‘The last option is this,’ said Zhurko, even-toned and sensible. ‘We were told to eliminate the traitor Mandryka. If we kill him we are redeemed. If we are wounded, we are redeemed. We know where Mandryka is. That’s our mission.’
‘You’re suggesting a few horsemen ride into his stronghold?’ said Koshka. ‘We tried that earlier and it was madness. Think of all the men we lost.’
‘We’re on a suicide mission after all.’ Benya smiled as he spoke.
‘More Odessan irony?’ said Zhurko. ‘We’re still alive and I plan to stay alive. We don’t attack the village of Shepilovka, which is crawling with Mandryka’s men and a unit of Germans. We know though that he rides out each day with German colleagues to organize anti-partisan aktions. Let us ambush him when he ventures out of his stronghold. If we die in the attempt, so be it.’
‘I agree,’ said Panka. ‘We have our horses; we are still Cossacks. I am not going anywhere! You’ll see: it’s always sunny on the steppe.’ He got up, slid his sword back into its scabbard and started to build a fire.
‘That was a cheerful talk.’ Prishchepa chuckled. ‘Who’s gonna sing me my lullaby? I know. I’ll sing my own.’ As Prishchepa sang, Garanzha, half-lit by the orange flames, danced slowly around the fire swinging his meaty limbs in giant arcs, rising and falling, mouth wide open, eyes closed, yet finding a sort of grim, grinding rhythm all of his own.
Prishchepa sang in an angelic tenor:
‘A Cossack rode to a distant land;
Riding his horse over the steppe …’
And then Panka replied in a baritone: ‘His home village he left forever.’
And they all supplied the chorus:
‘He’ll never come back again;
He’ll never come back again.’
When Benya lay with his head on his saddlebag and observed Panka’s long foxy nose and little eyes as he sang, he was amazed to see that tears ran down his face. They had chosen the most dangerous mission. How many of them would be alive to sing their songs when the sun went down tomorrow?
Day Four
I
‘Where’s Koshka?’ asked Zhurko the next morning, but they all knew the answer.
It was dawn. The night had been sweltering. The men were sweating even though the sun was not up. Garanzha and Little Mametka stood near the horses, smoking Italian cigarettes. Beyond them, down the slope a little, lay Koshka, curled up like a child, hands stiffening already. The men followed Zhurko and stood around Koshka, looking down at him. Blackened blood ridged across his neck. Just saying, thought Benya, just saying.
Garanzha was calm, calmer than any of them. ‘I like to know who I ride with,’ was all he said, and he walked back to the campfire, now little more than ashes.
Benya wondered if Zhurko would say something, but he was arranging Koshka’s belongings: PPSh, dagger, mess-tin, spurs, boots and quirt were all laid out in a neat row. ‘Choose a gift,’ said Little Mametka, and Benya got a second Papasha.
The fear was gathering like a bundle of wire in Benya’s belly. He had slept deeply under the stars, without a thought, utterly exhausted, but when he awoke, he was sickened by what they had to do this day, and he felt the flickering of terror in every joint, as if his very bones were resetting and tightening inside him.
Sergeant Panka boiled the coffee and shared out the dried meats from the village and the ration of biscuit. No one mentioned Koshka again. Ten minutes later the seven rode out, guinea fowls and partridges scattering before them. The woodpecker tapped; skylarks swooped; howitzers boomed on the Don.
They moved cross-country towards the village of Novi Petroshevo, keeping to the fields of sunflower and maize, riding to the lane that led from Shepilovka, Mandryka’s headquarters. As they loped, they could hear music and shouting. The Schuma were celebrating, Zhurko told them, and Mandryka was unlikely to wake up early so the plan was to be in position when he headed out. If they missed him, they would catch him on the way back. Benya had started the day on edge, shaking with nerves, but as they rode through the heat, he began to daydream, to let Silver Socks find her way behind the others.
Just as they were riding through a defile of poplar trees, Socks’s ears went forward and she tensed. Benya was suddenly awake and he put his hand on the round drumlike magazine of his Papasha just as the Cossack voice said: ‘Who’s that? Stop right there!’ Around Benya, the men were reaching for their guns.
