The Undaunted (Book 2 of The Undesirables)

Chapter 27: The Cellist

"I have a question for Angel," she said, using Karen's nickname.

"Okay," Karen replied, somewhat surprised. "What would you like to know?"

"I was wondering..." Natasha hesitated, embarrassed.

"What were you wondering?" coaxed Karen.

"I was wondering," Natasha continued, "if Peter ever gets married."

"Ooooh!" cried out the other children, almost in unison, giggling.

Karen didn't really understand the question. "I don't think...I mean, he's just a boy..."

"But when he gets older," Natasha persisted. "Does he get married when he gets older?"

Petr cut in, suddenly realizing what Natasha was really asking. "I think if he met a girl that he really loved, and then yes, he would get married."

"But he has met a girl that he really loves," Natasha accused.

Karen's heart suddenly stopped, and her face turned beet red.

But Petr remained cool as a cucumber. "Then, if there was no war, then yes, I'm sure Peter would get married."

"But you can get married whether there's a war or not. That shouldn't stop him," Natasha insisted.

"But there is no priest or public official to preside over the ceremony and make it official," Petr contradicted.

"Sergeant Pavlov can make it official," Natasha proclaimed with confidence.

Sergeant Pavlov suddenly looked up, confused. "Me?" he asked.

"Of course, you," Natasha insisted. "Like a captain on a ship at sea."

Sergeant Pavlov raised the eyebrows of his moon-shaped face and shrugged. "If you say so," he conceded.

"Then I'm sure," Petr conceded, "that whether there was a war or not, Peter would ask that girl to marry him." He looked directly at Karen.

"And I'm sure," Karen replied, her voice weak with fright, "that if Peter really loved that girl, then she would say yes."

"He really loves that girl," Petr assured her.

"Then she says yes."

"And in that case, I declare you man and wife!" shouted Sergeant Pavlov.

Everyone, soldiers, children, everyone, leapt up in a cheer. Anton started dancing and clapping and singing a wedding song. Soon everyone was dancing, and Karen felt people closing in on her and hands pushing her toward Petr. "Kiss the bride! Kiss the bride!" She felt herself pressed up against Petr and then she felt his lips on hers. "Hooray!" came another cheer as they kissed, and then the heard glass smashing.

Karen looked up to see several of the soldiers smashing the empty vodka bottles that had once been lanterns. "It's tradition," Petr told her, still holding Karen in his arms, "the more shards of glass the more years of happiness we will share together." Karen thought that an unlikely superstition – Stalingrad was littered with millions of shards of shattered glass, but it would have to take a miracle for them to survive even a single year in this city. She kept the morbid thought to herself.

Then suddenly the cheering stopped. A sentry had stomped down the stairs and run over to Sergeant Pavlov. Someone was saying "Shh! Shh!" and all eyes turned to Pavlov. Were the Germans mounting another attack?
But when Pavlov looked at the children and his men, his eyes were sparkling and his mouth smiling. "Do you want to see fireworks?" he asked.

"Yes, yes, fireworks!" shouted the children.

"Then come on!" encouraged Pavlov, and he led everyone up the stairs.

* * *

The "fireworks" were a Katyusha rocket battery firing from the opposite side of the Volga River. They had heard of Pavlov's heroic resistance against multiple German attacks and had sent word to his radio-operator that they would support his defense by bombarding the Germans across Lenin Square and warned of the exact time the bombardment would begin.

That gave everyone in Pavlov's house time to lie down on the second and third stories, peering through cracks and broken windows at the German front line. They didn't dare stand on the roof – it was too exposed and dangerous.

The Katyushas began to fire at three a.m. Since everyone in the house was looking toward the west, they couldn't see the rockets launch across the river to their east. But they could hear the odd whistling and moaning of the rockets – the eerie sound that had motivated the Germans to nickname the weapons "Stalin's Organ". And they could see the fiery plumes of the individual rockets as they arced overhead and descended toward the other side of the park.

And they certainly could both see and hear the impact of each rocket's high explosive warhead. There was so many landing at once that they exploded into a blooming curtain of fire. Karen reached out and held Petr's hand.

The bombardment lasted ten minutes, and Karen had to admit the night felt like a real wedding, and not just any wedding, the wedding of a millionaire or princess. Who else could afford to celebrate their marriage with actual fireworks? It was beautiful and glorious...

...so long as Karen avoided thinking about the fact that these fireworks were killing people.