Ralph Peters - Red Army

Yelena changed after the child came. Perhaps she had already been changing, although he had not noticed it. But the event of childbirth seemed to unleash something unexpected in her, an uncomfortable and unwelcome new spirit. She began to joke about the Party and about 194

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Levin's beliefs. He could not comprehend the change in her. And she complained that he only had time for his books, and that he was naive and blind to opportunity. She gained weight.

She demanded that he leave the army as soon as he could. Her father was in a position to secure him a very good Party job; perhaps he could even arrange for an early release from Levin's military commitment. He needed a job with a future, she insisted. And he knew that she meant a job with perquisites and comfort and material possibilities. He was learning fast as a father.

He, too, saw many things differently now. Yet he continued to believe.

He read history, and he reviewed how far the people had come. Socialism was far from perfect. But it was continually evolving under the tension of the dialectic. And it had made the world a better place, Levin believed. It had rescued Russia from its fatal backwardness, and it had made the Soviet Union a great power. If the price had been high, then so had been the achievement. There was a new equity and security in the life of the average man. If there were many problems that remained unsolved, it was up to the present generation to address them, to fight inertia and complacency. Really, it was an exciting time to be alive, rich with new possibilities. He could not understand how Yelena had so fully lost her vision, how she could fail to see the dynamic at work.

And he loved the army. He found the purely military side of his duties almost more stimulating than the political, even as he enthusiastically embraced every opportunity to reach out to the young soldiers, to help mold them into better citizens of a better state. Slogans that others mocked were sacred to him, and he labored long over the most minor paperwork. He sought to perfect his abilities as a leader and his political-didactic skills.

Yelena had an affair with a moronic line officer. When Levin found out and confronted her, months after the rest of the garrison had known about the situation, Yelena stamped and screamed that he neglected her, that he did not love her, and that he did not even care enough to provide for the future of his child.

The accusations about the child hurt him most. Even though he could not accept them as true. It was Yelena who showed little concern for the infant. At times, she seemed to regard their son's care as nothing but a loathsome duty to be discharged with as little effort and conviction as possible. She was not even very clean about it all, and their cramped apartment grew slovenly.

Yet her threats about leaving him reduced him to panic. He had long loved her, and he had never wavered in that love. Now, at the revelation 195

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of her betrayal—a betrayal she had not tried very seriously to hide—he felt his love for her overripen to desperation. He hated the humiliation of it. And he loved her anyway. She let herself go. In a matter of months, she looked ten years older than her age. She painted herself with far too much makeup, becoming a cartoon of a Western harlot. And, as she took from him, he only wanted to give her more. He wondered how he could possibly make a contribution to saving the world if he could not even save the woman he loved. He begged her not to leave him, to give him a chance, leaving all of his accustomed notions of manliness in ruins.

He promised he would leave the army. He would do everything she wanted him to do. But it was too late to avoid a last posting. He had a commitment to fulfill, and even Yelena's father could not move the Soviet bureaucracy with the requisite speed. And he went to the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. Alone.

Yelena went to live with her family until his tour ended. She wrote decent, even loving letters, and sent him snapshots of his son. He tried not to think of the men with whom she might be betraying him. Because, he told himself, they did not matter. The weakness and error of the flesh was a minor concern. It was only the future, the better future, that mattered. There would be a tomorrow of decency, fairness, and love.

There would come a future without betrayals.

"Comrade Political Officer?"

It was Dunaev, a lieutenant from Third Company.

"Over here."

Dunaev searched the cavernous room with his pocket lamp, finally slapping its light across Levin's face. Then he respectfully lowered the beam.

"Comrade Political Officer, the battalion commander has sent me to relieve you. He wants you to report to him at the hospital."

"Is something wrong?"

"I don't know. He just told me to relieve you."

Levin brushed the crumbs from his hands and slung his assault rifle onto his right shoulder. "All right. Let me walk you around our positions.

There's plenty of food here, by the way. The soldiers have already eaten.

Just keep them away from the liquor."

"Yes, Comrade Political Officer."

Levin took the lieutenant on a tour of the platoon perimeter. The buildings, both new and old, were extremely well constructed, and the ring boulevard and the park beyond offered a perfect break where overlapping fields of fire could be established. Most of the soldiers were 196

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awake and alert, the noncommissioned officers seemed to be firmly in charge, and no one had wandered from his assigned position. Levin suddenly felt very proud of them all, proud of how much they had already achieved.

He left Dunaev back at the ad hoc command post in the restaurant and walked briskly down the main street, keeping well under the shadows of the overhanging buildings. From behind a line of gabled rooftops that paralleled the river up ahead, a vibrant glow lit the sky. The section of town on the far side of the river was burning. But the old town remained safe, even strangely peaceful, as Levin made his way through its heart.

The refugee traffic had long since stopped attempting to pass through Hameln. The next wave of traffic would undoubtedly be combat vehicles attacking to dislodge the Soviet defenders. Levin marched along, review-ing the ranks of shops. The fire's glow sent just enough light into the street to hint at inexhaustible riches. Levin had thought himself prepared for the inequitable wealth of revanchist West Germany. But now, in the bloodstained darkness, he could only wonder at the material splendor of this small city. He had studied the problem, and he knew that, somewhere, there must be horrid slums where the exploited were contained, where imported Turkish wage-slaves clung to one another in a desperate attempt to survive. Yet this casual display of riches, these shops bursting with merchandise of undeniable quality, troubled him profoundly.

Above the modern shop displays, handsomely preserved and restored medieval buildings leaned over the street, as if peering down at him. It would be criminal to destroy this, he thought. He recognized the necessity of seizing the bridges for the passage of Soviet forces, however.

Now, he reasoned, it was really up to the NATO commanders as to whether or not all of this would perish. He himself had no wish to fight here, to risk the destruction of such monuments without necessity.

Past the old town hall, he turned right up another street of shops that led toward the hospital. Offhandedly, he considered the height of the old town hall, as well as its central location. This was where the battalion command post needed to be, in accordance with military logic. The hospital was too far north to allow firm control of the entire battalion.