Armageddon (37 page)

“What do you propose, Orlov?” He shoved past the captain harshly, then turned. “You have time enough to run to Azov and report this. As for now, have my orderly prepare something warm to eat and see if there is woman’s clothing in any of the closets.”

Feodor was waiting before the colonel’s door. “I am so ashamed,” he whispered.

Igor spat at the young officer’s feet, entered his bedroom, and laid the girl down. He wiped the back of her neck with a damp cloth, applied smelling salts, and as she came to, made her sit on the edge of the bed and put her head between her legs.

“Come along, child. You are all right.”

The girl’s hand trembled so badly Igor had to feed her at first. He made her sip slowly from the hot cabbage borsch filled with chunks of meat. Her shrunken stomach rebelled at the sudden onslaught of food.

“Don’t eat so quickly or you’ll throw it all up.”

She nodded, then ate until she thought she would burst. She pushed the dark rich bread around in the bottom of the bowl.

“What is your name, girl?”

“Lotte. Lotte Böhm.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Well ... how do you feel now?”

“Better.”

Igor had his orderly clear the room. The soldier said he had found some woman’s clothing. Igor told him to unlock the adjoining bedroom and not disturb him further.

When the soldier left he considered the situation. The girl seemed to have recovered her senses and appeared none the worse for wear ... a few minor bruises. However, she might be too weak to go on out alone. Out to what, of course, was conjecture. All that appeared to wait for her, if her story could be believed, was another rapist. Naturally, he felt no obligation to protect her; nevertheless, one would have afforded the same courtesy to a beaten dog.

“Your story had better be completely true,” he said. “I intend to check it.”

“I wish it were not true. I wish I had a home and parents.”

He came to a sudden decision. “I shall allow you to sleep in the next bedroom tonight. You will not be disturbed. Help yourself to whatever clothing is in there. Tomorrow I will see what can be done about arranging a safe place for you.”

“You are very kind,” she said and began to cry.

Igor wanted to say that not all Russians were like those in the streets now ... even after a war that had taken his only child and his beloved Natasha. Yes, even after Natasha, mortal enemies must have some humanity left. He opened the door to the next bedroom.

Lotte Böhm wiped her tears. “Do you have water?” she blurted.

“Water?”

“To wash.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I have not washed decently in a month.”

“Well, help yourself.”

“Could ... could I ... bathe?”

She knocked timidly at the half-opened door. Igor turned from his desk. “Well now, let’s take a look at you. You look quite decent with your face scrubbed.”

Her youth had made possible a revival of body and spirit. She breathed deeply and happily and bounced about her bedroom pinning up her hair in long graceful rolls. She wore an oversized night coat, making her appear very tiny. “I was thinking about how nice you are all the time I was bathing. You must be someone very important.”

“Just a soldier.” He pointed to the bed. She slipped between the covers, stretched and purred with joy and felt the pillows and the satin spread as though she were in a wonderland. “I’ll die if I wake up and find this is a dream. I’ll die if I wake up in the cellar.”

Igor sat on the edge of the bed and smiled indulgently. She was so small and helpless. So like ... Natasha. Unconsciously, his hand reached out and touched her cheek, startling her. He drew his hand away quickly.

“I did not mean to frighten you.”

“You do not frighten me.” She rolled away so that her back was to him. “I have been living in a cellar alone for six months. I have been half starved all the time. The Amis came with their bombers every day and the British every night. And since the Russians ...”

“I know.”

“I am more grateful to you than I can say.”

“We are just people ...”

“I must show you how grateful I am. I want to please you.”

“It is not a condition for being human to one another.”

“But I want to thank you. I have no other way. The others took what they wanted from me. Once I was left for dead in the gutters when three of them had finished with me. At least let me give it once, willingly.”

“Go to sleep and shut up.”

“When I was out there, struggling on the ground, I ... I heard a voice singing ...”

He leaned over, bussed her cheek, touched her hair. “Good night, Natasha.”

“It was your voice, wasn’t it?”

