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

“Tania.” Irina opened her eyes wide. “You’ve killed Nazis?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“More than a hundred. Between here and Moscow.”

Olga asked, “You were in Moscow? In the battle?”

“No. I was outside Moscow. In the forests. I was with the partisans. We attacked German convoys.”

The conversation, the eyes of the women and Shaikin and Chekov, had become focused on Tania. This had not been her intention, to take up space or energy on this visit. She’d simply wanted to observe, slake her curiosity, then leave. But with the unforeseen remembrance of her days with the resistance, her many sacrifices rose now to her surface. She realized that she was wearing them, without warning, in her face and voice. Her skin felt warm, prickled by the friction of the visions fleeing past her: her parents in their cozy home, whom she had not contacted in over a year—they must fear daily for her safety and for the grandparents, little knowing it was too late for their fears; Tania’s friends back in Manhattan in their two-tone shoes flirting with soldiers and buying war bonds; young Fedya dead; old Yuri dead in a sewer; so many members of her partisan cell, dead in the fields; all the mourning women, young and old, and children, in Byeloruss, the Ukraine, Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad. She looked down at Irina, the child whore, thin and white as cobwebs. Tania thought of her own lost American girlhood: cars and parties, books and speeches, her heart skipping at a handsome boy, her mind reaching for ideas. She missed America with a pang in her breast; she missed herself, deeply, in her marrow. And in that marrow, where she could feel nothing keener, burned her hatred for the Nazis for doing this to her.

Tania tried to fight down the visions, but the ghosts in their scenery swarmed around her, as they did so often when she was alone, or more recently after she’d made love to Zaitsev. Sometimes when her woman’s body came alive in his arms, he brought the specters up out of her as if they were rising out of a tomb. Now these whores were doing it. The sexuality of their cellar, Olga’s swaying bosom, Irina’s pliant white skin, the Argentinean tango; Tania felt them digging at her own body, unearthing her sorrows.

Seated next to Tania, Chekov reached into his coat pocket for a bottle of vodka. He handed it to Olga. The woman cooed over the gift. She clutched the bottle to her chest.

Chekov looked up at Shaikin, who had dug into his own pockets. Shaikin walked around the mattress to Irina. He handed the girl four packets of chocolate.

Olga’s eyes returned to Tania. The business of the cellar had commenced. Tania found she had no questions, no sisterhood to explore with Olga or Irina. She’d lost her preoccupation with their nature. She knew enough now; they were whores on their surface. Beneath that, she had no interest. She would accept their purpose in Stalingrad, even their contribution. Shaikin and Chekov smiled at the women while they presented their tributes. This satisfied Tania. These women serve, too, she admitted, because her friends’ smiles were indeed the same toothy smirks she’d seen on the soldiers who’d passed them ten minutes ago, young men skipping back from this cellar to their dooms with a song on their lips.

Tania had to leave. These women had kindled something in her body, some spark in her heart and loins that, when it glowed and caught, pulled her back into her flesh. The flesh carried memory and too much pain. When Chekov and Shaikin handed over their payments, the ugliness of the whores’ trade gave her a reprieve from her visions. She flung down her warming heart in that moment to retreat without it back into the depths of what had become for her the empty husk of her emotions, her bare cell.

These two women are more of the wartime dead, Tania thought. I have that in common with them. They’re like the corpses at the summer funerals my grandfather took me to when his patients would pass away. They were painted nicely, spoken of in whispers. They looked well and composed in their deaths.

Olga held her gaze on Tania. Irina busily unwrapped one of the chocolate bars. Tania, too, would present the women with a gift before she left the cellar.

“I have something for you,” she said to Olga.

“Really?” The prostitute resettled herself into the mattress. She nestled the vodka bottle between her legs to hold it upright with her thighs and free her hands.

Tania reached to Chekov’s waist. Quickly, she drew from Chekov’s belt his captured German Luger pistol.

“Tania, give me that! What are you doing?”

She tossed the pistol onto Olga’s lap. The gun struck the woman’s thigh and bounced onto the mattress beside her. It lay there, ugly against the pastels.

Pale Irina pulled her knees away from the pistol on the bed as if it might strike at her. Olga looked at the gun beside her. Her hands fingered the bottle between her legs.

“Right now,” Tania said, “this cellar is in our territory. That’s today. Tomorrow, this little nest of yours could be behind German lines.” She pointed to the stairs. “If a German comes down those steps, you use that pistol. You kill him. Do you understand me? You do it.”

She stabbed her finger at Irina and Olga.

“I’ll do your fighting for you, girls, but you die with the rest of us. You die Russian.”

Tania reached into her coat pocket. She pulled out two chocolate bars and threw them backhanded at Irina. Then she whirled and stomped onto the first step. She reached up to push open the ocean blue cellar door.

The door was pulled out of her grasp to rise on its own. The final light of the day flooded down with the cold. In the opening, in silhouette, stood Zaitsev.

He held the door open and looked down at her.

Chekov called out, “Vasha? What are you doing here? Come down and close the door. You’re letting out the heat.”

Zaitsev stepped into the cellar and lowered the door. He walked past Tania to the edge of the mattress. He nodded at Shaikin, who stood beside Irina. He looked at Chekov and jerked his thumb toward Tania at the steps.

“Interesting decision to bring Tanyushka along, Anatoly. Did she make it for you?”

Chekov lowered his head. Shaikin gave Zaitsev a thumbs-up.

Zaitsev took the Luger off the bed and held it up to Tania.

“Yours?”

Chekov spoke. “Mine.”

Zaitsev handed the pistol to the little sniper. “Put it away.”

He looked back into the shadows at Tania. “Recruiting, Tania? Danilov will be jealous. That’s his department.”

Zaitsev turned to Chekov and Shaikin. “After today, tell them goodbye,” he said evenly. “No more. Understand?”

Both men nodded.

Zaitsev bowed his head in mock gentility. “Ladies.” Then he walked over to Tania and spoke to her. “You’re leaving.” He put his hand under her elbow.

Tania jerked her arm free. “What do you mean, I’m leaving?” She pointed at Chekov and Shaikin. “If they stay, I stay.”

Shaikin raised his arms in exasperation and exhaled as if he’d been skewered.

Tania’s tone was sharp. “Besides, what are you doing here?”

“You’ve been given an order, Private.”

“By whom?”

“By your sergeant.”

Tania laughed. “Are you still my sergeant in a whorehouse?”

Zaitsev thrust his arms up to open the door. “That’s enough.” He grabbed Tania’s wrist and pulled her up the steps. She hit him in the back with her other fist.

“Tania,” Chekov called through the jingling of their rifles and stomping boots, “don’t be like that. It’s just a little fun.”

Shaikin’s voice chased them. “I told you, Anatoly.”

Outside, Zaitsev let her go and slammed the doors down with a bouncing clatter. She stomped off.