FOUR

 

 

 

 

 

February 18, 1945, 11:45 A.m.

Goethe Strasse

Charlottenburg, Berlin

 

 

Lottie stares at the yellow door.

 

She tightens her sweater around her, expressing huffiness, but her mother pays no heed. Freya busies herself making sandwiches and a big pot of potato soup, humming over the stove in a pretty, warbly voice. There is electricity this morning and she wants to cook as much as she can during these random hours of civilization. For months Freya has hoarded a salami, hiding it wrapped in waxed paper under a loose floorboard. This morning she carves from it precious slices.

 

Lottie leans against the wall in the short hall between the dining room and the kitchen. She could stick out her foot and kick the door leading to the basement. That would get some attention.

 

The basement door is painted a meringue yellow. A gross color, it looks like pus. Behind the door she imagines hell. A demon waits behind that door, her personal devil, come into her life to ruin her.

 

She might have survived. Her chances were good. But now there is a devil.

 

Invited into her life. By her own mother.

 

A Jew.

 

In the basement, Freya keeps a Jew.

 

He sits at the top of the steps—Freya says that’s what he does—listening to them, to Freya hum, Lottie grumble. He hears everything, he never moves from the step. It’s always dark in the basement, he lives on what little light creeps under the door, what little sound he can snatch through it. Lottie thinks of him as a gargoyle, folded wings, cleft pupils in his eyes.

 

Lottie will not speak to the Jew behind the door. For two weeks, since she came to stay with Freya when her building was destroyed, she has refused. Lottie leaves the room whenever Freya talks to him, she does not want to hear the Jew. She goes from the house whenever Freya opens the door to take him food. She does not want to be there if they’re caught. She reasons that if she’s ever questioned, she can claim no knowledge of the Jew; her mother said he was there but Lottie never heard or saw him. This is her only slim hope to survive him.

 

She wants to throw him out. Kick open the door, bruise him on his stoop for the outrage of his presence, and order him to leave. But this is not her home, it’s her mother’s. She suspects Freya would sooner order Lottie banished than the Jew.

 

Lottie shifts her gaze from the basement door to the kitchen. Freya pares potatoes over a skillet. The peels she will fry in lard and seasonings. She has a lovely voice. Her dress hem seems a bit higher lately, her shoes shine. She swore to save the salami for the most dire times. Now she makes sandwiches. It’s the Jew’s fault, Lottie believes, that she thinks these evil thoughts about her mother.

 

The morning her building was bombed Lottie collapsed in the street. Rescue workers carried Mrs. Preutzmann up from the blazing neighbor building before it too fell in on itself. The landlady awoke screaming for her husband. A fireman covered Lottie with a blanket, then she was left alone. She curled beside her cello, locking out behind closed eyes the crashes, sirens, shouts. A wailing crowd milled in Regensburger Strasse. Volunteers handed out hot drinks and bland buns. In the afternoon, with the sun cloaked in smoke, Lottie rose. Her body carried an ache that seemed to outweigh the cello case; she dragged it and herself to Charlottenburg. All the trains were stopped, there was so much wreckage across the tracks. The whole city was ignited. One train had barreled on fire into the Anhalter Station, slamming into the station like a flaming arrow. In backyards, winter piles of coal burned, giant anthills of angry red. They will smolder for weeks. The air was polluted with the cremation of buildings and escaping gas. Lottie’s progress through the city was held up by uprooted trees, broken telegraph poles, torn wires, craters, and mounds of smoking rubble. The fire-borne wind hurled roof tiles, gutters, and glass shards into the streets. She staggered through it all to Mutti.

 

When Freya opened her door, she wept to see her daughter. She took Lottie upstairs to bed and tended to the many scratches and cuts on her face and arms. She soaked her daughter’s blistered hands in Epsom salts. The two did not talk much. For three days Lottie lay in Freya’s bedroom, wrapped in quilts. Her mother slept on the sofa in the room or in a guest bed. She shuttled in hot tea and soups. Freya sat on the edge of the mattress resting her hand on Lottie’s foot or her forehead. Lottie fixed on the ceiling or shut her eyes. The Galiano stood in the corner like a patient friend, waiting for her to rouse and play.

 

On the fourth morning, Lottie left the house with the cello. She was weak and downhearted, but there was a rehearsal for the Philharmonic. She could not miss it, even with swollen hands, her place with the BPO as tenuous as it is. Freya walked with her to the U-bahn station, carrying the cello. The two kissed cheeks. Despite her worries, Lottie felt her spirits stir. A glimmer inside her hoped everything might be all right. Her mother could make it so. Lottie had not lost everything; not her cello, and not Mutti.

 

At dusk when she returned, Freya sat her down in the den. She took her daughter’s hands. Her eyes slid sideways to the basement door several times. Then Freya took a deep breath and spoke.

 

“You’re feeling better.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Good. I can tell you now.”

 

Lottie blinked.

 

“I’ve taken in a Jew.”

 

Lottie shook her head, balking at understanding what she’d just heard.

 

Freya repeated. “I’ve taken in a Jew.”

 

Lottie jerked back her hands as though from the maws of mad dogs.

 

“You’ve done what?”

 

“He’s in the basement.”

 

Lottie rattled her head. “No, no, no.”

 

“Lottie, listen to me. He has nowhere else to go. He’s been hiding from the Nazis for two years. If we turn him out he’s dead.”

 

Comprehension crashed into Lottie’s brain like the burning train at the station.

 

“He’s dead? He’s dead? What about us? We’re dead if he stays here.”

 

“No.”

 

“Yes! He’s got to go. Right now!”

 

“No. He’s already been here for a month. He’s going to stay. To the end.”

 

“A month! You’ve ...”

 

Lottie leaped from the sofa. She ran down the hall to the basement door, envisioning for the first time the demon behind it. She spoke to the door, an exorcism.