He flicked off the light and walked to the door.

“Please don’t make the room dark,” she called out.

“I will be working at my desk in the next room. I will leave the door open.”

Igor usually liked the hours of night to work. In the complete quiet of night one’s thoughts could be immaculately clear, but ghosts of the day followed him into this night. Things ran together. Drab statistics and engineering problems were invaded by the haunting smile of Peter Egorov and the sharp voice of Hirsch—and now Natasha was with him!

From time to time he heard the girl thrash restlessly and heard moans of what seemed to be a continuous nightmare. He found himself standing in the doorway looking at her as though drawn by an uncontrollable force. The light from his room fell across her body. What a magnificent little creature! She is young ... I was young once. Where did it all go?

And, as though Lotte had been awaiting him, she awakened from her sleep and saw him. They looked at each other for a long time without movement or speech. She did not blink and barely breathed as she drew him toward the bed, slowly. He sat down on the edge.

Her little hand reached out, took his powerful hand, and led it beneath the comforter and placed it on her throbbing breast, and then she drew the covers aside for him.

Her body was deliciously young and firm and warm.

Softly, he kept repeating to himself, softly. Be very gentle with her. Handle her with delicacy and make up to her for all of those miserable brutes. Be tender and make her want me as Natasha wanted me.

He worked her up slowly until the nerve ends leaped from her skin. They taunted and teased each other, but the girl was being driven mad. She groaned with the joy and tried to draw him in and devour him. And then came a time when control and judgment fled and they burst into convulsions ... and now, at last, Lotte slept a deep, quiet, peaceful sleep.

Igor Karlovy remained awake. He lay on his back, the girl’s body curled up against him. His eyes were wide open.

... Now I am no better than the rest of them ... but then, have I ever been? Have I ever really been?

Chapter Seven

T
HE VILLAGE OF
G
LINKA
on the Kuban River in southern Russia in the year 1921:

Igor finished his chores in the barn. He crossed through the chicken yard to the pump, took off his square, beaded cap and embroidered peasant’s shirt, drew a pail of water, and splashed it over his face and the back of his neck and hands.

He glanced pensively toward the cottage. Muffled, angry voices filtered out of it into the evening air. His father and his brother, Alexander, would be at it again. It was like this every night now, one heated argument after another. Last week his father had struck Alexander in a rage.

It was the same all over the village. Everyone walked about with long faces, curses on their lips, and suspicion in their eyes. Many of the younger villagers like Alexander had joined the Reds and fought with them. But there were others, mostly from the elders, who had been with the Whites.

Igor felt the presence of someone and turned to see Natasha inching toward him shyly. She smiled with obvious adoration of first love, for she was ten and he was twelve. She reached down and handed him his shirt.

Igor tolerated her as one tolerates a small sister. He had known Natasha from earliest memory. She lived three cottages down the road. Well, perhaps it was more than a toleration; she was a faithful friend. They even shared a secret hiding place near a bend in the river. Oftentimes they would meet there and discuss their most intimate thoughts.

“Please don’t be so sad, Igor,” she said.

“I don’t like to go into the house any more.”

“It is no better in my house.”

“Yes, I know. Alexander says the fighting is over. We all have to accept the new order. Only Poppa ...”

“Igor, come down to the river tomorrow and meet me?”

“I don’t know. We will be sacking grain most of the day. Besides, I have to study. You know how Alexander insists I learn how to read and write.”

“Please.”

“Very well. But only for a few minutes when the others are taking their midday rest.”

She ran off, climbed the rail fence, then ran down the road toward her cottage after a last look and a wave.

“Igor! Come in!” Momma’s voice called.

The crude room was held by an awesome silence. Igor’s father, Gregory Karlovy, a leathery, bearded giant sat at the rough-hewn table with his great hands folded, glowering at the floor. Opposite him, twenty-year-old Alexander sat with his face muscles twitching with tension. Igor slipped alongside his father as quietly as he could.

