Court Martial (40 page)

Everybody is a little frightened of Julia. She is the village
babuschka
,
59
and can tell fortunes and cure sickness.

'Who wants to talk to me?' asks Gregorij, weakly.

'You'll see when you get home,' answers
Babuschka
Julia, laconically.

'So tell 'em they'll have to wait,' says Gregorij. 'I'll come home when we've killed the Germans!'

'You're not right in the head,' says
Babuschka
Julia, and knocks on the door before she goes out.

Shenja hangs the Party Message on the board reserved for special notices:

Tovaritsch
, every step in retreat is cowardly

and dishonourable. It means death!

The rattle of a machine-pistol is heard out in the storm.

In a moment everyone has taken cover under a chair or a table.

In some mysterious manner Shenja has managed to force all her superfluous pounds of fat on to the shelf under the bar.

Sofija rushes wildly out to the coal bunkers. As she runs she tears the Party badge from her blouse and throws it into the stove.

Fjedor's Home Guard amulet goes the same way as the Party badge.

'Hard times are coming,' they confide to one another, 'and nobody can yet be sure who is going to win this war!'

But, shortly after, it proves to be only the fur-hunter, Sanja, who has been firing with his new machine-pistol. He looms large in the door, and bends down to look under the table where Gregorij is hunched down with his hands covering both ears.

'Come out, comrade! The Germans are sitting out there in the snow waiting to get shot!'

Slowly they crawl from their hiding-places, and, after a few glasses, Gregorij again begins to feel himself the born battle-group commander. He decides to put out advance posts. After a long discussion, about where people are to go, they slouch off to the selected positions.

Two men drag the water-cooled Maxim machine-gun with them, but as soon as they get outside they are knocked off their feet by the storm. It is not very long before they arrive back at 'The Red Angel', and agree that they might just as well wait for the Germans there as risk freezing to death before they arrive. But Gregorij has learnt at the Home Guard course in Murmansk that it is most important to put out a sentry.

Nobody protests, when he proposes the Lapp as the right man for that important post. He is used to being outdoors, in all kinds of weather, and living close to nature as he does, his eyes and ears are well trained.

'If you do this,' says Gregorij, solemnly, 'I will recommend you for the Workers' Order!'

The Lapp rolls off, grinning, to keep an eye on the Germans, but the storm is too severe even for him, and soon he creeps into the reindeer stables. Before he goes to sleep he tells the reindeer to listen carefully, and to wake him if strangers come.

'The Workers' Order they can stick up the arsehole of a wild boar,' he mumbles, just before he falls asleep.

The whole day passes with no sign of any Germans, and courage is coming back to the villagers. 'The Red Angel' has been turned into a veritable fortress. An 80 mm mortar has been emplaced behind the kitchen. True there are only two practice bombs for it, but Gregorij feels that the noise alone will frighten the Germans properly.

Just inside the door the heavy Maxim MG has been placed. Nobody thinks of the fact that the water-coolant has frozen to solid ice. Even if it cannot be fired at the moment it is a wicked looking gun, and there is plenty of ammunition for it.

'Is there still a state of emergency?' asks Shenja, when they demand vodka and beer at the expense of the state.

'What do you think?' asks Gregorij, sarcastically. 'Even a stupid woman like you should be able to see that fighting will soon commence!'

'No skin off
my
nose,' she gives in, sourly, and fills the glasses to the brim.

'Neither the Germans nor the Finns'll take us alive,' roars Mikhail, happily, as he empties his fifth mug.

'They say that in war it is the best who die first,' shouts Bazar above the terrific din. 'What d'you say to that, Yorgi, you've been in it?'

'Nonsense,' states Yorgi. 'You can see I'm alive! War is natural to human beings, and a clever man can easily fool death. In the 809th Infantry Regiment, where I was a corporal, we had a sergeant who often warned the section of danger, as if he were an astrologer who could read tea-leaves: "Boys, don't enter that field! There are mines in it will blow your piles up into your throats!"