 

“Listen. You hear me? You’ve got to leave. We can’t have you here. Get out!”

 

The door was silent. Lottie feared the doorknob, what she might see if she turned it, moist and white, the Jew in the darkness, the Jew eclipsing her life.

 

She put her hand on the knob.

 

Freya laid her hand over Lottie’s. Her mother’s grip was shocking, hard.

 

Her tone was calm, not just a mother’s words but a protector’s, firm and righteous.

 

“Get away from this door, Lottie.”

 

As strong as Lottie’s hands were, Freya pried her fingers from the door.

 

She took Lottie by the elbow and towed her back to the sofa. With a yank the two women sat.

 

“Mutti.”

 

“No.”

 

“Do you understand the danger you’ve put us in?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Lottie needed to explain it anyway to her mother, who couldn’t possibly understand, or else she wouldn’t have done this. “If we’re caught, we’ll be shot. Right outside in the street, in front of your house. The SS will shoot us, Mutti.”

 

“And what will they do to him if he’s caught?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

Freya was stricken. She wagged her head, solemn, almost a shudder.

 

“That’s the worst of all possible answers.”

 

Lottie stood. She wanted to look down on her mother, that was her mood.

 

“Mutti. We’re not heroes.”

 

Freya also stood.

 

“We’re not monsters. Today, in Berlin and everywhere in Germany, that’s all there is. It’s a choice and every German makes it. Do nothing, know nothing. Or act. Monster or hero. That’s all there is for the whole world until this is over.”

 

Freya put her hands to her hips. She spread her legs.

 

“Lottie, Liebchen, I only put myself in this danger. I had no idea you’d be coming to live with me. You’re here now and you’re welcome, of course. But I’ve made my choice in this matter. You’ve got to make yours.”

 

The arguments lasted for days. Lottie demanded to know how they could feed a third mouth when they could barely scrape by themselves? Their ration cards are already growing more and more useless, government stores are drying up. The few remaining shops are being burned out from the bombings. They have not enough money for black-market food.

 

Who else knows about the Jew? Will Mutti keep her mouth shut and not tell her friends, not want to show off how good she’s being, how heroic? Who among her acquaintances will trade in Mutti’s and Lottie’s lives for an extra portion of horsemeat?

 

How can the Jew be trusted? How does she know he’s not a spy, just waiting to grab her and some ring of imagined conspirators?

 

Who’s to say how long he’ll keep his word and stay put? That he won’t go crazy in the dank basement and go out for a stroll? It’ll all be over then.

 

What happens if the house is bombed and he’s found in the basement, moaning, ”Get me out, get me out.” After they rescue him, they shoot him. And then Lottie and Mutti. He’s a Jew in their basement.

 

Why give a stranger such control over them?

 

Freya held her ground. Lottie caved in. She had no choice. She has nowhere else to go. Like the Jew They are trapped in Mutti’s house together. But trapped or not, Lottie will not acknowledge him.

 

She finds it creepy that he sits there on the top step, listening, waiting for someone to walk by, capture a word or two outside his barrier. He perches there probably even when the house is empty. What kind of human being is it who can tolerate such darkness, silence, hatred, danger, suspicion, fear? The Jew scares her for his power, not only over her life, but what it must take to withstand his own.

 

At night Lottie awakes from nightmares and stares in the cold gloom at the door to her room. He’s down there, crouched on the top step behind the door. The nightmares must come from him. She’s afraid he’ll sneak out and touch her while she sleeps, that she’ll wake up and find him over her.

 

Mutti says he’s a wonderful man. A teacher of history, he knows all sorts of tales. His own is a horrible story. If Lottie would only let him tell it to her, she would see there’s no choice but to help him. He’s alone. His people, all his people, terrible, terrible.

 

For the two weeks she has been in Mutti’s household, the Jew has respected Lottie’s wish not to be seen or heard by her. She has never said it directly to him; she has not spoken one word to him since she demanded that he leave; but he has heard her say it to Mutti. Lottie thinks he might not even be real. He might be nothing more than an empty wish by Mutti, a fantasy that she could be so brave as to help a Jew.

 

When Lottie is out of the house, she doesn’t know what he does. Does he come out and sip tea with Mutti? Do they chat on the sofa? No, he must stay hidden. If a neighbor happened by, if a curtain were left opened to the street ... no, the consequences of the smallest slipup will be awful.

 

Lottie watches her mother move the soup kettle to the burner. The skillet begins to spit grease. The Jew behind the door can smell food coming, he rises like a goldfish to it. Lottie cannot stand the house, the malaise and tension, another moment. How can the Jew sit day after day, weeks without light, with such silence? How can a human being live like a rat? She wants to rap the door hard with her toe, make him jump, tumble down the steps.

 

Lottie whirls away from the kitchen, arms bound around her. She stomps the long walk to the front parlor. She goes to the sofa and folds with a bounce. It’s quiet in the parlor, the kitchen is a long way back. The rooms in Mutti’s house are narrow, and there are a lot of them. The building is a two-story row house, with a face of fat gray stone. The Gothic facade has been marred by shrapnel and some windows have been shattered, but Freya has been lucky with the bombings. And fortunate with the authorities; there’s room here for three more families.

 

She goes to her cello case. She takes out the Galiano, it is shiny and ancient. Placing a chair in the center of the room, she arranges the instrument between her knees. She hugs the cello, lays her head on its cool wooden shoulder. The Galiano is innocent, she thinks, perfect and good. In its big chest is nothing but the songs of maestros. Lottie knows how to caress it to bring them out, the music in the cello’s breath. She strokes its waist. Why are we here now, she wonders, you and me in this awful time and place? She’s ashamed that the Galiano—two hundred years old, it has cried and laughed on stages in Vienna, Rome, Paris, London, seen centuries of opulence and honor—must find itself today in Berlin.

