From the correspondent of Beacon of the Commune: “Details of the duel will be most helpful . . . Are you sure that’s how it happened? Wasn’t it a little more dramatic? Try to look more friendly for the camera—”
From the writer sent by Red Crimea: “How about a smile for your partner? I’m sure he helped you make that fateful shot!”
From the war cine-cameraman Comrade Vladislav Mikosha: “I’m looking for the right angle for this footage; I’m just not seeing it. Look, climb up that apple tree there and strike a pose with your gun. Big smile—”
“No,” I snapped, finally cracking. “I’m not climbing up an apple tree, and it is a rifle, not a gun.”
My lover and my partner were no help. Lyonya was laughing so hard he could barely stand; Kostia had to hold him up, eyes dancing. I shot them both a filthy look as the cameraman fiddled with his camera.
“Look,” I said, trying to lay it out for a civilian, “I don’t shoot from trees in Sevastopol, so any picture of me like that is misleading. And I can’t answer questions about marksmanship, camouflage techniques, or my methods for hunting—anything printed in a newspaper will end up in enemy hands.”
He gave a blithe wave. “We don’t need technical details, Comrade Senior Sergeant, we need excitement! Tell us about the cold gray eye of the fascist oppressor as you locked gazes through your sights—”
“We didn’t lock gazes through our sights. That isn’t how this works.”
“—tell me how you trembled with hatred for the invader Helmut Bommel before overcoming your rage to pull the trigger—”
“I don’t feel rage when I pull the trigger. That would be distracting. You come to firing position with a heart at rest and the knowledge that you are in the right, and I guarantee that Helmut Bommel felt the exact same way.” I gave Lyonya a Help me glance, but he just stood there, broad shoulders shaking with laughter.
“Look, Lyudmila Mikhailovna,” the cameraman finally said, sounding amused, “I don’t care what you felt when you pulled the trigger. People need heroes right now, and you’ve been picked for the role, so say a few nice things about how inspired you are by the bravery of your comrades in arms and the leadership of the Party and climb up in that damned apple tree with your rifle. And smile.”
I bit my tongue. The whole circus was absurd, but he wasn’t wrong about the need for heroes. I didn’t think I was one, but maybe Slavka would read the accounts and be proud of his mother—who he hadn’t seen now in more than a year. So I climbed the damned tree, posed with my rifle, and bared my teeth in what you might, in a charitable mood, call a smile.
At least after this it will all be done, I thought, ignoring the muffled chortles from Kostia and Lyonya as I tried to figure out what exactly “Put a heroic gleam in your eye!” meant. They’ll all go away and leave me alone.
“Wrong, milaya,” Lyonya said when the stories came in. “I’m afraid this is only the beginning.”
“They got it all wrong,” I nearly wailed, pacing up and down the dugout as I read one of the newspaper clippings. “Listen to this: In the pale light of dawn, Lyudmila saw her enemy behind a tree root . . . They reset everything in the forest; apparently the bridge wasn’t dramatic enough? . . . Suddenly she caught in the lines of her sight the Hitlerite sniper’s deadened eyes, flaxen hair, slab-like jaw . . . That’s not what he looked like, and I never tried to describe him anyway! Life was decided in an instant—by a mere second, she beat him to the shot. Taking the Nazi sniper’s notebooks, she read that more than 400 Frenchmen and Englishmen had perished at his fascist hands. It was 215, not—”
“Beacon of the Commune put his tally at 600 Soviet lives alone,” Lyonya said, reading away.
“Who is going to believe that?” I stuffed the clipping into the stove. “No German sniper has had a chance of racking up that many Red Army kills by this point in the war. Entrenched fighting and long sieges, that’s where sharpshooting come into play. The Hitlerites have been here only half a year, and they’ve been pushing forward with tanks and aircraft, not digging in with telescopic sights. Positional fighting—”