City of Thieves

23

That evening we sat with the other prisoners in a sheep barn just outside of Krasnogvardeysk. The air smelled of wet wool and dung. The Germans had given us a few twigs for firewood and most of the men were gathered around a timid little fire in the center of the barn. Tonight they were too tired to talk of escape. They complained with little vigor that the Germans hadn’t fed us since the morning biscuit, they muttered predictions about the next day’s weather, and soon all of them were sleeping on the cold ground, spooned together for warmth. Vika, Kolya, and I sat with our backs against the splintering wood wall, shivering, debating whether or not the game would happen.

“If he sends for us,” Vika said, “if they bring us to him, I promise you, they will search us for weapons.”

“They already searched the prisoners. What are they going to think, we found guns in the sheep barn?”

“The man knows he’s a target. He’s very careful. They’ll find the guns.”

Kolya responded with a mournful fart, low and solemn as a single note from a baritone horn. Vika shut her eyes for a few seconds, breathing through her mouth. I studied her pale red lashes in the firelight.

“All the same,” she said at last, “they will find the guns.”

“So what should we do, strangle the man?”

She reached into her coveralls, pulled her Finnish knife from the sheath on her belt, and began carving a little grave in the frozen dirt. When it was deep enough, she buried her pistol and held out her hand for Kolya’s.

“I want to keep it.”

She waited with her outstretched hand and finally he handed it over. When both pistols were covered with soil, she unbuttoned her coveralls and unbuckled her belt. Kolya gave me a little nudge. The coveralls had slipped off Vika’s shoulders; beneath them she wore a heavy wool woodcutter’s shirt and two layers of long underwear, but for a moment I saw her collarbone shifting beneath skin speckled with dirt. I had never before given any conscious thought to another human’s collarbone; hers looked like the wings of a gliding seagull. She yanked off her canvas belt, lifted her woodcutter’s shirt and the two undershirts to just below her breasts, held the shirts in place with her chin, and strapped the belt to her bare skin. The knife sheath now rested against her sternum, and when she pulled down the undershirts and the woodcutter’s shirt and rebuttoned her coveralls, it was impossible to detect its shape.

She took my hand and placed it against her chest. “Do you feel anything?”

I shook my head and Kolya laughed. “Wrong answer.”

Vika smiled at me. My hand still rested on her padded chest. I was scared to move it and scared to keep it there. “Don’t listen to him, Lyova. He was born from his mother’s ass.”

“You two want some privacy? I could cuddle up with old Edik over there. He looks lonely.”

“What about my knife?” I asked her.

“I forgot about your knife.”

“Let me have it,” said Kolya. “I know how to use it.”

“No,” said Vika. “They’ll search you the most carefully. You’re the only one who looks like a soldier.” She leaned forward and I pulled away my hand, certain that I had somehow missed an opportunity even if I didn’t know what it was or where it went. She unclipped the sheath from my boot and hefted it in her hand for a moment, pondering its size and shape. Finally, she slipped it deep inside my boot, under my sock. She examined the boot again. Nothing was visible. She patted the leather and seemed satisfied.

“Can you walk normally?”

I stood and took a few steps. I could feel the sheath point digging into my foot, but it seemed secure, held firmly in place by my sock and my boot.

“Look at him,” said Kolya. “The silent killer.”

I sat down beside Vika again. She touched the soft spot below my ear and drew her finger across my throat, stopping below the other ear.

“You cut that open,” she told me, “and no one can ever close it.”

The senior officers of Einsatzgruppe A had commandeered the Krasnogvardeysk party headquarters, a grubby warren of small offices with peeling linoleum floors above the blackened husk of the police station. The building stank of smoke and diesel fumes but the Germans had already restored electricity and fired up the furnaces; the second floor was warm and comfortable, aside from the occasional brushstroke of dried blood on the walls. A few hours after we buried the pistols, two troopers from the Gebirgsjäger battalion escorted the three of us into the conference room, where before the town fell the planning committee members had met to discuss orders from above and commands for below. Four-paned windows overlooked the unlit main street of Krasnogvardeysk. Posters of Lenin and Zhdanov still hung from the walls, unmolested, as if their stern expressions bothered the Germans so little they weren’t worth tearing down or defacing.

