City of Thieves

25

The snow had melted in the daylight and frozen again at night, making for a treacherous walk, a skin of frost cracking with every step we took. My finger hurt so much it was hard to think about anything else. We kept walking because we had to keep walking, because we had come too far to stop now, but I do not know where the energy for each footfall came from. There is a place beyond hunger, beyond fatigue, where time no longer seems to move and the body’s misery no longer seems fully your own.

None of this applied to Kolya. He had eaten as little as I had, though he had slept better the night before in the toolshed with the illiterates, as comfortable as if he lay on a feather bed in the Europa Hotel. While I slogged north with my head down, Kolya gazed around at the moonlit countryside like an artist on a stroll. We seemed to have all of Russia to ourselves. For hours we saw no sign of humanity aside from the abandoned farm fields.

Every few minutes he would reach inside his coat, making sure that his sweater remained tucked inside his belted pants and the box of eggs was secure.

“Have I told you the story of the courtyard hound?”

“Your novel?”

“Yes, but where the title comes from.”

“Probably.”

“No, I don’t think I have. The hero, Radchenko, lives in an old building on Vasilevsky Island. A house really, built for one of Alexander’s generals, but now it’s falling apart, eight different families living there and none of them like one another. One night, the middle of winter, an old dog walks into the courtyard, lies down by the gate, and makes the place his home. A big old beast, his muzzle gone gray, one of his ears chewed off in some fight ages ago. Radchenko wakes up late the next morning, looks out his window, and sees the dog lying there with his head between his paws. He feels sorry for the poor fucker; it’s cold and there’s nothing to eat. So he finds a bit of dry sausage and opens his window, just as the church bells start ringing for noontime.”

“What year is this?”

“What? I don’t know. 1883. Radchenko whistles and the dog looks up at him. He tosses down the sausage, dog gobbles it down, Radchenko smiles, closes the window, and gets back in bed. Now remember, at this point he hasn’t left his apartment in five years. The next day, Radchenko’s still sleeping when the church bells ring at noon. When the bells go quiet, he hears a bark outside. And then another one. Finally, he crawls out of bed, opens the window, looks down to the courtyard, and sees the hound staring up at him, tongue dangling from his mouth, waiting to be fed. So Radchenko finds something to toss the old boy, and from then on, every time the church bells ring at noon the dog waits beneath the window for his lunch.”

“Like Pavlov’s dog.”

“Yes,” said Kolya, a little annoyed. “Like Pavlov’s dog, except with poetry. Two years go by. The courtyard hound knows everyone in the building, he lets them pass without trouble, but if a stranger comes to the gates, the old boy’s a terror, growling and gnashing his teeth. The residents love him, he’s their guardian, they don’t even lock their doors anymore. Sometimes Radchenko wastes a whole afternoon, sitting in a chair by the window, watching the dog watching the people streaming past the gates. He never forgets the noontime ritual, always makes sure he has plenty of good meats to toss down. One morning Radchenko’s in bed, having a wonderful dream about a woman he admired when he was little, a close friend of his mother’s. The church bells ring and Radchenko wakes with a smile, stretches his arms, walks to the window, slides it open, and looks down to the courtyard. The hound’s lying on his side by the gate, very still, and right away Radchenko knows the beast is dead. Remember, Radchenko had never touched him, never scratched behind his ear or rubbed his belly or any of that, but still, he came to love the old mutt, considered him a loyal friend. For almost an hour Radchenko stares at the dead hound and finally he realizes no one’s going to bury him. He’s a stray; whose job is it? Radchenko hasn’t left the apartment in seven years; the thought of stepping outside makes him nauseous, but even worse is the thought of leaving the hound to rot in the sun. Do you understand how dramatic this is? He walks out of his apartment, down the stairs, out the front door of the building, steps into sunlight—first time in seven years!—picks up the big dog, and carries him out of the courtyard.”

“Where does he bury him?”

“I don’t know. In one of the university gardens, maybe.”

“They wouldn’t let him do that.”

“I haven’t figured that part out yet. You’re missing the point of the story—”

“And he needs a shovel.”

“Yes, he needs a shovel. You’ve got all the romance of a train station whore, you know that? Maybe I won’t even write the burial scene, how would that be? Leave it to your imagination.”

“Probably a good idea. Could be a little maudlin. Dead dogs, I don’t know.”

“But you like it?”

“I think so.”

“You think so? It’s a beautiful story.”

“It’s good, I like it.”

