David Robbins - War of the Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad

Tania leaned against the opposite wall. Fedya, she thought, you’ll die here, too. So will I.

She was spent, too tired even to vent her frustration at ending her life beneath the streets of Stalingrad, in the dark and filth instead of out in the light, in the sound and heat of battle. Or I might have died old and in bed, surrounded by my children. Dying is blackness. Dying smells rotten, too. Look at me, where I am. Maybe I’m dead already.

She walked past Fedya, listening to her own stumbling footsteps. Her senses careened. She caught herself against the wall. Her stomach convulsed and she vomited on the wall. The sound of the spasm flew off like bats into the emptiness.

Tania righted herself and a weakness ascended in her legs. She recognized it as her death knell. Without intending it, she turned from the wall and walked, at least to die moving. The weakness tried to trip her. From behind came the splashing of quick footsteps. A hand appeared and held her up. The grasp bore her with a strength she thought could no longer exist in this hole. She reached to take Fedya’s arm and felt that he was carrying Yuri’s undershirt.

Tania walked in silence, unaware of time. She forgot her notions of traveling for more hours to reach any particular location in the city above. Her steps were measured now against her remaining strength. Her only goal was unfettered air, sunlight, and unechoed sound. Her feet grew leaden, and her breath came slow and labored. She walked stiffly with Fedya for her crutch; her concentration was focused in her calves and thighs to resist the coming end of her power. She dragged herself onward, as if in leg irons, and clung to the arm around her middle. The blackness of the pipe threatened to infect all of her, blotting her out of consciousness, completing the darkness. She stumbled on, ticking off the list of her departing senses: I can no longer smell the tunnel, she thought. I can no longer feel my hands or Fedya’s arm. I can no longer hear my footsteps. I can…

Something gleamed in the blackness ahead. My death, she thought. There it is. At least there will be light.

She lunged away from Fedya. A white spear twinkled ten meters ahead, shooting down at an angle. Tania thrust her face into the shaft of light as if it were a gushing fountain. Puffs of dust danced inside the beam, wandering slowly through it, tiny ballerinas floating across a spotlighted stage.

Tania heaved her chest against the wall to feel feverishly with her hands. She leaped to the other side.

“Here it is!” she croaked. “A ladder! It’s a manhole.” Fedya lurched forward toward the ladder. “Let’s go.” She felt him ready himself for the climb, and she reached out to stop him. The touch of the ladder, of salvation, had rekindled some of her strength.

“No. Put on Yuri’s shirt,” she whispered. “Calm down. We’re going to be all right. But I…” she smelled the foulness of her surroundings as if for the first time. She reeled and steadied. “I must go up first.”

“I suppose I’m not to argue with you about these things, am I?” he said, pulling off his Red Army tunic.

“No. I’ll signal you to come up. Walk away from the manhole. If I find Germans up there, they may climb down to see if anyone’s with me. Stay silent. If you hear them coming down, lie flat. They’ll fire soon as they drop. They certainly won’t chase you down here. Find another manhole and try again.”

Tania laid her hands on the ladder’s rungs. She climbed two steps. Fedya touched her leg.

“Tania.”

“No. Walk away.”

She waited for him to move beyond the ladder. She climbed to the manhole cover and shoved it aside as quietly as she could.

Daylight pushed in on her eyes. She ducked her head below the level of the street and blinked until she could see.

When her eyes adjusted, she raised her head slowly. They had been lucky. The manhole was shielded on all four sides by ripples of rubble. The facades of a row of large stone buildings had teetered into the street here and crumbled on all sides of the manhole, somehow failing to cover it. Tania clambered out of the hole and lay on her belly in the debris. She gulped the morning air. She heard nothing but the faraway pops of rifle fire. She hung her head into the manhole and said softly into the dark, “Come up.”

Fedya climbed onto the street. He inhaled in great grateful swallows. She saw how filthy Fedya was, how scabrous was the front of Yuri’s longjohn shirt. He wore the boots and olive khakis of the Red Army, but she hoped the longjohn and the overall condition of his dress would hide him from scrutiny. She looked at herself lying in the dust, coated like Fedya with a brown, rusty crust. She was just a young girl covered in shit.

The two climbed to the top of the rock pile. To the north was a line of Germans holding tins in front of a mess tent. Fedya stiffened at the sight of the Nazis as if he wanted to duck back into the debris. Tania hissed at him to stay straight up.

“No sudden moves. We’re behind enemy lines. We can’t run or crawl out We’ll have to walk out.”

Fedya met her eyes. She smacked her dry lips once.

He grabbed her hand. “No, Tania. You’re kidding.” She shook loose his grip. “Tania,” he pleaded, “nobody is that crazy.”

She scrabbled down the mound, raising a dust cloud. At the bottom she called up to Fedya, frozen with his hands out from his sides, “Come on!” She waved him down with big gestures. “We’ve got to eat. I’m exhausted. I’m starving. This could be our last chance for the next twenty-four hours.”

Fedya held his ground on the rubble heap.

“They won’t know we’re in the Russian army,” she called. “We’re not carrying weapons. We’re walking around in the open. They’ll just think you’re some poor local worker who got latrine duty today and is taking a break for lunch.”

“What about you?” he asked down to her.

“Me?” Tania shrugged. “I guess they’ll figure I’m some whore who’s working with you for food. Who cares? They’ll make up their own stories so long as we keep our mouths shut.”

Fedya slapped his hands on his hips in resignation. He picked his way down with measured strides. Such a large man, she thought, covered in crap and taking such small steps.

Fedya landed at her side. He frowned.

“You’re the devil. Do you know that?”

“I can be. Come on. Say nothing.”

They walked across open ground and took places at the end of the mess line. Impatient soldiers tapped their knives and forks on their plates.

For these sticks to be standing about waiting for mess like this, she thought, we’re far behind their lines. They’re acting like they’re very safe here.

The line moved a few paces. Tania looked into Fedya’s face. He stared at his boots, still caked but now covered in dust. He looked like a peasant from the villages, not a poet from Moscow. “Was im Himmel?”

A Nazi pinched his nose in disgust. He stomped to Fedya and pushed him out of line, pointing for Tania to move also.

The two stood several paces back. They waited for the last soldier to disappear into the tent. They crept forward, obedient looks on their faces. Once inside, the cook tossed them plates and hurriedly scooped up knockwurst and kraut.

Fedya whispered while they walked into the tent, “Let’s eat outside.”

“No, I don’t want to draw attention.”

“Attention?” he said in quiet amazement. “Tania, we smell like camels. What more attention could we get?”

She shushed him and moved ahead. Around them a hundred Nazis sat eating. At each table, heads spun about when they passed. Fingers hurried to noses on appalled faces.

They found an open table and sat quickly. They shoveled the food into their mouths, afraid they would be thrown out before they could slake their hungers.