War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] (19 page)

She rose, then leaned down and brought her face close.

“Don’t ever touch me in front of the others. Ever.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t do it, Fedya.” She turned away, then stopped and whispered to him angrily. “I must be as good as the others—better, even. And I will
not
be viewed by them as just a woman. I will not be a nurse or go work a radio in a bunker. That’s where I’ll end up if I’m seen holding your hand. There’s time. There are places. But never until I say so. Do you understand?”

She looked into Fedya’s face, wanting and expecting to find a ripple of pain there. She saw concern. She saw purpose instead of hesitation.

What have I done? she thought. The boy is in love with me.

“Tania, I only wanted to make sure you were all right.” He rose also, shouldering his rifle, and turned to rejoin the bears. “And no, I don’t understand or agree.”

She stopped him. “Fedya?”

“Yes?”

She quietly asked, “Have you told anyone I’m an American?”

“No. And do you know why I haven’t?”

He paced back to her the distance he had walked away. Close to her, his large chest near, she felt heat; the kill had not made him colder but had inflamed him. The poet, the scared boy, was impassioned with a gun in his hands.

Fedya spoke slowly. “Because if I did, they
would
treat you differently. They’d protect you and parade you like a show pony. I have enough sense to know that, Tania. Give me credit.”

He spun and walked off, his rifle clutched in one mitt.

After thirty minutes, Zaitsev and Medvedev ordered everyone back behind the crates and barrels. The intermediate-sized circles represented a head shot at 300 meters. The smallest circle was also a head shot but at 450 meters, the maximum distance at which they could expect to work. These targets were to be fired upon at will.

“Begin,” Medvedev called, and walked behind the trainees. Zaitsev stood near Tania for five minutes. Through binoculars, he watched the blooms of brick dust issue from her target. With each bullet, words of encouragement and invectives flowed into her ears while Zaitsev, and Medvedev elsewhere along the line, molded the volunteers as quickly as possible into snipers to bedevil the enemy.

* * * *

TANIA LOWERED HER RIFLE. SHE WAS CERTAIN THAT SHE
could not physically tolerate firing one more round. Her elbows, knees, eyes, and especially her right shoulder were pummeled and swollen. Her hips felt locked. She had to roll out of her sitting position onto her stomach and push up to get off the floor.

The trainees limped to the mess line. Each was given a bowl of warm gruel, a plate of sliced meat with bread, and a tin cup of tea. She sat on a crate and looked into the queue where Fedya stood. He nodded. She pointed at the crate next to her.

She wanted to dilute her angry comments of the morning. Perhaps there was a way to make Fedya understand her feelings without cramming them into his ears with such force. They had made love. It had been good, passionate, a release. But what baggage did the act carry? Did it mean they were joined, their spirits entwined the way their bodies had been? Had they been consecrated by Fedya as lovers, turned into pretty images in one of his poems? Or were they nothing more than what Tania felt them to be, two warriors on the edge of a battlefield sharing the last shreds of life left to them? Tania had not visited the depths of love while rocking on the bed with big Fedya. Yes, they had both cried out. But he had called her name.

Tania watched him collect his rations. She saw the agreeable confidence of his motions and thought, There’s no room in me for Fedya’s innocent love. I am full with sorrow and bitterness enough for a hundred hearts. I’ll be his friend. Perhaps I’ll sleep with him again. But I will not fall in love. He’ll accept that. Or he’ll step aside.

Before Fedya could join Tania, Danilov hopped in front of her. The commissar inclined his head in a mannered greeting and sat on the crate next to her. The crate groaned when the rotund little
politrook
unbuttoned his greatcoat. He took out a pencil and opened his notebook in his lap. A blur of scrawl covered every line and margin as he flipped to one of the few blank pages.

“My dear,” he began, “I am Captain Danilov. I believe you know who I am and my own mission in this sniper unit. Of course, I do not have the honor of actually being a sniper. But I have taken a great interest in the activities of this first class of trainees. I will be describing your activities and lessons for the rest of the army through my articles in
In Our Country’s Defense.
Perhaps you have read one or two of them?”

“No, comrade commissar.”

“Well,” he replied with a smile, his single eyebrow a cloud over his dark eyes, “maybe you’ll read this next one. You will be in it for your part in last night’s icehouse raid. What can you tell me?”

Tania looked to Zaitsev, who was speaking with some of the hares. She wished he’d save her from this unctuous, dangerous man perched beside her with his legs kicked out in front of him, croaking like a toad. She knew that with a word this commissar could send her out of the sniper school to a noncombatant role. And Fedya was right; if this commissar learned an American was fighting in their number, she would become a curio, a political and propaganda coup, too valuable for the
rodina
to risk her taking a bullet.

“Have you spoken with Comrade Zaitsev?” she asked. “He was the leader of the mission.”

“We have spoken. It was he who insisted I talk to you. Apparently you killed a Nazi with your bare hands last night. And you lit the fuses that blew up the headquarters.”

Tania looked at the commissar’s little feet. His ebony boots were shiny. She wondered, How does he keep them that way?

Danilov continued. “What do you think of Comrade Zaitsev? And what do you think about being one of his hares?”