“And the title? The Courtyard Hound? Now you understand why it’s such a great title? All these women come over to Radchenko’s, constantly trying to get him to go outside with them, and he never does. It’s almost like a game for them; they all want to be the first one to lure him out the gates, but none of them can make him go. Only the dog, an old dumb dog with no master.”

“The Courtyard Dog wouldn’t be nearly as good.”

“No.”

“What’s the difference between a dog and a hound?”

“Hounds hunt.” Kolya grabbed my arm, his eyes gone wide, forcing me to stop walking. At first I thought he had heard something, a growling Panzer engine or the calls of distant soldiers, but whatever demanded his attention seemed internal. He held my arm very tight, his lips slightly parted, a look of intense concentration on his face, as if he needed to remember a girl’s name but he only had the first letter.

“What?” I asked. He held up his hand and I waited. Stopping for even ten seconds made me want to lie down in the snow and close my eyes, only for a few minutes, just long enough to take the weight off my feet and wriggle my toes back to life.

“It’s coming,” he said. “I can feel it.”

“What’s coming?”

“My shit! Oh, come on now, you bastard, come on!”

He hurried off behind a tree and I waited for him, swaying in the wind. I wanted to sit, but some irritating voice within my skull told me that sitting was dangerous, that if I sat I would never stand again.

By the time Kolya returned I was sleeping on my feet, a montage of incoherent dream images flashing through my mind. He grabbed my arm, startling me, and shined his Cossack grin.

“My friend, I am no longer an atheist. Come on, I want to show you.”

“Are you joking? I don’t want to see.”

“You have to look at this. It must be a record.”

He tugged on my arm, trying to get me to follow him, but I dug my boots into the snow and leaned my weight backward.

“No, no, let’s go; we don’t have time.”

“Are you afraid to see my record-breaking shit?”

“If we don’t get to the colonel by dawn—”

“This is something extraordinary! Something you’ll tell your children about.”

Kolya pulled with his superior strength and I could feel myself beginning to topple, when his gloved hands slipped off my coat sleeve and he fell onto the ice-skinned snow. His first reaction was to laugh, but he quit laughing when he remembered the eggs.

“Fuck,” he said, staring up at me. For the first time in our journey I saw something close to genuine fear in his eyes.

“Don’t tell me you broke them. Don’t tell me that.”

“I broke them? Why is it only me? Why didn’t you just come and look at the shit?”

“I didn’t want to look at your shit!” I shouted at him, no longer mindful of enemies that might be moving through these same woods. “Tell me if they’re broken!”

Sitting on the ground, he unbuttoned his coat, pulled out the box, and inspected it for damage, running his hand over the wood slats. He took a deep breath, pulled off his right glove, and gingerly felt inside the straw-stuffed box with his bare fingers.

“Well?”

“They’re good.”

After the box was warm and secure beneath Kolya’s sweater, we resumed our northward march. He didn’t mention the historic shit again, but I could tell that he was irritated I hadn’t gone with him to bear witness. Now when he told the story to his friends, he wouldn’t have any verification to back up his claims.

Every minute I’d look for the powerful searchlight roving through the sky. Sometimes we’d lose sight of it for a kilometer or two, our view blocked by trees or hills, but we always found it again. As we got closer to Piter we saw more of the searchlights, but the first one was the most powerful, strong enough that it seemed to brighten the moon when the light passed over those cold distant craters.

“I bet the colonel will be surprised to see us,” said Kolya. “He must think we’re dead by now. He’ll be so happy with the eggs, I’ll ask him for an invite to the daughter’s wedding. Why not? His wife’s going to love us. And maybe I’ll get a dance with the bride, show her a few steps, let her know I’m not averse to married women.”

“I don’t even know where I’m going to sleep tonight.”

“We’ll go to Sonya’s. Don’t even think about it. I’m sure the colonel will give us some food for our troubles, we’ll share it with her, try to get a little fire going. And tomorrow I’ll have to track down my battalion. Ha, the boys will be surprised to see me.”

“She doesn’t even know me, I can’t stay there.”

“Of course you can. We’re friends now, Lev, am I right? Sonya is my friend, you’re my friend; don’t worry, she has plenty of room. Though staying with her might not be so exciting now that you’ve met Vika, eh?”

“Vika scares me.”

“She scares me, too. But you like her quite a bit, admit it.”

I smiled, thinking about Vika’s eyes, her fat lower lip, the precise curve of her collarbone.

“She probably thinks I’m too young for her.”

