Moskva (39 page)

‘I volunteer, Comrade Commissar. Let me prove my loyalty.’

The haggard major stared at the boy who’d stepped forward. Before he could speak, the boy grabbed the wrist of a grinning Tartar a few years older.

‘He volunteers too.’

His friend looked so surprised that the first boy gripped his shoulders, hugging him tightly and whispering what the major imagined was encouragement. Had Major Milov known the truth, he’d have been less moved.

‘We can always desert.’

When the school’s commander stepped forward, the major cut him off with a glare, staring out over the assembled boys. They stank of dirt and shit and too few showers, but no worse than those he’d left behind him.

‘How old are you?’

‘Eighteen,’ said the boy. It was an obvious lie.

The Tartar might be eighteen. Just. The major found Asiatic faces difficult to judge, and the loyalty of their owners. But the smaller boy, the sharp-faced one – he was younger.

‘Their crimes?’

‘This one, thieving, delinquency, slander, rape. That one …’ The school’s commander nodded at Pyotr Dennisov. ‘From a family of traitors.’

‘Kulaks?’

‘Worse. White Army officers.’

‘Parents dead?’

‘Father executed. No idea about his mother.’

The camp where Pyotr Dennisov had spent most of his short life was a
maloletki
, reserved for the children of traitors, renegades and recidivists. A few miles further into the forest was a
ChSIR
, which held wives of traitors to the Motherland. Part of a grouping outside Stalingrad, both supplied labour for the logging industry.

If his mother was still alive, Pyotr hadn’t heard from her.

The prisons in the city had already been emptied, their inhabitants thrown into the front line. The Soviet Army in Stalingrad was out-machined and outnumbered by experienced enemy officers and professional soldiers. But what the USSR did have was a near-bottomless well from which to draw conscripts.

‘What are you volunteering for?’

‘To fight. To die.’

The commissar was surprised that the penal school hadn’t been emptied before this. He’d have taken the lot of them by now. He was, however, puzzled by a boy who would volunteer rather than plead youth, or keep his head down and hope like the rest of his school. ‘Your name?’

‘Dennisov, Comrade Major. Pyotr Dennisov. This is Kyukov.’

‘He doesn’t speak for himself?’

‘His Russian is not good.’

‘You speak Turkic?’

‘A little, Comrade Major.’

You didn’t have to speak Russian to die. You didn’t have to speak at all. You simply had to charge the guns, probably unarmed, wait until the man in front fell, pick up his rifle if he had one and keep going.

‘Over there,’ he told them.

The two boys went to stand behind the major as he turned to address the rest. He imagined by now that they had guessed what he intended to say.

Later, the words became so famous they were used in a poem by Yevtushenko, unless it was by Voznesensky. Back then, it was just a standing order:
When the man in front dies, the man behind takes his place …

It was shouted so loudly and so often that by the time Pyotr reached the front of the queue he’d heard it a hundred times.

‘Here …’

A corporal thrust a loaded rifle at him and gave a clip containing another five bullets to Kyukov behind. Kyukov’s mouth twisted in displeasure at not getting his own gun.

‘You’ll get one soon enough,’ Pyotr promised, as another corporal shoved them away from the head of the line. ‘Not mine, though …’

‘Thought we were going to desert?’

‘See anywhere to run to? Anywhere to hide?’

The weight of the other conscripts, shoves from corporals and brave words from red-capped political officers – shouted through megaphones – carried the lot of them to the ruined edge of a railway siding. Falling snow made it impossible to see the far side and a whining wind howled through what remained of an engine shed.

‘Over there,’ Kyukov indicated a concrete signal box with a shell hole and half its roof blown away.

‘When the whistle goes,’ Pyotr agreed.

It went, and all but two of the first hundred poorly armed conscripts raced up a slippery bank and on to the twisted tracks, with only ‘Not one step back’ shouted from behind to
disturb them until the machine guns opened up ahead and they started falling, their rifles unfired and grenades unthrown. Those behind snatched up weapons, as ordered, and died in turn, cut down like screaming wheat.

‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck …’ Kyukov scrambled up the steps and collapsed on the floor. Pyotr crawled over him and peered out through a crack. Behind him the Tartar was still swearing. Kyukov had never been in a fight he couldn’t win. Pyotr knew this. It was one of the reasons they were friends.

This was different.

‘We’re going to die here.’

Pyotr shook his head. ‘No, we’re not. We’re going to become heroes.’

Enough blood had been spilt for patches of snow, ice and churned-up earth to smoke, steam rising from puddles in ever diminishing wisps until the blood cooled.

Snow fell. An hour later, with darkness also falling, an artillery barrage lit the sky to one side of them, and they could see that the bodies in the more exposed areas had become mounds, indistinguishable from the earlier snow.

‘Heroes?’ Kyukov said.

Pyotr smiled. He’d been waiting for the question.

‘They keep heroes alive. That’s why we’re going to become heroes, so we can stay alive.’ He could tell, looking into his friend’s wide face and dark eyes, that he didn’t get it, didn’t understand how it would work.

‘I’m hungry,’ Kyukov said.

‘We had breakfast,’ Pyotr reminded him.

Kyukov grumbled, and Pyotr went back to examining the rows of metal levers that had once changed points on the track, trying to imagine this place as part of a normal station
with unbroken rails and trains to take him elsewhere. A man might have to live a long time before that happened.

His way was better.

The enemy’s side of the tracks was in darkness, but the glow of a fire showed from inside a machine shop with sandbags piled high at the front. A loudspeaker in a broken window above blared bad Russian across the gap, suggesting that they surrender and promising Red Army soldiers shelter, warm clothing and food.

Swiftly, a loudspeaker fired up on the Soviet side.

Soviet citizens did not surrender. There was no man here who wouldn’t willingly give up his life for the Boss. It was the Germans who’d die here, forgotten by their wives, who were being fucked by filthy foreigners as their husbands froze or lost their balls to Russian bombs.

‘You think that’s true?’

‘Wouldn’t you worry about what was going on back home?’

‘You think the Germans would really give us food if we surrendered?’

‘I think they’d put us up against a wall. Our side certainly would if they caught us going over to the enemy.’

‘Pyotr,’ Kyukov said, ‘look …’

‘At what?’ he said crossly.

‘To the left. Wait for the next flare.’

Below them, in the lee of a broken wall that kept him free from drifting snow, a Russian sergeant lay, his face shrunken back to the skull. It was his watch Kyukov had spotted, gold by the look of it, looted from a German most likely. It wouldn’t buy their way out but it had the makings of a bribe. ‘Go and get it,’ Pyotr ordered.

Kyukov shook his head.

‘I’ll whistle if anything moves.’

‘It’s too risky,’ Kyokov said.

‘Oh well, if you’re scared …’

Slithering down the steps, feet first, keeping his body tight to the cold concrete, Pyotr Dennisov prayed that his movements were invisible.

A day in battle and he already feared the enemy’s snipers. He was also furious at having trapped himself into doing this. At ground level, he edged around the base of the signal box, knowing that he was now exposed, with only his resemblance to one corpse among hundreds to keep him safe.

Cold had reduced the sergeant’s corruption to a slow crawl. His eyes were gone, liquefied or taken by crows, his nostrils leprous and his teeth bared. He smelled of sour milk and frost had glued him so tightly to the ice that bits of his face came away when Pyotr rolled him over. Inside his jacket were photographs, folded letters and a silver cigarette case. Pyotr left the photographs and letters.

The leather of his watch strap was so frozen that it cracked slightly when Pyotr unbuckled it. He was turning to go when he hit his kneecap hard, the shock sending black waves through him. A rifle, bigger than any he’d seen.

The Russian corporal clutching it didn’t want to give it up. Resting flat to the ground, Pyotr tugged again and kept tugging until the rifle slid out from under its previous owner. Pyotr’s breath rose like steam.

How could they miss seeing him?

A flare went up and he hugged the ground, pushing in against the corporal, with the rotting sourness of the sergeant on his other side. He shut his eyes tight against a bullet that never came. After a minute’s brightness, he sensed darkness return and night shuffle in from the shadows.

‘What’s that then?’

Pyotr rested the rifle casually in the corner.

