‘Perfect? You used scum like that to work for you?’
‘Scum like Kapto? Yes, and scum like you too, Golden. He was ours. Ours! And you wiped him out! I’ve been down here for ten days waiting for news of this and then you turn up thinking you’ve done us a favour and we’re going to pat you on the head. Do you understand, prisoner?’
‘I am beginning to …’ Now Benya thought about it, what were the chances of Kapto turning up with his maps in the same sector as Mandryka? It was not a coincidence. Perhaps the entire Shtrafbat charge had been devised just to get him there; eight hundred Shtrafniki sacrificed for this mission. And he had ruined it. ‘Oh God!’ he groaned again.
‘Do you know what Lavrenti Pavlovich said? He said: “If you find the man who fucked up this operation, beat him to a pulp until his eyes pop from his head. Punch him so hard he swallows his own teeth.”’
Benya was shaking.
Kobylov paused. ‘But here’s the thing. It’s now five oh five p.m. You left Kapto and Manteuffel dead at around ten thirty. Schwerin is not expected until, shall we say, around midnight. Do you see what I am getting at?’
‘I am not sure I do.’
‘You and your horse-riding clods. Don’t you remember, Golden, who you are?’
‘I’m a writer, that’s all. And we fought the Fascists, we did our best, but I’m no soldier. Just a writer …’
‘A writer? No, no, prisoner. You are a convicted terrorist and British–Japanese spy, found guilty of the gravest and most shameful crimes, including planning to murder Comrade Stalin and our leaders, in conspiracy with your mistress, the spy Sashenka. Yes, I remember her all right! Quite a beauty.’
Is she alive? wondered Benya.
‘You are a terrorist sentenced to death, and you already have Eight Grammes lodged in your head. It’s just unfired. You have helped our enemies. If you resist me in any way, you and your Cossacks will be nothing more than smears on a wall within a few minutes. I’ll do it myself’ – and Kobylov slapped his pistol on to the plywood table like a gambler throwing down his money.
Benya flinched.
‘Ah yes,’ said Kobylov. ‘But there’s another way. Do you want to hear it?’
Benya tried to speak.
‘Do you know what we believe in? Watch me say it. Re-demp-tion, Golden, re-demp-tion! Do you know what that means for you?’
Benya shook his head.
‘If you correct your mistake, you may be redeemed. Not just sent back to the Camps but truly redeemed! I can’t promise anything for your donkey-humping bumpkins. They need to be checked out. But for you, that’s a promise! Golden?’
‘You want me to …’ Benya was overcome by a new panic. ‘I can’t go back. I can’t! I will die out there.’ He was shivering, beyond tears. ‘You don’t know what we saw out there!’
Kobylov glanced at his watch again, bejewelled fingers drumming. Then he lost patience and slapped Benya across the face. Benya saw a rain of red stars behind his eyes, and his face was burning. He touched his lip. It had a pulse of its own, it was ballooning, and there was blood on his fingertips.
‘Pull yourself together, Golden, and stop pitying yourself,’ Kobylov roared. ‘We’re in a desperate war. The Motherland is in peril and our great Soviet State is in jeopardy. Don’t you know the Germans are killing the Jews? Golden, listen to me. It’s just a few hours more and when you return, you will be redeemed.’
‘I’ll never return … I’m not sure I can do this. I mean I want to …’
‘You have every chance of succeeding and you’ll be helped by your Cossack pals. You’ll have new guns and ammo; fresh horses. Do this and you will return to normal life, to your cafés, your bookshops, your girls, all those girls who love writers – do you remember the old life, Golden? Good. Now, what do I want you to do?’
‘You want me to go back and replace the maps?’
Kobylov flashed his dazzling teeth. ‘You’ve got it! Get those three sheepfuckers. Mogilchuk rides with you. You leave in fifteen minutes.’
‘One thing.’
‘Speak.’
‘I want my horse, Silver Socks.’
‘Is that all? Done. Your nag awaits!’
VIII
‘Getting out was easy,’ said Panka when they reached the office of the Sergei Kirov Collective Farm 23 some hours later. ‘It’s getting back that will be difficult.’ Behind them the sun was sinking over the Don, the light sticky.
