“Maybe you can help me with something, Maria,” I said quietly, unfolding a handkerchief from my pocket. It held a handful of different leaves, which I now laid across her lap. “I’m collecting samples from the trees here to send to my son. He’s learning all about plants in the Young Pioneers, but I’m no country girl and I don’t know what kind of trees these came from. This one here—is that birch?”
Her voice was a bare whisper. “Black alder.”
“And this one?”
“Chalk pine.”
“And that?”
“Sessile oak.” She named the rest for me, one by one, as her mother watched, and my men.
“Thank you, Maria.” I tucked the leaves away for later, for when I could put aside the sniper and write to Slavka. “May I show you something?”
She nodded like an old, old woman. The pang that went through me was so far beyond pain, so far beyond grief, it left me breathless. Gently I took her hand where it lay in her lap.
“See the black streaks there on the slope?” I pointed to the field beyond the window. “That’s from the rocket shells of our Katyushas. They can burn fascist soldiers down to black cinders. We don’t bury them, Maria. We let their dust vanish into the earth, so no one will remember their faces and names. That’s the way invaders ought to die.”
Her eyes pierced me. May I never see such a look in the eyes of my own child. No mother should see such a thing. “Are you a good shot, Sergeant?” the girl asked.
“Yes. I’ve got a rifle with special gun sights.”
A breath everyone in the squad seemed to hold together, and then:
“Kill them,” said Maria. “However many you see, kill them all.”
*
MURDERESS. SLAYER OF innocents. Cold-blooded killer. Later some of the American journalists called me that. To them, a woman who had overcome her natural feminine sympathies to become a sniper must be nothing but an icy front-line murderer, hunting poor defenseless German soldiers who were after all only following orders of their own. I wanted to tell those self-righteous typewriter warriors the truth: You didn’t look into the eyes of Maria Kabachenko after she had been pinned down by four men who invaded her country, then her home, and then her flesh. You didn’t see the desperate, grieving fury in her gaze. You didn’t hold her clutching hands in yours as she begged you, Kill them all.
If you had, you would have done what I did. Squeezed her hands back, with all the gentleness in your soul, and then with every drop of rage you could summon, say: I promise I will.
I shot five when my squad ambushed three motorcycles with sidecars. I dropped eight more when we stopped two enemy trucks rumbling past; Kostia took out the wheels and I picked off the invaders as they spilled from the cabs. My men dug a trench at the foot of the slope behind the homestead, past a hillock overgrown with wild roses, and I lay there between Kostia and Fyodor when we watched Romanian tanks roll past; heard the dragon roar of our artillery opening fire on them, and then picked off the survivors retreating back across the slope. Every day I brought a handful of leaves and flowers for Maria to identify, and as she told me the names, I told her how many I’d downed that day. For her, I would care about my tally. Because every day, I saw her smile.
“I’ll pray for you,” she whispered when she heard we’d be returning to our battalion tomorrow. “Our Lord Jesus Christ will protect you.”
I don’t believe in God, I nearly said. Like most city families, mine had always put its faith in the state and the motherland rather than in empty religious trappings. Even if I had been devout, as remote rural families like this still often were, this war and its horrors would have killed my faith stone dead. But I squeezed Maria’s hand and thanked her for her prayers.
“Do you believe, Kostia?” I asked my partner that night. Everyone had gone to bed except those on watch—and us. I’d wandered out to sit in the long grass before the darkened house, savoring the crisp autumn air, and Kostia followed with a jug of the cloudy home brew Maria’s mother had uncorked for everyone this evening. Leaning back on our elbows in the grass, rifles lying alongside us like pet dogs, stars wheeling diamond-silent overhead . . . it was the kind of night to talk about God, about souls, about the great mysteries.