David Robbins - Last Citadel

She bent to her shovel. Dimitri, behind her, gave her buttocks a squeeze.

Dimitri stayed in the trench, digging with the women and old men, the darling of the civilians. When he did not come out of the hole in an hour to return to his tank, Andrei wandered up to the lip to check on him. Below Andrei’s feet, he saw Sonya and barebacked Dimitri with a gaggle of women around him. The dairy farmer doffed his cigarette and his tunic, too, and stumbled down the wall of the trench. He was welcomed, introduced around, and handed a shovel. Within the hour, a dozen more tankers were in the trench, sweating and flinging dirt and flirting like it was a holiday. In the early evening, they shared a meal with the diggers.

The air cooled with the lowering sun and the work slacked after the food. The sound of arriving trucks reached them down in the pit, come to take the laborers back to their camp miles to the east away from the front. Andrei got a peck on the cheek from the girl he’d worked beside. Some of the other tankers, unsure bumpkins, backed away, muttering, Nice to meet you, and clambered up the slope. Sonya told Dimitri, Thank you, she hadn’t laughed as much in a day for years. Thank you, Dima. He reached both hands into the water bucket and dipped water to splash his face, then grabbed Sonya in a bear hug. Her breasts against his chest stunned him for a moment, it had been all he thought about the whole day hefting the shovel. He wanted to give her something but had nothing in his pockets, so he gave her a truth. My daughter, he said, is not dead. She’s a pilot. Sonya did not take a swing at him for his gambit; instead she said, So, you are still a hetman , you have a clan. Yes, he said, proud the way she put it. Yes. You’re a good woman, he said. I am, she answered, and lingered in his arms, sea-green eyes flowing over his face. And you need to let me go.

This is when Valentin arrived at the edge of the trench.

‘Let her go, Private.’

‘Your son?’ she asked Dimitri.

‘Yes. The bastard.’

‘Go,’ Sonya said.

‘A kiss first.’

‘No. I don’t know you that well.’

‘I’ve earned a kiss.’

Valentin repeated his command. The sky behind him reddened.

‘Go, Dima. You’ll get in trouble.’

‘See. You do know me well! Kiss me, woman, and I’ll deal with the trouble.’

Sonya bent her head to his and they touched lips; the kiss was softer than Dimitri wanted but, again, he found she was plenty. He let her pull away first and open her eyes.

‘Another time,’ she said.

‘Another time, Just Sonya.’

He grabbed one more handful of her bottom and clambered away before she could consider taking a swipe at him. He flew up the trench slope to stand beside Valentin.

‘You should have gotten here sooner,’ he said to his son, looking down at all the women gathering their tools, washing their bare arms in the last of the water buckets. Then he made a face. ‘No. Perhaps not.’

Two boys sat cross-legged on the ground in front of the General Platov. They jumped up when Valentin strode into the glow of their lantern.

‘Sergeant!’ they said together.

Dimitri came to stand beside his son, who addressed the two newcomers.

‘Men, this is your driver. Private…’

Dimitri stepped forward before Valentin could make any more formal pronouncements. He held out his hand to each. Neither was out of his teens. More sons, Dimitri thought; Christ, more children to take into battle.

‘Dimitri Konstantinovich Berko,’ he said with each handshake. The boys had acne and nervous clasps. Dimitri felt expansive after his day in the trench with the woman, the digging made him tired in the good, old way of the farm. ‘Call me Dima. Tell me your names.’

Both were short, the way tankers must be. One was thick, the other lean. Dimitri guessed the chunky one was the loader, he had to be strong to sling the shells around inside the tank, out of the bins and into the breech. The other would be the hull machine-gunner and radioman, if the General had a radio.

‘Pyotr Semyonovich Belyayev,’ said the stumpy one. His eyes were close-set. Beneath broad shoulders hung short arms. ‘I am…’

‘The loader, yes, I guessed. Of course. Look at you. Strong as an ox, I’ll bet. Good, good. And you?’

The thinner of the two was the edgy, pinched one. Both boys had buzzed haircuts but this one looked like a match head, there was something incendiary about him.

‘Private Frolov.’ His name had to escape his mouth as though words were prisoners in this boy’s head.

‘Private Frolov? I’m not going to call out “Hey, Private Frolov, shoot those Nazi fuckers for me!” in the middle of a battle. What’s your name, boy?’

‘Urn… um…’

‘Yes?’

‘Alexander Mikhailovich Frolov.’

This one will be fun, thought Dimitri. The quiet ones always are after you put some vodka in them. He guessed the skinny one would be the harder fighter of the two when the time came. Life for the quiet ones is a fight all the time. Good. He’ll keep his head.

‘Gunner extraordinaire, da!’ Dimitri clapped Frolov on the back to see how he’d take it. The boy wavered under the smack but looked up and grinned.

‘Good, very good. Sergeant, these look like good fighters. Well done.’

Valentin eyed his father.

Dimitri spread his arms, pushing the two boys together, tucking both inside his span as though measuring their collective width and worth.

‘Alright! Pasha and Sasha. Yes. And Dima.’ He looked back at Valentin. ‘And the sergeant.’

Dimitri took up the lantern and carried it to the General . He set it on the ground and folded next to it, resting his tired back against the T-34’s tread.

‘Gather ‘round.’

Pyotr and Alexander came to sit about the lantern. Valentin stood apart. This was the third crew they’d had in a year, and Dimitri had gone through this exercise with each. Dimitri walked over to his son and took the boy’s arm, leading him away to speak privately.

‘Come on, Valya. They’re children.’

‘They’re soldiers.’

‘They’re fighters, yes. And who are the best fighters in all of Russia? Hmm?’

‘Cossacks,’ Valentin said with rolling eyes. The answer was their ritual.

‘Yes! So, you see. We have to do this, every time. Yes? Come on.’ Dimitri steered Valentin by their linked arms back to the lantern, the General , and the two waiting crewmen.

‘Good. All together,’ he said, grunting a bit while descending to the ground again. Valentin took a place up on the tank, close but above the three privates. ‘Pasha. Tell me where you’re from.’

The broad one said, ‘Lesogorsk. Near Bratsk.’

‘Ah,’ Dimitri clapped, ‘a Siberian. Are you a hunter, then? You must be.’

‘I grew up shooting ducks on the Bratskoye reservoir. And foxes in the taiga . My father and I…’

‘Excellent, wonderful. You’ll tell us more sometime. Sasha, you. Where is your home?’

The boy licked his lips. ‘Odessa.’

Dimitri looked up at Valentin. ‘You hear that! He’s from the other side of the Black Sea from us. Splendid.’

‘Did you two know the sergeant and I are Kuban Cossacks?’

The boys shook their heads and looked at each other.

‘What do you know about Cossacks? Anything?’

Pasha the stump said, ‘My mother used to scare us when we were bad. She’d say if we didn’t behave, she was going to call the Cossack and let him get us.’

‘What would the Cossack do?’

‘I don’t know. Eat us, I guess.’

Dimitri chuckled. ‘Your mother was a wise woman, Pasha. I might have eaten you and grown very fat myself. But as you can see, I’m skinny, so I never ate any children. Alright?’