“Maybe. But you saved her life back there. That bullet was heading straight for her head.”

“I saved your life, too.”

“No, I had that Fritz under control.”

“You did not, he had that gun—”

“The day some Bavarian goose-stepper beats me in a fight—”

The argument kept going, veering from an analysis of the chess game and my supposed mistakes to the likely guests at the colonel’s daughter’s wedding to the fate of the four girls we met at the farmhouse. The conversation kept me awake, kept my mind off my numb feet and my legs stiff as stilts beneath me. The sky brightened, shade by imperceptible shade, and we stumbled upon a paved road where the snow was tamped down and the walking was easier. Before the sun had risen to the east, we saw the outer ring of Piter’s fortifications: the trenches like dark gashes in the snow; the cement block dragon’s teeth; the thickets of rusted railroad irons sprouting from the cold ground; kilometer after kilometer of barbed wire wrapped around wood posts.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Kolya. “I want a slice of this fucking wedding cake. What we’ve gone through, it’s only fair.”

A moment later he said, “What are they doing?” and a moment after that I heard the gunshot. Kolya grabbed my coat and shoved me to the ground. Bullets twanged overhead. “They’re shooting at us,” he said, answering his own question. “Hey! Hey! We’re Russian! We’re Russian, don’t shoot!” More bullets ripped through the air above us. “We’re Russians, damn your mothers, listen to me! Do you hear my voice! Do you hear me! We have papers from Colonel Grechko! Colonel Grechko! Do you hear?”

The rifles went quiet, but we stayed on our bellies, our arms over our heads. Behind the fortifications we could hear an officer shouting to his men. Kolya lifted his head and peered toward the trenches, several hundred meters to the north.

“Haven’t they heard of warning shots?”

“Maybe those were warning shots.”

“No, they were aiming for our heads. They don’t know how to shoot, that’s all. Bunch of slobs from the Works, I bet. Probably got their rifles a week ago.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled. “Hey! Can you hear me? You want to save your bullets for Fritz?”

“Put your hands in the air and walk slowly toward us!” came the hollered reply.

“You’re not going to shoot us if we stand up?”

“Not if we like the looks of you.”

“Your mother likes the looks of me,” Kolya muttered. “You ready, little lion?”

As we stood, Kolya grimaced and stumbled, nearly falling. I grabbed his arm to steady him. Frowning, he brushed the snow off the front of his greatcoat before twisting to examine his lower back. We both saw the bullet hole punched through the thick wool at hip height.

“Throw down your weapons!” the officer shouted from the distant trench. Kolya tossed aside his MP40.

I’m shot!” he yelled back. He unbuttoned his coat and studied the hole in the seat of his pants. “Do you believe this? Those cunts shot me in the ass.”

“Walk toward us with your hands in the air!”

“You shot me in the ass, you fucking idiot! I can’t walk anywhere!”

I had my hand on Kolya’s arm, helping him stay upright; he couldn’t put any weight on his right leg.

“You should sit,” I told him.

“I can’t sit. How am I going to sit, I have a bullet in my ass! Do you believe this?”

“Can you kneel? I don’t think you should be on your feet.”

“You know how much shit I’m going to get from my battalion? Shot in the ass by fucking amateurs straight off the assembly line?”

I helped as he lowered himself to the ground. He winced when his right knee hit the snow, jarring his leg. The officers in the trench must have held an impromptu conference. A new voice called to us now, an older voice with more authority.

“Stay where you are! We’re coming to you!”

Kolya grunted. “Stay where you are, he tells us. Yes, I think I’ll do that, now that I’ve got one of your fucking rifle bullets in my ass.”

“Maybe it went straight through. That’s better, isn’t it, if it went straight through?”

“You want to pull down my pants and check?” he asked, giving me a pained grin.

“Should I do something? What do I do?”

“Pressure, they say. Don’t worry, I’ll do it.” He untied the drawstring of his down hat, took it off, and pressed it against the bullet hole. He had to close his eyes for a moment, inhaling deeply. When he opened them again, he seemed to remember something; with his free hand he reached under his sweater and pulled out the straw-stuffed box of eggs.

“Put it under your coat,” he ordered. “We don’t want them freezing. And don’t drop them, please.”

A few minutes later we saw a GAZ rolling toward us, an armored model with thick-nubbed snow tires and a heavy machine gun mounted in the back. The gunner kept the wide-mouthed muzzle aimed at our heads as the car braked beside us.

