Last Citadel

‘Good. You will send ten of your able-bodied men to come with us.’

The elder’s hands worked his hat in a circle, turning it by the rim.

‘Please, sir. Please.’

Plokhoi’s horse shifted under him, an impatient movement from the animal. His voice matched the horse’s gesture.

‘Please what?’

‘Sir. I am sorry. This we cannot do.’

Plokhoi’s horse moved out of the pack of dark partisans. The animal came close to the starosta and tossed his head. The old man made no move to back away, but the turning of his hat quickened.

‘Please?’ Plokhoi repeated from high above the peasant.

The elder clutched his hat now, stopping his hands. He spoke but could not raise his head to answer, as if Plokhoi’s boot were on it.

‘Sir. The Germans. They’ve…’ and the old man quit.

‘They’ve what?’ Plokhoi demanded over the elder’s bowed head to the rest of the village. ‘The Germans have what? Have they been such good masters to you in the two years they’ve occupied your land that you won’t rise against them now?’

Plokhoi slung his legs down from the saddle. He walked away from the horse, leaving it untethered, and the animal stood still. He strode to the middle ground between the villagers and the mounted partisans. He lifted both arms.

‘We greeted the Germans, didn’t we all? We met them with bread and salt. They were supposed to be our liberators from Stalin and his henchmen, they were the ones to set us free from the tyranny of the Communists. Hitler couldn’t be worse than Stalin, we said. We were all hopeful.’

Plokhoi lowered his hands. He nodded to the people.

‘I was, I know. I hated Stalin. I saw the steppe fill with the graves of starved women and children, next to wheat fields that should have fed them. I watched comrades be jailed, exiled, or shot for raising their voices against the repressions. So I was first in line when the Germans came. I waved my arms in the air.’

He walked past the starosta to an old woman. Flesh hung from her face, in the quarter light of the night Katya could see her hunger. Her neighbors stepped away from her now that the partisan came close.

Plokhoi reached for her hand. ‘How many of your men have the Nazis taken, mother?’

The woman lowered her chin, but with his free hand, Plokhoi lifted her face to his.

‘How many, mother?’

‘Half.’

‘Half your men.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve lost half my men, too, mother. Should I tell you about it? They were left beside a railroad mound, unburied, to rot like cabbage.’

Plokhoi held the old woman’s hand for a long moment, then let her loose gently. He stepped back to address the villagers.

‘Your men, the ones the Nazis took. They were executed. Two of your men for every one of theirs killed by the partisans. I know this. I’ve seen the bodies hung outside this village. I’ve seen it in other villages, too. You were ordered by the occupation police to let them hang for two weeks before you could cut them down and bury them. Two weeks!’

Katya imagined the gallows of corpses dangling in the middle of this little collection of pastel houses, the people shuffling past their husbands, brothers, cousins, friends, watching them turn blue-black and crow- pecked.

She saw the bodies piled beside a railroad. Her mouth went dry.

Plokhoi raised his voice.

‘And others. They were taken to Germany as slaves. I know this, too. I was captured from my home in Poltava. My brother, as well. But I escaped.

My brother’s in Germany somewhere, starving worse than you, beaten every day, spit on. Instead of a gun, he carries German slop buckets.’ He unstrapped his carbine and with one hand he hoisted it over his head.

‘I carry the gun.’

He held the rifle high for several seconds, a statue of dark resistance; in Katya’s mind he stood beside the gallows, defying it, equaling it. Then with a clatter he lowered the gun and strapped it back over his shoulder.

‘So will you.’

Silence descended in the village, broken only by a shifting horse, a squeak from a saddle.

The starosta linked his knotty hands in front of his face. He held them up to Colonel Bad, as a counterweight to the gun, a prayer perhaps to equal the partisan’s command.

‘Please,’ the old man said again. ‘I ask you to let us alone. My people have…’

So much was on the old man’s tongue. He wanted to tell all to this partisan gang come out of the darkness, all the stories of his village’s sufferings. But Katya knew Plokhoi would not be moved by suffering. And the starosta knew this, too, for all he could say was ‘I beg you, please go away.’