the perspective of the chief of staff.”
“Better than I feared,” Chibisov said. “We can communicate, although we’re often forced to rely on nonprimary means. The confusion on the ground is intense. It’s a matter of continuous effort. You know our antenna farm was struck earlier? We were at minimum capability for over an hour. That didn’t help the effort to maintain the automated data bases. But we’re back up to ninety percent now.”
“They’ll hit the bunker again,” Malinsky said. “And again. You’ll be able to measure their desperation by how often the walls shake around you.”
Chibisov nodded. He felt tired. Exhausted. Yet there was so much waiting to be done. The smoke from Malinsky’s cigarette snaked into his lungs, and he unconsciously touched the pocket where he carried his pills.
“Overall,” Malinsky said, “we’ve had better than average luck. And, while I recognize that luck is a thing best reduced to a minimum in one’s calculations, I know it when it touches me.” Malinsky nodded at the map, having worked his way through the mental clutter of war to a level of reasonable satisfaction. “Marshal Kribov is delighted with us — his worries are all down south. The Americans are proving tough — they’re so damned unpredictable. And the Germans in the south are fighting more like Americans.” Malinsky paused for a moment, mouth slightly open at a troubling thought. “Yes, we’ve been lucky. But tonight will be our first big test. Tonight, and then tomorrow morning. If they piecemeal their counterattacks, and if Starukhin gives me a breakthrough by noon, they won’t stop us until we’re standing on the banks of the Rhine.” Malinsky smiled. “And they may not even stop us then.”
Leonid sat comfortably in a chair by the window, belly stuffed full, dreaming of home. His assault rifle lay balanced across his thighs. The weapon reeked with the sulfurous smell of blown powder. He had not cleaned the rifle since the battle. He had, however, taken the first opportunity to scrub the blood and filth from his tunic, and now it hung drying over the footboard of some stranger’s abandoned bed.
The war seemed thankfully far away, and Leonid had convinced himself that he had done his fair share. It was up to the others now. He shifted his position, staring out into the cool darkness without focusing on any object. His slight movement ticked and clattered with the sounds of colliding plastic. He had filled his pockets with cassette tapes in an adjacent bedroom, which appeared to belong to a teenage girl. Delighted with his find, he wasn’t bothered by not being able to read the labels or recognize any of the groups from the small, colorful illustrations tucked inside the cassette cases. The high quality of the printing and the lively look of the performers in the photographs promised great things.
On the far horizon, beyond a palisade of darkened evergreens, the night sky shimmered and sparkled as though a vast celebration filled the distance. Occasionally, a sputter of closer brightness disturbed the perspective, and the kettle-drum noises roamed closer, only to recede again. Leonid thought that other soldiers were undergoing experiences similar to his own of the past afternoon. On one hand, he thought it might be even more frightening at night, but he also figured that it was easier to hide.
In the aftermath of the engagement, he had found his way to the remnants of his own unit with surprising ease. The firing had diminished to a trickle, then it shut off completely, as though a tap had been closed. The barking of the officers soon replaced the noises of battle. The wounded made noises, too, but the officers seemed determined to shout them down, to bury their reality under the bullying noises of control.
Seryosha had made it through, and he told stories of machine-gunning countless numbers of the enemy. Leonid noticed that Seryosha was still laden with most of the ammunition he had carried into battle, but he accepted the tales, neither believing nor disbelieving. Their squad vehicle could not be identified, but Lieutenant Korchuk, their political officer, shepherded them to Junior Sergeant Kassabian, and they became part of a unit again. Korchuk praised their performance and asked them how they felt now that they were veterans of battle. But it was evident that Korchuk did not really listen to their responses. The
Their unit remained behind as the others lined up and pulled off in the direction of the shifting battle noises. Korchuk returned and explained to them that they were to help gather the wounded who had fallen for the cause of international peace and socialist brotherhood. The young soldiers followed the wanderings of the medical orderlies, who were clearly at a loss confronted with such devastation. An orderly would bend over a helpless figure and seem to play with it. But Leonid did not believe that the orderlies really knew what they were doing.
