Derek Lambert - Vendetta

But not Meister and I. We know each other. If I kill Meister it will be a sort of suicide. But just supposing – and here Antonov began to suspect that he was feverish – that all the men fighting to the death over the lip of the dug-out knew each other. Would the fighting stop?

He patted Misha’s hand. ‘You and I know each other don’t we, Alexander.’

‘Who’s Alexander?’ Misha asked but Antonov didn’t answer because his eyes were closed and there was a snow-smelling breeze reaching him from the black earth of the steppe and wolves were singing in the taiga and the lighted windows of the wooden cottage were beckoning him home.

Antonov surfaced again at dusk as they discussed the plan to knock out the German machine-gunner dominating this stretch of the Volga.

He distinguished Gordov’s bearded voice. ‘We’ve got a couple of men from Lyudnikov’s 179th Engineers to finish the tunnel. That should take three hours. We hit the vermin at 2200 hours. Any questions?’

No one questioned him, this leader re-fashioned by circumstances. ‘Don’t use guns if you can help it, we’re down to twenty rounds per person. Don’t worry about grenades – we haven’t got any left.’

How were they going to kill the machine-gunners? With sharpened spades? With their bare hands?

Antonov looked for Misha; he was asleep under a filthy blanket. He could see slits of darkening sky between planks placed over the dug-out to hide the glow of the stove from the Germans. He heard German bombers returning to base leaving the sky free. He felt frost nosing down the sides of the dug-out; in Siberia the permafrost stayed a few metres below the surface forever.

‘After they’ve fixed the MG 34,’ Razin said to Antonov, ‘we will be taken across the river in a row-boat.’

‘And have beds, and plump nurses to keep you warm,’ Gordov said, towering over the stretcher. ‘But don’t think we’re knocking out the machine-gun just for your sake: we want to get the wounded over to the east bank as well.’

In the lull after the day’s fighting Antonov could hear them sighing.

‘You must take them before me,’ Antonov said.

‘You’re more important,’ Gordov said without meaning it. ‘Chuikov says so. Moscow says so.’

Razin said to Gordov: ‘Why are you in charge? Why not the military?’

‘Because we know Tsarytsin. Its tunnels and its cellars, its secret places. Because it’s our city. Because we care.’

‘And we don’t?’

‘You might care about the Soviet Union, not about Tsarytsin. The old name for Stalingrad,’ he explained. ‘Derived from the Tartar words for yellow sand. It was built to protect the Russians from what was left of the Golden Horde. And it has been fought over many times. In the Civil War the Reds defended it against the Whites.’

‘So you’re a historian as well as an engineer?’

‘Should I be ashamed?’ Gordov stroked his beard. ‘Are you anything else but a soldier?’

Antonov said: ‘If you’re not going to use guns or grenades what are you going to use?’

‘You’ll see.’ Gordov produced a silver watch from inside his patched sheepskin jacket. ‘Five minutes. They’re putting up a diversionary barrage from the other side of the river. That usually means supplies are being rowed across. The Fritz machine-gunners will be looking for the row-boats, not us.’

The assault party were silhouettes behind the stove. One by one they disappeared. When Antonov looked round Misha was gone too.

‘They burned them,’ Misha said later.

‘With a flame-thrower,’ Gordov explained.

‘They were covered in flames,’ Misha said. ‘They rolled on the ground trying to put them out.’

‘They had killed many Russians,’ Gordov said.

‘They were burned alive.’

Misha’s eyes stared at Antonov in the light from the stove. His face was masked with wildness.

‘You shouldn’t have been there,’ Gordov said.

‘Roasted alive,’ Misha said. ‘They were screaming. Calling to God.’

‘It was the only way,’ Gordov said. ‘We had no grenades. We couldn’t have started a shooting match. Not against a machine-gun.’

The bottom half of the mask that was Misha’s face trembled.

Antonov said: ‘Don’t be ashamed of crying. Don’t ever be that. Don’t ever try and be tough.’

And when Misha began to cry he said: ‘That’s it, that’s real bravery,’ and stretched out his hand to the boy.

The row-boat slid onto the sandy mud at 2315 hours as a flare lit the river finding grey corpuscles of ice and slush in its dark blood.

German mortars and machine-guns opened up, firing at anything that moved, even ice-floes. But there were no splashes in the water opposite the dug-out.

Antonov, lying on the stretcher beside the small waves, shaded his eyes against the brightness of the flare. The river-smell was strong in his nostrils and the buzzing filled his head again.

Kneeling beside him in the mud, Razin said: ‘We’re taking off as soon as the flare has gone out.’

‘You’re not staying here?’

‘You forget, I’ve got to protect you. And those plump nurses Comrade Gordov was talking about.’

The flare began to fade.

Gordov came up behind them, mud sucking at his boots. ‘We can’t waste this boat,’ he said. ‘There are six others coming with you.’

Razin said: ‘We can’t? Who’s we?’

‘Lyudnikov. If you stay here there’s room for one more casualty.’

‘Orders are orders,’ Razin said. ‘And you know where mine come from.’

‘Not heaven,’ Gordov said and Antonov asked: ‘Can we take the boy?’

‘He doesn’t want to go. In any case he’s valuable to us.’

Antonov noticed Misha standing behind Gordov. ‘No?’

Misha shook his head. ‘I’m needed here.’ He sounded very important.

The flare spent itself. Razin lifted Antonov from the stretcher and laid him in the bottom of the row-boat. Razin and the wounded sat on the bench-seats propping each other up.

Gordov, a silhouette again, pushed the boat with his boot.

Antonov, leaning on one elbow, waved and as the first ice floe ground against the hull, the lesser of the two silhouettes waved back.

Meister, cleaning his rifle beneath the two shrivelled fruit adorning the fingers of the pear tree in the school playground, considered Mankind.

No man is an Island… He had once believed Donne as he had believed everything he had been taught. No longer. Now he questioned.

Countries, cities, villages, men and women – islands, all of them. A man only interprets through his own perception therefore he is self-contained.

But, gazing down the barrel of the Karabiner, Meister conceded that we are floating islands drifting occasionally into each other’s lives. Destiny? Too grand. It was circumstance that navigated those islands; circumstance that introduced husband to wife; circumstance that propelled a young German from Hamburg into conflict with a young Russian from Siberia.

What else could it be? I learned to shoot because, family wealth apart, I had nothing to offer; Antonov learned to shoot because his father was a hunter. Hitler and Stalin went to war and became our patrons and we were matched and that wasn’t destiny, it was circumstance.

And now, islands that have barely touched, we are drifting apart. He sensed it and was surprised at the eddies of emotion. Regret and relief. We didn’t know each other but we knew each other well.

‘You look as if you’ve lost a mark and found a pfennig.’ Lanz handed Meister a mug of coffee. ‘Don’t let the date get you down.’