 

Lottie lifts her head. Her cheek wears the flat kiss of the cello.

 

She flicks her glance at the kitchen, to her cooking, courageous mother. Then to the basement door, behind which an unknown manner of man suffers for deliverance.

 

Fine for the two of you, Lottie thinks.

 

Now, listen. This is what I can do.

 

She inclines her head, her eyes half closed. Lottie descends to the place inside her where the music waits with its arms out, always, like a child to be lifted. She draws the bow across the strings, slowly, the opening strain to the first solo of Schumann’s Concerto for Cello in A minor, Opus 129. This is Lottie’s dream piece. She’s practiced it a hundred times. One day she will play the solo in front of the Berlin Philharmonic and adoring thousands. In her mind they’re in their seats in the theater now.

 

Her playing builds with the work. This is not her private, rehearsal tone but full concert pitch. Her vibrato and bow stroke would fill the Beethoven Hall to the rafters were she there. Lottie lifts her chin, her head undulates left and right with the sound, the cello charms her as though out of a basket. Under lowered lids, Lottie sees her mother in the doorway.

 

The music broods for many measures, exploring the lower registers of the cello, the sounds of a father weeping. Then the music becomes the keen of a mother, high-pitched, sweeping into a quicker lament, the beating of fists. Lottie surrenders to the pain and the selfishness of her genius. She is strapped to the passages and cascades with them. She is oblivious to all else but the cello and her cause, to play as powerfully as the Jew, to play as loftily as anything Mutti might behold of herself.

 

Lottie listens. She knows her performance is compelling. The cello is a treasure box she sweeps clean, the Schumann piece is her broom; she leaves nothing inside the instrument, bringing out every bauble and secret of it for her mother and the Jew to marvel at.

 

When she is done, her eyes are fully closed. She lowers the bow gracefully, with flourish. By instinct of her imagination, she stands to the applause of the concert hall. She lifts her head and there is Freya clapping, a dish towel over her shoulder. Mutti’s eyes are red-rimmed.

 

Freya says, “Bravo, child. Bravo.” She pulls the towel off her shoulder to dry her eyes.

 

The clapping continues.

 

It carries from far down the hall. From the basement.

 

Freya beams at her daughter, but only for a moment. She turns away, walking a few steps into the dining room. She calls, “I told you she plays beautifully. Doesn’t she?”

 

The single clapping continues, softened by distance and walls. Lottie wants it to stop. This is wrong, a violation of the rules. He should not become real. It was the bargain they all made. He’s clapping. He’s there. The Jew behind the door speaks to Lottie.

 

Freya returns fully to the parlor. She has been moved.

 

“Liebchen, that was magnificent. Was that for me?”

 

Lottie fumbles with the bow and the cello, putting them in the case. The clapping does not die out. He’s there. A Jew in their house.

 

“No.”

 

“Well.” Freya folds the kitchen towel. “It was practice, then. Wonderful.”

 

Make him stop, Lottie thinks. It’s ridiculous.

 

Freya cocks her head backward, to the basement. “Listen to him.”

 

“I have to get ready. There’s a concert at four.”

 

“I didn’t know. Will you be playing the Schumann?”

 

Stupid question. Stupid mother.

 

“No.”

 

The clapping stops.

 

Freya stays in the room while Lottie stows the Galiano. Lottie replaces the chair and makes for the stairs. Freya speaks to stop her.

 

“Liebchen.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Thank you. You can see what that meant to him.”

 

Lottie imagines the history teacher on his dark stoop. He probably cried too.

 

Making no reply, she climbs the steps, aggravated. She did a self-centered thing. An awful thing. She played with all her might to humble them both, show them who was extraordinary among the three. Plenty of people suffer, everyone in Berlin. Millions are brave. But who possesses Lottie’s gift? A handful in the world.

 

Mutti chose to see Lottie’s vanity as noble. Mutti warped her daughter’s egotism into generosity. The Jew clapped a full minute after the music stopped. He’s ludicrously appreciative. The two of them stole the music from Lottie. They wept and molded it into their own images, for their purposes, further proof that they’re the most special and good of anyone.

 

Lottie changes into the tuxedo and puts up her hair. Twenty minutes later she lands in the foyer. The cello is by the door, beside a paper sack of salami sandwiches. Lottie dons her overcoat, and without saying goodbye takes both packages into the chill city afternoon.

 

By two o’clock she has arrived at the Beethoven Hall. Today’s concert is Mozart and Schubert. There’s plenty of cello in the Schubert, even for fourth chair. Outside the theater, people stand in line. The afternoon concerts are free, but there are limited seats available for the public. Large sections are blocked off for Nazi officials and servicemen. When the lights go up after performances, Lottie and the musicians look out over a lake of black uniforms, whitecaps of bandages. Sometimes there are no lights; ushers use lanterns to lead the audience out.

 

Backstage, there is animated chatter. Whenever the musicians of the BPO gather, the first thing they do is weigh their fates. Lottie doesn’t take part in the discussions; she’s a woman, only a provisional member of the orchestra.

 

The men lump into clatches of five to ten, often by instrument. What will happen to them? Will they be conscripted into the Volkssturm? Will Speer act to save them? Is Goebbels just going to throw them to the wolves after all they’ve done for Berlin? Lottie sits alone, her back to a wall, casting her attention left and right like a fishing lure. An oboist found some black-market bread, here’s the address. A French-horn player saw a Belgian worker crushed to death by a falling beam. Another string player was bombed out of his house; oddly, along with Lottie, the string section has been hit hardest. Someone in the percussion section has been listening to Allied broadcasts. This can get him executed so he whispers, though he is among men he can trust. They all have the same interest: survival, for themselves and the BPO. He says the Americans and British are ready to cross the Roer River, headed for the Rhine. They’re aiming at Berlin. He believes the German troops will lay down their arms and escort the Amis in. Then they’ll all band together and take care of the dirty Reds.

