War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] (28 page)

Zaitsev handed Shaikin’s journal back to him without looking through it.

“Go sit down, Ilya.”

Shaikin slumped on the floor next to Tania. He slapped his hands in his lap.

Zaitsev spoke now with Sidorov. “You have seventy kills. That’s excellent. You know I have twice that many.”

“Excellent for you as well, Chief Master Sergeant.”

“And what do you think,” Zaitsev asked, “of Shaikin’s thirty-six kills? Truthfully.”

Sidorov shrugged as if to say he would have chosen diplomacy but the Hare specified he wanted the truth.

“I cannot say the same, Chief Master Sergeant.”

“Shaikin is not excellent?”

Shaikin tensed. He moved to push himself off the floor. Tania laid a hand on his arm.

Sidorov shook his head with dramatic reluctance.

“Comrade Sidorov,” Zaitsev said, raising his chin, “you will transfer from this unit immediately.”

Sidorov stepped back as if pushed. “Chief Master Sergeant, what? . . .”

“There’s no room for your attitude in the hares, Sidorov. We are a small group and we are Communists. We do not bicker over personal achievements. Excellence is not measured in numbers or scores.
Pri
vate Shaikin doesn’t need seventy kills to be as good a sniper as you. Dismissed.”

Zaitsev stared at the private. He and Sidorov were close in size, but Zaitsev seemed by far the bigger man.

“Dismissed, private.”

Zaitsev waited for Sidorov to collect his journal, rifle, and pack and leave beneath the blanket hanging over the doorway. Shaikin got to his feet after Sidorov left. Tania stood also. She knew Shaikin to be a reliable and resourceful sniper. For the past three weeks, since they’d graduated from the sniper school, the two had worked the same sector. Almost half the kills in Shaikin’s journal bore her signature as spotter and witness. In turn, Shaikin had witnessed twenty-three of her thirty-one kills.

With Sidorov’s departure, there were now twenty-two hares and bears left of the original thirty. Zaitsev said that when the snipers got down to twenty, he would teach ten more to keep the strength of the unit always between twenty and thirty. He’ll be teaching another class soon, Tania thought. Kostikev died last night, blown apart. He stepped on a mine during a commando raid deep behind German lines. Kostikev had been the mission’s point man, their creeping assassin in the lead. The reputation of the hares was growing; their members were being requested throughout the division for special duties with squads outside the sniper cadre. Kostikev had been hurrying back; he was just south of the Lazur when he tripped the mine. Shaikin and Tania had tipped a bottle of vodka for Kostikev, the brave, gold-toothed killer whose mouth always flashed but rarely spoke.

Sidorov was the first in either the hares or the bears to be asked to leave. This was shameful. The others who’d departed their ranks had done so only by giving up their lives.

Zaitsev spoke to Shaikin. “Sidorov’s sector bordered on yours, didn’t it?”

Shaikin nodded. Sidorov had been one of four snipers assigned to an area on the eastern slope of Mamayev Kurgan, about twenty-five hundred square meters. Zaitsev and Medvedev had divided the entire front line into fifteen such sectors. Two two-man teams were assigned by the sergeants to work those areas with the most combat activity or to support Red troop movements whenever word came down from Command.

The sectors were reviewed nightly for shifts in combat activity. At all times, a minimum of ten sectors were manned with capable and experienced snipers. Zaitsev tried not to move the teams too frequently; he wanted them to get familiar with the terrain in their areas.

Shaikin and Tania had been shuttled between sector five, their current sector, and sector six, swapping with Sidorov’s unit. Both were on the eastern base of Mamayev Kurgan.

Each unit was assigned a leader; Shaikin, Kulikov, and Chekov were the heads of their sectors, as Sidorov had been in his. These leaders met nightly, whenever they could attend, here in the bunker Zaitsev shared with Medvedev. Tania had recently begun to attend these evening meetings with Shaikin, at her request. Shaikin, her friend and partner, agreed to let her come to the meetings, but only as an observer. Afterward, the two designed their next day’s strategy together.

Now Zaitsev turned to Tania. He’d kept his distance since her costly error two weeks earlier. He had rarely addressed her in that time, communicating her assignments through Shaikin. For the first week, she was allowed only to spot for Shaikin. Finally, she was granted permission by Zaitsev to shoot. She set herself the goal of learning Shaikin’s care and patience in the hunt, to gain better control over her passions when a Nazi was in her sights. She’d done so with deadly, gratifying results.

Tania thought constantly about the day Fedya had been killed. She knew she’d disgraced herself. After the incident, a chill had spread between her and Zaitsev like the ice growing in the Volga. Standing before him now, looking at his flat face, his hands, his body, all under such control, like a fox or a gliding bird, she wanted him to call her “partisan” again, to look in her journal and see how controlled she had been, what a good hare she’d become. She wanted to swallow vodka with him again in the trenches, to hunt with him, to be with him at dawn, to be in his eyes.

“Private Chernova,” Zaitsev said to her, “you will take over Sidorov’s place. He’s been working with Redinov, Megolin, and Dyenski. You know the bounds?”

Tania nodded. “Yes, Chief Master Sergeant.”

This was the moment she’d been piecing together in her heart, bit by bit like a puzzle. Now it was complete. She was renewed. Zaitsev had put her in charge of sector six. The probation, dating from the moment he’d struck her, was done.

Zaitsev looked at her sternly. “There are several German snipers working in that sector. Mamayev Kurgan is hot.”

Shaikin, still standing beside her, spoke up.

“It’s been hot for weeks, Chief Master Sergeant. Tania has dueled with a dozen German snipers. They’re all in her journal with my signature.”

Zaitsev smiled at her. The first smile from the Hare in too long a time.

