Things changed again when they joined a Soviet division. Things became more organized, more compartmentalized. Magda welcomed a regimen that was predictable. She felt safer. Her rifle was requisitioned, and she was sent far behind the line to join the nurses. It was only then that she finally risked making friends once more. Natalia, a Ukrainian blonde, had run off to become a nurse so that she could be near her boyfriend. He had been killed. Ula was a no-nonsense Pollack who taught Magda how to drink and smoke. She reminded Magda of Renata.
Magda was efficient, especially when it came to bullet wounds. One day there had been so much blood, so much anguish, and she recognized that one soldier would bleed out. She grabbed her dagger, undid the man’s tunic, cleaned out the wound, and dug into it to retrieve the bullet. Afterward, she cleaned and sealed his shoulder. Ula and Natalia praised her, and Magda had told them about Dr. Tauber, told them—as they smoked together—about the models of the heart and the brain and the organs in Dr. Tauber’s office and how much she had enjoyed examining them. Magda stopped short of talking about the circumcision kit, and not because she had pushed her way through the cloud, which the third shot of vodka had created, but because of the past and the guilt those memories brought had choked Magda up. She had vowed long before to never cry again. Tears were wasted in war.
For the first few months, she also told herself love would be a waste as well. She was usually located far behind the fighting troops, but when she saw the bodies being carried and transported, when she knew that the men had been deployed to the front or sent to a skirmish, Magda could not sleep. She tossed and turned, worried about Karol the entire time and became so anxious that she told him she no longer wanted anything to do with him. They could remain friends, but the idea of losing yet another person who had become so close to her was more than she could bear. It was easier if they maintained a distance.
Karol, however, had his own ideas about how to handle Magda’s insecurities. In the late spring of ’43, he yanked her out of the makeshift hospital and led her to a field where several soldiers—thanks to a raid—had found munitions and weapons and were practicing firing. Karol’s hair was shorn away, his body lean and hard beneath the half-opened tunic, and his cinched trousers accented his hunger.
“It’s time to make you into a real warrior, Magda. It’s time you learned how to take control and defend yourself. I believe you will feel better if you learn how to use this properly.”
Magda walked away.
Sometime later, the division enjoyed a rare respite. They were all together in a small village, the willows iridescent green, the blue brooks meandering into the horizon. The villagers held a dance, but Magda avoided Karol, and she was never more miserable in her life. She smoked and drank and then she lured a Russian field soldier into the woods. She climbed on top of the man, and when he tried to take over, Walter swam before her face. She dug her nails into the man’s shoulders, raked them across his chest, and bit him on the upper arm, drawing blood.
The Russian screamed, threw her off of him, and walloped her with the back of his hand. With his trousers halfway around his ankles, he fled the forest, calling her a crazy whore.
Magda put her hand on her face, her left cheek throbbing—alive!—and laughed, wide mouthed and silent, her entire body shaking. She wondered—not for the first time—how she had become all this.
That event, however, made an impression on the field soldier and the men in his četa. Her reputation proceeded her as the rumors were passed on from one squad to the next. Magdalena Novák was not someone to mess around with—she was to be avoided at all costs. She was touched, not right in the head. She might be fun and she might be able to drink you under the table, but she would likely cut your manhood off if she could. To this Magda almost had to smile. The irony of that rumor was hers and only hers to appreciate.
A week later, certain she had no other choice but to accept her pariah status, she coolly watched Karol as he approached her nurses’ station. She expected him to be angry, jealous, broken. Anything. He was disheveled and had not shaved his beard, but instead of words of reprimand, he swung his rifle off his shoulder and thrust it at Magda.
“We’re pushing west,” he said. “And the Americans are moving east. This war is going to end, and I feel it will be sooner than later. Are you ready to show them what they really have to fear? It’s time to live up to your reputation, Warrior Queen.”
She opened her mouth. She stared at the rifle. She did not want this war to end. She did not want to face the woman she was at the other end of it.
Magda followed him onto the range, ran with him, trained with him, and made friends with the other women who had also volunteered to fight. Within a few weeks, Magda earned the right to be outfitted and sent on her first detail. Winter was around the corner again, and she felt she had only begun to recover from the previous one. At first she was assigned to simple things: scouting out a ridge. Reporting how many tanks, how much artillery, how many soldiers. Return to base, report, and then go sit down and let the men do the fighting. But when there had been a surprise attack on their division, Magda whipped up her rifle and ran headlong
