Petr didn’t jump on Lieutenant Gromoslavsky’s truck. Instead, he calmly wandered over to the abandoned truck that wouldn’t start. Gromoslavsky shouted at him again, but Petr raised his hand and gestured at the lieutenant to go on without him. The lieutenant didn’t have to be told twice. His truck disappeared down the rutted road, leaving a wake of icy mud.
Petr had the vague intuition as he walked toward the stalled truck that he was being foolish. He wasn’t a stupid or dim-witted boy. He couldn’t really have said what made him do what he did that day. He was certain that his refusal to retreat would result in his death. A sensible voice in his head urged him to turn around and run, trying to convince him that it still wasn’t too late. But it wasn’t a loud voice, because in that moment Petr didn’t care whether he lived or died. His life no longer mattered to him. He just wanted to see a German, finally, and to stop the endless marching.
CHAPTER 3
THE CHOIRBOY
More than four thousand miles away, it was still December 8 in New York City. There, at roughly 11:30 p.m., Bobby picked up a pen—and hesitated.
He was in an Army Air Forces recruitment center, and he wasn’t alone. He’d had to wait in line just to get inside the door. Japan had just bombed Pearl Harbor, and in retaliation, America had declared war on both Japan and Germany. The outrage of that sneak attack was fresh in everyone’s minds. Army recruitment hit an all-time high in December of 1941. Everyone wanted to enlist; everyone wanted to fight back against the Japanese. But that was not why Bobby was there. Bobby was there because of Karen Hamilton.
The papers before him demanded his signature, but still he hesitated. He knew that if he scribbled his name on the dotted line, his parents would be furious. They’d always been so proud of him, and he had never done anything to make them waver in that pride. He’d been a model son, which is why they so looked forward to seeing him during Christmas vacation. But his train home left the next morning from Grand Central Station, and if he signed his name now, he would miss it.
Bobby didn’t like going back to Minneapolis. It felt provincial, isolated, and small. The desire to get out of that city had driven him to graduate high school early, when he was only sixteen. Two years before, he had chosen to attend Columbia University, solely because it was in New York City. There was no bigger stage in America.
Bobby hadn’t been disappointed. Columbia was a challenging intellectual environment; his high school lessons seemed remedial by comparison. At first he’d fallen back on old habits, coasting along in his studies, completing his assignments right before they were due. Then he’d realized he was falling behind, and for the first time in his life, Bobby started working hard. He paid attention to the study habits of his most successful classmates and mimicked them until he developed his own, even more efficient, methods. He didn’t find the hard work difficult; he found it invigorating.
Basketball was more exciting, too, especially because he was now competing with boys two or three years his senior. No longer could he count on driving to the basket for an easy layup; long arms and strong bodies inevitably barred his path and threatened to strip the ball. So he perfected his outside shot and moved from the post to the back court. He studied game strategy and the abilities of his teammates, so he knew whom to feed the ball to and when. By the end of his freshman season, he wasn’t a scoring champion like he had been in high school, but he was leading his team in assists. And he was having more fun on the court than he could ever remember.
The only place Bobby continued to be bored was on dates. The high school girls he dated back home had all been Catholic. They were tall and pretty, but they were reluctant to embrace him, timid at his touch, and frightened by his kiss.
The Catholic nuns who ran their private schools ruled with velvet tongues and iron fists. Boys and girls alike were treated to terrifying sermons describing the spiritual agony that assailed the bodily curious. Only in the sanctity of marriage could men and women finally explore their carnal desires, content in the knowledge that pregnancy, supposedly the inevitable consequence of even light petting, was no longer to be feared. Those who were suspected of ignoring these sermons were assailed first with words and then with rulers and belt straps if necessary.
The girls attending Barnard, Columbia’s sister college, weren’t Catholic. But the Protestant girls who seemed to rule the Ivy League’s sister schools were even worse. They were cold fish. When one finally allowed Bobby to kiss her after he had tried for weeks, she closed her eyes and grimaced as if it were some torture to endure rather than an exquisite pleasure to share.
As Bobby became more familiar with upper-class Protestant culture, he began to realize that they had a lot in common with the Catholic families he’d known in Minnesota. They were repressed in the extreme. Married couples never seemed to touch each other. In public, husband and wife addressed each other as “Mr.” and “Mrs.,” like perfect strangers. Bobby often wondered how these people managed to have children at all.
This attitude was unique to the upper social stratum, Bobby knew. He wasn’t naive. Other communities within the city reveled in their passions and suffered the consequences. He’d seen men and women huddled outside taverns and nightclubs, ignoring falling snow, lost in the feel of each other’s embraces and the taste of each other’s lips. On more than one occasion, he’d passed a parked car, noticed the steamed windows, and knew exactly what was happening inside.
He would have felt more envy if the consequences of those tawdry affections weren’t equally apparent. Orphaned children and single mothers were everywhere, as were fathers laboring long hours or even begging to feed too many children. Even if these consequences weren’t so abundantly clear, Bobby knew he was a prisoner of his social class. His family would never condone his fraternizing with what they saw as the working poor. So he never considered it.
Bobby met Karen Hamilton in the winter of 1939.
He was attending a concert—Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. He had a music history class at the time and chose the event because that week’s subject was Russian composers. He brought his girlfriend at the time, Elizabeth—a pretty, blonde nineteen-year-old who’d allowed Bobby to kiss her good night on their previous date. In the cab on the way to the concert, she even allowed Bobby to hold her hand. But as soon as they arrived, as soon as they found themselves in public view, she let go of him and returned to her reserved Protestant self.
The music was like nothing either of them had ever heard. Elizabeth hated it. The fast tempos and percussive beats gave her a headache. She described the music as “savage.” She even went so far as to complain that all the concert was missing were bare-breasted islanders dancing in grass skirts. She meant it as an insult, but Bobby was quite taken by the image.
Bobby disagreed. He not only loved the music but admired one of the cellists in particular. She played with both skill and passion. And she was beautiful. Her brown eyes were almost black, and her raven hair formed a striking frame around her pale face and red lips. The strenuous score made her and the other performers sweat, making her cream-colored gown stick to her skin. The silky material outlined the curve of her chest, the roundness of her hips, and the long, sensuous lines of her legs. That fine silk let Bobby see her muscles tense and relax with each forceful thrust of her bow. He was mesmerized.