A great pot of chicken broth and dumplings was put on the center of the table. As Alexander reached for a chunk of bread his father raised his head and glared at him. Alexander retreated by dropping the bread, folding his hands, and mumbling a short prayer and crossing himself.

It was another of those silent meals, frequent of late, the only noise an occasional slurp. With each spoonful Igor saw the wrath building up in his father. Finally the old man brought a hamlike fist down on the table making the entire room rumble. “My own flesh and blood leaving the house and the land of his fathers!”

Alexander nearly choked trying to swallow past the lump in his throat. His father roared again. He dropped his spoon. “I’m telling you for the fiftieth time. I am going to Rostov at the invitation of the District Planning Committee. It is the greatest opportunity in my life. We will be reorganizing clear down to the Georgian border. Can’t you understand how important this is to me?”

“Nothing is more important than your own farm.”

“You’re wrong, Poppa. The revolution is more important.”

“It seems to me,” the father answered with a trembling voice, “that we have lived through enough years of bloodshed and sorrow. First the war took half our sons, then the revolution, and then the counterrevolution. Is there to be no peace? What kind of a revolution is it that turns a son against his own father and his own land.”

“The old ways are gone.”

“Gone, hell! Generations of Karlovys have been born, lived, and died on this land! Don’t you tell me they’re gone!”

“Poppa, for God’s name. The counterrevolution has failed. We’ve been bled dry for centuries. The people want a new life.”

“I will thank you not to repeat Red slogans under this roof.”

“This is not a slogan, Poppa. Glinka has stood here for three hundred years without a school or a hospital. Don’t you want to see Igor read and write. Don’t you want to see women like your own wife give birth without losing three or four children.”

The old man shook his head sadly. “Freedom is life, my son. We have heard all of the talk of reform before. Here ... this land ... this is freedom. You are a Kuban Cossack and that is freedom. If there is anything we have learned it is to smell out those who would take freedom from us.”

The young man pushed away from the table. “What the hell’s the use of talking.”

An impasse had been reached. A final impasse. The flame of revolution was destined to burn in the young man’s heart, alone. The father was lost to the son just as the old ways were gone. Alexander turned, shoved open the curtain across his alcove, and grabbed his carpetbag. His mother and his brother began weeping.

He went to her and kissed her and he tousled his brother’s hair. “Study Igor, study. The future will belong to those who study.”

The father and the son stood face to face. “Shall we shake hands, Father? Will you wish me a good journey?”

Gregory Karlovy arose, but his hands remained at his sides. He turned his back. “May God protect you,” he whispered after the door slammed shut.

Igor whistled their secret code, three times like a marsh swallow, then skittered down the bank through the tall grass to the clearing where Natasha waited for him. They were on the slightest of knolls on a point in the bend of the river; nearby stood a huge and ancient willow tree whose limbs draped to the water’s edge.

It was midday. The air hung still, the land aflame with oranges and reds and golds. A raftsman swirled past them, poking his long pole into the opposite bank to push him back midstream. Voices of song drifted to their hearing from over the fields.

Natasha’s great brown eyes were filled with fear and she was trembling. “I’m so glad you’re here, Igor ...”

“It wasn’t easy to come,” he said, mindful only of his own problems. “Alexander left home for good last night. He has gone to Rostov to join the Reds. I lay awake all night trying to think of what life will be like without Alexander. I could hear Momma crying and Poppa moaning in his sleep.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Never mind. Well, what is so important?”

Natasha drew a deep breath and tried to speak, not knowing if she could; and then he saw her anxiety.

“The Reds,” she quivered at last ‘They have talked to my brother, Sergei.”

“Where? When?”

“When we were at market three days ago in Armavir. Poppa went to the Jew’s quarters to trade with them and left Sergei to watch our stall. When I came he was gone. He didn’t tell me until this morning where he had been. The Reds had taken him away.”

“What did they want?”

“What they always want. They wanted to know where the village was hiding the grain.”

“He didn’t tell, of course.”

“Not at first. Then they told him we were all saboteurs and provocateurs ... whatever that means ... and that the people in the city were starving.”