Derek Lambert - Vendetta

‘And fight they will,’ Paulus said. ‘Like animals defending their young, dying with snarls frozen on their faces.’ He lit another cigarette; his hands shook. ‘So when do you propose to kill Antonov?’

‘As soon as possible, Herr General.’

‘Not soon enough. I had a message this morning from the Führer in Bavaria. He can’t understand why you’re taking so long.’

‘Because Antonov is good.’

‘Better than you?’

‘The same.’

‘Have you taken a shot at him yet?’

‘One,’ Meister admitted.

‘And you missed?’ Paulus was incredulous.

Meister explained about the smoke.

‘Has he taken a shot at you?’

‘It’s his turn, Herr General.’

‘Then we must pray for more smoke. After that it will be your turn again, Meister, and this time you mustn’t miss. Understand? Because I’m not concerned any longer about the people back home, the Press, the radio, I’m concerned about my troops staring into winter. They need your victory: that’s worth more than a battalion of re-inforcements. If you killed Antonov today they’d take what’s left of this Godforsaken city tomorrow.’

‘I’ll do my best, Herr General.’

‘Good.’ With one finger Paulus tried to arrest the tic beneath his eye. ‘And then perhaps we shall be able to turn our attention to those arrows,’ pointing at the map on the table.

To Meister it seemed as though the arrows had become sharper but that, of course, was his imagination.

The motor-cycle and sidecar taking Meister back to the centre of Stalingrad stopped in a hamlet a mile down the road. Wooden cottages with mossy roofs, picket fences, a log road leading to a square with a water-pump in the middle.

The scaffold was also made of wood.

The motor-cyclist, young with acne-scarred cheeks, said: ‘It looks as if we’re going to have some fun’.

Meister, steel helmet cradled in his lap, peered out of the sidecar. Soldiers armed with rifles were posted round the square; near the scaffold stood a group of peasants, women wearing headscarves, men peaked caps or fur hats with spaniel ears. They seemed indifferent to their fate, as though suffering were a fifth season of the year.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ he asked the motor-cyclist.

‘Wait and see. But I can tell you this – these bastards are lucky. When partisans blew up a bridge near Sevastopol we burned down a whole village and shot anyone who tried to escape.’

Meister who had heard such stories and dismissed them as the fictions of war said: ‘Did you actually see this happen?’ and when the motor-cyclist admitted that he hadn’t, allowed himself a mature and indulgent smile.

A cold, mud-smelling breeze nosed its way into the square. Away to the east castles of cloud were assembling. The peasants remained mute, motionless, garbed with forlorn dignity.

‘Look,’ the motor-cyclist pointed down the log road on the opposite side of the square. Meister saw a youth and a girl approaching; their hands were tied behind their backs and hanging from the youth’s neck was a placard: WE ARE PARTISANS AND WE HAVE KILLED GERMAN SOLDIERS. AS WE ARE CIVILIANS WE KNOW WE MUST PAY THE PENALTY. Behind them walked two German soldiers and an officer brandishing a pistol; with his long greatcoat and boots and shiny-peaked cap he cut quite a figure.

A corporal wearing steel-rimmed glasses and a forage cap that was too small for him slung two ropes over the cross-piece of the gallows, made them secure and tied two nooses. Then he rubbed his hands together, a man who knew his job and liked appreciation.

Meister noticed two children in the silent group. A small boy with ragged trousers flapping round his shins and a girl of about twelve wearing a white shawl. The boy held the girl’s hand. Meister saw trust flowing between them; their parents had been killed; he knew that.

He wanted to leave the square but he had to stay in case it didn’t happen. In case humanity was given a reprieve.

The ropes, braided red and white, looked like bell-ropes from a church.

Meister turned to look at the youth and the girl approaching the gallows. They, too, looked like brother and sister. Her hair was cropped, figure boyish; she reminded Meister of Joan of Arc. The boy wore a big, white cap with a small peak protruding from beneath it; he wore it at a jaunty angle, smiling with tremulous ferocity. The girl stared ahead expressionlessly.

Meister was amazed at their composure. Their lives were about to be switched off. No world. Nothing. And they’re younger than me. Meister searched their faces for their childhood and saw his own and smelled perfume. His hand went to his throat; he hoped they believed in God.

The officer pulled the ropes with gloved hands, testing them.

Meister concentrated on the youth’s cap. He must have been very proud of that cap when he bought it.

The girl’s lips were moving. Praying? The boy’s smile broke into fragments, re-assembled fiercer than ever.

The cap. Look at the cap. Perhaps he had kept his money in it. Taken it off with a flourish, produced a soiled rouble note and bought his first girl a rose with silver paper round the stem.

The cap. Concentrate on the cap. He had probably experimented with it, turned it back to front and imagined himself at the wheel of an open tourer.

The cap fell to the ground and on the breeze funnelled along the log road where the boy and girl had just walked the smell of perfume was strong.

The rain came from the east, a last cleansing before winter. Scattered drops at first that coaxed dry scents from the dust and rubble; then a sustained drizzle reaching back into Siberia.

Antonov, crouching with Razin in a shell hole near the Barricade gun factory, smiled at the coldness of it on his cheeks. Very soon now it would turn to snow.

All morning they had hunted Meister but, with nine-tenths of the city in enemy hands, the German had the advantage, free to wander the yawning acres of devastation and concentrate on the Russian pocket in the north – unless one of the civilian storm squads operating in the ruins got him.

By early afternoon Antonov had decided that the best strategy was to wait for Meister to come for him and, with Razin’s assistance, he devised a trap. When they knew Meister was close Razin would raise his helmet on the end of a stick; if Meister put a bullet through it Razin would rear up screaming; Meister would show himself and Antonov would shoot him.

It was, they acknowledged, a hackneyed ploy – and Antonov had seen it in a silent film about the Civil War – but, with their backs to the Volga and the stricken factories where the Soviet pocket had been cut in two, there was no scope for originality.

They wore rubber capes but the rain found its way inside them and Razin worried about his lungs which, he insisted, had been weak since an attack of pleurisy in his childhood. From time to time he coughed discreetly but irritatingly, in fact Antonov found that the cough, and the soft tap of rain on his helmet, were more distracting than the thunder of battle a few hundred yards away. After a while he took off his helmet and put on his forage cap; it quickly became sodden.

‘You’ll catch a cold in the head,’ Razin told him.

Antonov shook his dripping head. ‘We don’t get colds in the head where I come from.’

‘Spoken like a true Siberian? You know something? You Siberians are a pain in the ass.’

‘Siberians saved Stalingrad.’

‘According to Red Star Rodimtsev and the 13th Guards saved Stalingrad.’

‘They fought well. But so did Zholudev’s 37th and Gorishny’s 95th and all the others.’

Sometimes Antonov felt wiser than Razin; this dated from the night he had returned from the east bank of the Volga.