffee in the other, said: ‘You needn’t bother about me coughing. We won’t be together much longer: the bird has flown. If Antonov was still in Stalingrad he would have found us here because this is where that little bastard Misha would have brought him. Where else? He finds us a nice quiet hideout, dumps us and fetches Antonov to finish us off.’

  ‘No.’ Meister shook his head emphatically. ‘Antonov hasn’t flown. Something’s happened.’

  After leaving the tunnel they had returned to the school to wait, convinced that Antonov was on his way. That, while Lanz kept watch, Meister could pick him off because Misha was right, the school was a good vantage point. But that was three days ago and there had been no sign of Antonov.

  ‘What do you mean, something’s happened?’

  ‘Maybe he got hurt.’

  ‘You feel his wounds?’

  ‘I think something’s happened, that’s all. Look at it logically. The Russians wouldn’t pull him out: they still want him to kill me: they still want victory.’

  Meister stood on a pile of rubble and peered over the wall. Before the battle there couldn’t have been much of a view but now you could see the river in the distance; the shells and bombs had seen to that. When they came to rebuild Stalingrad they wouldn’t need foundations: its bedrock was steel. He focussed his field-glasses. Snow hadn’t settled yet but on the river he could see packs of slush and ice jostling each other. If Antonov had been wounded he would have been taken across the Volga, through the stampeding ice. The emotion Meister felt was disconcerting, a parting of flesh.

  Lanz threw an atlas on the fire, burning the world. ‘Aren’t you glad he’s gone?’.

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘You didn’t want to kill him, did you?’

  ‘But I would have.’

  ‘And you would have condemned yourself as a murderer?’

  ‘I don’t think,’ Meister said, using words as stepping stones to some great truth, ‘that anyone really wants to kill anyone else. But in war rules are laid down. Killing rules. Antonov and I broke the rules. We identified each other.’ The stepping stones petered out.

  ‘But you don’t mind killing other Russians?’

  ‘I don’t want to but it’s in the book of rules.’

  ‘Who wrote the book?’

  ‘A minority. That’s all I know. A minority single-minded enough to control a majority who merely want to live in peace.’

  A child’s history of the Civil War followed the atlas into the flames.

  ‘It all seemed so simple before I left Germany,’ Meister said. ‘The Bolshevik menace had to be destroyed.’ He gestured at the flattened city. ‘Look at the Bolshevik menace now.’ The sound of battle continued to reach them from the north.

  ‘If they fight the way they’re fighting at the factories the Bolsheviks could conquer the world,’ Lanz said. ‘They’re fighting with their balls in the river and still they won’t give up. And soon they’ll counter-attack and you know something? We’ll be cut off but we won’t have a river to escape across.’

  A motor-cyclist in field grey drove down the road, ruts of mud frozen into iron ridges, and stopped outside the school. Pushing his goggles onto his forehead, he unstrapped a tin canister and handed it to them. ‘Rabbit stew,’ he said.

  ‘Pussycat,’ Lanz said.

  ‘And bread and cheese.’

  ‘Soap,’ Lanz said.

  ‘Don’t eat it then,’ the motor-cyclist said. ‘I will.’ He was young and blond and dusty with wide, slanting eyes. He was attached to the 336th Sapper Battalion which explained his cockiness; they had just flown from Magdeburg to support the November 11 attack and he hadn’t grown old with Stalingrad.

  He leaned against the wall. ‘Well,’ he said making a performance of lighting a cigarette, ‘it won’t be long now.’

  Lanz inspected his stew. ‘It just meowed,’ he said.

  ‘What won’t be long?’ Meister asked.

  ‘Victory,’ the motor-cyclist said. ‘Look what we brought from Germany.’ He fished in the pocket of his tunic, produced a folded poster and opened it up. Black letters proclaimed THE FALL OF STALINGRAD. ‘We’ve got thousands of them and we’ll make the Ivans eat them,’ he said replacing the poster in his pocket carefully, as though it were a banknote.

  ‘Taste better than this stew,’ Lanz said.

  ‘I told you, I’ll eat it.’

  ‘You eat your poster.’

  ‘That reminds me of a joke. I was taking my dog for a walk when I was a kid and a man stopped me and said, “Does your dog bite?” And when I said, “No,” he said, “Then how does it eat its dinner?’” The motor-cyclist laughed displaying very white, uneven teeth. When he had finished laughing he said: ‘So you’re Meister.’

  ‘He’s Meister,’ Lanz said.

  ‘I read about you in Magdeburg,’ the motor-cyclist said. ‘I never thought I’d meet you. It’s an honour.’

  ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read,’ Meister told him.

  ‘Where’s Antonov? Around here?’ The motor-cyclist looked eagerly around.’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘You mean he’s run away?’

  ‘No,’ Meister said, ‘I don’t mean that.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t much more time. As soon as we push the Ivans into the river that will be the end of your duel.’

  ‘They’re taking some pushing,’ Lanz said, spooning stew into his mouth.

  ‘Is that your rifle?’ the motor-cyclist asked, reaching for the Karabiner but dropping his hand when Meister snapped: ‘Don’t touch it.’

