"That didn't look like God's work to me, Ouspensky," said Alexander.

"How could God allow that?" Ouspensky exclaimed.

"The same way he allows volcano eruptions and gang rape. Violence is a terrible thing."

"There is no God," Ouspensky repeated stubbornly. "Majdanek, the communists, and science have shown us there is no God."

"I cannot speak for the communists. Majdanek showed us only man's inhumanity to man-this is what man sometimes does with the free will God gave him. If God made all men good, it wouldn't be called free will, would it? And finally it's not science's place to show us if there is a God behind the universe."

"It absolutely is. What else is science for?"

"Experiments."

"Yes?"

"Experiment with this-on such and such a day I slept so many hours and felt this way afterward. I ate x amount of food and was able to work for this long. In my forties my face began to line-science has told us this is the beginning of old age. How can the science that measures and combines and mixes and observes tell us what is behind the sleep?" Alexander laughed. "Ouspensky, science can measure how long we sleep, but can it tell us what we dreamed about? It will observe our reactions, it can tell if we twitched or laughed, or cried, but can it tell us what was inside our own head?"

"Why would it want to?"

"It can only report on the visible, on the ostensible, on the tangible. Science has no place inside my head, nor yours. How can it possibly tell you if there is a God? It cannot tell me what even you are thinking about and you are as transparent as glass."

"I am, am I? You'd be surprised, Captain. I'll tell you what I'm thinking about-"

"Where the nearest cathouse is?"

"How did you know?"

"Transparent as glass, Lieutenant."

They drove on in their tank.

Later: "Captain, what are you thinking?"

"I try not to, Lieutenant."

"What about when you can't help it?"

"I think about the Boston Red Sox," said Alexander. "And whether they're having a good season this year."

"The who?"

"Never mind."

"Oh, my dear God."

"There you go, calling on Him again. I thought He didn't exist?"

"I thought you tried not to think?"

Alexander laughed. "I'm going to prove the inability of science to disprove the existence of God to you, Ouspensky." He turned around and looked at the column of men marching doggedly behind the tank. "Now, look. Over there we have Corporal Valery Yermenko. This is what the army knows about him: he is eighteen years old, he has never lived away from his mother. He went straight from his family farm to Stalingrad. He fought in the city, surrendering to the Germans in December of 1942. When the Germans themselves surrendered a month later, he was "freed" and sent up the Volga to a forced labor camp. My question to you is, how did he get here? How is this young man walking with us through eastern Poland, in a penal battalion with the dregs the Siberian camps didn't want? That's my question: How did he get here?"

Ouspensky stared at Yermenko and then at Alexander. "Are you telling me that there is a God because some bastard named Yermenko managed to claw his way into your penal battalion?"

"Yes."

"And I understand this why?"

"You don't. But if you talk to him for two minutes, you will understand why God created the universe and the universe did not create itself."

"We have time for this?"

"You have some place else to go?"

Very close to Lublin, they made their slow way through a field that was heavily mined in staggered row formations. The chief combat engineer got almost all of the mines, except for the last one. They buried the engineer in the hole made by the mine. "All right," said Alexander. "Who wants to be the new chief engineer?"

No one spoke.

"One of you will either volunteer or I will volunteer one of you. Now which will it be?"

A small private in the back of the formation raised his hand. He was tiny, he could have been a woman, Alexander thought. A small woman. Private Estevich trembled as he stepped forward and said, "We won't be hitting another field for some time, sir?"

"We will be coming into a town that has been occupied by the Germans for four years and before they retreated, they mined it to welcome us. If you want to sleep tonight, you will have to prepare to un-prime our sleeping quarters, Private."

Estevich continued to tremble.

Inside the tank and in motion, Ouspensky said, "Will you tell me the end of your fascinating theory? I'm aflutter with anticipation."

"Well, aflutter further, Lieutenant. I will tell you tonight, if we make it into Lublin alive."

Estevich did well. He found five round mines in a small, largely intact house. The Germans left one place in town for the Soviet soldiers to rest in and then mined it to kill them. Eighty men made their beds in a broken dwelling, and when they were sitting in front of the fire outside in the yard, Alexander said, "Ouspensky, do you ever think of how many things you don't know?"

Ouspensky laughed.

"Think of how many things you stumble on and say, how should I know?"

"I never say that, sir," said Ouspensky. "I say, how the fuck should I know?"

"You don't even know how an insignificant corporal in the first brigade ended up under my command when by all rights he should have been somewhere else, and yet you can sit there and assure me with all confidence that you are certain there is no God."

