Ouspensky did not take a single drag of his cigarette. “Lieutenant,” said Alexander, “don’t waste my precious cigarettes. Smoke or give them to me.”
Dropping the cigarette on the floor, Ouspensky, without taking his eyes off Alexander, said, “You’re bullshitting me.”
“Because that’s me?”
“You’re lying.”
“Me again.” Alexander smiled.
“So let me understand…”
“Behind Yermenko is himself which only he knows. Only Yermenko knows the workings of his own soul. Only you know why you walk slightly in front of me at all times even though I am your commander, and only I know why I fucking let you. That’s my point. Behind the exterior of us there is Yermenko’s soul, and yours and mine, and everyone else’s. And if science looked in on us, it would never know. How much more there must be behind the vast and unknowable universe.”
Ouspensky was pensive. “Why does that bastard Yermenko show so much loyalty to you, Captain?”
“Because Meretskov told me to shoot him and I didn’t. He is now mine till death.”
By the fire, Ouspensky asked, “So because of fucking Yermenko you are sure there is a God?”
“No. It’s because I have seen Him with my own eyes,” replied Alexander.
BOOK TWO
The Bridge to Holy Cross
Come my friends
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world,
Push off, and sitting well in order smite, the sounding furrows;
For my purpose holds, to sail beyond the sunset and the baths,
Of all the western stars until I die.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Bridge to Holy Cross, July 1944
IN LUBLIN, ALEXANDER’S TROOPS rested and liked it so much they unilaterally decided to stay. Lublin, unlike the scorched and burned and plundered villages they had found in Byelorussia, remained nearly intact. Except for a few bombed and burned houses, Lublin was whitewashed and clean and hot with narrow streets and yellow stucco squares, which on Sundays had markets which sold—! things! Fruits, and ham, and cheese, and sour cream! And cabbage (Alexander’s men stayed away from the cabbage). In Byelorussia they encountered maybe a handful of livestock; here, succulent, already basted and smoked pigs were being sold for zlotys. And fresh milk and cheese and butter implied the presence of enough cows to milk, not to eat. Eggs were sold, and chickens, too. “If this is what it means to be German-occupied, I’ll take Hitler any day over Stalin,” whispered Ouspensky. “In my village, my wife can’t pull the fucking onions out of the ground without the kolkhoz coming to take them away. And onions are the only thing she grows.”
“You should have told her to grow potatoes,” said Alexander. “Look at the potatoes here.” The vendors sold watches, and they sold dresses for women, and they sold knives. Alexander tried to buy three knives, but no one wanted Russian rubles. The Polish people hated the Germans, and they liked the Russians only marginally more. They would lie down with anyone to get the Germans out of their country, but they wished it weren’t the Russians they were lying down with. After all, the Soviets had carved up Poland alongside Germany in 1939, and it looked as if they had no intention of giving their half back. So the people were skeptical and wary. The troops couldn’t buy anything unless they had barter goods. No matter which way they turned, no one would accept their worthless Russian money. The Moscow treasury needed to stop printing meaningless paper. Alexander finally managed to sweet talk an old lady out of three knives and a pair of glasses for his near-blind Sergeant Verenkov for two hundred rubles.
After a dinner of ham and eggs and potatoes and onions, and much vodka, Ouspensky came to Alexander and whispered excitedly that they had found a “whore’s mess tent” and were all going; would Alexander like to come, too?
Alexander said no.
“Oh, come on, sir. After what we saw at Majdanek we need something to reaffirm life. Come. Have a good bang.”
“No. I’ll be sleeping. We are forcing the bridgeheads at the Vistula in a few days. We’re going to need our strength for that.”
“Never heard of the Vistula.”
“Fuck off.”
“Let me understand—because of a river in some nebulous future, you’re not going to get some cully-shangy today?”
“No. I’m going to sleep because that is what I need.”
“With all due respect, Captain, as your drudge, I am with you every minute of every day, and I know what you need. You need Sir Berkeley as badly as the rest of us. Come with me. Those girls want to take our money.”
Smiling, Alexander said, “Oh, because you’ve had so much luck unloading your rubles earlier. Ouspensky, you couldn’t buy a damn watch. What makes you think you’re going to buy a whole woman? She is going to spit at your rubles.” Alexander was polishing his new knives in front of the tent.
“Come with us.”
“No. You go ahead. Maybe when you come back you can tell me all about it.”
“Captain, you are like my brother, but I will not let you live vicariously through me. Now come on. I heard there are five lovely Polish girls, and for thirty zlotys they will have each and every one of us.”
Alexander laughed. “You don’t have thirty zlotys!”
“But you do. Come on.”
“No. Maybe tomorrow. Tonight I’m exhausted.”
Nothing inside Alexander lifted when he was alone. When he was in the midst of battle, when he was commanding the tank, or waiting to attack, or killing other human beings, he could will his heart to forget.