A sergeant and a lieutenant hopped out and walked over to us, their hands on the butts of their holstered pistols. The sergeant paused beside the discarded MP40 lying in the snow. He considered the submachine gun for a moment before looking at Kolya.

“Our snipers saw the German gun. They did the right thing.”

“Snipers, is that what you call them? Are they trained to shoot men in the ass?”

“Why do you have a German gun?”

“He’s bleeding, he needs help,” I told them. “Can’t you ask these questions later?”

The lieutenant glanced at me, his flat, bored face devoid of all emotion save mild hostility. His head was shaved and he wore no hat, as if he didn’t notice the cold wind gusting around us.

“You’re a civilian? You’re giving me orders? I could execute you right now for violating curfew and exiting the city limits without a permit.”

“Please. Comrade Officer. We stay out here much longer, he’ll bleed to death.”

Kolya dug into his pocket, pulled out the colonel’s letter, and offered it to the officers. The lieutenant read it, disdainful at first but stiffening when he saw whose signature was on the bottom of the page.

“You should have said something,” he muttered. He waved his hand for the driver and the gunner to come help.

“I should have— I was screaming the colonel’s name while you shot at us!”

“My men did the right thing. You were advancing with enemy hardware, we had no advance warning—”

“Kolya,” I said, my hand on his shoulder. He looked up at me, his mouth already open, ready to verbally fillet the lieutenant. For once in his life he understood that it was time to shut up. He smiled, rolling his eyes a little, but then he saw the troubled expression cross my face. He followed my gaze down to where the blood was seeping into the snow, his pants leg drenched. The stained snow looked like the cherry ices my father used to buy me at summer fairs.

“Don’t worry,” Kolya said, staring at the blood. “That’s not so much, don’t worry.”

The driver grabbed him under the armpits, the gunner held him under his knees, and they carried him to the backseat of the still-idling GAZ. I crouched in the space between the driver’s seat and the backseat while Kolya lay on his stomach, his greatcoat draped over him for warmth. We drove toward the trenches, Kolya closing his eyes each time the car jolted over a bump in the road. I had taken the blood-soaked cap from him and I pressed it against the bullet wound, trying to maintain enough pressure to slow the bleeding without hurting him.

He smiled, his eyes closed. “I’d rather Vika was the one with her hand on my ass.”

“Does it hurt very much?”

“Have you ever been shot in the ass?”

“No.”

“Well the answer is yes, it hurts. I’m just happy they didn’t hit the other side. Please, Lieutenant,” Kolya said loudly, “will you thank your snipers for not shooting my balls off?”

The lieutenant, sitting in the passenger seat, stared at the road ahead and did not answer, his bare scalp flecked with small white scars.

“The women of Leningrad thank them, too.”

“We’re taking you to the hospital at the Works,” said the lieutenant. “That’s where the best surgeons are.”

“Very good, I’m sure the NKVD will give you a medal. And when you’ve dropped me off, please take my little friend here to Kamenny Island. He has an important package for the colonel.”

The lieutenant sat in sullen silence, angry that he had to take orders from a private but unwilling to risk making a powerful enemy. We stopped at a sandbagged barricade and lost nearly two minutes as soldiers lowered a wooden platform across the trench so we could cross. The driver barked at them to hurry, but even so the soldiers drifted about, weary and nonchalant, arguing about the proper way to position the bridge. Finally, we made it to the other side. The driver stepped on the gas and we sped past machine-gun emplacements festooned with sandbags.

“How far to the hospital?” I asked the driver.

“Ten minutes. Eight, if we’re lucky.”

“Try to be lucky,” said Kolya. His eyes were clenched shut now, his face pressed against the seat, his blond hair hanging over his forehead. In the last minute he had gotten very pale and could not stop shivering. I rested my free hand on the back of his neck and his skin was cool to the touch.

“Don’t worry,” he told me. “I’ve seen friends bleeding worse than this and they were back a week later, all stitched up.”

“I’m not worried.”

“There’s so much blood in a human body. What is it, five liters?”

“I don’t know.”

“It looks like so much, but I bet I haven’t even lost a liter. Maybe one.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t talk.”

“Why not? What’s wrong with talking? Listen, you go to the wedding. Dance with the colonel’s daughter, and then come to the hospital and tell me about it. I want details. What she’s wearing, what she smells like, all that. I’ve been jerking off to her for five days straight, you know that? Well, once to Vika. My apologies. But what she did in the sheep barn, tightening the belt around her chest? You saw that. Can you blame me?”

