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

Tania winked at her friend’s eyes, which could not stay on hers. “Silly as you men look right now,” she said, “why would I want to be one?

Chekov returned, beaming. “We’re next.”

Tania’s mouth hung open. “Next?” She lowered her voice to a nasty hiss. “You mean there’s a line?”

“Yes, of course,” Chekov answered, unconcerned. “Every man in the Two eighty-fourth knows about these girls. We’re lucky today, though. It’s so late in the afternoon that we’re the last.” He leered at Shaikin. “We can take our time a little.”

Tania’s surprise rose into indignation. Every man in the 284th? Risking their necks just to…

Quickly as her vexation had risen, it passed.

She took in the ruins of the city, with peril stamped on every brick and stone, and thought: Why not? Some tenderness for these men, even in the arms of whores, is a refuge. Perhaps it’s the only respite left for them outside the glass of a vodka bottle.

Tania knew this power herself. To lie, even for moments, in warmth and gentleness was a haven in the long battle. She watched the last scarlet rim of the sun set behind the slope of Mamayev Kurgan— where she’d killed dozens of men, where fifty thousand more had fallen.

I’m not a man, Shaikin said. But he’s wrong when he says I don’t understand.

Tania heard footsteps. Voices too loud for the danger they posed floated on the air.

Three Red soldiers rounded the corner. One paused to give Chekov a friendly punch in the shoulder. The men hummed a lively tune in unison. The last one slowed to look at Tania. He made a shallow bow and moved on, rejoining his mates in their tune.

Chekov stepped forward. “Let’s go.”

“Wait.” Shaikin spoke to Tania. “Please. You’ll stay for five minutes, then come back here and wait. All right? Promise.”

Tania looked at the backs of the men who had just sauntered away. She wanted the same cheerful mood for her two friends.

“Yes, Ilyushka. Of course.”

Chekov led Shaikin and Tania around the corner. Ten meters ahead were the remains of a foundation in the ground. A square of broken cinder blocks stuck up from the snow like the jagged back of a rising beast. Other bricks marked where interior walls had once stood. The blackened remains of a pink wooden house lay behind the foundation.

A pair of hinged cellar doors showed in the ground just above the snow. The boards of the doors were pastel green with metal handles of sky blue. Shaikin yanked up one of the doors; the effect on Tania, looking into the darkness below, was of entering an underwater cave of shadowy aqua.

She followed Chekov down a short flight of steps. Shaikin lowered the door above their heads, and she became aware of the close, piquant smell of humanity in an oily mix with kerosene.

Tania stood at Chekov’s back. Shaikin stepped in front of her. Hidden by her two friends, she folded her arms and waited to be either introduced or discovered.

“Anatoly Petrovich.” A woman’s throaty voice. Tania could not see its owner. The voice was energetic, not tired the way Tania expected a whore would be at the end of her day.

“Wait,” the voice said. “I know the one you like.”

Tania looked over the shoulders of Shaikin and Chekov. The room was square, no larger than five meters long and wide. The ceiling was made of the beams and floorboards of the house that had once stood above. The walls were concrete block, thinly whitewashed. In the amber light and deep, sharp shadows thrown by the lantern, she saw no cobwebs or dust in the corners. At least, she thought, these women are good housekeepers.

A gramophone scratched to life. Trumpets and woodwinds blared an introduction to a song promising to be lively. Tania looked down at Chekov’s hips. The little sniper raised his elbows and snapped his fingers. He swayed to the tune, a tango.

The low voice spoke over the music. “Now who are your friends, Anatolushka?”

In time with the music, Chekov wobbled his right hip into Shaikin, knocking his friend sideways a step. Shaikin’s hands stayed jammed in his coat pockets.

“This is Ilya Alexeyavich Shaikin.”

Shaikin righted himself and Tania caught her first glimpse of the two women. They were arranged on a mattress on the concrete floor. One of the women, a brunette with a round, soft face, was larger than the other. She wore a white linen skirt and blouse. Her clothes appeared to be undergarments. Her bare arms and legs were heavy, not enough so to make them unpleasant, but large and soft. Like feathers, Tania thought, of a white dove.

Next to the brunette reclined a thin, pasty blonde. She wore an olive army undershirt above a skirt that had been stitched from a wool blanket. A frayed pink shawl wrapped her shoulders. The girl appeared sickly, brittle, with the hurting look of bruises under her eyes. The veins in her arms and neck were like blue streaks against frosted glass. Tania could feel the girl breaking even as she smiled up at her visitors.

Behind the two barefoot women were pastel pillows. Tania stepped forward between Shaikin and the swaying Chekov. The brunette on the mattress clapped her hands over her mouth.

“Oh. Oh, my,” she said through her fingers. “Oh. Wait right there.”

The woman dug down behind the mattress, through the pillows. She pulled up a small bronze tube. She rolled it in her hand, then put it to her mouth. Her lips began to glow bright red.

“Oh,” she said, “wait. Let me get this on. There now.”

She stood while the fragile blonde sat smiling absently.

“Hello.” The big brunette spoke with the radiant lipstick, her mouth damask against the whiteness of her skin and the yellow cast of the lantern. She reached her hand to Tania and stepped with her knees high, still the large white bird, over the softness of the mattress through the scratchy tango.

She said, “I’m Olga Kopoleva. My friend is Irina Gobolinka. And you are…?”

“Private Tania Chernova.”

The woman shook Tania’s hand. She looked back at blond Irina, who gathered herself deeper into her shawl. Olga grinned at Tania and shook her hand again, more firmly, as though greeting a dignitary. Tania thought quickly of Danilov. He should meet this woman.

Olga pulled Tania forward, ignoring Shaikin and Chekov. “Come. Please sit.”

The woman’s lips seemed to bite at Tania while she talked. “You are a soldier? This is your gun?” She pointed at Tania’s submachine gun, strapped over her shoulder. Tania sensed herself holding back, keeping judgment bottled for now.

“Yes. Of course it’s mine.”

Olga turned again to the silent, wan Irina. “She has her own machine gun. She’s a fighter. A woman.” She returned her attention to her guest. “Tania, dear, do you like music? We have a few records.”

“This is fine.”

Irina spoke. “It’s an Argentinean tango. We don’t know the name.” Her voice was unsure, fluttery, like a butterfly in wind. The pale girl giggled. “We can’t read the label. It’s in English, I think.”

Olga continued talking, cutting Irina off. “Anatolushka likes this one best. It’s odd, but most of the men that visit us like this one. I’ll bet they don’t even know where Argentina is.”

Chekov sat next to Tania. “Tania’s one of our snipers. She’s one of the best. Silent as the night. As deadly as a woman.”

Olga enjoyed this. “Anatoly, you bastard,” she said, laughing and slapping at his leg, “we’re not all killers.”

“You are,” said Chekov.

“Stop,” laughed Olga.

Tania watched the large woman’s lipstick smear at the corners of her mouth. Olga’s breasts jiggled lavishly under her blouse when she shifted her attention from Chekov to Irina to her. Tania looked down at them. A woman’s breasts are the only things in the world that can move like that, she thought. They can make any room in the world, even beneath the surface of a war, into a room rippling with sensation. I’ve done it before. Olga does it now.