The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] (77 page)

She wears no undergarment, she is immediately naked there. She does not pull her sweater over her head. Her pelvis protrudes in horns out of her hips, this girl is hungry. Bruises discolor her knees and thighs and groin.

She stands splay-footed on the carpet. She is two statues welded at the middle, a comely boy on top, a sad and trammeled woman on the bottom. Her face is a cipher. She has learned to keep it empty.

The girl bends. Her motion is empty too. It gives everything, and so grants nothing to be taken. There is no conquest of this girl.

She lies on the carpet, arms at her side, legs slightly spread. Her head is back, eyes at the ceiling. Her boots and the bunch of her dropped pants are beside her, like a melted man, another symbol of absence.

Ilya has not been with a woman since before Stalingrad. Three years. She is gaunt but beautiful.

Ilya walks forward. He stands over the girl. Her eyes shift to his. Looking down at her, the sense Ilya has is staring down into a well. If the black bottom has a face, it is this face below him now. He feels a chill.

Ilya has quested for answers but has he gone far enough for them? He’s seen life and death daily for four years now, in more manners than he would have once thought conceivable. But how much is there in between that he’s missed? Everything. Everything.

This girl on the floor is a casualty. Ilya is the same, but still on his feet. He is drawn to her the way a man is drawn to a mirror, to get a better look at himself. This girl, her hair is almost as short as Ilya’s. Her hands, for a woman, are stronger than his. Her body is marked too; Ilya lowers his eyes to her crotch, threads of her pubis are rusty with dried blood. She has battled, she and her mother, as much as any soldier. The cost of her war is not measured in other battered bodies, only her own. The battlefield is not a tract of torn-up, faraway land, but the carpet in her own parlor. And what she fights for is far more precious, more rightful, than anything Ilya has ever waged for. She fights to live. Only live.

Misha is right. War doesn’t end. It turns into this. This is where it waits and incubates, in this girl. You can see it already, in her body, the bruises like purple explosions, bloodshed between her legs.

As much as Ilya has done, he cannot do this.

Misha is wrong.

Ilya is war.

War stops right now. Here.

He kicks the clump of pants over her bare legs.

“Get dressed.”

Ilya whirls from the supine girl. The chill he felt moments before is a sirocco now.

He stomps out of the parlor. His boots on the steps are heavy, purposefully announcing he is coming.

Ilya finds Misha in a bedroom. The little man is on top of the mother. His trousers are bundled around his ankles, he did not take off his boots. They are on a bed. Misha does not stop humping or look around from his labor. The woman lies beneath him like a five-pointed star, spread wide and white. Ilya grabs Misha’s lowered pants and yanks, pulling him by the legs backward off the woman until Misha hits the floor facedown, buttocks in the air. Misha blusters and curses for Ilya to let him go and get out. Ilya presses Misha to the floor with his boot between the man’s squirming shoulder blades. The woman does not slide out of bed. She must figure the big one wants her now and is tossing the little one out. Her lower body bears the same ugly badges as her daughter’s.

Ilya hoists Misha from the floor. The little sergeant is livid. Ilya does not listen to his tirade, does not give him time to pull up his pants. He makes Misha hop, dragging him out of the room. Snatching up Misha’s rifle and coat, Ilya heaves them into the hall and down the steps. Misha stumbles, grabbing at his pants. Ilya hauls him like a garbage sack.

At the bottom of the steps Ilya lets him fasten his trousers and shoves him his coat. Misha has not stopped yelling.

Ilya says nothing. The girl has risen from the parlor floor. She stands again where she was when they entered, in the hallway. Misha sputters. Ilya does not listen. He reaches back to cuff Misha across the scar on his cheek. The little man recoils and clams up. Untucked and flummoxed, Misha slings open the door. He flees into the street. Ilya walks out of the house behind him, tossing Misha’s rifle to clatter in the road. Misha steps forward with care to pick it up. The watches he left outside are gone, snatched by other greedy hands.

“Ilya.”

“Go away, Misha. Now. Don’t come back.”

“What ... ?” Misha staggers, still confounded, only seconds ago he was buried in a woman.

“Go. I won’t say it again.”

Misha jams his tunic into his pants. He bounces from small foot to foot doing it. Not taking his eyes from the sergeant, Ilya leans back and closes the door.

“What are you doing?”

Ilya answers by sitting on the stoop. He brings his PPSh down from his shoulder and lays it across his knees.

Misha nods at this.

“All right.”

The little man laughs.

“Good for you, Ilyushka. And good fucking luck.”

Misha pivots and walks away with even more of the false stature Ilya noticed before. Misha has swollen, bigger now that the whole war is inside him. Ilya thinks: Good luck to him, as well. Ilya watches him go.

The battle for the Reichstag is still in the air. Thumps and haze denote the final front lines between the warring countries. A new front line is drawn at Ilya’s feet. He will sit here on the steps of this house and anchor his end of it, to see how far it may reach.

Behind him, the door opens. Ilya doesn’t look over his shoulder. He expects some soft touch, perhaps a sob. He doesn’t want gratitude.

