The Redbreast

10

Leningrad. 31 December 1942.

It was cold in the machine-gun post. Gudbrand was wearing all the clothes he possessed. Nevertheless, his teeth were still chattering and he had lost the sensation in his fingers and toes. The worst was his legs. He had bound new rags around his feet, but that didn't help much.

He stared out into the dark. They hadn't heard much from the Ivans that evening. Perhaps they were celebrating New Year's Eve. Perhaps they were eating well. Lamb stew. Or ribs of lamb. Gudbrand knew, of course, that the Russians didn't have any meat, but he couldn't stop thinking about food nevertheless. As for themselves, they hadn't had much more than the usual lentil soup and bread. The bread had a green sheen to it, but they had become accustomed to that. And if it became so mouldy that it crumbled, they just boiled the soup with the bread in it.

'At least we got a sausage on Christmas Eve,' Gudbrand said.

'Shh,' Daniel said.

'There's no one out there this evening, Daniel. They're sitting eating medallions of venison. With a thick, light brown game sauce and bilberries. And almond potatoes.'

'Don't start talking about food again. Be quiet and see if you can spot anything.'

I can't see a thing, Daniel. Nothing.'

They huddled together, keeping their heads down. Daniel was wearing the Russian cap. The steel helmet with the Waffen SS badge lay beside him. Gudbrand knew why. There was something about the shape of the helmet which caused the eternally ice-cold snow to pass under the rim and create a continual, nerve-grinding whistling sound inside the helmet, which was particularly unfortunate if you were on duty at the listening post.

'What's wrong with your eyes?' Daniel asked.

'Nothing. I just have quite bad night vision.'

'Is that all?'

'And then I'm a little colour blind.' A little colour blind?'

'Red and green. I can't tell the difference. The colours seem the same. I never saw any berries, for example, when we went into the forest to pick cranberries for the Sunday joint…'

'No more talk about food, I said!'

They were quiet. In the distance a machine gun chattered. The thermometer showed minus twenty-five. Last winter they'd had minus forty-five several nights in a row. Gudbrand consoled himself with the thought that the lice were less active in this cold. He wouldn't start itching until he went off duty and crept under the woollen blanket in his bunk. But they tolerated the cold better than he did, the beasts. Once he had carried out an experiment: he had left his vest out in the snow in the biting cold for three consecutive days. When he took the vest into the bunker again, it was a sheet of ice. But when he thawed it out in front of the stove, a teeming, crawling mass came to life and he threw it into the flames out of sheer disgust.

Daniel cleared his throat.

'How did you go about eating your Sunday joint then?' Gudbrand needed no second bidding.

'First of all, Dad carved the joint, solemnly, like a priest, while we boys sat completely still, watching. Then Mum put two slices on each plate and poured on gravy, which was so thick that she had to take care she stirred it enough so that it didn't set. And there were loads of fresh, crisp Brussels sprouts. You should put your helmet on Daniel. What if you got shrapnel in your cap?'

'Imagine if a shell hit my cap. Carry on.'

Gudbrand closed his eyes and a smile played around his mouth.

'For dessert we had stewed prunes. Or brownies. That wasn't such usual fare. Mum had brought that tradition from Brooklyn.'

Daniel spat in the snow. As a rule, watch was an hour during the winter, but both Sindre Fauke and Hallgrim Dale were in bed with temperatures, so Edvard Mosken had decided to increase it to two hours until the section was back to full strength.

Daniel put a hand on Gudbrand's shoulder.

'You miss her, don't you? Your mother.'

Gudbrand laughed, spat in the same place in the snow as Daniel and gazed up at the frozen stars in the sky. There was a rustling sound in the snow and Daniel raised his head.

'Fox,' he said.

It was unbelievable, but even here, where every square metre had been bombed and mines were closer than the cobblestones in Karl Johans gate, there was animal life. Not much, but they had both seen hares and foxes. And the odd polecat. Obviously they tried to shoot whatever they saw. Everything was welcome in the pot. But after one of the Germans had been shot while he was out catching a hare, the top brass had got it into their heads that the Russians were releasing hares in front of the trenches to tempt men out into no man's land. As if the Russians would voluntarily give away a hare!

Gudbrand fingered his sore lips and looked at his watch. One hour left to the next watch. He suspected that Sindre had been shoving tobacco up his rectum to give himself a temperature; he was the sort who would do that.

'Why did you move home from the US?' Daniel asked.

'Wall Street Crash. My father lost his job at the shipyard.'

'There you are,' Daniel said. 'That's capitalism for you. The small guys slog away while the rich get fatter whether it's boom time or a slump.'

"Well, that's the way it is.'

