Walter Miller - Dark Benediction

“Marya Dmitriyevna.”

“ Familiya?”

“Lisitsa.”

“It means ‘fox’, sir. Possibly a lie.”

“Well, Marya Dmitriyevna Fox, what’s your rank?”

“ V kakoin vy chinye?” snapped McCoy.

“Starshii Lyeityenant,” said the girl.

“Senior lieutenant, sir.”

“You see, girl? It’s all straight from Geneva. Name, rank, serial number, that’s all. You can trust us…. Ask her if she’s with Intelligence.”

“Razvye’dyvatyelnaya sluzhba?”

“Nyet!”

“Nyet, eh? How many divisions are ready at the front?”

“Skol’ko na frontye divizii?”

“Ya nye pomnyu!”

“She says she doesn’t remember.”

“Who is your battalion commander, Lisitsa?”

“Kto komandir va’shyevo baralyona?”

“Ya nye pomnyu!”

“She says she doesn’t remember.”

“Doesn’t, eh? Tell her I know she’s a spy, and we’ll shoot her at once.”

The interpreter repeated the threat in Russian. The girl folded her arms and stared contempt at the major. “You’re to stand at attention!”

“ Smirno!”

She kept her arms folded and stood as she had been standing. The major drew his forty-five and worked the slide.

“Tell her that I am the sixteenth bastard grandson of Mickey Spillane and blowing holes in ladies’ bellies is my heritage and my hobby.”

The interpreter repeated it. Marya snorted three words she had learned from a fisherman.

“I think she called you a castrate, sir.”

The major lifted the automatic and took casual aim. Something in his manner caused the girl to go white. She closed her eyes and murmured something reverent in favor of the Fatherland.

The gun jumped in Kline’s hand. The crash brought a yell from the sergeant outside the bunker. The bullet hit concrete out the doorway and screamed off on a skyward ricochet. The girl bent over and grabbed at the front of her skirt. There was a bullet hole in front and in back where the slug had passed between her thighs. She cursed softly and fanned the skirt.

“Tell her I am a terrible marksman, but will do better next time,” chuckled Kline. “Good thing the light shows through that skirt, eh, McCoy—or I might have burned the ‘tender demesnes.’ There! Is she still cursing me?”

“Fluently, sir.”

“I must have burned her little white hide. Give her a second to cool off, then ask what division she’s from.”

“Kakovo vy polka?”

“Ya nye pomnyu!”

“She has a very poor memory, sir.”

The major sighed and inspected his nails. They were grubby. “Tell her,” he muttered, “that I think I’ll have her assigned to C company as its official prostitute after our psychosurgeons make her a nymphomaniac.”

McCoy translated. Marya spat. The major wrote.

“Have you been in any battles, woman?” he grunted. “ V kakikh srazhyeniyakh vy oochast’vovali?”

“Ya nye pomnyu!”

“She says—”

“Yeah, I know. It was a silly question.” He handed the interpreter her file. “Give these to the sergeant and have him take her up to Purvis. I haven’t the heart to whip information out of a woman. Slim’s queer; he loves it.” He paused, looking her over. “I don’t know whether to feel sorry for her, or for Purvis. That’s all, McCoy.”

The sergeant led her to the Blue Shirts’ tent. “Listen,” he whispered. “I’ll sneak a call to the Red Cross.” He appeared very worried in her behalf.

The pain lasted for several hours. She lay on a cot somewhere while a nurse and a Red Cross girl took blood samples and smears. They kept giving each other grim little glances across the cot while they ministered to her.

“We’ll see that the ones who did it to you are tried,” the Red Cross worker told her in bad Russian.

“I speak English,” Marya muttered, although she had never admitted it to her interrogators, not even to Purvis.

“You’ll be all right. But why don’t you cry?”

But she could only cry for Nikolai now, and even that would be over soon. She lay there for two days and waited.

After that, there was General MacAmsward, and a politer form of questioning. The answers, though, were still the same.

“Ya nye pomnyu! ”

What quality or quantity can it be, laughably godlike, transubstantially apelike, that abides in the flesh of brutes and makes them men? For General MacAmsward was indeed a man, although he wished to be only a soldier.

There are militarists who love the Fatherland, and militarists who love the Motherland, and the difference between them is as distinct as the difference between the drinkers of bourbon and the drinkers of rye. There are the neo-Prussian zombies in jackboots who stifle their souls to make themselves machines of the Fatherland, but MacAmsward was not one of them. MacAmsward was a Motherland man, and Mother was never much interested in machines. Mother raised babies into champions, and a champion is mightier than the State; never is he a tool of the State. So it was with Rufus MacAmsward, evil genius by sworn word of Porphiry Grigoryevich.

Consider a towering vision of Michael the Archangel carrying a swagger stick. Fresh from the holy wars of Heaven he comes, striding past the rows of white gloved orderlies standing at saber salute, their haloes (M-1, official nimbus) studded with brass spikes. The archangel’s headgear is a trifle rakish, crusted with gold laurel and dented by a dervish devil’s bullet. He ignores the thrones and dominations, but smiles democratically at a lowly cherub and pauses to inquire after the health of his grandmother.

Grandmother is greatly improved.

Immensely reassured, General MacAmsward strides into his quarters and hangs up his hat. The room is in darkness except for the light from a metal wall lamp that casts its glare around the great chair and upon the girl who sits in the great chair at the far end of the room. The girl is toying with a goblet of wine, and her dark hair coils in thick masses about her silk-clad shoulders. The silk came by virtue of the negligence of the general’s ex-wife in forgetting to pack. The great chair came as a prize of war, having been taken from a Soviet People’s Court where it is no longer needed . It is massive as an episcopal throne—a fitting seat for an archangel—and it is placed on a low dais at the head of a long table flanked by lesser chairs. The room is used for staff conference, and none would dare to sit in the great chair except the general—or, of course, a lovely grief-stung maiden.

The girl stares at him from out of two pools of shadow. Her head is slightly inclined and the downlight catches only the tip of her nose. The general pauses with his hand on his hat. He turns slowly away from the hat rack, brings himself slowly to attention, and gives her a solemn salute. It is a tribute to beauty. She acknowledges it with a nod. The general advances and sits in the simple chair at the far end of the long table. The general sighs with fervor, as if he had not breathed since entering the door. His eyes have not left her face. The girl puts down the glass.

“I have come to kill you,” she said. “I have come to nurse you to death with the milk of a murdered child.”

The general winced. She had said it three times before, once for each day she had resided in his house. And for the third time, the general ignored it.

“I have seen to it, my child,” he told her gravely. “Captain Purvis faces court martial in the morning. I have directed it. I have directed too that you be repatriated forthwith, if it is your wish, for this is only common justice after what that monster has done to you. Now however let me implore you to remain with us and quit the forces of godlessness until the war is won and you can return to your home in peace.”