The Sniper's Kiss

Chapter Three

Russia, September 1943

The air raid siren over the city of Arkhangelsk began to wail for the hundredth time, and Alexia sprang into action. The Red Army was pushing back the Germans all over the Eastern Front, but the Luftwaffe persisted in bombing Arkhangelsk, trying to block the arriving arms shipments. Not only the harbor came under repeated attack; the town itself was regularly bombarded.

She rushed down the creaking wooden staircase at the back of the house and ran full-out toward the school. The first wave of bombers was overhead now, dropping their high-explosive charges. Knocked to the ground by the first concussion, she rolled behind a truck, covering her head. Her ears rang, and when she looked up she saw that the school, just in front of her, was untouched. Unfortunately, another raid would follow within minutes.

She staggered along the cratered road to where the rest of the wardens were already assembling with gloves and helmets, and Grigory was unrolling the main hose. Waving to the team leader, she rushed up the stairs to her post, cowering behind one of the walls as the next wave of planes arrived.

As usual, the second wave carried only incendiaries. Where the earlier explosions had penetrated the roofs, the incendiaries would finish the job inside the buildings, igniting fires inaccessible to the water hoses.

The incendiaries themselves were small, but very hot. Hundreds fell at once, littering the tar-and-wood roof in a network of sizzling sparks, and the wardens lurched toward one after another to snatch them up before they burned through.

Though she held them for only a second, they scorched her gloves, and the acrid smoke reddened her face, but she and the others succeeded in flinging them onto the courtyard below, where they burned out.

Then the planes were gone, and the school still stood. Exhausted, she joined the others jogging back to town, too exhausted and coughing to cheer, or even talk.

Ten minutes later, still standing in the road, she heard the rumble, and her heart sank. A third raid. And this one was in earnest, for bombs began exploding all around them. The school took a direct hit. From their position, Alexia and Grigory watched, stupefied, as the interior of the building shot up in a mass of wood and flame and fell again, battering what was left of the walls. They didn’t budge from where they crouched. There was nothing left to save.

“That’s it,” Alexia said. “I’m joining up.”

Alexia brought the glass of hot tea from the samovar and handed it on a napkin to her grandmother. “I’m sorry, Babushka, but the time has come. All the men I know are at the front already, and now that the school’s destroyed, I have no job, no reason to stay at home.”

“I don’t want you to leave, my Alyosha. You’ve been the light of this house for so many years, since your mother died.” She gestured toward the simple room cluttered with painted pottery and embroidered cloths. “How will I manage without you?”

“You do very well without me, Babushka. The neighbor’s boys feed the goat and chickens, you’re in good health, and Father Zosima will still come by every day, as he has for years.”

The old woman sipped her tea. “But it is a sin to kill,” she grumbled.

“I know that, Babushka, but it’s not a sin to defend yourself from a murderer. And the Germans are murdering us.”

“I pray to the Virgin every night that the war will end, but it never does.” She glanced lovingly toward the “beautiful corner” of the room, where a cabinet draped with a silken cloth held candles and three icons.

“Babushka, you know the village headman doesn’t like you keeping those.”

“I don’t care. No one is going to arrest an old woman for her icons. Even if you claim to be a good communist and member of the Komsomol, I know you have a soft spot for them.”

There was some truth in that. The Virgin and Child image had comforted her when she’d been orphaned at the age of seven and adopted by her grandmother. Saint George’s icon was appealing because he had a horse, and she liked horses.

The third, supposedly of the Annunciation, attracted her the most. Gabriel, with silver-painted wings and streams of golden hair, was suspended in the air over the Virgin, the angelic lips lightly touching the virginal ones. From her earliest notice of the icon, Alexia had assumed the angel was a woman offering a holy, life-changing kiss. It had filled her first with contentment and then with longing. Even after formally renouncing the faith upon entering school, she had fallen asleep at night imagining that the divine female Gabriel, in a robe of fluttering silk, hovered over her and pressed angelic lips on her own childish ones.

She laid a protective arm over her grandmother’s back. “I’ll always have a soft spot for you and this house. But I have to go. Patriarch Sergei himself said on the radio that the task of all Christians is to defend the sacred borders of the homeland against the German barbarians.”

