David Benioff - City of Thieves

This graphic daydream was a departure for me. Had Kolya’s pornographic playing cards riled my imagination? Usually my fantasies were chaste, anachronistic—I’d envision Vera Osipovna, fully clothed, giving me a cello recital in the loneliness of her bedroom, and afterward I would praise her playing, impressing her with my eloquence and mastery of the musicians’ vocabulary. The fantasy would end with some strong kissing, Vera’s out-flung leg knocking over the music stand, her face hot and flushed as I flashed a mysterious smile and left her standing, her collar askew, one button of her shirt undone.

My fantasies generally ended before getting to the sex because I was afraid of sex. I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t even know enough to fake knowing how to do it. I understood the basic anatomy, but the geometry of the act confused me, and without a father or an older brother or any close friends with experience, there was no one around to ask.

But there was nothing chaste in my hunger for Vika. I wanted to jump on her, my pants around my ankles. She could show me where everything went and once we were sorted, her fingers with their dirty, bitten nails would rake my shoulders; her head would tilt back, exposing her long white throat and the tremor of pulse below her jaw; her heavy eyelids would open wide, pupils constricting in the blue of her eyes until they were the size of the dot above the i.

All of the women of the house—Nina and Galina, Lara and Olesya—were prettier than Vika at first glance. Their hair was long and brushed; they had no dried mud on the backs of their hands; they even wore a bit of lipstick. They hurried in and out of the great room, carrying bowls of shelled walnuts and salted radishes. There was a new group of armed men to please—countrymen, yes, but still dangerous and unpredictable. One of them, sitting cross-legged on the floor by the fire, grabbed Galina’s chubby wrist as she leaned down to refill his glass of vodka.

“You take a look outside yet? Is your boyfriend one of them lying on his face?”

His friend beside him laughed and the partisan, encouraged, yanked Galina into his lap. She was used to rough treatment; she didn’t cry out or spill a drop of the vodka.

“Did they bring you lots of tasty things to eat? They must have, eh, feel these cheeks!” He brushed a callused thumb across her soft pink cheek. “And what did you do for them? Anything they wanted, was that it? Danced naked while they sang the ‘Horst Wessel Song’? Sucked them off while they drank their schnapps?”

“Get off her,” said Vika. She was lying on her back just as she had been, still looking up at the ibex head while her feet in their thick wool socks swayed to the beat of an unheard song. Her voice was uninflected—if she was angry, it was impossible to tell. As soon as the words were in the air I wished I had said them instead. It would have been a brave gesture, possibly suicidal, but Galina had been kind to me and I should have defended her—not because of my noble nature, but because it might have impressed Vika. But in the moment when I might have acted I froze, another act of cowardice to dwell on through the years. Kolya would have intervened without hesitation, but Kolya was in the back bedroom with Korsakov, looking over the colonel’s letter of safe transit.

The partisan gripping Galina’s wrist hesitated before responding to Vika. I knew he was afraid. I’ve been afraid for so long I can spot the fear in other people before they know it’s there. But I also knew he would say something back, something cutting to prove to his comrades that he wasn’t afraid, even though they all knew he was.

“What’s the matter?” he finally asked. “You want her for yourself?”

It was a weak effort and none of his friends gave him a laugh. Vika didn’t bother responding. She never looked his way. The only sign that she had heard him at all was a slow smile that spread across her face, and it wasn’t clear if that was in response to his taunt or the ibex’s glass-eyed glare. After a few more seconds the partisan grunted, let go of Galina, and gave her a weak push.

“Go on, serve the others. You’ve been a slave so long that’s all you’re good for.”

If the partisan’s insults wounded her, Galina hid it well. She poured glasses of vodka for the other men in the room and all of them were polite, nodding their heads in thanks.

After a minute to consider the odds of severe embarrassment, I walked over to the horsehair sofa and sat on the end of it, close to Vika’s feet in their gray wool socks. The ibex’s chin beard dangled above my head. I glanced up at it and then over to Vika. She was staring right at me, waiting to hear whatever ludicrous thing I was planning to say.

“Was your father a hunter?” I asked. This was the question I had formulated while standing on the other side of the room. As soon as I said it I wondered why I had thought it was a good way to start a conversation. Some article I had read about snipers, something about Sidorenko shooting squirrels when he was a boy.

“What?”

“Your father… I thought maybe that’s how you learned to shoot.”

I couldn’t tell if it was boredom or disgust in her blue eyes. Up close, by the light of the oil lamps and the fireplace, I could see a spray of small red pimples across her forehead.

“No. He wasn’t a hunter.”

“I guess a lot of snipers started out as hunters…. Anyway, I read something about it.”

She wasn’t looking at me anymore, she was back to studying the ibex. I was less interesting than a stuffed animal. The other partisans watched me, elbowing each other and grinning, leaning close to whisper and laugh quietly.

“Where’d you get that German rifle?” I asked her, a little desperate, a gambler who keeps on betting even as his hands get worse and worse.

“Off a German.”

“I have a German knife.” I pulled up my pants leg, unsheathed the knife, and turned it in my hand, letting the fine steel catch the light. The knife got her attention. She held out her hand and I passed it to her. She tested the edge of the blade against her forearm.

“Sharp enough to shave with,” I said. “Not that you need to… I mean…”

“Where’d you find it?”

“On a German.”

She smiled and I was very proud of the line, as if I’d said something massively clever, responding to her taciturnity with my own.

“And where’d you find the German?”

“Dead paratrooper in Leningrad.” I hoped that was vague enough to leave open the possibility that I had killed the paratrooper.

“They’re dropping into Leningrad? It’s started?”

“Just a commando raid, I guess. Only a few got through. Didn’t go so well for the Fritzes.” I thought that sounded right, offhand, as if I were the sort of killer who spoke casually of the enemies I’d dispatched.

“You killed him yourself?”

I opened my mouth, fully prepared to lie, but the way she looked at me, her lips curled into that smirk that both angered me with its condescension and made me want to kiss her…

“The cold killed him. I just saw him falling.”

She nodded and handed back the knife, stretching her arms behind her head and giving a tremendous yawn, not bothering to cover her mouth. Her teeth were like children’s teeth, very small and not quite matching. She looked content, as if she’d just eaten a nine-course meal served with the best wines, though all I’d seen her nibble on was a black radish.

“The cold is Mother Russia’s oldest weapon,” I added, some line I’d heard a general spout on the radio. Immediately I wished I could retract it. Maybe it was true, but it had been a propaganda cliché for months now. Even mouthing the phrase Mother Russia made me feel like one of those stupid smiling Young Pioneers, marching in the parks in their white shirts and red ties, singing “The Little Joyful Drummer.”