Last Citadel

CHAPTER 23

July 11

0540 hours

the Karteshevka-Prokhorovka road

Dimitri had never seen this much traffic. He moved the General at a slow walk, the pace of the thousands of men and trucks ambling east with him over the road and in the fields on all sides this morning. He hadn’t shifted past second gear in more than four hours, most of that spent jerking along in first. He’d grown impatient with the bumpy ride and the grinding transmission. He wanted to stand up and yell at the shuffling soldiers and spewing trucks, You’re in the way of a tank! A tank! With a shell or two in their tails they’d clear the road fast enough and let the General speed through.

Dimitri was simmering, warming and angry since sunup inside the empty tank. The rest of the crew rode outside on the deck in the fresh air, Valentin with his new lieutenant’s stars, admired by Pasha, and poor Sasha, a cliche of the wounded patriot soldier with white gauze lapped around his head. Dimitri felt used. Last night rolling, crawling, with the metal tide along the road, Valentin’s boots propped out of habit on his shoulders, he felt like a horse, blinkered and reined and ridden. For the first several hours he’d muttered to himself that he was a Cossack and a hetman and many things that were not a horse, but his mumblings had been shaken out of him by the long ride in first gear and by no one to listen; now he stared out his open hatch, out of grim eyes at the exhaust smoke pouring from beneath the truck bumper directly in front of him.

A major reshuffling of forces was taking place. It seemed every able-bodied man, truck, and tank was being crammed into the area around Prokhorovka. The General had picked up a dozen hitchers since sunrise.

Valentin had told the crew they were headed southeast to join the defense of Prokhorovka. They were going to hook up with the 32nd Tank Brigade of the 211th Tank Corps. Dimitri had heard nothing about this unit. What had they done in the battle of Kursk? They were Steppe Front units, reserves.

He had been running under enemy gun sights for a week now, he’d carted Valentin and his cannon in front of a hundred German tanks, Sasha had depleted fifty ammo belts, Pasha had re-loaded his bins a dozen times.

He’d got them all out safe every time. Now they were going to join a brigade of sixty tanks that didn’t even have a scuff on the paint yet. Valentin told them the 32nd Tank Brigade was arrayed directly beside the Prokhorovka road, right in the Germans’ route. Valya was proud, calling it the place of honor. Pasha nearly shit himself hearing this. Another road to defend, Dimitri thought, as if this were some specialty they’d developed. More like a curse, he thought. He swished his tongue but found no moisture, just road dust and ire.

He pulled the General out of line, off the road. He shut down the engine and stood in his hatch, pushing past a thicket of strange legs and muddy boots to shove himself out of the opening and drop to the ground.

He looked up at his tank, it was scabbed with soldiers clinging to every open spot. He stomped into the field away from the road and the endless line of creeping vehicles, all of them going too slow. Behind him men called Hey and What’s he doing? Dimitri walked far enough into the field to not hear them, he stood looking north into open land where a horseman could clip along nicely. Out of the south the booms of combat lobbed over his head.

He expected his son, waiting with his back turned. If he sends Sasha he’s a coward, Dimitri thought. Come yourself.

Finally boots kicked through the crop rows, coming to him. He had swearing ready and his tired hands were balled.

‘Papa.’

Dimitri turned. Pasha and Sasha watched from the deck of the tank.

Valentin was bareheaded. Dimitri pulled his own padded helmet off and dropped it on the ground. He ran both hands through his damp hair, grimacing beneath his mitts.

‘Papa, I’ve got to ask you to stop this.’

So easy a trap I could lay for him, Dimitri thought. I could demand, Stop what? Make him say it. Stop being insubordinate, Papa. Stop being a danger. Stop being unpredictable. Then I can yell back.

‘Why am I so mad at you all the time, Valya?’

Valentin knew the answer, and he said it.

‘We’ve traded places, Papa. You weren’t ready for it. That’s all.’

Dimitri had seen a wife die. Comrades skewered or shot. A powerful father wasted to illness and gone too young. He’d seen a man’s life and knew he should not have this as his saddest moment. But there it was, and it seemed so wrong to be this crushed at something a boy said.

Is this what happens to every father, at war or not? Does this moment hurt all fathers this much? When did I do this to mine? Did I stare him down like a dog that got too old to hunt?

Dimitri gazed at the ground and waited for it, the notion to slap his son. Then he lifted his eyes to his son’s face.

Valentin had not moved or flinched. His son stood with the backdrop of a mural behind him, men and machines rushing to the defense of Russia, to bar the road to Prokhorovka; this Lieutenant Berko and his crew had fought in the worst of the battles for Kursk and now hurried to fight in another. Dimitri’s hands relaxed. He chuckled at himself. No matter how little else was left to him, either pride or time, he was the father of a Soviet hero. In a Soviet country, this was not so bad a thing.

When will he know me, Dimitri wondered? Never. The roads separated too soon, my son’s and mine, there was not enough time, the war and the Communists came too swiftly. This boy learned the sword and now the tank. But Valya does not know his father, as I did not know mine until now. Perhaps that’s just how it works. We do not know, that’s why wars are fought, great wars like the one in the river valley at the end of this road, infinitesimal wars like the one in the space between the locked eyes of father and son. And perhaps we will not know God the Father until too late also. Dimitri sighed for all this stumbling around blind. What a design, to make things this way, pieces that will never fit, what sort of machine is life to be like that? That’s why it runs so rough. Before his sigh was done it became a good laugh. This was Dimitri’s gift, the true Cossack’s gift, to switch sides nimbly, to pick the winner and go with him.

He eased beside Valentin, and laid his arm across the boy’s shoulders. He gave Valya’s frame a squeeze, pleased to feel muscle and grit there.

‘Have you heard from your sister?’

‘No. She hasn’t written in weeks.’