War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] (60 page)

But the sound of her own voice broke the spell of hatred like the snap of a hypnotist’s finger. The quick spur of anger at Mogileva returned Tania to the night chill, the rifle and dynamite packs slung across her shoulders, the mission and the line of snipers walking in front of her.

The abrupt release swirled in her stomach. Just walk, Tania thought. Don’t think. Just follow the tall man in front of you. Vasha’s at the head of the line. Vasha will take care of it all. He’ll point you at the Germans and let you kill them. Tonight, tomorrow, and again, just follow Vasha. Stay close to him. All of life that is not war and hatred will wait. Just stay close to Vasha.

The thought of closeness touched Tania. Stay close to him, she repeated. Stay with Vasha.

Deep inside, in the center of the hardness that was her pain, a thrill hovered like a hummingbird in her breast. You are alive, Tania, it said. You move, you live, you love. Just stay alive.

In that suspended second, Tania knew the beating warmth of a heart that had not turned hard, a heart that did not belong to the statue of hatred but was hers, soft and quickened and hers.

Ten meters ahead, Mogileva tripped and fell forward. Out of the woman’s boots, like from a rocket, exploded a blast of orange light. Sand and ice ripped out of the ground, riding the detonation. Tania froze, wondering even while shrapnel from the mine clawed into her stomach if she had found love too late.

She fell onto her back, her arms spread wide as if in greeting. She could not move; a weight pressed on her chest and abdomen, crushing her to the ground. Her mouth was engulfed in thirst, but she could not swallow. A blue spot like a welder’s torch hovered in her eyes. She felt nothing. Then came the strong coursing of her pulse and something slipping out of her stomach, a rising heat, as if someone had left a door open there into the cold night.

Slowly the weight was lifted and laid beside her. She lolled her head to look at Jakobsin. The length of his white front was blackened and torn. Smoke ghosted from his tattered face and chest.

Hands dug beneath Tania’s shoulders. Her head was lifted into a lap; a jumble of arms and legs gathered her in. She struggled to halt her rolling eyes. The rising in her stomach called her to come down there, to leave through the open door. No, she thought. In a little while. Let me stay a bit longer.

She heard the voice of Vasily Zaitsev. She could not break out of herself to hear what he was saying. His hands were under her head, but the hands were not strong enough somehow to keep her eyes still. Where is he, she wondered? He is all around me.

A shaft of agony leaped from her stomach and rose to her throat. She opened her mouth to cough it out. Warm ink burbled on her breath and ran down her cheeks.

Tania could not move, though her senses reeled in a tempest of confusion. She closed her eyes to shut it out. Too much, she decided. Too much going on. Are these Vasha’s hands? Where is he?

The ground disappeared beneath her. She was turned to her side; her head and her right arm dangled, pointing at the earth. Let me lie back down, she thought. It was warm and quiet, and I felt pain only once.

Tania became aware of a pressure against her stomach. Something was tight against her there; the warmth escaping out of her had stopped. Now there was only pain, the stabbing of a thousand blades deeply into her, past her spine, out into the night like the glow from a flame. She was burning. The torment kicked at her in a rhythm, pounding like the stomping of boots.

The pain cleared her faculties. She was alive, yet— Oh, it hurts! What happened? Panic circled her senses like a jackal. I’m wounded, in the stomach, an explosion. Pain and blood. Jakobsin dead. Mogileva. A land mine. The blast. What’s happening? Where is Vasha? Arms are under me, Vasha’s arms, legs running. Oh, the steps hurt! Go slower. No, run! Run with me, don’t let go!

The salt taste of blood filled Tania’s mouth. In her midsection, the ache threatened to envelop her. She opened her eyes.

Zaitsev holds me to him. He presses against me, closing my wound with his chest. Run, Vasha! He’s my bandage; his life holds mine inside me while we run.

Stay close to him, Tania. Stay alive.

Oh, run, Vasha, run!

Tania swished her tongue to clear her mouth. A dribble spilled over her lips.

In English she murmured, “Run.”

Zaitsev’s gait slowed. He spoke. His breathing was fast and heavy but his words were clear.

“Stay with me, Tanyushka. We’ll make it to the hospital.”

Tania could form no answer. She’d spent her strength. So many things to say, and all she could utter was “run” in the wrong language.

She began the slide down into her body, into the joggling pain, to splash in it, then to slip beneath it into unconsciousness.

* * * *

THIRTY

SHE MOANED ONCE, TERRIBLY, WHEN HE STUMBLED. HE
righted himself quickly from his knees, never letting go the pressure, keeping his bloody chest pressed into Tania’s open gut.

Zaitsev ran again. The sand hissed under his skimming boots, the sound mingling with his pounding breath. His mind swerved between panic and focus: Tania’s limp weight in his arms terrified him, and her blood was running into his boots.

He tried to make himself blank, to drive forward like a machine beyond thought or fatigue. Images hurled themselves at him, all of Tania—sleeping, naked, laughing, aiming her rifle, racing beside him in the flashes of explosions. He pushed through them, popping the memories like bubbles until the night was empty of all but the body in his arms and the running.

He came to a barbed-wire checkpoint, dodging a shattered horse cart on the dark beach. Pulling aside a rickety gate to let him through, the guards said nothing. He regained his pace, and a voice shouted after him, “Go!”

