“Ah, yes, the famine. A tragic ... accident?” He ventured a smile. “We’re not supposed to call it an act of God.”
“I said—No matter.” I said they were starved to death. The harvests never failed. The state simply took everything from us. That brought us at last to submission. “I only wanted to say that many Ukrainians feel they have a grievance.” They never quite gave up hope. In their hearts., they resist yet.
Indignation flashed. “They are stupid!”
Katya sighed. “They certainly made a bad mistake, those who went over to the Nazis.”
God help me, I might have myself. If Hitler had been willing, no, if he had been able to treat us as human beings, he would have had us all. This day he would hold Moscow, Leningrad, Novosibirsk; Stalin would cower among his gulags in the farthest comer of Siberia, or be a refugee with the Americans. But no, the fascists burned, raped, slew, tortured, they dashed out the brains of babies and laughed while they machine-gunned children, women, the old, the unarmed, they bayoneted for sport, they racked prisoners apart or doused them with gasoline and set them alight, oh, it sickens me to think of them in holy Kiev!
“You knew what was right, and did it,” Pyotr said softly. “You are braver than I.”
She wondered if fear of the NKVD had kept him from deserting. She had seen the corpses the Green Hats left along the roads by the thousands, for a warning.
“What made you join the partisans?” he asked.
“The Germans occupied our village. They tried to recruit men from among us, and killed those who refused. My husband refused.”
“Katya, Katya!”
“Luckily, we were newly married and had no children.” I was rather newly arrived there, bearing a fresh name. That has grown difficult under the Communists. I have to search out slovenly officials. But they are common enough. Poor Ilya. He was so glad, so proud of his bride. We could have been happy together for as long as nature allowed.
“Luckily?” Pyotr knuckled fresh tears. “Regardless, you were very brave.”
“I am used to looking after myself.”
“As young as you are?” he marveled.
She couldn’t help smiling. “I’m older than I look.” Rising: “Time for another survey.”
“Why don’t we each take a window?” he suggested. “We could watch almost without a break. I feel much better. Thanks to you,” he ended adoringly.
“Well, we could—“ Thunder grumbled. “Hold! Artillery! Stay where you are.”
She sped to the north room. Early winter dusk was falling, the wreckage gone vague among shadows, but Mamaev still bulked clear against the sky. Fire flickered there. The crashing waxed, widely about. “Our half-truce is over,” she muttered when she came back to look east. “The big guns are busy.”
He stood at the middle of the floor, his features hard to see in the quickly thickening murk but his voice uncertain. “Did the enemy begin it?”
Katya nodded. “I think so. The start of whatever they have planned. Now we earn our pay, I hope.”
“Really?” The question trembled.
“If we can get some idea of what is going on. How I wish we had a moon tonight.” She chuckled dryly. “But I wouldn’t expect the Germans to pick their weather to oblige us. Keep quiet.”
She shuttled between windows. Dark deepened. Thin snow on untrafficked streets was slightly helpful to eyes and night glasses. The cannonade mounted.
Abruptly breath hissed between her teeth. She risked leaning out for a better view. Cold fell around her like a cloak.
“What is it?” Pyotr tried to whisper.
“Hush, I told you!” She strained to be sure. Black blots on the next street over from this, headed straight north... A hunter could interpret traces for a soldier. Those were perhaps a hundred men, afoot, therefore infantry, but they dragged several carte on which rested faintly sheening shapes that must be mortars ...
They passed. She lowered her glasses and groped through the apartment till she found Pyotr. He had sat down, maybe in his weariness he had fallen asleep, but he sprang to his feet when she touched him.
Tautness keened within her. “Germans bound for Kratoy Gully,” she said into his ear. “Got to be, on that route. If they wanted to go fight near the hill, they’d1 be headed westerly and I might never have seen them.”
“What ... do they intend?”
“I don’t know, but I can guess. It’s surely part of a general offensive against our sector. The cannon—and maybe armor, attacking from the side—those should hold our people’s attention. Meanwhile yonder detachment establishes itself in the ravine. It has the makings of a strongpoint. Our headquarters was in Tsaritsa Gorge, farther south, till the Germans took it, at heavy cost. If they take and hold the Kratoy, why, troops can scramble straight through it, or their engineers might throw a new bridge across.”
“Do you mean we could lose the whole city?”
“Oh, that alone won’t do it.” We have our orders, directly from Stalin. Here, at this place he renamed in his own honor, here we stand. We die if need be, but the enemy shall not pass one centimeter beyond us. “Every little thing counts, though. It would surely cost us hundreds of lives. This is what I came for. Now I go back and tell.”
She felt him shiver. “We go!”
A dead man’s hand clenched around her throat. She swallowed twice before she could say: “Not together. It’s too important. This whole district will be aswarm. I’ll have all I can do to get through alive, and I’m experienced. You must try by yourself. Wait here till—tomorrow night?—till it looks safer.”
Between her hands, he straightened. “No. My comrades are fighting. I ran away once. Not again.”
“What use will you be, with that wound of yours?”
“I can carry ammunition. Or—Katya, you might not make it. I might, by sheer luck, and let them know.” He laughed, or sobbed. “A tiny, tiny chance, but who can say for certain?”
“Oh, God. You idiot.”
“Every little thing counts, you said.”
Yes, each scrap thrown into the furnace, it does become part of the steel. “I mustn’t delay, Pyotr. Give me, well, half an hour till you start, so I can get clear. Count to, uh—”
“I know some old songs and about how long they take. I’ll sing them in my head. While I think of you, Katya.”
“Here.” She undid objects and tossed them on the sofa. “Food, water. You’ll need strength. No, I insist; I’m not injured. God keep you, lad, you—you Russian.”
“We’ll meet again. Won’t we1? Say we will!”
Instead, she cast her arms about him and laid her mouth on his. Just for a minute. Just for a memory.
She stepped back. He stood. His breath went like flaws of wind in the dark (springtime wind?) amidst the hammering of the guns. “Do be careful,” she said. Taking up her rifle, she felt her way to the door.
And down the stairs. And into the streets.
Tanks roared somewhere on her left. Would the Germans mount a night attack? Likelier a feint. But she was no strategist, merely a sharpshooter. Flashes etched skeletal buildings against a reddened sky. She felt the racket through her bootsoles. Hers was simply to deliver a message.
Or to survive? What had she to do with the cruel follies of mortals? Why was she here?
“Well, you see, Pyotr, dear, I am a Russian too.”
A park, a piece of openness between these jagged walls, glimmered white before her. A solitary tree was left, the rest were stumps and splinters around a crater. She skirted it, keeping to shadows. Likewise would she skirt the ravine, and be most cautious when she came to the railroad tracks that led to the Lazur. She must arrive with her word.
She doubted Pyotr would. Well, if not, he’d stop a bullet or two that might otherwise have gone into somebody more effective. If somehow he kept alive—Maria of the mercies, let him, help him!—of course they’d never see each other, or hear, or anything. Suppose two grams of dust are whirled together for a moment when a storm runs over the steppe. Will it bring them back?
Certainly never her to him. She would be changing identities again before long. Whenever the Four Horsemen rode across the world, they opened easy ways for doing that. She could not have stayed much more with the
