by Alan Furst
By full daylight they could see columns of black smoke where the city was burning and the sound of the barrage had grown more distinct, could be heard to crackle like wet wood in a fire. Vyborg drove, Szara sat beside him. They did not speak for a long time. Szara watched the needle on the gas gauge, quivering just below the midpoint on the dial. Now, when they encountered a rise or a low hill, Vyborg stopped the car just below the top, took his binoculars, and climbed the rest of the way. Szara stood guard, rifle in hand, back protected by the metal side of the car. On the fourth or fifth scouting expedition, Vyborg appeared just below the brow of a hill and waved for Szara to join him. When he got there Vyborg said, “They’re on the other side. Go slowly, stay as close to the ground as you can, and do not speak; make gestures if you have to. People notice motion, and they hear human sounds.” The sun was blazing. Szara crawled on his elbows and his knees, breathing dust, the rifle cradled across his arms. Sweat beaded in droplets at his hairline and ran down the sides of his face.
When they crested the hill, Vyborg handed him the binoculars, though he could see the valley very well without them. They’d reached the railroad switching station-as Vyborg had predicted- which lay by a dirt road at the foot of a long gentle grade. A single set of rails curved to the west, coming together by the switching station with a double-track north-south axis. A switchman’s hut and a set of long iron levers housed in a wooden framework stood to one side of two laybys, lengths of track where one train could be held while another used the right-of-way.
The little valley, mostly weeds and scrub trees, was alive with Wehrmacht gray. The hut and the switching apparatus had been protected by a sandbagged machine gun position; a number of Wehrmacht railroad officers, identifiable by shoulder patches when he used the binoculars, were milling about with green flags in hand. From the position of the long row of freight cars parked on the western track, Szara inferred that the troop train had arrived directly from the German side of the border. There was further evidence of this. Across the wooden boards of one of the cars was a legend printed with chalk: Wir fahren nach Polen um Juden zu versohlen, We are riding to Poland to beat up the Jews. Insignia indicated that he was witnessing the arrival of elements of the Seventeenth Infantry Division; about a thousand of them had already formed up while hundreds more continued to jump down from the open doors of the freight cars.
With the binoculars, details of faces were very clear to Szara. He saw them through a smoky haze that lay over the valley, with foreground weeds cutting across his field of vision and with the eerie detachment of observation at long range-mouths move yet no sound is heard-but he could see who they were. Farmboys and idlers and mechanics, street toughs and clerks, factory workers and students-an army of young faces, dark and fair, some laughing, some anxious, some full of bravado, some silent and withdrawn, some handsome and some ugly, others entirely unremarkable-an army like all others. A group of officers, generally in their thirties and forties (as the troopers were in their teens and twenties), stood to one side and smoked and talked quietly in little groups while the inevitable confusion of a military force on the move was sorted out by the NCOs, the sergeants and corporals.
Szara observed this particular group with interest. They were all of a type: big, strong, competent, full of easy authority but without swagger. They were, he knew, the soul of an army, supervisors and foremen rather than executives, and upon their abilities would ultimately rest defeat or victory. They worked with their units almost casually, sometimes taking a stray by a handful of uniform and heading it where it belonged, usually without any comment at all, simply pointing it in the direction it ought to go and giving it a bit of a shove to get it moving.
From a group of cattle cars farther down the track, the division’s horses were being led to the staging area. They were great, muscular beasts, bred for army life on the horse farms of East Prussia. They would pull the divisional artillery, the provisioning and ammunition wagons, and some of the better ones would be ridden by officers: the German army, like most other European armies, moved by horsepower. There would be a few open staff cars, like the one Szara and the colonel were using, for senior officers and the medical staff, but it was horses who did all the heavy work, four thousand of them for each division of ten thousand soldiers. The spearhead of the German offensive was armored-divisions of tanks and trucks, and their speed had so far entirely outmaneuvered the Polish defense-but the units moving up now would hold the territory that the fast-moving armored groups had captured.
Szara shifted his binoculars up the road that led north, where several companies were already on the move. It was no parade, they were walking not marching, weapons casually slung-as always the giants carried rifles while small, lean men lugged tripod machine guns and mortar tubes-in a formation that was ragged but functional. The machine was, for the moment, running in low gear. Szara saw that a field gun had tipped over into a ditch, the horses tangled up in their reins and skittering about to get their balance- the accident had evidently just happened. The situation was quickly put right: a sergeant shouted orders, several troopers soothed the horses, others freed the reins, a group organized itself to lift the gun back onto the road. It took only a moment, many willing hands- heave! — and the job was done, the advance continued.
Vyborg touched him on the shoulder to get his attention and made a hand motion indicating they’d spied long enough. Szara slithered backward for a time, then they rose and walked toward the car. Vyborg spoke in an undertone-even though they were well away from the Germans, something of their presence remained. “That,” he said, “was the road to Cracow. Our reckoning was, after all, correct. But, as you can see, the road is presently in use.”
“What can we do? “
“Swing around behind or try to sneak through at night.”
“Are we cut off, then?”
“Yes. For the time being. What was your impression of the Wehrmacht?”
