Daughters of the Night Sky(82)

We happened upon two of our soldiers and a German girl of about sixteen.

One knelt between the girl’s knees, his trousers dropped. The other had her pinned down to the forest floor with one hand and was groping her breasts through a tear in her blouse with the other.

“Get off of her, you disgusting jackasses,” I snarled.

“What do you care what we do with some German bitch?” the man with his pants down said, barely glancing back at us. “We’ve won the war; we’re able to do with them as we please.” This soldier, no more than twenty years old, wore the marks of a lieutenant. The other was a sergeant.

“Get off of her,” I spat again. The soldiers looked at me in disgust but made no signs of movement. “That’s an order.”

“Fuck off,” the kneeling soldier said.

The poor girl, her blond hair matted with blood and her eyes pressed shut against her nightmare, whimpered softly.

I pulled out my service revolver and pointed it at the soldier’s head. “I am your superior officer. I will not repeat my order a third time.” I heard Polina and Renata free their pistols behind me as well.

The man must have seen the eyes of his companion facing me widen, because he turned. If he was alarmed by finding three pistol barrels trained upon him, he didn’t reveal it. But he did sigh and sit back. “Disloyal whore,” he mumbled, pulling up his trousers. The sergeant at least had the good graces to look embarrassed. “I should report you for this.”

“How do you think it would go for you? I’m within my rights to shoot you where you stand, you insubordinate prick. Get back to your regiment, and busy yourself cleaning latrines. It’s a far better use of your time.”

The soldiers skulked off in the direction we came from, leaving the German girl behind without a thought. So very typical. She wiped her eyes and pulled her ruined blouse over her bruised breasts. I offered her a hand to help her stand, but at the movement she cowered as if I’d made to strike her.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, remembering the German I’d learned before the academy. We’d all made an attempt to learn a little during our scarce free hours once we’d become confident we’d be crossing over the German borders, and I’d been called on to give a few tutorials for our regiment and others.

The girl said nothing, only scooted farther back into the brambles, her green eyes round with fear. She had seen too much to trust anyone with a red star on their uniform, and I cursed the soldiers, and the thousands like them, who had seen her as nothing more than the spoils of war.

I removed my small knapsack and opened it. We’d intended to eat lunch in the quiet splendor of the woods, but my stomach now rolled at the sight of the canned meat and hard bread in my bag. I offered her the modest meal, making sure both my hands were visible.

“Take this, please,” I said in my rough German. “You look like you need it more than I do.”

The girl looked at me, cocking her head to one side in appraisal, then looked at the food in my extended hands and accepted it, setting about devouring it before I could change my mind.

“I’m Katya. These are my friends, Polina and Renata.” I sat next to her on the bed of ground cover and patted the ground next to me, encouraging the girls to follow suit.

“Heide,” she mumbled in reply, still eating ravenously.

“You might want to slow down,” Polina encouraged in halting German. “You might make yourself ill.”

Heide considered the advice and slowed her pace.

Renata, never one to sit idle, gathered the buttons from the dirt and pulled a mending kit from her day bag. She removed her uniform jacket and motioned to exchange it for the girl’s spoiled blouse. Timidly she traded the garments, covering herself as best she could with her hands. She’d felt exposed enough for one day. Renata, with the same devotion and attention to detail as she used when servicing an engine, sewed the discarded buttons back in place. She examined the garment and, seeing none of the other damage was significant, handed it back. The buttons would never lie as neatly as when the blouse was new, but the girl could wear it back into town without shame.

With the girl continuing to look at us like a wary dog who expected a kick at any moment, we spoke cheerfully—alternating between our native Russian and broken German—to keep her at ease, but there was no way for us to quell her nerves.

“Would you like us to take you home?” I asked. “We don’t want you to come across any more trouble.”

She contemplated my offer, clearly understanding that the likelihood of more soldiers on the road was as certain as the impending sunset. But still she hesitated. Had she come across other Russian soldiers who had baited her with kind gestures only to cause her pain, or was it merely that she’d seen so much atrocity in the past five years that she’d learned to fear the red star on our uniforms just as we feared the ugly black spider on theirs?

“Please let us help you,” I prodded. “We just want to help you.”

“But why? You are Russian. I am your enemy.”

“Do you intend to fire a gun at me, my aircraft, or my comrades here?” I asked, my expression flat.

“No,” she stuttered, her face draining of color.

“Good. We don’t intend to hurt you, either, so we’re not enemies. The war is over. You have nothing to fear from us.”