SS General (29 page)

We reached another road. It was flanked on either side by overturned vehicles, German ambulances which had been shot up by Russian machine gunners, and, as we passed them, great black crows rose flapping and croaking into the air. Inside the vehicles were piles of frozen corpses. Some of the bodies had had their skulls broken open, or neatly sliced off like coconut shells. We knew what that signified: when men are dying of hunger, when rations have been cut to two grams of bread a day, and even that is not always forthcoming, then it is possible to fill an aching belly with human brains. A doctor had told us long ago, before we dreamed we should ever suffer the pangs of starvation, that brains are extremely nourishing. Tiny was
the
only one of us who had ever sampled them. He dipped one day into a dead colonel's skull, but was unable to keep the meal down long enough to derive any nourishment from it. We found rat quite palatable, but somehow we balked at brains. Perhaps we had not yet suffered sufficiently.

We reached Yelarionovsky at last, but were moved on almost at once by General Augsberg.

"No time to hang around admiring the scenery," he said briskly. "We've a long journey ahead of us." He took the Old Man to one side and showed him the map. "We'll go as far as Peskovtka, then turn off at right angles toward the Don. I think that with luck we should be able to make it, but it's there, of course, that the problems really begin; somehow or other, we've got to get across that river."

The plain seemed to be endless. We traipsed across it, mile after mile, with a hard blue frosty sky above us and crisp white snow all around. Nothing but snow and sky. Not a tree, not a bush, not even a withered shrub. The dazzling whiteness began to hurt my eyes. No matter in which direction I looked, there was no relief from the glare. If I closed them, the pain was so intense that I had to open them again after only a few seconds; but keeping them open only intensified the constant throbbing ache. Soon I began to see bright silver flashes and whirling patterns of purple spots. Daggers plunged deep into my pupils. Burning tears spilled out and coursed down my cheeks. Before long I could hardly see at all. I began staggering and stumbling, and the vague black blur of the boots of the man marching in front of me made me dizzy and nauseated. I snatched up a handful of snow and crushed it against my eyelids, hoping for some alleviation, but it felt like burning embers.

My senses began to swim away from me. I lurched on after the black boots, which trod inexorably up and down in the snow, luring me after them, but my brain was refusing to function intelligently. I saw myself marching to my death. I saw myself perishing somewhere between the Volga and the Don, lying in my snowy shroud between the Volga and the Don. What a fascinating name that was! The Don. The Don. The Volga and the Don. The words began to beat out a rhythm to the pounding of those big black boots. The Don, the Don, the Volga and the Don. The Don, the Don, the Volga and the Don. The Don, the Don . ..

I became slowly aware that the Old Man and Tiny were hoisting me up between them. My body felt heavy and stupid. My eyes were still paining me.

"What's the matter, Sven?" It was the Old Man speaking; calm and kind, as always.

I pressed a hand against my eyes. "It's this damned snow! Nothing but snow wherever you look. Why does it have to be so goddamn white all the time?"

"What color would you like it to be?" growled Tiny. "Black?"

"Black would be beautiful," I said.

Tiny guffawed. The Old Man held out a hand to Porta, who passed over a bottle.

"Here," the Old Man said. "Have a drink. That'll do the trick."

"We're nearly there now, anyway," added Porta by way of encouragement.

I knew he was lying, but by the time I had swallowed several mouthfuls of vodka I no longer cared quite so much.

We reached a village of dilapidated huts, and the Legionnaire was sent off in command of a small group to reconnoiter, while the rest of us sank gratefully into the welcoming snow to await their return.

The Legionnaire reappeared half an hour later and beckoned us to follow him. The village showed all the signs of having been abandoned in a hurry, and the sole remaining inhabitant was a thin white cat, which made the mistake of rubbing against Porta's legs and whining for food. Unfortunately, the great black feline monster that had adopted Porta as its owner was of a jealous disposition, and was, moreover, growing daily more aware of the demands of its own deprived belly. It was bigger and stronger than the white cat, and it fell on it with howls of fury and tore it apart. Before Porta could bag it for his own, the black cat had carried it off in triumph and was later seen to be licking its lips and preening itself in a corner.