‘What do you think?’ He weighed the watch and the cigarette case in his hands, changing his mind about using the watch as a bribe. This left the question: which did he want? The watch was gold, with a dial that was white and shiny, but the silver cigarette case held cigarettes, black ones with a gold band above each filter.

‘Here,’ Pyotr Dennisov said, throwing Kyukov the watch.

His friend flashed him a grateful grin.

Later that night, after Kyukov had set his watch to what Pyotr thought was roughly the right time, they sat with their backs to the wall, smoking a German cigarette between them, and Kyukov suggested a way out of there.

‘Across the river,’ he said.

‘You’ll be shot by our side.’

‘Then let’s go by land.’

‘And be shot by Germans? No, stick with me. I’ll get us out of here.’

Kyukov would stick with him, they both knew that.

They were just talking.

A cigarette against the darkness, and talk to fill silences that were almost more unnerving than the shelling and the crack of sniper fire.

First thing next day the Germans launched an attack on the siding and were beaten back. Their bombers came that afternoon, a long line of grey planes with black crosses on the wings. They started dropping their load half a mile back and the line of explosions ran straight towards the hut.

‘We stay,’ Pyotr said.

The older boy looked at him, his eyes uncharacteristically mutinous.

‘We stay together. We stay here.’

‘Pyotr …’

‘What do you think they’ll do to us if they discover we’ve been hiding in here since yesterday?’ They both knew he was talking about their own side.

‘They might feed us first.’

Pyotr took that as surrender.

Kyukov sat with his back to the approaching bombers, his arms wrapped around himself as if that could provide protection. And then, when the planes were past, the last of the German bombs falling into the Volga, he vomited.

‘I’m hungry,’ he said.

‘We’re both hungry.’

‘I bet they have food.’ He jerked his head towards the Nazi side. ‘They said they had food.’

‘They were probably lying.’

No one attacked next day and no bombers flew over the sidings, and all that happened was that Pyotr and Kyukov smoked the last of the stolen cigarettes. The day after that, they watched a German sniper in the ruins of a factory opposite kill half a dozen Soviet soldiers in a communication trench.

‘We need to move,’ Kyukov said.

He said it so often Pyotr barely noticed.

It was three days since they’d eaten, almost as long since they’d felt close to warm and Pyotr was regretting sharing his cigarettes. Crawling to the shell hole, he peered out. ‘Something’s happening.’

NCOs were gathering, Soviet conscripts being manhandled into a line. Political officers tugged their collars and gripped their megaphones as they began to rehearse their words.

‘Look at that,’ Kyukov said.

Out of sight of the enemy, two Red Army soldiers lugged a machine gun. When one slipped, her cap fell away to reveal blonde hair. The other helped his comrade up, then picked up the gun again. They were young, obviously a couple.

Kyukov grinned. ‘Let’s go down there.’

‘And get killed? We wait …’

The whistle went and the troops raced up the icy bank towards the tracks, the two with their machine gun at the rear. As a German gun opened up, and soldiers at the front stumbled, they fell too. It was a ruse. Dropping into a crater, they slotted a circular magazine on top of the gun and opened fire the moment the last of those in front fell, the black magazine spinning like a record.

Its burst was brief.

The boy lunged forward to remove the disk and replace it. The next magazine burned out as fast and was replaced as quickly. They were lucky or well trained or simply desperate, because the enemy machine gun suddenly stilled. Pyotr thought that a fresh wave would charge from his side but all that happened was that those screaming kept on screaming and the enemy gun remained silent.

‘Oh shit,’ Kyukov said.

A mortar arced high from the German side.

It exploded the moment it landed; the boy busy replacing the disk jerked sideways, half the skin and all of his uniform ripped from his shoulders. The girl simply shuddered, her cap coming away again.

‘Fucking, fucking fuck!’

It was the angriest Pyotr had ever seen his friend.

Grabbing the big rifle from the corner, Kyukov jerked at its bolt, which jammed. He hammered at the weapon with such fury that its magazine dropped away. The round that fell from the clip was fatter than Pyotr’s thumb.

‘Wait,’ Pyotr said.

‘Why would I fucking wait?’

‘A bullet bigger than your dick deserves better.’