of machinery and instruments and the bulky gun breech, there was a lot of elbowroom. This machine smelled startlingly like a new car; Pug guessed this came from the heavy leather seats for the gunner and the commander. He knew very little about tanks, but the workmanship of the raw metal interior seemed good, despite some crude instrument brackets and wiring. The dials, valves, and controls had an old-fashioned German look.
“Great God, Henry, it’s a land battleship,” Tudsbury said. “When I think of the tiny tin cans we rode in! Why, the best German tanks today are eggshells to this. Bloody eggshells! What a surprise!”
When they climbed out, soldiers were clustering around the tank, perhaps a hundred or more, with others coming through the trees. On the flat hull stood Pamela, embarrassed and amused under the male stares. Bundled in mud-caked lambskin, Pamela was not a glamorous object, but her presence seemed to thrill and hypnotize the tankists. A pale moonfaced officer with glasses and long yellow teeth stood beside her. Major Kaplan introduced him as the political officer. “The commissar would like to present all of you to the troops,” said Amphiteatrov to Victor Henry, “as he feels this is a serious occasion that can be used to bolster their fighting spirit.”
“By all means,” Victor Henry said.
He could understand only fragments of the strident quick-tumbling harangue of the moonfaced commissar, but the earnest tones, the waving fist, the Communist slogans, the innocent, attentive faces of the handsome young tankists, made a clear enough picture. The commissar’s speech was half a revivalist sermon and half a football coach’s pep talk. Suddenly the soldiers applauded, and Amphiteatrov began to translate, in bursts of three or four sentences at a time, during which the moon face beamed at him:
“In the name of the Red Army, I now welcome the American naval captain, Genry, the British war correspondent, Tudsbury, and especially the brave English newspaperwoman, Pamela, to our front. It is always good for a fighting man’s morale to see a pretty face.” (
Comrade Stalin has said that the side which has more petroleum engines will win this war. Why is the petroleum engine so important? Because petroleum is the biggest source of energy today, and energy wins wars. We tankists know that! Hitler and the Germans thought they would make a lot of petroleum engines in a hurry, put them in tanks and aircraft, and steal a march on the world. Hitler even hoped that certain ruling circles in America and England would help him once he decided to attack the peaceful Soviet people. Well, he miscalculated. These two great nations have formed an unshakable front with the Soviet peoples. That is what the presence of our visitors shows us. We three countries possess many more petroleum engines than the Germans, and since we can manufacture still more engines faster than they can, because we have much larger industries, we will win this war.
“We will win it faster if our fiends will hasten to send us plentiful war supplies, because the Nazi bandits will not quit until we have killed a great many of them. Above all, we will win much faster if our British allies will open a second front at once and kill some German soldiers too. Certain people think it is impossible to beat Germans. So let me ask this battalion: have you fought Germans?”
Twilight had fallen during the harangue, and Pug could barely see the nearest soldiers’ faces. A roar came from the darkness: “DA!”
“Have you beaten them?”
“DA!”
“Are you afraid of Germans?”
“NYET!” — and barking male laughter.
“Do you think the British should be afraid to open a second front against them?”
“NYET!” — and more laughter, and another bellow, a college cheer, in Russian, “
“Thank you, my comrades. And now to dinner, and then back to our tanks, in which we have won many victories and will win more, for our socialist motherland, our sweethearts, our mothers, our wives, and our children, and for Comrade Stalin!”
A tremendous college cheer in the gloom: “WE SERVE THE SOVIET UNION!”
“The meeting is over,” hoarsely cried the commissar, as the moon rose over the trees.
Pug came awake from restless sleep on a straw pallet, on the dirt floor of a log cabin. Beside him in blackness Talky Tudsbury liquidly snored. Groping for a cigarette and lighting it, he saw Pamela as the match flared upright on the only bed, her back to the plastered log wall, her eyes glittering. “Pam?”
“Hello there. I still feel as though we’re bumping and sliding in mud. D’you suppose if I stepped outside, a sentry would shoot me?”
“Let’s try. I’ll step out first. If I get shot, you go back to bed.”
“Oh, that’s a fine plan. Thank you.”
Pug pulled on the cigarette, and in the red glow Pamela came over and clasped hands. Moving along the rough wall, Pug found the door and opened a blue rectangle in the dark. “I’ll be damned. Moon. Stars.”
A high moon, partly veiled by swift-rolling clouds, dusted the thatched huts and the rutted empty road blue- gray. Across the road in the woods, soldiers were sadly singing to an accordion. Victor Henry and Pamela Tudsbury sat down on a rough bench, hands clasped, huddling close in the frigid wind which blew straight up the road.
Underfoot the mud was ridged hard.
“Dear God,” Pamela said, “it’s a long long way to Tipperary, isn’t it?”
“Washington, D.C.’s even further.”
“Thanks for bringing me out, Victor. I was sitting there not daring to move. I love the smell of the countryside, but lord, that wind cuts you!”
Yellow flashes ran along the sky and loud thumps followed fast. Pamela winced against him, with a little gasp, “Oh, oh! Look at that. Talky was a pig to drag me out here, wasn’t he? Of course it suits him. He dictated two hours by candlelight tonight, and he couldn’t have written a line himself. It’s quite a story, I’ll say that. Are those tanks as startling as he claims? He says in his last sentence that if the Soviet Union can mass-produce them, the war’s as good as over.”
“Well, that’s journalism. Size isn’t everything. Any tank, no matter how big, can be an incinerator for crews if it’s built wrong. How maneuverable is it? How vulnerable is it? The Germans’ll find the weak spots. They’ll rush out a new gun that can penetrate these things. They’re good at that. Still, it’s quite a tank.”
“Count on you!” Pamela laughed. “I think that was why I couldn’t sleep. I had this vision of the war coming to a sudden end. It was such a weird, dazzling idea! The Germans beaten, Hitler dead or locked up, the lights going on again in London, the big cleanup, and then life continuing the way it used to be! All because of these monster tanks rolling by the thousands to Berlin — my God, those guns do sound close.”
“It’s a pipe dream,” Victor Henry said. “The Germans are winning. We’re pretty close to Moscow here, Pam.”
After a silence she said, looking up at the moon and stars and then at Pug’s shadowy face, “When you just said those tanks couldn’t end the war, do you know what? I felt relieved. Relieved! What kind of mad reaction was that?”
“Well, the war’s something different, while it lasts.” Victor Henry gestured at the angry yellow flare-ups on the black western clouds. “The expensive fireworks — the travel to strange places -”
“The interesting company,” Pamela said.
“Yes, Pam. The interesting company.”
The accordion was playing alone now, a plaintive tune like a lullaby, half drowned by the cracking and sighing of trees in the wind.
“What is that sensation of sudden remembering supposed to mean?” she said. “The sort of thing you felt yesterday at the Tolstoy place?”
Pug said, “Isn’t it a kind of short circuit in the brain? Some irrelevant stimulus triggers off the sense of recognition when it shouldn’t. So I once read.”
“On the