Abendroth sat at the far end of the long table, drinking clear liquor from a cut-crystal tumbler. He nodded when we walked into the room, but made no move to stand. His gray peaked hat—banded in black, with a silver death’s head below the German eagle—rested on the tabletop. A traveling chessboard, the pieces already arranged, waited between the hat and an unlabeled, nearly empty bottle of liquor.

I had been expecting a slender aesthete, a professorial type, but Abendroth was a big man, built like a hammer thrower, his collar digging into the veins of his thick neck. The heavy tumbler seemed dainty as a doll’s cup in the palm of his hand. He didn’t look older than thirty, but the close-cropped hair on the sides of his head was white, as was the stubble on his chin. SS lightning bolt runes gleamed on his right collar tab; four silver pips indicated his rank on the left tab; and a black-and-silver Knight’s Cross hung in between.

He was at least a little drunk, though his movements remained perfectly coordinated. I had learned at an early age how to spot a drunk, even the skillful drunks who held their liquor well. My father wasn’t a big drinker, but his friends all were, poets and play-wrights who had never gone to bed sober in their adult lives. Some were sloppy with their affection, kissing my cheeks and mussing my hair while they told me what a lucky little man I was to have a father like him. Others were cold and distant as orbiting moons, waiting for me to return to the room I shared with my sister, to leave the adults alone so they could resume their debates about the Litburo or Mandelstam’s latest provocation. Some slurred their words after a single glass of vodka and some became articulate only after draining their first bottle.

Abendroth’s eyes shined a little too brightly. He smiled from time to time for no apparent reason, amused by whatever joke he told himself. He watched us and didn’t say a word until he had finished his glass of liquor, wiped his hands together, and shrugged.

“Plum schnapps,” he told us, his Russian quite precise, though like his fellow Einsatz officer at the schoolhouse he made no effort to approximate the accent. “An old man I know makes it by hand, best stuff in the world, and now I bring a case with me wherever I go. One of you speaks German?”

“I do,” said Kolya.

“Where did you learn it?”

“My grandmother was from Vienna.” Whether this was true or not I had no idea, but he said it with such conviction Abendroth seemed to accept it.

“Waren Sie schon einmal in Wien?”

“Nein.”

“Too bad. Beautiful city. And no one has bombed it yet, but that will not last. I expect the English will get to it before the year is out. Someone told you I play chess?”

“One of your colleagues back at the schoolhouse. An Obersturmführer, I believe? He speaks Russian almost as well as you.”

“Kuefer? With the little mustache?”

“That’s the one. He was very…” Kolya hesitated as if he were not sure how to proceed without saying something offensive. “… friendly.”

Abendroth stared at Kolya for several seconds before snorting, amused and disgusted. He covered his mouth with the back of his hand and burped before pouring himself another glass of the schnapps.

“I am sure he was. Yes, he is very friendly, Kuefer. And how did your conversation turn to me?”

“I told him my friend here is one of the best players in Leningrad and he said—”

“Your Jewish friend here?”

“Ha, that was his joke, too, but no, Lev’s no Jew. He got the curse of the nose and none of the money.”

“I am surprised Kuefer did not inspect the boy’s cock to verify his race.”

Still looking at me, Abendroth commented in German for the benefit of the troopers, who glanced my way, curious.

“Did you understand what I just said?” he asked Kolya.

“Yes.”

“Translate for your friends.”

“‘It is my business to know a Jew when I see one.’”

“Very good. And unlike our friend Kuefer, I can spot a girl, too. Take off your hat, my dear.”

For a long count Vika did not move. I did not dare to look at her, but I knew she was debating whether or not to go for her knife. It would have been a pointless gesture, the troopers would have gunned her down before she had taken a step, but pointless gestures seemed like all we had left. I could feel Kolya tensing beside me—if Vika went for her knife, he would lunge for the nearest trooper, and then everything would end very quickly.

The imminence of death did not frighten me as much as it should have. I had been too afraid for too long; I was too exhausted, too hungry, to feel anything with proper intensity. But if my fear had diminished, it was not because my courage had increased. My body was so weak, so spent, that my legs trembled from the effort of standing upright. I could summon no great concern for anything, including the fate of Lev Beniov.

