City of Fate (14 page)

His cousin took up their cry, his voice cracking over the word, ‘Mama, Mama …’

The sergeant put a finger to his lips and when his cousin fell silent, he continued, ‘Rumours began to fly around that we would have to shoot the children, but I refused to believe them. After all, we were Germans, a proud and glorious nation, and what kind of nation needs to kill infants?’

Yuri stole a glance at Sarah and was suddenly terrified when he saw her eyes were closed.

‘I sought out my lieutenant again and told him about the ridiculous rumours, waiting for him to scoff at them, but he didn’t. Instead, he confided in me that his superior, a mad man, thought the easiest solution was to kill them.
However
, he disagreed and contacted Head Quarters in Berlin, explaining the situation, saying that he couldn’t ask his men
to massacre children. I thanked him for telling me this and for sparing us from such a horrible act.

When I went to sleep, all I could see was the terrified faces of those children I had led into that dark, cold
building
. I dreamt about them all night. Some of us had to carry the babies inside because there was nobody else to. I carried a boy, he was just eight or nine months old, but old enough to tremble with fear in my arms. I think he was scared of the dark too; his little fingers gripped me when I set him down on the stone floor, I had to peel them off me, one by one. Who knows if any of the children slept; more than likely they were awake all night afraid.

‘Early the next morning we packed up and prepared to march on. We shouted greetings at one another as we worked, trying to block out the crying that hadn’t stopped. I couldn’t wait to leave the village behind, none of us could. It was going to be another gorgeous day, a chance to start over again, and I convinced myself that the children were going to be looked after.’

Shrugging at us, he said, ‘I don’t know who I thought would do the looking after. Maybe I believed that they would be sent to another village, or there would be nurses brought in … or something like that. I couldn’t find my lieutenant, but I received an order to get the men together and move out. Fortunately our path was on the other side of the village, away from the orphanage. I had been dreading having to pass
it. I called my men, gave the order and we began to march.’

Staring at the ground, he admitted, ‘A couple of days ago we heard that Berlin agreed with killing the children, but because they knew we might refuse, they brought in
different
soldiers from the Ukraine to do the job.’

Looking utterly wretched, he added, ‘I don’t know what else to say. I really don’t.’

Isabella inhaled sharply, startling the two boys beside her, ‘Why did you tell us this?’

The sergeant was confused. ‘What? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.’

The old woman showed no mercy or interest in his
apology
, ‘You stupid, ignorant people!’

Silence followed this statement, during which she stood up abruptly and strode over to cut the remains of the loaf in half. Wrapping it quickly in a paper bag, and not bothering to wipe the tears from her face, she handed it to the sergeant while grabbing the bag of meat from him. Her expression was one of perfect fury. ‘Your soldiers killed my
seventy-eight
year old sister and now you stand here and talk about shooting babies?’

The soldier concentrated on the bag in his hand.

Isabella appeared to swell in size as she spoke, ‘You wear the uniform of a killer of children and old women. It was you, your friends, your family, who voted for Hitler. You waved flags at him, cheered his speeches of hate and then
went out to kill in his name.’

She looked like she might go on, but Sarah pleaded with her, ‘Hush now, Isabella. You have said enough.’

Sarah turned to the men and advised them to be on their way, ‘You got what you came for.’

The soldier nodded heavily. ‘Thank you for the bread.’ Unwilling to leave it there, he tried again with Isabella, ‘We just want to go home, forget about this war and go back to our normal lives.’

Isabella sniffed loudly, ‘Oh, don’t be so silly!’

Nobody said a word so she added, ‘Do you
really
believe that you’ll be able to forget about all this?’

IN STALINGRAD AT LAST

A
nton was giving orders again or, at least, he was trying to. Leo kept butting in and asking questions like, ‘Why?’, ‘How do
you
know?’ and ‘Who put
you
in charge?’ To his credit, Anton did not lose his temper. Instead, he spoke calmly, as if to a stubborn child, ‘We should do this for Misha’s sake, so he won’t have died for nothing.’

However, if Anton didn’t lose his temper, Leo certainly did. ‘What? You know what, I am sick of the sound of your voice and, by the way, Anton, you were no friend of Misha’s. Friends don’t bully one another. Remember when you had your mates slap him because of the colour of his hair. Remember when you ….’

Vlad laid his hand lightly on Leo’s shoulder, causing him to fall silent.

Anton sniffed loudly and said, ‘We need to find our regiment!’

They had achieved something rather amazing. In a city where there were thousands of soldiers, the three boys had managed to end up in the ruins of a deserted house all by themselves.