He wet a towel in a bucket of water and lay down on his makeshift bed, covering his head and face with the sopping cotton. There, there. The cold water ran down his neck, his cheeks, his scalp. His eyes were closed. There, there.
“Shura, lie down, right here on the blanket.”
Alexander obeys gladly. It is a warm, sunny, quiet afternoon. He has been chopping wood, and she has been reading. He wants to go for a swim.
“All that wood chopping, has it tired you out?”
“No, I’m all right.”
“Are you a little tired?”
He doesn’t know what answer she wants. “Uh—yes. I’m a little tired.”
Smiling, Tatiana plops down on top of him and pins his arms above his head.
Her scent meanders into his insides. Alexander fights the impulse to kiss her collarbone. “OK, now what?” he says.
“Now you have to try to get away.”
“How far do I have to get?” Alexander asks, flipping her on the blanket and rising to his feet.
She shakes her head. “I wasn’t ready. Get back here.” She is trying not to smile. Failing.
He obeys gladly.
She pins his arms—her fingers unable to circle the very wrists she is so judiciously attempting to pin—back under his head. Her scent weakens Alexander’s senses. He is aroused by her spirited fearless playful struggle with him, by her jumping on his back, pulling him down on the ground, by her attempts to wrestle with him, by her wild antics in the water—her shy, erotic woman-child self is an endless aphrodisiac to him, like ambrosia.
“Are you ready yet?” he asks, gazing at her determined face as she thinks of the best way to keep him in place. She moves his wrists close together and under his head. “That’s good,” he says. “What else?”
“I’m thinking.” Tatiana’s legs squeeze his ribs. She takes a deep breath. “Ready?”
Before she can finish talking, Alexander flips her over. This time he does not stand up.
Sitting up, she asks plaintively, “What am I doing wrong? Why can’t I hold you in place?”
He lays her down on the blanket. “Could it be because you are one and a half meters and forty-five kilos, and I’m a meter ninety and ninety kilos?” He places his large, dark, messy hand on her alabaster throat.
Moving away, she says stubbornly, “No. First of all, I’m a meter fifty-seven, so ther
e. And secondly, I should be able to—physics demands that I can—put enough weight on you in the right place to immobilize you.”
Alexander is trying hard to remain serious. Straddling her, he pins her wrists above her head. And smiles. “Am I allowed to kiss you during this game?”
“Absolutely not,” Tatiana declares.
“Hmm,” he says. He stares down at her face. He really wants to kiss her. Bending his head—
“Shura, that’s not part of the game.”
“I don’t care,” he says, kissing her. “I’m making up the rules as I go.”
“Like you do at poker, right?”
“Don’t start with the poker thing.”
She tries not to laugh. “Are you ready?”
He is looking down at her. “I’m ready.”
She tries to get away but she can’t move. Her ribs are between his knees. Her legs flail behind him, actually rising high enough to hit him on the back. Her head is bobbing from side to side as she tries to lift her torso and disentangle her wrists. “Wait,” she pants. “I think I got it.”
“I tell you what,” says Alexander. “I’ll hold your wrists with just one hand; will that help?” With his right hand he squeezes her wrists together above her head.
“Ready?”
He laughs. “Yes, babe.” He is trying to catch her eye, but she won’t have any of it. Alexander knows once their eyes meet, that will be the end for this portion of the game. Tatiana knows the look in his eyes so well, as soon as she sees it, she moans a little, even while she is still fighting with him. Especially if she is still fighting with him.
Her legs are still flailing. She can’t even free her wrists. With his roaming hand, Alexander caresses her thigh under her dress.
“That’s not allowed,” she pants, struggling against him.
“Not allowed?” His hand becomes more insistent.
“No. I do not allow that.”
“All right, tadpole, come on,” says Alexander, kissing her lips, her freckles, her eyes. “Show me what you got.”
Tatiana turns her cheek to him. “I think I know what I’m doing wrong,” she says. “Let’s try it again.”
His hand tightens around her wrists. “Go ahead.”
Nearly inaudibly she moans. But Alexander hears.
“Well, you have to let go of me,” whispers Tatiana.
“I thought you knew what you were doing wrong.”
“I do. But you have to let go of me and lie down.”
Reluctantly this time, Alexander obeys her.
Tatiana kneels between his legs. She doesn’t hold his hands but pulls off his trousers and climbs back astride him, lifting her dress. “Now…” she murmurs, pinning his wrists above his head and moving her lips to his face. “Go ahead, soldier.”
Alexander doesn’t move. Tatiana moves. Up and down.
“Go ahead,” she murmurs again. “You were saying? Show me what you got. Try to get away.”
Alexander emits a low groan. Tania kisses him. “Oh, husband…” she calls melodiously, to the rhythm of her heart, to the rhythm of her motion. “You were saying…”
“Nothing.” He closes his eyes. Tatiana yields herself to remind him that her submission—the source of all his strength—is his privilege and not his right. Wrapped in her, he takes it from her as though it is an elixir he needs to continue living.