Vika finally removed her rabbit fur cap and held it between her hands. Abendroth downed half his glass with a single swallow, pursed his lips, and nodded.

“You will be pretty when your hair grows out. Now everything is in the open, yes? Tell me something,” he said to Kolya. “You speak German quite well, but you cannot read Russian?”

“It always gives me a headache, trying to read.”

“Of course. And you,” he said to me, “you are one of the best chess players in Leningrad, but you cannot read either? It is a strange combination, yes? Most of the chess players I know are quite literate.”

I opened my mouth, hoping lies would flow forth as quickly as they did for Kolya, but Abendroth raised one palm and shook his head.

“Do not bother. You passed Kuefer’s test, good, I respect that. You are survivors. But I am not a stupid man. One of you is a Jew posing as a Gentile; one is a girl posing as a boy; all of you, I assume, are literates posing as illiterate. And despite the attentions of our vigilant mountain rangers and the esteemed Obersturmführer Kuefer, all these ruses have succeeded. And yet you asked to come here for a game of chess. You asked for me to notice you. This is very strange. You are not fools, that is clear, or you would already be dead. You do not really expect that I would set you free if you win this game, do you? And the dozen eggs… the dozen eggs is the strangest part of the whole equation.”

“I realize you don’t have the power to free us,” said Kolya, “but I thought, if my friend wins, perhaps you could put in a good word with your superiors—”

“Of course I have the power to free you. It is not a question of— ah.” Abendroth pointed at Kolya and nodded, almost smiling. “Very good. You are a clever one. Play on the German’s vanity. Yes, no wonder Kuefer was so fond of you. Explain the eggs.”

“I haven’t had one since August. We’re always talking about the food we’re craving, and I couldn’t get the idea of fried eggs out of my head. The whole day, marching in the snow, that’s all I could think about.”

Abendroth tapped the tabletop with his fingertips. “So, let’s consider the situation. The three of you are confirmed liars. You come up with a dubious story that gets you a private audience—” Abendroth glanced at the troopers and shrugged. “A semiprivate audience with a senior officer of the despised Einsatzgruppe A. Obviously you have information you wish to trade.”

There was a moment’s silence before Kolya said, “I don’t understand.”

“I think you do. You know which of the prisoners are Bolsheviks, perhaps, or you have heard plans for Red Army troop movements. You cannot deliver this information in front of the other Russians so you arrange for this meeting. It happens very often, you know. Your countrymen seem eager to betray Comrade Stalin.”

“We’re not traitors,” said Kolya. “The boy happens to be very good at chess. I heard you’re a player. I saw an opportunity.”

“This is the answer I hoped for,” said Abendroth with a smile. He gulped down the rest of his tumbler of schnapps and poured out the final glass, holding it to the light to examine the liquor.

“My God, this is the stuff. Seven years in an oak cask…”

He took another small sip, patient now, not wanting to rush the last glass. After a moment to savor the schnapps, he spoke a few quiet words in German. One of the troopers leveled his MP40 at us while the other stepped closer and began patting me down.

The knife had seemed well hidden back in the sheep barn, but standing there while the soldier searched me, I could think of nothing but the hard leather sheath digging into the top of my foot. He searched the pockets of my father’s old greatcoat, checked beneath my armpits, under my belt, down my legs. He dug his fingers into my boots and my fear returned, a jolt of pure terror, mocking me for the numbness I had felt five minutes before. I tried to breathe normally, to keep a calm expression on my face. He prodded around my shins, found nothing, and moved on to Kolya.

I wonder how much he missed it by, how many millimeters separated his fingertips from the sheath. He was a boy, a year or two older than I was, his face constellated with small brown moles. His classmates had teased him about those moles, that was certain. He had stared at them in the mirror, sullen and ashamed, wondering if he could shave them off with his father’s razor. If he had gotten another fifteen minutes of sleep the night before, if he had swallowed another spoonful of soup, he might have had the energy to do his job properly and find the knife. But he did not, and his carelessness changed everything for both of us.

When he finished searching Kolya, he stepped over to Vika. His fellow ranger made a joke and chuckled at his own wit. Maybe he wanted to goad the boy into slapping Vika’s ass or pinching a nipple, but she watched him with her cold unblinking eyes and he seemed unnerved, inspecting her far less thoroughly than he had Kolya and me. I realized the boy must be a virgin; he was as nervous around a woman’s body as I was.