The old woman sighed and set her tea glass aside. She placed a noisy kiss on Alexia’s cheek and stroked her hair. “All right. You have my blessings, Alyosha. But you must first promise to go and see Father Zosima.”

Alexia braced herself. That was going to be the hard part.

The old wooden church of Arkhangelsk had been closed for years and adapted as a storage depot. But the old priest known as Father Zosima still lived in a room at the back of it. When she knocked on his door, he greeted her with an embrace and led her into the church where barrels of kasha and dried fish had replaced the holy objects.

He drew her down next to him on a bench. “You see what the communists have done to us?”

She understood his sorrow and recalled the Christmas celebrations of her childhood, but she had no time for nostalgia. She gathered her courage and blurted out the news.

“The German bombers have destroyed my school. I have no more work, no more reason to stay here, so I’m enlisting.”

He took both her hands in his. “I am aggrieved to hear it, my child. I wish you would not soil yourself by killing. Even in defense. God gives us a free choice at every moment. You can choose to serve but not shoot. Perhaps you can be a medic or a guard or a mechanic.”

“Mechanic? I don’t know a wrench from a potato. As far as medicine is concerned, I’m afraid I’d cause more harm than good. I’ll go where they send me. Besides, weren’t you in the tsar’s military when you were a young man? My grandmother mentioned it once.”

“Yes. I was an officer. I was also a brute to my servants and a charmer to the ladies. I even fought a duel for a woman.” He chuckled at her expression of astonishment.

He smiled wanly. “I was really quite dashing, in fact, and caught the eye of a certain married lady. When her husband challenged me to a duel, I could not refuse. But the night before was a particularly beautiful summer evening. Moonlight shone on the water of the park where we were to duel. I decided I could not defile such beauty by killing someone, especially a man whom I had wronged in the first place.”

“So you canceled the duel?”

“No. I let him shoot me. And you know, God rewarded me for my decision by letting me be wounded but not killed. I recovered and vowed to never hurt any man. I renounced my military commission, and after a year of study I became a priest. So you see? We always do have a choice, even if it is only the choice of self-sacrifice.”

“I… I don’t know what to say. I suppose I will have choices, but not many.”

“Then choose to serve without shooting. And pray for the salvation of those who want to harm you. Remember, the most important gift we have is our capacity to love. Do not forget to love.”

Alexia sighed. She had grown up under the guidance of Zosima, but his faith didn’t include defending himself, or anyone. She thought of the angelic kiss of the icon. It seemed worlds away from the bombs dropping on Arkhangelsk.

She embraced him and left him sitting in his dusty church-turned-storeroom.

The commissariat was housed in an old brick building that had once been an export station for cod, snail fish, and salmon to the inland cities. The Bolsheviks had confiscated it in the 1920s and removed its processing equipment, and now the sign overhead read Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. As she entered, Alexia was sure she could detect the faint odor of fish.

The commissar was short and somewhat spherical, his plump jowls blending in a smooth line with his wide neck, and the top button of his uniform collar was invisible under the rolls of his chin.

“So, you’d like to enlist,” he said. It wasn’t a question, so she merely nodded.

“How have you served until now?”

“In the Komsomol. I’m also a schoolteacher. Was. My school was bombed.”

“Schoolteacher, I see. But what about military training? Did you follow any of the Vsevobuch courses?”

“Yes, Comrade Commissar. Driving, marching, small-arms firing, political instruction.”

“Anything you particularly excelled at?”

“No, sir.”

He looked her up and down, then tilted his head. “Just how tall are you?”

“One meter seventy-seven, Comrade Commissar. I was the tallest in my class.”

He scribbled something on her papers. “They’ll find a place for you after your training. Here, fill out the form for your identification, then take it down that corridor to the photographer.” He handed her several sheets of paper as well as a pencil and pointed with his chin toward a table in the corner.

She wrote in her birth date and place, family members, Komsomol membership number, civilian profession, and list of Vsevobuch courses, then joined the line to the photographer. When she returned to the beefy sergeant and handed over her photo and questionnaire, he clipped everything together, then slid a page of military regulations toward her. “Sign here at the bottom,” he said, handing her a fountain pen. Without reading any of the text, she wrote her name.

“All right, then. You’re in the Red Army now. Report at eight tomorrow morning for the ride to the training center. Don’t be late, or you’ll be arrested.”

