He sat down and began talking about his family and how much he hated the war. Marya sat with her eyes closed and her head tilted back in the wind and tried not to listen.
“Say, how can you have a baby and be in the army?” he asked after a time.
“Not the army. The home guard. Everybody’s in the home guard. Please, won’t you just be quiet awhile?”
“Oh. Well. Sure, I guess.”
Once they bailed out of the truck and lay flat in the ditch while two Russian jets screamed over at low altitude, but the jets were headed elsewhere and did not strafe the road. They climbed back in the truck and rolled on. They stopped at two road blocks for MP shakedowns before the truck pulled up at a supply dump. It was pitch dark.
The sergeant vaulted out of the truck. “This is as far as we ride,” he told her. “We’ll have to walk the rest of the way. It’s dark as the devil, and we’re only allowed a penlight.” He flashed it in her face. “It would be a good chance for you to try to break for it. I hate to do this to you, sis, but put your hands together behind your back.”
She submitted to having her wrists bound with telephone wire. She walked ahead of him down the ditch while he pointed the way with the feeble light and held one end of the wire.
“I’d sure hate to shoot you, so please don’t try anything.”
She stumbled once and felt the wire jerk taut.
“You’ve cut off the circulation; do you want to cut off the hands?” she snapped. “How much farther do we have to go?”
The sergeant seemed very remorseful. “Stop a minute. I want to think. It’s about four miles.” He fell silent.
They stood in the ditch while a column of tanks thundered past toward the front. There was no traffic going the other way.
“Well?” she asked after awhile.
“I was just thinking about the three Russky women they captured on a night patrol awhile back. And what they did to them at interrogation.”
“Go on.”
“Well, it’s the Blue Shirt boys that make it ugly, not so much the army officers. It’s the political heel snappers you’ve got to watch out for. They see red and hate Russky. Listen, it would be a lot safer for you if I took you in after daylight, instead of at night. During the day there’s sometimes a Red Cross fellow hanging around, and everybody’s mostly sober. If you tell everything you know, then they won’t be so rough on you.”
“Well?
“There’s some deserted gun emplacements just up the hill here, and an old command post. I guess I could stay awake until dawn.”
She paused, wondered whether to trust him. No, she shouldn’t. But even so, he would be easier to handle than half a dozen drunken officers.
“All right, Ami, but if you don’t take wires off, your medics will have to amputate my hands.”
They climbed the hill, crawled through splintered logs and burned timbers, and found the command post underground. Half the roof was caved in, and the place smelled of death and cartridge casings, but there was a canvas cot and a gasoline lantern that still had some fuel in it. After he had freed her wrists, she sat on the cot and rubbed the numbness out of her hands while he opened a K-ration and shared it with her. He watched her rather wistfully while she ate.
“It’s too bad you’re on the wrong side of this war,” he said. “You’re okay, as Russkies go. How come you’re fighting for the commies?”
She paused, then reached down and picked up a handful of dirt from the floor, kneaded it, and showed it to him, while she nibbled cheese.
“Ami, this had the blood of my ancestors in it. This ground is mine. Now it has the blood of my baby in it; don’t speak to me of sides, or leaders, or politics.” She held the soil out to him. “Here, look at it. But don’t touch. It’s mine. No, when I think about it, go ahead and touch. Feel it, smell it, taste a little of it the way a peasant would to see if it’s ripe for planting. I’ll even give you a handful of it to take home and mix with your own. It’s mine to give. It’s also mine to fight for.” She spoke calmly and watched him with deep jade eyes. She kept working the dirt in her hand and offering it to him. “Here! This is Russia. See how it crumbles? It’s what they’ll bury you in. Here, take it.” She tossed it at him. He grunted angrily and leaped to his feet to brush himself off.
Marya went on eating cheese. “Do you want an argument, Ami?” she asked, chewing hungrily while she talked. “You will get awfully dirty, if you do. I have a simple mind. I can only keep tossing handfuls of Russia at you to answer your ponderous questions.”
He did an unprecedented thing. He sat down on the floor and began—well, almost sobbing. His shoulders heaved convulsively for a moment. Marya stopped eating cheese and stared at him in amazement. He put his arms across his knees and rolled his forehead on them. When he looked up, his face was blank as a frightened child’s.
“God, I want to go home!” he croaked.
Marya put down the K-ration and went to bend over him. She pulled his head back with a handful of his hair and kissed him. Then she went to lie down on the cot and turned her face to the wall.
“Thanks, Sergeant,” she said. “I hope they don’t bury you in it after all.”
When she awoke, the lantern was out. She could see him bending over her, silhouetted against the stars through the torn roof. She stifled a shriek.
“Take your hands away!”
He took them away at once and made a choking sound. His silhouette vanished. She heard him stumbling among the broken timbers, making his way outside. She lay there thinking for awhile, thoughts without words. After a few minutes, she called out.
“Sergeant? Sergeant!”
There was no answer. She started up and kicked something that clattered. She went down on her knees and felt for it in the dark. Finally she found it. It was his gun.
“Sergeant.”
After awhile he came stumbling back. “Yes?” he asked softly.
“Come here.”
His silhouette blotted the patch of stars again. She felt for his holster and shoved the gun back in it.
“Thanks, Ami, but they would shoot you for that.”
“I could say you grabbed it and ran.”
“Sit down, Ami.”
Obediently he sat.
“Now give me your hands again,” she said, then, whispering: “No, please! Not there! Not there.”
The last thing would be vengeance and death, but the next to the last thing was something else. And it was clearly in violation of the captain’s orders.
It was the heating of the old man that aroused her fury. They dragged him out of the bunker being used by Major Kline for questionings, and they beat him about the head with a piece of hydraulic hose. “They” were immaculately tailored Blue Shirts of the Americanist Party, and “he” was an elderly Russian major of near retirement age. Two of them held his arms while the third kicked him to his knees and whipped him with the hose.
“Just a little spanking, commie, to learn you how to recite for teacher, see?”
“Whip the bejeezis out of him.”
“Fill him with gasoline and stick a wick in his mouth.”
“Give it to him!”
They were very methodical about it, like men handling an unruly circus animal. Marya stood in line with a dozen other prisoners, waiting her turn to be interrogated. It was nine in the morning, and the sun was evaporating the last of the dew on the tents in the camp. The sergeant had gone into the bunker to report to Major Kline and present the articles her captors had taken from her person. He had been gone ten minutes. When he came out, the Blue Shirts were still, whipping the prisoner. The old man had fainted.
“He’s faking.”
“Wake him up with it, Mac. Teach him.”