After he timidly patted down her legs, he stood, nodded to Abendroth, and backed away. The Sturmbannführer watched the boy for a moment, a slight smile curling his lips.

“I think he is afraid of you,” he told Vika. He waited a few seconds to see if she would respond and when she didn’t, he turned his attention to Kolya. “You are a soldier, I cannot release you or you will rejoin the Red Army, and if you kill a German, his parents would have me to blame.” He looked at me. “And you are a Jew; releasing you goes against my conscience. But if you win, I will let the girl go home. That is the best offer I can make.”

“I have your word you’ll let her go?” I asked him.

Abendroth rubbed the silver stubble on his chin with his knuckles. A gold wedding band on his ring finger caught the light from the bulb overhead.

“You like the girl. Interesting. And you, little redhead, do you like the Jew? Never mind, never mind, no need to be vulgar. So… you are in no position to make demands, but yes, you have my word. I have been looking for a good game since Leipzig. This country has the best chess players in the world and I have not seen anyone competent.”

“Maybe you shot them before you could find out,” said Kolya. I held my breath, quite certain this was a step too far, but Abendroth nodded.

“It is possible. Work comes before play. Come,” he said to me, “sit. If you are as good as your friend says, I might keep you around for the competition.”

“Wait,” said Kolya. “If he wins, you let her go and you give us the eggs.”

Abendroth’s patience with the back and forth began to fade. His nostrils flared as he leaned forward, though he did not raise his voice.

“What I have offered is more than generous. You wish to continue with this stupidity?”

“I believe in my friend. If he loses, put bullets in our heads. But if he wins, we’d like to fry up some eggs for supper.”

Abendroth spoke again in German and the older trooper jammed the muzzle of his gun against the base of Kolya’s skull.

“You like to negotiate?” asked Abendroth. “Good, we negotiate. You seem to think you have leverage. You have no leverage. I say two words and you become a corpse. Yes? Two words. Do you understand how fast it happens? You are a corpse, they drag your body outside, I play chess with your friend. Later on, maybe I take the little redhead back to my room, give her a bath, see what she looks like without all the dirt. Or maybe not, maybe no bath, maybe tonight I want to fuck an animal. When in Rome, yes? Now think, boy, think very carefully before you open your mouth. For your own sake, for your mother’s sake if the bitch still lives, think.”

Another man would have decided to leave it alone and shut up for good. Kolya did not hesitate for more than a second.

“Of course, you can kill me whenever you’d like. This is undeniable. But do you think my best friend here will have a decent game left in him after he sees my brains on the table? Do you want to play Leningrad’s best or a scared boy with piss running down his leg? If he can’t win our freedom, very well, I understand, this is war. But at least give him the chance to win the supper we’ve been dreaming about.”

Abendroth stared at Kolya, his fingertip slowly drumming the tabletop, the only sound in the room. Finally, he turned to the trooper with the moles and uttered a clipped command. After the young German saluted and left the room, the Sturmbannführer gestured for me to sit in the chair at the corner of the table beside him. He nodded to Kolya and Vika and pointed to the chairs at the far end of the table.

“Sit,” he ordered them. “You have been walking all day, yes? Sit, sit. Should we flip a coin?” he asked me. Without waiting for a response he pulled one from his pocket and showed me the swastika-clutching eagle on one side and the fifty Reichspfennig marking on the other. He flicked the coin in the air with his thumb, caught it, slapped it down on the back of his other hand, and looked up at me. “Bird or numbers?”

“Numbers.”

“You do not like our bird?” he asked with a slight smile. He removed his hand and showed me the Nazi eagle. “I’ll play white. And do not worry—you can keep your queen.”

He slid his queen’s pawn forward two spaces and nodded when I mirrored the move.

“One day I will choose a different opening.” He moved his c-pawn up two, offering the sacrifice. The Queen’s Gambit. At least half the games I played started with these moves. Weekend players and grand masters alike began with the combination; it was still too early to tell if the German knew what he was doing. I declined the Gambit and moved my king’s pawn forward a space.

