Derek Lambert - Vendetta

‘And how do you propose to serve the Fatherland?’ he had asked.

Meister, fifteen at the time, determined only that he wanted nothing to do with perfume, told him that he hadn’t made up his mind.

‘Do you enjoy reading and writing? Theatre, cinema? Do you read the newspapers?’

Meister answered affirmatively although the scope of the questions made total honesty elusive. He told Goebbels that he had written an essay about the years of waste after the Treaty of Versailles.

‘I’d like to see it. Maybe I’ll find a job for you one day.’ Goebbels smiled conspiratorially; on the other side of the fire his father gazed at them speculatively. ‘It’s been said before – “The pen is mightier than the sword” – but never forget that it’s words not bullets that win wars.’

At the time that had sounded neat and wise and Meister might have joined Dr. Goebbels’ propaganda machine if he hadn’t won a trophy involving bullets instead of words.

That night, after the guests had departed, wives carrying gifts of perfume, his father, breath smelling of violet cachous, had come to his bedroom and questioned him about his conversation with Goebbels.

‘So, what did the good doctor have to say?’

Meister told him.

‘Was that all?’

Sleepily, he tried to remember if Goebbels had let slip any other pearls of wisdom; he couldn’t understand why his father wanted to know.

‘He seemed quite happy with everything here?’

‘Quite happy, Papa.’

‘Did he mention me?’ voice suddenly very casual.

‘Not once.’ Meister yawned.

‘That’s all right then.’ He couldn’t tell whether his father was pleased or disappointed. ‘A very able man, Dr. Goebbels. Even though he doesn’t come from very good stock.’

As the big guns stopped firing, leaving a buzzing in Meister’s ears, a soldier on a bicycle pedalled onto the platform. ‘For you.’ He handed Meister an envelope. ‘Lucky bastard, I haven’t had a letter for weeks.’

‘You’re not a star turn,’ Lanz told him.

Meister glanced at the envelope. Elzbeth’s businesslike writing. He ripped it open.

‘I’ll get some coffee,’ Lanz said.

Dearest Karl,

I love you and miss you and think about you all the time. As if she wanted to get the formalities over and done with. And perhaps it won’t be long until we are together as we read in the newspapers that Stalingrad is on the point of surrender. Did she really believe that or was one of Goebbels’ minions standing behind her? You have become quite a celebrity here and we’re all very proud of you and all the other girls are very jealous of me. No, this wasn’t Elzbeth; by now the real Elzbeth would have cut him down to size. They – who? – tell me that when Stalingrad falls you will be allowed leave. And who knows, a decoration?

Meister folded the letter and replaced it in the envelope because there was no point in finishing it: Elzbeth, who didn’t even know of Antonov’s existence, was being used to urge him to finish the job.

Lanz returned with some foul coffee and a tin of corned beef he had found under a pile of rubble in the refreshment room.

‘Well,’ he asked, ‘how’s everything back home?’

‘Ticking over. How’s the battle?’ Lanz always returned from foraging missions with the latest news of the fighting.

‘We’re still winning. Surprising how long it’s taking considering we’re winning every day. We’ve taken the Tractor Plant and cut the Russians in two again and we’re within 400 yards of the river between the Barricade and Red October factories. God knows, we might even advance another couple of yards today.’ He opened the tin of corned beef with a clasp-knife. ‘Everyone wants to know when you’re going to kill Antonov.’

‘Soon.’

‘Take your time.’ Lanz handed him half the tin of meat.

‘The trouble is we anticipate each other all the time.’

‘You anticipated him in front of the toy factory?’

‘He anticipated me.’

‘You should have shot his head off.’ Lanz ate a mouthful of meat from the blade of his knife.

‘We’ve got to find fresh cover. Antonov knows about the factory.’

‘A cemetery?’

At that moment Misha arrived. It was the second time he had visited them.

He had brought a bucket of water, raw potatoes and a cucumber. He told Meister who had taken Russian at college that he had the latest dispositions of the Soviet troops to pass on to 6th Army headquarters. The Russians, he said, were in a desperate position in the industrial north: one more push and Paulus could claim victory.

‘If we had the reserves to push with,’ Lanz said when Meister translated.

‘The Germans are within a few hundred yards of Chuikov’s headquarters,’ Misha said.

‘Then what’s stopping them from taking it?’ Meister asked and Lanz, getting the gist, said: ‘Russians.’

Lanz poured water into his mess-tin and drank from it, spilling some on his grey-green tunic, carefully wiping a drop from his Iron Cross. He said to Meister: ‘Ask him why he’s so anxious to help the Germans?’

‘Why not?’ Misha protested. ‘They’re winning.’

‘No one is as callous as that,’ Lanz said. ‘Not even me.’

‘All right,’ Misha said to Meister, ‘the Russians took my father to Siberia. I never saw him again. My mother cried every night. Would you want the Russians to win?’

‘Ask him why they took his father,’ Lanz said.

‘He doesn’t really know,’ Meister said when the boy had finished. ‘His father was in the army. It’s possible, the purges…’

‘I think he’s a liar,’ Lanz said. ‘It takes one to spot one. Ask him if he knows of a good place to hole up before we go looking for Antonov again.’

Misha smiled and the war left his face. Meister noticed that he had one tooth missing; it made him momentarily defenceless. He also had a graze on one knee – there had never been a time in Meister’s own childhood when one of his knees hadn’t been grazed – and burrs on the socks collapsed round his ankles.

‘I know just the place,’ he told Meister.

They walked warily through the ruined streets in the direction of Tsaritsa Gorge, the 200-foot deep ravine where the Soviet headquarters had been earlier in the campaign. Lanz, pistol drawn, suspecting a trap, walked beside the boy: Russian civilians, in radio communication with the military, were still used to lure Germans down streets covered by Soviet gunners: when the guns opened up the civilians disappeared into the subterranean depths of the city.

A cold wind had sprung up but it didn’t disperse the smell of rotting corpses.

‘It will snow soon,’ Misha said. ‘And that will help the Russians. You must be quick.’ As he talked he nibbled sunflower seeds, cracking the husks with his teeth and dropping them on the ground.

They passed sagging signs offering cherry jam and apples for sale and picked their way along ruptured tracks where shabby trams had once run. Finally they came to a shell-torn wall. ‘Here,’ Misha said.

They went behind the wall. ‘It was my school,’ he said.

Of the school there was nothing left except the shell of a classroom containing crippled desks and chairs and a wall-clock lying on its back but still working. Its fluttering hands pointed at 12.30 but they were wrong.

The playground, a square of punished grass and frozen mud, was untouched by debris.

Meister took off his steel helmet and walked round the square. One patch of turf was completely bald – ‘That used to be the goal,’ Misha explained – and in a corner stood a pear tree, a couple of withered fruit hanging from its branches.