City of Thieves

22

The Germans woke us by prying the nails out of the planks they had hammered over the doorway. Sunlight shot through the gaps in the wallboards, tiny spotlights shining on a greasy forehead, a leather boot with the sole curling away from the toe, the horn buttons of an old man’s coat.

Vika sat next to me, chewing on her fingernails. She chewed methodically, not an anxious person with a nervous habit but a butcher sharpening his knives. At some point in the night she had moved away from me and I hadn’t felt her leave. She looked up when she sensed I was watching and there was no trace of affection in her eyes. Any glimmer of intimacy I felt in the darkness was gone in the daylight.

The door opened, the Germans shouted at us to move, and the peasants disentangled themselves from one another. I saw the old man Edik press a gnarled forefinger against one nostril and blow a gob of snot to the floor, barely missing another man’s face.

“Ah,” grumbled Kolya, wrapping his scarf around his neck, “don’t you wish you grew up with our comrade farmers on a collective?”

As the prisoners began to file out the door, a man on the far side of the shed cried out. Those around him turned to see what had frightened him and soon they were anxiously whispering among themselves. From our corner all we could see were peasants’ backs. Kolya and I stood, curious about the commotion. Vika, uninterested, headed for the door.

We stepped to the other side of the shed, sidled around the muttering peasants, and looked down at the man still lying there. It was Markov’s accuser, his throat slashed, the blood long drained from his body, and his face chalk white. He must have been murdered in his sleep or we would have heard him cry out, but his eyes had popped open when the knife cut his skin; they bulged from their sockets, staring with horror at our downturned faces.

One of the peasants yanked off the dead man’s boots; a second took his sheepskin gloves; a third pulled the tooled leather belt from the belt loops on his pants. Kolya knelt down and snatched the quilted down cap before anyone else could. I turned and saw Vika adjusting her own rabbit fur cap, setting it very low on her forehead. She looked back at me for a second and walked out of the toolshed. A moment later a German trooper stepped inside, angry at the delay, ready to fire his weapon. He saw the corpse, the gaping throat, the bloodstain that started under the dead man’s back and spread across the floorboards like a pair of monstrous black wings. The murder irritated the trooper—this required an explanation for the officers. He asked a question in German, more to himself than any of us, not expecting an answer. Kolya cleared his throat and replied. I couldn’t judge Kolya’s German, but the trooper seemed amazed to hear his own language spoken by a prisoner.

The German shook his head, gave a curt response, and gestured with his thumb for us to leave the shed. When we were outside, I asked Kolya what he had said.

“I told him the peasants hate the Jews even more than your people do.”

“And what did he say?”

“‘There is a proper way of doing things.’ Very Germanic.” He was trying to fit his new cap onto his bare head; it wasn’t really big enough, but he managed to yank the earflaps down far enough so he could tie the drawstrings together.

“You think it’s smart to let them know you speak German? After what they did yesterday?”

“No, I think it’s dangerous. But at least now they won’t ask any more questions.”

The prisoners had been organized into a single-file line; we shuffled forward, squinting in the bright morning sun, toward a hulking, hungover trooper, his eyes still crusted with sleep, who handed each of us a single round biscuit, hard and dry as a lump of coal.

“A good sign,” muttered Kolya, tapping at his biscuit with his fingernail.

Soon we were marching south with the Gebirgsjäger company, heads bowed against the wind. Today we walked on the road, though the pavement was hidden beneath layers of tread-marked snow. A few kilometers from the schoolhouse we passed a sign for Mga and I pointed it out to Kolya.

“Huh. What day is today?”

I had to think about it, counting backward in my head to Saturday.

“Wednesday. We’re supposed to show up with the eggs tomorrow.”

“Wednesday…. I haven’t shit in thirteen days. Thirteen days…. What happens to it all? It’s not like I haven’t eaten anything. Darling soup and some sausages, those buttered potatoes with the girls, ration bread… What’s it doing, just sitting in my belly, a fucking lump?”

“You want to shit?” asked Edik, the old bearded peasant, who had heard Kolya’s complaints and now turned to give advice. “Boil some buckthorn bark and drink the water. Never fails.”

“Wonderful. You see any buckthorns around here?”

Edik glanced at the roadside pines and shook his head. “I’ll give a whistle if we pass any.”

“Many thanks. Maybe you can find me the boiling water, too.”

Edik had already faced front and resumed his place in the line, mindful that one of the troopers had looked our way.

“Stalin goes to visit one of the collectives outside of Moscow,” began Kolya in his joke-telling voice. “Wants to see how they’re getting on with the latest Five-Year Plan. ‘Tell me, comrade,’ he asks one farmer. ‘How did the potatoes do this year?’ ‘Very well, Comrade Stalin. If we piled them up, they would reach God.’ ‘But God does not exist, Comrade Farmer.’ ‘Nor do the potatoes, Comrade Stalin.’”

