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

To her left, gossamer light shimmered on the icy Volga. The river was black and cold. But above and to her right the city cast down a heat like a match held near her cheek. The sticks are still up there, she thought. The city felt as if it were burning, the flames leaping out of its entrails just as they had the first night she’d seen Stalingrad from the opposite bank.

The battle continues here and across Russia, she thought. So long as the sticks live on our soil, there’s still a job of killing to do.

Forget Florida, America.

The hate had ambushed her again. It’s so strong in me, so solid, she thought, surprised how quickly it reared to the surface. The part of me that does not hate is so thin, less than my skin. I can almost stand back and look at the hate. I can describe it, touch it, like a statue inside me. The statue grows; it’s filling me up. The hate has become me. Oh, Vasha, I want… I want. But the hate is all of me. Every step we take on this ice, every crunch of my boots, I hear the guns, see the bodies jerk and fall, pile upon pile. Will they never stop falling?

The Kazakh woman stumbled ahead of her. The noise laid the whip to Tania’s temper. “Get up,” she mumbled; all the jocularity and tenderness she’d shared with Zaitsev in the sniper’s bunker only an hour before had dissolved.

But the sound of her own voice broke the spell of hatred like the snap of a hypnotist’s finger. The quick spur of anger at Mogileva returned Tania to the night chill, the rifle and dynamite packs slung across her shoulders, the mission and the line of snipers walking in front of her.

The abrupt release swirled in her stomach. Just walk, Tania thought. Don’t think. Just follow the tall man in front of you. Vasha’s at the head of the line. Vasha will take care of it all. He’ll point you at the Germans and let you kill them. Tonight, tomorrow, and again, just follow Vasha. Stay close to him. All of life that is not war and hatred will wait. Just stay close to Vasha.

The thought of closeness touched Tania. Stay close to him, she repeated. Stay with Vasha.

Deep inside, in the center of the hardness that was her pain, a thrill hovered like a hummingbird in her breast. You are alive, Tania, it said. You move, you live, you love. Just stay alive.

In that suspended second, Tania knew the beating warmth of a heart that had not turned hard, a heart that did not belong to the statue of hatred but was hers, soft and quickened and hers.

Ten meters ahead, Mogileva tripped and fell forward. Out of the woman’s boots, like from a rocket, exploded a blast of orange light. Sand and ice ripped out of the ground, riding the detonation. Tania froze, wondering even while shrapnel from the mine clawed into her stomach if she had found love too late.

She fell onto her back, her arms spread wide as if in greeting. She could not move; a weight pressed on her chest and abdomen, crushing her to the ground. Her mouth was engulfed in thirst, but she could not swallow. A blue spot like a welder’s torch hovered in her eyes. She felt nothing. Then came the strong coursing of her pulse and something slipping out of her stomach, a rising heat, as if someone had left a door open there into the cold night.

Slowly the weight was lifted and laid beside her. She lolled her head to look at Jakobsin. The length of his white front was blackened and torn. Smoke ghosted from his tattered face and chest.

Hands dug beneath Tania’s shoulders. Her head was lifted into a lap; a jumble of arms and legs gathered her in. She struggled to halt her rolling eyes. The rising in her stomach called her to come down there, to leave through the open door. No, she thought. In a little while. Let me stay a bit longer.

She heard the voice of Vasily Zaitsev. She could not break out of herself to hear what he was saying. His hands were under her head, but the hands were not strong enough somehow to keep her eyes still. Where is he, she wondered? He is all around me.

A shaft of agony leaped from her stomach and rose to her throat. She opened her mouth to cough it out. Warm ink burbled on her breath and ran down her cheeks.

Tania could not move, though her senses reeled in a tempest of confusion. She closed her eyes to shut it out. Too much, she decided. Too much going on. Are these Vasha’s hands? Where is he?

The ground disappeared beneath her. She was turned to her side; her head and her right arm dangled, pointing at the earth. Let me lie back down, she thought. It was warm and quiet, and I felt pain only once.

Tania became aware of a pressure against her stomach. Something was tight against her there; the warmth escaping out of her had stopped. Now there was only pain, the stabbing of a thousand blades deeply into her, past her spine, out into the night like the glow from a flame. She was burning. The torment kicked at her in a rhythm, pounding like the stomping of boots.

The pain cleared her faculties. She was alive, yet— Oh, it hurts! What happened? Panic circled her senses like a jackal. I’m wounded, in the stomach, an explosion. Pain and blood. Jakobsin dead. Mogileva. A land mine. The blast. What’s happening? Where is Vasha? Arms are under me, Vasha’s arms, legs running. Oh, the steps hurt! Go slower. No, run! Run with me, don’t let go!

The salt taste of blood filled Tania’s mouth. In her midsection, the ache threatened to envelop her. She opened her eyes.

Zaitsev holds me to him. He presses against me, closing my wound with his chest. Run, Vasha! He’s my bandage; his life holds mine inside me while we run.

Stay close to him, Tania. Stay alive.

Oh, run, Vasha, run!

Tania swished her tongue to clear her mouth. A dribble spilled over her lips.

In English she murmured, “Run.”

Zaitsev’s gait slowed. He spoke. His breathing was fast and heavy but his words were clear.

“Stay with me, Tanyushka. We’ll make it to the hospital.”

Tania could form no answer. She’d spent her strength. So many things to say, and all she could utter was “run” in the wrong language.

She began the slide down into her body, into the joggling pain, to splash in it, then to slip beneath it into unconsciousness.

SHE MOANED ONCE, TERRIBLY, WHEN HE STUMBLED. HE righted himself quickly from his knees, never letting go the pressure, keeping his bloody chest pressed into Tania’s open gut.

Zaitsev ran again. The sand hissed under his skimming boots, the sound mingling with his pounding breath. His mind swerved between panic and focus: Tania’s limp weight in his arms terrified him, and her blood was running into his boots.

He tried to make himself blank, to drive forward like a machine beyond thought or fatigue. Images hurled themselves at him, all of Tania—sleeping, naked, laughing, aiming her rifle, racing beside him in the flashes of explosions. He pushed through them, popping the memories like bubbles until the night was empty of all but the body in his arms and the running.

He came to a barbed-wire checkpoint, dodging a shattered horse cart on the dark beach. Pulling aside a rickety gate to let him through, the guards said nothing. He regained his pace, and a voice shouted after him, “Go!”

The medical station was fifty meters ahead in the base of the limestone cliff. It was where Shaikin had lain clutching his neck. Shaikin had died in that cave.

Zaitsev pushed through the blanket in the doorway to the medical station. He stood panting in a short hall; the walls and ceiling were built from timbers buttressed by metal beams. A bare light bulb

swung from a hanging wire. Three soldiers lay on stretchers in a line on the floor. A nurse in green fatigues bent over the soldier farthest from Zaitsev.

Now that he’d reached the field hospital, Tania felt heavy in his arms. His panic spurted at the thought of releasing her. She was going to be given over to this nurse who hadn’t even turned around to see him holding her. He swallowed and spoke.