“No, sir.” Smirnoff didn’t look at Alexander.
“No sir what?”
“Sir, I found out the commander is not German but Russian. Though I think there are a few Germans in their ranks. I heard German spoken. The commander is definitely Russian. He yells to the troops in German but speaks to his lieutenant in Russian. He’s got about fifty troops left.”
“Fifty!”
“Hmm. They look to him for their every move.” Smirnoff paused. “I know because we got very close to him. That’s when we found out the area around his tent is mined. But now I know where to go. I’ll just find Yermenko’s body, the mine there has already been tripped, and I figure I can throw a grenade into the commander’s tent. He’ll be blown to pieces and his men will surrender.”
Alexander paused. “You sure he’s Russian?”
“Positive.”
Smirnoff left. A half-hour went by and he wasn’t back. An hour went by and he wasn’t back. After an hour and a half, with the woods black and impossible to see through, Alexander gave up on Smirnoff. The stupid cocky bastard had obviously alerted them with another casualty. Now he is lying there dead, waiting for me to come and retrieve him.
“I’m going in, Lieutenant,” said Alexander. “If anything should happen to me, you’re in command of our unit.”
“Sir, you cannot go in.”
“I’m going, and I’m not coming back until either me or their commander is dead. Fucking Smirnoff! Left poor Yermenko in the woods.” Alexander cursed again. “At least now there are two of them for me to find. I’ll know where to step. Wish I had a fucking tank. If I had a tank, I wouldn’t be in this position.”
“You had a tank. If you hadn’t insisted on storming the river by yourself, you’d still have it.”
“Shut up,” said Alexander, taking his machine gun, tucking a pistol and five grenades into his shirt, and adjusting his helmet.
“I’m coming with you, sir,” said Ouspensky, getting up.
“Yes, right,” said Alexander. “They’ll hear you wheezing in fucking Krakow. While I’m gone, stay here and grow yourself a lung. I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Be back, Captain.”
In the dark, quiet as a Siberian tiger, Alexander made his way in the woods around the small flickering lights of the German camp. He had a small penlight that he held in his teeth and shined on the underbrush as he looked for a body, disturbed ground, anything. Alexander’s pistol was cocked and the knife was in his hand.
He found Smirnoff, who had found a mine. A meter away he saw Yermenko. He made the sign of the cross on the men with his pistol.
After putting the penlight away, his eyes made out the commander’s tent not five meters away in the clearing. He saw the mines lying flat on the ground. They hadn’t even bothered to bury them in their haste. If only his men hadn’t stepped on them in theirs.
He saw a flicker of a flashlight and a shadow in front of the tent. A man cleared his throat and said, “Captain? Are you awake, sir?”
Alexander heard a man’s voice say something in German, then in Russian. In Russian, the captain asked the soldier to bring him something to drink and then not to step a meter away from the tent. “The mines have already killed two of them. But more will come, Borov. I’m well hidden, but we cannot take any chances.”
That was helpful, Alexander thought, putting the knife between his teeth and getting out his grenade. He knew he had to be stealthy and very exact. He could not miss the tent.
The soldier came out of the tent and before he closed the flaps, he saluted the man. Alexander was about to pull the pin out of the grenade. The adjutant said, “I’ll be right back, Captain Metanov—”
Alexander fell noiselessly to the ground. He dropped his grenade, and the adjutant went away.
Did he just say Metanov?
His tortured mind was playing tricks on him. With trembling hands, he picked up his grenade. But he couldn’t throw it.
He was so close. He could have killed the commander and his assistant so easily. Now what?
If he had imagined the name, well, so much the worse for him, so much the fucking worse for the ceaselessly restless him. A little more forgetting, a little less lament and he wouldn’t be within three strides of the German commander’s tent imagining he had heard the name Metanov.
Alexander took one-two-three steps to the tent. He suspected the enemy captain wouldn’t bury a mine within such proximity to his sleeping area and he was right. Reaching out, he touched the canvas with his fingers. Inside the tent a small flashlight shone. Alexander heard the rustling of paper. He couldn’t even hear his own breath. It wasn’t because he was quiet. It was because he wasn’t breathing.
