who was never quite sure how to handle Lanz in this mood, drank the rest of his foul coffee. It was said to be made from acorns and dandelion roots and there was no reason to contest this.
Lanz lay back on the sloping bank of the crater, lit a cigarette and said: ‘How long is this going to last?’ words emerging in small billows of smoke.
‘Antonov and me? God knows. It’s been official for three days thanks to Red Star.’
If the Soviet army newspaper hadn’t matched Antonov against him the duel would never have started.
A Yak, red stars blood-bright on its tail and fuselage, flew low overhead. The Germans held the two airfields, Gumrak and Pitomik, but the Russians held the whole of Siberia. They could retreat forever, Meister thought.
‘I wish to hell it was over,’ Lanz said.
‘One way or the other?’
Lanz, smoking hungrily, didn’t reply.
Meister thought: ‘What would I be doing now if I were Antonov?’ and knew immediately. He would be checking whether any Russians had been killed today by a single marksman’s shot.
Could he find out about the sniper who had died at the altar near Ninth of January Square? Russians isolated in pockets of resistance were often in radio contact with Red Army headquarters.
Yes, it was possible.
Yury Antonov, waiting for Razin to return from a command post, dozed in a tunnel leading to the river.
He saw sunflowers with blossoms like smiling suns crayoned by children and he heard the insect buzz from the taiga shouldering the wheatfields and he smelled the red polish that his mother used in the wooden cottage.
It had been a languorous Sunday early in September when they had come for him. He had been lying fully clothed on his bed picturing the naked breasts of a girl named Tasya who lived in the next village. His younger brother, Alexander, was sitting on the verandah drinking tea with his father and his mother was in the kitchen feeding the bowl of borsch bubbling on the stove.
After a Komsomol meeting the previous evening he had walked Tasya home. He had kissed her awkwardly, feeling the gentle thrust of her breasts against his chest, and ever since had been perturbed by the intrusion of lascivious images into the purity of his love.
He was almost eighteen, exempt from military service because of a heart murmur triggered by rheumatic fever, and she was seventeen. He was worried that, like other girls, she might be intoxicated by the glamour of the other young men departing to fight the Germans. A farm labourer wasn’t that much of a catch. But at least he was here to stay.
He considered the contents of his room. A small hunting trophy, the glass-eyed head of a lynx, on the wall beside a poster of a tank crushing another tank adorned with a Hitler moustache – he dutifully collected anti-Nazi memorabilia but here on the steppe the war seemed very far way – his rifle, a red Young Pioneer scarf from his younger days, a book of Konstantin Simenov’s poems … Yury himself often conceived luminous phrases but he could never utter them.
He heard a car draw up outside. A tractor was commonplace, a car an event. He peered through the lace curtains. A punished black Zil coated with dust. Two men were climbing out, an Army officer in a brown uniform and a civilian in a grey jacket and open-neck white shirt. Fear stirred inside Yury, although he couldn’t imagine why.
His father called from the verandah: ‘Yury, you’ve got visitors.’ Yury could hear the apprehension in his voice. He changed into a dark blue shirt, slicked his hair with water and went outside.
They were sitting on the rickety chairs beside the wooden table drinking tea. The officer was a colonel; he had a bald head, startling eyebrows and a humorous mouth. The civilian had dishevelled features and pointed ears; he popped a cube of sugar into his mouth and sucked his tea through it. Alexander was walking towards the silver birch trees at the end of the vegetable garden.
The colonel said: ‘I’m from Stalingrad, Comrade Pokrovsky is from Moscow. Have you ever been to Moscow, Yury?’
Yury shook his head. He wondered if Pokrovsky was NKVD.
‘Or Stalingrad?’
‘No, Comrade colonel.’
‘Ah, you Siberians. You’re very insular – if that’s the right word for more than 4 million square miles of the Soviet Union. What’s the farthest you’ve been from home?’
‘I’ve been to Novosibirsk,’ Yury told him.
‘Novosibirsk! Forty miles from here. Well, I have news for you Yury. You’re going farther afield. To Akhtubinsk, eighty miles east of Stalingrad. Please explain, Comrade Pokrovsky.’
The civilian swallowed the dissolved sugar and said to Yury: ‘You are going to serve your country. God knows, you might even become a Hero of the Soviet Union.’
Yury’s father interrupted. ‘He has a bad heart. I have the documents …’ The weathered lines on his face took on angles of worry.
‘Heart condition? According to my information he has a heart murmur. A murmur, comrade! What is a murmur when Russia cries out in anguish?’
The colonel said to Yury’s father: ‘Of course I realise that farm work is just as important as military service,’ and Pokrovsky said: ‘Not that there seems to be much work going on round here. Haven’t you heard about the war effort?’
‘We’ve just finished harvesting one crop. Tomorrow we start on the wheat.’ He spoke with dignity, pointing at the golden fields stroked by a breeze.
‘You Siberians,’ the colonel remarked. ‘You don’t stay on the defensive long, do you? Ask the Germans, you’ve taught them a lesson or two.’
Yury, his emotions competing – apprehension complicated by faint arousal of bravado – waited to find out what the two men wanted.
Pokrovsky spoke. ‘Siberians? Very courageous.’ He stroked one crumpled cheek. ‘But don’t forget the glorious example given by the Muscovites. And by Comrade Stalin. Did you read his speech on November 7th last year?’ Pokrovsky looked quizzically at Yury.
Yury tried to remember some dashing phrase from the speech on the 24th anniversary of the Revolution. It had certainly been a stirring address.
Pokrovsky said: ‘I was in Red Square when he spoke. What a setting. Troops massed in front of the Kremlin, German and Russian guns rumbling forty miles away and Stalin, The Boss, inspired.’
His voice was curiously flat for such an evocation. Then he began to quote. ‘“Comrades, Red Army and Red Navy men, officers and political workers, men and women partisans! The whole world is looking upon you as the power capable of destroying the German robber hordes! The enslaved peoples of Europe are looking upon you as their liberators … Be worthy of this great mission.’”
Yury imagined the little man with the bushy moustache standing on Lenin’s tomb. Heard his Georgian accents on a breeze stealing through the Urals.
“‘…
