КАК КАСПИЙСКИЙ РЫБАК ОСТАНОВИЛ ШТУРМОВУЮ ГРУППУ ОСТАЛСЯ ОДИН В ИЗВИЛИСТОМ ОКОПЕ

He counted the bullets the way he once counted fish in a net—by touch, in the dark. His fingers moved over the cold brass, separating them, and the number formed in his head without counting, simply laying there, complete. The trench was silent. Only the dripping of water from the parapet, hollow and measured, as if someone large were counting down the time. His men had gone north, carrying away the wounded, and he remained at the junction of the two trenches—alone. In his hands was someone else's machine gun and his own shovel, worn to a shine. Around the bend, the clay crunched under a German boot. Asif pressed himself into the corner and realized: only the one who knew these curves best would emerge from here alive. And he had already memorized them. Twenty-three bullets. Three partially full magazines from a captured MP-40. He pulled them out one by one, weighed them in his palm, and returned them to their place. The brass was warm from his body; he kept the magazines tucked into his bosom, under his greatcoat. That's what the sergeant major had taught him. The cold steel of a German machine gun is capricious; it jams in the cold, and here it wasn't freezing—it was late September—but dampness seeped under his belt, like in a hold in the early morning. Asif wiped his palms on the hem of his greatcoat. Then he took out his shovel. A small entrenching tool, with a chopped-off handle—he'd shortened the handle by a palm's length himself, so it wouldn't snag in tight quarters. The blade was straightened, sharpened on one edge, and polished to a shine. He rubbed it on his greatcoat whenever he had nowhere to put his hands. Habit. At home, they polished the knife they used to gut carp like that—tough as a mirror, so the scales wouldn't stick. There were no scales here. There was clay, and it stuck to everything. The walls of the trench rose above his head. Asif squatted in the very corner of the junction, where two trenches met at an obtuse angle, and began to listen. Silence in a trench is deceptive. He didn't know this from the sergeant major. He knew it from the sea. On the Caspian Sea, everything also becomes still before a storm, and the water becomes smooth as butter, and the fish sink to the bottom, and any fool from the shore would call it "blessings." But it wasn't blessings. The wind had picked up, gathering strength beyond the horizon. Silence always hides something in its bosom. Now it was hiding the Germans. He couldn't see them, but he sensed them—there, beyond the second bend, where the trench curves to the right and disappears. There was a draft coming from there. Not even a sound, but a movement of air, the dampness lay slightly differently. So you can tell where a school of soldiers is moving by the ripples on the water. A drop fell from the parapet and hit a puddle near his boot. Asif didn't move. He reached into his jacket again, touching the magazines. Not because he'd forgotten how to count—the count was firmly in his head. His hands simply wanted to do something. The only thing he feared was that his hands would shake while reloading. Not death. Death—it's around the corner, it's clear. But if your fingers lose the magazine at the crucial moment, drop it in the mud, miss the receiver—that's scary. It's unmanly. It's like breaking your net after a good catch. A fisherman who loses a fish because his hands are shaking isn't a fisherman.