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

“Tania, no,” he said again, looking up. “It’s not…”

Her arms flew from her sides. “It’s not what? What’s wrong?”

Fedya got off the bed and stepped to face a wall. She sat in his place on the squeaking bed.

“Fedya, what’s the matter?”

He rubbed the wall with his boot and said nothing.

Tania sat on her hands. The bed squeaked again. She thought angrily about the noise they could have made on those springs.

“Fine,” she said, “don’t talk to me. Talk to that wall. If you want to stay up and guard me, go ahead. I’m going to sleep.”

Fedya leaned his back against the wall.

“It’s not right,” he said. “We shouldn’t do this.” He motioned to the corner where her coat and boots lay.

“Shouldn’t do what?” She pulled her hands from beneath her and slapped them down in her lap. “Shouldn’t make love? Here? On a battlefield? Is there something sacred about a battlefield?” She looked out the window at the blasted world. “Where else do we have, Fedya? This is it.”

Fedya moved in front of her. “I don’t agree with you. I don’t feel like you do, that I’m dead, like I don’t exist. But you! You act like you don’t care what happens to you, like there’s nothing left of you for them to kill.”

He pointed in the direction of the enemy lines. “Look at the chances you take! I remember you on the barge. You had to sit in the most dangerous spot. You wouldn’t move. Then after three hours in the water and six more in a sewer, you walk me straight into a Nazi mess tent! You screamed at a patrol of Germans… in Ukrainian or something, I don’t even know what that was! And your idea of a precaution is to tell me to babble like a moron in case we get stopped. Great plan! Is every American that insane?”

As Fedya stomped back and forth, waving his arms, she resisted the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. He’s right, of course, she thought. But dear Fedya, he never loses his charm. Even in the sewer, afraid of the dark and the shit. Even now, here, afraid of me.

His pacing covered the short distance between walls in a few strides. He flapped his arms at every turn. Tania looked into her lap to hide her smile. He looked like a giant mad goose.

“I don’t think you put enough thought into these things,” he said. “You act like you’re invisible. That may be fine for you, but remember I’m right there behind you and I don’t want to get killed in a Nazi mess tent! They don’t give medals for that!”

He looked at the ceiling. “Oh, and I just can’t wait for tonight to get here!” He spun on his heels, raised his arms high and held them there. “Tonight, I finally get to crawl behind you across a no-man’s-land that is probably a minefield, worrying about who’s more likely to shoot me, the Russians or the Germans! But first we get to make love as if it’s something we ordered off a menu, like it doesn’t matter at all. It’s wrong, Tania. It’s wrong to act as if things don’t matter when they really do.”

Fedya lowered his arms. He sat at her feet and shook his head, holding her eyes with his own. “I don’t think I was ready for this. I joined the Red Army because Stalin said so, because, let’s face it, it was the only thing possible. I trained for four weeks and then got on a transport. I ended up crossing the Volga in the water, holding on to a piece of a boat. I’m not like you. I didn’t come to this war by choice. I didn’t live with the partisans for a year. I’m scared of everything. Yuri dying in the sewer like that, that mess tent with Germans all over the place… You’re wrong, Tania. This has been some day. And it mattered to me because it scared the shit out of me. Not that anyone would have noticed even if I had shit all over myself!”

He rubbed a finger behind his ear, looking away from her. “I’m not used to this. You might be, but I’m not.”

She took Fedya’s hand from behind his ear and pulled him onto the bed. She laid his hand high on her thigh. She put the top of her head against his cheek, nuzzling him with her hair.

“Are you used to this?” She rubbed his hand, feeling his veins, his fingernails. She pressed his hand higher on her thigh.

“I’m from Moscow, Tania. This is the one thing we’re all used to there.”

“Well,” she whispered, “I’m in New York. It’s so much smaller than Moscow, it’s easy to get lost there. Why don’t you lead me again for a while?”

She whispered into the ear hovering at her mouth. “Go on, Fedushka. Lead me. I’ll take over when we get to the minefield.”

Fedya whispered in return. She felt the warmth of his words on her throat.

“The minefield, Tanyushka?” he whispered. “Too late. I’m already in the middle of it.”

FEDYA WAS WRONG. THE RAIL YARD HAD NOT BEEN MINED. Crawling in the darkness, Tania felt ahead with her fingers for detonator spikes, black barbs that would stick out of the earth only a centimeter. She found none.

She slid along the ground in as straight a line as the terrain allowed. She stopped at the hulk of a German tank. One of its treads had been blown off by an antitank rifle, further evidence for Tania to believe the Red Army was in the building in front of them. If not, the Germans surely would have towed this tank away and repaired the tread.

She and Fedya rested beneath the tank. They were halfway across the yard to the gray building rising out of the night, with another four hundred meters to go.

Tania was not worried about crossing the distance. The evening was quiet and dark. No flares scratched the sky. There was plenty of debris to slither behind. But she knew there were eyes behind and in front of her, sights fixed across the rail yard staring at each other in suspicion and hatred, watching for any activity. Her main concern was their first encounter with the Russians. They would be in the forward trenches, guarding their fortress from nighttime infiltrators. Like Fedya and her.

Tania lay still until her strength returned. Fedya’s breathing eased long before her own did. He’s powerful, she thought, recalling his strength in the sewer, his embrace on the dusty mattress.

Tania crawled from the cover of the tank. She led Fedya over more tracks and under rail cars to within seventy-five meters of the building. With the walls towering above them, Fedya pulled on her foot and dragged himself beside her.

“Now what?” he whispered.

“I don’t know.”

Fedya rolled his eyes into his brows. He laid his forehead on the backs of his hands in the dirt.

Tania stared up at the building. She scoured the ground, examining every bump and mound for the defense works and Red Army guards she knew were there. To surprise those guards in the dark would be fatal. To be caught in no-man’s-land at sunup before they could make themselves known as Russians would also be certain death.

She touched the top of Fedya’s head. “Stay here.”

“What? Where are you going?” His head jerked up. “Tania?”

She pushed his head back down onto his hands. “Keep this down if you want to keep this.”

Tania stood. She raised her hands over her head.

“Nicht schiessen!” she called out, walking forward, away from Fedya. “Nicht schiessen, bitte!” Don’t shoot!

The night calm was splintered by rifle chambers slamming shut. She knew the barrels were aimed at her heart.

She cried again, “Nicht schiessen!”

Russian voices called out from the debris twenty meters ahead. “Who’s there? Identify yourself.”

She inhaled to answer. Her lips formed the first sound in Russian. Ya Russkaya. I’m Russian. Then she stopped herself. She stepped carefully.