Sniper's Honor

CHAPTER 12

Two of them. Not Germans, definitely not Germans. But partisans, survivors of the Bak column, as was she? Hard to tell.

A heavy one, a light one. In the heavy one, she recognized the dignity and stolidity of the eternal peasant. He had no partisan affectations, no babushka hat, no crossed bandoliers of ammunition, no potato mashers stuck in his belt, no Red tommy gun. He wore only a shapeless black peasant smock and equally shapeless trousers over the thick boots peasants had worn for centuries. He moved with deliberation; you knew in a second that patience would never be a problem with this one. He could outwait God or the devil if it came to that and, as a hobby, watch mud bricks dry. He would be the one who knew a lot more than you thought, and if he gave you his loyalty, he was giving you everything. Everything about him was big: feet, legs, arms, hands. He could put in a thousand hours behind a plow. He was the man who would plant and harvest the wheat her father had tried to protect for him. He would feed the masses; he was the masses.

The other was leaner, quicker, a lithe man with goatee and glasses, under a frost of prematurely gray hair, wiry and tight. He looked somehow more refined, and if he moved easily through the woods, it was not out of heritage but out of learning. He, too, was as unwarlike as could be imagined, in a well-worn black leather jacket, some kind of bluish shirt, and a pair of threadbare trousers.

She watched as they picked their way along some fifty feet below her, the peasant leading, the thinner man — she had no insight as how to classify him and so would not make the mistake of conferring an identity upon him too soon — following. At a certain moment, the peasant raised a hand, and each halted, dropped to knees, and looked nervously around. After a bit, satisfied that no SS men were about to nab them, they rose.

“Hello,” she cried.

They reacted in terror, scrambling back, edging into panic.

She emerged from the cave, pulled herself upright, and started down the slope to them. “Greetings, comrades.”

The peasant babbled in Ukrainian.

“She’s the sniper!” said the thinner man, having made an immediate calculation.

“Belaya Vedma!” exclaimed the peasant. And added something else.

“He says you should be a princess,” said the thin fellow.

“There are no princesses these days,” said Petrova.

“He says your beauty is a gift from God.”

“I hope God is busy giving out other gifts, like mercy and long life. He shouldn’t be wasting time on St. Petersburg girls. Are you pursued?” she asked.

“No, madam. Like you, accidental survivors from the nasty business of last night,” said the thin man.

“You are with Bak? Why are you unarmed?”

“I threw my gun away,” said the thin fellow. “A practical decision. If I had a rifle, I would be shot on sight. If captured, tortured for information, then executed. Maybe if I didn’t have one, they’d just beat me for amusement, then dump me in the bushes. I ran into the big fellow in the dawn. We scared the life out of each other. We are simply trying to evade capture.”

“I don’t think the Germans are here in force,” she said. “Despite all the shooting, that was a small team. That’s how they moved so effectively through the forest. They had many machine guns, unusual for a German unit. Did Bak escape?”

“I confess cowardice,” said the thin man. “I don’t know, and not until you mention it did I even think of it. I have been thinking only of my own miserable skin.”

“Do you have food? I am famished.”

“Not a bite.”

“Ach!” She sat back. “What a pair of sorry dogs.”

Introductions were made, names quickly forgotten. The peasant was a Ukrainian farmer who had been a partisan for a year. His stoic face may have concealed tragedies, but he did not volunteer them. The scrawny man — younger than he looked under that gray hair and the goatee — was a former schoolteacher. He had been with the partisans only a few months.

“I am not much of a fighter,” he said. “But since I have good reading and writing skills, General Bak used me as a clerk. I kept records, made reports.”

“So if the SS tortured you, you would have a lot to reveal.”

“Only that food is low, ammunition is low, communication with higher authority uncertain, and nobody’s happy. They know all this, but yes, they would enjoy beating me until I told them. Then it would be nine grams of lead for me.”

“Nine grams awaits all of us if we don’t make a sound decision now.”

“Tell us what to do.”

“First, tell me some stuff. I don’t know a thing about this area. I was flown here and dumped.”

The Peasant got the gist of her request. “Beyond us, perhaps eight kilometers, is a village called Yaremche,” he said as the Teacher translated. “It is built in ravines on the waterfalls of the River Prut. If a case can be made to the villagers, they might take us in or at least give us food.”

“What else?”

“Bak’s main camp is a farther march,” said the Teacher. “It is at least seventy-five kilometers through forest that is unclearly administered. Perhaps German patrols wander it, perhaps partisan units. It would be our bad luck to run into the former and good to run into the latter.”

“Next question: food. How do we feed ourselves?”

“He knows mushrooms,” said the Teacher. “These Ukrainians, they live on mushrooms. Mushrooms are the secret wealth of the Carpathians.”

“Mushrooms, then. After mushroom paradise, we’ll head back to the ambush site,” she said. “We can look for weapons, foodstuff, anything the Germans left behind. Is it going to rain?”

“By afternoon, yes. I believe,” said the Peasant in translation.

“Then we had better get there first and see what the tracks tell us. When it rains, it will wash away our tracks. Once we have gotten what we can, we will rejoin the war. Our little vacation is over.”