Just as they had done that morning, they dismounted and tied up the horses and lay in the grass and watched. The Germans’ horses were still where they’d been tied up. Around them, they could hear the cawing of crows; and a vulture on a branch like a priest in his cowl.
‘No one’s there,’ said Panka. ‘Over to you, Benya.’
‘Go on, Granpa,’ said Prishchepa.
‘Do your duty and we can get back,’ said Spider.
A pause. ‘Garanzha, I need you to come up with me,’ said Benya.
‘Afraid of stiffs?’ asked Garanzha.
Benya nodded.
‘Come then,’ said Garanzha, waving his fingers like a magician.
‘Wait,’ said Mogilchuk. ‘I give the orders here.’
‘What are your orders?’ Benya sighed. It was all going to be much more difficult with Mogilchuk watching them.
‘Right, let us proceed!’ ordered Mogilchuk.
They had to humour him. If they made it back, he would decide their destiny.
Garanzha smirked. ‘Good, let us proceed.’
Panka remained on watch, covering the hut with his Papasha as the others approached the door, Mogilchuk creeping up as if playing grandmother’s footsteps. Garanzha winked at them.
As they scaled the steps into the office, Benya tentatively looked round the corner to the couch and Kapto was there, untouched, paler and chalkier as if made of plaster. He already looked deader than he had appeared before. As if he had subsided a little.
‘There’s our friend,’ said Garanzha.
‘Right,’ said Mogilchuk, trying to assume the gravity of command. ‘Shtrafnik Golden, proceed to replace the documents.’
Benya hesitated, still unwilling to touch the body.
‘Get on with it, Golden,’ said Garanzha. ‘He won’t bite. Or maybe he will – ha!’
Benya unstrapped the satchel around his neck and put it on the table, taking out the maps, the notebooks. He opened the maps, laid out the pencils, positioned the notebook open at Manteuffel’s neat notes. Then he took out the ID papers of the dead men.
‘Put them back in their pockets,’ ordered Mogilchuk, wiping his forehead.
Benya moved closer to Kapto’s body. ‘I can’t,’ he said.
‘Mother of God!’ Garanzha took the papers.
‘Make sure you put the right papers in the right pockets,’ said Mogilchuk.
‘Mother of God!’ Garanzha said again. He slipped them into Kapto’s pockets and then, to shock the others, kissed him on the forehead and rolled his eyes like a clown as the body slipped slowly sideways.
‘Done,’ said Benya thankfully.
‘Shtrafnik Garanzha, how dare you fool around with official business!’ said Mogilchuk.
‘Who’s going to believe these maps are real when there are three dead bodies here?’ asked Garanzha, going outside to replace the papers in the pockets of the two Germans.
‘Don’t ask, Spider, don’t think,’ said Benya. ‘We’re just screws in the big machine. They must have thought of that …’
‘Shtrafnik Garanzha, this is your second and last warning!’ blathered Mogilchuk from behind them. ‘You are prohibited from speculating on this top-secret mission. And, Shtrafnik Golden, that applies to you too.’
‘Are we finished here, senior lieutenant?’ asked Panka. ‘The shooting has increased over at the Don and I really think we should try to get home …’
‘Yes, yes, let us proceed, Sergeant Churelko.’
‘Let us proceed up my arse,’ leered Spider Garanzha to
Prishchepa behind Mogilchuk’s back. Prishchepa grinned.
The sun was almost gone now but the sky was cloudy for the first time Benya could recall. The air wafting over the Don was burning and dusty. Ahead of them, the artillery was thundering. Benya was relieved. Tiredness was making his vision blur and he swayed in the saddle. Twice, Prishchepa nudged him. ‘Wake up, Granpa.’ But he drifted off again and then he froze.
The men around him in the greyness were no longer Garanzha and Prishchepa but other horsemen, one or two, then more, phalanxes of them, ghostly squadrons in the grainy red twilight. The Italian cavalry were moving up to the front line. Benya could hear swear words in Italian and the sounds of hundreds of horses on the move, snaffles clinking, the creak of leather. Men whispered to their horses, and all around Benya was the smell of horse shit. Silver Socks nuzzled an Italian horse, and Benya caught his right spur on an Italian spur and he heard the clacketing of the steel. His body stiffened and poured sweat as he looked straight ahead. A single word and it would all be over but he kept riding through them, Socks making her way towards the horses she knew who were standing, waiting under the trees ahead.