Silently he untied one of the ropes holding the tent to the stake. Crawling around, he untied another. Then another. Then the fourth. He took a deep breath, took out his sidearm—though couldn’t cock it because it would make too much noise—gripped his knife, counted to three and jumped on top of the tent, pinning the commander inside the canvas. The man could not move. Alexander’s body was on him and the barrel of his now-cocked Tokarev was pressed to the man’s head. “Don’t move,” Alexander whispered in Russian. He felt for the man’s hands, pinning them with his knees. With one hand, he reached under the loose straps of the tent and felt around the ground for the commander’s gun. He found the gun and the knife, lying by what used to be the bed and the blanket. Feeling him stir slightly, Alexander said, “Can you understand me, or should I speak German?” He didn’t trust the man to lie quietly. Alexander punched him hard, knocking him out. Then he pushed away the canvas and shined his penlight into the man’s face. He was young, once dark-haired, completely shaven. He had a deep scar running down from his eye to his jaw; he had blood on his head; blood on his neck; he had only barely healed wounds; he was thin; he was pale in the white light of the flash; he was unconscious; he was either Russian or German. He was nothing, everything. Alexander gleaned no answers from this man’s face.
Alexander pulled the commander out of the tent, flung him on his back and before the adjutant had a chance to return with water, walked with him down the slope through the forest back to his own camp.
Ouspensky nearly fell down and lost breath in his only lung when he saw Alexander carrying the enemy commander. He jumped up but before he could say a word, Alexander cut him off with a hand motion. “Stop talking. Get me some rope.”
Alexander and Ouspensky tied the man to a tree in the back of the tent.
For the rest of the night, Alexander sat in front of the captured officer. At last he saw the man’s eyes open and watch him angrily and questioningly. Moving closer, Alexander untied the bandana from his mouth.
“You bastard,” were the man’s first Russian words. “All you had to do was shoot me. No, you had me leave my men in the middle of battle.”
Alexander still said nothing.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” the commander said loudly. “Are you figuring out how I’d like to die? Slowly, all right? And painfully. I don’t give a shit.”
Alexander opened his mouth. Before he spoke, he brought a flask of hot coffee to the man’s mouth and let him have a few sips. “What is your name?” he said.
“Kolonchak,” said the man.
“What is your real name?”
“That is my real name.”
“What is your family name?”
“Andrei Kolonchak.”
Alexander took his rifle into his hands. “Understand,” he said, “if that’s your real name, I’ll have to kill you so your men make neither a hero nor a martyr out of you.”
The man laughed. “What do you think? I’m afraid of death? Shoot away, comrade. I’m ready.”
“Are the men you left behind ready for their death, too?”
“Certainly. We’re all ready.” The man sat straight up against the oak and stared unflinchingly at Alexander.
“Who are you? Tell me.”
“Tell you? Who the f
uck are you? What are you, my brother in arms? I won’t tell you shit. You better kill me now because in a minute I’ll yell my rallying cry and my men will charge. They’ll die charging but you’ll lose what pathetic troops you got left. You won’t get a word out of me.”
“You’re in the back of my camp. You’re a kilometer and a half away from your own troops. Scream all you want. Scream like a woman. No one will hear you. What is your name?”
“Andrei Kolonchak, I told you.”
“Your last name is a combination of Alexander Kolchak, the leader of the White Army during the Russian Civil War and the woman partisan Kolontai?”
“That’s correct.”
“Why did your aide call you Captain Metanov then?”
The man blinked. For just one moment, he glanced away from Alexander, but that one moment was enough. Alexander caught that one glance away square in the chest. Recoiling back from the man, he couldn’t look at him when he said, “Captain Pavel Metanov?”
There was silence from under the tree. There was silence from Alexander. Looking at his rifle, at his hands, at the moss, at his boots, at the stones, Alexander took one deep breath, one shallow breath, one aching breath and said, “…Pasha Metanov?”