“When did you have time to do that?”

“On the endless fucking march to here. You learn how to jerk it on the move when you’re in the army. Hand in the pocket, it’s no big trick.”

“You jerked off to Vika while we were walking last night?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you. You were sleepwalking half the night, I was bored, I had to do something. Now you’re angry. Don’t be angry with me.”

“Of course I’m not angry.”

The driver hit the brakes hard and Kolya would have tumbled off the backseat if I hadn’t been holding him. I sat up and peered through the windshield. We had reached the edge of the sprawling Kirov Works, a city in itself, where tens of thousands labored night and day. Artillery shells and Luftwaffe bombs had flattened some of the brick-walled machine shops; empty windows throughout the complex had been covered with plastic tarps; ice-filled craters pockmarked the yards. But even now, with thousands of workers evacuated and thousands more dead or waiting to die on the front lines, even now the chimneys still smoked, the alleyways bustled with women pushing carts filled with coal, the air was loud with the clamor of whirring lathes and rolling mills and hydraulic presses shaping steel.

A line of newly completed T-34 tanks had trundled out of an assembly shop as big as an airplane hangar. Eight of the tanks, their steel unpainted, rumbled slowly over the dirty snow, blocking off the road.

“Why did we stop?” Kolya asked. His voice sounded much weaker than it had a minute before and it made me afraid to hear him like that.

“Some tanks are going by.”

“T-thirty-fours?”

“Yes.”

“Good tanks.”

Finally, the tanks passed and we shot forward. The driver had a heavy foot on the accelerator, a sure hand on the wheel, and he knew the Works well—cutting through back alleys behind turbine shops; blasting down unpaved paths alongside the workers’ housing, tin-roofed sheds with squat little stovepipes—but even with an expert it took time to get to the far side of the rambling factory town.

“There,” said the lieutenant at last, pointing to a brick warehouse that had been converted into the local hospital. He turned in his seat and looked at Kolya. When he couldn’t see Kolya’s face, he looked at me, questioning. I shrugged to say, I don’t know.

“Devils!” shouted the driver, slapping the steering wheel and hitting the brakes again. A small locomotive chugged across the tracks that bisected the Works, tugging boxcars loaded with scrap metal for the foundry.

“Lev?”

“Yes?”

“Are we close?”

“I think we’re very close.”

Kolya’s lips had gone blue, his breathing rapid and shallow.

“Is there any water?” he asked.

“Does anyone have water?” My voice broke as I asked the question. I sounded like a frightened child.

The gunner passed forward a canteen. I unscrewed the cap, shifted Kolya’s head sideways, and tried to pour water in his mouth, but it ended up spilling onto the seat. He managed to lift his head a little and I got some down his throat, but he choked and spat it up. When I tried to give him more, he refused with a slight shake of the head and I handed the canteen back to the gunner.

Realizing Kolya’s head must be cold, I tore off my hat and put it on him, ashamed that I hadn’t thought to do that before. Even though he shivered, his face was damp with sweat, his skin pale and mottled with coin-size scarlet patches.

I could see the doors of the hospital, less than a hundred meters away, through the gaps between the rolling boxcars. Our driver sat hunched forward in his seat, his arms draped around the wheel, nodding his head impatiently as he waited. The lieutenant kept glancing back at Kolya, more and more worried.

“Lev? You like the title?”

“What title?”

“The Courtyard Hound.”

“It’s a good title.”

“I could just call it Radchenko.”

“The Courtyard Hound is better.”

“I think so, too.”

He opened his eyes, those pale blue Cossack eyes, and smiled at me. We both knew he was going to die. He trembled, lying on the backseat beneath his greatcoat, his teeth very white against his blue lips. I have always believed that smile was a gift for me. Kolya had no faith in the divine or the afterlife; he didn’t think he was going to a better place, or any place at all. No angels waited to collect him. He smiled because he knew how terrified I was of dying. This is what I believe. He knew I was terrified and he wanted to make it a little easier for me.

“Can you believe it? Shot in the ass by my own people.”

I wanted to say something, to make some stupid joke to distract him. I should have said something, I wish that I had, even though I still can’t think of the right words. If I told him that I loved him, would he have winked and said, “No wonder your hand’s on my ass?”

Even Kolya couldn’t hold the smile for long. He closed his eyes again. When he spoke, his mouth was very dry, his lips sticking together as he tried to form the words.

“It’s not the way I pictured it,” he told me.