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

Tania flipped through the clean white pages. Each page a life. A German life. A broken stick. I want my own notebook, she thought with envy. I’ll fill up fifty of these.

Fedya tucked the booklet away. “I heard about your raid on the icehouse last night. The sergeant and I heard the blast. It was something.”

Fedya waited for her to speak.

“I made a bet with myself you were in on that,” he added.

She nodded. “It was something.”

He reached his hand out to her. She folded her arms tightly over her chest and looked away at the others in the room, some walking about, some sitting in groups, others still with their attention fixed on their rifles. She shook her head, almost trembling.

“Are you all right?” He lowered his hand.

“Yes.”

She rose, then leaned down and brought her face close.

“Don’t ever touch me in front of the others. Ever.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t do it, Fedya.” She turned away, then stopped and whispered to him angrily. “I must be as good as the others—better, even. And I will not be viewed by them as just a woman. I will not be a nurse or go work a radio in a bunker. That’s where I’ll end up if I’m seen holding your hand. There’s time. There are places. But never until I say so. Do you understand?”

She looked into Fedya’s face, wanting and expecting to find a ripple of pain there. She saw concern. She saw purpose instead of hesitation.

What have I done? she thought. The boy is in love with me.

“Tania, I only wanted to make sure you were all right.” He rose also, shouldering his rifle, and turned to rejoin the bears. “And no, I don’t understand or agree.”

She stopped him. “Fedya?”

“Yes?”

She quietly asked, “Have you told anyone I’m an American?”

“No. And do you know why I haven’t?”

He paced back to her the distance he had walked away. Close to her, his large chest near, she felt heat; the kill had not made him colder but had inflamed him. The poet, the scared boy, was impassioned with a gun in his hands.

Fedya spoke slowly. “Because if I did, they would treat you differently. They’d protect you and parade you like a show pony. I have enough sense to know that, Tania. Give me credit.”

He spun and walked off, his rifle clutched in one mitt.

After thirty minutes, Zaitsev and Medvedev ordered everyone back behind the crates and barrels. The intermediate-sized circles represented a head shot at 300 meters. The smallest circle was also a head shot but at 450 meters, the maximum distance at which they could expect to work. These targets were to be fired upon at will.

“Begin,” Medvedev called, and walked behind the trainees. Zaitsev stood near Tania for five minutes. Through binoculars, he watched the blooms of brick dust issue from her target. With each bullet, words of encouragement and invectives flowed into her ears while Zaitsev, and Medvedev elsewhere along the line, molded the volunteers as quickly as possible into snipers to bedevil the enemy.

TANIA LOWERED HER RIFLE. SHE WAS CERTAIN THAT SHE could not physically tolerate firing one more round. Her elbows, knees, eyes, and especially her right shoulder were pummeled and swollen. Her hips felt locked. She had to roll out of her sitting position onto her stomach and push up to get off the floor.

The trainees limped to the mess line. Each was given a bowl of warm gruel, a plate of sliced meat with bread, and a tin cup of tea. She sat on a crate and looked into the queue where Fedya stood. He nodded. She pointed at the crate next to her.

She wanted to dilute her angry comments of the morning. Perhaps there was a way to make Fedya understand her feelings without cramming them into his ears with such force. They had made love. It had been good, passionate, a release. But what baggage did the act carry? Did it mean they were joined, their spirits entwined the way their bodies had been? Had they been consecrated by Fedya as lovers, turned into pretty images in one of his poems? Or were they nothing more than what Tania felt them to be, two warriors on the edge of a battlefield sharing the last shreds of life left to them? Tania had not visited the depths of love while rocking on the bed with big Fedya. Yes, they had both cried out. But he had called her name.

Tania watched him collect his rations. She saw the agreeable confidence of his motions and thought, There’s no room in me for Fedya’s innocent love. I am full with sorrow and bitterness enough for a hundred hearts. I’ll be his friend. Perhaps I’ll sleep with him again. But I will not fall in love. He’ll accept that. Or he’ll step aside.

Before Fedya could join Tania, Danilov hopped in front of her. The commissar inclined his head in a mannered greeting and sat on the crate next to her. The crate groaned when the rotund little politrook unbuttoned his greatcoat. He took out a pencil and opened his notebook in his lap. A blur of scrawl covered every line and margin as he flipped to one of the few blank pages.

“My dear,” he began, “I am Captain Danilov. I believe you know who I am and my own mission in this sniper unit. Of course, I do not have the honor of actually being a sniper. But I have taken a great interest in the activities of this first class of trainees. I will be describing your activities and lessons for the rest of the army through my articles in In Our Country’s Defense. Perhaps you have read one or two of them?”

“No, comrade commissar.”

“Well,” he replied with a smile, his single eyebrow a cloud over his dark eyes, “maybe you’ll read this next one. You will be in it for your part in last night’s icehouse raid. What can you tell me?”

Tania looked to Zaitsev, who was speaking with some of the hares. She wished he’d save her from this unctuous, dangerous man perched beside her with his legs kicked out in front of him, croaking like a toad. She knew that with a word this commissar could send her out of the sniper school to a noncombatant role. And Fedya was right; if this commissar learned an American was fighting in their number, she would become a curio, a political and propaganda coup, too valuable for the rodina to risk her taking a bullet.

“Have you spoken with Comrade Zaitsev?” she asked. “He was the leader of the mission.”

“We have spoken. It was he who insisted I talk to you. Apparently you killed a Nazi with your bare hands last night. And you lit the fuses that blew up the headquarters.”

Tania looked at the commissar’s little feet. His ebony boots were shiny. She wondered, How does he keep them that way?

Danilov continued. “What do you think of Comrade Zaitsev? And what do you think about being one of his hares?”

Tania searched for something to say. To her surprise, there was more than she expected in her storehouse of words. She realized they were not the words the commissar wanted to hear. He expects me to give him a heroic quote, she thought. How magnificent Zaitsev was in leading our most dangerous mission last night. What an honor it is to serve under such a man. I can’t tell this commissar the truth, that I have no idea whether Zaitsev is a hero or a strutting coward; he seems to me to enjoy his growing status as a headline for In Our Country’s Defense, one of the many new and improved icons of the Russian cause. No, I can’t say true words to this little Chekist, that I also find Zaitsev disturbing, that I want to touch his veined hands and flat Siberian face; when his voice tells me to move or stop, to aim left or jump right, my body follows. How badly I want for him to be the hero that Danilov is constructing.

“Comrade Zaitsev is a bold man,” she said, and the commissar set upon his notebook with his flying pencil. “He is indeed a hero, and all those who fight by his side will do heroic deeds. I am honored to be a sniper, one of the hares, under him.”