“Old one.”

“Jokes only get old if they’re good. Otherwise, who keeps telling them?”

“People like you who aren’t funny?”

“I can’t help it if you never laugh. I make the girls laugh, that’s what matters.”

“You think she did it?” I asked him. He glanced at me, confused for a moment, until he saw that I was watching Vika, who marched apart from us today, near the front of the procession.

“Of course she did it.”

“I just… She was squeezed up against me all night. When I fell asleep, her head was on my shoulder—”

“That’s as close to sex as you’ve ever been. You see that? You’ve listened to me, you’ve learned.”

“—and somehow she managed to get away from me, and I’m a very light sleeper, crawl around thirty peasants in total darkness, cut the man’s throat, and come back? Without waking a single person?”

Kolya nodded, still watching Vika, who walked alone, scanning the roadside and the position of the German troops.

“She’s a talented killer.”

“Especially for an astronomer.”

“Ha. Don’t believe everything you hear.”

“You think she’s lying?”

“I’m sure she went to university for a while. That’s where they recruit. But come, little lion, you think she learned to shoot like that in astronomy class? She’s NKVD. They have agents in every partisan cell.”

“You don’t know that.”

He stopped for a few seconds to kick one boot against the other, knocking off snow trapped in the sole, holding my arm to balance himself.

“I don’t know anything. Maybe your name isn’t Lev. Maybe you’re the greatest lover in the history of Russia. But I consider the facts and I make an educated guess. The partisans are local fighters. That’s why they’re so effective—they know the land better than the Germans ever will. They have friends in the area, family, people who can give them food, a safe place to sleep. Now, tell me, how far are we from Archangel?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know, either. Seven, eight hundred kilometers? The German border is probably closer. You think the local partisans just decided to trust some girl who showed up out of nowhere? No, she was sent to them.”

She plodded through the snow ahead, her hands jammed into the pockets of her coveralls. From behind she looked like a twelve-year-old boy wearing a stolen mechanic’s uniform.

“I wonder if she has any tits,” said Kolya.

His crudity annoyed me, though I had wondered the same thing. Judging her body beneath the oversize coveralls was impossible, but from what I could tell she was curveless and slender as a blade of grass.

He noticed the expression on my face and smiled.

“Did I offend you? I apologize. You really like this one, don’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“I won’t talk about her that way anymore. Will you forgive me?”

“You can talk about her any way you want.”

“No, no. I understand now. But listen, this isn’t an easy fish to hook.”

“Are you going to give me more advice from your made-up book?”

“Just listen. Make your jokes, fine, but I know more about these things than you. My guess is she was a little bit in love with that Korsakov. And he was a tougher man than you, so you can’t impress her with toughness.”

“She wasn’t in love with him.”

“Just a little bit.”

“I never thought I was going to impress her with toughness. Do you think I’m that stupid?”

“So the question is, what do you impress her with?”

Here Kolya went silent for a long time, eyes scrunched up, forehead creased with worry lines as he pondered my assets. Before he could think of any we heard shouts behind us and turned to see the troopers waving us to the side of the road. A convoy of Mercedes half-tracks with tarpaulin-covered flatbeds rumbled past, hauling provisions and materiel to the front lines. We stood watching for five minutes and still there was no end to the slow-rolling convoy. The Germans could not have cared less about impressing their prisoners, but I was impressed. Fuel rationing in Piter meant that I rarely saw more than four or five moving vehicles in a day. I had already counted forty of the hybrid trucks, with their rubber tires in front and tank tracks in the rear, three-pointed stars on their grilles and white-bordered black crosses painted on their backsides.

Behind the half-tracks came eight-wheeled armored cars, caterpillar-tracked heavy mortars, and light trucks carrying troopers seated on parallel benches, faces weary and unshaven, rifles strapped to their shoulders, huddled up in their white anoraks.

We heard curses from the front of the convoy, drivers leaning out of their windows to find out what the trouble was. One of the self-propelled artillery pieces had slipped a tread, and while its operators scurried to fix it, the howitzer blocked everything behind it. The infantrymen took the opportunity to jump out of their trucks and piss along the side of the road. Soon there was a line of several hundred troopers and half-track drivers and artillerymen stamping their boots and hollering to their friends, leaning back to see who could launch their stream the farthest. Steam rose from the yellow snow.

“Look at these ass-lickers pissing on our land,” muttered Kolya. “They won’t be laughing so loud when I squat down to shit in the middle of Berlin.” The thought cheered him. “Maybe that’s why I can’t squeeze one out. My bowels are waiting for victory.”

