The colonel said to Yury’s father: ‘Of course I realise that farm work is just as important as military service,’ and Pokrovsky said: ‘Not that there seems to be much work going on round here. Haven’t you heard about the war effort?’
‘We’ve just finished harvesting one crop. Tomorrow we start on the wheat.’ He spoke with dignity, pointing at the golden fields stroked by a breeze.
‘You Siberians,’ the colonel remarked. ‘You don’t stay on the defensive long, do you? Ask the Germans, you’ve taught them a lesson or two.’
Yury, his emotions competing – apprehension complicated by faint arousal of bravado – waited to find out what the two men wanted.
Pokrovsky spoke. ‘Siberians? Very courageous.’ He stroked one crumpled cheek. ‘But don’t forget the glorious example given by the Muscovites. And by Comrade Stalin. Did you read his speech on November 7th last year?’ Pokrovsky looked quizzically at Yury.
Yury tried to remember some dashing phrase from the speech on the 24th anniversary of the Revolution. It had certainly been a stirring address.
Pokrovsky said: ‘I was in Red Square when he spoke. What a setting. Troops massed in front of the Kremlin, German and Russian guns rumbling forty miles away and Stalin, The Boss, inspired.’
His voice was curiously flat for such an evocation. Then he began to quote. ‘“Comrades, Red Army and Red Navy men, officers and political workers, men and women partisans! The whole world is looking upon you as the power capable of destroying the German robber hordes! The enslaved peoples of Europe are looking upon you as their liberators … Be worthy of this great mission.’”
Yury imagined the little man with the bushy moustache standing on Lenin’s tomb. Heard his Georgian accents on a breeze stealing through the Urals.
“‘… Death to the German Invaders. Long live our glorious country, its freedom and independence. Under the banner of Lenin – onward to victory.’”
Without changing his tone, Pokrovsky said: ‘Do you believe in those qualities, Yury? Freedom for instance?’
‘Of course,’ Yury replied, surprised.
‘Of course, he’s a Siberian,’ said the colonel who was apparently obsessed with their matchless qualities.
Pokrovsky seemed satisfied. ‘As you may have guessed it is your abilities as a hunter that interest us. I understand you’re the best shot in the Novosibirsk oblast?’
‘Second best,’ Yury said promptly. ‘My father is the champion.’
His father took off his black peaked cap and rotated it slowly on his lap.
‘But a little too old to fight, eh?’ The colonel smiled, offering commiseration.
As the sun reached inside the verandah through the fretted eaves steam rose from the dew-soaked floorboards. A tractor clattered lazily in the distance.
Pokrovsky said: ‘There are ten of you. The best shots in the Soviet Union. You will all be reporting to Akhtubinsk. There will be a competition.’
He paused. He enjoyed effect. The colonel took over and Yury sensed that there was little harmony between the two of them. As he talked creases on his forehead pushed at the baldness above them.
‘The other nine are Red Army. Marksmen. But you apparently are exceptional. Your prowess reached the ears of the military commander of the area and he told us about you.’
Yury’s mother peered from the doorway. She was smoothing her dress, printed with blue cornflowers, and her plump features were anxious.
Her husband waved her away. ‘You will forgive me, comrades,’ he said in a tone that didn’t seek forgiveness, ‘but would you please tell me what this is all about?’
Pokrovsky popped another lump of sugar into his mouth. He seemed to be debating with himself. Finally he said: ‘As you know, the Germans attacked Stalingrad last month. The battle is still being fought fiercely and I have no doubt we shall win. But the Germans have introduced a new tactic …’
The colonel explained: ‘The Germans are very good at propaganda. They know we are going to win the Battle of Stalingrad’ – he didn’t sound quite as convinced as Pokrovsky – ‘and so they have to find a hero to bolster their faith. Well, they’ve found one. His name is Meister and he’s a sniper. The best. Ten Russians killed, each with one bullet, in one week. Very soon the German people will be hearing about this young Aryan warrior with eyes like a hawk.’ The colonel smiled. ‘We have to beat the propagandists to the draw.’
Emotions not entirely unpleasant expanded inside Yury. ‘But surely these other marksmen from the Red Army are better than me?’
‘That,’ Pokrovsky said, standing up, ‘is what we are going to find out at Akhtubinsk. Come, pack your things, we haven’t much time.’
Yury’s father said: ‘Do you have any authority, any papers?’
‘Authority?’ Pokrovsky spun out another pause. Then: ‘Oh, we have authority all right. From the Kremlin. After all, the duel will be fought in the City of Stalin.’
***
A rat ran past Antonov, pausing at the mouth of the tunnel, a disused sewer, before jumping into the mud-grey waters of the Volga to swim to the east bank where there was still plenty of food. Antonov doubted whether it would make it: the Red Army had trouble enough getting across.
Where was Razin?
He shivered. The wet-cold of the tunnel had none of yesterday’s expectancy about it. Antonov yearned for snow, but according to the locals – there were said to be 30,000 still on the west bank – it wouldn’t settle until November.
These people professed to dread winter. Antonov suspected that, like Siberians, they deluded themselves. Summer was merely a ripening: winter was truth – the steppe, white and sweet, cold and lonely, animal tracks leading you into the muffled taiga, the song of cross-country skis on polished snow, blue-bright days with ice dust sparkling on the air, and in the evenings kerosene lamps and a glowing stove beckoning you home.
Antonov felt that when his parents had waved goodbye to him outside the cottage, Alexander beside them smiling tremulously, they should have been framed in falling snow. Instead the snapshot in his mind was glazed with late-summer heat. Just the same, whenever he studied the photograph, he felt as though a dressing had just been removed from a wound.
He heard a disturbance at the other end of the tunnel that had been fractured by a shell. He reached for his rifle. ‘Razin?’
No reply. He aimed his rifle into the darkness and a young voice said: ‘Don’t shoot,’ although there wasn’t any fear in it.
The boy reached the light from the river exit and offered Antonov a bucket. ‘Thirsty? It’s been boiled.’ One of the water boys who quenched the Russian soldiers’ thirst and fed them scraps of food. They also fraternised with the Germans, subsequently describing uniforms and positions to the commanders of the encircled 62nd Army.
‘No thanks.’ Antonov grinned at him; his face was sharp and starved; Antonov had read Dickens at school and he reminded him of a pickpocket in Oliver Twist. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Misha.’
‘Shouldn’t you be on the other side of the river, Misha?’
Although he was only eighteen Antonov felt paternal. He had discovered that war confused age.
‘No point. I can only help over here. In any case the kids on the other side have got families.’
‘You haven’t?’
‘My parents were killed on the thirteenth.’
The thirteenth of September, a Sunday, was the day when the Germans had launched an all-out assault on the city.