'But there were some clever ones in the section, who wouldn't believe what he said, and walked straight into the grass. Bang! Up go the mines, taking earth and shit with 'em. That sergeant taught us not to believe that everything was predestined, for example walking on a mine or stopping a fascist bullet with your own body. "If everything's gone wrong," said this sergeant, "and the enemy's boys are pulling your arsehole up over your ears, just bash on like a crazy man. Above all never hold back. Grab hold of your feet in your hands and keep going!"'

'When the Germans come,' decides Gregorij, 'you take the lead. You have the experience, and the rest of us can learn from you!'

Yorgi strikes his chest proudly, and swings the machine-pistol above his head, so that half a magazine goes off into the ceiling.

'You pay for what you break,' shouts Shenja, angrily.

She gets up on a chair to examine the beams.

'I only hope this war piss doesn't cause too much damage,' she sighs, worriedly, as the steps down from the chair.

By now the whole village is inside 'The Red Angel'. Everybody is talking at the same time, stifling their fears with words. None of the women scold their husbands for being drunk again.

A party is learning how to load and arm the LMG by the window. The unavoidable occurs. A whole magazine rips through the wall and across the kitchen, where Shenja and Sofija come close to getting killed.

'The Germans, the Germans,' comes a howl from the coal-bunkers, where some have taken cover.

Gregorij throws a hand-grenade out of the window. Mikhail sends a hail of machine-pistol bullets into the snowdrift on the far side of the road. Shenja fires her shotgun off, and hits the stuffed bear. She strikes out blindly with the butt, and knocks it over on top of Fjedor, who is lying behind the MG.

'Holy Raphael,' he screams, in terror, putting up his hands. 'I surrender! It was Gregorij, that Bolshevik swine, who made us shoot at you! Don't kill me,
tovaritsch germanski
!'

A little later things have quietened down and they begin to quarrel.

Nobody will speak to Fjedor who is still sitting, talking to himself in his own version of the Finnish language.

'You pointed me out to the enemy,' shouts Gregorij, incensed. 'You'll answer for that in Murmansk when the war's over.'

'I was only joking,' Fjedor excuses himself, laughing forcedly. 'Can't you take a joke, any more?'

Five snow-covered Lapps come noisily into the room, together with their even noisier dogs.

'The Germans are here,' they announce, with grins.

'
Where
?' screams Gregorij, terrified, throwing himself to the floor.

'Outside,' says the Lapp hunter, Ilmi.

'Put out the lights,' shouts Mikhail, blowing out the nearest.

'Damnation, there they are,' screams Yorgi, excitedly, firing single shots with the LMG.

The lights are extinguished quickly, and everything goes black as a coal-cellar.

Cautiously they peer out through the windows, but only the storm howls out there.

'Can't you be mistaken?' asks Gregorij, with hope in his voice.

'No chance,' answers the Lapp hunter, Ilmi, insulted. We were so close to them we could feel them breathing down our necks. They are coming in a long column from the north. NKVD troops we have also met. They are looking for some Germans who have blown the roof from over their heads in some place to the east, where no ordinary people who are born of women may go. I think it is these Germans we have met. Well, we just dropped in. We are going now, and if we were you we would go too!'

'When d'you think they'll get here?' asks Gregorij, his voice shaking.

'They cannot be far away, since we are here,' says Ilmi, with crafty logic.

'You stay here,' orders Gregorij, firmly. 'Every man and woman who enters this district belongs to my battle group!'

'Can't you find anything to talk about but
your
battle group?' jeers Fjedor. 'I'll be sick if I hear that word again. All the senile chaps in the country with a couple of celluloid stars on their shoulders are runnin' round these days making up battle groups, God help us!'

'What do you want me to call us?' asks Gregorij, looking lost. 'We're not enough for a company, and a section doesn't sound like much if the Germans get to hear of it. Those devils'll eat a section, like a Lapp woman swallows a herring!'

'Let's call it "The Red Banner's Barricade",' suggests Sofija, proudly.

A shot splits the darkness.