‘Thank God!’ said Panka.
‘Thank Silver Socks!’ They turned silently and glanced back. The air around them was the colour of good coffee, the sky a gaudy, blood-spattered crimson with new terraces of backlit clouds through which shone stairways of sun-gold, the Day of Creation one minute, Apocalypse the next. The countryside itself was alive with the grit of a thousand hooves, the chink of spurs; and on another, aural level, the gunning of engines, tanks on the move, the crump of howitzers.
Panka raised his hands: Don’t move; they can’t see us here; wait. Then he pointed. On the hill a few hundred yards behind, illuminated by one of the day’s last sunbeams, they could see the Italian command in a heartbreakingly beautiful square of golden light. A few horses stood towards the front, commanders watching their squadrons coming up. Benya took Panka’s binoculars, knowing what he would see: and there he was, the hunched shoulders, and that way of leaning in the saddle like a fearsome but half-collapsed castle. It was Malamore, and behind, one hand on Violante’s mane, right there where he knew she would be, was Fabiana.
IX
Svetlana climbed the steps to her Kremlin apartment fearfully. At least her father would be in his office, she told herself. It was late evening, and he’d still be working in the Little Corner. But she halted at the top of the steps. Four uniformed Chekists – she knew their names of course – stood outside with their Papashas on their arms.
‘It’s going to be OK, Svetlana Josefovna,’ General Vlasik whispered, breath fishy and spicy. Unmistakably ukha soup.
‘How long has he been here, Uncle Kolya?’
‘All day. He hasn’t even been to the Little Corner yet.’
‘All day? Is he still furious, Uncle Kolya?’
‘A little, yes, but it will pass. Daughters fall in love, fathers are angry! It’s the order of things. But, Sveta, you’ve been a bad girl! If it was my daughter, well, I’d give her more than a slap … He’s a Georgian and Georgian fathers reach for the shotgun even before Russian ones. And he’s under unspeakable pressure. Don’t make it worse, Sveta. Be calm. Go in.’ And he took her by the shoulders and guided her through the front door.
Inside the sound of papers being torn, the smell of pipe smoke. In the sitting room stood her father ripping up Shapiro’s love letters while Svetlana’s nanny watched miserably.
Stalin looked up at her. ‘Calls himself a writer, does he? I found his letters. I’ve read them.’ He was speaking calmly, tearing Lev’s letters into little pieces and sprinkling them around the table, barely looking at her. ‘There’s the war on. Every family has lost someone. Have you any idea what I am going through? In the south? And this hack is sending messages to a schoolgirl in his newspaper reports! Oh, that playboy played you all right, didn’t he? You fell for it, you fool! What kind of writing is this? It’s repulsive claptrap. And what does he want you for, did you ask yourself that? Only one reason. To get close to me. Yes, to worm his way to me! And if you wanted a filthy writer, couldn’t you have chosen a proper Russian? This one’s a Jew. Out of all the filth in Moscow, and the scum around Vasily, you had to choose a Jew. Yes, a Jew!’
With this, Stalin walked out of the room, leaving Svetlana standing there looking at the shreds of her love letters from the Lion all over the carpet.
The moment he was gone, she threw herself into the arms of her nanny, who kissed her hair.
‘There there, bright one, it’s going to be OK,’ said her nanny.
‘Is it over now?’ Svetlana sobbed.
‘I think so.’
‘Will he … will he punish Lev?’
‘Of course he won’t,’ answered her nanny. ‘Your father would never do such a thing. But, Svetlana Josefovna?’
‘Yes?’
‘Promise me you will never contact him again. You can’t. It’s over. Your father is calmer because I’ve promised him that. Promise me!’
‘Of course! I promise,’ said Svetlana through her tears. ‘Never again!’
X
Panka tapped Benya on the shoulder and they rode on towards the Don. Another field and they looked back again. Malamore was still on his hill with Fabiana behind him.
