The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] (29 page)

Everyone else in Zhukov’s force is heading west to the Oder, massing for the attack on Berlin. Ilya’s walking the wrong way. How’s that an honor?

“I’ve taken ten thousand prisoners. I’ve never once been told to leave the front line to nursemaid them.”

“You were an officer. This is an acknowledgment for foot soldiers. And that’s what we are, Ilya. Foot soldiers. Lucky-to-be-alive foot soldiers, at that. So stop giving me orders.”

Ilya takes a cold breath. “Is that an order?”

“No. It’s a request. From a friend.”

Ilya puts on his green watch cap. They did storm the citadel. And they did it in more ways than Ilya has ever seen in battle. With Misha’s rolling exploding drums. With bundles of sticks filling the moat for bridges. With heaps of chairs and crates thrown into the crevasse to obscure the vision of enemy gunners at the bottom. With burning barrels of oil to smoke them out. With lashed-together logs for trestles and ladders. With cudgels and bayonets and flamethrowers and bullets and man after man after man.

For the final week Ilya, Misha, and two dozen men who followed them into the citadel fought in close quarters with the Germans. It was like Stalingrad all over again, and Ilya was ready. He taught the men with him by example and stern whispers how to survive and kill in the bowels of a building. Creep. Stay low. Stay apart. Stay alert. Storm a room or a stronghold from many angles. Roll grenades ahead of you to clear paths. Work at night and in the morning, around the clock, wear the enemy down, no rest for them or you until they’re finished. Use feints, false attacks, dummy positions, fool them, be everywhere and nowhere. No mercy, no grief, swallow your fear. Ilya and Misha survived the citadel with the six men who are with them right now. Ilya does not know any of their names. He saw no need inside the citadel to become familiar. He commanded them first with his own actions, and when he needed them to move he pointed and said, “You, you, and you!” In the citadel fighting, Misha stayed near Ilya. He’s not a terrific fighter but is a gifted tactician. Misha has the rear officer’s tolerance for sending men to their deaths.

Ilya casts his eyes over the line of haggard prisoners tramping in
ersatz-wool
greatcoats. Another loses his footing, trips over himself, two others stumble over him. In confusion the line bunches to a halt. Two of the guards make angry noises and approach. Why did they fight like that, Ilya wonders? Why did the Germans have to kill and be killed, sixty thousand defenders in Posen ground down to twelve thousand. Defending what? How many young Russian men are dead, hurt, ruined, how many more to come? How much needless destruction is there in Posen, all of Poland, Russia, and now in Germany because of them?

Duty. The lone answer to every soldierly question. There is nothing beyond it.

But what about all the havoc that’s gone beyond duty? Again, Ilya smells Majdanek. The mounds. The ditches. Ashes. Cruelty.

That is not the work of soldiers. It’s the spawn of madmen. Rabidness. Hitler’s not here. Who answers for it?

Do these men in line?

Is revenge part of Ilya’s duty?

He hates these Germans. He doesn’t detest them in constellation but individually, each sunken face and skittish eyeball, each defeated brute, one at a time, the way he’s killed them.

The march has stopped. Ilya holds his ground at the rear of the pack. Misha strides forward. In German he tells the fallen soldiers to get up,
schnell!
Two of them climb to their feet, the third lifts no farther than his knees before he collapses again to the earth. Misha reaches down and clasps the collar of the prisoner’s coat. He yanks, but the man like a downed mule will not rise.

Misha sends a swift kick into the prisoner’s midsection. In Russian he shouts, “Get up, you piece of shit! Get up!”

Ilya sees his own hatred taking form around the Germans, like blood clotting. The other guards and Misha take steps away from the fallen man. The prisoners close ranks around their comrade, who can barely sit up on the ground. The air thickens into a paste of anger and tension.

Misha puts his little fists to his hips. He says in Russian, so it is intended not for the prisoners but the armed guards around him, “I said get up, you German piece of shit.”

The German knows what Misha wants. The man looks ill. His cheeks work as though to keep down vomit. He does not—probably cannot— stand.

With a flourishing hand Misha draws a pistol, a captured Luger. The six other guards see this. One by one they follow suit, leveling their rifles behind Misha into a firing line. The Germans’ eyes go wide, their knees stiffen before the guns.

One of the guards spits on the ground. In a snarling voice he says, “Smolensk.”

Another Red soldier spits. He says, “Leningrad.”

A third. “Moscow.”

These are Russian cities that withstood sieges of terrible carnage. These are curses the Russians put in the ears of the Germans.

A fourth. “Minsk.”

“Chelmno.”

“Kursk.”

Misha looks over to Ilya, who has not moved. In the surrounding woods a crow caws, a bad sound.

The guards hurl more names at the Germans. Names of prison camps, Rovno, Ternopol, Zitomir; names of occupied villages, Braslav, Balvi, Vigala; names of death camps, Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka; names of dead comrades, Kazora,Vozny, Smirnov, Zubkov, Mastavenko; names of fathers and mothers, brothers, women. The Red soldiers vent themselves on the Germans, who cower under the onslaught of condemnation. The names are stones. Russian throats strain, neck tendons bulge, faces go red with the effort of throwing them.

