‘Njet,’ I answer.
‘llgun66’, he screams, exposing a row of white teeth. ‘You speak Russian! You say njet!’ He turns to a sergeant for confirmation. Without waiting for a reply, he goes on: ‘Was you blow up Nova Petrovsk?’
‘Njet,’ I answer.
He spits, and slashes me across the face several times with his nagajka.
‘Admit,’ he roars, wildly. We tear tongue from throat! No confess, no use for tongue!’
Again the nagajka whistles through the air, tearing the skin from my neck and throat. He waves to two Siberian soldiers and gives them an order in a dialect I do not understand.
The soldiers return with a heavy box, of the kind tinsmiths use to carry their tools in. With a grin the officer takes a pair of long-handled pincers from the box and snaps them at us threateningly. With practised movements the soldiers tear the clothes from Barcelona and the Old Man.
The officers repeats the questions he had put to me.
‘Get fucked,’ answers Barcelona, staring at the little officer with hate-filled eyes.
‘We soften you,’ smiles the Russian, wickedly. ‘Who lead section?
‘Piss off,’ snarls Barcelona, contemptuously.
‘I break German balls, if no answer,’ promises the Russian, his eyes vicious slits.
A long, wavering scream from the cellar interrupts him. Only a human in terrible pain can scream so.
‘Now find one who will talk!’ smiles the Russian officer. ‘Hang them up!’ he orders, brusquely.
A soldier puts a thin rope around my throat. He ties the other end to a beam. I have to stand on my toes to prevent myself from being strangled.
The officer begins to flog the Old Man with his nagajka.
‘Who is leader?’ he asks, after each stroke.
He is a specialist in the use of the terrible Siberian whip, Each stroke opens the skin. Blood streams down the Old Man’s body.
In a short while the Old Man’s screaming stops. He has collapsed completely, as if he were dead.
I have heard that it is possible to kill a man with three strokes of the nagajka, and having seen a nagajka in the hands of a Siberian NKVD soldier I do not doubt it.
I look at the Russians around me. They look tired and worn out. Their faces are covered with frost sores, as are ours. One of them is asleep on his feet, with the Mpi hanging loosely against his chest.
‘You saboteurs,’ decides the little officer, running the nagajka caressingly over Barcelona’s naked torso.
‘No we’re not, you shit,’ roars Barcelona, raging and straining at his bonds.
‘What you do here?’ asks the Russian, with a dangerous smile. ‘You hunt reindeer?’
‘We’re here to piss on you!’ shouts Barcelona, viciously.
The nagajka whistles, splitting the skin of Barcelona’s face.
‘I whip you dead,’ promises the little officer, the black eyes burning in his flat, Mongolian face. ‘You hear, svinja?’
‘Son of a whore,’ shouts Barcelona, hoarsely.
The officer seems to go amok. Blows from the nagajka rain on Barcelona. He gives out a long, rattling scream and goes unconscious.
‘What about this Finnish pig?’ asks a sergeant, coming up from the cellar.
‘We’ll take him to Murmansk and plaster a cell wall with him,’ answers the officer.
The room fills up with Siberian soldiers. They throw themselves to the floor and roll up like dogs. Five minutes later they are snoring loudly.
One of the sentries lets me down from the beam enough to allow me to sit down. Despite the pain from my hands and feet, I fall into a strange, disturbed sleep.
A faint sound wakens me. The trap in the floor opens and the Legionnaire’s sinewy body sneaks up from the cellar and crawls like a snake towards the half-asleep sentry.
Faster than thinking, the piano wire is around his throat. Two powerful tugs and the sentry is dead.
Porta creeps from the kitchen and takes the Siberian sergeant, who is sitting by the window. He too is garotted.
Tiny’s tough features appear from behind the stuffed bear, his teeth bared in a murderous grin. Like a doll he picks up the sleeping officer from the floor and presses his head against his mighty chest. There is a sound like cardboard being crushed.
Heide comes tip-toeing down the ruined stairs. Half-way down he stumbles over a pack and rolls on into the room with a terrific racket.
Like lightning the three others are over by the wall with machine-pistols at the ready. Nothing happens. A Russian complains in his sleep, demanding quiet.