The medical station was fifty meters ahead in the base of the limestone cliff. It was where Shaikin had lain clutching his neck. Shaikin had died in that cave.

Zaitsev pushed through the blanket in the doorway to the medical station. He stood panting in a short hall; the walls and ceiling were built from timbers buttressed by metal beams. A bare light bulb

swung from a hanging wire. Three soldiers lay on stretchers in a line on the floor. A nurse in green fatigues bent over the soldier farthest from Zaitsev.

Now that he’d reached the field hospital, Tania felt heavy in his arms. His panic spurted at the thought of releasing her. She was going to be given over to this nurse who hadn’t even turned around to see him holding her. He swallowed and spoke.

“We need help.”

The nurse lifted her head. Like a winded horse, Zaitsev chuffed hard through his nose. He knew his face must show his terror.

The nurse moved to him, her hands reaching to support Tania’s head. “Lay her down here,” she said.

The nurse pulled Tania’s head to guide Zaitsev to an open space on the floor. He wrapped Tania tighter in his arms.

The nurse saw the madness. “Sergeant.”

He did not move.

She spoke sternly. “Sergeant. Lay her down. I must look at her wound.”

“Where’s the doctor?”

The nurse checked beneath Tania’s eyelids while she talked.

“He’s in surgery. I’m the triage nurse. He’ll be with her as soon as he can. Put her down.”

Triage. This woman decides who goes before the doctor. If I lay Tania down, she’ll die on the floor. She’ll die waiting in line behind these stretchers.

The nurse stepped back. She seemed to be calculating Tania’s chances from what she could see while Zaitsev held her, looking at the amount of Tania’s blood on him. She pointed at the floor.

“Lay her down or she’ll die in your arms.”

The words stung him. He knew death, and he knew this nurse was wrong.

“No.”

Behind Zaitsev, a snap sounded. Another snap, like plastic, then a voice.

“What’s going on here?”

The nurse kept one hand beneath Tania’s head and motioned with the other.

“He won’t put her down. I have to look at her. She’s bad.”

The doctor threw two splotched surgical gloves into a bin. The man was old, the oldest Zaitsev had seen in Stalingrad. He was tall and thick-waisted, with his head shaved bald. His blue eyes were rimmed in exhaustion. The doctor’s white apron was fresh, barely soiled with blood. His stoop disappeared when he held out his arms to Zaitsev.

“Give her to me. We’ll see what we can do.”

Zaitsev balked, though he felt a surge of faith in the old man. His arms ached in their lock around Tania.

The doctor shook his head, solemn as a great oak.

“She won’t die in my arms either, son. Give her to me.”

The doctor touched Tania. Zaitsev lowered his arms to let her body roll back from his breast. The nurse stayed at Tania’s head; Tania’s arms flopped when the doctor took her.

Zaitsev looked at the dripping rip in Tania’s coat. It was big enough to put his fist into.

“Doctor.” He intended to plead somehow, but the old man and nurse had already assumed all of Tania’s weight and turned from him. They laid her on the floor.

The doctor’s hands flew at Tania, pecking at her like two white chicks. The nurse returned to the line of stretchers. She knelt at all three; when she was done, she called to the doctor, “Stable.” To the man on the last stretcher, the nurse leaned close and mumbled.

The doctor unbuttoned Tania’s coat and tunic. With scissors he sliced through her undershirts, pulling aside the burgundy pieces like a velvet curtain. His hands and apron began to streak with red.

The wound jumped at Zaitsev. A pit the shape and size of an open mouth was torn in the left side of her abdomen, below the rib cage. Poking out of the hole was a pink, veined glob; the pressure inside her body had caused part of her small intestine to boil through the opening. Pulses of blood escaped around the edges, dribbling down her side to pool on the floor.

The nurse returned to the doctor’s side. Zaitsev moved behind her. Tania’s face was waxen; her eye sockets and cheeks were shadowed as though rubbed with charcoal. Her face stunned Zaitsev; it looked hollow, like a skull.

The nurse slapped a gauze sheet in the doctor’s outstretched hand. He clapped it over the wound and pushed down. He spoke urgently. “Lift her again.”

Zaitsev stepped between the doctor and nurse and dug his hands under Tania. He tried to be careful.

The doctor squawked at him. “Come on, boy!”

They carried Tania into a large room off the hall. Two tables held the center, both ringed by glaring electric lights hoisted on poles. The low grumble of a gasoline-powered generator came from somewhere in the wails. One table was empty and covered with a fresh white sheet. On the other table a soldier lay unconscious; beside him, a second nurse wrapped gauze around the stump below his right knee. His detached leg was bundled in cloth on the floor, still in its boot.

Zaitsev laid Tania on the table. The doctor took his hands from the bandage above her wound to put on clean plastic gloves; the nurse pushed down on the gauze in his stead. With her free hand she searched under Tania’s chin for a pulse. Zaitsev backed away from the table and bumped into an elevated tray of surgical instruments. They rattled, but none spilled. The nurse and doctor ignored him, busying themselves with preparatory movements and intense chatter. The doctor asked rapid-fire questions, and the nurse responded in one- or two-word bursts.

The doctor moved to the middle of the table to swab Tania’s naked torso clean. The nurse removed the bandage from the wound and threw it in a bucket beneath the table. With another swab, she painted an orange coating around the opening where the balloonlike intestine was sticking out.