David Robbins - Last Citadel

Luis did not need to look at the chatty man, he smelled the perspiration, could hear the officer’s hands run over his belly across the stale cloth of his uniform, even through the torrent of talk. In the imposed stillness of his injuries, Luis was turning inward. He found a soothing darkness there, the darkness that first came to him bleeding in the snow at Leningrad and came again beside his burning Tiger at Prokhorovka, and now on his way out of Russia, headed south for Italy, it seemed not to leave.

‘…meant to check on you in the hospital at Belgorod when I heard you’d been brought in,’ the major rambled, ‘but there was so much to do in the last several days, you understand, Captain. Besides, I’m sure you were in a great deal of pain and needed…’

Luis had made himself stand on the battlefield. He’d been thwarted in Russia but he would not lie like a skewered bull in his own blood. He’d survived the destruction of his tank, a fantastic blast when the Red shooter’s shell pierced his Tiger’s side armor; a secondary explosion ignited when all the stored rounds went off in the Tiger and the T-34. Everyone died instantly, except Luis. He’d been blown into the air on top of the Tiger’s flying turret. When he landed he was somehow alive.

He’d rolled over on his back and raised a hand to God, one last prayer, certain he was about to die. When he did not, there was no more reason to lie there, nothing to wait for. The pain propelled him to his feet. He was in awe again of his flimsy body, what it could endure. Even more than the burning Tiger, it seemed. A Mark IV in his company spotted him and ferried him out of the valley.

‘…you were fighting at Prokhorovka, the Americans landed 160,000 men on Sicily, and six hundred tanks. That, of course, changed everything. Hitler’s obsessed that Mussolini is going to be overthrown. He summoned von Manstein and Kluge to Rastenburg for a meeting. And on the thirteenth, of course, while you were in the hospital, Hitler called off Citadel.’

Yes, Luis thought, Hitler has taken Russia from me. With it, he’s taken Spain. I can’t go home.

Tomorrow Hitler will order the rest of Leibstandarte out of Russia. So I am to be given Italy next. And the Americans for an enemy. Bueno . What do I care? What hasn’t been taken from me?

‘…Papa Hoth, as you can imagine, was furious and wanted to keep up the attack. Hitler agreed to let the battle in the south go on for a few more days, you know, to try and siphon off the last of the Russians’ reserves. But that was destined to be no good at all, you see. And then today, the Russians started their counteroffensive in the north against Orel. Early reports have the Reds already across poor Model’s first defense lines…’

Luis had begun to mutter curt replies, ‘Yes,’ ‘Hmm,’ ‘Really?’ He issued these like boulders or downed trees to try and stem the flow of the major, wanting to dam him up with a blunt, final word.

The porter walked by with a pitcher of water swathed in a white kerchief, the thing looked as bandaged as Luis. He refilled Luis’s glass and handed Grimm a full glass. The major downed the water with one swift raise of his arm, the arm that did nothing at Kursk but push toy blocks and lift sheets of paper. Grimm swallowed and said, ‘Ahhh,’ with satisfaction. Under his tunic Luis’s rib cage was wrapped tight. Every breath for him was a task. He glowered at the officer. The fat man would not be plugged.

‘…problems began with Totenkopf on your left flank. The hope was they would advance far enough to threaten Prokhorovka from the northwest. But the rain made a mess of their river crossings, and resupplying the division across the Psel became impossible. Totenkopf couldn’t hold their beachhead and had to fall back.’

Luis imagined Grimm in the map room sliding the black blocks backward. He wondered how long until the glass of water Grimm had just gulped ran down his forehead as sweat. The darkness outside his window and inside him was emptiness. Luis looked at this man, his opposite, and considered how full Grimm was, how bursting with noise and memory and need. Look at him, swollen with it all, talking just to keep from popping. The dark required none of this from Luis. The dark was pain, and if you embraced the dark’s pain you felt nothing of the world’s. That was real power.

‘…Kempf, but too little too late. Kempf’s linkup with Das Reich didn’t come until the fifteenth. By then, for all intents and purposes, the battle was over. Oh, you SS chaps might have made a go of it, certainly, but with due respect, Captain, Leibstandarte’s inability to take Oktyabrski state farm in the center doomed the attack. Neither Totenkopf nor Das Reich could defend their flanks after that. By the night of the thirteenth, Prokhorovka was a stalemate. That’s when Hitler called it off. And now the damn Ivans are hitting back. Well, it’s to be expected. It’s what I’d do. It’s only a matter of time, I’m afraid…’

Late that afternoon a nurse had come to Luis’s bedside. She’d handed him orders to report to this train at the Belgorod station. Apparently Grimm got the same orders. Luis was being sent to defend another yappy fat man, Mussolini. Luis would recuperate in Rome, then take over a panzer company. He would get another Tiger in the sunny south, in a coastal town named Anzio.

‘…put you in for a medal, you know. The Iron Cross Second Class. I heard about all the Red tanks you knocked out in that damn sunflower field. Splendid, Captain. You deserve it! And since this is the second time you’ve been wounded in battle, you’ll be getting your silver wound badge…’

Luis heard the talk of medals the way a man listens to the plops of stones landing at the darkness of a well. He dropped the medals into the darkness, plop, plop . They were not enough to give him back Barcelona, the Ramblas, his father. He was starting over. In Italy.

He watched Russia recede in his window. Adios . The moonlit flats were heaped with Grimm’s assessments of failure here, describing the expanse as impregnable, no one had ever conquered it for long. Maybe he’s right, Luis thought. Perhaps it was better to get out of here and head south. He thought about Prokhorovka. What had happened? What in hell was that old T-34 driver screaming at the end? What was he saying? What did he want?

Luis licked his dry lips. A dart of pain pricked in his stitched chin. The pain swept the Red driver out of his head, out into the bland deluge of Major Grimm’s monologue. Luis didn’t care what the crazy old Russian had been yelling. Whatever it was, Death had answered him. The Russian was not going to haunt Luis, there would be no more throbs in his hand like the partisan or the bulls, no. The darkness in Luis left no room for the weakness of curiosity, no dilution of the mind or will, no pride, and certainly no ghosts.

Stay empty, the dark told him. See how powerful you have become. It’s simple: first the bullet outside Leningrad, then that crazy old Russian at Prokhorovka. They were sent to you, to change you and make you stronger.

You have nothing.

You are nothing, nothing but la Daga .

It will take something stronger than Russia to kill you.

Colonel Plokhoi was first out of the bushes. A moment after the blast on the rail mound, before the echo was gone from the trees where they hid, he ran from cover with his submachine-gun braced at the hip, chasing his bullets over the open ground. Katya leaped out with the waves of dark partisans, following Colonel Bad, shouting and shooting their weapons into the roofs and sides of the tipping train.