Upsetting the Balance

Sweat ran down George Bagnall’s face. When summer finally got to Pskov, it didn’t fool about. The grass on the hills outside of town was turning yellow as the sun. The forests of pine and fir to the east and south, though, remained as dark and gloomy in summer as at any other time of year.

A lot of German troops in Pskov went around bare-chested to get a suntan. The Russians didn’t go in for that. The ones who weren’t in uniform and were lucky enough to have a change of clothes switched to lighter, baggier tunics and trousers. Bagnall’s RAF uniform wasn’t much more than tatters these days. He mostly wore Russian civilian clothes, with a Red Army officer’s cap to give him a semblance of authority.

As happened on account of that, somebody came up to him and asked him something in Russian. He got the gist-which way to the new stables? — and answered in his own halting Russian. “Ah!” the fellow said.“Nemets?”

“Nyet,”Bagnall answered firmly.“Anglichani.” You never could be sure how a Russian would react if he thought you were a Jerry-better to set him right straightaway.

“Ah,Anglichani. Khorosho,” the Russian said: Englishman-good. He rattled off something Bagnall thought was thanks for the directions and hurried off toward the street to which Bagnall had pointed.

Bagnall headed on toward the market square. As a fighting man, he got plenty of black bread, the cabbage soup calledshchi, and borscht, along with the occasional bit of hen or mutton or pork. The Russians ate and thrived, the Germans ate and didn’t complain-the winter before the Lizards came, they’d been eating horses that froze to death in the snow. Bagnall wanted something better, or at least different; he wanted to see if any of thebabushkas would part with some eggs.

The old and middle-aged women sat in rows behind rickety tables or blankets on which they’d laid out what they had for sale. With their solid, blocky figures and the outlines of their heads smoothed and rounded by the scarves they all wore, they reminded Bagnall of nothing so much as figures from those cleverly carved, multilayered sets of Russian wooden dolls. The immobile stolidity with which they sat only enhanced the illusion.

No one was displaying any eggs, but that didn’t necessarily signify. He’d found out good stuff often got held back, either for some special customer or just to keep it from being pilfered. He walked up to one of thebabushkas and said,“Dobry den.” The woman stared at him, expressionless.“Yaichnitsa?”

She didn’t bother returning his good-day. She didn’t even bother scowling at him; she just looked through him as if he didn’t exist. It was one of the most effortlessly annihilating glances he’d ever received. He felt himself wilting as she let him know she didn’t have any eggs, and that even if she had had some eggs, she wouldn’t have had any for a German.

Before the Lizards came, before the partisans emerged from the forest to reclaim a share of Pskov, she never would have dared to act so to a German, either. If she’d had eggs, she would either have turned them over or hidden them so well the Nazis would never had suspected they were there. As it was, he got the notion she was just taunting him.

“Nyet nemets,”he said, as he had before.“Anglichani.”

“Anglichani?”She gave forth with a spate of Russian, much too quick for him to follow in detail. What he did get, though, suggested that that made a difference. She plucked a few sorry-looking potatoes out of a bowl-you’d have to have been starving to want them. Underneath lay more equally unprepossessing spuds-and, nestled among them, several eggs.

“Skolko?”he asked. “How much?”

She wanted 500 rubles apiece, or 750 marks. German money had been falling against its Soviet equivalent ever since Bagnall arrived in Pskov. The Soviet Union and Germany were still going concerns, but the Lizards in Poland and to the south of Pskov screened the city away from much contact with other German forces. The Soviet presence, on the other hand, was growing. That might lead to trouble one day, as if the Reds and the Nazis didn’t already have enough trouble getting along.

“Bozhemoi!”Bagnall shouted, loud enough to draw glances frombabushkas several places away. He’d learned you’d best forget all you’d ever known of British reserve if you wanted to get anywhere dickering with Russians. If you stayed polite, they thought you were weak and they rode roughshod over you.

He knew he mixed his cases and numbers in a way that would have got him a caning in sixth-form Latin, but he didn’t care. This wasn’t school; this was the real world. However inelegant his Russian might have been, it worked, and he didn’t think thebabushka was any budding Pushkin, either. He ended up buying three eggs for seven hundred rubles, which wasn’t half bad.