From out on the square we hear a buzzing of voices. The sentries are changing. They do not bother about the noise, either. We are so far behind the front line that they cannot imagine anything happening.
The guard commander enters the door, yawning, throws his machine-pistol down on a table, stretches his arms towards the ceiling and yawns again, noisily, like a tired horse. His mouth stays open. With a surprised expression he stares down the muzzle of Heide’s Mpi.
Heide smiles satanically and salutes with one finger to his cap-brim. Before the guard commander can close his mouth the Legionnaire’s wire is round his throat. His tongue sticks out from between his frost-cracked lips, and slowly his face goes dark blue.
A corporal enters the room and immediately catches sight of the dead guard commander, who is lying in a heap on the floor. He stiffens and opens his mouth, but not a sound crosses his lips.
Tiny kills him with one blow across the throat from the edge of his hand. Quickly and quietly as a cloakroom girl accepting a hat from a guest.
‘Come death, come . . .’ hums the Legionnaire, softly.
‘Rookies,’ sneers Heide, contemptuously.
Porta gives the butt of his Mpi a loud slap.
‘Up on your feet, you sad sacks,’ he roars, in a ringing voice.
Tiny fires a burst at the beams of the ceiling and one of the hanged women falls to the floor with a thud.
Confused and sleepy, the NKVD soldiers scramble to their feet. With looks of utter foolishness on their faces they stare at the four grinning German soldiers lined up by the wall. One of them fumbles for his Nagan. The Legionnaire throws his knife. It bores into the reckless man’s chest right up to the hilt.
‘Watch it, tovaritsches,’ grins Porta. ‘Don’t even wobble on your feet, or you’ll have sat on the pot for the last time!’
‘Throw your weapons over here,’ orders Heide, in a tough voice, ‘don’t try anything we might misunderstand or off these go!’
‘We’re on your side,’ says a sergeant, his voice shaking.
‘Now you tell us,’ says Tiny, cheerfully, giving him a blow on the neck which sends him flying across the room and half into the fireplace.
‘Kick his balls up in his throat,’ suggests Porta, with a broad grin. ‘They get me so piss mad, these whining shits who change sides soon as the fat’s in the fire.’
In a moment the rest of us are free, but we are hardly on our feet before an Mpi stutters and the whole room is filled with acrid cordite smoke.
Two of the prisoners sink to the floor.
‘What the hell did you do that for,’ shouts the Old Man, accusingly, at Heide.
‘They didn’t know the fighting was over,’ answers Heide, coldly, bringing down the heel of his boot on the face of the nearest of them.
‘Don’t stand there starin’,’ roars Tiny at a sergeant. ‘Do somethin’ or other so’s I can shoot the life out of you!’
‘Off with your clothes!’ orders the Old Man. ‘You can keep your underclothes and socks. Everything else into the fire!’
The fire burns up, and a stench of burnt cloth and singed fur spreads through the room.
‘We’ll freeze to death,’ protests an NKVD soldier, banging his hands together.
‘Of course,’ Heide laughs sarcastically, ‘but comfort yourselves with the thought that death from freezing is quite pleasant. If it had been up to me, you lo
t of rookies would’ve been dead by now.’
‘We’ll meet again,’ promises a corporal, sending Porta a look of hate.
‘You a prophet or something?’ asks Porta.
‘I’m telling you, Gernzanski, I’ll be seeing you,’ snarls the corporal, furiously.
‘Wooden soldiers are lucky,’ grins Porta, patting the corporal on the cheek, ‘they can’t drown!’
‘Pjors,’67 snarls the corporal, spitting helplessly after Porta.
‘Frost in your whiskers, nose all blue,
Furs all white, and your army socks too.
sings Porta, jeeringly.
‘Grab your kit,’ orders the Old Man. ‘Let’s get away from here in a hurry!’
Porta and Tiny go round, solemnly, and shake hands with every one of the prisoners in parting.
‘Those wicked Germanskis certainly got hold of the arses of the tavaritsches this time, didn’t they?’ grins Porta, delightedly. ‘Sit down nicely in the corner, now, and think over carefully what you’re going to say to your bosses when they turn up one day to have a chat with you.’
‘Malltschal,† you devil of a German,’ shouts one of the prisoners, viciously, throwing a piece of firewood after Porta.
