The Winter Soldiers

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  There was danger out there from the enemy. Light was needed to handle the crane and such light, especially backlight, meant exposure to sharpshooters. Even as Crossman watched, a shot zipped through the night and took a careless sailor who had raised half his torso above the wall right in the back. The victim fell forward into the arms of a comrade. Others crowded round for a few moments, then left him when an officer barked an order. The wounded sailor – Crossman could see by his eyes he was close to death – was carried past the spot where the sergeant stood. It was difficult not to feel anger towards the shooter (who for all the world might have been Peterson if she had recovered enough to join with Captain Goodlake’s sharpshooters, as was her wont during mission lulls) on the ‘other side’ of the wall. Crossman had to shake himself, mentally, and remind himself that the soldier who had made the shot was a comrade not a foe, was on his side. The Guards’ officer who organised such night raids, with hawk-eyed riflemen handpicked from various regiments, was not indeed his enemy.

  ‘Have you seen enough?’ whispered the Greek. ‘We should get back to the others.’

  Crossman had not finished studying the crane. Where to place the charge? Any amount of gunpowder in the wrong place would explode uselessly without damaging the device. A small charge, in the right place, should be enough to cripple it forever. Well, at least for a few days, perhaps weeks, giving the British and French enough time to blast the defences and weaken them to the point where an attack might be possible. Crossman knew the French were raring to have a go. Champing at the bit. Give them a hole and they would do their damnedest to go through it. Their army was in much better health than the British. Their numbers were greater and their men in finer fettle. They slept in huts, were well supplied, and their state of well-being was superior to that of the British. Crossman wanted to give the French that gap to go through. Perhaps it might be the hole in the dam through which the flood would pour and drown Sebastopol.

  ‘All right,’ he said in German, there being some men standing quite close and it being dangerous to use English, ‘I’m ready to go back to the others. Let’s go before they eat and drink everything in your house.’

  ‘Eh?’ uttered the Greek. Crossman realized the other man did not speak German. He should have used Russian. However, one of three workmen just relieved of their shift had heard what he’d said, and suddenly the tiredness left the man’s face. He looked interested.

  ‘Others?’ said one of the Russian soldiers, also in German. ‘You are having a party?’

  ‘No. There’s no party. Not really.’

  The men came over to him. They were dressed for work in old clothes, but were wearing fatigue caps denoting the 26th Regiment. One was quite elderly, with grey hair and a grey moustache decorating his lined face, but the other two were young men and they looked eager. The same one who had spoken before now continued to press his case.

  ‘You mentioned food and drink. Come on, share with us. We won’t tell anyone else.’ The soldier turned and spoke to his two companions in Russian and they nodded eagerly.

  Crossman had a dilemma. If he stood and argued with these men he was going to attract attention to himself and Diodotus. While he was confident enough on the periphery of Sebastopol society, for there was a great variety of citizens and nationalities in this cosmopolitan city, he knew he did not warrant close inspection. If some Russian officer came over and wanted to know what was going on, then started asking awkward questions, Crossman once again might end up in a Sebastopol prison.

  ‘Oh, come on then,’ he said, jovially. ‘But I hope you won’t be disappointed.’

  The soldier who had spoken in German rubbed his hands together in anticipation and jabbered to his companions. Crossman set out with Diodotus by his side. The two had exchanged significant looks and Crossman thought he recognized an expression of ‘leave it to me’ in the Greek. He was quite prepared to do this because he himself was at a perfect loss. Obviously they could not take the three soldiers back to the house, but at the same time Crossman saw great difficulty in killing them. There were three of them for a start. It is no easy task to kill three men one after another, without at least one of them escaping. Aside from the practical considerations, killing a man on the battlefield, even at close quarters, was not the same as killing a man who was walking by your side, chattering away about trivial social matters, in the streets of a civilized town. The latter actually felt like murder. Crossman knew there were men who could do such things: he believed Lovelace would have little hesitation. Ali would certainly do it, if he felt he had to, and Ali was no cowardly backstabber. And both would quite rightly justify their actions by saying that anyone who jeopardized their life, the lives of their men and the success of their mission, whether knowingly or not, had unfortunately forfeited the right to live. Crossman could not bend his mind to such logic.

