Another Green World (17 page)

The magnificent work, completed in some godforsaken industrial town east of the Urals, was said to depict thematically the glorious defense of the “City on the Neva” against the Fascist hordes. It had special meaning for Butler, too; he'd gotten good American ink—the
Chicago Trib
, among others—for his review of the premiere performance at the Bolshoi in March of ‘42. The recording he'd just placed in the
politruk'
s hands was made only a couple of months ago, after the final lifting of the siege, by the Leningrad Philharmonic itself, the very orchestra Shostakovich had had in mind. As patriotic icons go, this was right up there with
Alexander Nevsky.

The
politruk
raised his eyes to meet Butler's. He was a shrewd fellow— they usually were, in his line of work—and from his expression two things were apparent. One, he understood what Butler had given him. A career
apparatchik
, he knew the symbolic status of the
Leningrad
and could guess how tricky it must have been to obtain a copy. For this reason he would be
wondering now what motives lay behind such a gift—surely something more than uncomplicated generosity.

Two—all doubts aside—he was touched, deeply and truly. What Russian would not have been? The man's expression softened, his gaze taking on something of that famous sentimentality. Turning away, he placed But-ler's gift reverentially on an ammo crate, then reached underneath to pull out a bottle of fiery pepper vodka—the good stuff, such as the Chairman himself was said to enjoy. “Please join me, gentlemen,” he said, filling their glasses. “Now we shall listen to this noble piece of music.”

Butler eased back into his chair while a phonograph was wound and the needle carefully lowered. He let a few minutes pass while the symphony got off to its lyrical, unhurried start. Seryoshka was watching him—interested, waiting—but Butler declined to return the look. These days, paranoia came to him easily and naturally. War was Tolstoyan, yes— and this one was spiked with a strong dose of Kafka.

A second round was poured, a toast offered by the
politruk
to the citizens of Leningrad, and after that no one spoke for a while. The orchestra quieted down; a folkish little melody made the rounds of the upper winds. In his
Tribune
piece, Butler had noted the striking serenity of this opening movement—a marvel, when you thought about what was actually happening while Shostakovich toiled away. Shells were landing in the square outside the Winter Palace, a few blocks from the composer's apartment; miraculously, they failed to crack the domes or knock Peter off his horse. Fires were breaking out at all hours, fists pounding the door, people running around in terror. Then time began to slow, the food supply trickled down, winter crept over the city and the great hunger set in. The starving shuffled like zombies, going home to scrape off the wallpaper, using the paste for soup stock. Before long, people began lying down in the street to die—a civic-minded gesture, saving another hungry soul the bother of dragging your corpse down from the flat. Thinking about all that while listening to this wonderful, lilting, purely serene and unruffled melody…it made you wonder if artists of Shostakovich's caliber were altogether sane.

“This part here,” Seryoshka said, “this part with the drums—that's the German panzers rumbling over the steppe. At first they're quiet, then they get louder till you can't hear the flutes anymore. I think the woodwinds are the peasants, working out in the wheat fields—good humble folk overwhelmed by the tides of war. Something like that.”

The others nodded without replying. They'd heard it before, and other narratives as well—every trumpet call, each boom of a timpanum, was said to signify this cruel blow or that daring counterstroke. And by the
third movement you had snow on the roof at the Kirov, the German guns fallen quiet, tanks frozen in place and babushkas dragging corpses on chil-dren's sleds up the wide, empty promenade beside the river.

You had to wonder, though. What would this music have sounded like in Peoria? It had been broadcast, Butler had heard, over the radio, Toscanini pinch-hitting for Samosud, the NBC Orchestra for the Bolshoi. And yet, though every note in the score might be the same, could such a performance have any meaning, any power, over there? Folks in Peoria had barely heard of Leningrad. They knew next to nothing about the German assault or the Russians' heroic stand before the city gates; all this had happened the summer before Pearl Harbor, while the Yankees were steaming toward another World Series win and the nation was enjoying its long isolationist nap. The
Leningrad
, in its majestic unfolding, could evoke for them no landscape of moon-white marble façades, nor the black waters of Lake Ladoga, nor the sky stretching unbroken to the Arctic.