Call me “partisan,” Tania wished, but he did not.

Zaitsev asked Shaikin to make do for a few more days until he could assign him someone to replace Chernova in his sector.

Shaikin elbowed Tania in the side. “Better send two.”

Tania felt the urge to go out right then, in the dark and blowing cold, to hunt. She touched Shaikin on the arm for his trust in her.

A bellow erupted from outside the doorway.

“Bullets and borscht!”

The blanket to the bunker swept aside. An icy wind followed the broad back of Atai Chebibulin, a burly old Bashkir from the village of Chishma in Turkmenia. Atai was the sniper unit’s courier, the man who brought them ammo and rations.

Tania rarely heard Atai speak to the snipers other than to announce his arrival with his preamble “Bullets and borscht,” and to say “T’ank you” in his halting Turkic dialect. But on one occasion the week before, Atai had come into the bunker earlier than usual, near dusk, when Tania was alone, waiting for more cartridges. She talked to him then. He told her he was a Moslem and that his son Sakaika had died here in Stalingrad.

Chebibulin knelt. He slid the harness for the large tin soup canister off his back. He laid the container in the center of the floor and took from a gunnysack a dozen boxes of cartridges. From his coat pocket a bottle of vodka appeared. This he handed to Chekov, who dove forward for it.

Since her first sight of Chebibulin weeks ago, while still a sniper trainee, Tania had been amazed at the Bashkir’s ability to produce food every night for the snipers. He never arrived empty-handed; he was always burdened, grunting under the weight of ammo and rations. Chebibulin carried no rifle or grenades. All his strength was used to deliver whatever the snipers needed. If Atai were a sniper, thought Tania, he would certainly be a bear. He moves like an ox, with his banging tin canister and bowls and his shy mumble.

Chekov tipped the vodka bottle back like a circus sword eater. After several gulps he called out, “Donkey! It’s not borscht again, is it? I hate cold soup. It was cold last night.”

Atai turned his back to Chekov, who busied himself again with the bottle.

Zaitsev walked to Chekov and reached for the vodka.

“Eat some soup, Anatoly, before it gets cold on you again.”

Chekov handed Zaitsev the bottle and moved to the canister. He flipped open the flimsy top and kneeled to inhale the steam from the soup.

“Ah, the Donkey ran here fast tonight,” he said, looking at Chebibulin’s back. “Potato soup.”

Shaikin said to Chekov. “That’s enough, Anatoly.”

Tania added her voice. “That’s enough.”

Chekov looked up from the cauldron. The vodka had already reddened his eyes.

“What’s the matter? You two taking sides with the Donkey?”

Before Tania could answer, Chebibulin turned on Chekov.

“Donkey! Why Donkey! Why you call me that?”

The graying Bashkir’s body was tensed, his big hands working at his sides. He blew out from under his large, drooping moustache. His chin, stippled with a dense salt-and-pepper stubble, worked as though he were chewing on his growing anger, trying to swallow it.

Chekov looked at Tania and Shaikin. Kulikov muttered and put his head back into his journal. Zaitsev, in his corner, ran his fingers up and down the vodka bottle.

“Come on, Tanyushka, Ilyushka, all this old man does is carry food back and forth,” Chekov muttered. “He’s no soldier. He doesn’t fight. Don’t give me a hard time sticking up for him. He plods back and forth. He’s a donkey. So what? Let’s eat.”

Tania put her hand on Chebibulin’s thick shoulder. “Atai, tell me again about Sakaika. I want the others to hear it.”

Chebibulin stared at the ground, chewing his mustache.

Tania watched Chekov spoon some of the white potato soup into a battered bowl.

“His name is not Donkey, Anatoly. It’s Atai Chebibulin. And if you weren’t such a mean drunk, you might have a little more respect. This man’s son—”

Chebibulin raised his thick hands. “No, I,” he said to her. “Is OK. I tell.”

Tania sat next to Shaikin. Chekov stepped aside, reaching out his open hand in a gesture to the old man, ceding him the stage. He bowed with open sarcasm.

Chebibulin sat cross-legged in the center of the room with his back to Chekov. He grunted as he folded his legs.

“Three month ago, I take Sakaika, is my boy, to train in Chishma. He in army. I take him down in cart, long way. At train, I see army horses eating hay, drinking water. I think OK, I get free drink and hay for my horse, too. I tie him to post with army horses. Train crowded, many army. I lose Sakaika. I go in every car, calling boy’s name. No answer. I lose.”

The old Bashkir narrowed his eyes. His hand scratched his matted, graying hair.

“OK, I say myself, I say goodbye already. Sakaika know. I go back to horse, he gone. Army put him on train with rest of horses. I got no way home, no horse to pull cart. I need horse for farm. I go up and down, shouting, ‘Army stole my horse!’ I call horse name, Prinza, and I hear him stomp. Brrrrr.”

Chebibulin blew through his moustache to make the flapping, rattling horse noise.

“I jump on train, find my horse with army horses. I go to soldier. ‘Hey, this my horse.’ Soldier shake his head, he say no can help. Another soldier, another, and no can help. Then train move and I try jump off. One soldier grab me. He say, ‘Hey, where you going, old man?’ I say I jumping off, you keep my horse, I walk home, OK. Man say we need you in army, all Russians fight. I say, ‘Where Sakaika?’ This soldier, he help find. I talk with Sakaika, we say OK, we go fight, we go father and son. Army give back my horse, one more horse and new cart. Me and Sakaika, we go in same regiment, Thirty-ninth Guards. Come to Stalingrad. Many fighting. Many dead. Day and night I going with dead boys to river, always coming back with bullets and borscht.”