Karen was having a serious case of déjà vu, and it wasn't the good kind. Once again she was hungry, like she had been in Leningrad, and once again she was lying face down in a field of snow, like she had been in Leningrad. This time, though, she wasn't hunting potatoes.
This time she was hunting Germans.
The supply parachutes had landed in no-man's land, right in the middle of 9th January Square. Sgt. Pavlov wanted those supplies.
So did the Germans.
The trouble was, the park was open ground. That's what had made Pavlov's House into a fortress: It was surrounded by a killing field.
And now Karen, Petr, and a few other volunteers had to venture into that killing field.
They were armed with Ppsh submachineguns, but Pavlov warned them not to use them. Their only cover was darkness, and the muzzle flash from their firearms would give them away.
"If you have to shoot, roll away as quickly and as far as possible," Petr coached her as they checked their weapons. "Because the snipers across the park will see you and shoot you."
Petr had also given Karen a knife. She'd never used a knife before. She'd killed a man with a shovel, once, Petr's shovel, the kind of shovel the Russians liked to use in hand to hand combat. But the man she'd killed, an NKVD officer who was going to shoot her for espionage, hadn't expected it. And Petr feared Karen was too small and too weak to fight off a prepared German soldier with a shovel.
"Hold it like this," he'd told her, and he wrapped her fist around the knife handle so she grasped it underhand, like she would if she were about to lob a softball. "And if someone grabs you, just stab them as often and as quickly as you can. Don't waste time aiming, just stab, over and over again."
Petr hadn't wanted her to come along, she'd volunteered, he'd argued against it. But Petr wasn't in charge of the platoon, Pavlov was. And Pavlov wanted a medic to be with the foraging party.
Karen wasn't wearing her red cross badge. It made her feel helpless. She wanted to be armed, she wanted to be able to fight back. Besides, she reasoned, the Germans wouldn't be able to see the badge in the dark, anyway. Even if they respected her role as a "non-combatant" under the rules of war, the badge wouldn't protect her. So she left the red cross armband behind and brought a gun and knife, instead.
The Russian winter uniforms included snow suits. But Pavlov's platoon hadn't yet received their winter uniforms, and they wouldn't until the Volga froze and the supplies resumed. However, when they'd first occupied the apartment building that would become their home for the next two months, they'd found cans of white wash that had somehow survived the firebombing. Karen, Petr, and the other volunteers had used it to paint their coats and helmets white. There hadn't been enough time for the paint to dry. It was still wet and sticky, and its toxic smell was overwhelming. But against the snow it turned out to be perfect camouflage.
They'd waited until the moon set and then headed out, first into the trench and then up over its lip and under the barbed wire. From there they'd crawled, slow and careful, toward the supply crates.
Karen was sopping wet. The weather wasn't as cold as it had been in Leningrad when Karen hunted potatoes, but that just meant the snow melted beneath her. It soaked through the front of her coat, tunic and skirt. She'd lamented not having trousers like the men, but now she realized wet trousers wouldn't have kept her any warmer.
She was shivering uncontrollably and had to clench her teeth to keep them from chattering. She was exhausted. She'd already crawled almost a hundred yards, and the cold and the hunger sapped her strength. Lenin's statue loomed before her, his outstretched hand pointing toward the German lines, as if in warning. She wanted to close her eyes and rest. But she was afraid that if she did she'd never open them again.
She remembered the corpse of an old woman she'd once seen in Leningrad. The old woman had died at the base of a statue, too. Karen didn't want to follow that example so she kept pushing herself, and kept inching forward.
The only sound was that of Karen and her companions shuffling through the snow. The German snipers hadn't spotted them yet. She saw something white move in the snow and realized it was a parachute. She'd reached the supply crates. Hope blossomed and gave her renewed strength.
She wrapped the silk around her hands and began to pull, gathering the billowing cloth beside her. She felt for the nylon cords at the parachute's edge and found them. She gave them a yank, hoping to drag the supply crate toward her.
But then, no more than ten feet in front of her, a dark shape rose up from the ground: a German.
Karen froze in terror.
The German was dressed in white, too. That's why she hadn't seen him until he stood up. That's why the men manning the machineguns and the anti-tank rifles behind her, the men in Pavlov's House who were tasked with providing protective cover fire, hadn't seen him, either. And still they didn't shoot. The German's white clothing was still protecting him from their view.