Over the years I’ve played thousands of games against hundreds of opponents. I’ve played on a blanket in the Summer Gardens, in tournaments at the Palace of the Pioneers, in the courtyard of the Kirov with my father. When I played for the Spartak club, I kept records of all my games, but I threw them away when I quit competition. I was never going to study my old matches, not after I realized I was only a middling player. But if you gave me a piece of paper and a pen, even today, I could write out the algebraic notation of my entire game with Abendroth.

I sprang my queen from the back row on the sixth move, which seemed to surprise him. He frowned, scratching the stubble along his upper lip with his thumbnail. I chose the move because I thought it was a good one, but also because it might appear to be a bad one—neither of us yet had any sense of our opponent’s skill, and if he believed I was a poor player, I could lure him into committing a critical mistake.

He murmured something in German and moved his kingside knight, a reasonable response but not the one I had feared. If he had taken my pawn, he would have kept the initiative, forcing me to respond to his aggression. Instead he played defensively, and I took advantage by moving my bishop into his territory.

Abendroth leaned back in his chair, studying the board. After a minute’s worth of contemplation, he smiled and looked up at me.

“It has been a long time since I had a good game.”

I said nothing, watching the board, visualizing potential sequences of moves.

“You do not need to worry,” he continued. “Win or lose, you are safe. A good game every night will keep me sane.”

He sat forward again and moved his queen. While I deliberated, the young trooper returned carrying a slatted wood box stuffed with straw. Abendroth asked him a question and the trooper nodded, placing the box on the table.

“You’ve put me in the mood,” Abendroth said to Kolya. “If I win, I might eat a twelve-egg omelet.”

Kolya, sitting at the far end of the table, grinned at the sight of the box of eggs. Both troopers now stood behind him and Vika, their hands never straying from the butts of their submachine guns. Kolya had been trying to follow the game from a distance, but Vika stared at the table. Her face never gave much away, but I could tell she was irritated and I realized, far too late, that I had missed an opportunity. When the trooper had gone to fetch the eggs, we briefly outnumbered the Germans; they had guns and we had only knives, but it might have been our best chance.

Eight moves into the game the Sturmbannführer and I began exchanging pieces. I took a pawn; he took a knight. I took a bishop; he took a pawn. At the end of this flurry our forces were still evenly matched, but the board had opened up and I judged my position stronger.

“Violinists and chess players, eh?”

I had been afraid to look at him before, but now I stole a glance as he analyzed our formations. Sitting so close, I could see the dark, swollen crescents below his hazel eyes. His jaw line was strong and right-angled, in profile a capital L. He noticed that I was watching him and he raised his massive skull to stare back at me. I lowered my eyes quickly.

“Your race,” he said. “Despite everything, you make wonderful violinists and chess players.”

I pulled back my queen and for the next twelve moves we gathered our forces, avoiding direct confrontation. Both of us castled, protecting our kings as we prepared for the next battle, massing toward the center, trying to claim the best ground. On the twenty-first move I nearly fell for an elegant little trap he had set for me. I was ready to snatch an exposed pawn when I realized what the German had planned. I returned my bishop and moved my queen to give her a better angle of attack.

“Too bad,” said Abendroth. “That would have been a pretty little maneuver.”

I looked over and saw that Kolya and Vika were staring at me. The plan had never been spelled out, but now it seemed obvious. I wriggled my foot in my boot and felt the dead pilot’s sheath digging into my ankle. How quickly could I pull the blade? It didn’t seem possible that I could get the knife free and slash Abendroth’s throat before the troopers gunned me down. Even without his soldiers protecting him, Abendroth looked far too powerful for me to kill. When I was little, I had seen a strongman in a circus with hands like the Sturmbannführer’s—he had twisted a heavy steel wrench into a knot, and because it was my birthday, I got to keep it. For years I saved the knotted wrench, showed it to my friends in the Kirov, bragged about how the strongman had tousled my hair and winked at my mother. One day I looked for it and could not find it; I suspected Oleg Antokolsky stole it, but I never had any proof.

The idea of pulling a knife on a man that big panicked me, so I stopped thinking about it for a few minutes and concentrated on the game. A few moves later I saw an opportunity to exchange knights. My position seemed a little cramped, so I forced the trade. Abendroth sighed when he took my piece.

“I should not have allowed that.”

