Derek Lambert - Vendetta

It was Friday, November 13. Two days earlier Paulus had launched a frenzied attack on the factories to the north of Stalingrad, Red October and Barricade in particular, splitting the remnants of the Soviet forces. But everyone knew that the attack had faltered; that the 6th Army was a bloodied bull, head bowed in bewilderment. Everyone, that was, except strategists in faraway places.

Lanz said: ‘It looks as if Antonov has laid down his arms even if Chuikov hasn’t.’ He thrashed his arms against his sides; the Russians’ ally, the cold, was on the rampage and their bodies ached before its assault.

Lanz took a cigarette from a green packet and lit it, inhaled like a man struggling to stay alive, and coughed ferociously.

‘That’s all a sniper needs,’ Meister said, ‘someone beside him coughing like a machine-gun.’ He leaned his rifle against the pear tree and wrapped a scarf under his chin and over his head to protect his ears; Lanz wore a Russian shapka with ear-flaps; he had offered one to Meister but Meister didn’t want to wear dead men’s clothes.

Lanz threw more schoolbooks onto the small fire he had built, a cadet version of Das Kapital among them. According to the wall clock on the floor it was lunchtime but the clock was two hours fast.

Lanz, cigarette in one hand, mug of coffee in the other, said: ‘You needn’t bother about me coughing. We won’t be together much longer: the bird has flown. If Antonov was still in Stalingrad he would have found us here because this is where that little bastard Misha would have brought him. Where else? He finds us a nice quiet hideout, dumps us and fetches Antonov to finish us off.’

‘No.’ Meister shook his head emphatically. ‘Antonov hasn’t flown. Something’s happened.’

After leaving the tunnel they had returned to the school to wait, convinced that Antonov was on his way. That, while Lanz kept watch, Meister could pick him off because Misha was right, the school was a good vantage point. But that was three days ago and there had been no sign of Antonov.

‘What do you mean, something’s happened?’

‘Maybe he got hurt.’

‘You feel his wounds?’

‘I think something’s happened, that’s all. Look at it logically. The Russians wouldn’t pull him out: they still want him to kill me: they still want victory.’

Meister stood on a pile of rubble and peered over the wall. Before the battle there couldn’t have been much of a view but now you could see the river in the distance; the shells and bombs had seen to that. When they came to rebuild Stalingrad they wouldn’t need foundations: its bedrock was steel. He focussed his field-glasses. Snow hadn’t settled yet but on the river he could see packs of slush and ice jostling each other. If Antonov had been wounded he would have been taken across the Volga, through the stampeding ice. The emotion Meister felt was disconcerting, a parting of flesh.

Lanz threw an atlas on the fire, burning the world. ‘Aren’t you glad he’s gone?’.

‘In a way.’

‘You didn’t want to kill him, did you?’

‘But I would have.’

‘And you would have condemned yourself as a murderer?’

‘I don’t think,’ Meister said, using words as stepping stones to some great truth, ‘that anyone really wants to kill anyone else. But in war rules are laid down. Killing rules. Antonov and I broke the rules. We identified each other.’ The stepping stones petered out.

‘But you don’t mind killing other Russians?’

‘I don’t want to but it’s in the book of rules.’

‘Who wrote the book?’

‘A minority. That’s all I know. A minority single-minded enough to control a majority who merely want to live in peace.’

A child’s history of the Civil War followed the atlas into the flames.

‘It all seemed so simple before I left Germany,’ Meister said. ‘The Bolshevik menace had to be destroyed.’ He gestured at the flattened city. ‘Look at the Bolshevik menace now.’ The sound of battle continued to reach them from the north.

‘If they fight the way they’re fighting at the factories the Bolsheviks could conquer the world,’ Lanz said. ‘They’re fighting with their balls in the river and still they won’t give up. And soon they’ll counter-attack and you know something? We’ll be cut off but we won’t have a river to escape across.’

A motor-cyclist in field grey drove down the road, ruts of mud frozen into iron ridges, and stopped outside the school. Pushing his goggles onto his forehead, he unstrapped a tin canister and handed it to them. ‘Rabbit stew,’ he said.

‘Pussycat,’ Lanz said.

‘And bread and cheese.’

‘Soap,’ Lanz said.

‘Don’t eat it then,’ the motor-cyclist said. ‘I will.’ He was young and blond and dusty with wide, slanting eyes. He was attached to the 336th Sapper Battalion which explained his cockiness; they had just flown from Magdeburg to support the November 11 attack and he hadn’t grown old with Stalingrad.

He leaned against the wall. ‘Well,’ he said making a performance of lighting a cigarette, ‘it won’t be long now.’

Lanz inspected his stew. ‘It just meowed,’ he said.

‘What won’t be long?’ Meister asked.

‘Victory,’ the motor-cyclist said. ‘Look what we brought from Germany.’ He fished in the pocket of his tunic, produced a folded poster and opened it up. Black letters proclaimed THE FALL OF STALINGRAD. ‘We’ve got thousands of them and we’ll make the Ivans eat them,’ he said replacing the poster in his pocket carefully, as though it were a banknote.

‘Taste better than this stew,’ Lanz said.

‘I told you, I’ll eat it.’

‘You eat your poster.’

‘That reminds me of a joke. I was taking my dog for a walk when I was a kid and a man stopped me and said, “Does your dog bite?” And when I said, “No,” he said, “Then how does it eat its dinner?’” The motor-cyclist laughed displaying very white, uneven teeth. When he had finished laughing he said: ‘So you’re Meister.’

‘He’s Meister,’ Lanz said.

‘I read about you in Magdeburg,’ the motor-cyclist said. ‘I never thought I’d meet you. It’s an honour.’

‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read,’ Meister told him.

‘Where’s Antonov? Around here?’ The motor-cyclist looked eagerly around.’

‘We don’t know.’

‘You mean he’s run away?’

‘No,’ Meister said, ‘I don’t mean that.’

‘Well, you haven’t much more time. As soon as we push the Ivans into the river that will be the end of your duel.’

‘They’re taking some pushing,’ Lanz said, spooning stew into his mouth.

‘Is that your rifle?’ the motor-cyclist asked, reaching for the Karabiner but dropping his hand when Meister snapped: ‘Don’t touch it.’

Meister said: ‘Where are you from?’

‘Munich. I’ve seen the Führer there a couple of times. What does it take to make a sniper?’

‘You have to discriminate,’ Meister said.

‘Ah.’ The motor-cyclist looked puzzled. And then: ‘I envy you. You know, the sense of satisfaction. You’re actually killing Russians instead of merely driving a motor-cycle. But still, I suppose I am doing a worthwhile job. You know, keeping Karl Meister supplied with food so that he can shoot Antonov on a full stomach. When I write home I’ll tell them I supplied Karl Meister with rabbit stew.’

‘Cat stew,’ Lanz said, placing a piece of pale cheese onto a hunk of bread and popping it into his mouth with a furtive movement as though it were stolen.

Meister handed his canister to the motor-cyclist. ‘You eat this, I’m not hungry.’

The motor-cyclist dipped a spoon into the stew. With the spoon halfway to his mouth he turned to Lanz. ‘You were joking, weren’t you? You know, about cats…’ Without waiting for a reply he put down the spoon.