‘Too late! Don’t move! Keep your hands up or we’ll kill you all!’
Zhurko turned to his unit: ‘He’s right.’
In front of them, men emerged out of the maize. Behind them, the black snouts of guns were raised.
‘Who are you?’ said a man, wearing Russian fatigues but holding a German Schmeisser. Benya guessed he was the commander but were these Mandryka’s thugs? The seven Shtrafniki froze but kept their guns levelled.
‘We’re Red Army,’ said Zhurko.
‘What unit?’
‘Second Cavalry Shtrafbat.’
‘I see your pips,’ said the man. ‘Identify yourself.’
‘Leonid Zhurko. Captain, penal rank.’
Just then a lanky young man pushed forward. ‘Major Elmor, it’s them,’ he said. ‘I can vouch for them.’
It was ‘Grasshopper’ Geft, a youngster who had vanished a day earlier from the Shtrafbat along with the vet Lampadnik and a couple of others Benya recognized.
‘You’re sure?’ said the man they called Elmor.
‘Sure.’
‘All right. Dismount, Zhurko. Slowly!’
Zhurko stayed put, and gestured to his unit to do the same. ‘I need to know who you are.’
‘Partisans, Second Don Brigade.’
‘I didn’t know there was a First Brigade.’
‘There isn’t. We’re the remnants of the Kharkov encirclement a month ago. We have orders to intercept you; Stavka sends regards to Melishko with reference to your last order concerning Operation Pluto.’
Benya felt Zhurko’s relief. They were who they said they were: Soviet partisans in contact with Stavka in Moscow.
‘Is Melishko with you?’
Zhurko just shook his head and Elmor understood.
‘Where’s the rest of your battalion?’
‘We’re it, but we’re alive.’ Zhurko dismounted and shook Elmor’s hand. The partisan officer was built like a low-slung cooking pot, Benya thought, with a bald head topped with tousled strands of blonde-grey hair that flapped like the earmuffs of a shapka hat. He and the others dismounted and they hugged the skinny Geft with real joy.
Elmor crouched down on his haunches like a Kazakh and Zhurko sat cross-legged. Benya noticed Elmor wore five grenades around his belt.
‘What are your orders concerning my unit?’ Zhurko asked.
‘Moscow radioed us. Stavka informed us you were alive and needed support, and we had a message for Melishko, restoring him to his rank of general but … Well, anyway, we’ve been looking for you.’
‘If I’m honest,’ replied Zhurko, ‘there are just seven of us and we’re all that’s left of an offensive close to the Don.’
‘We would invite you for pirozhki, shchi and vodka; take you sightseeing; introduce you to the local girls,’ said Elmor without smiling, ‘but this area is crawling with hostile forces of every stripe. You had a mission here?’
‘To eliminate Mandryka.’
‘Us too. Headquarters has ordered his assassination, whatever the cost. I have men watching him and his people.’ Elmor paused. ‘You hear that shooting? That’s a German unit engaged in what they call “anti-partisan aktions”.’
‘They’re hunting you?’
‘No. Their “anti-partisan measures” usually involve killing Jewish women and children or innocent peasants. And they are assisted by Romanian forces in the area. They’re across this field and right beside the lane Mandryka will take, so we can’t attack Mandryka with them in our rear, or shoot it out with them. A firefight would attract Mandryka and the Germans.??
? He looked around at Zhurko and his Cossacks. ‘How are you with cold steel?’
Spider Garanzha drew his sabre. So did the others.
‘Keen,’ said Elmor. ‘I’m impressed.’
II
Svetlana Stalina found the letter waiting for her when she got back from school. Even her nanny was excited.
‘Could it be from him?’ her nanny said, flush-cheeked with anticipation.
Svetlana opened it in the sitting room.