The next morning an open troop carrier transported her and sixteen other recruits to the training center at Vaskovo, where half a dozen other trucks had arrived as well. She clambered out of the carrier, shrugging inside her coat to keep away the sharp October wind, and was glad to soon be indoors in the female barracks. She and her barrack mates were herded into a central hall, where a lieutenant delivered a patriotic speech and then ordered them to the quartermaster to be issued uniforms.

With her own bundle in hand, she stepped into an assembly room and examined the parts. The trousers were baggy, wide at the hips and narrow below the knee, with the lower portion designed to slip into boots. The boots were a disappointment. She learned that leather was reserved for officers while hers were some sort of stiff rubberized material sewn over leather soles. Tying on the new footcloths, of which she was issued two pairs, she drew the boots on and found they were a size too large.

The best part was the gymnasterka, the closed tunic that would be both shirt and jacket. Buckling on the military belt, she sensed a change of attitude. More than the official welcoming speech, the uniform gave her a sense of belonging, of being part of a body of patriots defending the homeland.

“All right, stop preening,” the sergeant ordered. “Put your civilian clothes in the bags provided and write your home address on the outside. We’ll mail them for you. Five minutes, then fall out for roll call.”

Roll call meant another hour of standing in ranks until she had been assigned to a training group. Hers was Group J, and by the time the entire group had been assigned, she was hungry.

Her first military meal, a stew of kasha and assorted vegetables, was tolerable, and if it represented what she’d be getting for the rest of the war, she was content.

“Company attention!” Benches scraped as the recruits got to their feet. Another sergeant stood at the front of the dining hall with an open notebook.

“You all know your group designations, so you will march starting from the first table and proceed in order to the last. Training assignments are posted on the walls outside. You have ten minutes to determine your assignment and to fall in at the relevant location. Dismissed!”

Alexia shoveled the remaining portion of her stew into her mouth and joined the line from her table as it waited to exit the dining hall. Full, and feeling quite smart in her new uniform, she decided the army wasn’t such a bad place to be.

Because they were urgently needed at the front, their basic training was brief. They practiced running in full gear, jumping and falling without breaking a limb, shooting at straw targets, and marching in step to patriotic chants. She could dig a trench in just minutes, carry a fallen colleague on her back, and bayonet a sand-filled dummy on the run. And they listened to endless political lectures reminding her of the virtues and duties of communism.

Though she had little time for socializing, she grew to respect her comrades, tough men and women of northern Russia, hardened to the cold.

Ironically, her rifle fascinated her. The 7.62 caliber Mosin Nagant, with its bayonet attached, was longer than she was tall. With concentration, she could dismantle, rebuild, and fire it in less than three minutes, and it pleased her to hit the center of the target with surprising regularity. The rifle itself was a beautiful thing, but it marked the line between being a patriot and a killer. And always the spirit of Father Zosima seemed to hover near.

“Not bad, Mazarova.” her instructor said, “You’ll be an asset to the infantry.”

She cringed. “You think so, sir?”

“Yes, but it’s not up to me. The military board will decide what to do with you, and they’re full of surprises.”

The day came when training was over, and the lists were posted in the corridor. Alexia searched for her name, found it, and stood ruminating in front of the board.

Standing next to her, a comrade smiled at his posting. “Tank training. Fantastic. I love those things. Talk about power.” He turned toward her. “What about you?”

“Special Purpose Division, D.O.N, Kremlin Regiment,” she read off. “What’s that?”

“That’s the NKVD Honor Guard. They’re elite troops that guard the leaders. They were in the military parade in Red Square when the war started. You should be very pleased they’ve chosen you.”

“Why do you suppose they did?”

“To start, my dear, you look great in uniform. And you’re the tallest woman in our class. Ash-blond hair, great cheekbones, ice-gray eyes… your face is so Russian, it belongs on a coin.”

“What nonsense. Russians don’t look any special way.”

“The leaders don’t care, and they like having handsome people like you around them in spiffy uniforms. Don’t complain. You’ll stay alive longer than a lot of the rest of us.”

Uncertain, she returned to her barracks. Was a pretty face all she had to offer her homeland? And what did she want to do in the Red Army, anyhow? The Honor Guard, a purely ornamental regiment, would certainly please Father Zosima. But how could it be honorable to not want to fight?