‘’Ave fun, mates,’ chuckles Tiny, and waves as he goes out of the door.
‘We should’ve shot them,’ complains Heide. ‘If they’ve got any brains at all they’ll soon be after us. If a stupid Eskimo can knock up a pair of skis out of what’s lying around, and pinch the clothes off a seal, one of Stalin’s NKVD men ought to bloody well be able to! Let me go back and liquidate ’ern!’
‘You stay here,’ answers the Old Man, decidedly. ‘We’re not murderers!’
‘Hell, but it’s cold,’ complains Porta, knocking his hands together.
‘We’re up in the Arctic,’ grins Gregor, weakly.
Wherever we look the scene is cold and deserted, with nothing living in sight. After a while the high spirits, our escape from the hands of the NKVD soldiers has created, begins to ebb.
We call a halt in a hollow. It is doubtful if the Finnish captain can live through the trip home. His feet have begun to smell like rotting meat.
‘Gangrene,’ confirms the Old Man, briefly.
‘We must amputate,’ mumbles the Legionnaire.
‘You do it?’ asks the Old Man, doubtfully.
‘Par Allah, if we do not get back within forty-eight hours he will be dead,’ prophesies the Legionnaire, gloomily.
‘Let’s put a bullet in ‘is neck,’ suggests Tiny, practically. ‘The Finnish Army’s got no use for ’im, an’ ’e’s a burden on us. So what else can we do with the bleeder?’
‘Shut it, you wicked sod!’ snarls the Old Man, angrily.
We look towards the captain. He is lying on a wooden sled which we take it in turns to pull. There is fear in his face. More than likely he has heard Tiny’s cynical suggestion.
‘We’ll just have to get him back as quick as possible,’ says the Old Man, resolutely. ‘Are there any morphine tablets left?’
‘Not a one,’ answers Sanititsgefreiter Brandt.
We begin the ascent in the wavering light, but are not even half up before the Old Man has to order a halt. The section is completely worn out.
In a moment we have all fallen into a deep sleep. It is that deadly dangerous sleep which goes directly over into death, and which has struck down so many in the Arctic.
After over twelve hours’ sleep the Old Man gets us on our feet again.
‘Shut up,’ groans Porta. ‘How I’m longing for to Finnish sauna and some regulation military cunt!’
‘My prick’s like a little frozen button,’ shouts. Tiny. take at least twenty of the fattest kind of quims in existence to thaw ’im out again!’
‘Let’s get moving,’ wheezes Gregor, jumping up and down on the spot, to try to get some warmth into his body. ‘If we stay here much longer we’ll all be blocks of ice!’
After several hours of inhuman toil we reach the edge of the cliffs.
The Old Man lies down on his stomach, and examines the steep declivity down which we shall have to go. Listlessly he lowers the binoculars.
Far below us rages the White Sea. Mountains of green, foam-specked water surge and thunder against the fanged rocks.
‘Once we reach the beaches,’ says the Legionnaire, ‘it is not far, at the most one hundred kilometres.’
‘That all,’ laughs Porta, jeeringly. ‘Just a little country walk for a party of heart cases.’
‘Go on, laugh,’ sighs the Old Man, downheartedly. ‘It’ll be a rough trip, I can tell you!’
‘Par Allah, we have no choice. We must go over this edge,’ says the Legionnaire. ‘I have a feeling the Russians are at our heels!’
‘Then we’ve had it,’ decides the Old Man, tiredly, lighting his silver-lidded pipe.
‘C’est le bordel, but I have seen tireder soldiers than this section,’ growls the Legionnaire We can still fight!’
The Old Man goes down on his knees and looks round at the section, spread out apathetically in the snow.
‘Hear me,’ he shouts. ‘We’re going on a little climbing expedition and we’ll have to let ourselves down on ropes. Once we’re down there it’s not far to home. Now then, spit on your hands, lads, and let’s pull together!’
We crawl over to the edge and peer down. The first part of the cliff face looks reasonable and not too difficult to manage, but further down there is a smooth vertical wall which goes straight down towards the sea. Before getting there, however, about half-way, it goes sharply inwards. There we will have to swing ourselves in to obtain a foothold.