We made our way through the village, examining each of the huts. In one we found an overturned table, ruined food, and a collection of toys. We ate the food and went out to the stable, where five bodies, frozen stiff and obviously dead for some time, were dumped unceremoniously on top of one another. Porta bent down to examine them.

"Shot through the back of the head," he told us. He looked more closely. "With a nagan," he added.

We all knew what that meant: the NKVD had been at work again.

In the kitchen of another cottage we found an entire family hanging from a row of hooks in the ceiling. We didn't trouble to cut them down, it seemed pointless. We merely pushed them to one side like a bead curtain and walked through in search of food. There was nothing to eat, but Porta discovered a wooden cask in the corner. He cautiously sniffed at it before raising it to his lips and swallowing several mouthfuls.

"Well? What is it?" asked Heide curiously.

"Have a go and see for yourself."

Porta handed it to him, belched loudly and wiped his mouth across his sleeve. Heide looked suspiciously from the cask to Porta and back again to the cask. He took a mouthful and swallowed it, then let out his breath on a long, wheezing cough and turned red in the face.

"Holy smoke! That's enough to burn a hole in your guts!" He looked indignantly at Porta. "Are you sure it's not sulphuric acid?"

The cask was passed around. We all suffered the same interesting reaction as Heide.

"What the devil is it?" demanded the Old Man, pressing a clenched fist hard into his chest and gasping. "I feel as if my lungs are on fire!"

Porta grinned. "I guess it's
samorchonka
--Uncle Jo Stalin's special pick-me-up for tired troops. Two casks like this are said to be enough for a whole company."

"I believe you," I said, staggering about, through the hanging bodies, in search of a chair.

"Couple of mouthfuls of this stuff," said Porta, "and a man's willing to wrestle barehanded with a sixty-ton tank,"

"It's not quite as bad as I thought, admitted Heide, rather sheepishly propping himself against the wall. "Now that it's gone, it's really quite pleasant."

"What's it made of?" I asked. "Red peppers?"

"Corn, potatoes, beets," began Porta, who always had the recipes for any sort of liquor.

"What sort of beets?" demanded the Old Man, already intoxicated. He wagged a wise, farming finger at Porta. 'There's more than one, you know. Just like potatoes. There's more than one variety. Which one are you talking about?"

"Any one," said Porta firmly. "Corn, potatoes, beets-- any variety'll do. They're all as good as each other. And you just shove 'em in a barrel and let 'em rot for a few weeks. They figure it takes about a month. All the scum and stuff, you can take that off and put it in the pig swill. Does 'em a world of good."

"Does me a world of good," said Gregor, snatching back the cask.

"Samorchonka,"
went on Porta, "is Stalin's secret weapon. What they say about faith, hope and love, and all that balls --all that crap about
Gott mit uns
--well, the Russians don't give a damn for any of it. They chucked faith, hope and love into the trash can, and they got rid of God, and they invented
samorchonka
instead--leastways, Uncle Joe invented it. Trust a Jew to know what's what!"

"Stalin's not a Jew," protested Heide, reaching out for the cask.

"Who says he ain't? Joseph's a Jewish name, ain't it?"

"In that case," cried Heide, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Joseph Porta! You know damn well the Fuhrer said anyone with a Yid name had got to change it!"

"It's not the name that makes you a Jew," said Gregor with an air of owlish sagacity. "In any case, Stalin doesn't like 'em any more than Goebbels--and he's called Joseph too," he added, as one making the discovery of the century.

He raised the cask to his lips, but the Legionnaire removed it just in time.

"Thing about Stalin," he said, "I grant you he's got the same bee in his bonnet as Adolf, only he goes about things in a far more sensible way. Like he feeds his Jews to enemy artillery rather than Dutch ovens."

"Nobody loves the Jews," said Gregor mournfully.

"Not out here they don't," agreed the Legionnaire. "You remember that crazy Pole we saw that time? The one that kept a Jew chained up in his back yard in place of a guard dog?"

"Then what the hell are we all fighting about?" shouted Heide in a sudden burst of rage. "Stalin hates the Jews, Hitler hates the Jews, I hate the Jews, everybody hates the Jews! Why don't we all turn around and
fight
the Jews?"

"Seems to me," said the Old Man glumly, "Hitler's made a real balls-up. Sticking them in gas chambers and that. It's just plain daft."