When he looked up, the man was staring at him with the perplexed, stunned, emotional face of someone who had heard an English voice in China, who had traveled a thousand miles and saw one white face, one black face, one recognizable, familiar face. As if an imprint of childhood were snapped with a black-and-white camera and it caught the smiling face of a young boy and of a soldier near death sitting roped to a tree, all at once and more.
“I don’t understand,” the man said faintly. “Who are you?”
“I,” said Alexander, and his voice broke; he couldn’t continue. I…I…I scream to the deaf sky.
But it’s not deaf. Look at what’s in front of me.
Alexander stared at the man by the tree with a mixture of sadness, confusion, and disbelief. “I’m Alexander Belov,” he finally managed to utter. “In 1942 I married a girl named Tatiana Metanova—” However much it hurt Alexander to say her name, it must have hurt the man at the tree even more to hear it. He flinched, coiled up, bent his shaking head. “No, stop. It can’t be. Take your weapon. Shoot me.”
Alexander put down his Shpagin and inched his way to the man. “Pasha, oh my God, what the fuck have you been thinking? What are you doing?”
“Forget me,” said the man named Pasha Metanov. “You’re married to Tania? She’s all right then?”
“She’s gone,” said Alexander.
“She died?” He gasped.
“I don’t think so.” Alexander lowered his voice. “Gone from the Soviet Union.”
“I don’t understand. Gone where?”
“Pasha…”
“We got time. We got nothing but time. Tell me.”
“She escaped through Finland.” Alexander spoke in a whisper. “I don’t know if she made it, if she’s safe, if she’s free. I know nothing. They arrested me, put me in charge of this penal battalion.”
“What about…my”—Pasha’s voice faltered—“family?”
Alexander shook his head.
“Did anyone make it?”
“No one,” Alexander breathed out.
The warrior fought his words. “My mother?”
“Leningrad took them all.”
Pasha was speechless for a few terrible moments, and then he cried.
Alexander’s head was lowered so far, the chin was on his chest.
An unconsoled Pasha said, “Why? You could’ve killed me, and I would have never known. I would have been all right. I thought they had evacuated, were safe. I thought they were in Molotov. I had comfort thinking of them alive. Why did you spare me? Can’t you see I have no interest in being spared? Would I have joined the other side if I thought for a moment my life was worth saving? Who asked you to come along and save me?”
“No one,” said Alexander. “I didn’t ask you to come along either. I was ready to throw the grenade into your tent. You would’ve been dead, your troops annihilated by morning. Instead, I heard someone calling you by your rightful name. Why did I have to hear that? Ask yourself.” He paused. “Can I release you?”
“Yes,” said Pasha. “And I will tear out your heart with my bare hands.”
“If only I fucking had one,” said Alexander, getting up off the ground, and replacing the gag on Pasha’s mouth with a heavy hand.
Morning broke and with it came anger. Alexander didn’t understand as he watched Pasha sitting sullenly gagged and bound. He wished he had leisure to worry about it. At the moment it was raining, as if all other iniquities were not enough. They came to the mountains of Holy Cross to die, and now they were going to die wet.
Alexander offered Pasha some food. Pasha refused. A cigarette? Also a no.
“What about a bullet?”
Pasha wouldn’t even look at Alexander.
The enemy was quiet this morning. Alexander wasn’t surprised, and he knew Pasha wasn’t either. The commander of their unit had gone.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Alexander asked, taking the gag out of Pasha’s mouth.
“Why did you have to tell me about my family.” There was no inflection.
“You asked me.”
“You could have lied. You could have said they were all right.”
“You would have wanted that?”
“Yes. A thousand times yes. A small comfort to a dying man in the rain, I would have wanted that.”
Alexander wiped the rain off Pasha’s face.
Then he regrouped his men, and they all took their positions along the trees. After a morning smoke, they opened feeble fire that was not returned. In the woods the sound of war was too close. A meter away, a kilometer away, the canopy of the leaves, the denseness of the underbrush, the slight damp echo made the fire sound oppressively close. Fields were better, mines were better, tanks were better. This was the worst.
