Derek Lambert - Vendetta

‘And the cinema,’ Razin remembered, reaching for the vodka. ‘Tarzan and Tom Mix and Charlie Chaplin and, every other week, the Battleship Potemkin. And the smell of the cinema, the Shantser – celluloid and cheap scent and cigarette smoke. Smells, how would memories live without them? And the taste of lipstick.’ Razin smiled, showing yellow teeth.

Silence except for the muted noise of battle. Was that all? ‘I still don’t understand,’ Antonov said tentatively.

‘Because there’s nothing to understand. You think there has to be a reason for everything. Wrong. Things just happen. Sorry to disappoint you.’ Razin swigged vodka. ‘But if you must have a reason perhaps it was happiness. I was too happy.’

Not good enough, Antonov thought.

‘Content, perhaps. And secure. Yes, despite the Revolution and the Civil War, I was secure. I didn’t question anything. I was complacent. Do you know something, Yury? That’s what Communism teaches you, complacency. If you’re not very careful you accept everything it has to offer you, a recitation of values.’

‘But you rebelled?’

‘Not in the conventional sense. No speeches, no banners, no handcuffs chaining me to railings. I was studying law at the university in Kiev, reciting it, and one day I just got up from my desk, walked out of class and joined the army.’

‘It could be argued that you were shirking responsibility.’

‘Watch it, comrade, you’re beginning to sound like a commissar.’

Yury worked the bolt of his rifle; it made comforting, oil-snug noises. ‘If you feel like that about Communism you shouldn’t be fighting for it.’

‘Who’s fighting for Communism? Every soldier I’ve met is fighting for Russia. In any case I’m not fighting, am I? I’m nursing.’

‘You fought for Moscow.’

‘Survival, comrade. And I was shit-scared at Moscow.’

‘Perhaps you have to be scared to be brave?’

‘Leave the philosophising to me,’ Razin said.

Philosophising? Nothing that Razin said seemed to have any pattern. But that was the case with any of the philosophers – admittedly few – that Yury had read: they only complicated logic.

In the confusing light from the river the lines on Razin’s face, cheek to jaw, looked deeper than usual, exaggerated, probably, by the bristles his cut-throat razor had missed while he shaved with cold water and carbolic soap during a bombardment. Razin, the old soldier, kept himself neat.

He also worried about his health. He suffered from boils and mysterious internal pains but, all things considered, he looked astonishingly healthy.

Recalling the conversation with one of the soldiers who had jumped into the crater, Antonov asked him about the Ukrainians. Had some of them joined the Germans? Was such treachery possible in the Soviet Union?

‘You wouldn’t understand. Your kitbag’s still full of school books. Who am I to disillusion you?’

An oil-slick swimming with rainbow patterns slid past the tunnel on the muddy water. Boris, belly against the brickwork floor, sat like a dog.

Razin asked: ‘Which is most important to you, the Soviet Union or your republic?’

‘My country and then my republic of course,’ said Antonov who had never thought about it before.

‘Ah, but I forgot, your republic is Russia. Stupid of me. But some day…’ With one finger he felt the fur inside a crease on his cheek.

‘You didn’t answer my question about the Ukrainians.’

‘Didn’t I? You probably won’t believe this but a lot of Ukrainians were praying that the Germans would annihilate the Russians. And why not? The west of the Ukraine was part of Poland until Stalin grabbed it in 1939. And the feeling in the east wasn’t much different. You see the idiot Ukrainians think they have an identity. So what did the Boss do? Stamped upon it, purged it, stole the harvest so that people starved… Do you wonder that some of them opened their arms to the Fritzes. And occasionally their legs? And why?’

Antonov wished he would stop asking questions.

‘Because the Germans promised to let them have their own government, that’s why.’

‘Did they get it?’

‘They got it all right. For five days. Then the Germans broke it up. Locked up all the hot shots. Killed the Jews and anyone who got in their way. You see the Germans want lebensraum, living space, and what better place than the Ukraine?’

‘And that’s the only reason the Ukrainians are fighting the Germans now?’

‘Not the only reason. Mother Russia has a broad embrace.’

Antonov said: ‘One last thing. Why didn’t we know that Germany was going to attack?’

‘Do you remember the days not so long ago when Hitler and the Boss were like this?’ Razin entwined two fingers. ‘Well, they were both buying time, trying to fool each other. But Stalin needed more time…’

‘I think,’ Antonov said, ‘that I’d better throw those school books out of my kit-bag.’

He looked at Boris but the rat was asleep.

Misha arrived half an hour later bringing boiled water, warm bread and makhorka. Razin took some of the coarse black tobacco and rolled himself a cigarette with a strip of Red Star.

‘So,’ Razin said, ‘how’s the battle going?’

‘We’re fighting for every inch of ground,’ Misha quoted. Losing, thought Antonov, flexing his new awareness. ‘Zholudev’s guards are fantastic. They’re tall and very straight and they wear paratroop uniforms and they fight with daggers and bayonets.’

‘The best,’ Razin agreed.

‘I saw them go into a cellar and kill all the Fritzes inside. One of them threw a body over his shoulder on his bayonet as though it were a sandbag.’

Misha’s eyes were dark and bright in his pale face; the skin on his cheekbones had a transparent quality about it and his knees below his short trousers were like little fists; but he was full of importance.

‘Where are they fighting now?’ Razin asked.

‘In the Tractor Plant Stadium.’

‘Shit,’ Razin said.

‘When the Guards die they shout: “For country and Stalin! We shall never surrender!’”

‘And do you know what units are fighting there?’

‘Oh yes, I know.’

‘But you’re not going to tell us?’

‘Why do you want to know?’ Misha asked.

‘We’re supposed to be on the same side,’ Razin said.

‘Can I have a cigarette? A real cigarette.’

Razin gave him a papirosy.

Misha lit the cardboard-tube cigarette and drew on it inhaling deeply; like most Russians he made a meal of a smoke.

‘Don’t you trust us?’ Antonov asked.

‘I was told not to tell anyone about the German units until I got to headquarters.’

‘Then you must do what you’re told.’

‘I suppose you’re different,’ Misha said. ‘The 94th and the 389th Infantry. Fourteenth and 24th Panzers and the 100th Jäger.’

‘And Meister?’

‘That’s why I came here. He’s in the toy factory.’

Remembering the lessons about war he had learned at school in Hamburg? Antonov wondered what Hamburg was like. Not much different, perhaps, from Novosibirsk. Or Stalingrad as it had once been.

He took out his wallet and extracted a photograph of Meister taken from the German forces magazine Signal. He looked very sleek and sophisticated standing beside a poised blonde, smiling over his trophy; but the smile was borrowed and it didn’t fit his face. In that moment Antonov the hunter glimpsed uncertainty in his prey.

‘How did you get warm bread?’ Razin asked Misha.

‘It’s old bread heated on a primus. I like the smell of warm bread. It makes me think of early mornings before the Germans came.’