Benya knew nothing about the countryside he was riding through except the books he’d read – And Quiet Flows the Don by Sholokhov and Babel’s Red Cavalry – and what the Cossacks had taught him. Where were his friends now? Were they even alive? Had they joined the Hitlerites? Not Panka, perhaps, but Prishchepa, light-footed and thoughtless as a wolf cub, could change his path like the flick of his whip. Knowing the Kalmyks would be tracking them, Benya assessed their position. It was not good. As the adrenalin thinned in his veins, he started to become more and more afraid. And Fabiana’s presence just made things worse. Then he remembered Panka telling him, ‘This is a big country, you’ve got to stretch yourself just to keep up with it, you’ve got to hear its voice,’ and he understood that he had to expand his plans to match its cunning, its expanse. He guessed their pursuers would presume he would head eastwards towards the Russian lines, so decided to take a more roundabout way to safety.
After an hour of riding, they heard horsemen. They stopped, dismounted, and Benya unhitched his Papasha and pulled the horses into the high grass. A group of men, silhouetted over the marsh grass, were riding towards Shepilovka, the Schuma headquarters. Of course, he calculated, the Italians from Fabiana’s command had guessed he would be heading east and had decided to ride into Shepilovka to try and find out who he really was. This was good and bad; good because it gave him more time, but bad because if they recruited any of the auxiliaries or Germans there, the end – if they got him – would be a terrible one.
Malamore and Montefalcone were riding towards the Schuma headquarters at Shepilovka as Montefalcone started to sing a love song in a strong tenor.
‘Shut up,’ said Malamore, and they rode on in silence.
As they rode into Shepilovka, they heard the clucking of poultry, the nuzzing of camels, and tuneless soused yelling – even though it was mid-afternoon.
The Schuma and Cossacks, many glassy-eyed, shirtless and reeking of alcohol, brandishing sabres and Schmeissers, came out into the street when they heard the horsemen clatter in.
Two long gallows of swaying bodies with placards saying ‘Partisan’ had been placed on the green; one of them a woman. Not all of the men wore Red Army green, Malamore noticed. A couple were Cossacks in German uniforms with placards that read: ‘Double agent’. The Schuma were hanging their own people too.
The Italians halted and stared. The gallows creaked like the rigging of an old sailing ship. ‘Take a look at that!’ said Malamore. There was nothing he loathed more than an unruly unit and these people were dangerous clowns.
Montefalcone peered around him as if he was in the last circle of Dante’s Inferno.
The new commander, Bron Kaminsky, now apparently calling himself an SS-Brigadeführer, was drinking with his crew of renegades. His shirt was wide open, chest like his face, a sunburned puce. Malamore could tell that he wasn’t too impressed with the Italians as he showed them to a chair.
‘Brigadeführer, was the partisan one of your prisoners?’ Malamore asked Kaminsky through his interpreter after he had recounted the bare essentials of how the wounded prisoner had escaped. They were in the handsome single-storey house commandeered by Kaminsky. Once owned by a well-off farmer, it had been converted into a mess room, and cheese and bread and tomatoes were spread on one table, half eaten. Bottles of vodka and local moonshine and boxes of Pervitin tablets were on another. A rack of weapons, mainly German but some Russian, had been stacked nearby.
Kaminsky was half cut and high. ‘I don’t know,’ he drawled. ‘We just held a trial. We found two traitors in my outfit, and we hanged them. Over there.’
‘I’m more interested in the prisoner we lost.’ Malamore’s nostrils flared with distaste. Kaminsky called in a short garishly over-made-up girl in a German tunic and jodhpurs that did nothing for her sturdy legs.
‘Do we know anything about an escaped Russian prisoner?’
‘Yes, Brigadeführer,’ said the girl, who had a Schmeisser over her shoulder, ‘one of our prisoners got away after the ambush that killed Colonel Mandryka.’
‘How did he get away? And who was he?’ demanded Malamore.
‘Our doctor knows all about him.’
‘Get the doctor,’ ordered Kaminsky.
A man was brought in, a sober and sensible professional; Malamore was somewhat relieved to find a sane person in this madhouse. Dapper in his German tunic with Red Cross armbands and riding boots, his handsome intelligence radiated from his lineless face.
‘Dr Kapto knew Colonel Mandryka at school,’ the woman explained in her nasal drone. She told the doctor the story of the escaped Russian partisan who had taken an Italian nurse as a hostage or human shield.
‘Yes, it’s probably him,’ Dr Kapto agreed. ‘After Mandryka’s funeral, one prisoner got out and I saw him ride off. I raised the alarm, got off a couple of shots but… it was dark.’
‘Who is he?’
‘His name is Golden. He was a prisoner in the Gulags, a Shtrafnik who took part in the Mandryka ambush.’ It was only now that Malamore noticed the little girl who stood close beside the doctor’s legs, almost hiding in the skirts of his tunic, watching them all with the big, deep haunted eyes of a child who had seen the rottenness of the world in all its intricacies. She had a bandage on her leg and a ripped dress.
He was about to ask who she was and what the hell she was doing here when Montefalcone, patting the sweat from his face and his upper lip, said, ‘Sir, let’s get out of here.’
For once, Malamore agreed with him. ‘Thanks for your help,’ he said to Kaminsky. ‘Will you let me know if they come this way?’
‘He’s a Jew,’ said the woman with the stout legs.
‘Who is?’ asked Malamore.
‘Golden, the Soviet partisan who’s taken your nurse,’ said the woman. ‘A Jew has taken your nurse.’
VI
Fabiana was swaying in the saddle. It was early evening, and the sky was a turquoise blue strewn with crimson-lit clouds. As the sun set, they looked at each other, eyes like sleepwalkers, surprised to be alive. The horses were labouring; Socks had been unhappy for a while, fretting, ears back. She tripped in a marmot hole and lost her footing, and Benya had got down to check her fetlock, but they were lucky, nothing broken. Yet he knew if they went on much further, they would destroy the horses.
‘We must stop. Here.’ They’d arrived at a farmer’s cottage that seemed abandoned.
Fabiana dismounted first, stiffly, staggering a little as she hit the ground. ‘I’ll water the horses if you check the house.’
Papasha levelled, Benya walked through the cottage. It was empty. There was running water from a well in the copse, and Fabiana tried to lead Silver Socks but the horse stiffened and wouldn’t go with her.
‘Leave her, I’ll take her,’ Benya said. Together they poured water over their horses who snorted and threw back their heads. Silver Socks stamped her hooves impatiently.
‘Eh! Damned horse,’ muttered Benya. ‘Don’t I look after you all right? Don’t I spoil you?’
Fabiana got the food out of the saddlebags and the two of them sat beside the horses and silently ate the Italian rations of smoked meat, black bread, army biscuit, dried cherries and sunflower seeds. There were two beehives by the well and they scraped out the honey with pieces of wood to get to the wads of honeycomb.
‘Ouch!’ Benya winced as he was stung but they scooped out the honey, excited at this amazing find, he eating with his knife and she with her hands like a little bear.