Dear Svetlana,
How kind of you to write. Your letter made my day and I have reread it several times. It arrived soon after the attack by the penal battalion that I described in my most recent article. They were so brave, these Criminals and mavericks, and I saw them charge the Fascists. I knew one of them, an old friend, a writer, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. But I was happy to see him. Sadly they were almost wiped out and very few made it. I admit I was a little broken-hearted. I waited for them to come back but none came. I hoped to see my friend but no, nothing, and even though I am accustomed to the tragedies of this war, I was upset and moved. I admit I wept and then your letter arrived. It comforted me and restored my faith in life. It was so charming and right now, as I sit in the bunker here with the leaders and generals on the Stalingrad Front, I am thinking of you. You may be in Moscow faraway, and I don’t even know you, but I feel your passion and your love of writing and literature. I doubt we will ever meet but would I be crazy if I hoped that we can correspond? And maybe one day, we might talk about literature?
Write soon.
Lev Shapiro
Svetlana screamed with joy. Lev Shapiro had responded in such a warm fashion. He’d confided in her, shared his feelings and emotions with her, welcomed her letter.
‘What do you think?’ asked her nanny – but Svetlana was already writing back.
III
Five miles away from the grasslands where Benya and his comrades had met up with the Soviet partisans was the hamlet of Radzillovo, which had become a safe little corner of Italy, complete with its tastes and clothes and even its songs, right in the midst of the Russian steppe.
Sitting in the shade of a fruit-laden cherry tree behind a Russian cottage painted in the bright colours of these Cossack homesteads, Nurse Fabiana Bacigalupe closed her eyes and imagined she was home in Venice and had not just suffered a terrible loss.
The heat was soothing and out of the kitchen came the delicious aroma of garlic and coffee and the voice of the lieutenant singing his favourite Piedmontese song, ‘In the shadow of a bush slept a pretty shepherdess’, as he and others in the unit cooked up their polenta, chatting in their different Italian dialects about girls, love, pasta, wine and war. On pasta, it was simple: food was their first solace for being sent to fight in this war and the lieutenant’s rye-grinding contraption allowed them to make perfect penne and sometimes polenta. Fabiana had shown them how to grind real coffee beans in a steel helmet – ‘Perfetto!’ they cried – and this had made her even more alluring in their eyes – if that was possible. On war, she could hear them loudly grumbling why were they in Russia at all? Mussolini had sent 235,000 Italians to fight in Hitler’s war and only the most fanatical Fascists, like their commander Colonel Malamore and his élite legions of Blackshirts, believed this crazy war was a good idea or embraced the Nazis’ racial ideas. They had been inserted into Hitler’s Army Group B for this summer offensive, and the Russians had collapsed so fast it had been a bit of a holiday. Fabiana’s units had not lost a man until two days ago when a squadron of wild Russian Cossacks had suddenly fallen on them and driven them out of their village with the loss of several men including Ippolito Bacigalupe, Fabiana’s husband.
‘Do you think the principessa is OK? She seems quiet!’
Fabiana smiled as the men’s voices dropped to stage whispers as they discussed her.
‘Of course she’s quiet! She lost her husband—’
‘But he treated her badly. I heard him slap her once and she had a black eye next day.’
‘Now she’s sad; I saw her crying; she’s a widow and we have to look after her.’
‘Don’t worry about her. Colonel Malamore will marry her if he can … but what would you give for a kiss from her?’
‘A hundred lashes!’ said one voice.
‘Demotion. One rank for a kiss but for a full night, a long night, I’d happily go to the blockhouse for a year!’
‘Ottimo! Delizioso!’ She listened to them laughing, somewhat shocked by this, unsure if she was amused or not.
‘Tell me what the principessa is going to do now? Shall we take her a taste of something? The polenta? Let’s see!’
Fabiana was no princess – she was the daughter of a teacher – but she also wondered what on earth she was going to do now. Until two days ago, the war had been somewhat boring and everything had seemed simpler. She had married her husband, Major Ippolito Bacigalupe, back in Venice, and when he was sent to Russia, she had rashly volunteered to serve as a nurse at the front. She could have stayed in Venice and worked at the hospital but she had come to be with him and to see Russia – this was the sort of woman she was.
She soon became the favourite of her husband’s entire unit. They were respectful to her – she was after all their major’s wife – but they discussed (in those loud whispers) what on earth she was doing with this dapper but short-tempered popinjay (whom they nicknamed ‘Il Duce’ after Mussolini – not a compliment) and how to rescue her from his tempers.
