| Opened Wound By David Westfall “Adviga…?” I glanced back up at Vasilii, who seemed as if he were awaiting my answer, his lean face abounding with expectation. I leaned forward, my back groaning audibly with old age and uneasiness, and asked him with a raspy grunt, “What is it?” “Can I get something in that coffeehouse? I’ll only be a minute or two.” I nodded. “Sure. Maybe I ought to wait here…the crowds are annoying.” As Vasilii turned and left me, I looked back towards the street at the general din of daily city life. Cars trundled heavily past, honking their horns occasionally, desperate to reach their destinations as quickly as possible. Only for a moment had I been standing there when two cars—one of them turning left onto the street through traffic, the other moving straight ahead—smashed into each other at a speed of at least thirty miles an hour in each direction. Coolant sprayed across the street as if the cars were bleeding and the gas tank of one of the vehicles exploded, engulfing the two in flame. I was so surprised by the blast that I fell over on the street, face down. The explosion sounded familiar, like something I had heard before, long ago. With a heavy gasp, I tried to get back on my feet. I looked up. The buildings around me were vanished; instead the space was inhabited by charred rubble and the orange tongues of flames dancing up into the cloudy and overcast afternoon sky. The whole character of the area was changed, replaced by that terrifyingly familiar city I had lived in from the years of 1942 to 1943. The memory of it hit me like a train, awaking within me a deeply concealed and restrained emotion that I sought not to remember, for it was so painful. Then, as I stared into the sky, the memory of the car crash faded, replaced with the memories I had lived with at the time, as if I had not yet aged and grown old. I felt a new strange and disorienting sense, tangled with the confusion of what I had thought I just saw on a bright sunny day in the future. But it faded, and I came back to my senses. It was then that I noticed there were chunks of concrete showering me like rain, cutting my hands and face. The wall behind me had just collapsed, blown outward by an inhuman force. Then I saw it: down the street, a German Panzer lay barricaded, its long iron barrel pointing at me, smoking, as if warning me of my mortality. Startled into action, I tried to rise and run for cover, but stumbled. I had not noticed it before, but I was surrounded by a group of dead men, each with his own rifle and the bright-red star of the Party emblazoned on their fur caps. Their equally red blood was on me also. Staring at them, I noticed that one of the soldiers bore a familiar face: it was Vasilii, a great friend of mine. Shrapnel had evidently killed him, buried in his skin and head, and his eyes were blank, staring up into the cold sky. More of his blood trickled onto my coat. As I turned him towards me his steely-eyed gaze glared into my very soul, sundering my composure, and I screamed out loud—my cry echoed through the cool morning air, but was eventually lost in the low rumble of far-off shelling. Then the hatch on the Panzer opened and a German soldier exited to take the machinegunner’s seat, catching my attention with his guttural barks in German to another crewman in the tank. Cocking the massive weapon, he took aim at me and fired, the muzzle flashes seeming to grope outward for me. I did not hesitate any longer, and rose up out of the mound of men, running to the side of the street, where the inviting shelter of an alley waited between two bombed-out buildings. Another soldier sat crouched there, beckoning me to him with waving hands. As I ran the machinegun fire kicked up dust and dirt around me, showering me with it, but the German did not hit his target. I ran fearlessly through it automatically—a scripted reaction to danger inputted by years of training. Only after did I realize what I had just done. Tumbling into the cover of the alleyway, I was snatched up by the other soldier, who allowed me to catch my breath for a moment. But the tank began to upshift, and we heard it approaching, crushing a lamppost in its path. Swiftly and silently we fled. “Follow me,” was all that the soldier said to me, taking the lead. He ducked in and out of ruined structures, leapt over piles of rubbish, and expertly chose his path through the ruined city of Stalingrad, never once glancing back to be sure that I was close behind. He seemed not to care about me, which surprised me very little. I had long since learned that to stay alive in this city, other people had a tendency to serve no purpose but dead weight, unless they were in your unit. Then they would know you and your habits. He ran ahead of me, occasionally almost lost to my view amongst the wreckage. But I stayed in pursuit, desperate not to be left by myself. I was still trying to contain my fear after the horrific sight of my friend Vasilii, torn up by hot metal shards from that tank. Eventually the two of us stopped for a moment to rest, and I asked him where we were going. “The CP is down that way…the assault is about to start,” he said, panting lightly from the running. “Assault?” I said. “Farther east in the city, there is a German stronghold. The Political Officer, Khrushchev, and my company commanders, have tasked us with destroying it.” “How many?” “On our side? Something like fifty, about one-third a full company’s strength. Now we have you to help us though, so…” the soldier leveled his gaze at me sarcastically. “…Suicide…” I said, plainly, for it was nothing more or less. “It is the price we pay for our freedom,” he paused, then added, as if having carelessly forgotten “—and for the Party.” I laughed. “Oh yes…and that too.” “Our commanders know what they are doing…they wont let us down,” he said hopefully. Again I laughed. “But according to Marx, we’re all equal, right? Can they know better than us?” The other soldier stared off into space for a moment in thought, but never gave any response. Then he got to his feet, and we headed off. It only took us a matter of minutes from our resting place to get to the command post where we found a group of men with rifles were lined up, a