“Patriotic bowels.”

“Every part of me is patriotic. My cock whistles the ‘Soviet Hymn’ when it comes.”

“Whenever I hear you two talking, it’s always cocks and asses,” said Vika. She had crept up behind us in her usual silent way, startling me when she spoke. “Why don’t you both strip naked and get it over with?”

“It’s not me he wants to strip naked,” Kolya said with a leer.

I felt a rush of anger and embarrassment, but Vika ignored the comment, keeping an eye out for watchful guards and other prisoners as she slipped us both half slices of her good rye bread.

“You see the officers’ cars at the end of the convoy?” she asked, looking in that direction but not raising a hand to point.

“That’s the best bread I’ve had since summer,” Kolya said, his portion already devoured.

“You see the Kommandeurwagen with the swastika fender pendants? That’s Abendroth’s car.”

“How do you know?” I asked her.

“Because we’ve been tracking him for three months. I almost had a shot at him outside Budogoshch. That’s his car.”

“What’s the plan?” asked Kolya, picking at a caraway seed stuck between his teeth.

“When the convoy starts moving again, I’ll wait till he’s close and I’ll take my shot. Shouldn’t be hard.”

I looked up and down the road. We stood in the middle of what seemed like a full battalion, surrounded by hundreds of rifle-toting Germans on foot and in armored vehicles. Vika’s pronouncement meant that we would die in a few minutes, whether or not she hit her target.

“I’ll take the shot,” said Kolya. “You and Lev stand over there with those cretins from the collective. No point bringing us all down.”

Vika curled her lips in her half smile and shook her head. “I’m the better shooter.”

“You’ve never seen me shoot.”

“True. And I’m the better shooter.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I told them. “Both of you shoot, what difference does it make? You think they’ll let any of us live after that?”

“The boy has a point,” said Kolya. He surveyed the illiterate prisoners standing around us, shuffling their feet and clapping their hands to keep warm, most of them farmers who had never before traveled more than a few kilometers from their collectives. A few Red Army privates were mixed into the lot. One or two of them, I was sure, could read just as well as I could.

“How many prisoners did they say? Thirty-eight?”

“Thirty-seven now,” said Vika. She saw me staring at her and she stared right back with those pitiless blue eyes. “How long do you think you’ll last before one of these peasants notices you’re missing a few bits down there”—and here she pointed at my crotch—“and turns you in for an extra bowl of soup?”

“Thirty-seven…. It seems like too many to sacrifice for one German,” said Kolya.

“Thirty-seven prisoners headed to the steel mills? These men aren’t Russian assets anymore,” she said in her quiet, uninflected tone. “They’re German labor. And Abendroth is worth sacrificing for.”

Kolya nodded, peering at the Kommandeurwagen in the distance.

“We’re pawns and he’s a rook, that’s what you’re saying.”

“We’re less than pawns. Pawns have value.”

“If we can take a rook, we have value, too.”

Saying this, Kolya blinked and looked at me. He flashed a sudden and certain smile; his whole Cossack face lit up with the grandeur of a new idea.

“Maybe there’s another way. Wait here a minute.”

“What are you doing?” asked Vika, but it was too late; he had already started toward the closest cluster of troopers. The Germans narrowed their eyes when they saw him coming and moved their fingers toward their trigger guards, but Kolya held up his hands and began chattering to them in their native tongue, as cheerful and relaxed as if we were all gathered together to watch a parade. After thirty seconds they were laughing at whatever jokes he was telling. One of the troopers even let him take a long drag off the man’s cigarette.

“He has charm,” said Vika. She sounded like an entomologist discussing a beetle’s carapace.

“They probably think he’s their long-lost Aryan brother.”

“The two of you are a strange couple.”

“We’re not a couple.”

“I don’t mean it like that. Don’t worry, Lyova. I know you like girls.”

My father had called me Lyova and hearing the nickname coming from her mouth—so unexpected but so natural, as if she had been calling me that for years—almost made me want to cry.

“He made you angry before, didn’t he? When he said that about wanting to see me naked.”

“He says a lot of stupid things.”

“So you don’t want to see me naked?”

Vika wore her mocking smile now, standing with her feet wide apart, her hands jammed into the pockets of her coveralls.

