David Benioff - City of Thieves

The lieutenant, sitting in the passenger seat, stared at the road ahead and did not answer, his bare scalp flecked with small white scars.

“The women of Leningrad thank them, too.”

“We’re taking you to the hospital at the Works,” said the lieutenant. “That’s where the best surgeons are.”

“Very good, I’m sure the NKVD will give you a medal. And when you’ve dropped me off, please take my little friend here to Kamenny Island. He has an important package for the colonel.”

The lieutenant sat in sullen silence, angry that he had to take orders from a private but unwilling to risk making a powerful enemy. We stopped at a sandbagged barricade and lost nearly two minutes as soldiers lowered a wooden platform across the trench so we could cross. The driver barked at them to hurry, but even so the soldiers drifted about, weary and nonchalant, arguing about the proper way to position the bridge. Finally, we made it to the other side. The driver stepped on the gas and we sped past machine-gun emplacements festooned with sandbags.

“How far to the hospital?” I asked the driver.

“Ten minutes. Eight, if we’re lucky.”

“Try to be lucky,” said Kolya. His eyes were clenched shut now, his face pressed against the seat, his blond hair hanging over his forehead. In the last minute he had gotten very pale and could not stop shivering. I rested my free hand on the back of his neck and his skin was cool to the touch.

“Don’t worry,” he told me. “I’ve seen friends bleeding worse than this and they were back a week later, all stitched up.”

“I’m not worried.”

“There’s so much blood in a human body. What is it, five liters?”

“I don’t know.”

“It looks like so much, but I bet I haven’t even lost a liter. Maybe one.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t talk.”

“Why not? What’s wrong with talking? Listen, you go to the wedding. Dance with the colonel’s daughter, and then come to the hospital and tell me about it. I want details. What she’s wearing, what she smells like, all that. I’ve been jerking off to her for five days straight, you know that? Well, once to Vika. My apologies. But what she did in the sheep barn, tightening the belt around her chest? You saw that. Can you blame me?”

“When did you have time to do that?”

“On the endless fucking march to here. You learn how to jerk it on the move when you’re in the army. Hand in the pocket, it’s no big trick.”

“You jerked off to Vika while we were walking last night?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you. You were sleepwalking half the night, I was bored, I had to do something. Now you’re angry. Don’t be angry with me.”

“Of course I’m not angry.”

The driver hit the brakes hard and Kolya would have tumbled off the backseat if I hadn’t been holding him. I sat up and peered through the windshield. We had reached the edge of the sprawling Kirov Works, a city in itself, where tens of thousands labored night and day. Artillery shells and Luftwaffe bombs had flattened some of the brick-walled machine shops; empty windows throughout the complex had been covered with plastic tarps; ice-filled craters pockmarked the yards. But even now, with thousands of workers evacuated and thousands more dead or waiting to die on the front lines, even now the chimneys still smoked, the alleyways bustled with women pushing carts filled with coal, the air was loud with the clamor of whirring lathes and rolling mills and hydraulic presses shaping steel.

A line of newly completed T-34 tanks had trundled out of an assembly shop as big as an airplane hangar. Eight of the tanks, their steel unpainted, rumbled slowly over the dirty snow, blocking off the road.

“Why did we stop?” Kolya asked. His voice sounded much weaker than it had a minute before and it made me afraid to hear him like that.

“Some tanks are going by.”

“T-thirty-fours?”

“Yes.”

“Good tanks.”

Finally, the tanks passed and we shot forward. The driver had a heavy foot on the accelerator, a sure hand on the wheel, and he knew the Works well—cutting through back alleys behind turbine shops; blasting down unpaved paths alongside the workers’ housing, tin-roofed sheds with squat little stovepipes—but even with an expert it took time to get to the far side of the rambling factory town.

“There,” said the lieutenant at last, pointing to a brick warehouse that had been converted into the local hospital. He turned in his seat and looked at Kolya. When he couldn’t see Kolya’s face, he looked at me, questioning. I shrugged to say, I don’t know.

“Devils!” shouted the driver, slapping the steering wheel and hitting the brakes again. A small locomotive chugged across the tracks that bisected the Works, tugging boxcars loaded with scrap metal for the foundry.

“Lev?”

“Yes?”

“Are we close?”

“I think we’re very close.”

Kolya’s lips had gone blue, his breathing rapid and shallow.

“Is there any water?” he asked.

“Does anyone have water?” My voice broke as I asked the question. I sounded like a frightened child.

The gunner passed forward a canteen. I unscrewed the cap, shifted Kolya’s head sideways, and tried to pour water in his mouth, but it ended up spilling onto the seat. He managed to lift his head a little and I got some down his throat, but he choked and spat it up. When I tried to give him more, he refused with a slight shake of the head and I handed the canteen back to the gunner.

Realizing Kolya’s head must be cold, I tore off my hat and put it on him, ashamed that I hadn’t thought to do that before. Even though he shivered, his face was damp with sweat, his skin pale and mottled with coin-size scarlet patches.

I could see the doors of the hospital, less than a hundred meters away, through the gaps between the rolling boxcars. Our driver sat hunched forward in his seat, his arms draped around the wheel, nodding his head impatiently as he waited. The lieutenant kept glancing back at Kolya, more and more worried.

“Lev? You like the title?”

“What title?”

“ The Courtyard Hound .”

“It’s a good title.”

“I could just call it Radchenko. ”

“ The Courtyard Hound is better.”

“I think so, too.”

He opened his eyes, those pale blue Cossack eyes, and smiled at me. We both knew he was going to die. He trembled, lying on the backseat beneath his greatcoat, his teeth very white against his blue lips. I have always believed that smile was a gift for me. Kolya had no faith in the divine or the afterlife; he didn’t think he was going to a better place, or any place at all. No angels waited to collect him. He smiled because he knew how terrified I was of dying. This is what I believe. He knew I was terrified and he wanted to make it a little easier for me.

“Can you believe it? Shot in the ass by my own people.”

I wanted to say something, to make some stupid joke to distract him. I should have said something, I wish that I had, even though I still can’t think of the right words. If I told him that I loved him, would he have winked and said, “No wonder your hand’s on my ass?”

Even Kolya couldn’t hold the smile for long. He closed his eyes again. When he spoke, his mouth was very dry, his lips sticking together as he tried to form the words.

“It’s not the way I pictured it,” he told me.

Officers in uniform and stern-faced civilians hurried in and out of the mansion on Kamenny Island, shoving through the front door beneath the white-columned portico. Behind the old house the Neva lay coiled, frozen and dusted with snow, a white snake slithering through the broken city.