 

The French-horn player hears this. He shakes his nose at his grouping of brass players. The Russians will be here first, he says. They’re only fifty miles away. He’s a sad, spongy old man, dripping of ugly tales and depressing news. Lottie avoids him and his clique.

 

The Russians are brutes, he says. The things he’s heard, tsk. You don’t want to know. You may even have heard worse. And they’re getting angrier and more out of control with every step closer to Berlin.

 

Pity the city, says a trumpeter.

 

The French-horn player answers. Oh, Berlin can take it. We just have to keep our heads down and lie low. But pity the women.

 

When several heads in the group tilt towards Lottie, they seem surprised to see her glaring back. Chagrined, they lean again into their circle, their voices ratcheted down. Lottie hears another tsk.

 

The day’s performance is lackadaisical. The image of a Russian plague massing on the Polish border is a pall over the performers. Furtwängler is gone; the director until he returns is Robert Heger. He appears perplexed waving his baton, a jockey on a distracted horse. Heger beats the BPO but they respond with reluctant speed. The Mozart is mangled; Lottie cannot even muster much gusto for the Schubert. But the house erupts in applause when they are finished. Heger drops his arms and turns for his bow, he is snappy, badly hiding his anger. The orchestra stands and bows. To Lottie they look like an orchestra stretching their necks to a guillotine.

 

The house lights come up. The musicians shuffle off the stage. Lottie hears low-slung curses from the men. Chairs skid out of the way, sheets of music flutter to the stage floor. Lottie holds her spot, focusing her eyes on the back of the auditorium, at the top of the aisles where Berliners queue to exit. The line on the right is slow, a few soldiers on crutches hobble as best they can. Berliners are patient behind them.

 

The line on the left is also slow. Something unusual is going on. Two men in uniform are at the head of each aisle, handing out items from baskets. Lottie eases the Galiano to its side on the floor. She steps into the wings, then down the stairs to the house floor.

 

At the tail of the right-hand line in the emptying house, Lottie accepts a few kind statements from an elderly couple. She bites her tongue and says thank you. They congratulate her for being a woman in the orchestra and admit surprise; from the audience they could not spot her for the tuxedo. Lottie explains it’s only until the war is over, they nod. Approaching the top of the aisle, Lottie discerns that the men in uniform are boys, Hitler Youth. From thirty feet away, she sees the blue of their eyes, like welders’ torches. Their paramilitary outfits are hard things, dark shells of leather and spiny creases, they look so wrong for boys of fourteen or fifteen.

 

Lottie follows the slow gait to the boys. Ahead, some people dig into the baskets, then hurry away. Others halt and gaze down at what the two youths offer, seeming to fall into a spell until someone prods them and they either dig in or walk on, dazed. No one speaks. The two Nazi youths say nothing. They look everyone in the face. They are stony, sober children.

 

When the old couple in front of Lottie gain the top of the aisle, the two peer down into the basket. Their eyes stay in there for several moments, netted in what they see. Their glances rebound up together, and in the look they share Lottie reads the lives these two have spent by each other’s side. Fifty years or more, husband and wife. On their twin faces are love, children, tragedy, loyalty. Still as twins, they nod just slightly, never unlocking their eyes. The man reaches into the basket for both of them and takes two.

 

Lottie steps up. The basket is held out.

 

Inside are capsules, wrapped and labeled in tiny plastic packets.

 

Cyanide.

 

Lottie catches her breath. Her gut plummets.

 

Dear God.

 

This is all the protection Hitler can summon at the end for his German people against the Russians. Baskets of poison, government-sanctioned suicide. A Home Guard made up of old men and frightened musicians. Cities of ruins. And dead-faced boys, whose hands holding out these baskets are smaller-boned than Lottie’s.

 

She’s disgusted. Neither of the Hitler Youth twitches, they could be mannequins.

 

Her disgust twists in her gut like a dirk, twists into nausea.

 

The Jew in the basement is real. The Russians are real. The cyanide is real.

 

Doom.

 

Lottie loses her balance. Neither ebon boy moves to aid her. One knee buckles; she grabs hold of the gilded door frame. The theater spins. She wants to vomit.

 

One of the boys speaks. “Fräulein. We cannot protect you.”

 

Lottie lifts her chin above the tide of her rising insides. Looking into their faces, she does not know which of the boys talked. She dips a hand into the basket. The packets beneath her fingertips are white, soft, little kisses in the basket. She fingers a pill. So small, so enormous. She’ll put the thing in the Jew’s food. That’ll take care of one problem.

 

Her hand digs deeper. The tablets play around her knuckles. They seem gentle, competent. The pills make a vow to her: we’ll keep our promise. Trust us, but nothing else. We’re the only things in your world that will do what we say. Take me. Me! No, pick me!

 

She hovers over the basket.

 

She won’t poison the Jew. He may live like a rat in the basement but she won’t kill him like one.

 

Lottie’s head clears. Her hand is still plunged in the pills. They nibble at the backs of her fingers like minnows.

 

She chooses .You. Little friend, you are for me.

 

She plucks another. And you. You can come also.

 

For Mutti.

 

The Gestapo or the Russians—one or the other, when they come— will be coming for Mutti too.

 

Everything is real.

February 22, 1945, 11:10 p.m.

With the Ninth Army on the west bank

of the Roer River, near Jülich

Germany

 

 

bandy never likes night operations. he can t take photos in the dark.

 

He pulls a lantern closer to his lap, not for the light but the heat. The air is river-damp and chilly, even in his tent. He takes a quick look around at his setup: cot, desk and chair, blankets, magazines. He’s been living high on the hog the last ten days, staying in one place. By afternoon this’ll all be torn down, moved across the river and given to someone else. Bandy doesn’t want to spend any more nights in tents. He, along with the whole U.S. Ninth Army, wants to get going again, to Berlin. He wants to sleep in the front seat of a rolling truck on the Autobahn. In the last week he hasn’t sent one photo back to New York. Photos of what—waiting? Even so, his instincts tell him he’s in the right place.