  Quite suddenly, as these thoughts still churned inside Crossman’s head, they turned a corner and his worst fears were realized. They had come face to face with a Russian officer, who seemed inclined to stop and stare at them through his spectacles. He was a young man, a second-lieutenant, and his face bore a serious expression.

  The three Russians halted and saluted, since this young officer was clearly not going to let the party pass without a word.

  ‘My Greek friend,’ said the officer, speaking to Diodotus. ‘Where are you going in such a hurry?’

  Diodotus stepped forward and took the officer’s hand to shake it, though the lieutenant did not seem inclined to offer it in the first place.

  ‘How good to see you, Leo. How very good to see you.’

  ‘I asked you a question,’ said the officer. He turned to stare, first at Crossman, then at the other men. ‘Where are you and your companions racing away to? Is the city under attack? Do you know something?’

  Crossman could tell the officer was half-joking, so he said in his not-very-good Russian, ‘The city is always under attack, sir. Why just a few moments ago, when we were working on the walls, a man was killed before my very eyes. Shot through the heart.’

  ‘No, no,’ said one of the soldiers, ‘the ball hit him in the head.’

  ‘And who are you?’ asked the officer of Crossman. ‘Are you a merchant sailor?’

  The officer looked an intelligent man. Crossman did not want to say yes and then get into conversation with him over matters of the sea, which would – if the officer knew anything about it himself – expose the sergeant’s ignorance. So, putting on an indignant expression, he said, ‘I was tutor to some children here, teaching German, until this damn war started. Now I can’t get home to my wife and children. I have to do gruelling manual work,’ he showed the lieutenant his palms, ‘which is ruining the skin on my hands . . .’

  Diodotus suddenly interrupted with, ‘I myself was a prince in my last life and God neglected to change my skin.’

  Suddenly, with this extraordinary remark, all attention was on the Greek.

  ‘How so, my friend?’ asked the officer, his eyes lighting up a little. ‘Tell us more. Is this to be the subject of one of your epic Greek poems? Please explain.’

  ‘Why,’ replied Diodotus with an expansive gesture, ‘I can’t wear anything next to my skin but silk, or I break out in a rash. I have these beautiful manners which no one taught me, for my mother was a washerwoman and my father a drunk. You can see I have princely looks – the face of an angel, the body of a god. I sleep like a lamb on satin sheets, but toss and turn on rough cotton. It seems obvious to me that I was once a prince whom God is tormenting by leaving me in my old skin.’

  The lieutenant laughed. ‘You must have done something very bad in your last life, to return as you are now.’

  ‘But then,’ continued Diodotus, ‘you must admit my poetry is so very princely. It sings. It is mellifluous.’

  The officer laughed again. ‘It’s not bad – not bad. Well, then, where are you off to?’

  ‘A party, sir,’ blurted out one of the soldiers. ‘These ge
ntlemen kindly asked us along.’

  There was a tutting sound from the lieutenant. ‘My Greek friend, what are you doing, collecting rough fellows like these? Are you dredging the slums for material for those dreary stories you’ve been writing? Shame on you. Stick to poetry. Your prose is mundane. Men,’ he said to the soldiers, ‘you are being used. He will write down every word you say in his little blue notebook and it will re-emerge from the mouth of one of his sordid characters – people of the streets, people of the soil. This man is a writer you know. Good at verse, but horrible at prose. Take my advice and leave him to his devices. If you don’t, your grandchildren will recognize your earthy phrases in one of his self-published works and die of embarrassment for you.’

  With that, the officer nodded curtly to Crossman, took his leave of Diodotus, and continued on his way.