Ilya stands watching Misha.

They’re on a country road, far from any town, hidden in Poland. What they do here no one else will see. What happens here, no one will care. The eight of them can report back to their company in Posen claiming the prisoners made a break into the trees. Shrugs will answer that tale. Perhaps it’s even expected of them. They will have been poor shepherds, that’s all. They can join the rest of their battalion on the river Oder, aimed at Berlin, to unleash more anger.

Misha holds still under Ilya’s inquiring gaze.

The guards continue their barrage of names and vitriol. Each man in his turn leans in to skirl another word, like snapping dogs. Ilya can only imagine the vengeful millstones these men must carry on their souls. They’re simple peasants. Freed prisoners of war. The dreaded men of the second echelon. These are the Red soldiers who’ve endured the worst of all the battles. They get no leave, rarely get paid. They’ve been bombarded by inflaming rhetoric from the Communists, prodded forward by threats from NKVD commissars. Right now they’re on their own with the enemy in their hands, and they’ve had enough. They’re stupid with rage and vendetta. Their eyes are glassy like corpses’. Hate like that kills the man and leaves the body. Ilya knows many of the places they shout, and the ones he does not recognize he understands what they represent. But Ilya has been fortunate, he’s been able to fight the Germans, to exact his toll and soothe his demons on the battlefields. These barking men have been corralled, beaten, starved, tortured by the Germans. They have debts to collect.

All but Misha. He appears very calm, almost entertained.

The bandaged little man breaks his eyes from Ilya. He spits the way the others did. He shouts over the guards. “That’s enough!”

They listen to him. Ilya leads them in battle. Misha takes the fore now in terror.

Steam issues from all the mouths on the road. The Russian screamers catch their breaths, the Germans fear these are their last breaths. Again, a crow caws from the cold bare woods.

Misha calls out, “There’s one left. For you, Ilyushka.”

Misha cocks his Luger. He says to the Germans, “Stalingrad.”

One of the Germans mutters in Russian, “Bastards.”

All of these men hate. Back and forth, volleys of loathing.

Two of the Germans reach to the ground to lift their comrade. They put the man on his feet and release him with care. He stays erect, shaking. The rest of the prisoners move by instinct closer, penned animals do the same. They do not take their eyes from the guns facing them, but every man of them backs until he can feel the shoulder of another.

One of the Russians raises his rifle to his cheek, ridiculous, as though he needs to aim this close to his targets. Ilya’s mouth is bone dry. He could speak. They listened to him in the frenzy of the citadel. He could make them listen now. He would say, what?

Another crow dispatches his voice from the trees.

Ilya turns his back.

* * * *

MARCH

orld history occupies a higher ground than that on which morality has properly its position, which is personal character and the conscience of individuals. . . . Moral claims which are irrelevant must not be brought into collision with world-historical deeds and their accomplishment. The litany of private virtues—modesty, humility, philanthropy, and forbearance—must not be raised against them.

So mighty a form must trample down many an innocent flower—crush to pieces many an object in its path.

G.W.F. Hegel

Lectures on the

Philosophy of History

* * * *

FIVE

March 1, 1945, 11:50
a.m.

An anteroom in the House of Representatives

Washington, D.C.

eople bustle on all sides, checking last-minute arrange
ments
. The President in his wheelchair looks at them from hip level. Hands in pockets, pocket watches, belted skirts, fat bellies parade past his eyes.

The President thinks about sledding.

This is his favorite dream. He is a child at Hyde Park in winter. He stands on top of a hill, pushes his sled off the peak. He picks up speed, negotiates turns, dodges trees, and outruns dogs. He is gliding, fleet and free.

More members of his staff slide by his seat. He sleds through them like they are tree trunks, turns the rudders sharply, heads out into the open fields, keeps going.

Anna walks past, brushing long fingers along his shoulder, saying nothing. Roosevelt wants her to stop and speak, to chase away his daydreaming. But she is off, arranging something for his speech in a few minutes to a joint session of Congress. His mind—the way tired minds will—wanders further, plays leapfrog to another thought. Anna did not tarry with him. His daughter, who has the widest entry of anyone into him, did not come in, she left him alone. This sends him to think on his greatest fear. The President is afraid of being alone in a burning building. He will not be able to escape on his useless legs. When he first became a paraplegic, he used to practice for hours rolling from his bed and crawling to the door to escape, in case he was alone. Sometimes he confuses his fears. Fire, or alone, which is greatest for him?

Fire. Alone. His thoughts pick up pace. Next dot. Death. Pa Watson died on the voyage back from Yalta. Cerebral hemorrhage. Had an argument with Harry, so sick himself he couldn’t leave his stateroom. Pa went back to his cabin and just stopped breathing. Major General Edwin “Pa” Watson, one of the best storytellers, poker players, and friends Roosevelt ever knew. Gone. The great alone. Harry left the
Quincy
in Algiers to fly home to the Mayo Clinic. He’s still there. Roosevelt spent the last part of the Atlantic trip alone, either in his cabin or on the admiral’s deck, somber in his blue cloak and gray floppy hat, watching the blue and gray sea for portents.