‘Lord save us,’ sighs Barcelona, looking as if he feels like giving up before he has even started.
‘We’ve got to do it,’ decides the Old Man, heavily, taking the glasses from his coat pocket, where he has put them to keep the lenses from freezing up.
He examines the cliff face all the way along. Then he hands the binoculars to the Legionnaire.
‘I think there’s a small man-made gap a good way down. If I’m right we can get through there!’
The Legionnaire stares for a brief moment in the indicated direction.
‘Tu as raison, but what a job it will be to get there, and if we make one mistake we end in the White Sea!’
‘If we had suction cups on our hands and feet and an extra one tied on the end of our pricks, we’d never get over that bulge,’ says Porta, creeping, shivering, back to safety.
‘Oh, arseholes,’ rumbles Tiny, crawling back from the edge in his turn. ‘Giant bleedin’ stones, loads of snow an’ ice, an’ a ’ell of a lot of cold, green water! More’n enough to drown all the barmy soldiers in this whole World War, who’ve volunteered to go out an’ get theirselves killed!’
‘Get ready,’ orders the Old Man, harshly. ‘It’ll be the roughest climb of our lives!’
Gregor makes the ropes ready. He is the only one of us who has attended the mountaineering school. With a supercilious expression he explains to us how to let ourselves down on the ropes.
Squabbling amongst ourselves we share out the ammunition between us and adjust the balance of our weapons.
The Old Man almost has a fit when Porta suggests our leaving the two light mortars and the heavy boxes of bombs behind.
‘If we get home by Christmas,’ says Gregor, solemnly, taking cover behind a snowdrift, ‘I want a sun-lamp for a present!’
‘I’ll give you one,’ Porta promises him. ‘I know a shop that sells ’em, and also how to get into it after closing time!’
Gregor stands on the edge of the storm-battered heights, takes the loop of the rope over his head and makes it fast under his arms. He leans forward against the storm as if it were a solid wall. His chapped lips part in an optimistic grin. With his feet braced against the face of the cliff he begins to slide downwards. At the vertical wall he stops and looks up for a moment. Then he seems to disappear into the abyss. A moment or two later he appe
ars in sight again. He has managed to gain a foothold on the dangerous bulge, from which he will have to swing inwards.
‘We could get a job in a circus with this number,’ says Porta, shuddering.
‘World wars are pure shit,’ grumbles Tiny. ‘Let you in for all kinds of pissed-up jobs! No wonder they’ve got conscientious objectors in all them free countries!’
‘Your turn, Barcelona!’ shouts the Old Man.
‘I can’t go yet,’ protests Barcelona, with fear in his voice. ‘I want to see if anyone breaks his neck first!’
‘If you don’t come now I’ll see to it you go last!’ rages the Old Man. ‘And then there’ll be nobody left up here to hang on to the rope!’
But before Barcelona can reach the edge, Heide is on his way and after him the Legionnaire goes down.
Barcelona is anxious to go, now. The Old Man’s threat of leaving him to the last is enough to give him cold shivers.
We have to lower the Finnish captain down. Several times he is dashed violently against the cliff face, but to our surprise he is still alive when he gets down. One of his legs has been crushed from the foot to above the knee. His chances of survival are not good.
Now it is my turn.
’Take it easy, now,’ warns the Old Man, who sees how scared I am.
‘Brace hard with your feet all the time. There are enough of us up here to hang on to the rope. As long as you don’t lose your nerve, you’ll be all right!’ He adjusts the hang of the machine-pistol, slung across my chest, so that it will not get entangled with the guide-rope.
‘I can’t do it,’ I protest, in panic fear, staring down into the roaring abyss.
‘Off you go,’ the Old Man sends me off with a push, and I am over the edge.
Far beneath me the White Sea thunders in all its Arctic fury. I scramble desperately for a foothold, but my boots only scrape on the snow. I hit the first ledge, with a bump which presses the magazine pouch painfully into my ribs.
Porta waves to me and flips the rope.
I hang on for dear life to the narrow ledge. Round me the storm howls and roars like a raging monster trying to smash me.
Three hard tugs on the rope give me the signal to continue. Carefully I crawl over the sharp edge. This is the part of the climb which cannot be seen from above.