Derek Lambert - Vendetta

‘I went whenever I could.’

‘So you like killing?’

‘I never thought of it that way.’

‘And now?’

‘It has to be done.’

‘That wasn’t what I asked.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t like it,’ and hoped he was telling the truth.

‘I went hunting for food the other day,’ she said. ‘A soldier gave me a grenade. A pineapple, he called it. Like an egg with squares cut in it. He showed me how to use if it I was stopped by parasite soldiers. You pull out a pin and when you throw it the lever comes away from the egg and it explodes a few seconds later. Anyway I was stopped by a German soldier shouting at me from behind a wall. I had found some old cans of meat and I didn’t want to lose them so, without really thinking, I pulled the pin and threw the pineapple and, because he was so surprised I suppose, the German didn’t do anything about it and the pineapple exploded. His body was in a terrible state but his face… His face,’ she repeated after a few moments, ‘was very young. Perhaps nine years older than… Anyway let’s say nine years older than Misha.’

She looked at Misha but he was asleep on the flagstones. Gently she covered him with a blanket.

She woke them an hour before dawn. Shook them and gave them tea from an ancient samovar; the old couple slept on, arms round each other as if they were on their honeymoon.

‘How do you feel?’ she asked and when Antonov gave the old peasant reply: ‘Better than tomorrow,’ she smiled.

‘How old are you?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘Quite a target with that fair hair of yours.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘black hair’s worse against snow.’

‘God go with you.’

He felt her gaze lingering with them as Misha led the way through a trapdoor into what was left of her house. God go with you… in a society that had rejected religion.

He had mentioned these habitual references to God to Razin and the Ukrainian had replied: ‘Communism is a religion.’

Misha said: ‘We have to go above ground for a little way now.’

Outside the sleet had stopped but the night air had a snow-coldness about it, and the rubble was slippery underfoot as they made their way from the cellars of the State Brewery to the vaults of the State Bank to the basement of Univermag.

They were deep inside German-held territory.

Razin, pistol in hand, shone his flashlight. They were in the furniture depository; there was even a bed there; Razin lay on it and the springs played a few chords of rusty music.

He said to Misha: ‘So where the hell are you taking us?’

‘Beneath the stage of Gorki Theatre. Under Red Square to the railroad station. Through a tunnel to Tsaritsa Gorge. There’s a church there overlooking my school.’

‘So?’

‘That’s where Meister is.’

Razin, exploring the basement with the flashlight, said: ‘Odd that Meister should have chosen your school.’

‘It’s a good hiding place.’

‘A coincidence, though. Don’t you think so?’

‘I suppose so.’ The flashlight lit Misha’s face; his eyes were wide and dark in his sharp features.

‘You took him there, didn’t you? Got the watch for telling him where we were.’

‘No!’ Misha blinked; in the beam of the flashlight Antonov saw tears squeezed from beneath his eyelashes.

‘Leave him alone,’ Antonov said. ‘There’s no point.’

‘Then came to us – and got a penknife.’

‘I led you away from your tunnel.’ Tears trickled down his cheeks.

‘Who do you want to win Misha, Meister or Antonov?’ Razin asked.

‘Antonov, of course. I’m a Russian –’

‘I know you do,’ Antonov said. ‘And I don’t care how you got the watch and I gave you the knife. What does it matter? Soldiers go looting, the prizes of victory. And we’re going to win, aren’t we, Misha?’

Misha nodded, pressing his fingertips to his eyes.

‘All right then, let’s go to school, your school.’

The Katyusha exploded as they emerged from Gorki Theatre. It killed the big rat outright and knocked Antonov, Razin and the boy to the ground. The last thing Antonov saw before he lost consciousness were flakes of snow falling like feathers from the darkness above.

Antonov’s mother came towards his bed, bedclothes smelling as always of warm cleanliness, carrying a bowl of steaming borsch. His father stood at the door, smoking rifle in his hands. Alexander stood on the bed-rail beating his chest like a gorilla.

A breeze coming from the wheatfields rippled the curtains and he could see cranes flying high in a summer sky. Tasya took the bowl from his mother and spooned borsch to him. When he refused it she offered her bare breast.

Then Alexander swung on a vine and Antonov caught his hand and Misha said: ‘Not so hard, you’re hurting,’ and Razin, pulling on his moustache, said: ‘Welcome back.’

To his left side it was very hot, to the right cold. He moved his left hand but Misha, hanging on, said: ‘Don’t, you’ll burn yourself.’

He shut his eyes tight, opened them wide. The stove beside the stretcher was incandescent. He moved his right hand and touched wet earth studded with stones; like fruit in a cold plum pudding, he thought. He smelled hot metal and spent explosives. He heard growling voices.

He tried to raise himself on one elbow but his head was too heavy. It sounded as though there were an insect inside it. He turned so that he was staring at the grey sky. Razin’s face came into view again, in duplicate.

Two mouths said: ‘For God’s sake don’t say, “Where am I?” I’ll tell you. In a dug-out on the banks of the Volga near the Barricade factory. In a pocket 400 by 700 metres surrounded by Fritzes on one side and floating slush on the other.’

Antonov tried to ask what had happened but his tongue filled his mouth. A recurrent dream came back to him: he was standing on a platform trying to read a poem he had written but his lips were frozen.

A wave of Stukas flew overhead. He could feel the ground shaking with the wounds of battle.

Razin, face focussing into a single image, was speaking. ‘… owe everything to Misha. I misjudged him.’

Antonov tried to concentrate as Razin, corrected from time to time by Misha, told him what had happened after the Katyusha had exploded. But the words had wings and flew away.

He closed his eyes. Ah, better. The words returned and formed pictures. He saw himself lying beneath the hesitant snowflakes, saw Misha stand up, then Razin; heard them conversing in ragged whispers.

And they were dragging him into the ruin of Gorki Theatre, beneath the stage, Razin’s flashlight picking out props – a harlequin costume, a carousel, a backdrop of a city skyline.

Now Misha was running and he was looking down upon him as he navigated tunnels, trenches, cellars, sprinted through devastated streets, dodged German sentries shivering beneath snow-dusted helmets.

Once a sentry fired a shot and Misha fell, gashing his shin on a shard of broken glass. Antonov, eyes still closed, stretched out a hand and touched the boy’s arm.

Razin’s voice continued uninterrupted as Misha struggled to his feet and, keeping low, dodged between humps of masonry. The sentry fired again; Antonov cried out but no sound issued from his lips.

Finally Misha reached the thin Soviet lines stretched along the Volga. He was challenged by two sentries, gave the password and was escorted to a command-post where the duty officer for the night was a young lieutenant flexing his authority.

The lieutenant was at first reluctant to call Chuikov on the field telephone. But Misha could be both persuasive and threatening. He knew General Chuikov, he told the lieutenant. And the general would be very angry if the sniper pitted against Meister was allowed to die beneath the stage of the Gorki Theatre in German-held territory. And who in Moscow, Misha asked, voice breaking with effort, had instructed Chuikov to make sure that Antonov was given every assistance in his duel?