'I got him!' screams Pavelov, and fires again. 'God dammit, I knocked the bastard over!'

'Where's he lying?' whispers Gregorij and Mickhail, in chorus, peering cautiously out of the broken window.

'Can't you see! There he is over by the shed!'

A little later they discover it is one of the dogs which has been shot. To make things worse, a lead dog, Fear turns to anger. Everybody has a go at Pavelov.

Somewhere out in the snow a machine-gun stammers.

Terrified, they stop fighting. The sound comes to them in short, wicked bursts, like somebody hitting a bucket.

Sofija begins to scream, wildly and hysterically. Mickhail strikes her across the mouth with the back of his hand.

The distant machine-gun goes quiet again.

'Put that lamp out,' scolds Gregorij, as Shenja enters with a lamp swinging in her hand. 'The Germans'll think we're
asking
to get shot!'

For a while they remain lying on the floor, listening tensely to the howl of the storm.

'You'll see, our boys've found those Germans they were out looking for,' says Mikhail, who is the first to get to his feet again.

'And killed 'em all in one long burst,' says Shenja, crawling out from behind the bar with the shotgun in her hand. She lights a carbide-lamp and pours herself a respectable-sized mug. She tips the contents down her throat in one long swallow.

'Come and get it,' she shouts, filling up glasses convivially.

Slowly they creep from cover, convinced that the Germans are lying dead, somewhere out there in the storm-whipped snow.

Under no circumstances must any general or private soldier consider the thought of voluntarily giving up a position. To counter such foul thinking we have the Courts Martial. It is my order that such defeatist
schweinhunde
shall be liquidated.

Adolf Hitler, August, 1944,

'It's nothing to laugh at,' the Finnish corporal admonished us, looking at us in annoyance. But we kept on laughing. It was the funniest looking body we had ever seen and we
had
seen more than a few. It was really two bodies, locked so closely together that we thought at first they were one.

'Stop
laughing
,' shouts the corporal, furiously. 'There's really nothing
to
laugh at!'

'If that's not something to die laughing at,' shouts Porta, half-choking with laughter, 'then I don't know what
is
!'

'Think on it! There 'e is, lyin' in bed in the middle of 'avin' a lovely bang, an' just when 'e's ready to let go, a bleedin' flyin'-bomb comes 'n' blows 'im straight out of bed,' grins Tiny.

An Unteroffizier from the motor cycle squadron tries to force them apart, but the girl's legs are locked so rigidly around the man's hips that he gives up.

'He was the only man I ever loved,' says the girl standing amongst us. There are tears in her voice.

'Bloody shame he had to die just when he was making love to somebody else!' says Gregor.

'And a German trollop too,' says the girl, breaking into a burst of sobbing.

54
rabotschij (Russian) = worker.

+
Molinija (Russian) = The Light.

55
kalorshnik (Russian) = Criminal.

56
polittruk (Russian) political commissar.

57
Sampolit (Russian) = Regimental commissar.

58
garadovoj (Russian) = police officer.

+
spjaetsyalniyi stamtsyja (Russian) = special station for vagrants.

59
babuschka (Russian) = grandmother.

THE WAR DOGS

The cold air strikes us, with all the violence of a battering ram, and sucks every vestige of warmth out of our bodies.

'Breathe slowly,' Heide advises me, as I go into a violent spasm of coughing. 'If you get frost in your lungs you've had it!'

I bury my face in my fur gloves, draw breath only cautiously, and fight the cough which tears at my chest. Even through the thick layers of fur, and the heavy camouflage cape, the icy air feels like glowing iron. The still air turns our breath immediately to ice, if we stop
moving
for only a moment. We could be choked by our own breath.

The moon shines brightly, and the stars are brilliant in the night sky. The air as icily cold and dry. The tundra takes on a strange, ghostly appearance, terrible, and yet, at the same time, beautiful.

To the north-east dances a great curtain of light, colours shifting and shimmering through the spectrum. In sheer fascination we stare at the electronic streamers, as they move across the heavens.