Glancing surreptitiously, Butler found his comrades sunk into misty-eyed absorption. One of the pleasures of going to a concert in Russia was to watch how the audience responded. And they did respond, like no other people in the world, even the Germans. They would bow their heads and sob, or open their mouths in delight, or crane their necks in breathless anticipation, as if expecting the Firebird to come whooshing down from the chandeliers. The day Russian composers discover irony, Butler thought, will be the end of the world.

Movement four began. The weakest, in Butler's opinion. Shosti must have hated that tractor town in the east. “It was rye,” he said quietly.

The other two men stared at him as though he had spoken in Japanese.

“It was rye in those fields, where the peasants were working. They don't grow wheat around Leningrad.”

Seryoshka shook his head and grinned. “You know a bit of everything, don't you, my friend?”

“Only a bit.” He knew one thing: now was the moment, if ever. “I have a proposition to make. To both of you.”

Out of the phonograph, the string section galloped like the Tsar's cavalry. The
politruk
lowered his eyelids, but it was too late for cynicism now.

“I want to get into the action over there,” said Butler. He nodded westward, where the sound of fighting could be heard behind the gathering finale. “To see the war like nobody else ever has—nobody on either side. But I need your help. It could be a good thing for all of us.”

Seryoshka stared at him, a wary interest in his deep Georgian eyes. The
politruk
waited with his fingers knitted.

“We're not far from the Carpathian Mountains,” said Butler. “That's wild country—the Huns have never properly conquered it. No one has. Those hills around the Moravian Pass have sheltered renegades and rebels and deserters for so long, you've got third-generation outlaws in there. And now you've got partisans, ours and everybody else's. You've got escapees from the prison camps. You've got soldiers from the Czech and Polish armies who wouldn't surrender in thirty-nine and have been fighting ever since. And of course you've got the damned Germans, shooting everyone not in feldgrau. Hell, by this time they may be shooting each other. I want to get in there. I want to hook up with the Underground— the Red formations, they're the dominant force now—and get
their
story.”

He made a bracket with his hands, framing an imaginary scene, like Zanuck briefing a cinematographer.

“Here you've got this clandestine Red Army, supported by a secret proletarian society. By some stroke of providence, they've survived the Fascist occupation. They've taken terrible losses, unspeakable losses, but they haven't been knocked out. They've kept up the fight, they've attacked supply dumps and rail lines and raided armories and who knows what all else. They've struck the Nazis at every tender spot. They've surely targeted local collaborators—we've got to be honest about this—as well as the Germans. But in doing so they've forced the enemy to hold units back from the line, to police the whole rear area. That's weakened the front, which in turn has hastened the Soviet victory.”

He slapped the table. “Think of it! Behind every partisan there's a story. Real human drama. A husband who's seen his family shot. A girl who fled from a slave-labor camp. A Red Army man, caught behind enemy lines, bravely carrying on the struggle. Somebody has got to go in there and meet those people and tell those stories. And whoever does it first is going to be”— barely nipping off the word
famous
, which one would leap for in a room full of Americans—” a hero. A genuine hero of the Revolution.”

With sweat gathering on his brow, Butler wondered if he should spell out for them exactly what sort of hero he was talking about. He was thinking, and he wanted his listeners to think, the
politruk
especially, of those young propaganda officers who'd broken the news—manufactured it, some would argue—of the Stalingrad snipers. Or for that matter the imaginative soul who did the flack work for Shostakovich. Butler would've given short odds that the no. 7 wasn't called
Leningrad
before the Ministry of Culture got hold of it.

“Such a story,” said the
politruk
at last, “might be inspirational. Were it not for certain obstacles. Chief among them, the German army. Which, if
I am not mistaken, unfortunately stands between ourselves and the partisans whose stories you wish to tell.”

Seryoshka gave a grunt of amusement. He must have known Butler would have a ready answer.