In one respect, Leonid surprised himself. He did not mind helping to lift and carry the wounded. He wanted to make them feel better, although their miseries made no deep impression on him. He spoke a few comforting words, repeating himself frequently, promising the unlucky boys that they would be all right. The regimen called for gathering the wounded officers first. But they, too, now were just boys and young men, no longer radiant with power, but simply shocked into silence, or weeping at their misfortunes, or groaning with their unimaginable pains. The soldiers loaded the officers into the little train of field ambulances, then they filled the few remaining spaces with badly burned other ranks. As the ambulances pulled off they began the drudgery of packing the mass of the casualties into the beds of empty transport trucks. The few wounded enemy soldiers in evidence went carefully ignored until the last, then they were loaded onto the already crowded vehicles. Most of the trucks had no medical orderlies to attend their cargoes, and two officers had an argument that Leonid did not quite understand. Lieutenant Korchuk cautiously avoided touching any of the wounded at all.
After policing their fragment of the battlefield, the soldiers in Leonid’s unit loaded up onto the combat vehicles that were still operable. Leonid, Seryosha, and Sergeant Kassabian rode with a reduced vehicle crew whose members Leonid half recognized from battalion parades. The atmosphere had changed now, and the soldiers grew loose and talkative. The rain had stopped, and they drove down German country roads with the top hatches open, weapons held at a casual ready as they watched the world go by.
In the last twilight, they drove through a village whose streets seemed to have been strewn with diamonds, an effect of the light of burning buildings reflecting off broken glass. Along a street that fire had not yet touched, external blinds had been lowered over windows, sealing the houses off like private fortresses. But an artillery round exploding at the end of the street had blown all of the nearby blinds away, leaving the windows looking like dark, dead eyes. To Leonid, the last untouched houses seemed to be waiting like sheep. In the town square, bodies littered the pavement, some with a distinctly unmilitary appearance.
In the next village, the little column had to wait as towed guns with long, slender barrels moved ahead of them. Then they were delayed again, this time by a serial of military equipment the like of which Leonid had never seen. The oversized vehicles had the appearance of farm machinery, or of giant instruments of torture.
“Engineers,” one of the soldiers said, eager to flaunt his knowledge.
Finally, the vehicle in which Leonid and his comrades rode was directed into position between two houses on the edge of town. Sergeant Kassabian received command of all of the dismounted soldiers. An unfamiliar officer ordered Kassabian to set up firing positions inside the house beside the road.
Even in the dark, Leonid could tell that the Germans were very well-to-do. Sergeant Kassabian made a halfhearted attempt to position the soldiers at firing points behind doors and window frames. But soon he, too, succumbed to the general desire to explore. Seryosha even tried to turn on the electric lights, but there was no power. The soldiers wandered about by the light of matches, stolen lighters, and a few candles that turned up.
The kitchen was full of food, and the soldiers ate their first real meal since their deployment from garrison. They made it into a slopping feast. There was even beer, still mildly chilled from the now-powerless refrigerator. Several of the soldiers commented on the apparent wealth of the Germans, jealous and admiring. Finally, one man said angrily that the Soviet Union could be rich, too, if it stole from starving people in Africa and Asia. Leonid did not know what to believe, but he envied any family that could possess such a house. Then one of the unfamiliar soldiers with whom they had been thrown together began to smash things.
There was no logic to it, but the mood quickly caught on. The soldiers tore through the house, upsetting furniture, hurling vases and figurines, and ripping pictures from the walls. Upstairs, the boys scattered the contents of drawers over the floor, and one soldier found a treasure of oversized women’s underthings. Laughing crazily, he pulled on a drooping bra and panties the size of a big man’s swimming trunks. He pranced about, throwing his shoulders forward in a parody of enticement. In an adjacent room, Leonid discovered a fine little cassette recorder and a drawer full of tapes. He doubted that he could conceal the recorder, and there were too many tapes, so he
