The Longest Pleasure (5 page)

'That for your victory,' Kirsten screamed, getting to her feet and waving her arms, forgetful of the stray bullets which whined across the bedroom. 'Look at you. Russian hero. Cowering on the floor.'

Galitsin looked over his shoulder. Irena Szen was sitting in the corner, placidly eating her sausage. She gazed at him and smiled. There was contempt in her smile.

Galitsin stood up, straddled the window. The tank continued to spit fire, and the walls on either side of him were crumbling. The air was a cloud of flying dust and debris, and a searing piece of stone tore open his cheek from chin to ear. His pants were wet again, Schabski and his bloody beer. But to stop now was Impossible. The girls were staring at him, contempt diffused with alarm.

He slung his rifle over his shoulder, turned quickly. His elbows grated on the window-sill, and another shell exploded close to his feet, scattering pebbles across his-boots. He dropped, and struck the cobbled road, rolling in a breakfall as he did so, the rifle jarring his back, his left hand closing on the grenade at his belt. For a moment he was winded, and lay half in the gutter, feeling the cold striking
through his uniform. Above him,
the sky, amazingly, was blue. He looked at the white house, but there was nothing to see. The Gestapo headquarters was a mass of clouding dust and leaping flame. Perhaps he had done the right
thing in getting out while he c
ould. In there could only be cindering corpses, the girl Kirsten and the girl Irena, the commissar Dus and the friendly Englishman, Shirley. A strange name for a man, he thought
.
A girl's name in English. B
ut there had been nothing effem
inate about the English officer. He was sorry he was dead.

The tank was satisfied. The can
non was turning down the street,
its platform moving forward again. Galitsin could lie here and watch it go, and it would not trouble him. He had not the courage to assault a tank, and, besides, where was the point? This could only be an isolated counter-thrust, a suicidal attempt to halt the Russian advance. Soon the Soviet tanks would re-group, and this brief skirmish would be over.

And Galitsin would have survived. To remember the two girls, smiling contemptuously.

He rose to his knees, still against the wall, shoulder pressed to the stone as if it could cave inwards and offer shelter. But the tank was facing away from him. Galitsin ran. His boots struck the cobbles, like those boots earlier this morning, bringing death. He slipped on the melting snow, but he was close to the tank now, the grenade freed from his belt and swinging from his fingers. He panted, and gained on the slow-moving monster, for the tank had checked to sweep another house with cannon fire.

The steel was hot, as the air was cold. His fingers scrabbled ineffectively for a moment, and then he got a knee up, slithered across the rear of die tank, reached the tower. His boots drummed as he tried to keep from, sliding off, and the noise penetrated the interior. The tank wheezed to a stop, and Galitsin took a long breath, watched the hatch. Slowly it swung upwards. Galitsin leaned forward, pushed the grenade in. It
struck someone on the head, pro
voked an amazed ejaculation, and then Galitsin lost hold of it, and heard it clatter on the steps. It was the last sound he heard.

Alan Shirley wrote every night in the diary he had started in the summer of 1938. 'Page 2,371, January 28th 1945. Germans counter-attacked today. Took everyone by surprise. The Ivans have become too used to victory. Raid began just before one, was all over by two, cost the enemy seven tanks he could ill afford. Notable for case of extreme heroism by eighteen-year-old Russian infantryman Alexander Galitsin, who attacked one tank singlehanded, dropped grenade through conning hatch. Will live, although seriously wounded. To be decorated. Interesting boy, because of Scottish mother. Check Motherwell? Otherwise, typical Russian soldier, bombastic and diffident, overconfident and lacking poise, all at once. Future interest
-
Category One.

'Note re Tigran Dus. Future interest, Category One Plus. Ambitious, ruthless,
single-minded
. No doctrinal communist, more Tsarist type of career soldier/politician. Would expect secondment to security forces in due course. Will make good spy-catcher. File to be commenced and kept up to date.'

Shirley put down his pen. He wondered if Dus was writing a similar note about Alan Shirley.

PART TWO

Men at Peace

I

The Soldier

Talwik
picked up
his knight. He made his moves sl
owly
,
deliberately; he was a large, deliberate man. But the knight could only be going in one direction, however long Talwik might linger over its journey. The vast room, already quiet, descended into a hush in which not even breathing was discernible. The other competitors, their games either over or no longer of importance, had gathered around the leading board; they exchanged glances, shook heads—the stage uttered a protesting creak. It supported high leaping ballerinas without protest, but the booted feet of twenty soldiers always gave cause for alarm. Before the stage, and stretching into the darkness at the back of the hall, the spectators in the huge auditorium studied the demonstration board behind the players, waiting for Talwik to drive another blow into his opponent's position, for the Red Army Championship of 1956 to be decided.

Talwik smiled. For four hours he had been continuing his pressure, slowly dragging Galitsin's king into the centre of the board, and the heavy pieces were still in play, waiting to close in for the kill. He placed the knight, pressed the button which stopped his own clock and started his opponent's once again. He said, 'Check!'

Galitsin ran his fingers throug
h his close-cropped brown hair.
It was an habitual gesture, whether he was satisfied or dissatisfied with his position. It was a mannerism the onlookers had become used to during the preceding three weeks of competition, and they had watched him closely, both because he was a- Hero of the Soviet Union and because he had been one of the favourites from the start. The public was surprised that C
aptain Galitsin had not won the
championship before. The experts knew better. A. P. Galitsin had the skill, the experience, the technique, the opening knowledge, but he lacked the imaginative flair which could convert a sterile position into
a
win. Galitsin's score sheet showed few losses, but far too many draws, as
a
rule. Until this year. Yet even now he was half a point behind Talwik.

