Most of the war stories received challenges from the more cynical listeners. But Seryosha retained his gift for convincing others. It was remarkable to Leonid. Seryosha had already ingratiated himself with the facility’s political officer, and he had begun to draw away from Leonid once again.
Leonid didn’t mind. He wanted to put the events of the war behind him. He wanted to go home, and he listened avidly to rumors that all combat veterans would receive home leave, while those who had not fought would remain behind with the occupation forces. Yet Leonid suspected that, if anyone received a leave, it would be Seryosha. Well, that was all right, too. Sooner or later, they would all be discharged. The army couldn’t keep you forever. And he would go home and play his guitar. He had managed to rescue two looted cassette tapes from destruction, half-surprised when they were not confiscated upon his arrival at the holding facility. It turned out that nearly everyone had a souvenir or two to show for his battle experience.
A voice loudly called the barracks to attention. It was almost time for the political officer’s daily world-events class, and Leonid assumed that either the lecture would be a bit early today or this was yet another of the endless roll calls.
He was wrong. Instead of the political officer, the warrant officer in charge of work details appeared beside a new captain. The warrant officer announced that a very sensitive mission, one of great honor, required a platoon of soldiers for its immediate execution. They were all familiar with this particular litany. It meant that more bodies had been located. It was the worst detail imaginable.
Leonid knew he would be selected. It was just his luck.
Bezarin sat on a concrete slab at the water’s edge, watching the withdrawal of the last American forces across the Rhine. His new medal dangled from the blouse of the fresh uniform he had been issued for the presentation ceremony. General Malinsky, the front commander, had flown in to present several dozen awards at a gathering hosted by General Starukhin, commander of the Third Shock Army and of all occupation forces in the Ruhr. The banquet undoubtedly continued, with passionate drinking of cognac, back at the Japanese luxury hotel that served as the provisional Soviet headquarters in Dusseldorf. But Bezarin had no thirst for alcohol at the moment, and he had slipped away to think about Anna and the rest of his life.
Between daydreams, he watched the Americans passing in the distance. Ugly, venomous-looking attack helicopters covered the crossing from midriver and from the urban industrial tangle of the far bank. Tanks crossed the big bridge with their main guns at the ready, swiveling around to cover the eastern bank behind them. The Americans moved very well, with superb march discipline. They did not look like a beaten army to Bezarin.
But they had been beaten. If not on the field of battle, then at the greater level of political decision. Bezarin remembered waiting on the heights at Bad Oeynhausen, surrounded by his surviving tanks, out of ammunition, as the American spearheads slashed up through the forwardmost Soviet formations. Their advance had been halted by a miracle, a few kilometers from his position.
Bezarin inspected his opponents. He figured he could beat them all right. But he had not particularly wanted to face them without any main-gun ammunition. The big, solid-looking tanks rolled smoothly over the roadway of the bridge, partially obscured by its sidewalls. The Americans, the great enemy. Now they were leaving, and it seemed as if a lifelong nightmare had finally come to an end.
He had attempted to report honestly on the tragedy that had occurred along the highway behind Hildesheim. But no one wanted to hear it. As far as his chain of command was concerned, it was all history — regrettable but, viewed from the grand perspective, unavoidable. The Soviet Union needed war heroes, not war criminals.
And Bezarin became a hero. One of the brilliant heroes of the Weser crossing operation. And in his own mind, the horror of the massacre along the highway had already begun to undergo a subtle change, receding in importance in comparison to the already codified achievements of his battalion. He tried to write to Anna about the tragedy, expecting that she would somehow understand and help him. But he could not put the words on paper. The incident seemed to demand forgetting. To be buried, like the dead themselves. Bezarin knew that certain images would remain with him, below the surface, occasionally rising to remind him of what he and his soldiers had done. But now he spent more time thinking of Anna, remembering the fragrance of the sparse Galician spring, and the smell of the woman he had held in his arms. Instead of writing his confession to her, he had found the strength, at last, to write and say he loved her.
He had no idea how long a response would be in arriving, if one were to come at all. He feared that his letter or her reply would go astray in the disruption of events, and he had decided that, if no response came within a month, he would write again. And again. He would not be defeated now by his fears of a little Polish girl.
At the same time, he felt haunted. His mind filled with terrible images of Anna in another’s bed, of her special admissions spoken to another man. He worried that he had already become no more than a bit of finished personal history to her. But he was determined not to surrender without a fight.
A vehicle pulled up on the quay. Bezarin stood. He was not supposed to be off on his own; there were reports of violent assaults against Soviet officers and men throughout the occupation zone. At a minimum, two officers were always to go together, and it was much preferred that officers remain near their place of work or assigned quarters unless official matters called them elsewhere. The soldiers and sergeants were closely restricted.
Bezarin touched his holster.
The sight of the major surprised Malinsky. He had neither wanted nor expected company. He simply wanted to see the Rhine up close, to savor his moment in history as best he could. To confirm the value of his sacrifice. And this nervous major appeared, reaching for his pistol. Malinsky decided to make the best of it.
“I would be grateful, Comrade Major, if you didn’t shoot me.”
The major reddened, embarrassed. He stammered out a barely intelligible apology.
“Don’t worry,” Malinsky told him. “It’s always a good thing to be on your guard.” He recognized the major as one of the men on whom he had pinned a medal not an hour before, and he offered him a cigarette, which the major clumsily declined. It struck Malinsky as odd that this fresh-baked hero would be alone, when Starukhin was holding court for all of his heroes at what promised to be one of the great parties of the century. Malinsky had excused himself so that Starukhin and his boys could relax and drink themselves sick. Starukhin seemed to Malinsky to embody much that was eternally Russian — big, loud, vainglorious, generous, abusive of his personal power, desperate for comradeship, alternately slothful and passionate, and capable of great cruelty.
Well, who knew what devils chewed at this lone major? The war had very different effects on different men. Malinsky examined the younger man. The major’s face looked bright enough. Not as intelligent, and certainly not as sensitive, as Anton’s face had been. But it was the type of clean, earnest face that would go far under the new regime. Certainly, this Hero of the Soviet Union would not be a major much longer.
“Married, Comrade Major? Thinking of your wife and family, perhaps?”
The major had begun to recover from his embarrassment. But he remained ill at ease.
“No, Comrade Front Commander. I’m not married.”
Malinsky flicked his cigarette ashes toward the river. The storied Rhine was a bit of a disappointment to him, running grayish-brown, with eddies of garbage against the shore. “A girl, then?”