'Calm down, boys,' Edvard said, pulling Gudbrand to one side. 'You should go and get some sleep, Gudbrand. You were relieved an hour ago.'
'I'll go out and look for him,' Gudbrand said. 'No, you won't,' Edvard said. 'Yes, I will, I -'
'That's an order!' Edvard shook his shoulder. Gudbrand tried to break free, but the section leader held him in a tight grip.
Gudbrand's voice went higher and quivered with desperation;
'Perhaps he's wounded! Perhaps he's caught on the barbed wire!'
Edvard patted him on the shoulder. 'It'll soon be light,' he said. 'Then we can find out what happened.'
He shot a quick glance at the others, who had followed the scene in silence. They began to stamp their feet in the snow and mutter to each other. Gudbrand saw Edvard go over to Hallgrim Dale and whisper a few words in his ear. Dale listened and glowered at Gudbrand. Gudbrand knew very well what it meant. It was an order to keep an eye on him. A while ago now, someone had spread a rumour that he and Daniel were more than simply good friends. And that they couldn't be trusted. Mosken had asked straight out if they were planning to desert together. Of course they had denied this, but Mosken probably thought now that Daniel had used the opportunity to make a run for it. And that Gudbrand would 'look for' his comrade as part of the plan to go over to the other side together. It made Gudbrand laugh. True enough, dreaming about the wonderful promise of food, warmth and women the Russian loudspeakers spewed out over the barren battlefield in ingratiating German was attractive, but to believe it?
'Shall we take a bet on whether he comes back?' That was Sindre. 'Three food rations. What do you say?'
Gudbrand put his arms down by his sides and could feel the bayonet hanging from the belt inside his camouflage uniform.
'Nicht schiefien, bitte!'
Gudbrand spun round and there, right above his head, he saw a ruddy face beneath a Russian cap smiling down at him from the edge of the trench. Then the man swung down over the edge and performed a soft Telemark landing on the ice.
'Daniel!' Gudbrand shouted.
'Da da da dum!' Daniel sang, doffing the Russian cap. 'Dobry vyecher.'
The men stood rooted to the spot, staring at him.
'Hey, Edvard,' Daniel shouted. 'You'd better tighten things up with our Dutch friends. They've got at least fifty metres between the listening posts over there.'
Edvard was as silent and stunned as the others.
'Did you bury the Russian, Daniel?' Gudbrand's face was shiny with excitement.
'Bury him?' Daniel said. 'I even read the Lord's Prayer and sang to him. Are you hard of hearing or something? I'm sure they heard it on the other side.'
Then he jumped up on to the top edge of the trench, sat with his arms raised in the air and began to sing in a deep, warm voice: A mighty fortress is our God…'
The men cheered and Gudbrand laughed so much he had tears in his eyes.
'You devil, Daniel!' Dale exclaimed.
'Not Daniel… Call me…' Daniel took off the Russian cap and read the name on the inside of the lining. 'Uriah. He could bloody write as well. Well, well, but he was still a Bolshevik.'
He jumped down from the edge and looked around him. 'No one has any objections to a common Jewish name, I hope?'
Total silence followed for a moment before the outburst of laughter came. Then the first of the men went over to slap him on the back.
10
Leningrad. 31 December 1942.
It was cold in the machine-gun post. Gudbrand was wearing all the clothes he possessed. Nevertheless, his teeth were still chattering and he had lost the sensation in his fingers and toes. The worst was his legs. He had bound new rags around his feet, but that didn't help much.
He stared out into the dark. They hadn't heard much from the Ivans that evening. Perhaps they were celebrating New Year's Eve. Perhaps they were eating well. Lamb stew. Or ribs of lamb. Gudbrand knew, of course, that the Russians didn't have any meat, but he couldn't stop thinking about food nevertheless. As for themselves, they hadn't had much more than the usual lentil soup and bread. The bread had a green sheen to it, but they had become accustomed to that. And if it became so mouldy that it crumbled, they just boiled the soup with the bread in it.
'At least we got a sausage on Christmas Eve,' Gudbrand said.
'Shh,' Daniel said.
'There's no one out there this evening, Daniel. They're sitting eating medallions of venison. With a thick, light brown game sauce and bilberries. And almond potatoes.'
'Don't start talking about food again. Be quiet and see if you can spot anything.'
I can't see a thing, Daniel. Nothing.'
They huddled together, keeping their heads down. Daniel was wearing the Russian cap. The steel helmet with the Waffen SS badge lay beside him. Gudbrand knew why. There was something about the shape of the helmet which caused the eternally ice-cold snow to pass under the rim and create a continual, nerve-grinding whistling sound inside the helmet, which was particularly unfortunate if you were on duty at the listening post.
'What's wrong with your eyes?' Daniel asked.
'Nothing. I just have quite bad night vision.'
'Is that all?'
'And then I'm a little colour blind.' A little colour blind?'
'Red and green. I can't tell the difference. The colours seem the same. I never saw any berries, for example, when we went into the forest to pick cranberries for the Sunday joint…'
'No more talk about food, I said!'
They were quiet. In the distance a machine gun chattered. The thermometer showed minus twenty-five. Last winter they'd had minus forty-five several nights in a row. Gudbrand consoled himself with the thought that the lice were less active in this cold. He wouldn't start itching until he went off duty and crept under the woollen blanket in his bunk. But they tolerated the cold better than he did, the beasts. Once he had carried out an experiment: he had left his vest out in the snow in the biting cold for three consecutive days. When he took the vest into the bunker again, it was a sheet of ice. But when he thawed it out in front of the stove, a teeming, crawling mass came to life and he threw it into the flames out of sheer disgust.
Daniel cleared his throat.
'How did you go about eating your Sunday joint then?' Gudbrand needed no second bidding.
'First of all, Dad carved the joint, solemnly, like a priest, while we boys sat completely still, watching. Then Mum put two slices on each plate and poured on gravy, which was so thick that she had to take care she stirred it enough so that it didn't set. And there were loads of fresh, crisp Brussels sprouts. You should put your helmet on Daniel. What if you got shrapnel in your cap?'
'Imagine if a shell hit my cap. Carry on.'
Gudbrand closed his eyes and a smile played around his mouth.
'For dessert we had stewed prunes. Or brownies. That wasn't such usual fare. Mum had brought that tradition from Brooklyn.'
Daniel spat in the snow. As a rule, watch was an hour during the winter, but both Sindre Fauke and Hallgrim Dale were in bed with temperatures, so Edvard Mosken had decided to increase it to two hours until the section was back to full strength.
Daniel put a hand on Gudbrand's shoulder.
'You miss her, don't you? Your mother.'