They reached the car; Vyborg started the engine and slowly backed down the track until a curve took them out of the direct sightline of the hill they’d climbed. “My impression,” Szara said after Vyborg had backed the car into the wheat and turned it off, “is that I do not want to go to war with Germany.”
“You may have no choice,” Vyborg said.
“You believe Hitler will attack Russia?”
“Eventually, yes. He won’t be able to resist. Farmlands, oil, iron ore; everything a German loves. By the way, did you take note of the horses?”
“Handsome,” Szara said.
“Useless.”
“I’m no judge, but they seemed healthy. Big and strong.”
“Too big. The Russians have tough little horses called panje, they can live on weeds. These big German beasts will disappear in the Russian mud-that’s what happened to Napoleon, among other things. They’re strong enough, powerful, but too heavy. And just try and feed them.”
“Hitler knows all about Napoleon, I’d imagine.”
“He’ll think he’s better. Napoleon came out of Russia with a few hundred men. The rest remained as fertilizer. Hundreds of thousands of them.”
“Yes, I know. What the Russians call General Winter finally got them.”
“Not really. Mostly it just wore them down, then finished the job. What got them was spotted fever. Which is to say, lice. Russia defends herself in ways that nobody else really thinks about. The peasant has lived with these lice all his life, he’s immune. The Central European, that is the German, is not. Far be it from me to intrude on old Kinto’s information apparai, but if Hitler starts making hostile noises, somebody ought to go and have a look at what sort of salves and preventatives the German pharmaceutical houses are turning out. That could, in the long run, matter a great deal. Of course, why on earth would I be telling you such things? It will hardly do for Pravda. Still, if you do get out of here alive, and should you chance to meet one of the operatives you’ve never known, there’s a little something to whisper in his ear.”
At midnight they made a decision: abandoned the car and worked their way south through the countryside, carrying weapons, canteens, and hand baggage. The first two hours were agony, groping and stumbling through thick brush that bordered the wheat field, halting dead still at every miscellaneous sound of the night. What helped them, finally, was a German railroad patrol; a locomotive, its light a sharp, yellow cone that illuminated the track, moved cautiously south pushing a flatcar manned by soldiers with machine pistols. Following the light, they walked for another hour, saw the silhouette they wanted, then simply waited until the engine disappeared over the horizon.
The tiny railway station had a water tower. They twisted open a valve at the bottom and took turns drinking greedily from the stream sluicing onto the ground. It was foul water, bad-smelling and stale, and Szara could taste dirt and rotting wood and God knew what else, but he lapped at it avidly, drinking from cupped hands, not caring that the stream soaked his shirt and trousers. A man and a woman came out of a little cottage that backed up to the station; he was likely a sort of stationmaster, flagman, switchman, or whatever else might be required.
Vyborg greeted the couple politely and told the man he would require new clothing, whatever might be available. The woman went off and returned with a faded shirt and pants, broken-down shoes, a thin jacket, and a cap. Vyborg took a wallet from his jacket and offered the man a sheaf of zloty notes. The man looked stubbornly at his feet, but the woman stepped forward and accepted the money silently. “What will become of us now?” the man asked.
“One can only wait and see,” Vyborg said. He bundled up the clothing, took charge of the rifle and the canteens, and said, “I will take these off and bury them.” The man found him a coal shovel, and Vyborg vanished into the dark fields away from the track.
“To bury fine boots like those …” said the woman.
“Best forget them,” Szara told her. “The Germans know what they are and who wears them.”
“Yes, but still,” said the woman.
“It’s bad to see such a thing,” the man said sharply, angry that the woman saw only fine boots. “To see a Polish officer bury his uniform.”
“Is there a train?” Szara asked.
“Perhaps in a few days,” the man said. “From here one goes to Cracow, or south to Zakopane, in the mountains. In normal times every Tuesday, just at four in the afternoon.”
They stood together awkwardly for a time, then a workman came out of the field and stepped across the track. “It’s done,” Vyborg said.
There was no train. Szara and Vyborg determined to go east, on a road that ran well to the south of the railroad station, skirting the Slovakian border, winding its way through the river valleys of the Carpathians. They joined an endless column of refugees, on foot, in carts drawn by farm horses, in the occasional automobile. German units were posted at the crossroads, but the soldiers did not interfere with the migration; they seemed bored, disinterested, slouching against stone walls or bridge abutments, smoking, watching without expression as the river of humanity flowed past their eyes. No papers were demanded, no one was called out of line or searched. Szara noticed what he took to be other soldiers in the column who, like Vyborg, had shed their uniforms and obtained civilian clothing. Among the refugees there were various points of view about the German attitude, ranging from attributions of benevolence-“The Fritzes want to win our confidence”-to pragmatism-“The less Poles in Poland, the happier for them. Now we’ll be Russia’s problem.” The road east became a city: babies were born and old people died, friends were made and lost, money was earned, spent, stolen. An old Jew with a white beard down to his waist and a sack of pots and pans clanking on his back confided to Szara, “This is my fourth time along this road. In 1905 we went west to escape the pogroms, in 1916 east, running away from the Germans, then in 1920, west, with the Bolsheviks chasing us. So, here we are again. I don’t worry no more-it’ll sort itself out.”
