Last Citadel

toward the front, forcing the commander to stand behind it. It was done this way to protect the commander during combat from ahead, but in the end it was simply cumbersome, difficult to see around, and the cause of many bloody noses during sudden stops. But Valentin looked good in the commander’s spot, peering down at Dimitri kneeling in the grass. He had a Cossack nose, sharp and long like a sword, a square jaw, and the blue eyes of the Azov sky, the ancient canopy for the Kuban and Don horsemen. Dimitri had passed to his son his own wiry build and black hair.

But the boy did not always keep his head up, and Dimitri lamented that he had given Valentin a Cossack’s body but not his soul.

Dimitri rose and stepped back from the General, to let the boy have it to himself for a while, for it was new to him, too. Valentin’s head disappeared into the tank, the hatch banged shut above him. In seconds the tank came alive. The periscope in the commander’s hatch began to rotate. Then Valentin worked the manual crank to elevate the main gun. The long barrel lifted to its full height, thirty degrees, then drooped to its lowest elevation, minus three degrees. The turret’s low profile made it a hard target, but the closeness of the gun mantlet to the chassis made it impossible to depress the main gun far. This restricted the gunner’s ability to fire at close targets, or to level the barrel when the tank sat behind a protective berm with the hull tilted up. So many compromises, Dimitri thought. So much left undone in the making of a tank, a son.

Dimitri watched the tank, silent and motionless now, wrapped around his boy. Together he and Valya had fought and killed, escaped and spit smoke and blood. Dimitri did not know how many German tanks they’d faced in the war, hundreds certainly. He had no count of how many they’d beaten. Enough to still be standing here, whatever the number. Valentin in combat was an excellent gunner, his marksmanship with the 76 mm main gun was as good as any tanker. But as a commander, when the bold time came, that moment in every battle when you face life or death and leave it to God to decide, the boy could hesitate. He waited for instructions, held in check by the Communists, who fight sometimes as if they’re afraid to go in alone, so instead they die in ten thousands. These times Dimitri took over, he turned the tank toward God and the Germans and told the boys over the intercom to keep shooting. The others in their crews, the ones dead now, believed he was insane. He wasn’t, ever. He was a Cossack.

The commander’s hatch lifted with a creak. I’ll need to grease that, thought Dimitri. I’ll need to groom the whole damn thing, and then some German will shoot it out from under me again. Valentin hoisted himself out of the hatch, dropping gracefully to the ground.

‘Good,’ he said.

‘I think so,’ Dimitri agreed.

Valentin stuck his tongue inside his lip. He looked at his boots. ‘I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment to you.’

Dimitri glared at the top of his son’s head, longing to yank Valya’s eyes up from the earth.

‘You’re soft,’ he told his son.

‘I follow orders.’

‘You follow Communists.’

‘Stalin’s winning the war.’

Dimitri held out one veined forearm. He pointed at the blue tracks marbling the muscle. ‘You see this? This is what’s winning the war. Russian blood. Not Stalin, not Lenin. Me. You. You know what the word ‘Cossack’

means. It’s Turkish, from kazak. It means - ‘

‘Freedom, Papa, it means freedom. We’ve had this discussion.’

‘And I want to have it again.’

‘I’m not going to fight with you.’

No, thought Dimitri, it seems you’re not.

The son, born under the reign of Lenin, turned his back on his father, born under Tsar Alexander III. He took several steps with Dimitri glaring at his back.

‘When will we get our new crew?’ Dimitri called, his tone controlled, as if he were a private asking his sergeant.

Valya stopped. He did not turn or raise his head. Face me, thought Dimitri, get your fucking head up.

‘In a few days, I’m told.’

‘Well, if you’ve been told, I’m sure that’s what will happen.’

The boy’s jaw was set. Dimitri nodded at this, pleased.

‘My mother was a saint.’

Svetlana. Dead. Starved by Stalin fifteen years ago in the Ukraine along with ten million others. There she was, in Valentin’s lean Cossack face, just for an instant, defending herself on his lips. Dima, Dima, you bastard! she’d shouted at him a thousand times; Dima, you fool, she’d laughed a thousand more.

‘Yes, she was,’ Dimitri answered.

Over the battleground of the mother and wife, father and son stood equal for a few seconds. Then she was eclipsed by the boy’s own spirit and Valya’s eyes dropped again.

‘Leave me alone,’ Dimitri told him, ‘and let me get this tank ready.’

Valentin walked away into the hip-high grass, following the tank tracks crushed there by his father.

* * * *

June 28

2315 hours