Galitsin moved his king, pressed the clock button, made
a
note of his move in a neat, concise hand. He raised his-head, stared at Talwik. Talwik met his gaze, glanced at the board, then at his clock, for he had consumed more time than his opponent, and rested his chin on his hands, eyes close to the board. He suggested that he was sinking into a deep sleep. But the frown remained.

A whisper of sound spread across the hall. Someone in the upstairs gallery had seen it first, and muttered a comment to his neighbour. The rustle of a
larm seeped around
the upper floors, dropped back to the auditorium itself. Heads craned, backsides shifted position, legs crossed and uncrossed. The controller arose from his desk with majestic disapproval, advanced to the edge of the stage, frowned, and shook his head, and his forefinger, from side to side,
a
schoolmaster admonishing a classroom of small boys—and at least one member of the Praesidium was in the hall.

The noise subsided, and Talwik sat up. His right hand started to move, towards his hair, and he checked it. To start copying your opponent's mannerisms was the next thing to conceding him the initiative. Instead he glanced at his clock. But to become anxious about the number of minutes remaining, the number of seconds, was also to admit uncertainty as to the outcome of the game. So he gazed at the board, the frown now
a
rigid line from ear to ear. For with the move of the black king, the white knight, which had so boldly advanced into the fray, had become trapped. Talwik had seen the danger, of course. One escape square was controlled by a black pawn, another crossed the line of fire of a black bishop, and a third was now overseen by the black monarch itself; but there was also a fourth square, to which the marauding knight had been intended to return in safety, having completed its task of further diminishing the black king's defences. Only now, having made the move, did Talwik discover what he should have seen ten minutes earlier; when the white knight occupied that last remaining flight square, then two simple pawn thrusts by Galitsin would trap the white rook, also poised to join in the attack, but needing the open rank on which to manoeuvre.

Talwik raised his head, gazed at Galitsin once again, discovered Galitsin still staring at him. No question but that Galitsin had submitted to the entire attack with just this outcome in mind. A knight or a rook. It mattered nothing that, in cold figures, the rook was the more valuable piece. To lose the knight for only a pawn was at this juncture a sufficient catastrophe.

Talwik glanced at the clock again, bent his head low, as if ascertaining that the second hand really was moving; it was racing from numeral to numeral. Talwik sighed. The psychological blow involved in resigning
a
competitive chess game, especially when with it goes an important championship, is impossible of understanding by other games players, where things happen more quickly, where defeat usually comes rushing upon some brilliant stroke of the opponent

But not to resign, in a clearly lost position, is at once the mark of the tyro and the poor sportsman. Talwik sighed again, extended a stubby forefinger, and gave his king
a
tentative jab. It teetered for a moment, and he needed
a
second push to send it rolling across the board, to come to rest against the white queen, reduced in that instant from the most powerful woman in the hall to a lifeless piece of wood. Then Talwik stood up, and extended his hand.

The auditorium exploded into noise, people standing and clapping, and shouting, "Bravo! Bravo, Galitsin!' The other competitors clustered around, slapping Galitsin on the back, bending over the board, eager to demonstrate either how they would have avoided the trap or just how Galitsin would now finish the game.

'I was lucky.' Galitsin squeezed Talwik's hand. You will be the victor next year, Comrade Major.'

'Next year,' Talwik said. 'But congratulations, Comrade Captain.'

He sat down again to gaze at the board, where the pieces were being moved to and fro like dancers. Galitsin.sidled through the throng, acknow
ledging greetings and congratu
lations, eager to escape the press. People depressed him. He could tolerate his own men, now that he was an officer, because they stood at a respectful distance. People pressing close, in large numbers, inflated the balloon lurking in his belly.

But an ambition had been realised. His only ambition, for some years now. Since obtaining his commission, in fact, He felt somewhat flat.

'A. P. Galitsin,' said the controller. 'A famous victory. I look forward to seeing you qualify for the Soviet Championship.'

'Alas, comrade, I must rejoin my regiment in Budapest.'

'Ah, but they play good chess in Hungary too, Comrade Captain. And now this young lady wishes to ask you some questions,'

The reporter was American, Galitsin thought; she had thin legs but a large bust, a head
of short, glowing auburn hair,
carefully untidy, a pert rather than pretty face, dominated by a huge mouth an
d an equally outsize pair of horn
-rimmed spectacles. Her yellow summer frock was linen, and her shoes crocodile skin. She was listening to her interpreter translating what the two men had been saying. 'But doesn't winning the Red Army Championship carry automatic entry into the Soviet Finals?' she asked. Definitely an American.

The interpreter smiled apologetically for being forced to ask such an inane question, while Galitsin gave no sign that he had understood, smiled himself, a tremendous lightening of the otherwise solemn face. 'During the war,' he replied in Russian. 'But now we soldiers are not quite good enough.'

The interpreter translated. 'And could you sum up your game with Major Talwik?'

'Major Talwik over-reached himself.'

'Have you any ambition to play chess in the West, Captain Galitsin?'

'Perhaps. I would like to visit the West one day.'

The young woman gazed
at
the ribbons on the olive-green uniform jacket. 'May I ask the captain about his decorations?'

'Those two are campaign ribbons,' the controller explained, beaming. 'One
for the recapture of Bucharest,
one for the recapture of Budapest. In the Great Patriotic War, you understand. The third, that is the Order of Glory. During the battle for Budapest Captain Galitsin attacked a tank single-handed, and destroyed it, too.'