Peter Higgins - Truth and Fear

Kamilova jumped down and turned to catch Yeva and Galina.

‘Now!’ she screamed at them. ‘Run! Now! Run with me! Run!’

Every night at midnight General Rizhin gathered his city defence commanders together to hear their reports, review the day just finished and make plans for the next. In the early days of the siege, when they first understood that Rizhin intended to make a stand, the commanders he appointed had attacked their tasks with a fierce commitment and determination. Few among them thought they could actually succeed in driving back the overwhelming force of the enemy, but there was honour, and for some a fierce joy, in fighting not running. A week of bloody resistance was worth more than a lifetime of capitulation, and every day that Mirgorod did not fall was a day stolen from inevitability by their own determination and will. Rizhin had chosen them because that was how they felt, and he’d chosen well.

But now, as Rizhin’s gaze moved round the table, examining first one face and then another, he saw tiredness, lack of confidence, reluctance, even despair. One by one they gave their reports, and none of the news was good. Every day the enemy’s forces made some small advance, and the best that Mirgorod ever achieved was not to lose more. Defeat was only a matter of time, and the longer it took, the more grindingly desperate, even humiliating the resistance became. Rizhin knew that his commanders were beginning to feel this, and some were even willing quietly and privately to say so. A shared collective opinion was forming among them, in the way that such opinions do, without any one person leading it, that to continue the battle further was to impose pointless suffering on the people of the city. And so, this midnight, Rizhin called the city commanders together, grey-faced and dusty with the struggles of the day, in a different room, one end of which was separated off by a wide, heavy curtain.

When they were assembled, Rizhin took his place at the head of the table, relaxed and smiling, and spoke to them in a quiet voice.

‘Colleagues,’ he said, ‘friends, I know how tired you all are. You are fighting bravely, you do wonders every day, but I see in your faces that some of you don’t trust the struggle any more. Perhaps some of you think I should have accepted the enemy’s terms of surrender—’

‘No!’ shouted Latsis, loyal Major Latsis, and some round the table joined in the murmurs of denial, but others kept silent, and Rizhin noted for later who they were.

‘I know that some of you are thinking this,’ Rizhin continued. ‘Where are we going with this bitter, grinding resistance? That is what you ask each other. What is the purpose? What is the strategy?’ He leaned forward and skewered them one by one with his stare. None of them would meet his eye. ‘Do you think I don’t know how you whisper among yourselves?’ he continued. ‘Do you think I don’t hear it all? Do you think it does not reach my ears, this cowardice and doubt? This backsliding? This revisionism?’

Rizhin let the uncomfortable silence grow and spread round the table.

‘I don’t need to hear it,’ he added. ‘I can smell it in the room.’

‘General Rizhin—’ began Fritjhov, commander of the Bermskaya Tank Division.

‘Let me finish,’ said Rizhin, his voice quiet, reasonable.

‘No!’ said Fritjhov. ‘I will have my say! You call us cowards? Cowards! Our soldiers fight for the city, and they will fight to the bitter end, they will fight and die for Mirgorod. But they cannot fight and win . We cannot fight without munitions, and munitions do not come. We cannot advance without air cover, and our air force does not come. The Vlast has abandoned Mirgorod to the enemy! The enemy knows this, and do you think our soldiers don’t?’

Rizhin poured himself a glass of water. The clink of the jug against the tumbler was the only sound in the room.

‘Munitions?’ he said. ‘Air cover? There’s only one weapon that wins wars, Fritjhov, and that is fear. Terror. If the enemy think they are winning, it’s because they smell the stench of your fear.’

Fritjhov bridled.

‘I am a soldier,’ he growled. ‘I am not afraid to die.’

Rizhin shrugged.

‘Then you will die, Fritjhov,’ he said. ‘What I need are commanders who are not afraid to win .’ He fixed the room with his burning, fiery glare. Holding them with all the relentless force of his will and the strength of his imagination. It was Rizhin the poet, Rizhin the artist of history, speaking to them now. ‘There are new forms in the future, my friends,’ he said, ‘and they need to be filled in with blood. A new type of humankind is needed now: individuals whose moral daring makes them vibrate at a speed that makes motion invisible. We here in this room are the first of mankind, and this city is our point of departure. There is no past, there is only the future, and the future is ours to make. Our imminent victory in Mirgorod will be just the beginning.’

‘There isn’t going to be any fucking victory here, man,’ said Fritjhov. ‘As senior commander it is my duty—’

Rizhin smiled.

‘Victory is coming, Fritjhov my friend. Victory is nearly here.’

‘What—’

‘A train is coming from the north-east, bringing a consignment of artillery shells.’

‘One shipment of shells?’ said Fritjhov in derision, looking round the table for support.

‘Shells of a new type,’ said Rizhin. ‘You will need to prepare your guns. I will give you instructions.’

Fritjhov jumped to his feet, sending his chair clattering.

‘No more instructions, Rizhin, not from you.’

Rizhin was a restful centre of patience and forbearance.

‘Just sit down a moment, would you, Fritjhov,’ he said, ‘and I will show you what is coming.’

Rizhin stood and walked across the room. He drew back the heavy curtain to reveal a projector and a cinema screen. He started the projector whirring and turned off the lights.

Lom woke in the quiet before dawn and lay still in the cocoon of branches and leaf mould, knees pulled up tight against his belly, head pillowed on the warm knot of his own folded arms. He didn’t want to move.

He breathed with his mouth, shallow slow breaths. Breathing the warmth of his own breath, inhaling pine and earth and moss, the smell of damp woodsmoke in his clothes and his hair. He listened for sounds from outside the shelter, but there was nothing: the thickness of the shelter absorbed sound as it absorbed light. Yet the shelter itself had its own faint whispering, a barely audible movement of shifting and settling, the outer layer flicking and feathering in the breeze, and sometimes the rustle and tick of small things–woodlice? spiders? mice?–in the canopy. The shelter was a living thing that had settled over him, absorbing him, nurturing. Deep beneath him in the cold earth the roots of trees, the fine tangled roots, sifted and slid and touched one another. They whispered. They were connected. All the trees together made one tree, night-waking and watchful. It knew he was there.

Twice in the night Lom had heard the long trains passing.

He had done a terrible thing and the guilt of it weighed him down. He had lost Maroussia. He had not been there. He could hear the sound of her voice in his head, but not the words.

Reluctantly he sat up and pushed the entrance branches aside and let in the dim grey dawn and the cold of the day. Harsh frost had come in the night, and now mist reduced the surrounding forest to a quiet clearing edged by indeterminacy. When he crawled out of the shelter the mist brushed cold against his face and filled his nose and lungs, and when he walked his shoes crunched on brittle, snow-dusted iron earth.