Ouspensky thought first and then said, "I'm starting to hate this Yermenko."

"Let's call him over."

"Oh, no."

"Before I call him, I will remind you that for the last four hours you have been performing a scientific experiment on him. You have been observing him, you have been watching him carefully. The way he marches, the way he carries his rifle, the way he holds his head. Is he out of step? Does he show signs of tiring? Is he hungry? Does he miss his mother? Did he ever lie down with a woman?" Alexander smiled. "How many of these questions have you been able to answer?"

"Quite a few, sir," said Ouspensky indignantly. "Yes, he is hungry. Yes, he is tired. Yes, he wants to be someplace else. Yes, he misses his mother. Yes, he lay down with a woman. All he needed was half a month's salary back in Minsk."

"And you know all this how?"

"Because that describes me," replied Ouspensky.

"All right. So you know the answers to these simple questions because you know yourself."

"What?"

"You know the answers because you've looked inside yourself and you know that though you're marching and though you're holding your rifle high, and though your step is with your fellow soldier, you're tired, you're hungry, and you want to get laid."

"Yes."

"So, you're saying there is something behind what you see, and the reason you're saying there is something else is because you know there is something behind you. There is something inside you that makes you say one thing and do another, that makes you march yet feel melancholy, that makes you look for whores yet love your wife, that makes you shoot an innocent German yet not want to hurt the rat that's running among the mines."

"There's no such thing as an innocent German."

Alexander continued. "The thing that makes you lie and feel remorse, that makes you betray your wife and feel guilt, the thing that makes you steal from the villagers knowing all the while you're doing wrong, that thing is inside Yermenko, too, and that's the thing science can't measure. Let's go and talk to him, and I will show you how far from the truth you were."

Alexander sent Ouspensky to get Yermenko. He offered both men a cigarette and a glass of vodka and put more wood on the fire. Yermenko was wary at first, but then drank and warmed up. He was young and extremely diffident. He wouldn't look Ouspensky in the eye, kept shifting from place to place, and said, yes, sir, no, sir, to every question that was asked of him. He talked a little about his mother in Kharkov, about his sister who died of scarlet fever at the start of the war, about his farming life. When asked about the Germans, Yermenko shrugged and said he didn't read any newspapers and didn't listen to much news. He didn't know what was going on, he just did as he was told. He made a small joke at the expense of the Germans, he drank another glass of vodka, and shyly asked for one more cigarette before going to bed. Alexander excused him and he left.

Ouspensky raised his eyebrows. "All right-so he's a cipher. He is everyman, he is like Telikov, and like the engineer who just got killed-he is like me."

Alexander was rolling cigarettes.

"He doesn't want to know about the Germans, he just goes and shoots them when you tell him to. He is a good soldier, the kind you want in your battalion. Has some war experience, listens to orders, doesn't complain. What?"

"So you've observed him closely, you've watched him, and now you called him over and you talked to him. We socialized with him. We warmed him up, we chatted, we joked, we know a bit about this person, science has made its conclusions, right?"

"Right."

"Just the same way that science has observed the earth and the motion of the moon and the sun and the stars in the galaxy. The same way the telescope helped science discover the Milky Way and the nine planets, the same way the microscope helped Fleming discover penicillin and Lister discover carbolic acid. Right? We put Yermenko under the telescope when he marched, and under the microscope when he sat with us. We observed him the way science observes the universe-the only way science can observe the universe. Perhaps for a shorter time, but we have used the scientific principles that scientists use to tell us of the universe and how it was made, of atoms, of electrons, of cells. Perhaps we could find out what Yermenko's blood type is? Perhaps we could find out how tall he is? How many push-ups he can do? Would all that help us, you think, to understand what is behind the man who marches on the field with us?"

"Yes," said Ouspensky. "I think it would."