  Meister said: ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Munich. I’ve seen the Führer there a couple of times. What does it take to make a sniper?’

  ‘You have to discriminate,’ Meister said.

  ‘Ah.’ The motor-cyclist looked puzzled. And then: ‘I envy you. You know, the sense of satisfaction. You’re actually killing Russians instead of merely driving a motor-cycle. But still, I suppose I am doing a worthwhile job. You know, keeping Karl Meister supplied with food so that he can shoot Antonov on a full stomach. When I write home I’ll tell them I supplied Karl Meister with rabbit stew.’

  ‘Cat stew,’ Lanz said, placing a piece of pale cheese onto a hunk of bread and popping it into his mouth with a furtive movement as though it were stolen.

  Meister handed his canister to the motor-cyclist. �
�You eat this, I’m not hungry.’

  The motor-cyclist dipped a spoon into the stew. With the spoon halfway to his mouth he turned to Lanz. ‘You were joking, weren’t you? You know, about cats …’ Without waiting for a reply he put down the spoon.

  Before leaving he asked Meister for his autograph. ‘You know, for the people back home.’ Meister scrawled it on the back of the FALL OF STALINGRAD.

  Bug-eyed again with his goggles in place, the motor-cyclist kick-started his machine and, waving, took off down the frozen track.

  The shell exploded so near to the school that it showered Meister and Lanz with debris. When Meister peered over the wall all he could see of the motor-cycle was one wheel spinning beside the shell-hole, the grave.

  Skipping away in the breeze, heading for the river, was the poster; as it unfolded it reminded Meister of a fledgling bird, spreading its wings for the first time but looking just the same for its nest.

  ***

  At 9.00 that evening Lanz heard a noise above the rattle of gunfire and the whine of an iced wind nosing through the jagged walls of the school.

  He touched Meister’s arm, put his finger to his lips, a thief hearing a footstep on gravel, the creak of a door opening.

  They had decided to wait until dawn before reporting to Paulus that, in their opinion, Antonov was no longer in Stalingrad. They had moved the burning schoolbooks to the grate in the ruins of the classroom and, wrapped in blankets, were watching knowledge go up in flames, sparks racing up the sawn-off chimney to return through the open roof like words trying to make sense again.

  Meister listened. He couldn’t hear anything except the normal sounds of nocturnal Stalingrad. Lanz picked up his pistol and left the classroom. Meister saw him, dark and feline, scale the wall in the playground, drop to the other side on sponge feet. Meister picked up his rifle and, through a shell-hole, thrust the barrel into the night.

  Finger hooked on the trigger, shoulder muscles tensed, he waited. Only when he had a target in the sights could he relax, stroke the trigger, breath gently. An aircraft lumbered overhead; a searchlight switched the sky; tracer bullets glowed and died.

  Supposing he shot Lanz?

  He had allowed Elzbeth to fire his rifle once on the banks of the Elbe. In fact he had done everything except pull the trigger, standing behind her, easing the butt into her shoulder, aiming the sights at a pine tree and feeling her warmth through her silk blouse.

  The row startled him. Shouting, scuffling, cursing on the other side of the school. He ran to the space where the door had been as Lanz led in Misha squirming.

  Lanz pushed him onto the blankets in front of the fire. ‘Antonov hasn’t quit,’ Lanz said. ‘That little bastard was leading him here.’

  ‘Were you?’ Meister asked in Russian. ‘Were you leading Antonov here?’

  ‘I was trying to save you,’ Misha shouted. He tried to get up but Lanz pinned him with his boot.

  ‘I don’t know what he said,’ Lanz said. ‘But whatever it was I don’t believe it.’

  Meister said: ‘What do you mean, trying to save us?’

  Misha told him that Antonov had been wounded and taken to a hospital on the other side of the river.

  ‘Badly wounded?’

  ‘I don’t know. He looked at me in a funny sort of way and kept wiping his forehead as though he was trying to get rid of something. But that’s not the point, not now. You’re in danger …’ He tried to get up again but Lanz’s boot went for his throat.

  When Meister translated Lanz said: ‘Ask him where Antonov was injured,’ and when Meister had translated the answer Lanz said: ‘My local geography isn’t too good but isn’t that on the way here from the tunnel?’

  When Misha agreed Lanz said with a sort of negative triumph: ‘You see, he was leading Antonov here. Then they got shot up. Maybe Antonov was concussed, who knows. But if you think he’s on the other side of the river you’re crazy. He’s here. Outside. Looking for you.’

  Meister said to Misha: ‘Is Antonov here?’

  ‘I told you, he’s on the other side of the Volga.’ He blinked. ‘If he made it.’

  Misha said that an assault group had been sent to rescue Antonov, that a row-boat from Vice-Admiral Rogachev’s Volga Flotilla had set off across the river with him on board.

  ‘But how are we in danger?’ Meister asked.

  Misha said: ‘I knew two members of the assault group before the Germans came. They lived near the bakery. They were bad men and they robbed my father once. I heard them talking the day after Antonov left. They were talking about killing you.’