A bolt of pain coursed through Benya as he thought about Malamore and Fabiana together. In the shrouding darkness, the countryside, the grasses, the trees, the sibilant wheatfields all seemed alive with men and machines. By now they were close to the river, and Benya could see the muzzle flashes of big guns and the tracers of small ones zinging through the dusk as the Germans, Italians, Romanians and Hungarians threw their forces against the last, beleaguered Russian positions on the west bank of the Don. In front of them, the Russians were lobbing shells over the river, each one sending waves of vibrations pulsating through them. Flashes lit up hillsides, and explosions rendered cottages and vehicles and running men as light as day before darkness washed back over them. How would they ever get back now? Benya thought.
A shell whistled right over them. Panka turned back – and so did Benya – and suddenly they were all looking at the Italian group on the hill as the shell hit its mark. In a halo of orange brilliance, a doll-like figure was tossed in the air, and then nothing, nothing but horses running, dead animals scattered and people on fire. Garanzha and Prishchepa were cheering, and Mogilchuk was staring wide-eyed at the scene. There was no sign of Fabiana.
Benya knew she was gone. In that moment, he felt a little piece of him wither and die. They had loved each other ‘somehow forever’ but his ‘somehow forever’ never once envisaged that it would be she who was gone. He had always assumed it would be he. He saw her quite clearly at her most beautiful, her eyes honey-coloured in the sunlight and burning with indignation, her chin raised and hands open – until her fury was breaking into the widest laugh, and she was raising her eyes to him, and he was kissing those soft lips with the slight twist, smelling her amber skin, seeing her dark hair unbraided and flowing.
Now he stared at the hillside, almost reclaimed by darkness except for small fires burning on the grass where Fabiana had been just a few minutes earlier, and the strange thing was he was glassed off, feeling and hearing nothing, nothing at all. She was no longer amongst the living and he was utterly blank.
Panka grabbed him by the collar, telling him to ride on – now was their moment. Benya didn’t care what happened now. That was his last investment in the world and he was nearly fearless, careless, heedless. Panka was explaining what lay ahead to Mogilchuk, who managed, even now that things were dire, to rustle up a last reserve of pomposity. ‘Let us proceed, sergeant.’
They couldn’t get back along the beach, Panka was saying, and German armour was crushing the last Russian positions on the bend. The stronghold they had been in that morning had been abandoned, and the advance of the Italian cavalry could only mean a charge against Russian lines was imminent. What was left? There
was only one course of action.
‘We must embrace our darling mother,’ said Panka, spurring Almaz forward.
‘What’s he talking about?’ asked Mogilchuk.
‘Follow me,’ said Panka. Up the bluffs they galloped and down the chalky escarpment of the high bank, down a thin snaking path that led to the River Don. Here they could see the battle, a multi-faceted panorama across the mirror-like expanse of the great river, reflected in the water and in the sky above it, as were the muzzle flashes of the Russian guns fired from the other bank. Suddenly the sky went dark, and now the clouds were right above them, rolling over the riverbanks, and they too were jet black. It was, Benya thought, as if they were riding inside a black drum.
‘Perfect timing,’ said Panka as forks of lightning hit the water. ‘A Don fury.’
The horses were stamping and pacing and snorting. ‘I hate the rain, I hate the rain,’ said Garanzha, whipping his rearing horse. Panka rode down to the water, Benya following as foamy waves lapped Silver Socks’s hooves.
‘What now?’ shouted Mogilchuk.
Prishchepa threw his head back and started to sing, ‘I fell in love on the night of a Don storm …’ A red wall of fire illuminated the bank for a moment as a fuel tank exploded; then glimmers of orange flickered behind the clouds as the rain started, dense pails of rain, slanting in to burn and lash their faces and necks, blinding them. Benya was soaked instantly. The world was ending, and he was so tired that he might as well slip off his horse and die right here. But he was brought to by a sting of pain: Panka’s whip on his hand.
‘Come on, Granpa! This storm is a fierce bitch and every Cossack knows the bitches are fiercest on the Don. It’s our chance. We cross the Don here!’ shouted Panka over the deafening rain, lightning, guns. ‘Ride right in, look neither right nor left. Tighten your reins and say your prayers!’
‘But the horses …’ cried Mogilchuk, trying to hold the reins.
Red Sky at Noon (The Moscow Trilogy) Page 26