Karen didn't know what to do. She saw other dark figures rise up, too, other Germans who'd reached other supply crates.
The man in front of her had something in his hand – a crowbar. He shoved it between the supply crate's timbers and leaned down hard. There was a crunch of splintering wood as the lid popped free. Then the German dropped the crowbar, pried the lid open with his bare hands, and began to fill his pack with parcels from the crate.
Karen didn't dare shoot him. He was only a few feet away, she couldn't miss. But he hadn't seen her yet, nobody had. If she shot him, she'd immediately draw return fire from the German machineguns and sniper rifles across the park.
So she hesitated and drew her knife, instead.
Suddenly there was a series of quick flashes and booms to her right. One of the dark figures shuddered and fell. One of the other volunteers, Karen couldn't see who, had killed a German.
Then all hell broke loose. Machineguns opened up from the German lines, firing so fast they sounded like they were tearing the night in two.
And then Pavlov's men opened fire, too, the rat-a-tat of their own machineguns adding to the deadly cadence. Karen felt the ground moan as bullets tore through the snow all around her.
The German in front of her flopped down on his belly. Was he hit? No such luck, he was just scared. He was crawling away, now, crawling back to the German lines with his sack full of food.
Karen couldn't let him escape. She needed that food. She and Petr and the orphans and the rest of Pavlov's soldiers needed that food to survive.
But Karen couldn't shoot him. The only reason she was still alive was because the Germans didn't know where she was.
So instead she crawled carefully to her feet. The German was keeping his head down; he didn't see her. She ran toward him a crouch and dove right on top of him.
The German gasped, more in surprise than in pain. Karen wasn't heavy, she was a small woman, and skinny to the point of starvation. But he hadn't expected someone to land on top of him.
He tried to push her off of him, reaching out and thrusting his hand against her face.
Karen stabbed him, not once, not twice, but a half dozen times in quick succession, just like Petr had told her to do. Now the German really did gasp in pain, and his hand convulsed, his fingernails tearing at her lips, cheek and nostril.
Karen kept stabbing. Her hand felt wet and warm. She'd stopped shivering.
And then the German stopped moving.
Karen rolled off of him and slung his pack over her shoulder. The machineguns were still firing from both sides, their tracer bullets flashing all around her.
Karen crawled back to Pavlov's House, snaking the entire way on her belly. It took her over a half hour, and the guns never stopped firing. The paint on her coat felt even wetter and stickier than before. Only when she rolled into the trench did she climb to her feet. From there she waddled, staying low, into the safety of Pavlov's House.
That's when she saw that her coat was no longer white and sticky with paint. It was red and sticky with blood.
Karen tried not to think about the gruesome and painful way she had just killed a man. She used another trick Petr had taught her – reimagining the memory. He hadn't been a man, she told herself, he had been a dummy, a practice dummy filled with straw. She ignored the fact that her blood-soaked coat screamed otherwise.
Most of the foraging party made it back alive. Chernogolov had been the one who fired, and he'd been killed in that first salvo of enemy fire. But his sacrifice hadn't been in vain, because Petr had managed to drag back the supply crate opened by the German Chernogolov had killed.
Now everyone gathered around and watched as Karen and Petr opened their booty and displayed the packages like Christmas presents: cans of liverwurst, hard crackers, bags of rice, flour and noodles, cubes of beef bouillon, and packages of bratwurst sausages.
Each new prize drew a cheer from the soldiers and orphans, and by the time Karen reached the bottom of her pack she was smiling and cheering, too.
But then she reached in and touched something vile. She screamed, leaping to her feet and throwing the pack down hard on the floor. She shook her head uncontrollably, still screaming "No! No! No! No!" She tore at her coat, pulled it off like it was on fire, and threw it in a corner.
Petr was next to her in an instant, his arms wrapped around her, drawing her into a forceful embrace. She struggled to break free but his arms were like iron bands. "Shh," he said, "what's wrong? Tell me what's wrong?" he gently stroked her hair.
Petr's touch and words calmed her down. But she didn't tell him what was wrong. It was too shameful. All she could do was close her eyes tight and feel the tears seep through their lids and roll down her cheeks.
She couldn't tell him, she could never tell him, that what she'd felt at the bottom of the pack was a violin.