 

Along Ike’s broad front, both Bradley in the middle and Patton in the south are facing a lot of opposition getting to the Rhine. Even after they’re across, they’ll be staring at the bulk of the German forces in the West. Plus, there’s a rumor that Hitler’s preparing a southern route out of Berlin for his escape to the alpine regions of Bavaria, Austria, and Italy. The story goes the Führer’s going to retreat there to a prepared redoubt, his Eagle’s Nest, set up a microphone and radio transmitter and keep the fight alive with a Nazi resistance force of maniacs in the mountains. If Hitler does get in there, it’ll take another million men to pry him out. Look at the killing in the Hürtgen; triple it. So Ike has to worry about intercepting enemy troops possibly heading south. But up here on the northern track, Monty’s free from having to cut off any breakout. He’s got Berlin in his bonnet and a straight shot once he’s across the Rhine. The Ninth Army is still under him. Eisenhower let the Field Marshal keep it. Bandy gambles that these U.S. forces will be the ones to break through, with Montgomery and Churchill spurring them on.

 

Jump-off this morning is at 0245. Bandy figures he’d better get in a letter to Victoria. Who knows when he’ll have another chance to write. Like all servicemen around the world at war, Bandy has his final letter written out and sealed in his breast pocket. It’s been there for three years now. In his career he’s written five of them, goodbyes to Victoria.

 

Her recent letter was another plaint. She’s getting more annoyed every time she writes. When are you coming home? I’m so mad at you, if the Krauts don’t kill you I might, and so on. She never acted like this before when he was gone. What’s different now?

 

On the cot he touches the pen to the pad. What can he say? Dear Vic, I’m not sorry I’m here. I’m not sorry I’m the man I am and drawn where and when I am. I’m not sorry that I’m risking making you a widow so I can take pictures of other men doing it worse to their own gals. How does Bandy tell her this?

 

He lowers his forehead into his palm and thinks, You just plain don’t tell her. The pen stands at attention, waiting for orders. Bandy writes:

 

Dearest Victoria,

 

Hi, doll. I’m here in the middle of nowhere again. Next to the Roer River with a division of the Ninth Army, about ten thousand men. We’re going across tonight. Well, they are. I’ll wait for morning.

 

That was some spread Life gave me on the Hürtgen, wasn’t it? It was pretty awful being there. Not as bad as being one of the soldiers. Of course.

 

After I got through the forest with the First Army, I came up here north with the Ninth for the Roer crossing. But the Germans blew the river dams two weeks ago and we’ve been held up here ever since, waiting for the water to recede. Dammit (ha-ha). In the downtime the men have practiced the crossing a bunch of times, and we’ve had some big brass visit, wearing ties. Even some correspondents came up to take a few notes, watch a couple artillery shells fired, then scoot back to the rear to file their reports “from the front.” Papa Hemingway was one. Everybody made a fuss over him. Me, I’m here all the time. Anyway. A prophet is not without honor. . . .

 

With luck, by next week I should be able to write from the east bank of the Rhine. Then it’s on to Berlin. I’m going to keep trying to find out what outfit has the best shot of getting there first and join up. That’ll be the best, Vic. Won’t it? Charles Bandy, IN BERLIN. Can you see it?

 

I know this is hard on you, but it’s almost over. We’re on our way, every man here feels it!

 

In his head Bandy hears the responses from his wife. He doesn’t want to argue with her. He writes something conciliatory.

 

Look, I swear. When this is over I’ll stay home permanent, just you and me, tobacco, babies, and some domestic assignments just to keep my hand in.

 

This is mostly a lie, everything but the part about the babies. He wants to scratch it all out but that would mar the letter, make her suspicious that he’d written something even worse. There’s worse he could have written. A kind lie’s not so bad. If he was face-to-face with her he’d say it, whatever, to make her feel better about things, to get through this.

 

But Bandy won’t quit Life magazine. Not so long as history gets made in the world, and that’s every dang day. After this war there’s going to be another conflict somewhere, big or small. Mankind only knows one way to exist with each other and that’s with some measure of mayhem. Victoria teaches schoolkids about things that Bandy has photographed, and will photograph. How can he give this up? How can she not understand? It’s always been bigger than one man and one woman, or it wouldn’t be history. Lies are like punches, they come best in combinations.

 

The brass here figure weeks, Vic, maybe a month more. The Germans are hightailing it. This’ll all be over real soon and you can give me up the country in person. That sound good?

 

A whopper. Hitler’s not rolling over for the West, no way. Though he ought to be. No one can figure out why the little shit is fighting so hard against the Americans and British. The guns are all on German soil now. These are German towns and cities going up in flames. The country’s being destroyed, while the soldiers and people and even teenage boys fight back fanatically It doesn’t make sense—for what? They’re beat. Bandy’s heard only three possible explanations: first, the National Redoubt in the Alps, Hitler’s buying time to get it ready. Second, the Führer thinks if he can give the Western Allies one more bloody nose like he did at the Bulge, we’ll make a separate peace with him and join with the Nazis against the Reds, which won’t happen. Nobody wants that fight, from Roosevelt on down. The last explanation is that the German people are scared to death of paying the piper for what they’ve done here in Europe. If they put up a good enough fight, the Allies might consider accepting something less than unconditional surrender from Germany, just to get the war over with. That’s not going to happen either. Not from everything Bandy’s heard about what went on in Russia and Poland, and what he’s seen with his own eyes, his precious history. The piper is owed far too much.

 

Outside the tent a convoy growls past. Bandy’s tent rattles. He shoves aside the flap. Trucks carrying the four-hundred-pound, eight-man assault boats make for the river’s edge.