An odd man sits down on the step beside him. He is slighter than either of the women, his skin as pale as their bellies. He wears a gray civilian suit, bedraggled, the hems unravel at the wrists and ankles. A brown tie is pulled tight to a yellowed collar. Thinning dark hair lies greasy across a speckled scalp.The man mimics Ilya’s resolved posture on the steps, elbows on knees, except he has no gun.

He lofts his gaze up to the sky. He seems to admire the size of it.

He turns a large nose and unblinking black eyes to Ilya. The men are face-to-face only for seconds. In that short space Ilya sees the man has questions, as many as Ilya. He has strength too, more than Ilya.

Neither man will budge from these steps.

Ilya smiles. There is an ally. The new front grows.

* * * *

Epilogue

May 7, 1945, 6:05
a.m.

Stalin’s office

the Kremlin

Moscow

he war is over.

Stalin slams a fist on the telegram. The few items on his desk jiggle.

The general who brought him the sheet retreats as though Stalin’s fist might split open the floor.

The cable is from Eisenhower. It was sent an hour ago from the Supreme Commander’s headquarters in Reims, France:

the mission of this allied force was fulfilled at
O24I,
local time, may
7, 1945.

Stalin surveys the disarray on his desktop. His pipe has spilled tobacco. Lenin’s picture has tipped on its face. A blue pencil has rolled to the carpet. Stalin knows his teeth are bared. He takes one long breath through his nose. His jaw is tight, he can barely unclamp his molars to speak.

He lifts his eyes.

“General?”

“Yes. Yes, Comrade?”

“Who is responsible for this?”

The soldier in front of Stalin’s desk is clearly a man of long service. He has his code of loyalty. He is reluctant. He bends to retrieve Stalin’s blue pencil. He reaches it out. Stalin does not extend his hand to accept it. The general places it on the desk.

Stalin glares.

“General. Who signed the surrender on behalf of the Soviet Union?”

“It was Susloparov.”

The officer begins to fidget. The man wants to do something. What? Straighten Stalin’s desk? He wants to say something more. To defend his comrade. To tell Stalin that Susloparov is innocent.

Innocent? This Susloparov flies to fucking France to accept the surrender of the German army, in Eisenhower’s headquarters? France! What did the French lose? How many bottles of wine did they have smashed? And Eisenhower. How many soldiers did he expend? Two, three hundred thousand? The Red Army lost that many between the Vistula and Berlin. This war cost Russia ten million of its people.

A week ago Hitler shot himself in his bunker. His whore Eva Braun took cyanide. Goebbels and his wife poisoned their children, then killed themselves. That’s because the Red Army was one block away and storming their gates. The next day the Soviet battle flag flew over the Reichstag.

The Nazi empire slipped and fell on Russian blood. Germany lies coated in it.

Who is Susloparov? He wasn’t authorized to report to France like one of Eisenhower’s lackeys. Who designated him to accept the German surrender? He has no right to agree to anything on behalf of the Soviet Union. Stalin was not even shown the surrender document before it was signed. In France.

“General, do me a kindness.”

“Of course, Comrade.”

“Somewhere in the Kremlin there is a bottle of vodka, yes?”

The general does not trust the question. It’s barely dawn. And Stalin does not drink alcohol.

“It’s all right,” Stalin assures the man, there is no trap here. “A bottle of vodka, General. And two glasses. You will join me in a victory drink.”

The officer licks his lips. There is hesitation. The man lifts his head and neck, giving the impression of a proud man at the gallows.

Stalin smiles, showing his yellow teeth again. The general comes to rigid attention. Such fuss, Stalin thinks, for a bottle and two glasses.

“Of course, Comrade Stalin. At once.” The officer spins on his boots and departs.

While the officer is gone, Stalin tidies his desk. He repacks his pipe and puts it aside. When he is done, he stands from his chair to pace. The
soyuzniki.
They nibble always at Stalin’s authority. Little gambits like this one. Eisenhower commanded the French, British, Americans, and Russians to come to him and sign his paper. To him, like he is some big shot. No, no, no, Stalin chuckles, you will not catch me so easily. It is you, little allies, who have been nabbed.

Stalin is ever on guard. Daily he reads Churchill’s telegrams and Truman’s cables of concurrence. They warn Stalin, they request, they beg. They offer nothing but friendship, threaten nothing but the withdrawal of their good graces. They bear no cudgel Stalin fears, no treasure Stalin covets. Every utterance from his allies is an attempt to sway him one way or another. Like wind.

The West is afraid. They fling charges of communist takeovers in eastern Europe. These are not takeovers. They are liberations. But the revolution can grow too fast, so Stalin must be careful.

To quell criticism, he makes certain that every postwar government in the countries occupied by his Red Army is fashioned as a coalition. Radical and peasant factions are joined with communist parties, so long as Communists hold key ministries. These include Interior, responsible for the police, Agriculture for land reform, Information, and Education. The strategy is working well in Yugoslavia, where Tito included five non-Communists in his government. When those men resigned, protesting they were given no real power, Tito had them arrested for seeking to provoke foreign intervention. The same transition goes on in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. Even in Poland, despite the commotion kicked up by that Churchill. The world does not hear the Soviet whispers in these lands, only indigenous voices crying out for equality and prosperity, for closer ties with Russia, and for communism. This is the ultimate will of the people.