captain at their head, waiting. He nodded in acknowledgement of our presence as we passed and got in line, but then busied himself with keeping track of the time. After we had fallen in and the captain checked his watch several more times, he gave a signal to move out. So off we went, towards the German “stronghold”. As we were marching, I asked the man his name, and told him my own. “Nikolai,” he had said. We were able to talk only briefly, as our destination was not too far away, and we were ordered to exercise continual noise discipline. Afterwards I glanced about, constantly in awe of the state of the city. Never again in my life would I be able to call any other thing “utterly destroyed”, for no matter what it was, it would always pale in comparison to the charred wreckage of Stalingrad. If there was any vestige of a hell on earth, this was it. I had not yet seen a building that was fully intact, for all had either a roof or wall missing, with rubble scattered about their bases. Concrete fragments and burnt wood lay everywhere, a constant, treacherous obstacle for the footman. On a regular basis, German—and Russian—bombers would swoop down low over the city to saturate it with carpet-bombing. Artillery pieces would pound the city from far off. The shelling was a consistent rumble in my ears, reverberating through my body, seemingly even when the bombardments had ceased. Stukkas would occasionally make low passes, strafing anyone who dared leave cover. Our group had to seek refuge in the wreckage more than once. As we marched on, the terrain grew even more pulverized. It was obvious that this place had been the site of a particularly chaotic firefight, since rifle cartridges were strewn everywhere, and bullet-holes pockmarked the broken-glass windows of shops, houses, and factories. Eventually we drew near a particularly large industrial plant, allegedly the German outpost we were seeking. Nearing the building, the captain raised his hand and we slowed. He made silent hand-motions for us to take cover, and in doing so I carefully assessed the situation. There was a straight path with some cover on it (piles of rubble), heading towards the factory, which was unbelievably intact for the most part—the windows were gone and part of the roof was missing. Along both sides of the path were destroyed buildings that were the perfect lairs for snipers and concealed assault teams. This left no path that actually led to the factory but directly through the center. All was quiet. Then, before I could think about anything else, the world exploded, and I went flying into the air, arced, and landed ten feet behind my original spot, slamming my back into the hard concrete ground. The wall where I had been sitting a moment before was completely gone, and I became dazed. My vision blurred, and all sounds around me descended into chaos, a dull roar that gradually moved to the back of my head. I could faintly make out muzzle flashes from the factory, and men from my company shouting to one another, particularly violently at the captain. Two soldiers tried desperately to get a 50-caliber machinegun set up, but were cut down in a hail of gunfire. Their hollow cries in agony pierced my deep trance, bringing me back to the real world and a blast of sound, louder than anything I had heard before. Fire was continuing its steady stream from a line of windows in the factory, and I could make out the sharp tapping of MG-42’s, as well as the sharp crack of German KAR-15 rifles. With nearly each one a new man in our company would fall, perforated by bullets, and gradually our numbers dwindled. The slaughter was pointless, senseless, and terrible. Amidst the pandemonium I made out one gut-wrenching word, issued from the captain: “Retreat!” Then the sound once again dulled, and my heart raced. My sanity fled me as I stood to run, sucked from my soul into a fathomless black hole where I would not again find it for some days. The edges of my vision blurred outwards, my only focus on the road away from the nightmarish, damnable hell that I was entrapped in. As I fled my weapon fell to the ground with a clatter, and my legs bore me farther and faster than I had ever before run in my life. I felt as though demons chased me, tormenting me, wearing the faces of the Germans I fought, and also the faces of the comrades I served with—kicking me and laughing maniacally, they harassed me. My hands groped outward to the distance, desperate for the freedom of the outside world. I sought solace from the vile burning grave around me that had been my life for the past months. Beyond my control, my mouth opened in a blood-curdling shriek that sounded akin to that of a specter, my foul breath rushing out with a raspy cough and a wail. As I ran I heard gunfire—or what I thought to be gunfire: little was discernable any longer—on the path ahead. Then I realized with terrifying finality what was happening—Khrushchev had told us, just before we joined the battle, that we would do our duty to the Motherland or die trying. And now the shroud of death approached, not from the Germans, but from my own fellow Russians, in the form of a wall of hot lead. Tracers streaked down the road, cutting us down by the dozens. In a matter of seconds I had fallen, my leg pierced and bleeding. I lay on the ground, writhing, sobbing in agony and despair. Then a hand gripped my shoulder and pulled— Vasilii gaped at me with a look of great concern, his face etched harshly against the clear, blue sky and the buildings behind him. Across the street the wreckage of the cars had been extinguished by firemen. As I stared at the burnt masses of the two vehicles, my son pulled me to my feet. “Are you all right?” he asked, clutching me by the shoulders. I wiped a tear from my cheek. “I’m fine,” I said, a downright lie. He scrutinized my facial expressions skeptically, and then hugged me. I took refuge in his warm embrace, and sobbed openly into his comforting shoulder. He knew that I was not all right, that something had happened to me that had profoundly unsettled me. I no longer cared. “I was so startled by the car crash that I fell over.” He smiled. “City life…it’s hell.” Releasing my embrace, I stared at him blankly. |