Vlad knew that what Anton said made sense. However, he much preferred staying where they were. As far as he was
concerned
, it was better to spend the rest of the night in the house. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s late. Don’t you think it’s best to wait until tomorrow morning? We don’t know where we are or where we’re supposed to go. The shooting has stopped, so maybe everyone just sleeps at night. It might be a rule, or something?’

Leo shrugged in moody agreement while Anton was unsure. ‘But if the Germans are asleep, shouldn’t we go out now and find the others?’

Leo’s reaction was instant, ‘Typical!’

Vlad knew that his friend was only annoyed because Anton was absolutely right. Vlad quietly took charge of the three of them, so quietly that he didn’t realise it himself. ‘Okay, Anton, that makes more sense. So, we’d better work out where we’re going now, because once we get outside it’s probably best to do as little talking as possible since we have no idea where the Germans are.’

Leo was staring at the wall behind him, and Vlad turned to see what he was looking at, and found himself face to face with a huge, white wolf – a painting, that is, that someone had taken great care with.

‘Oh, it’s beautiful!’ said Vlad, forgetting for a blissful moment where they were and what they had to do.

‘Isn’t it?’ nodded Leo, smiling for the first time in a long time.

Vlad laughed. ‘Imagine having him for a pet or a guardian. Some people believe that wolves are the same as guardian angels, but then there are others who say they are demons in disguise.’

Leo smiled awkwardly. ‘Well … my grandmother believes that our family has a spirit wolf, called Sheba, who watches over all of us.’ He made a face. ‘I’m not too sure about it, to be honest.’

Vlad was prepared to be open-minded. ‘What makes her say that? Has she actually seen the wolf?’

This interesting discussion might have gone on for much longer, except for one thing: Anton, an impatient boy who neither read books – unless he was forced to, for school – nor believed in magic or anything he could not touch with his bare hands. He longed to get out of the house and join up with the other soldiers, their comrades, because he had had a taste that day of what it was to be respected for his ideas, and he liked it.

Gathering together every drop of sarcasm he could manage, he mowed through the boys’ conversation, ‘So sorry to interrupt this lovely chat about angels but perhaps – just perhaps – we should be concentrating on how we’re going to get out of here. Sorry to be so boring and all!’

Vlad couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing, being careful not to be too loud, while Leo rolled his eyes.

It was not the reaction he had expected, but Anton glowed with pleasure all the same.

‘Poor Misha,’ said Leo, as carefully as he could. ‘Although I don’t think he would have been able for this.’

The other two neither agreed nor disagreed but Vlad said, ‘When we get settled I’ll write to his parents.’ He paused to give Anton a defiant look. ‘And I’ll tell them he died a hero’s death.’

Slightly shocked that he would be doubted about
agreeing
to this, Anton put up his hands and exclaimed, ‘Yes, yes!’ Then he thought of something. ‘We’re all heroes, aren’t we? The others took off, but we stayed behind Mr Belov – Misha and us. We came to Stalingrad, and nobody can take that away from us.’

For the first time ever Leo and Vlad were in complete agreement with him. It was a little miracle in itself, and one that would have pleased Mr Belov.

Vlad took a deep breath and asked his classmates, ‘Are we ready, then?’

‘For what?’ Leo couldn’t help saying.

‘Keep an eye out for Germans,’ muttered Anton.

Leo snorted, ‘Thanks for pointing out the obvious!’

Undeterred, Anton gave the breadknife to Leo, who allowed Vlad to hold the gun that he had taken from the body outside. So, the three of them were now armed, although none of them were too sure about actually harming or
killing
a person.

Vlad led the way back out on to the street. Someone shouted out in the distance, and they could hear the sound of racing footsteps. Vlad felt he had walked out onto a stage, where the audience could watch his every move, while he couldn’t see them at all. It was certainly spooky, especially when Vlad could not decide what was more frightening: bumping into Nazis or getting utterly lost.
What if we end up on the wrong side, completely surrounded by enemy soldiers?

It seemed sensible to move away from the Volga and go deeper into the city. This much was expected of them, at the very least. Keeping as close as possible to the charred walls, they inched their way forward, all hoping and praying that they were doing the right thing. The moon lit the way for them. Vlad was mightily grateful to be able to see where he was putting his feet; there was just so much rubble to stumble over, and, apart from the embarrassment of stupidly ending up on his backside, there was also the threat of making noise that would alert lurking Nazis to their whereabouts.