It took them six days to reach the small city of Krosno, some eighty miles east of the Cracow-Zakopane line. There, Szara saw with amazement that the Polish flag still hung proudly above the entrance to the railway station. Somehow, they’d managed to outdistance the German advance. Had the Wehrmacht permitted the column of refugees to enter Polish-held territory in order to overload supply and transport systems? He could think of no other reason, but that seemed to him dubious at best. Vyborg left Szara at the station and went off to look for an intelligence unit and a wireless telegraph among the forces manning the Krosno defenses. Szara thought he’d seen him for the last time, but two hours later he reappeared, still looking like a dignified, rather finely made workman in his cap and jacket. They stood together by a beam supporting the wooden roof of the terminal, restless crowds of exhausted and desperate people shifting endlessly around them. The noise was overwhelming: people shouting and arguing, children screaming, a public address system babbling indecipherable nonsense. They had to raise their voices in order to make themselves heard. “At last,” Vyborg said, “I was able to reach my superiors.”
“Do they know what’s going on?”
“To a point. As far as you’re concerned, Lvov is not currently under attack, but that is a situation which may change quickly. As for me, my unit was known to have reached Cracow, but there they vanished. Communication is very bad-several Polish divisions are cut off, mostly trying to break out and fight their way to Warsaw. The capital will be defended and is expected to hold. Personally I give it a month at most, probably less. I’m afraid there isn’t much hope for us. We do have miracles in this country, even military ones from time to time, but the feeling is that there’s not much that can be done. We’ve appealed to the world for help, naturally. As for me, I have a new assignment.”
“Outside the country?”
Vyborg’s thin-lipped mouth smiled tightly for a moment. “I can tell you nothing. You may wish me well, though, if you like.”
“I do, Colonel.”
“I would ask you, Mr. Szara, to write about what you’ve seen, if you can find a way to do that. That we were brave, that we stood up to them, that we did not surrender. And I would say that the next best thing, for us, if you can’t do that, is silence. I refer to your assignment from Pravda. Stories about our national minorities have already appeared in London and Paris, even in America. Perhaps you will decline to add your voice to the baying chorus.”
“I’ll find a way.”
“I can only ask. That’s all that officers of defeated armies can do, appeal to conscience, but I ask you anyhow. Perhaps you still feel yourself, at heart, a Pole. People of this nation are far-flung, but they often think of us, it would not be inappropriate for you to join them. Meanwhile, as to practical matters, I’m told that a train for Lvov will be pulling in here within the hour. I’d like to think that you’ll be on it-you have your work cut out for you, I can see-but at least that way I’ll have kept my part of the bargain, albeit by an unexpected route.”
“Journalists are very good at forcing their way onto trains, Colonel.”
“Perhaps we’ll meet again,” Vyborg said.
“I would hope so.”
Vyborg’s handshake was strong. “Good luck,” he said, and slipped away into the milling crowd of refugees.
Szara did get on the train, though not actually inside it. He worked his way to the side of a coach, then moved laterally until he ca
me to the extended iron stair. There was a passenger already in residence on the lowest step, but Szara waited until the train jerked into motion, then forced his way up and squeezed in beside him. His fellow traveler was a dark, angry man clutching a wicker hamper in both arms and, using his shoulder, he attempted to push Szara off the train-the step belonged to him, it was his place in the scheme of things.
But Szara availed himself of a time-honored method and took a firm grip on the man’s lapel with his free hand so that the harder the man pushed, the more likely he was to leave the train if Szara fell off. The train never managed to pick up any speed; there were people hanging out the windows, lying flat on the roof, and balancing on the couplings between cars, and the engine seemed barely capable of moving the weight forward. For a long time the two of them glared at each other, the man pushing, Szara hanging on to him, their faces separated only by inches. Then, at last, the pushing and pulling stopped and both men leaned against the bodies occupying the step above theirs. The train made the eighty miles to Lvov in six agonizing hours, and if the station at Krosno had been a hell of struggling crowds, Lvov was worse.
Attempting to cross the platform, Szara literally had to fight. The heat of the crowd was suffocating, and he shoved bodies out of his way, tripped over a crate of chickens and fell flat on the cement floor, then struggled desperately among a forest of legs in order to rise before he was trampled to death. Someone punched him in the back, hard-he never saw who did it, he simply felt the blow. Once he got to the waiting room, he fell in with a determined phalanx using their combined weight to move toward the doors. They’d almost gotten there when a crowd of frantic, terrified people came sweeping back against them. Szara’s feet left the ground, and he was afraid his ribs might break from the pressure; he flailed out with one hand, hit something wet that produced an angry yelp, and with enormous effort got his feet back on the floor.
Somewhere, only barely touching the edge of his consciousness, was a drone, but he made no attempt to connect it with anything in the real world, it was simply there. He moved sideways for a few seconds, then some mysterious countercurrent picked him up and sent him sprawling through the doors of the station-he kept his balance only by jamming one hand against the cement beneath him, gasping at the air as he came free of the crowd.