Derek Lambert: Vendetta

‘Christmas?’ Razin said. ‘What’s this talk about Christmas? It’s a heathen festival. Be patient, wait until the New Year. Celebrate his victory,’ clumping Antonov on the shoulder, ‘with Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden.’

‘Christmas is Christmas,’ the driver said. ‘You know that. By God the zakuski we used to have at home at Christmas. Caviar, black and red, smoked salmon, pirozhki… and firewater, vats of it.’ He pursed his lips and blew as though he were exhaling flames.

‘And the food in Stalingrad now?’ Razin asked.

‘Not bad compared with the shit we were eating. Meat, fish, potatoes. The cooks position their stews so that the wind takes the smell into the Fritz lines. You can hear their stomachs rumbling a kilometre away. And yet they still fight as if their bellies were full of bullets.’

‘You haven’t eaten,’ Razin announced, ‘until you’ve tasted manti. Dumplings filled with spiced meat and onions. Now that’s food. A Kirghiz dish,’ he informed them.

Antonov said: ‘So the little nurse from Frunze is a good cook as well?’

‘As well as what? As a matter of fact, when all this is over we’re going to get married.’

‘Congratulations. Will she mind being married to a soldier?’

‘My time’s almost up. When we’ve chased the vermin back to Berlin I’m going to become a civilian again. And study law again,’ he said almost shyly. Antonov noticed that the ragged ends of his moustache had been trimmed.

‘Where do you come from?’ Antonov asked the driver. But he never found out because snow distorts distance and here they were on the west bank, beside a red flag as bright as a poppy. Back in the battlefield.

Chuikov’s headquarters had been transformed. It was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, the corrugated iron roof of each dug-out was numbered in black paint and paths had been cut through the trampled snow.

Antonov was escorted to dugout No. 14 where the captain with the young face and old hair and Gordov, the storm group leader, were waiting for him. Gordov looked plumper, as though the hunting had been good, and his pet beard was glossy. He even seemed pleased to see Antonov.

‘Welcome back to active service,’ he said.

The dugout was heated by a one bar electric fire that had made a collection of toasted bread-crumbs; grey blankets, German by the look of them, covered the walls. In Stalingrad this was luxury and the occupants, drinking tea served from a battered samovar, glowed with it and it was difficult to believe that the Germans were only a few hundred metres away.

The captain handed Antonov a glass of tea. It was sharp with lemon. How had they managed to get hold of a lemon? The captain held up a small bottle labelled LEMON CONCENTRATE.

He said: ‘Are you glad to be back?’ tone suggesting that he was a hard man to convince and, when Antonov said, truth-fully, that he was: ‘The odds will be against Meister this time: you’re refreshed, he will be exhausted.’

Antonov said: ‘With respect, Comrade Captain, I didn’t know the odds had previously been in Meister’s favour.’

‘I didn’t say they were. But he’s a trained marksman not a hunter from the taiga.’

Antonov knowing that he was invaluable and experiencing an unaccustomed surge of power, said: ‘May I ask, Comrade Captain, where you were born?’

The captain said: ‘Minsk,’ scarcely the Paris of the Soviet Union. And hurriedly: ‘You’ve brought your appetite for the duel back with you?’ Chuikov’s turn of phrase, Antonov recalled.

‘I don’t want to kill Meister if that’s what you mean.’

The silence was a fog. Antonov heard the scrape of shovel on concrete outside it. It thickened, then evaporated.

Gordov found direction first. ‘Then why are you here? Why did my men sacrifice their lives to rescue you, take you across the river?’ Astonishment being forged into anger.

‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t kill Meister; I said I didn’t want to.’

The captain said: ‘Do you want me to tell General Chuikov that?’

‘If you wish, Comrade Captain,’ Antonov replied. ‘But please convey my message accurately – didn’t want to, not wouldn’t.’

The captain drank some tea, small precise sips. He was a precise man, Antonov decided, confused by non-conformity. When his glass was empty he said: ‘Tell us why you don’t want to kill Meister.’

‘Why should I want to kill him?’

‘Because he’s a German,’ Gordov said. ‘Vermin.’

‘I’ve got nothing against him personally.’

‘What would happen if we all thought that way?’

‘We wouldn’t have wars,’ Antonov said.

‘We didn’t start this one,’ Gordov said. ‘Do you want the Germans to march right through Russia to the Sea of Japan?’

‘The war,’ Antonov said, astonishing himself, ‘was started by old men. Meister and I are young. Maybe if we were all taught when we were young that there is no need to fight each other then we’d live in peace.’

‘Take a look at any playground,’ Gordov said. ‘Boys fight.’

‘Because they copy their fathers.’

The captain said: ‘I’m sure General Chuikov will be interested in your views.’

But Antonov, battle-wise, knew he wouldn’t tell him: it was the captain’s job to pit him against Meister and Chuikov wouldn’t want complications.

Gordov said: ‘My sister was killed by the vermin.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Antonov said. ‘Truly sorry. But a lot of German girls will die before the war is over.’

‘Have you seen what the Germans did in the countryside? Have you seen the bodies of innocent peasants massacred in the villages?’

Antonov said: ‘I just don’t want it to ever happen again. Is that so wrong?’

Gordov made a grab for Antonov’s rifle. ‘Here, give me that. I don’t trust you.’

But the captain reached it first. ‘Don’t be stupid, you haven’t got his eyes.’ And to Antonov: ‘Dangerous talk, comrade. I would curb that tongue of yours if I were you.’

‘I don’t pull the trigger with my tongue, Comrade Captain.’

‘Are you sure you’re going to pull it?’

‘If I don’t Meister will pull his.’

This seemed to satisfy the captain because when Gordov, furiously combing his beard with his fingers, tried to speak he held up his hand. ‘Let’s get down to business,’ he said.

He spoke in numbers. The ruins of a wooden church 300 metres from the dugout. A reconnaissance party leaving at 1400 hours. Antonov to follow accompanied by Razin and two others. The captain treasured numbers.

‘It will still be light at 1400 hours,’ Antonov said.

‘So?’

Gordov said: ‘There’s a culvert leading from here to the edge of the graveyard beside the church. I know, I helped to build it.’ He frowned, displeased at the intrusion of the period before he became a warrior.

‘We want to make sure that Meister knows where you are,’ the captain said. ‘Then, when he comes for you, it will be easy for you, in a vantage point, wearing winter-white, to put a bullet between his eyes.’

Antonov said: ‘Can you tell me, Comrade Captain, how you’re going to make sure Meister knows where I am?’

‘Because we have a courier,’ the captain said, opening the door and calling Misha’s name.

Snipers, like hunters, anticipate deceit and, defensively, call it strategy. Antonov anticipated the captain. And deceived him.

Claiming that he had been told to report to the medical officer for a last check-up, he went looking for Misha and found him in a corner of the improvised canteen drinking a glass of hot milk.

Since the Russian victories some of his lost boyhood had returned to his face, blunting the sharp angles, but he was still bird-bright and wary.