  ‘What was all that about?’ asked the elderly soldier. ‘You are really taking our words and putting them down in some book?’

  ‘If you’re worried at all, you can go on your way now,’ said Diodotus. ‘I have no argument with that.’

  ‘No,’ said one of the younger men, ‘we’ll stick with you.’

  Diodotus turned and continued walking. Crossman fell in beside him. ‘Who was that second-lieutenant?’ he asked. The Greek looked behind him. The three soldiers had fallen back a bit. He felt able to talk, quietly.

  ‘That was Lieutenant Leo Tolstoy. Like me, he writes, only I’m better at it than him, though he won’t admit it. We show each other our work.’ He looked up at Crossman. ‘One day you will be proud to mention my name to your family. I knew him, you will say. What, the great author, Diodotus? they will exclaim in wonder. You knew him? As a friend? Yes, you will reply, he was one of my greatest companions. We fought together during the Russian war. Then you will probably brag to them that you gave me my best inspirations, that your suggestions had appeared in my works. You will point to a shelf containing a long line of my books. There, you will say, that one entitled The Sebastopol Incident. I gave him the plot for that book.

  ‘But you will be lying, of course. All men lie about such things. It is the nature of the beast. To be close to a genius and not to be part of that genius is impossible to bear. You will make things up, out of the ether, and I shall forgive you for it, because by that time we will be writing to each other once every few months. You will be praising my latest tome, and I shall be dispensing literary wisdom to you. You shall be my representative in London, arguing for more and more money from the publishers, as my books sell on the streets of your capital city like hot pies. You and I, my friend, will be as rich as Croesus one day.’

  Crossman laughed at the Greek’s flight of fancy and then said, ‘Until then, we have a more pressing problem.’

  ‘Ah, yes. The soldiers. Down here.’ Diodotus suddenly swung sharply down some cellar steps which led to a door with peeling red paint. He knocked on it briskly and when it was opened the sounds of revelry came from within. The three soldiers peered over the Greek’s shoulder, seeing in the tobacco fug inside men drinking, girls dancing. ‘The party,’ cried Diodotus with a shy little smile at Crossman. ‘In you go, soldier boys.’

  ‘Here,’ said a woman in Polish, ‘have you been invited?’

  Diodotus ignored her. Pushing his way past her jutting breasts he led the way into the room. Once they were all in, she shrugged and closed the door, going back to sit on the lap of a naval man. He laughed and bumped her up and down, before taking a long swig at a pot of something. The room was extremely hot, and crammed with bodies. Soon the three soldiers had melted into the melee. They were no longer interested in Crossman and Diodotus. They had found their party.

  ‘Shall we leave?’ asked Crossman, urging Diodotus towards the exit.

  The Greek was beaming, looking around him, nodding at acquaintances. ‘What’s the hurry? Relax. Enjoy yourself. No one here is worried about saboteurs.’

  Crossman winced. ‘Are you mad? Keep your tongue.’

  Diodotus made a Mediterranean gesture with his chin. ‘I would be mad to rush away from here to be with your smelly Turk, now wouldn’t I? They’re probably all asleep back there. Let’s enjoy ourselves for a bit. Oh, there’s Lucinda,’ he smiled and waved at a buxom young woman with dark hair and flashing eyes. ‘I won’t be long.’ Diodotus forced his way through the mass of bodies to the woman and they disappeared a couple of minutes later into a side-room. Crossman was left feeling foolishly sober amongst a drunken mob of revellers. He took off his coat and hat, knowing he would be close to swooning if it he kept them on in such an atmosphere. Someone took them from his hands and put them on a pile near the doorway. Before long he found he had a cup of vodka in his hand. He swallowed some of the harsh vodka: it numbed his tongue and the lining of his cheeks with its rawness.

