Summoned by a panic-stricken young sergeant, Levin had, for the first time in his life, experienced the feeling of willful disbelief of what the eyes took in. He could not believe that such a thing had happened under his command. Stunned, he could not even lose his temper. He simply walked through the dungeonlike room in a wordless daze, surveying the gore with his pocket lamp. His boot soles smacked and sucked at the wet floor. The dead men in the British uniforms at least looked like soldiers, hard-faced boy-men, and NCOs with broken teeth. But the German reservists, for the most part, looked like fathers and uncles, hapless men caught up in events for which they were utterly unprepared. The smell had been of a slaughterhouse, with the reek of burst entrails catching at the top of the throat.
Levin knew that the British or Germans would kill him for this. It even occurred to him that there might be a peculiar justice in the act.
He sent the two guilty soldiers out to fight on the line. He could not judge them. Somehow, it was all too easy to understand. He should not have left them alone, unsupervised. Yet there had been no realistic alternative. The only officer who remained fit for combat, other than Levin himself, was Lieutenant Dunaev, to whom Levin had assigned the defense of the northern bridge. The sergeants were of little use. Gordunov, the battalion commander, had been missing since early morning. Captain Karchenko was dead. The defense of the west bank had collapsed, and the isolated firing from that side of the river sounded as though the enemy were methodically rooting out the last resistance.
The situation at the northern bridge had broken down into a standoff. The enemy held the western approach now, but they could not get across. Dunaev’s handful of defenders killed every vehicle that approached, and the automatic mortars husbanded their last rounds to support Dunaev whenever things got too hot. The southern bridge had been lost back to the enemy in its entirety, and British regulars had pushed the defending air-assault troops north behind the ring boulevard. The only thing holding the British back now was their apparent reluctance to take the casualties one big rush would cost. The air-assault troops had run low on everything, including combat-capable soldiers. To Levin, it began to seem miraculous that they had held on for so long.
One quarter of the old town had caught fire, and flames separated the defenders from the enemy at the southern bridgehead. The beautiful old houses burned enthusiastically, as though they had grown weary of their existence. The destruction no longer struck Levin as tragic. He was too worn down for grand feelings. The spreading conflagration merely saddened him, sapping a bit more of his psychological juice. Perhaps, he thought, Gordunov had been right. It did not matter when you looked at it from the grand perspective. There were other old cities, even other men to replace those dying here.
Levin left the old town hall without trying the radios again. He had not been able to reach any distant stations since dawn. The location in the river valley was poor to begin with, on top of which the enemy jamming made communications impossible. Perhaps the burst transmissions had gotten through. But no responses had arrived. He wondered how the war was going overall. He had fully expected to greet Soviet tanks by now, to enjoy a scene like those in the old patriotic films. He had even imagined that he might be a hero, and that Yelena might take a renewed interest in him, and that they might be happy again. Now, weary beyond much emotion, he reflected that he might never see his son again, and that Yelena would not really mind losing him. He had been a mistake for her; her father had been right. Yelena would not be content with the things that contented him, not ever. She would not miss him.
Levin dashed across the little square, followed by the skip of a distant machine gun. In a well formed by a protrusion of buildings, a mortar section hurried lobbed rounds to help Dunaev push the enemy back one more time. Levin felt the enemy noose tightening. He strained to hear greater battle noises in the distance, the sound of Soviet tanks. But there was only the close-in chopping sound of automatic weapons and the dull thuds of grenades and mortar rounds. The enemy had concentrated an inordinate amount of force to reduce the bridgehead. Obviously, it was a critical objective. Why, then, hadn’t his forces made a greater effort to break through? It made no sense to him.
Keeping the burning area to his right, Levin worked his way down a series of passages and alleys, past garbage bins and a pair of civilian corpses. At a loss for decisive actions now, he automatically began to inspect the perimeter positions one more time. He worked in through the back of a barroom where a machine-gun post anchored the corner of the defense.
The entire front of the building had been gutted. He had to look hard to distinguish the bodies of his soldiers.
The enemy had gotten through. He could not understand how he had avoided running into them. He tried the battered field phone in the outpost’s wreckage. But the device was dead.
Levin retraced his steps, assault rifle at the ready. Soaking with sweat, he experienced real fear now, concentrated in a pain behind his eyes. The situation was out of control.
Foreign voices startled him. He drew back into a blown doorway. Footsteps slapped down on the cobblestones, the sound of men running.
Two British soldiers dashed down the alley and across Levin’s line of sight. He tensed to rush out behind them, prepared to kill. But he held back at the last moment, grown newly cautious. His easy courage of the night before seemed to have sputtered out of him like air out of a balloon.
When the footsteps faded, he hustled across the alley to the covered passageway down which he had come. Off to the side, he heard firing. He realized that he had behaved badly. The British soldiers he had allowed through were engaging his men.
Levin ran. But when he reached the end of the tunnel-like passage, he discovered that the broad shopping street before him was the scene of a wild firefight. The headquarters elements in the town hall fired out of the window frames. The mortar section he had so recently passed had been overrun, and the crew members lay dead around the tipped-over weaponry.
He did not know what to do. His men were still fighting, cut off here and there. He knew that he, too, should fight. But the very knowledge of combat behavior had gone out of him. He felt that the situation was hopeless, in any case, and that he was uselessly small and ineffectual. He thought of the bodies in the vaulted basement room. None of the men in the headquarters element would survive five minutes after the town hall fell.
He knew that he did not want to die. Not here, and certainly not like this. He had once pictured himself falling, heroically and painlessly, in dramatic combat, a hero of the Soviet Union. Now the notion, with its childish images, seemed like a revoltingly childish game. He felt as though all of his actions of the past night and day had been taken without any realization of their consequences, as though it had all been play.
Foreign weapons bit into the walls and street. Levin backed up a pair of steps, pressing himself against the cool masonry. Then he turned away from the fighting and worked his way along the back alleys until he found a door that had been broken open. A cluttered passage smelling of mildew led into a department store. He found himself stumbling through a shadowy maze of baby clothes, still perfectly displayed on their racks.
Clothes the like of which his son would never have. At least not purchased by a natural father’s hand. The accompanying set of images, in which Levin would not have indulged at any other time, struck him hard now. He could not resist the strangely warming melodrama of his vision. He began to cry.