 

I got to go now. With luck I’ll write you next from the east bank of the Rhine.

 

I love you. Always. Everywhere.

 

Charley

 

Bandy sticks the letter in an envelope. He gathers his camera bags, stuffs an extra blanket into his pack, and leaves the tent. He hooks a ride with a truck in the convoy and heads to the riverbank, leaving the letter with the GI driver to mail.

 

Along the bank, valves have been opened on giant steel canisters mounted on flatbed trucks. Clouds of oil smoke roil out, spilling across the water to obscure those engineers hoisting the assault boats to the lip of the water. The receding Roer has turned the approach to the river into a two-hundred-yard swath of marshy, muddy goop. Bandy watches the engineers go and return. He wishes for daylight to shoot them, the men are covered chin-down in muck, they steam stepping out of the fog, like swamp creatures. All around, the might of the Ninth Army slips and clutches for purchase against the river and earth. Giant trucks haul forward girders and pontoons to erect bridges once a beachhead is secured on the east bank. Dozens of assault companies, each a hundred fifty men strong, hunker in clearings, waiting; they clatter like cicadas in the dark, fidgeting with their rifles, rations, helmets, packs, fears, smokes, chatter, prayers. Their breaths, lit by passing headlamps, make false mists over the glens. Bandy knows he sees only a fraction of the activity along the twenty-mile Roer front; this gargantuan bustle is going on in dozens of other places out there in the night. Ten thousand men will attempt the crossing before daybreak; over the next few days four hundred thousand will follow.

 

What waits for them? First, natural barriers. The river is up to ten feet deep, with strong currents and icy temperature. After the troops make landfall there’s no cover for three hundred yards, just bald mud and backwash. Even more menacing are the man-made obstacles, almost comparable to what the Allies faced on Normandy’s beaches. The river and bank are mined, there’s concertina wire in the water, fortified trenches, minefields deep into enemy territory, presighted guns, a dug-in and determined enemy. Their objective is Jülich, a town often thousand on a low rise above the river. From there, east to the Rhine.

 

For two hours Bandy roams alone. He strides among trucks grinding gears, bleating men, silent huddled groups, cold equipment in high stacks. All this weight—millions of tons and dollars, millions of hopes for life and freedom, history!—resting on the shoulders of one man at a time, one soldier with a gun and running legs and a pumping heart. Bandy breathes in their glory and their coming horrors. He walks through them, wanting to touch each one, record every face and story so they will not pass unnoted. But it’s night and there is no role for him. He thinks something is unfair. He feels the way he does sometimes on the farm, like he’s just a man and the world does not know him, the way the world does not know each soldier.

 

At 0230, the preparations stutter to a stop. All the trucks cut their lights. The men are with the boats beside the Roer, officers stop calling orders. The engineers head for dry clothes. Bandy climbs up on the warm hood of a still truck. He stares across the gloomy swatch that is the unseen river.

 

Right on time, at 0245, an artillery barrage all along the front splits the night into splinters. The dark flashes on and off as though some prankster has his hand on the light switch. Bandy, warming his butt, watches the far bank of the river mushroom behind the oil smoke and gun smoke into circlets of orange flame. The sound rushes back across the wide water and thumps his chest.

 

For forty-five minutes the big guns rage at the Germans, killing them, stunning them, forcing them out of their holes. In both directions, up and down the river to the distant bends, the opposite bank and a mile inland are drenched in a rain of explosives. Bandy reaches into his memory and cannot recall a bombardment to equal it. The shelling at night is particularly fearsome, every explosion in its moment ignites the blackness, trembling through the fog like lightning in storm clouds.

 

At 0330, the shelling halts. Bandy gazes into restored dark and quiet. Neon spots ghost his vision from the shells. That was some pummeling. Right now the opposite bank must look like the moon. The first assault companies slip into the water. Engineers on thirty-two inflated boats will ferry the initial wave over, then they’ll come back for another load.

 

Bandy can’t see much from his truck hood. But the night is full with unseen men motoring across the misted water, clutching fear and resolve as tight as rifles. For which ones will the Roer be their river Styx? For whom will there be no return? The river is wide, the current strong. The enemy waiting. Bandy senses his own heartbeat pulse behind his breast pocket, nudging at the plastic-sealed final note to Victoria, the one letter that he and all men in war hope their women and folks never get.

 

In minutes the first cracks of small arms fire speed across the water, returning harbingers to report the battle is on. Muffled thumps like beaten laundry tell of detonated mines. Bandy builds for himself visions and photographs from the sounds, mosaics of imagination. Men slog through the mud into German lines, weapons bark, men fall, men ran, trenches smoke, ruins and craters pock the ground.

 

There’s nothing he can do until sunup but sit on this truck, or walk about some more. For now, Bandy is useless. He climbs down, pulls out his blanket, and crawls into the truck cab. He curls on the seat. The upholstery stinks of cigarettes.

 

Bandy’s last thought, the one he recalls when he wakes four hours later, is of tobacco. He opens his eyes. He feels as if he has dreamed, though he can’t remember a dream. But it was sad, long ago, and in another country. He thinks of Victoria. He sits up to war.

 

Stiff, Bandy steps down from the truck cab. He shoulders his packs and makes for the river’s edge. In the night, engineers have erected two footbridges and a cable ferry secured on the opposite bank. The artillery and the assault must have taken solid hold, dislodging the Germans. Men and materiel pour single file across the Roer. Pontoons and large beams are piled by the river to begin construction of a treadway bridge to move tanks and trucks. The engineers are like ants, crawling over everything, seeming to lift many times their own weight.

 

Hungry and cold, shuffling in the line to cross, Bandy bums a K ration. At 0740, he moves out over the river. The footbridge sways in the current under his feet, half the boards are underwater. He moves hand over hand along the lone cable. His balance is faulty from just waking up, his boots slosh and the oil smoke burns his eyes and nostrils.