  Crossman managed to deflect any attempt to engage him in a long conversation. People there were not much interested in talking anyway. They were more concerned with getting drunk. He noticed that his three soldiers were very soon inebriated. One of them was yelling to someone in the far corner of the room. The elderly member of the trio had sat himself down in a corner with a bottle and was drinking steadily. There was a look of mournful gratification on his face: the expression of someone who finds deep satisfaction in being miserable.

  ‘What time is it?’ a breathless woman asked the melancholy man, after she had finished dancing on a small table for the benefit of a dozen men.

  He took out a battered pocket watch. ‘February,’ he replied, after looking at it for a very long time. ‘Time I went home to Irkutsk.’

  The woman flounced away, or would have, if there had not been so many people in her way. She was slightly overweight, probably voluptuous in the eyes of many men, and she had bright red lips. She caught Crossman’s eye as she squeezed past him and said in French, ‘My, you’re a tall one.’

  ‘It’s in my family.’

  She put her hands on her hips. ‘Now how did I know you speak French? It must be in your eyes. Let me look in there. Yes! I see it. French blood.’

  Crossman thought not, but who knew all the names of his ancestors in full? One has four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents, and so on, doubling up forever. One had one’s name, and the name of one’s mother locked away somewhere, but as to all the others, one would have to delve very deeply indeed. It was doubtful any man on earth knew all the names that made him who he was and where he came from. There was definitely Celt and Saxon there, and possibly Norman French, perhaps a touch of Norwegian or Dane, but as to a link with modern France, why that was a matter of conjecture.

  ‘Cat got your tongue?’

  ‘I was just wondering about my French blood. I don’t know where it might be.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s gone to swell the organ of amour?’ He felt her touch his thigh and instinctively jerked away from her. She smiled, then gave him a throaty laugh. ‘Don’t looked so shocked. I’m a gypsy. We gypsy women are expected to be lewd, didn’t you know?’

  ‘I wasn’t shocked,’ he said, defensively. ‘I’m not naive.’

  ‘Not a little. Never mind.’ She took him by the hand. ‘Come and sit with me. We needn’t do anything. Sometimes I just like to be with a gentleman and hear his voice. You have such sweet voices, you gentlemen. Are you an officer in the army? You’re not a navy man, not with that skin. You can always tell navy men by the red veins in their faces. They get weathered, by salt, sea and storms, and their skin cracks. Look at that fellow’s nose over there! He’s a sailor. You can tell.’

  Crossman was suddenly glad that he had not pretended to be a sailor, either with the lieutenant they had met or with this woman. It was always best to stay with something one knew well. He talked with the woman for a while, learned that she had been abandoned by her husband, a ‘barbarous man from the Caucasian mountains’ in Sebastopol when he had fled along with other refugees, just before the siege began. Now she was living on her wits, she said, like many o
thers. Did he think Sebastopol would fall before the spring? He replied he did not know, but there were strong defences around the city. It seemed as if it might hold out forever.

  ‘Ah, but those Frenchmen outside the walls,’ she replied. ‘They will be desperate to get in to reach me.’ She gave another one of her lusty laughs and slapped his knee, as if he had said something risqué.

  He liked her. He liked her open manner and powerful voice. She was not one of your faint-hearted lavender-loving females who swooned at the slightest opportunity. She looked as if she took life by the throat and wrung every drop out of it. Even now she was smoking a clay pipe. For some reason this made her more attractive to Crossman, who would have found the act slightly repulsive in someone like Mrs Durham.

  ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘I’m an Abkhazian, or was. Now, I belong everywhere and nowhere. I am a child of the Black Sea. The sea will always look after its own, you know. I never starve. I never have to sleep in the gutter. The Black Sea is my father and mother. So long as I never go away from its shores, I shall live a long and happy life.’

  ‘Happy? In Sebastopol?’

  ‘Oh yes, this war is none of my making. I don’t have anything to do with it. I simply move around inside the walls it creates and bide my time. This war will be over one day – all wars have to end – and I shall still be here.’