Simon Montefiore - Red Sky at Noon

‘But what happens when I’m better? I can’t go back to the mine… I’ll die…’

Kapto sat on the edge of the bed, rested his hands on Benya’s hands, and Benya could not believe that someone could be so kind to him. Kapto smelled sweet, soapy, not of compacted sweat and disinfectant and death like everyone else. He smelled like a human.

‘Easy, easy now! You’re lucky, Benya Golden. You’re not going back,’ he whispered. ‘Everyone else has to go back to the mine. But not you. Aren’t you a medical orderly? A feldsher ? Don’t you have nursing experience?’

‘What?’ Benya was confused.

‘Don’t you remember, Golden, in your Spanish Stories , when you spent a week with the medics and their ambulance at the Ebro front? You had medical training? Now you understand?’

‘Yes, of course! I’m a nurse!’ Benya nodded like a child.

‘You see, I’ve read your book – and all your short stories too. You’ll be joining the two nurses here in our little clinic. The most important thing is your kindness to the patients. Many are fading away but we must make them feel loved. We’ll train you up. For us doctors, our duties don’t end with just saving a life: those we heal we must also cherish.’

Benya tried to speak but he was so moved that he wept instead.

‘Easy now,’ said Kapto. ‘You’re a lucky man, Golden. And tomorrow you’ll find out the very meaning of luck.’

General Melishko is covered in dust; even his starched-white moustache and winged eyebrows are reddened with earth. Thank God he’s back! He hands the reins of Elephant to his adjutant and joins Zhurko and Ganakovich outside the priest’s house near the church.

Benya listens as Zhurko and Ganakovich bombard Melishko with questions. When are reinforcements coming? Where are the supplies? Ganakovich is shrill, no longer the legendary friend of Politburo members and seducer of ballerinas.

‘How are we to provision the horses? We need support,’ says Zhurko, voice tight, calm, dry.

‘How do we rendezvous with the others?’ cries Ganakovich. ‘What do we do now? We don’t even have full maps.’

‘We are where we are,’ says Melishko.

‘And where is that?’ demands Ganakovich, gulping back a wad of saliva. ‘Where are we? Should we go back to our lines…?’

Melishko laughs huskily, rolling his false teeth. ‘Really, Ganakovich?’

‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ Ganakovich corrects himself. ‘Not One Step Back! We know Stalin’s order. Retreat means death.’

‘Yes,’ says Melishko quite jovially, poking him in the ribs. ‘You almost had to execute yourself just then.’

‘Forgive me! Please don’t inform the Special Section, I just meant—’

‘Calm down, boy.’ Melishko waves a bluff hand. ‘We don’t tell, do we, Zhurko?’

‘Of course not,’ said Zhurko, cleaning his spectacles with his shirt tail.

There is a strange stillness. Benya realizes the shooting has stopped.

‘Thank you, comrades…’

‘We’re not comrades, remember, Ganakovich? We’re bandits,’ replies Melishko heartily. ‘How many sabres are we here?’

‘Three hundred, give or take,’ reports Zhurko.

‘Wounded?’

‘Riding wounded included.’

‘So with our three hundred, how do we rendezvous with the rest of the battalion, the rest of the division?’ Ganakovich is almost weeping.

‘Ganakovich, let me spell it out. We’re alone. There are no reinforcements,’ Melishko explains. He speaks slowly and deliberately. ‘The other squadrons were wiped out when they charged the German tanks and machine guns. They redeemed themselves all right. I only just got through myself. Thanks to Elephant. That scout was right: our squadron got lucky. No one knew there were Italians in this sector. And because the Italians worry too much about their uniforms and pasta, we broke right through.’

‘So what do we do now?’ whispers Ganakovich.

Melishko lights a cigarette, taking his time about it, with a lot of puffing and chewing of false teeth. He talks when he is good and ready. ‘We can only advance. And we have a mission of sorts, remember? If we break through, they said, we must hunt down and destroy all traitors. And the chief traitor in this sector is Colonel Mandryka. The Germans have given him his own little kingdom here with his own security police, the Schuma, who are working on special tasks with the SS. He’s encouraging Soviet soldiers to surrender and defect. Moscow wants him eliminated, and the unit that kills him will be redeemed. That’s what we’re going to do. Tell Panka to saddle the horses, and gather all provisions. We move out at dawn.’

‘But won’t the Germans know we’re here?’ whines Ganakovich.

‘Yes, but they’ll be expecting us to retreat towards the Don. Instead we’re going in the other direction, further into enemy territory. And we’ll be moving fast and light as only cavalrymen can.’

‘Forward’s the only way back,’ agrees Zhurko.

‘But don’t you realize?’ says Ganakovich, and the fear in his voice echoes the fear in Benya’s belly. ‘We’ll never come back.’

An hour out of the village, the dawn sky began to lighten into lilac and then pink, and they saw a dead horse lying on its back, its hooves sticking up towards the sky. ‘Eaten itself to death,’ commented Panka wryly.

A few minutes later, they rode past a dead Russian run over by a tank. The body was shapeless, totally flat, just green fabric and pink flesh woven like a carpet. There was a smell of burning and Benya remembered the smoke of battle the day before. As they rode on, the stench grew stronger, the men grew quieter, three hundred riders, horses’ tails swishing, the bits clonking between teeth, the creak of leather, clink of spurs.

‘If you’re scared, don’t do it,’ Zhurko had said as they moved off. ‘If you do it, don’t be scared!’

And Benya found he was not as scared as he had been before. He was more afraid of capture. Death seemed easier now; it was merely the agony in between that he feared. He rode in his place between Spider Garanzha and Prishchepa, noticing that Dr Kapto had the little girl, all cleaned up now, riding on his horse in front of him. Melishko loped up and down the squadrons, a word here, encouragement there, to make sure the men understood that this was the way they would win their freedom. But the men were muttering. They had heard something back in the village, the poison spread by Mandryka’s traitors, that the war was lost, and that their fellow Cossacks had joined the Germans. ‘Join our brothers!’ a few of the soldiers were whispering.

Panka shook his head when he heard this: ‘Careful, brothers, I saw the German promises last time. Hear me say this,’ he said emphatically. ‘I’m not going anywhere !’

The scouts rode back: ‘Village ahead. Clear,’ they called.

They approached, walking slowly into the village’s only street. Every house in it was a blackened shell, and the barn was still smoking.

Suddenly a voice cried out, ‘ Klop, klop! ’ as an old-fashioned tarantass, a buggy pulled by an aged horse, trotted right into them. Benya and his comrades raised their guns at the old peasant holding the reins. He wore a Tsarist braided tunic with shoulderboards and a medal on it; an old hunting rifle lay across his knees. Seeing them, the old man jumped down and tried to run but Smiley shot him in the ankle and they brought him back.