“Well played,” cried Kolya from the far end of the table. I turned that way, saw that he and Vika were still watching me, and quickly returned my focus to the board. How had I become the chosen assassin? Didn’t Kolya know me by now? Abendroth should die, I knew that—I had wanted him dead since I heard Zoya’s story. Without doubt he had slaughtered thousands of men, women, and children as he followed the Wehrmacht across Europe. Berlin awarded him shiny medals for executing the Jews, Communists, and partisans of occupied countries. He was my enemy. But facing him now across the chessboard, watching him worry his wedding ring as he contemplated his next move, I didn’t believe I was capable of murdering him.

The sheath dug into my ankle. The Sturmbannführer sat across from me, the collar of his jacket digging into a blue vein on the side of his broad neck. Kolya and Vika sat at the far end of the table, waiting for me to act. Given the weight of these distractions, I managed to play decent chess. As meaningless as the outcome might have been, the game mattered to me.

I sat with my elbow on the table, my head propped on my palm so that my hand blocked my view of Kolya and Vika. On the twenty-eighth move I pushed my c-pawn to the fifth row, an aggressive advance. Abendroth could take the piece with his b- or d-pawns. There is an old rule in chess that players should “capture toward the center.” Abendroth followed classical strategy, using his b-pawn, establishing dominance in the middle of the board. But just as Tarrasch said, “Always put the rook behind the pawns, except when it is incorrect to do so,” capturing toward the center is the right move except when it is wrong. When the sequence was over, we had exchanged two pawns each, our piece count was still even, and like a man who has swallowed poison but continues to chew his meat, not realizing his death is now certain, Abendroth had no idea he had committed a fatal error.

Far from tipping over his king, the German thought he held the superior position. As we neared the endgame, his a-pawn was alone on the edge of the board, racing toward the eighth row, where he could transform into a queen and batter my defenses. Abendroth was so intent on getting a second queen he gladly accepted the various exchanges I proposed. How could he lose with two queens on the attack? Focused on his a-pawn, he didn’t realize until too late that I had my own passed pawn in the center of the board. In the end, my d-pawn earned its promotion one move before his a-pawn. Two queens are tough to beat unless your opponent gets his second queen first.

Abendroth still did not realize the game was over, but it was over. I glanced at Vika, stupidly proud of my imminent victory, and saw that her hand had slipped inside her coveralls. She would wait no longer for me to act, she was reaching for her knife; and Kolya had his hands on the edge of the table, ready to shove himself to his feet and attack when she did. My eyes met Vika’s and I knew with sudden clarity that if I sat still, her tattered body would soon be dripping out its last on the peeling linoleum floor.

While Abendroth considered the board and the rare mob of queens, I pretended to itch my calf, dipping my fingers slowly inside my boot. This was not a surge of courage, but the opposite— my fear of Vika’s death overpowered all my other fears. Abendroth squinted at his king and I saw his expression shift as he understood the truth about his position. I expected defeat to anger him. Instead a smile brightened his face and for a moment I could see what he must have looked like as a young boy.

“That was beautiful,” he said, raising his head to look at me. “Next time I won’t drink so much.”

Whatever he saw in my own expression troubled him. He peered around the table and saw my hand digging inside my boot. I fumbled with the hilt and finally yanked the knife free of its sheath. Before I could swing at him Abendroth lunged forward, knocking me out of my chair and onto the floor, pinning my knife hand down with his left hand and reaching for his holstered pistol with his right.

If I had managed to free my knife faster, if I had lucked into slashing his jugular, if this miracle had happened, Vika and Kolya and I would have died. The troopers would have raised their MP40s and blasted us from existence. Abendroth’s alertness—or my clumsiness, depending on how you look at it—saved us. As the troopers charged forward to help the Sturmbannführer, who needed no help, they neglected their other prisoners. Only for a moment, but that was enough.

Abendroth drew his automatic. Hearing the clamor at the far end of the room, he looked that way. Whatever he saw worried him more than this feeble, emaciated Jew writhing beneath him. He aimed at his target—Vika or Kolya, I could not see. I cried out and reached for the barrel of the gun with my left hand, slapping the muzzle just as he pulled the trigger. The pistol kicked and the report nearly deafened me. Abendroth snarled and tried to pull the gun away from my grasping fingers. Fighting him was as pointless as fighting a bear, but I clung to the barrel of that gun with all the strength left in me. Those seconds were a tumult of noise and violence, hollered German and flashing muzzles, the drumming of boot heels on linoleum.