"Whatdya mean by that?" shouted Heide.

The Old Man belched. "It's just plain daft," he repeated, forming each word with the tender care of the almost completely intoxicated. "Who's going to love us when we've slaughtered all the Jews? Who's going to love us when we've lost the war? Who's going to . . ."

"That's anti-Nazi talk!" screamed Heide. "That's defeatist!" He had had several more mouthfuls of Stalin's secret weapon and was even drunker than the Old Man. "I could have you arrested for that! I could have you shot! I could tell Hitler! I could . . ."

He suddenly lost his balance and fell sideways, collapsing in a heap onto the stove, where he at once set up a fearful wailing, pleading with us to fetch an ambulance.

"I'm burning!" he moaned. "I'm on fire! Can't you see the flames?"

Since the stove was unlighted, and had evidently not been used for several weeks, we ignored his shouts and turned contemptuously away. All except Tiny, who obligingly urinated over him and quenched the supposed flames.

"Thank you, thank you," murmured Heide. "That's much better--lovely cool rain--lovely raindrops--all over me. .."

His voice trailed away and he fell into a loud, snoring sleep. We turned our backs on him and set about finishing off the
samorchonka.
We had quite forgotten where we were, or what we were doing there. Half an hour later and I doubt if any of us could even have remembered that we were in Russia, let alone several miles behind the enemy lines. By the time we followed Heide's example and fell into a communal stupor, I don't believe we were even aware of our own identities.

We were wakened at dawn by General Augsberg kicking open the door of the cottage and shouting at us to get to our feet. I opened my eyes rather painfully and looked about me through the swirling mists of hangover. Hammers and sickles were hard at work inside my head. My mouth was dry, my throat was raw, and in the depths of my stomach a thick and savage sea was heaving to and fro. I staggered upright and watched the walls come and go as the floor undulated into the distance. At my side the Old Man stood swaying, with a hand waving in uncertain salute somewhere toward the ceiling.

"What the devil's been going on in here?" roared the general. "It looks like a goddamn thieves' kitchen!"

I did wish the man had the common courtesy to keep his voice down at that hour of the morning. It was really more than I could stand. With my stomach contracting and my throat gasping, I sank slowly back to floor level.

"Get that man on his feet!" hollered the general.

Porta and the Legionnaire hauled me up and we staggered together across the room and fetched up against the wall, where we lay panting and perspiring with our tongues lolling out and our eyeballs rolling.

"All present and correct, sir." The Old Man spoke slowly and earnestly and with an obvious effort. As he did so, Heide turned around and vomited.

I suppose the only reason Augsberg didn't shoot us on the spot was that he was in no position to suffer the loss of seven experienced soldiers.

"He'd never get home to Hitler without us," declared Tiny as we stood shivering outside in the snow.

As the black skies of night turned slowly into the dismal gray of a Russian dawn, we prepared to set off once again. The bitter shock of the knife-edge wind and the hard-packed snow beneath our tattered boots had quickly sobered us up, and we stepped out fairly briskly behind the general. Very few of us possessed suitable footwear for the time of year. Most of us were marching with rags and newspapers wrapped round our feet. Porta (of course) was one of half a dozen who had managed to equip themselves with skis, just as it was Porta who was in fact the first to reach the Don. We saw him hesitate at the top of a slope, then turn and come racing back to us in a cloud of sparking silver droplets.

"The Don!" He swept around the general in a wide circle and came to an ostentatious halt right in front of him. "Just the other side of the hill!"

The general frowned, already uneasy. 'The Don? Are you sure?"

"Positive, sir."

There was a sudden silence. The column shuffled to a halt and everyone stood listening with their heads to one side. Not a sound. No gunfire, no shells, no rattle of machine guns, no tanks. Only the rushing winds from Kazakhstan howling their enmity across the endless plains.

The general looked heavily at Porta. "You saw no sign of troops?"

Porta slowly shook his head. "Nothing, sir. There's nothing out there."

The silence continued. We went on listening, unable to believe that all this long time we had been marching toward emptiness. What had happened to our Army on the Don? Where was it? Had it ever really been there? Or was that, too, another of the lies they had been telling us?