 

It takes him ten minutes to get halfway over the river, fearing all the while that his hands or feet will slip and he’ll fall in. If his Speed Graphic and Leica get wet, Bandy becomes a civilian without a mission. He’d have to fall back to resupply. By the time he finagles his way back up here, Berlin might have already fallen. He moves with caution. Soldiers behind him bunch up, some call out at him to get going. Screw ‘em, Bandy thinks, I’m the oldest guy out here by fifteen years. He hears a splash through the smoke ahead, a man cusses, the voice floats downstream. Bandy grits his teeth. This is miserable.

 

To add to his ordeal, artillery shells begin to fall on all sides of the footbridge. Apparently the Germans have regrouped on some high ground over there near the town and are trying to stem the flow of Americans crossing the Roer. Pillars of water fountain left and right, soaking every soldier on the river. In an instant Bandy is dripping. The frigid water seeps down to his underwear, his skin puckers. The cameras in his pack are wrapped in oilskins, they’re safe so long as he isn’t submerged. The barrage is random, the Germans can’t draw a bead through the smoke. But the crossing is made that much more dangerous. Bandy thinks how just minutes ago he was asleep.

 

It takes him only six more minutes to cover the second half of the footbridge. Hitting the bank, he steps into sludge that sucks his boots and legs up to the calves. As unhappy as he is, Bandy’s relieved to see so few American bodies. The attack went well, clearly. But the dead lie in such an awful, apocalyptic place, under a greasy haze, half dissolved into the mud. The charge on Berlin is on, the Allies are coursing forward with power and pace. It’s a tragedy to die at all, but a pity to die now with the end in sight. Bandy wants to take pictures. He’s reminded of scenes of World War I, smoke and filth, rushing men. But his hands are too slimy, there’s no dry or clean place on him or anywhere around him. He leaves the cameras in their protection, nods to the dead, and hurries forward with the others who cannot stop, to Jülich.

 

Bandy struggles in the deep steps of soldiers making their way ahead of him. No one stops to shoot at anything, the Germans have left the bank and fallen back to the town. Through the winter-bare trees appear streets, a steeple, red slate roofs. The drier the ground gets under Bandy’s boots, the clearer are the sounds of battle; near the river all he could hear was the swoook, swoook of muddy treads. Behind a clump of bushes, he drops to his knees and takes from his camera bag the 35mm Leica. He loads a roll, slaps the case shut, and sticks three more rolls in his coat pocket. The Leica is Bandy’s action camera, compact and quick to focus, and he can handle it with one hand. The negatives are less crisp than those of the big Speed Graphic, but that’s not a concern this morning. He won’t be photographing faces. The subject will be smoking, crumbling buildings.

 

On the edge of town Bandy joins a squad of fifteen men. Their assignment is to move up and take a block in the southwestern corner of Jülich. The troops who came over the Roer by boat in the dark didn’t bother to take the town; their task was to keep moving, deeper and deeper, to expand the bridgehead. The second, larger echelon will consolidate the gains.

 

The American soldiers have reaped the methods of street fighting from France, Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. Now they know what to do, and because they’re in Germany they take a particular pleasure in doing it.

 

Bandy squats with the squad in a mound of rubble. About fifty feet away is the first of a row of brick buildings along a wide street. The structures are all two-story, attached. They appear to be businesses mingled with private homes. A sign has been painted in white letters on the wall facing them: welcome uncle sam. see Germany and die! Without looking behind him the squad sergeant wags a finger over his shoulder. The two-man bazooka crew skittles forward.

 

The sergeant says, “My guess is right on that big ol’ G in Germany.”

 

The two bazooka handlers, grizzled and sable-toothed from tobacco chaws, purse their lips and spit together. Bandy snaps their picture, spittle in midflight. Not publishable, he thinks, but a great shot for his private archive. The twin soldiers arrange themselves, one knee each on the ground. The rest of the squad clear the areas in front and rear. The bigger of the two hefts the bazooka pipe to his shoulder and lays his eye to the sight. The second soldier—a face bearded and squinty; Bandy sees how a shower, a shave, and a weekend in Bermuda would turn him into a handsome man—pats his comrade on the back. He gets a quick helmeted nod and slides in a shell the size of a bread loaf. He ducks, the bazooka recoils with a belch of flame out its tail, the firing man rocks, but the bazooka is firm in his grasp. Across the clearing the building explodes in the same moment. The bazooka stays in place, the crew is ready to fire again if necessary. The rest of the squad get set to rush forward. Smoke swirls out of the way, and the sign reads only welcome uncle sam.

 

Someone pulls the pin on a smoke grenade and rolls it into the open. It spews a small cloud bank. Four men scurry out, making slits in the mist, which quickly heals itself. Bandy waits for gunfire. The unit that has dashed inside is rushing from room to room looking for enemy soldiers. They’re kicking in closed doors, going leapfrog down halls, with hand signals and tense trigger fingers.

 

Around the town, from other blocks, Bandy hears sporadic bursts of gunplay. More thumps of bazooka fire. More Americans pour into the town, Jülich is being swarmed. By afternoon when the heavy bridges are built over the Roer, there’ll be tanks and artillery growling around whatever’s left of the place. Any German soldiers will be dead, captured, or somewhere else. Waiting in the rubble, Bandy takes a photo of the blasted brick wall showing through breezy fissures in the haze. He can read the funny remainder of the message; great story, this shot might get in Life. By nightfall there’ll be a command post set up in the best remaining building in town. The brass will move in. Bandy will have a press liaison officer to hand his film to for the flight to London, where the military censors get first crack, then the photo pool, then New York. In the middle of this thought a whistle comes through the smoke. The sergeant leaps first, his Thompson machine gun is leveled and ready. Bandy waits until last and runs through the greasy coils. He rushes with one hand over the Leica strapped around his neck to keep it from flying up and busting him in the nose.