He thought of Misha again, wondering was his ghost somewhere in the sky looking down upon them. To his horror, his eyes suddenly filled with tears. This was no time to start crying. Quickly, he decided to pretend that Misha was still alive, somewhere in Stalingrad, probably doing the very same thing, making his way down a strange street, with new friends he had made.

There was a hiss from behind him. ‘What?’ he whispered. Anton gestured to the air above Vlad’s head. Vlad dutifully gazed upwards but had no idea what he was meant to be looking at. Hundreds of stars sparkled in the navy sky,
twinkling
away as calmly as they always did at home. It was
soothing
to see such a familiar sight. Vlad assumed that Anton must have meant him to be comforted by this fact, that this desperate city had the same stars as home; even if it wasn’t the sort of thing that he’d expect Anton to think. In fact, he was just about to smile his thanks when he saw that the other two were not looking at anything at all; instead they appeared to be listening.

‘What?’ he asked again, but, then, before either of his friends could be bothered to answer him, he heard it – music on the night air. The three boys listened for several minutes, in complete silence.

‘It’s a piano, isn’t it?’ whispered Anton.

Leo said quietly, ‘Yep, Beethoven. It must be a German playing it. I heard that Russian musicians are no longer
allowed to play German composers.’

It was strange to be standing on a ruined street, in a ruined city, listening to the desolate strains of a beautiful melody that certainly deserved a finer location than this. A sudden burst of gunfire rang out, making the boys jolt in unison. The music stopped, as if taking fright too. Vlad was struck by how sad he felt at the resulting silence. The three of them waited, and waited, and were rewarded for their patience when the distant concert resumed once more. Leo breathed a sigh of relief, and whispered, ‘As long as there’s music …’

That was all he said, but Vlad felt that he understood. He was about to reluctantly suggest that they’d better get moving again, although he couldn’t help thinking that it was plain ridiculous to have absolutely no idea about where they were going to.

Anton’s head swung away from the music, just as there was a clicking sound from only a couple of feet away,
followed
by a voice that whispered as loud as it dared, ‘Identify yourselves!’

Vlad, in his confusion, could not think of a single word to say.
Was he to give his name, but who would know him here? Or was he to give a military number? But none of them had been given any number, or maybe they had and he had just forgotten it.

Feeling utterly panicked, Vlad wanted to hug Leo when his friend stated quite calmly and proudly, ‘We’re new recruits, just arrived a few hours ago.’

Yes,
thought Vlad,
that’s the answer. Of course it is.

Anton, on the other hand, was shocked at Leo’s decision to immediately cooperate with the voice. ‘It could be
Germans
,’ he said, louder than he’d intended.

‘Huh!’ a second voice pouted. ‘Aren’t your mamas lucky that we’re not. You’d all be lying dead on the ground
otherwise
. What do you fools think you’re doing, standing around like this?’

To the boys’ amazement, yet another voice joined in, at their expense, ‘They must think that they’ve time to do a bit of sight-seeing. You know, tourists first, soldiers second?’

‘Okay, okay. That’s enough!’ The first voice sounded
impatient
. ‘Where are you boys headed?’

Embarrassed for the three of them, Vlad answered
truthfully
, ‘Er … we don’t actually know.’ Before the shadows could start making fun of them again, he quickly added, ‘We’ve just crossed the Volga, under fire, and when we reached here we were still under fire so we hid in the first place we came across, to wait until things quietened down.’

No one laughed, the two jokers obviously obeying their boss, who appeared to welcome the recruits’ lack of
direction
. ‘Right then, you can come with us. Isn’t it lucky we bumped into you? You’re exactly what I need.’

Anton brightened up considerably, glad to be part of something again, whatever it was, and muttered to his friends, ‘Thank goodness for that!’

Vlad felt Leo’s reluctance to leave the music behind but reckoned he had to agree with Anton. Following these
strangers
up a street was so much better than nothing at all, which was all they’d done so far.

One of their new companions commented, ‘That bloody piano gives me the creeps.’

His comrade called him a fool. ‘You and your ghost stories!’

Vlad wanted to ask the men what they meant but felt it would be over-stepping the mark when they had only just met.

The second man groaned, ‘Seriously, Viktor, why – no, I mean, how on earth could anyone be playing a piano in a place like this?’

‘No! You mean,
at
a time like this,’ scolded their boss, who seemed a most particular man. ‘This city is famous for her orchestras.’

There was a grudging silence for a few steps, until Leo stated quietly, ‘There is no evil without good.’ It was a
well-known
Russian proverb. Who knows if he realised that his five assorted companions agreed with him wholeheartedly for not one of them said a single word.