images would remain with him, below the surface, occasionally rising to remind him of what he and his soldiers had done. But now he spent more time thinking of Anna, remembering the fragrance of the sparse Galician spring, and the smell of the woman he had held in his arms. Instead of writing his confession to her, he had found the strength, at last, to write and say he loved her.
He had no idea how long a response would be in arriving, if one were to come at all. He feared that his letter or her reply would go astray in the disruption of events, and he had decided that, if no response came within a month, he would write again. And again. He would not be defeated now by his fears of a little Polish girl.
At the same time, he felt haunted. His mind filled with terrible images of Anna in another’s bed, of her special admissions spoken to another man. He worried that he had already become no more than a bit of finished personal history to her. But he was determined not to surrender without a fight.
A vehicle pulled up on the quay. Bezarin stood. He was not supposed to be off on his own; there were reports of violent assaults against Soviet officers and men throughout the occupation zone. At a minimum, two officers were always to go together, and it was much preferred that officers remain near their place of work or assigned quarters unless official matters called them elsewhere. The soldiers and sergeants were closely restricted.
Bezarin touched his holster.
The sight of the major surprised Malinsky. He had neither wanted nor expected company. He simply wanted to see the Rhine up close, to savor his moment in history as best he could. To confirm the value of his sacrifice. And this nervous major appeared, reaching for his pistol. Malinsky decided to make the best of it.
“I would be grateful, Comrade Major, if you didn’t shoot me.”
The major reddened, embarrassed. He stammered out a barely intelligible apology.
“Don’t worry,” Malinsky told him. “It’s always a good thing to be on your guard.” He recognized the major as one of the men on whom he had pinned a medal not an hour before, and he offered him a cigarette, which the major clumsily declined. It struck Malinsky as odd that this fresh-baked hero would be alone, when Starukhin was holding court for all of his heroes at what promised to be one of the great parties of the century. Malinsky had excused himself so that Starukhin and his boys could relax and drink themselves sick. Starukhin seemed to Malinsky to embody much that was eternally Russian — big, loud, vainglorious, generous, abusive of his personal power, desperate for comradeship, alternately slothful and passionate, and capable of great cruelty.
Well, who knew what devils chewed at this lone major? The war had very different effects on different men. Malinsky examined the younger man. The major’s face looked bright enough. Not as intelligent, and certainly not as sensitive, as Anton’s face had been. But it was the type of clean, earnest face that would go far under the new regime. Certainly, this Hero of the Soviet Union would not be a major much longer.
“Married, Comrade Major? Thinking of your wife and family, perhaps?”
The major had begun to recover from his embarrassment. But he remained ill at ease.
“No, Comrade Front Commander. I’m not married.”
Malinsky flicked his cigarette ashes toward the river. The storied Rhine was a bit of a disappointment to him, running grayish-brown, with eddies of garbage against the shore. “A girl, then?”
The young officer nodded, stupidly eager. “Yes, Comrade Front Commander. A wonderful girl. Very well- educated.”
Malinsky sensed that the major wanted to gush details and descriptions of his beloved. But the younger man had the discipline to restrain himself.
“Well,” Malinsky said, “you must marry her. Marriage is a wonderful institution. I highly recommend it. And you must have children. The Motherland needs to preserve the bloodlines of her heroes.”
Malinsky suddenly wanted to turn the discussion off, to drive the major away so that he might be alone. He thought of his wife. He would not see her for some time yet, and she would have to bear the news of Anton’s fate alone. It seemed terribly unfair that his wife should be alone at such a time. A soldier’s wife never had the comforts or conveniences of a normal life.
Anton’s wife, too, was alone. More alone than his own wife. No one would ever come back to the girl. Malinsky thought of Zena, a silly, irresponsible red-haired girl, impossible to dislike. Swollen with the energy of life, bursting with it. She had possessed none of the makings of a soldier’s wife except the ability to love his son. And that love had made his son so happy that Malinsky found it easy to indulge the girl’s artistic pretensions and ridiculous behavior. Yes, he thought, she made my son happy. I must take care of her.
Malinsky felt tears rising in his eyes, and such a display would never do. He fought for and regained control of himself, flicking the butt of his cigarette carelessly toward the river. But he could not reconcile himself to Anton’s death. He could not bear it. He would have been glad to die, to die miserably, in his son’s place.
He looked at the major, who had averted his eyes. Why should this man live instead of his son? There was nothing special about this major, nothing without which the world could not keep turning. His face bore none of the high traces of honor and breeding that Anton’s fine features had carried. Why, of all the sons, did Anton have to die?
Malinsky understood the mundane logic of it. He understood war. He even comprehended the minuscule importance of his son’s fate in the shadow of events that changed the world. But he could not, he would not, reconcile himself to it. He raged at the death, refused it, holding Anton alive in his heart.
The last of the Malinskys, he thought bitterly. Now we will be nothing more than a footnote in unread historical treatises.
Malinsky followed the major’s stare out over the polluted water to the commanding span of the bridge. The Americans were going. Malinsky knew how close they had come to embarrassing his plan. They had almost beaten him. But “almost” was a word that carried no reward.
He felt no special hatred for the Americans. He admired the good order of their formations, their unbroken feel. He thought of how bitter this march must be for them, when they had fought so well. He believed he could have stopped them at the Weser until follow-on forces arrived. But he was glad he had not had to try.
Malinsky cut short his ruminations. It was time to go. He had other ceremonies to attend, other medals to award, and a host of tedious issues to resolve between toasts. He felt an urge to salute the Americans before he left, the tribute of an old soldier. But he doubted that the major would understand the gesture. The old traditions were dying, and you could not keep them alive artificially, no matter how hard you tried. A new and thoughtless age had overtaken them all. In the end, Malinsky simply wished the major luck with his girl.
Author’s Note
The land power elements of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union have not been known officially as the Red Army for many years. Yet in our informal conversations, in the bold colors of our war games, and in many of our bleakest mental images, the Soviet military remains indelibly Red. Certainly, that shorthand term “Red Army” was the accepted terminology of my childhood in the nineteen-fifties, when my classmates and I practiced huddling under our school desks as a defensive measure against nuclear attack. And we have accepted that “Red Army” as a cliche both verbal and mental, conjuring a “faceless mass,” with only the rarest attempts at differentiating between its individual members as human beings.
For more than a dozen years, I have been frustrated by my inability in formal briefings, lectures, and documents, either in the mud of gunnery ranges or in the comfort of theaters, to adequately transmit anything
