Hitler listened. Breit watched from the shadows.
Next, von Kluge spoke for himself, instead of letting his rival von Manstein rope him into more offensive operations. The leader of the forces on the northern shoulder advised Hitler that he could not resume any attacks at the moment. He needed all of Model’s remaining strength in 11th Army to stem the gathering Soviet counter-assault, which was gaining momentum every hour. He beseeched Hitler to allow his force to go on the defensive. His men and resources were exhausted, they would do well to hold their ground, much less take any more.
Von Manstein had come to Hitler prepared with rhetoric, strategies, and pleas. Von Kluge came with numbers. The Reds had suffered terribly in their defense of Kursk, von Kluge began. In two weeks of combat on three defensive fronts, the Soviets had lost one hundred and seventy thousand dead and wounded of the million and a half men they’d begun with. They’d lost a third of their five thousand tanks.
The attacking German force of three-quarters of a million men had been ground down by fifty thousand. Their thirty-three hundred tanks had been depleted by a number von Kluge could only guess at: He predicted a thousand gone, maybe more. And these numbers would grow immensely for both sides now that the Reds had launched their counteroffensive in the north, total losses for the Russians would swell to a million men before the summer ended. As for the German force, the Field Marshal could only shake his aristocratic head. ‘It may be catastrophic,’ was how he summed up the encroaching costs for the Fatherland. ‘We may never recover from Citadel.’
When von Kluge had succumbed to his mournful pause, von Manstein re-took the floor. ‘Where is the man?’ he asked, peeved, not seeing Breit right away. Breit stood. His uniform coat lacked his medal for administration, and the new jacket fit badly. He stood from his dark chair along the wall and tugged at his hem. What could he say to offset von Kluge’s gruesome numbers? Numbers are absolutes, he thought, standing in front of the Führer. Plead all you want, imagine all you can, but numbers dictate reality. Numbers are the damning brushstrokes.
Breit waited, unsure.
Hitler erupted.
Hitler did not want to hear any more about Russia. He was sick, near to vomiting, with Russia! His complexion was pasty, his hands flew about and trembled. Breit sat down. He would have left the room, but he stayed to the end, to hear the rest. Hitler calmed, some of his color returned. Without more screaming, he called off the offensive. He reassigned his SS tank corps in Russia; Leibstandarte was to head for Italy, effective immediately, Totenkopf and Das Reich were pulled from the front lines and relocated south, to help fend off the Soviet counterattack directed toward Khar’kov.
Von Manstein objected. Hitler would not yield. The Field Marshal succeeded only in talking Hitler into allowing a few more days for General Hoth to continue southern operations, to inflict a little more damage on the Soviets, but that was all.
Citadel, the last German offensive in Russia, was over. Breit stayed at the Wolfsschanze two more days and nights, silent and listening. Then he returned to Berlin.
This afternoon, in the empty museum in the smoldering middle of the capital, Breit finished his sandwich. He thought of the Night Witch, a striking young Russian woman, caught up in war, wearing men’s dirty clothes instead of dresses and bows. She so clearly has passion, she ought to be in love. Instead she’s in battle, surrounded by killers, she is likely one herself. What has this war done to her, cost her? These thoughts of the grim young Witch led Breit to consider what he had done to Germany, what he had cost it in terms of lives and strength. How many souls were circling him unseen, how many? Far more than the Witch, surely, or even her wild partisans. He looked into the cool air of the gallery and wondered, if he could see them, what would a hundred thousand spirits look like? A million before his work was done? A cyclone of invisible souls would swirl over his head. Still he would add to that number. There was no place he would stop now, no number too horrible, to save Germany from itself.
He crumpled the paper that had wrapped his sandwich, making an echo in the gallery hall, and stuffed the wad into the paper sack. He held up the imperfect circle of his apple. He admired it, red and splotched, uneven, bumpy. Only numbers were perfect, he decided; nothing else of mankind was. But it was their perfection that made numbers cold, made them no longer so important.
Abram Breit left his paper sack on the bench. He set the apple beside it for the lingering guard.
* * * *
EPILOGUE
April 10, 1946
2:15 p.m.
village of Troickaya
the Kuban
‘Katerina Berkovna?’
Katya turned to the voice. Ten meters behind her, an ancient man loomed on the lawn. The sea breeze freshened in his moustaches and crackled in his red burka cloak. He was far too broad and erect to be as aged as he was. This, thought Katya, is the Kuban. These are the Cossacks.
‘Lumanova,’ she said to the cemetery keeper.
She sent a quick glance to Leonid. Her husband stayed to the side in his major’s uniform, quiet, folded against the chill swirling off the Black Sea.
Leonid nodded to her. I’ll be here, his gesture said. Go on.
The elderly giant strode to her. He opened his arms. His breast was mottled with medals.
‘Katerina Lumanova,’ he said. ‘Hero of the Soviet Union. Welcome home.’
Katya held her place while the great arms wrapped her, the dark cloak eased over her. The old man smelled of oils and wax, loam, wind, years.
‘Come,’ he said.
The old man led Katya into the crowded cemetery. She did not look at any of the crosses and tablets, chiseled and weathered by centuries of this wind. She strode behind the flowing cape, ahead of her quiet husband, through the long path of graves. In a minute, they left the cloture of the cemetery and entered open, rising ground.
The old man led them up a slope, then halted. He stepped aside and Katya lifted her gaze.
There were only two graves on this hillcrest. The earth here was bare but green. The hill presided over the village below and the patchwork fields of spring plantings, all yellow boxes and emerald squares. The Kuban River sallied west to the Azov Sea, cows walked in the shallows. In the southern distance, the Caucasus Mountains serrated the mist, guarding the coastline.
Both graves lay at the foot of marble Orthodox crosses. One grave had grown over nicely, with grass new for the spring. The other was a bald brown rectangle, a hole freshly dug and filled.
Katya sank to her knees. The earth was soft and receiving. She looked to her left, beside her father’s bare grave.
‘Hello, Valya.’ She leaned to run her hand through her brother’s grass, like rubbing his head. ‘Hello.’