“I don’t know.” Yes, it was a stupid and cowardly response, but I could not handle the morning’s peaks and valleys. One moment I thought I had a few minutes left to live; the next a sniper from Archangel was flirting with me. Was she flirting with me? The days had become a confusion of catastrophes; what seemed impossible in the afternoon was blunt fact by the evening. German corpses fell from the sky; cannibals sold sausage links made from ground human in the Haymarket; apartment blocs collapsed to the ground; dogs became bombs; frozen soldiers became signposts; a partisan with half a face stood swaying in the snow, staring sad-eyed at his killers. I had no food in my belly, no fat on my bones, and no energy to reflect on this parade of atrocities. I just kept moving, hoping to find another half slice of bread for myself and a dozen eggs for the colonel’s daughter.

“He told me your father was a famous poet.”

“He wasn’t that famous.”

“Is that what you want to be? A poet?”

“No. I don’t have any talent for it.”

“What do you have talent for?”

“I don’t know. Not everybody has talent.”

“That’s true. Despite what they always told us.”

From the look of things, Kolya was delivering a grand lecture to the troopers arrayed around him in a semicircle, making elaborate hand gestures to punctuate his sentences. He pointed at me and I felt my throat constrict as the German soldiers turned and glanced my way, curious and amused.

“What the hell is he telling them?”

Vika shrugged. “He’ll get himself shot if he’s not careful.”

The troopers seemed doubtful, but Kolya kept cajoling them and finally one of them, shaking his head as if he couldn’t quite believe he was listening to this lunatic Russian, adjusted the strap of his MP40 and hustled toward the back of the convoy. Kolya nodded to the remaining men gathered around him, made some final joke that had them grinning again, and ambled back to us.

“The Nazis adore you,” said Vika. “Were you quoting Mein Kampf?”

“Tried to read it once. Very dull.”

“What did you say to them?”

“I told them I had a wager for Herr Abendroth. That my friend here, a fifteen-year-old boy from the less-fashionable side of Leningrad, could play without a queen and still beat the Sturmbannführer in a game of chess.”

“I’m seventeen.”

“Oh. Well, fifteen is more of an insult.”

“Is this a joke?” asked Vika, head tilted to one side, watching Kolya and waiting for him to smile and explain that he had done no such stupid thing.

“No joke.”

“You don’t think he’ll wonder how you knew he was here? Knew his rank, knew that he played chess?”

“I think he’ll wonder all of those things. And that will make him curious, and that will make him come to us.”

“What’s the bet?” I asked him.

“If he wins, he can shoot us dead on the spot.”

“He can shoot us dead whenever he wants, you thick-headed fool.”

“That’s what the troopers said. Of course he can. But I told them that the Sturmbannführer is a man of honor, a man of principle. I told them I trust his word and I trust his spirit of competition. They love all that blood and honor horseshit.”

“What do we get if I win?”

“First, he sets all three of us free.” He saw our expressions and cut us off before we could speak. “Yes, yes, you think I’m an idiot, but you two are the slow ones. We can’t play now, with the convoy moving. With any luck the game happens tonight, inside, away from all of this.” Kolya waved his hand, indicating the German soldiers standing in loose circles, chatting and smoking; the half-tracks loaded with provisions; the heavy artillery.

“He’ll never set us free.”

“Obviously he’ll never set us free. But we’ll have a much easier shot at him. And if the gods are smiling, maybe we’ll even have a chance to run.”

“‘If the gods are smiling,’” said Vika, mocking Kolya’s pomposity. “Have you been paying attention to this war?”

The mechanics had reset the track on the self-propelled howitzer. The driver and his crew hopped into the hatch. Moments later the engine coughed back to life and the long-turreted beast groaned into motion, cracking through the ice that had formed around its cast-steel track pads. The infantrymen didn’t seem in any rush to get back to their trucks, but after their final hoarse-voiced good-byes, with the officers shouting and the convoy beginning to snake forward, they took long last drags on their cigarettes, flicked them away, and hopped back onto the tarpaulin-covered flatbeds.

The trooper who had set off with the message for Abendroth jogged back to his unit. When he saw us watching him, he nodded and smiled. His face was pink and hairless, his cheeks round, and it was easy to picture him as a baby bald and bawling. He hollered at us, a single German word, before catching up to his already rolling truck, reaching out a hand, and letting one of his compatriots haul him onboard.

“Tonight,” said Kolya.

Our guards had already barked at us, knowing we didn’t understand and not caring. The message was simple enough. The prisoners formed into lines again, Vika drifted away from us, and we waited for the long convoy to pass. When the Kommandeurwagen motored by, I tried to spot Abendroth, but the window glass was frosted over.

I remembered something that had been bothering me and I turned to Kolya.

“What’s the second thing you asked for?”

“Hm?”

“You said if I win, first he sets us free. So what’s the second thing you asked for?”

He looked down at me, his eyebrows tilted toward each other, incredulous that I could not guess.

“Isn’t it obvious? A dozen eggs.”