He had only nineteen men left. Nineteen men and a hostage that both sides wanted dead.
They stopped firing and sat under the trees. Alexander sat mutely next to Pasha. He had tried to get Gronin on the phone again, but the telephone was cutting out and he could hardly hear. His men were nearly out of ammunition.
Ouspensky came and whispered that they needed to kill the commander to make headway in the woods. Alexander said they would wait.
And through it all, it rained.
Hours went by before Pasha finally moved his head, gesturing for Alexander, who took off the gag.
“Maybe now a cigarette,” Pasha said.
Alexander handed Pasha a cigarette.
After taking a long satisfying drag, Pasha said, “How did you meet her anyway?”
“Fate brought us together,” Alexander replied. “On the first day of war, I was patrolling the streets and she was eating ice cream.”
“Just like her,” Pasha said. “She nods and then does what she wants. Her instructions were very clear: don’t dawdle; go and get food.” He glanced at Alexander. “That day was the last day I saw her. Saw my family.”
“I know.” With a hurting heart, Alexander said, “What am I going to do with you, Pasha Metanov, the brother of my wife?”
Pasha shrugged. “That’s your problem. Let me tell you about my men. I’ve got fifty of them in the woods. Five commissioned lieutenants. Five sergeants. What do you think they’re going to do without me? They will never surrender. They will retreat just far enough to join up with the Wehrmacht motorized divisions protecting the western side of the mountains. You know how many troops are waiting there for you? Half a million. How far do you think your nineteen men are going to get? I know how the penal battalions work. No one will resupply you if they need the supplies themselves. What are you going to do?”
“My lieutenant thinks we should kill you.”
“He is right. I’m the commander of the last vestige of General Vlasov’s army. Afte
r I’m dead, there won’t be any of us left.”
“How do you know?” asked Alexander. “I hear the Vlasovites are running amok in Romania, raping the Romanian women.”
“What does that have to do with me? I’m in Poland.”
Alexander sat defeated with his hands on his legs. “What happened to you? Your family would have liked to know.”
“Don’t tell me anymore about my family,” Pasha said, his voice catching.
“Your mother and father were torn up after you vanished.”
“Mama was always so emotional,” Pasha said and started to cry. “I thought it was kinder that way. Not to know. Suspect the worst. This is all slow death anyway.”
Alexander didn’t know if it was kinder. “Tania went to your camp in Dohotino looking for you.”
“She’s a fool,” he said, his voice full of weeping affection.
Alexander moved a little closer. “The camp was abandoned, and then she moved on to Luga days before the Luga line fell to the Germans. She wanted to make her way to Novgorod to find you. She was told that’s where the Dohotino camp members were sent.”
“We were sent…” Pasha shook his head and laughed miserably. “God looks after Tania in mysterious ways. Always has. Had she gone to Novgorod, she would have died for sure, and I was never even close to Novgorod. The closest I got to Novgorod was passing Lake Ilmen in a train that the Germans blew up just south of the lake.”
“Lake Ilmen?”
Neither man could look at the other. “She told you about that lake?”
“She’s told me everything,” said Alexander.
Pasha smiled. “We spent our childhood on that lake. She was the queen of Lake Ilmen. So, she came looking for me? She was always something, my sister. If anyone could have found me, it would have been her.”
“Yes. But it turns out that I found you.”
“Yes, in fucking Poland! I wasn’t in Novgorod. The Nazis blew up our train and with dead bodies piled house-high, they set us on fire. Me and my friend Volodya were the only ones who survived. We scrambled our way out of the compost heap and tried to find our own troops but of course the entire countryside belonged to the Germans by then. Volodya had broken his leg in camp weeks before. We couldn’t get very far. We were taken prisoner in hours. The Germans had no use for Volodya. They shot him dead.” He shook his head. “I’m glad his mother didn’t know. Did you know his mother? Nina Iglenko?”