'That's how it's been so far, but there'll be changes now. When we win the war, Hitler's got a little surprise up his sleeve for the people. And your father won't need to worry any more about being unemployed. You should join the Nasjonal Samling!

'Do you really believe in all that?'

'Don't you?'

Gudbrand didn't like to contradict Daniel so he answered with a shrug of his shoulders, but Daniel repeated the question.

'Of course I believe in it,' Gudbrand said. 'But most of all I think about Norway. About not having to have Bolsheviks in the country. If they come, we'll definitely go back to America.'

'To a capitalist country?' Daniel's voice had become a little sharper now. A democracy in the hands of the wealthy, left to chance and corrupt leaders?'

'I'd rather that than communism.'

'Democracies have outlived their use, Gudbrand. Just look at Europe. England and France, they were going to the dogs long before the war began: unemployment, exploitation. There are only two people strong enough to stop Europe's nosedive into chaos now: Hitler and Stalin. That's the choice we have. A sister nation or barbarians. There's almost no one at home who seems to have understood what good luck it was for us that the Germans came first and not Stalin's butchers.'

Gudbrand nodded. It wasn't only what Daniel said, it was the way he said it. With such conviction.

All of a sudden all hell broke loose and the sky in front of them was white with flares, the ground shook and yellow flashes were followed by brown earth and snow which seemed to launch themselves into the air where the shells fell.

Gudbrand already lay at the bottom of the trench with his hands over his head, but the whole thing was over as quickly as it had begun. He looked up and there, back behind the trench, behind the machine gun, Daniel was roaring with laughter.

'What are you doing?' Gudbrand shouted. 'Use the siren! Get everyone up!'

But Daniel paid no attention. 'My dear old friend,' he shouted with tears of laughter in his eyes. 'Happy New Year!'

Daniel pointed to his watch and then it dawned on Gudbrand. Daniel had obviously been waiting for the Russians' New Year salute, because now he stuck his hand down in the snow which had been piled up against the sentry post to hide the machine gun.

'Brandy,' he shouted, triumphantly raising into the air a bottle containing a heel of brown liquid. 'I've saved this for more than three months. Help yourself.'

Gudbrand had crawled up on to his knees and smiled at Daniel.

'You first,' Gudbrand shouted.

'Sure?'

'Absolutely sure, old friend. You saved it up. But don't drink it all!' Daniel hit the side of the cork until it came out and raised the bottle.

'To Leningrad. In spring we'll be toasting each other in the Winter Palace,' he proclaimed and took off his Russian cap. And by summer we'll be home, hailed as heroes in our beloved Norway'

He put the bottle to his lips and threw back his head. The brown liquid gurgled and danced in the neck of the bottle. It twinkled as the glass reflected the light from the sinking flares, and in the years to come Gudbrand would ponder whether it was that the Russian sniper saw: the gleam from the bottle. The next moment Gudbrand heard a high-pitched popping noise and saw the bottle explode in Daniel's hands. There was a shower of glass and brandy and Gudbrand closed his eyes. He could feel his face was wet; it ran down his cheeks and instinctively he stuck out his tongue to catch a couple of drops. It tasted of almost nothing, just alcohol and something else-something sweet and metallic. The consistency was thick, probably because of the cold, Gudbrand thought, and he opened his eyes again. He couldn't see Daniel from the trench. He must have dived behind the machine gun when he knew that he had been seen, Gudbrand guessed, but he could feel his heart racing.

'Daniel?' No answer. 'Daniel?'

Gudbrand got to his feet and crawled out of the trench. Daniel was on his back with his cartridge belt under his head and the Russian cap over his face. The snow was spattered with brandy and blood. Gudbrand took the cap in his hand. Daniel was staring with wide eyes up at the starry sky. He had a large, black, gaping hole in the middle of his forehead. Gudbrand still had the sweet metallic taste in his mouth and felt nauseous. 'Daniel.'

It was barely a whisper between his dry lips. Gudbrand thought Daniel looked like a little boy who wanted to draw angels in the snow but had fallen asleep. With a sob he lurched towards the siren and pulled the crank handle. As the flares sank into their hiding places, the piercing wail of the siren rose towards the heavens.

'That wasn't how it was supposed to be,' was all Gudbrand managed to say. oooooooo-OOOOOOOO…!

Edvard and the others had come out and stood behind him. Someone shouted Gudbrand's name, but he didn't hear. He just wound the handle round and round. In the end Edvard went over and held the handle. Gudbrand let go, but didn't turn round; he remained where he was, staring at the trench and the sky as the tears froze solid on his cheeks. The lament of the siren subsided.

'That wasn't how it was supposed to be,' he whispered.