Frustrated by my stubborn grip, Abendroth punched me hard in the side of the head with his left hand. I had been in a few scrapes and tussles growing up in the Kirov, but they were the brand of sloppy, bloodless fights you’d expect from boys who belong to chess clubs. No one had ever hit me in the face. The room went blurry, fireflies darting across my field of vision, as Abendroth ripped his automatic out of my hand and pointed it at my eyes.

I sat up and shoved the point of my knife deep into his chest, through the breast pocket of his jacket, below the cluster of medals, the blade sliding in all the way to the silver finger guard.

Abendroth shuddered and blinked, looking down at the black hilt. He still could have shot a bullet through my brain, but avenging his own murder did not seem important to him. He looked disappointed, his lips curling downward, and finally he looked confused, blinking steadily, his breath gone ragged. He wanted to stand, but his legs gave way and he toppled over sideways, falling off of the knife in my hand, his pistol dropping from his slack fingers. He opened his eyes wide—a sleepy man forcing himself awake— placed his palms on the linoleum, and tried to crawl away from the sordid tableau, ignoring the commotion around him. He did not get far.

I turned and saw Kolya struggling on the floor with one of the troopers, both men trying to gain control of the German’s submachine gun. By that point I considered Kolya a champion fighter, but no one had told the trooper and he seemed to have the upper hand. I don’t remember getting to my feet or running over to help, but before the trooper could level his MP40 and empty his magazine into Kolya’s chest, I was on the man’s back, plunging the knife in and pulling it out, again and again.

Vika finally pulled me off the dead man. Her coveralls were drenched with blood and before logic could assert itself, I assumed she had been shot in the gut. I don’t think I said anything coherent, but she shook her head, hushed me, and said, “I’m not hurt. Here, let me see your hand.”

I didn’t understand the request. I raised my right hand, still clutching the bloody knife, but she gently pushed it down, took my other wrist, and held my left hand between her palms. For the first time I realized that I was missing half of my index finger. Vika knelt beside one of the dead troopers—the boy with the moles, who stared blindly at the ceiling, his throat split open—and cut a strip of wool from his pants. She came back to me and tied it around my finger, a tourniquet to staunch the bleeding.

Kolya had grabbed the MP40s. He tossed one to Vika, kept the other for himself, and snatched the egg crate off the table. We could hear German voices calling out from elsewhere in the building, confused officers wondering if the gunshot they heard in their sleep was dreamed or real. Kolya slid open one of the four-paned windows and crawled onto the ledge.

“Hurry,” he said, beckoning for us to follow him. He jumped and I rushed to follow him. The drop from the second floor wasn’t very far and the snow below the window was a meter deep. I lost my balance on landing and tumbling face-first into the snow. Kolya hauled me to my feet and brushed the snow from my face. We heard a burst of gunfire from the conference room. A moment later Vika leaped from the window, smoke rising from the muzzle of her submachine gun.

We ran from the burned-out police station. Unlit streetlamps curled above us like question marks. The shouting from the old Party headquarters intensified and I expected bullets to start ripping through the air, but none ever came. The guards stationed at the front door must have run inside when they heard the gunfire; by the time they realized their mistake we were lost in the darkness.

Soon we reached the edge of the small town. We turned off the road and ran through the frozen farm fields, past the silhouettes of abandoned tractors. Back in Krasnogvardeysk we could hear car engines revving and chain-wrapped tires trundling over the snow. In the murky distance ahead we could see the black edge of the great forest waiting to receive us, to cloak us from the eyes of our enemies.

I have never been much of a patriot. My father would not have allowed such a thing while he lived, and his death insured that his wish was carried out. Piter commanded far more affection and loyalty from me than the nation as a whole. But that night, running across the unplowed fields of winter wheat, with the Fascist invaders behind us and the dark Russian woods before us, I felt a surge of pure love for my country.

We ran for the forest, crashing through the stalks of wheat, beneath the rising moon and the stars spinning farther and farther away, alone beneath the godless sky.