Red Moth

With no idea how far he had to go

With no idea how far he had to go before he reached the Russian lines, Stefanov made his way towards the east. Still carrying the body of his friend, he tramped along roads whose yellow dust settled on his clothes and in the corners of his eyes. Hour after hour, the only sound he heard was of his footsteps and bumblebees and the thud of distant cannon fire. It was hot. The sky gleamed pitiless blue.

Late in the afternoon, Stefanov took a short cut across an open field. The grass was as tall as his knees and flecked with wildflowers. Burrs clung to his trouser legs.

In the middle of the field, beside an old zinc cattle trough which was overflowing with algae-covered water, he came across a crop of blackberries, like tiny knotted fists. Laying Barkat’s corpse upon the ground, he plucked the berries from the shelter of their spear-point leaves and stuffed them into his mouth. Purple juice ran down his lip. And afterwards, he sank his hands into the trough, ladling aside the green ooze of the algae, and drank.

Stefanov was just about to set off, having lifted Barkat once again on to his shoulders, when he heard a sound he felt certain must be thunder. It can’t be, he thought. But the thunder grew louder and more deafening until he could feel its vibration in the ground beneath his feet. At that moment, three German Stuka dive-bombers flew over the ridge, one after the other, heading west. Fixed landing gear jutted from their bellies like the extended talons of huge hunting birds and thick lines of exhaust soot trailed back along the fuselage, which was painted with tiger stripes of grey and yellow.

The Stukas flew so low that Stefanov could see their pilots, heads cocooned in leather flight helmets. One, with goggles pulled down over his eyes, glanced down at Stefanov. Sunlight winked off the lenses, as if sockets of that pilot’s eyes were crammed with diamonds.

Stefanov knew that there was nowhere for him to run. Since they had already seen him, there was no point even in taking cover, so he just stood there, looking up at the planes, with Barkat draped over his shoulder, the man’s long arms dangling in the tall grass.

Whether the men in those planes took pity on him, or else were low on fuel or ammunition, Stefanov could only wonder.

The Stukas continued on their way. In a moment, all Stefanov could make out were their hunchbacked silhouettes and a faint blur of smoke in the sky.

Arriving at the far end of the field, Stefanov discovered six freshly dug graves. Jammed into the dirt at the head of each grave was a Russian Mosin-Nagant rifle, its bolt removed, rendering it useless. The wooden stock on one rifle had burned away and its leather sling hung blackened like a dead snake from the swivel.

Robbers had dug up the bodies.

The dead lay with earth-filled mouths, purple lips drawn back and dimpled fingertips like badly-fitting gloves. Their boots and their watches were gone, and their pockets had been turned inside-out.

Moving on, Stefanov experienced the unmistakable sensation of having crossed an invisible border between the world of men and that of monsters, and every step he took now carried him deeper into the country of the beast.

Even though he was not sure why he continued to carry Barkat, or even why he had begun carrying him in the first place, it never occurred to Stefanov to abandon his old friend. His mind had fixed itself upon some path beyond his reckoning and he could no more question it than glimpse where it might end.

As he neared the Russian gun pits, Stefanov picked up the scent of machorka, its smell like damp leaves smouldering in the rain.

During those last moments, with a dozen weapons aiming at his heart as he walked into a Soviet encampment on the outskirts of the town, Stefanov was more afraid than in all the time he’d spent behind the lines. By this time, a downpour was pelting the road into mud.

The first building he reached was a schoolhouse which had been converted into a field hospital. Peering through the shark’s teeth of a broken window pane, Stefanov watched a doctor, stripped to the waist, operating on a man laid out on two school desks. Behind them, a black slate chalk board still showed a lesson in arithmetic.

In the school yard at the back of the building, Stefanov found an army cook, sitting in a horse-drawn food wagon. Rain popped off the wagon’s canvas roof. Stefanov realised he was hungry. Gently, he laid Barkat down and reached behind him for his mess kit. It was only when his fingers grasped at nothing that he remembered he had left all his equipment in the bunker.

The cook nodded towards a pile of field gear which had been removed from wounded soldiers before bringing them inside. From the soggy tangle of belts, canteens and ammunition pouches still crammed with bullets, Stefanov scrounged up a mess tin.

The cook handed him a slice of brown bread. Then he ladled some cabbage soup out of a large enamel-lined canister. Hot, greasy liquid dripped down the metal sides.

Rain fell through the hole in Barkat’s chest, splashing off the school yard underneath.

‘Mother of God,’ said the cook.

Stefanov sat on the concrete and drank the soup, using the bread to wipe out the insides of the mess tin.

The cook watched him from under the wagon’s canvas roof. The horse stared at him too, water dripping from its chin.

Artillery thudded in the distance.

Two medical orderlies appeared in the doorway at the top of the steps. Seeing Barkat, the medics hurried down to help him but they were not even at the bottom of the stairs before they realised the man was dead. They glanced back at Stefanov, confusion on their faces. ‘Are you hurt?’ asked one of the medics.

Stefanov did not reply, because he wasn’t sure.

‘Don’t touch him,’ whispered the other medic.

The two men walked back up the steps and shut the door behind them.

Stefanov lay down on the ground next to Barkat. He put his arm across Barkat’s chest, as if to shield him from the rain. Threads of consciousness snapped one by one in silent, dusty puffs inside his brain. And then he was asleep.