obey. He tried again. The stock and the trigger mechanism already lay on the woollen rug beside him in the snow, but it was harder undoing the final piece. In Sennheim they had been trained to dismantle and reassemble a machine gun blindfold. Sennheim, in beautiful, warm, German Elsass. It was different when you couldn't feel what your fingers were doing.
'Haven't you heard?' Sindre said. 'The Russians will get us. Just as they got Gudeson.'
Gudbrand remembered the German Wehrmacht captain who had been so amused when Sindre said he came from a farm on the outskirts of a place called Toten.
'Toten. Wie im Totenreich?' the captain had laughed.
He lost his grip on the bolt.
'Fuck it!' Gudbrand's voice quivered. 'It's all the blood sticking the parts together.'
He placed the top of the little tube of gun oil against the bolt and squeezed. The cold had made the yellowish liquid thick and sluggish-he knew that oil dissolved blood. He had used gun oil when his ear had been inflamed.
Sindre leaned over and fiddled with one of the cartridges.
'Jesus Christ,' he said. He looked up and grinned, showing the brown stains between his teeth. His pale, unshaven face was so close that Gudbrand could smell the foul breath they all had here after a while. Sindre held up a finger.
'Who'd have thought Daniel had so much brain, eh?'
Gudbrand turned away.
Sindre studied the tip of his finger. 'But he didn't use it much. Otherwise he wouldn't have come back from no man's land that night. I heard you talking about going over. Well, you were certainly… good friends, you two, weren't you?'
Gudbrand didn't hear at first; the words were too distant. Then the echo of them reached him, and he felt the warmth surge back into his body.
'The Germans are never going to let us retreat,' Sindre said. 'We're going to die here, every man jack of them. You should have hopped it. The Bolsheviks aren't supposed to be as brutal as Hitler to people like you and Daniel. Such good friends, I mean.'
Gudbrand didn't answer. He could feel the heat in his fingertips now.
'We thought of nipping over there tonight,' Sindre said. 'Hallgrim Dale and I. Before it was too late.'
He twisted in the snow and eyed Gudbrand.
'Don't look so shocked, Johansen,' he grinned. 'Why do you think we said we were ill?'
Gudbrand curled his toes in his boots. He could feel them now. They felt warm and good. There was something else too.
'Do you want to join us, Johansen?' Sindre asked.
The lice! He was warm, but he couldn't feel the lice. Even the whistling sound under his helmet had stopped.
'So it was you who spread the rumours,' Gudbrand said.
'Which rumours?'
'Daniel and I talked about going to America, not over to the Russians. And not now, but after the war.'
Sindre shrugged, looked at his watch and got on to his knees. 'I'll shoot you if you try,' Gudbrand said.
'With what?' Sindre asked, gesturing towards the gun parts on the rug. Their rifles were in the bunker and they both knew that Gudbrand wouldn't be able to get there and back before Sindre had gone.
'Stay here and die if you want, Johansen. All the best to Dale, and tell him to follow.'
Gudbrand reached inside his uniform and pulled out his bayonet. The moonlight shone on the matt steel blade. Sindre shook his head.
'People like you and Gudeson are dreamers. Put the blade away and join me. The Russians are getting new provisions across Lake Ladoga now. Fresh meat.'
'I'm no traitor,' Gudbrand said.
Sindre stood up.
'If you try to kill me with that bayonet, the Dutch listening post will hear us and sound the alarm. Use your head. Who do you think they'll believe was trying to desert? You, with all the rumours there already are about your plans to do a runner, or me, a party member?'
'Sit down, Sindre Fauke.'
Sindre laughed.
'You're no killer, Gudbrand. I'm off now. Give me fifty metres before you sound the alarm, so that you're in the clear.'
They eyed each other. Small, feather-light snowflakes had begun to fall between them. Sindre smiled: 'Moonlight and snow at the same time. That's a rare sight, isn't it?'
12
Leningrad. 2 January 1943.
The trench the four men were standing in was two kilometres north of their own section of the front, at the point where the trench doubled back, almost forming a loop. The captain stood in front of Gudbrand and was stamping his feet. It was snowing and there was already a thin layer of fine snow on the top of the captain's cap. Edvard Mosken stood next to the captain and observed Gudbrand with one eye wide open, the other almost closed.
'So,' the captain said. 'Er ist hinuber zu den Russen geflohen? He's gone over to the Russians, has he?'
'Ja' Gudbrand said.
'Warum?
'Das weifs ich nicht!
The captain gazed into the distance, sucked his teeth and stamped his feet. Then he nodded to Edvard, mumbled a few words to his Rottenfuhrer, the German corporal accompanying him, then they saluted. The snow crunched as they left.
'That was that,' Edvard said. He was still watching Gudbrand.
'Yes,' Gudbrand said.
'Not much of an investigation.'
'No.'
'Who would have thought it?' The one wide-open eye stared lifelessly at Gudbrand.
'Men desert all the time here,' Gudbrand said. 'They can't investigate all of-'
'I mean, who would have thought it of Sindre? Who would have thought he would do something like that?'
'Yes, you could say that,' Gudbrand said.
'On the spur of the moment. Just got up and made a run for it.'
'Right.'
'Shame about the machine gun.' Edvard's voice was cold with sarcasm. 'Yes.'
'And you couldn't call the Dutch guards, either?'
'I shouted, but it was too late. It was dark.'
'The moon was shining.'
They squared up to each other.
'Do you know what I think?' Edvard said.
'No.'
'Yes, you do. I can see it in your face. Why, Gudbrand?'
'I didn't kill him.' Gudbrand's gaze was firmly fixed on Edvard's cyclops eye. 'I tried to talk to him. He didn't want to listen to me. Then he just ran off. What could I have done?'
Both of them were breathing heavily, hunched in the wind which tore at the vapour from their mouths.
'I remember the last time you had the same expression, Gudbrand. That was the night you killed the Russian in the bunker.'
