When Fyodor entered, he found Petr and Duck standing over the dead Germans. He stared wide-eyed as Duck sat on his haunches and calmly licked his bloody snout with his long tongue. Petr was leaning against the wall now, catching his breath from the long sprint and the adrenaline rush of the fight.
Fyodor leaned over where Petr had ditched his PTRD rifle for the brutal efficiency of his shovel. “You’re still gonna need this,” Fyodor said, picking up the rifle and handing it to Petr.
CHAPTER 9
THE CELLIST
Karen could just make out the German soldiers’ steel helmets in the darkness as she lay facedown on the frozen potato field. There only appeared to be four of them, and for once they weren’t using lanterns or flashlights. Sasha lay about ten feet to Karen’s right, and Inna was snuggled up next to him. For a moment Karen envied them. They, at least, were keeping each other warm.
There was no cover between Karen and the German patrol, nothing to hide behind. Karen felt naked and exposed on the flat ground. But so far the Germans hadn’t seemed to detect Karen and her friends. The soldiers just chatted in their foreign language and stood around like lazy workers. As Karen lay there, her fingers, along with her toes and her legs and her chest, continued to grow numb with cold. She shivered and clenched her teeth so they wouldn’t chatter.
One of the German soldiers popped a cigarette into his mouth and lit a match. Karen immediately looked away from the flame, knowing that exposure to the sudden light could ruin her night vision. But she was grateful for the German’s nicotine addiction, because he passed out matches to each of his companions, and soon the glowing end of a cigarette was dancing like a firefly in front of each soldier’s face, and Karen knew that even those dull embers made it more difficult for the Germans to peer through the protective darkness.
Sasha came to the exact same conclusion. He reached into his bag and pulled out a frozen potato. Karen immediately recognized what he was planning to do and shook her head silently, trying to tell him—beg him—to just lie still. But Sasha wasn’t looking at her. He was looking past the soldiers at the darkness beyond. He lifted himself onto one elbow, pulled back his arm, and launched the potato in a high arc over the Germans’ heads.
The potato landed with a thud. The Germans turned away from Sasha, suddenly quiet, searching the darkness. One threw down his cigarette and picked up his rifle.
Sasha charged.
Karen wanted to scream for Sasha to stop but instead rolled farther to her left, putting more distance between herself and Sasha and Inna. She felt like a coward, but she didn’t want to die just because Sasha had more courage than sense.
But Sasha’s gambit worked. By distracting the Germans with the potato, he reached them before they could turn around. He threw his arms around the soldier with the raised rifle, and the gun went off with a bang. Sasha and the soldier struggled, Sasha pinning the German’s arms to his side. In a fair fight, Sasha might actually have won.
But it wasn’t a fair fight. Not even close. At first the three other soldiers were paralyzed with indecision. They raised their rifles but didn’t shoot, realizing that if they missed Sasha, they might kill their friend. But the confusion only lasted a moment. The smallest German flipped his rifle in the air like a baton twirler, caught its barrel, and swung the butt at Sasha’s head. The wooden butt smashed Sasha full in the face. Broken teeth spilled from his mouth, reflecting the glow of the cigarettes.
Sasha let go of the German and lay on the ground, hands over his bloody face, twisting in agony. His legs moved back and forth against the frozen soil of the potato field as if he were trying to create a snow angel. The German he assaulted stared down at Sasha a moment. He spoke to his fellow soldiers while he reached down and picked up his rifle. Karen noticed the other Germans pulling long blades from scabbards on their belts and realized with horror that they were bayonets. She wanted to warn Sasha, but she couldn’t do so without giving away her own position. And Sasha couldn’t see them, his hands still over his face, still writhing on the ground. One of the Germans chuckled as he fixed the bayonet to the end of his rifle. Then he raised the spearlike weapon over Sasha’s body, got his back behind it, and drove it down.
Karen caught her breath at the sound of the blade puncturing Sasha’s chest. Sasha mewed like a cat. Then he went still, and silent. That silence seemed to last a full minute. Then Inna screamed.
Karen knew she could do nothing now to save her friend. Instead of helping Inna, she used the scream to cover the sound of her own movement. She crawled to the edge of the potato field and didn’t stop until she reached the short stone wall that enclosed it. Flipping herself over it, she crawled back to her knees and risked a glance back.
Inna was still screaming. She hadn’t attacked the Germans. She’d rushed up to Sasha and knelt beside him, holding his bloody face against her heaving chest.
The Germans didn’t bayonet Inna. They simply raised their rifles and shot her.
Karen had never let go of her sack and shovel the whole time. She hadn’t thought about it; she just held on to them out of pure instinct. But that instinct saved her life, because the Germans spent the next hour searching the field. They established a methodical pattern, moving in slowly expanding concentric circles from the center of the field to the perimeter wall. They found the holes from which Karen and her friends had dug out the potatoes, having been lucky enough to pry the frozen soil loose. They found Sasha’s and Inna’s sacks as well as their shovels. But they never found Karen crouching low behind the stone wall. Two shovels, two sacks, and two dead Russians led the Germans to conclude that Sasha and Inna were alone. Besides, it was cold. The soldiers wanted to get back to their warm quarters, so eventually they left. They took the potatoes and the shovels. They didn’t bother with Sasha or Inna. They left their bodies to freeze in the field as a warning to other partisans who might risk stealing potatoes from the Wehrmacht.
After the soldiers left, Karen climbed the wall and crept back into the field. She first knelt beside Sasha and stared at his bloody face. A well of hatred rose up in her chest. She had grown to hate so many things in Russia, and now this boy had made her hate him, too. She almost hated him more than the German soldiers who’d killed him. They were the enemy. Of course they would kill him. But Sasha hadn’t needed to let them. He hadn’t need to attack them. If they’d waited, if they’d been patient, the soldiers would eventually have finished their cigarettes and returned to their camp. Karen was sure of it. Sasha’s attack had been suicide. No, it had been more than suicide; it had been murder. He had murdered Inna. Karen pulled open Sasha’s coat. It was soaked with blood from his punctured chest. She tried to keep her hands as clean as possible while she rifled through his coat pockets, only to find them empty. She found his belongings in his trouser pockets instead, and it was a good thing, too, because there his identification papers and ration card were still dry, not stained with blood.
Karen wiped Sasha’s blood off in the snow. Then she fell onto her knees beside Inna. Inna’s blue eyes were open, and frozen tears glistened on her cheeks like tiny icicles. Karen wondered whether she could ever sacrifice herself for Bobby the way Inna had sacrificed herself for Sasha, and she couldn’t help but feel cowardly and inadequate. She hoped Bobby would never force her to find out. Bobby wasn’t stupid like Sasha, was he? Bobby would never charge a squad of German soldiers armed only with his fists. It was Sasha’s fault that Inna was dead.
Karen opened Inna’s coat and searched through her pockets. She found her identification papers and ration card, an apartment door key, and a bundle of folded letters. The bundle was tied with a lock of hair. Inna had never mentioned that Sasha wrote her love poems. She’d kept them private and secret. Karen stared at the bundle before returning them to Inna’s coat, unread. She would respect her friend’s privacy. But she stuffed the identification papers, the key, and the ration card into her pockets along with Sasha’s. Then she turned and began the long twelve-mile walk back to Leningrad.