The village they stayed in had been charming: blue and red cottages set in a sea of golden corn, black-faced sunflowers and high steppe grass. Then came the day of the charge. They had been cooking polenta and roast goose in the priest’s house and they had seen the dust rising in the rosy dawn and had heard of a suicidal charge by a Russian penal battalion against their own Savoy Celere cavalry, but Fabiana’s husband had been certain that the Germans had wiped them out – until they heard the drumming of charging cavalry, then the clatter of hooves on stone and the thwang of bullets. One of the Kalmyk scouts had ridden fast into the village and reined in his little horse so hard it fell to its knees, shouting that the Cossacks were coming. A pig had run squealing down the street; a camel had broken loose, nuzzing loudly; ‘Pronti a fare fuoco! Prepare to fire!’ her husband had ordered the men, who pointed the Breda heavy machine guns out of the windows, trying to keep the Cossacks at bay just long enough to allow them to retreat. ‘Madonna santa,’ he shouted. ‘Muovetevi, ragazzi! Move it, boys!’ Fabiana had seen an officer of the Bersagalieri shot down in front of her, and two Savoy cavalrymen had been dragged through the village behind their horses. Then spikes of sunlight had glimmered through the cloud of dust, their swords just streaks of bedazzlement, and a horde of riders emerged out of the haze performing crazy acts of horsemanship – she had even observed some Cossacks slipping to their horses’ side to fire; others had halted and then stood up, one boot in their stirrup and another on the saddle to shoot. And somehow in the chaos, as they were waiting in a doorway to jump into the Fiat and Bianchi trucks, one neat bullet in the chest had killed her husband … and they had had to leave his body in the village.
Much later, Benya Golden would ask Fabiana what she thought when she saw those Cossacks standing in their stirrups, sabres glinting above their heads, mouths open, yelling to hell, and she threw her head back and laughed: ‘What did I think? Prepare to die! Santissima madre di Dio!’
Now she sat in the garden here and tried to collect herself. She loved to read and she had her books, Leopardi and Petrarca, and Fogazzaro. She was listening to the men in the house when she heard the brisk clip-clop of horses. She stood up and looked out down the lane: it was her commander, Malamore, with a thin German officer, his uniform bearing the lightning runes, and an escort of Cossack and Kalmyk collaborators, all in German uniforms.
Malamore dismounted stiffly from his magnificent sorrel stallion with a ching of spurs and, straightening up, he saluted her. She saluted back. He
was their colonel, and he had always made it obvious that he was her admirer, even when her husband had been standing, seething with indignation, right beside her.
He came through the gate and stood looking at her, in no hurry to talk. Malamore was not afraid of silences and he was accustomed to death, and she was a little frightened of him.
‘How are you feeling, Nurse Bacigalupe?’ he asked, removing his fez.
‘Still shocked, consul,’ she replied with a salute and a twist in her ghost of a smile. The way she said ‘console’ – using his Blackshirt rank, designed by Mussolini to evoke the Roman Empire – made her hauteur obvious.
‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he said, bowing. ‘This is the message I bring from the Blackshirts.’
She showed him to the other chair in the garden. When he sat, his britches, his high boots, his very bones seemed to creak. In the light, his skin was scaly and rough, and she thought it was like magma that had dried centuries ago. The heat was suffocating and he ran his hand over his grey buzzcut; he offered her a cigarette and took one himself. He lit hers and then his. Butchery and the African sun had hardened him into a sort of fossil.
‘We’ll get him back, nurse,’ he said. ‘I saw him just after he went down, hit right in the chest.’
‘You were there, consul?’ she asked.
He nodded. Her husband’s death seemed surreal; she expected Ippolito to stride into this garden at any moment, with his Clark Gable moustache, and gleaming boots, dyed black hair, utterly immaculate as ever. She had loved him, she supposed, even with his faults – and what would become of her now? She blinked back her tears, priding herself on her control. She had cried before and she would again, but not now.
‘You said, consul, that the Russians had been defeated and yet they drove us out of that village in a few minutes.’