His tunic and trousers were too big. Well, that was better than the other universal size, too small. He’d just tighten his belt. His helmet was too small. He traded with somebody who had a smaller noggin and a bigger metal pot.
He got the footcloths wrapped without even noticing what he was doing. He hadn’t messed with the goddamn things since 1945, but his fingers still knew what to do, the same way they did when he lit a cigarette. Thinking consciously about either one would only make him mess it up.
“How-how did you do that, uh, Comrade Veteran?” The kid next to him on the bench had no idea how to go about it. He also had no idea whether Ihor would whale the snot out of him for daring to speak at all.
Some guys who’d been through the mill would have, just as a kind of warming-up exercise. Ihor wasn’t that kind, any more than he found enjoyment from kicking a kitten. “Here. I’ll show you,” he said. And he did, quickly and deftly.
As quickly, he unwound the footcloth he’d done up. “But-” the kid started.
“Shut up,” Ihor explained, not without sympathy. “I’m not your mama. You’ve got to be able to do it yourself.”
After a wounded-puppy look, the youngster tried. It wasn’t a good job; his foot would blister and bleed in short order. So would the other one, which he did no better. Well, that was how you learned. Pain made the best teacher of all.
Ihor pulled on his boots. They were too small; they’d tear up his tootsies no matter how well he wrapped them. As with his helmet, he swapped with somebody who’d got big ones but had small feet.
A lieutenant with a hook where his right hand should have been carried a rifle in his left. “Listen up, you pussies!” he yelled. “How many of you know how to shoot and how to keep your piece clean?”
Most of the men raised a hand. Only the few pimpled kids hung back. Yes, the Red Army was digging deep, for whatever the USSR could give it. Ihor didn’t think that mutilated lieutenant would head for the front with them, but he could serve back here in the Ukraine and give some able-bodied fellow the chance to catch the next bullet.
“I’ll take you to the armory next,” he said. “Some of you will get a Mosin-Nagant”-he hefted the rifle to show the uninitiated what that meant-“and the rest will use the PPD or the PPSh.”
Greatly daring, Ihor raised a hand. The lieutenant aimed the hook’s point at him as if it tipped a rapier. He knew what that meant; if the officer didn’t like his question, he’d catch it but good. “Comrade Lieutenant,” he said, “will any of us get Kalashnikov’s new automatic rifle?”
The hook came down at the same time as the lieutenant shook his head. Ihor wouldn’t land an AK-47, but he wasn’t in trouble, or he didn’t think he was. “Not enough to go around,” the officer said. “Guards units have first call on them, then other top-of-the-line formations. If this regiment gets them, it will have to earn them.”
How did you earn better weapons? If the last war was any guide, by using the ones you had till most of you were dead. People said that in the early days of the fighting against Hitler, some units went into action ordered to pick up fallen comrades’ rifles and use those.
Ihor ended up with one of the older PPDs. He didn’t care. They both used the same ammo. They were both sturdy. And, at the close ranges he was likely to find in Western Europe, they were both handier and more dangerous than a rifle would have been.
The pup who didn’t know how to wrap footcloths got a Mosin-Nagant. He held it as if he’d never touched a firearm before-and he probably hadn’t. He followed Ihor around like a real stray dog looking for a master. Ihor found out that his name was Misha Grinovsky and that he came from Podolsk, a no-account town not far south of Moscow. He didn’t much care about any of that, but it poured out of the kid like vodka from a cracked bottle.
“Can you show me how to take care of the rifle and shoot it, Comrade, please?” he asked.
“How come you don’t know? What were you doing before you got conscripted?” Ihor snapped.
“I was going to start pipefitters’ school,” Misha said.
“Terrific. Fucking wonderful.” Ihor rolled his eyes. Yes, it was like the early days of the last war all over again. They’d give somebody a uniform and shove him into battle in the hope that he lived. There it was, survival of the fittest…or the luckiest. If you did live through a couple of fights, you started to have some idea of what you needed to do to keep breathing. If you didn’t, well, they’d throw somebody else in after you. Maybe he’d pick things up fast enough to do the rodina some good.
Trucks took the new regiment to the railroad station. They had Soviet nameplates, not the American ones that had adorned the trucks Ihor rode in during the last war. But they looked and sounded pretty much the same as those.
By then, the unit had acquired officers and noncoms with a full complement of body parts. The first lieutenant in charge of Ihor’s company said, “We’re going straight into action, boys. Most of you are veterans and don’t need to waste a lot of time with training. The rest of you will pick it up in a hurry.”
Had he said The rest of you will get slaughtered in a hurry, he would have come closer to the truth. Ihor knew that. So did the rest of the old sweats. Misha Grinovsky’s eyes said he suspected as much, too. He opened his mouth to ask, then clamped it shut again. Ihor didn’t blame him. Sometimes getting your suspicions confirmed was the last thing you needed.
Up chugged the train. Misha stared at it in dismay. “Those are all boxcars,” he squeaked. “Where are the ones with windows and compartments, the ones people go in?”
“They’d cram us into those like you cram herrings into a tin,” Ihor answered. “We’ll likely have more room in a boxcar.”
Misha didn’t believe it for a minute. “We’re not horses or cows!”
As if they were, the boxcar into which their section got herded had a thick layer of straw over its bottom planks. The straw smelled of animal manure and piss, too, though the buckets the Red Army had provided for its new human passengers even came with lids. By the standards of these accommodations, that counted for luxury. Ihor already knew it. If Misha Grinovsky didn’t stop one right away, he’d find out for himself.
Groaning and snorting, the locomotive pulled the train out of the station. Like many of the men it carried, it had seen better years. Yes, they were heading west, toward the fighting. Vodka came out to dull that grim fact. So did cards and dice, to redistribute whatever wealth the soldiers had. Ihor nodded to himself. No, not a goddamn thing had changed.
–
Herschel Weissman tapped the order form on the clipboard with a blunt, nicotine-stained forefinger. “The refrigerator and the washing machine go to this address,” he said. “It’s right near Manchester and Vermont.”
“I know where it is, boss,” Aaron Finch answered quietly.
“Sure you do.” The man who’d founded and still ran Blue Front Appliances nodded. “The trouble is, Jim will, too. Don’t let him give you any tsuris, you hear?” That he let a Yiddish word creep into a conversation other people might overhear showed how important he thought the point was.
Aaron nodded. He was a lean, weathered, medium-sized man five months away from his fiftieth birthday. Ridiculously thick glasses perched on his formidable nose. His eyes were so bad, they’d kept him out of the Army in World War II.
He’d joined the merchant marine instead. The only thing the guys who put together freighter crews cared about was a pulse. They couldn’t afford to be fussy, and weren’t. On the Murmansk run, in the Mediterranean, and in the South Pacific, he’d seen as much danger as most Army or Navy men. After the war, it got him exactly no benefits. That disgusted him, but what could you do?