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

Zaitsev ran and grabbed her again. He brought his face close. “What were you doing down there?”

She tried to yank away. He put both hands on her wrist and jerked her arm down hard.

“Stop it. What were you doing in there?”

He can ask me this? she thought. He can visit whores and then ask me what I was doing there when he arrived?

“Shaikin and Chekov invited me. I went to see what it was about. And who invited you?” She reached down with her free hand and grabbed his crotch. “Him?”

She let Zaitsev go before he could force her to. “Leave me alone,” she said.

Zaitsev released her arm. “Calm down. Listen to me.”

She put her hands on her hips and spread her legs, as though she were readying for the ground to shift.

He took two steps back. He thinks I might swing at him, she thought. He could be right.

“I came to get you out of there,” he said. His hands worked with his voice, illustrating his words. “After I left you in the trench, I turned to come back to you. To talk. I saw you leave with Shaikin and Chekov and head this way. By the time I figured where you were going and caught up with you, you were already inside.”

Tania pointed back at the cellar doors in the snow.

“And why did I need to be hauled out of there so quickly by my sergeant? Why me and not Shaikin and Chekov?”

“Tania, that…” He pointed, too. “That is a man’s place.”

“And I don’t belong in a man’s place.” Tania lowered her hand and her voice. “Is that it?”

Zaitsev took a breath to buy time for an answer. When none came, he shrugged.

Tania thought of chess. If a white king could shrug when he’s in checkmate, he would look like Zaitsev right now.

“Is that it, Vasha?” She brought her hands to her breasts. “What do I have to do to be treated like an equal by you? Do I need to kill more? I will. Just tell me.”

“Tanyushka,” he said, “you’re a woman.”

“Ah,” she said with angry sarcasm, “I see. So that’s what’s in the way. My woman’s body. Yes, yes, Vasha, thank you for making it so clear for me what it is I need to do. I need to stop making love to you.”

She snapped her fingers. “There. It’s over. No more. Now I’m not a woman. I’m just another sniper.”

“Tania…”

“No! We’re both men now. It’s OK. We can talk like men. You’ve obviously been here before, Sergeant. Why don’t you go back inside now and join the party in the men’s place? Hurry, though. They close after dark. But you must know that already.”

With that, she ran into the debris.

TANIA SEARCHED FOR SOMETHING TO THROW WHEN Zaitsev’s steps approached the hanging blanket.

Beside her on the floor of the snipers’ bunker stood a full vodka bottle. She’d tried to drink the stuff during her hour of sitting in the cool dirt of his corner, but she’d lost interest in getting drunk. It’s just one more way to feel lousy, she thought. I have enough ways.

She picked up the bottle.

Zaitsev pushed aside the blanket. Tania cocked the bottle back to heave it but set it down. She would throw words instead.

“Go away and fuck someone else.”

She folded her arms and legs tightly around herself like a beetle that had been touched.

Zaitsev walked to where she hunched against the bunker wall. He hung his machine gun, helmet, and canteen on a hook. He knelt in front of her. She drew in even tighter.

“Find some other whore, Sergeant.”

He winced. Her pain was his; it flowed around them.

“I don’t want to smell those women on you.”

“Tania…”

“Go on, Vasha, go have your fun.”

“Tania, I—”

“Shut up!” She reached for the bottle.

Zaitsev took the bottle and set it out of the way.

Tania tried to poke him in the eyes with her stare. She did not blink, feeling she’d crack if she did. She knew she had frozen stiff in the whores’ cellar. Even before she looked up at his form outlined in the doorway, she’d recoiled from the awakening of her body and emotions when Irina and Olga had paired off with Shaikin and Chekov. Her anger at Zaitsev’s sudden presence there and his patronizing attitude, following her to take her out of the “man’s place,” shoved her all the way down into the dark waters inside her, beneath the ice, where she sat now.

How dare he humiliate me in front of Shaikin and Chekov! Treat me like a dog that’s gotten off a leash and must be chased down and retrieved! Tania, you’re a woman, he said. Those two whores were women. Is that how he sees me?

She rose to her feet to gather her machine gun and the vodka.

Zaitsev’s voice stopped her. “I’m sorry.”

Tania laughed, facing him. “Don’t apologize. We’re both free. We can both make choices. Right now, I choose. I choose to get satisfaction for my woman’s body somewhere else.”

She saw Zaitsev’s shoulders droop. His face tumbled, his hands fell. Good, she thought. Even as I freeze, he melts.

“Tania, don’t…”

“I already have. We both have.”

He stepped forward. Zaitsev the hunter, she thought. Let’s see how he performs now, how he tracks and hunts. Let’s see what he finds in this great frozen forest.

Zaitsev looked stricken. He sat at her feet.

Without looking up, he spoke. His voice held the mournful sound of wind in empty buildings. Listening to Zaitsev, she grew sadder than him.

“What can I say?” he began. “It’s hard for me, too. There’s so much killing. My friends die. My family waits in Siberia. Every day, every awful day, there’s no rest, no break. And now, this… this Thorvald is hunting me.”

Tania knelt in front of him. She laid her rifle and the bottle in the dirt.

Zaitsev did not look up at her. He paused, acknowledging that she was near him. She looked at his crown, at the thick, short hairs crowding, reaching to her.

“After you left, I went hunting. I just roamed, I couldn’t concentrate.” He held out his hands as if showing her something small and tender. “I came looking for you. I had to find you and talk. To tell you you’re important to me. You’re how I survive. If I lost you, this would all go back to being a hell again.”

Zaitsev brought his face up to her. His eyes shone. He blinked as if looking into the sun.

“Now I feel like you’re someplace I can’t follow.”

He reached to her lap for her hands; she allowed him to take them. His grip was warm, firm.

“Tania, forgive me. I didn’t know what you meant to me. I didn’t know what made me follow you there and act like that. You were right. I…”

Tania pulled back her hands. She brought her knees again to her chest, wrapping them tightly with her arms. She lowered her head onto her drawn-up knees. With her eyes open, looking into the small, dark cave made from her face, arms, and knees, a tear skimmed down her cheek. She shook her chin to make it fly off and land on the dirt floor.

She felt him move closer. His voice came from near her forehead, buried in her arms.

“I do now,” he whispered.

Then Tania’s hair was in Zaitsev’s hand, pulling up to bring her face out of her cave. She knew the lamp was betraying her, that the path of the tear must be glistening.

He leaned over her. His lips grazed her cheek, dipping into the trail of the tear. He cupped it with his lower lip and followed it to her eye. His breath in the wetness on her face was lush.

She wrenched her eyes shut, squinting in a spasm as the ice inside her fissured and cracked open. Instantly she flew up through it; the water, no longer frozen but warmed now, fell from her, cascaded out of her closed eyes, down her cheeks, into his scooping lips. She flew out and above herself, her body left behind to convulse in his arms. She looked down and saw everything around her, the corpses and hatred, and shame, all of it, out in the open now, shimmering and cleansed in her raining tears.