  Misha paused and Meister thought: He should be in bed dreaming about football, not talking about killing.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Lanz asked but Meister held up his hand. ‘Why do they want to kill me?’ he asked Misha.

  ‘They think they will become heroes. Get medals. Good jobs when the war is over.’

  ‘Then they’re stupid. If I’m going to be killed Antonov’s got to do the job. They won’t get medals, they’ll get bullets.’

  ‘They asked me to lead them to you but I refused. Look.’ Meister noticed the swellings on his face, dried blood at the corner of his mouth. ‘I ran away but they’ll still find you. Razin told them where you were. There was no reason why he shouldn’t.’

  ‘Razin?’

  Lanz, picking out the one word, said: ‘Me, Russian version.’

  ‘They’re stupid all right,’ Misha said, ‘but they’re dangerous and they might be outside now waiting for you to show yourself.’

  ‘Then I won’t.’ Meister gave him coffee and a slab of bitter chocolate. ‘You stay here, don’t move, right?’

  Misha said: ‘Right.’

  When Meister translated what Misha had told him Lanz said: ‘I don’t believe him.’

  ‘You think everyone’s lying.’

  ‘Wrong. But I do think Antonov’s out there.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, does it? Antonov or two bounty hunters, they’re all trying to kill us.’

  ‘It matters to you,’ Lanz said.

  ‘Maybe. It also matters to me that I stay alive.’ Meister picked up his rifle. ‘I’ll take the front because that’s the way they’ll come, up from the river. You take the back in case I’m wrong. We’ll wait until they think we’re asleep. Then they’ll show themselves because they’re stupid.

  ‘Antonov isn’t,’ Lanz said.

  ‘Antonov isn’t out there.’

  ‘Supposing they’ve got grenades?’

  Meister asked Misha if they had grenades.

  ‘No pineapples,’ Misha said. ‘Lyudnikov’s hardly got any bullets let alone grenades.’ He opened his eyes wide, fighting sleep.

  Meister positioned himself beside a shell-hole; to his right he could see Misha in front of the fire; he could tell from the curl of his body that he was asleep.

  The wind had dropped and the clouds had parted in places and from time to time the moon shone through the rents; Meister hoped the two Russians would come when the moon was shining.

  Time passed neither swiftly nor slowly; it had no dimension when Meister was waiting. Born in another place, he reflected, he might have been a hunter like Antonov. Circumstance.

  He didn’t mind the waiting because in a way it didn’t exist: his senses melded. Familiarity with the gun, the occasional cough of combat as Russian marauders went about their work, a taste of rust, the moon projecting lonely pictures, the cold night in his nostrils.

  He enjoyed the smell of night in Stalingrad, its misty flavour of gestation, because it was normality which by day was thrust aside by shells and bombs. When danger was close he sometimes smelled perfume.

  He returned to Hamburg but his gaze didn’t waver from the rubble, now black, now silver. When he had decided to become a sharp-shooter he had been taken with a dozen other aspirants to a shooting range adjoining Landungsbrücken railway station by the harbour.

  A brisk middle-aged instructor wearing civilian clothes as t
hough they were a uniform, who was said to have been a sniper in the 1914-18 war, made them lie in a row on coconut mats. As he kicked their legs into position he said: ‘This is just to see if you’ve got the makings of a marksman. If not you can go home and take up knitting.’ His voice in the cordite-smelling, barn-like range reminded Meister of biscuits breaking.

  They were given .22 training rifles almost identical to the Mauser 98a but manufactured for use with small-calibre ammunition to comply with the Treaty of Versailles, and told to fire six rounds at conventional black and white targets.

  When Meister wound back his target there wasn’t a mark on it but his neighbour’s target was drilled with twelve bullet holes.

  But the instructor wasn’t as snappy as he sounded. Kneeling beside Meister whose face was pressed into his mat, he said: ‘Don’t worry, son, it happened to me once. Stay behind after the others have gone.’ And to Meister’s neighbour: ‘One word about this and I’ll kick your backside from here to Berlin.’

  Later Meister peppered the bull and magpie with bullets and the instructor said: ‘You’re going to be good, son, really good and I wish I was going with you wherever that is.’

  Kneeling beside the shell-hole, Meister experienced again the despair he had felt when, gazing at his blank target, he had believed that he would never command respect in Magdalena’s set and even now felt hot with shame although, since Stalingrad, he knew that it had never mattered anyway.

  Glancing at Misha, curled like a foetus, he wished that he had found out earlier in his life that such values are smoke screening truth.

  He squeezed the trigger gently as a shape that hadn’t been in his vision before moved in the moonlight. Stupid but then they were stupid. He squeezed the trigger harder and the shape reared and fell forward.

  He waited. Two members of an assault group.

  Misha joined him. Meister didn’t look down. He stroked the trigger, light, downward movements. He doubted whether he would have to shoot again but it was important to keep contact with the gun.

  ‘… really good and I wish I was going with you wherever that is.’ The instructor had died just before Britain declared war in 1939; a fragment of shrapnel that had been pressing on an artery since 1917.