Eugene Ganin. An eye for an eye. The Novel. Dresde

Åâãåíèé Ïåòðîâè÷ Ãàíèí
Eugene Ganin
AN EYE FOR AN EYE
The Novel
Trtanslated from original Russian
by M.A. Asho
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Vladimir Lazar - Director & Produser & Publisher
Offis: USA 1-414-665-7212 & 1-415-806-4402
E-mail: waltv 2000@yahoo.com

PO BOX 16374
San Francisco,
CA 94116-0374
USA
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Chapter
DRESDEN AS HELL


That evening, Dresden fell into a disquieting hush, even as it plunged deeper and deeper into the artificial darkness created by the deliberate black-out orders. Every glimmer of light was to be shuttered, masked, hidden away from view. At sunset, a black foreboding of death’s imminence flooded the streets, the dwellings, the very souls of the populace. Even the birds had given up on their exuberant songfests. Only the softly whispered prayers in the churches remained as a final refuge of an as yet unvanquished hope. At midnight, the nocturnal city that for centuries had been perfumed by the peaceable fragrance of gardens and of parks, suddenly shuddered into fear, hearing the sky throb with the distant drone of hundreds of airplane engines belonging to massive bombers:

“But maybe they’ll fly on, to another place?”

But the ferocious roar of the planes intensified as they relentlessly drew near, causing the citizens to stare with worry at the fragile structures of the cellars of the elegant, ancient houses. Too worried to cry, children pressed tightly against their mothers. All at once, the bursts of defensive anti-aircraft fire came, and they seemed louder, and more embarrassingly desperate and futile, than anyone could have anticipated. The power failed. Carbide lamps were lit. The cherished tiny tongues of flame provided by wax candles quivered timidly within the protective enclosure of the cupped palms of the condemned. Suffering human beings, their heads tilted back and turned upwards, stared hard in silence at the ceilings of the cellars and bomb shelters.

“Lord, send Death elsewhere!”

A tiny child began to cry. The first huge high-explosive bomb hit with a resounding, muffled thud. Immediately, what seemed like an endless succession of explosions hammered the ground like a thunderous drum roll. It seemed as if some invisible Someone, in a paroxysm of rage, was using with an gigantic sledgehammer to pound away at the roofs of those historic homes, gloating as he pulverized the beauty of history into dust and ashes. A carpet of fire insatiably consumed the past, enveloping it in the annihilating furnace of war. As the warplanes drew closer to the government buildings, to Hitler’s own state chancery, the howl of the massed English bomber engines, merging with the continuous thunder of the anti-aircraft guns, the crackling bursts of rapid-fire Oerlikons, the screech of sirens, was now accompanied by the raucous din of splintering wooden beams, of timber and panelling ignited in the monumental conflagration, and by the ringing of shattering glass as windows were blown out. Hellfire rained down from the skies. Clouds of powdered brick and cement swelled into billowing cascades of dense burning soot, racing wildly along the vacant streets, covering the pavement, the squares, the parks, the bridges, the abandoned buses and tramways, the orphaned private automobiles, and the ruins of houses in a thick layer of greyness and oblivion. The formerly green trees of the boulevards had been stripped of every vestige of life, having been turned into the stark, blackened skeletons of prehistoric dinosaurs. Carbon monoxide fumes, mixed with the scents of heavy soot, had displaced oxygen. Collapsed walls blocked roadways. Those who were still alive envied the dead. Somewhere nearby, an animal screamed in agony: it was a human person still alive although charred to the bone. The bomb blasts drew closer. Ursula clutched her one year-old Walter tightly to her breast, praying aloud:

“Lord Jesus Christ, our only hope, calling upon Thy love and Thy mercy, for the salvation of the soul and body of my innocent son Walter… Save us, O Lord, from all manner of evil, grant us this day salvation and peace… I know you are with us here, now, Lord… You will come to us, you will take away this terror… Do something for us, please…”

God did not hear Ursula’s prayer. A many-ton bomb bulging with high-explosive ordnance easily pierced all five stories of the ancient house and burst right in the midst of the crowd of women and children as they knelt, praying. Instantly, the blast converted all the bodies into ash. But still the English planes came coming at Dresden, wave after wave. After the heaviest bombs came the so-called fire-sticks, the incendiary bombs, and then yet another wave, of mid-sized shells intended to shower anyone still present with explosive fragments. Next, a swiftly moving tide of yet more warplanes showered the ruins of the city with masses of smaller bomblets, containing white phosphorus. By this time, even the stones were in flames.

Wrapping up the parade of death, in a kind of grand finale to the proceedings, came the fighter planes, buzzing low overhead, strafing fire engines and any individual feeling civilians in sight, those pathetic human forms that darted about like cockroaches in the sea of fire and smoke.