 

The building is secure. Stepping into the wrecked first floor, Bandy sees it was a home. Everything is smashed. Furniture is splintered, white cushion foam is splattered around like a hundred dead doves. Over the hearth there’s a framed photograph of Adolf Hitler, the glass oddly unbroken by the blast. Below the picture on the mantel are several decorative beer steins with metal caps, the only other things that survived unharmed. A few of the men grab the steins and put them in their rucksacks, then kick through the debris looking for other mementos. A corporal takes down the Führer’s picture. This soldier is mud-caked like the rest of them. He moves not like an invader on foreign land but like a man in his neighborhood bar, slowly and easily. He’s a veteran. He’s got a beer gut, Bandy can’t figure how he maintains that protuberance over here with the exertion and frayed nerves of war. But it makes him look cheery. The corporal throws his belly into his laugh.

 

“Hey, Pendleton!”

 

One of the bazooka men answers, the handsome one. “Yeah?”

 

The corporal hangs Hitler on the intact inner wall that divides the building from the one attached to it.

 

“I think right on the fucker’s kisser would be nice.”

 

This is how the platoon works its way to the end of the street, as do all the other Americans who are taking Jülich. They stay off the streets, moving through the cover of buildings, blowing holes in shared walls or across narrow alleys to scoot unseen through the block. At the end of each brick row, when they need to cross a street, they start over: knock an opening in the initial wall, smoke grenade first, then go! The ten thousands of men who died in the streets of the months before are not on their minds right now. But the lessons those men made them learn are.

 

The squad is done scavenging. They move to the opposite wall, crouching behind upturned chairs, tables, and a sofa. The bazooka crew takes a position as distant from the wall as they can get. Hitler’s image hangs in the center of the target, a determined, thoughtful bull’s-eye, showing the way to his country’s destruction one wall at a time. The man in the rear handles the shell. He pats his partner on the shoulder, gets a nod.

 

The men of the platoon all shout at the tops of their lungs. They’ve done this before.

 

“Heil Hitler!”

 

~ * ~

 

 

 

February 23, 1945, 1430 hours

Six kilometers east of Posen

Poland

 

 

ilya watches the boots of the five dozen germans in front of him.

 

Their heels shamble on the road through the forest. Livestock walk with more bearing, Ilya thinks. A defeated man loses his honor so fast; even a cow on the way to the abattoir walks with its head up. A rooster squawks with your hand around its throat until you cut it. But a man heading to his fate has imagination. He sees the unseen territory. These men see Siberia. So they shuffle, they stink, they dissolve into captivity. Ilya prefers death to becoming one of these scarecrows.

 

Yesterday the Germans surrendered. The commander of the Posen garrison laid a Nazi battle flag on the floor in his office inside the citadel and shot himself in the head. What kind of officer does that? It’s desertion in the face of battle. Is that some Prussian notion of honor? Ilya doesn’t fathom these Germans, who fight so ferociously then become unmanned when they lose. A soldier doesn’t have to be victorious to remain a soldier. Duty defines him; do it or don’t do it. Simple. Victory is for politicians and historians.

 

One of the Germans stumbles. He’s awkward, exhausted, freighted with shame. And well he ought to be, considers Ilya, recalling what he’s seen not on battlefields but in unforgivable places: mass executions in Polish villages, the Majdanek concentration camp, bodies lining the roadways of the German retreat, unmarked mass graves, naked death heaps. One of the men in Ilya’s company kicks the prisoner in the ribs to prod him off the ground and moving again. This German is slow, he’s been battered once before on this march already. He looks starving, like the rest. He gets another kick until a sheepish comrade helps him upright and he continues. Ilya says nothing.

 

He takes off his stocking cap. His big palm feels bristles over his pate. Time to shave it again. With the battle of the citadel lasting almost a month, there was no time.

 

Today is Red Army Day, the twenty-seventh anniversary of the Soviet force. General Chuikov announced this morning that in Moscow they’ve celebrated the taking of Posen with twenty salvos from over two hundred guns. Ilya rubs his head harder, he is aggravated. He was an officer in the Red Army. Even yesterday, he was a soldier. This afternoon, he’s a shepherd.

 

The line of captives is becoming too ragged. Ilya wants it straight, for no good reason other than he can’t bring himself to kick the Germans but he can make them march properly. If he’s going to be a damn shepherd.

 

“Misha. Tell them to firm up.”

 

A few meters away Misha calls out some command in German. The order has little effect.

 

“Tell them again.”

 

Misha strides over to walk beside Ilya. A bandage covers his right cheek and ear. A local Polish doctor helping to treat the Russian wounded stitched him up. Beneath the bandage, Misha has a black row across his cheek like barbed wire.

 

“It doesn’t matter, Ilyushka. Leave it alone. They’re moving.”

 

“I want them to march in an orderly fashion.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I said so.”

 

“Who are you giving orders to?”

 

Ilya draws out the word.

 

“You.”

 

Misha walks, nodding. “I see. And what am I supposed to do, Private? Follow them?”

 

Ilya crushes his cloth cap in a fist.

 

Misha asks, “Why’re you in such a foul mood? You’ve been like this since we left Posen.”

 

Little Misha with his pirate scar forming doesn’t put any distance between him and Ilya, he’s not afraid to stand close beside his gargantuan comrade and question him, even disobey him. Ilya eyes the sixty captives. Walking in a loose cordon outside them are six others from the punishment company, assigned with Ilya and Misha to escort the prisoners on foot twenty kilometers to the rear, to process the Germans for transport to detention. No one else speaks, just bare trees, dragging soles, dust, and eight guns.

 

“This is shit, Misha.”

 

“This is an honor, you lunkhead. We took these men prisoner! We stormed their citadel! Marching them to the rear and handing them over is recognition. Pushkov is actually rewarding us with this.”

 

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.

 

* * * *