Tania searched for something to say. To her surprise, there was more than she expected in her storehouse of words. She realized they were not the words the commissar wanted to hear. He expects me to give him a heroic quote, she thought. How magnificent Zaitsev was in leading our most dangerous mission last night. What an honor it is to serve under such a man. I can’t tell this commissar the truth, that I have no idea whether Zaitsev is a hero or a strutting coward; he seems to me to enjoy his growing status as a headline for
In Our Country’s Defense,
one of the many new and improved icons of the Russian cause. No, I can’t say true words to this little Chekist, that I also find Zaitsev disturbing, that I want to touch his veined hands and flat Siberian face; when his voice tells me to move or stop, to aim left or jump right, my body follows. How badly I want for him to be the hero that Danilov is constructing.

“Comrade Zaitsev is a bold man,” she said, and the commissar set upon his notebook with his flying pencil. “He is indeed a hero, and all those who fight by his side will do heroic deeds. I am honored to be a sniper, one of the hares, under him.”

“And after the building blew up last night, you ran, simply ran, through the streets to reach the Russian lines?”

“The explosion covered our sounds. I couldn’t hear myself run. Chief Master Sergeant Zaitsev ran ahead of us. We followed. It wasn’t my decision to make. But it was the right decision.”

Danilov closed his notebook. “One last question, Private Chernova. In these dangerous times, it is important that Russia is defended by, let us say, committed fighters. As a woman, you would die for the
rodina
? You are prepared for that?”

The Communist bastard, she thought. His question carries the same stench as the Green Hats’ queries on the Stalingrad road.

“Comrade commissar, I would not die for the
rodina
as a woman. I would die as a Russian.” Tania cocked her head as if aiming her sniper rifle. “And I certainly will not die a coward. Comrade.”

Danilov tucked his notebook under his arm and yanked in his legs. He stood from the crate. He was barely taller when standing than Tania was seated.

“Of course, my dear.” He buttoned his coat with one hand. He stopped and reached the hand to Tania. When he spoke, the dramatic and false qualities of his voice were gone.

“Of course. Comrade.”

Tania shook the flabby hand. She watched Danilov walk away. Zaitsev looked across the room. He nodded to Danilov when the little commissar bustled past him.

Tania replaced her spoon into her boot. She laid her plate down and walked back to the firing line. Three other soldiers were taking the time for extra practice. Their shots echoed in the great hall while she knelt behind her crate. She brushed aside empty casings, spilling them to clatter across the floor. She stuffed paper wads in her ears and threw back the bolt to send home another round. Fixing her eye through the scope on the smallest circle, she curled the second fold of her index finger over the trigger. She watched the target bob, riding her heartbeat. She waited, her breathing shallow, for her hand to steady. In seconds the target grew dead still under the crosshairs. It seemed huge, unmissable, summoning the bullet. She pulled the trigger slowly, evenly. The rifle cracked and recoiled into her tender shoulder. Through the scope, she found the sudden red breadth of the brick wall, struck in the center of the smallest circle. She pulled back the bolt to fire again.

* * * *

THE AFTERNOON SESSION WAS BEGUN WITH ZAITSEV’S
call: “Hares! Let’s go! Bring your rifles!”

He led them up the basement steps with his rifle slung across his shoulders like a yoke. The recruits followed him to the Lazur plant’s first floor. They wove through the maze of twisted metal and charred ceiling timbers to a row of sooty windows facing the no-man’s-land rail yard. Zaitsev halted a few steps from one of the large openings; the window sash had long ago been blown in. His boots crunched on broken glass.

He pointed out the window at the German-held buildings beyond no-man’s-land. The air drifting in was brisk, the Russian winter’s first white blossom.

“You are looking west.” Zaitsev spoke. “Right now, the sun is behind you. Whenever possible, set up your shots with the sun at your back. It makes it harder for your enemy to find you. Also, it prevents glare off your scope.”

Tania looked out at the crater-filled rail yard, across which she and Fedya had crawled two nights ago, and the railman’s shed and the trench they’d tumbled into. Now, in the afternoon light, she saw a dozen Russian machine guns, manned at fifty-meter intervals in the trench, aimed across the yard. Fedya and I could have collected a few bullets that night, she thought back.
Nicht schiessen.

On all fours, Zaitsev crept to the lip of the window to set his rifle on the sill. He took from his pocket a pair of gloves, which he’d lashed together with string; he laid them on the sill. “Make yourself some sort of shooting bag,” he said over his shoulder. “It’ll keep your barrel from sliding.”

He gazed down his scope. Without moving his head, he said, “See the second German tank, the one with the track blown off?”

Zaitsev fired. In the distance, Tania heard an impact, metal on metal,
ping,
ring through the report of the rifle.

The Hare turned from his shot. “The iron cross on the front fender of that tank is exactly four hundred meters from this wall. This row of windows is called the ‘shooting gallery.’ You will come here to calibrate your sights regularly or whenever you have any doubts about your rifle’s accuracy. Approach the windows carefully, two at a time. Set your sights for the proper distance and wait for my order to fire.”

Tania crawled to the window in front of her. Beside her was the Armenian woman, Slepkinian. She set her scope for four hundred meters and took careful aim at the Nazi tank’s insignia.

Zaitsev slid back from his window and stood. He raised his binoculars and walked behind the two hares at the first window.

“Shaikin. Fire.”

Tania braced at the report of the rifle to her right. From the field she heard nothing to indicate a hit.