Like a stage magician reaching into his hat, Butler dipped once more into the folds of his coat and pulled out an outdated situation map he'd nicked off the floor of the operations center. Moving the vodka glasses aside, he unfolded this on top of the ammo crate. It showed the territory between the Pripet Marshes and the Parczew Forest in Poland, as far south as Vinnitsa—most of which, according to the map, still lay in German hands.

“Last summer,” Butler said, “when the Red Army hadn't yet reached the Dnieper, a lieutenant colonel named Kovpak led a small armed reconnaissance force over the line right here”— tapping at a town called Konotop— “then crossed the river, slipped right through the enemy rear, breached the Dniester eighty kilometers on, and made it all the way to
here.”
His finger came firmly to rest on Delatyn. “Which is a long fucking haul. En route, he destroyed several German targets and freed a number of your people being held by the Gestapo. Made it back home alive, and won a medal for his trouble. Two medals—Rokossovsky personally pinned them on his chest. I was there, I wrote a piece about it.”

“I may have read that,” said Seryoshka, fingering his mustache.

Butler didn't doubt it.

“Let me understand you, Comrade Sammy.” The
politruk
stared down at the map, the better to conceal his thoughts. “You propose that an element of our forces should be dispatched on an exceedingly risky mission, the goal of which is to obtain a story for you?”

“Not just for me. And that's not the only point. We could carry in supplies and reinforcements for the partisans.”

“That is already being done, by parachute.”

“And
we could bring some of the partisans out. Not many—not the key leadership. But interesting people, sympathetic people. Mothers, children. People who can give testimony of Fascist cruelty. Poles awaiting their Red Army liberators. Jews who—”

The
politruk
raised a hand, a quick and subtle gesture. “It is not the attitude of the leadership,” he said primly, “to give special attention to any particular religious or cultural group. This goes against the spirit of Socialist unity.”

“That's fine—but you can see what I'm talking about. The potential here. Not just for us, not just for today. For history.”

The
politruk
turned thoughtfully to Seryoshka. There was no sign the two men despised each other. “What do you say about this?”

Seryoshka ran his finger through his thick black hair, making a show of deliberation that was, Butler felt sure, entirely feigned. “I think,” he began finally—but then the flap of the tent rustled open.

A young lieutenant stood there, flushed and panting. “There is a general alert, comrades. Excuse me, but the general has ordered everyone to prepare for combat. Our battalion is going into the line as soon as we can mobilize. I was sent to inform you.” Belatedly, he came to attention and offered a salute.

Seryoshka snapped off a quick return. “What is the situation? To what mission are we being assigned?”

The lieutenant stammered. “I—I am sorry, Comrade Major. I was not informed of these things. There has been an enemy counterattack, this is all I know. Our advancing forces were trapped at the river bend. Heavy casualties, they are saying.”

Seryoshka did a most surprising thing then. He laughed, loud and heartily. “You were right, my friend!” Slapping Butler on the shoulder, hard enough to cause pain. “Not for the first time. And I'll wager not for the last.” To the lieutenant he said, “All right, go get yourself ready. We'll be right behind you.”

When the young officer had gone, the
politruk
laid a hand on Seryoshka's forearm. “So you are getting your wish, comrade. To be out there in the fighting.”

Seryoshka grinned. He was indeed.

The
politruk
nodded. “Listen to me now. Don't take foolish chances. Go out and kill Fascists, if you like. But I need you back here as soon as it's over. Back in one piece. Is that understood?”

Seryoshka looked at Butler, then both of them stared at the
politruk.
The man's narrow eyes had a peculiar light in them. “If we are going to attempt this thing,” he said, “this big scoop of Comrade Sammy's, we all have work to do.”

AUGUST 1929

O
ne thing that must be said—one thing irrefutable, though everything else may be in doubt—is that Ingo Miller was a methodical young man. And careful, and patient, and deliberative. Yes: Ingo Miller, belying his youth, was all these things to a fault—and he was perfectly well aware of it. For he observed his own actions, his own thoughts and feelings, in the same quiet, attentive, unhurried manner that he observed the world around him. He watched himself move from place to place, passing from one day to the next, climbing out of one stage of life into another, and had been doing so—silently watching—for a long time now. He had gotten rather good at it.