Alexander lit a cigarette and offered one to Nikolai. "Lieutenant Ouspensky, Valery Yermenko is only sixteen years old. He killed his own father at the age of twelve. Village justice they called it, for the father was beating his mother daily. Yermenko simply got tired of watching it. He beat him to death with a stick. Do you know how hard it is to beat to death a grown man, especially for a small boy? He escaped village justice by running away and joining the army. He lied about his age-said he was fourteen-and they took him. During his training, he constantly had run-ins with his training sergeant, finally accosting him in the woods as the man was coming from mess and breaking his neck for humiliating him earlier at target practice. In Stalingrad, he distinguished himself by killing over three hundred Germans with his hands and his army knife-the army was too afraid to issue him a rifle. The building he took over remained under Soviet control from the beginning of the siege until the end. The Soviets gave up Yermenko to the Germans because they didn't want anything to do with him. When the Germans surrendered, the Red Army got Yermenko back. They sent him to the Gulag where he sliced open the guard on duty, took the guard's uniform and rifle and walked out of the camp compound, walking a thousand kilometers through the Soviet plains before coming to Lake Ladoga. Do you know where he was headed? To Murmansk. He wanted to get on one of the Lend-lease ships. Turns out he read just enough papers to learn about American Lend-lease: what they're sending, what they're producing, and in what numbers the ships are coming into the port. He was apprehended at Volkhov and our General Meretskov, not knowing what to do with him, decided to give him to me to dispose of."

Ouspensky did not take a single drag of his cigarette. "Lieutenant," said Alexander, "don't waste my precious cigarettes. Smoke or give them to me."

Dropping the cigarette on the floor, Ouspensky, without taking his eyes off Alexander, said, "You're bullshitting me."

"Because that's me?"

"You're lying."

"Me again." Alexander smiled.

"So let me understand..."

"Behind Yermenko is himself which only he knows. Only Yermenko knows the workings of his own soul. Only you know why you walk slightly in front of me at all times even though I am your commander, and only I know why I fucking let you. That's my point. Behind the exterior of us there is Yermenko's soul, and yours and mine, and everyone else's. And if science looked in on us, it would never know. How much more there must be behind the vast and unknowable universe."

Ouspensky was pensive. "Why does that bastard Yermenko show so much loyalty to you, Captain?"

"Because Meretskov told me to shoot him and I didn't. He is now mine till death."

By the fire, Ouspensky asked, "So because of fucking Yermenko you are sure there is a God?"

"No. It's because I have seen Him with my own eyes," replied Alexander.

BOOK TWO.

The Bridge to Holy Cross.

Come my friends.

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world, Push off, and sitting well in order smite, the sounding furrows; For my purpose holds, to sail beyond the sunset and the baths, Of all the western stars until I die.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

The Bridge to Holy Cross, July 1944.

IN LUBLIN, ALEXANDER'S TROOPS rested and liked it so much they unilaterally decided to stay. Lublin, unlike the scorched and burned and plundered villages they had found in Byelorussia, remained nearly intact. Except for a few bombed and burned houses, Lublin was whitewashed and clean and hot with narrow streets and yellow stucco squares, which on Sundays had markets which sold-! things! Fruits, and ham, and cheese, and sour cream! And cabbage (Alexander's men stayed away from the cabbage). In Byelorussia they encountered maybe a handful of livestock; here, succulent, already basted and smoked pigs were being sold for zlotys. And fresh milk and cheese and butter implied the presence of enough cows to milk, not to eat. Eggs were sold, and chickens, too. "If this is what it means to be German-occupied, I'll take Hitler any day over Stalin," whispered Ouspensky. "In my village, my wife can't pull the fucking onions out of the ground without the kolkhoz coming to take them away. And onions are the only thing she grows."

"You should have told her to grow potatoes," said Alexander. "Look at the potatoes here." The vendors sold watches, and they sold dresses for women, and they sold knives. Alexander tried to buy three knives, but no one wanted Russian rubles. The Polish people hated the Germans, and they liked the Russians only marginally more. They would lie down with anyone to get the Germans out of their country, but they wished it weren't the Russians they were lying down with. After all, the Soviets had carved up Poland alongside Germany in 1939, and it looked as if they had no intention of giving their half back. So the people were skeptical and wary. The troops couldn't buy anything unless they had barter goods. No matter which way they turned, no one would accept their worthless Russian money. The Moscow treasury needed to stop printing meaningless paper. Alexander finally managed to sweet talk an old lady out of three knives and a pair of glasses for his near-blind Sergeant Verenkov for two hundred rubles.

After a dinner of ham and eggs and potatoes and onions, and much vodka, Ouspensky came to Alexander and whispered excitedly that they had found a "whore's mess tent" and were all going; would Alexander like to come, too?

Alexander said no.

"Oh, come on, sir. After what we saw at Majdanek we need something to reaffirm life. Come. Have a good bang."

"No. I'll be sleeping. We are forcing the bridgeheads at the Vistula in a few days. We're going to need our strength for that."

"Never heard of the Vistula."

"Fuck off."

"Let me understand-because of a river in some nebulous future, you're not going to get some cully-shangy today?"