Afterward she is still holding his wrists and he is still not moving, except for his heart, which is pumping 160 beats a minute of Tatiana through his body.
“I knew I wasn’t doing it right before,” Tatiana says, grinning and licking his cheek. “I knew there had to be a way to beat you.”
“You should have just asked me. I would have told you what it was.”
“Why would I want to ask you? I had to figure it out for myself.”
“Good job, Tatiasha,” murmurs Alexander. “You only just figured it out?”
In the middle of the night, Alexander—with the moist towel still on his face—was startled out of sleep by the cheerful drunken whisper of Ouspensky, who was shaking him awake, while taking his hand and placing into it something soft and warm. It took Alexander a moment to recognize the softness and warmness as a large human breast, a breast still attached to a human female, albeit a not entirely sober human female, who breathed fire on him, kneeled near his bed and said something in Polish that sounded like, “Wake up, cowboy, paradise is here.”
“Lieutenant,” said Alexander in Russian, “you’re going on the rack tomorrow.”
“You will pray to me as if I’m your god tomorrow. She is bought and paid for. Have a good one.” Ouspensky lowered the flaps on the tent and disappeared.
Sitting up and turning on his kerosene lamp, Alexander was faced with a young, boozy, not unattractive Polish face. For a minute as he sat up, they watched each other, he with weariness, she with drunken friendliness. “I speak Russian,” she said in Russian. “I’m going to get into trouble being here?”
“Yes,” said Alexander. “You better go back.”
“Oh, but your friend…”
“He is not my friend. He is my sworn enemy. He has brought you here to poison you. You need to go back quickly.”
He helped her sit up. Her swinging breasts were exposed through her open dress. Alexander was naked except for his BVDs. He watched her appraise him. “Captain,” she said, “you’re not telling me you are poison? You don’t look like poison.” She reached out for him. “You don’t feel like poison.” She paused, whispering, “At ease, soldier.”
Moving away from her slightly—only slightly—Alexander started to put on his trousers. She stopped him by rubbing him. He sighed, moving her hand away.
“You left a sweetheart behind? I can tell. You’re missing her. I see many men like you.”
“I bet you do.”
“They always feel better after they’re with me. So relieved. Come on. What’s the worst that can happen? You will enjoy yourself?”
“Yes,” said Alexander. “That’s the worst that can happen.”
She stuck out her hand holding a French letter. “Come on. Nothing to be afraid of.”
“I’m not afraid,” said Alexander.
“Oh, come on.”
He buckled his belt. “Let’s go. I’ll walk you back.”
“You have some chocolate?” she said, smiling. “I’ll suck you off for some chocolate.”
Alexander wavered, lingering on her bare breasts. “As it turns out, I do have some chocolate,” he said, throbbing everywhere, including his heart. “You can have it all.” He paused. “And you don’t even have to suck me off.”
The Polish girl’s eyes cleared for a moment. “Really?”
“Really.” He reached into his bag and handed her some small pieces of chocolate wrapped in foil.
Hungrily she shoved the bars into her mouth and swallowed them whole. Alexander raised his eyebrows. “Better the chocolate than me,” he said.
The girl laughed. “Will you really walk me back?” she said. “Because the streets are not safe for a girl like me.”
Alexander took his machine gun. “Let’s go.”
They walked through the subdued night-time streets of Lublin. Far away there was the distant sound of men laughing in a crowd, of breaking glass, of revelry. The girl took his arm. She was a tall girl, but the feel of soft female flesh pressing on him was a bittersweet waterfall to Alexander.
He felt a tightening in his abdomen, he felt his pulsing heart, his pulsing everything. He held her arm to him, and as they walked he closed his eyes for a second and imagined the relief and the comfort. He opened his eyes, shuddered slightly and sighed.
“You’re headed over to the Vistula, aren’t you? To Pulawy?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
“I know you are, you know how? Two of your Soviet divisions, one armored, one infantry, a thousand men in all, went that way. No one came back.”
“They’re not supposed to come back.”
“You’re not listening. They’re not moving forward either. They’re all in the river. Every one of your Soviet men.”
Alexander looked at her thoughtfully.
“I don’t care a whit about them, no more than I do about the Germans. But you treated me with a bit of respect. I’m going to tell you a better way,” she said.
Alexander was listening.
“You’re going too far north. You’re headed straight into the German defense. There are hundreds of thousands of them. They’re lying in wait for you across the Vistula. They kill you all and they will kill you. Remember, it was a walkover in Byelorussia because they didn’t give a shit about Byelorussia.”
Alexander wanted to beg to differ that it was a walkover in Byelorussia but kept quiet.
The Vistula is the last large river before the Oder on the border of Poland and Germany and the Oder flows practically through Berlin. Across the river and north to Warsaw, you will never get through, I don’t care how many tanks and planes you have.”