Soldier X

The trio travels for three days without any sign of civilization and with little food or water. Eventually, they reach a farm; the Russian farmer is terrified to see them and demands to be left alone but reluctantly shares that they are in Ukraine. They continue, finding shell craters and scattered bodies, which they raid for supplies and weapons. Eventually, they come to a ruined, abandoned town once inhabited by Germans and now abandoned; they settle in the abandoned Pedagogical College and sleep with their new supplies.

The next day, they see German soldiers marching down the road and hide. They pass, but X grows nervous, knowing they would see him as an enemy for his Russian clothes. They see a little girl who greets them in Russian and German and waves her kitten’s paw at them. They pass through a beautiful field of wildflowers, but only X sees the skeletal arms sticking at an angle out from a pile of dirt.

As the day grows hotter, X and Tamara begin to trade carrying the pack. Sergo questions when they will get to America, and they tell him he must keep walking to get there, which he eagerly agrees to. He walks forward but is shot in the hand; German soldiers appear with rifles ready. X shoots one of them to save Sergo and shoots a warning shot at another, stunning him. To keep the other soldiers from finding them, he shouts a warning in German, getting the soldiers to duck, and then runs with Tamara, losing sight of Sergo in the process. They are briefly chased and stop after a while; German soldiers a few meters away do not catch sight of them as they shelter in the woods, somehow having gotten in front of them. When the soldiers move away, Tamara and X lie down on her jacket in the woods; she watches him contemplatively.

X wakes up, finds Tamara gone, and panics but finds her a minute later by a stream. They talk, and X expresses how much he cares for her. Tamara tells him he is brave for how he acted yesterday and demands the truth about his identity, even though she knows he is German, accusing him of lying about everything about himself. He tells her to do what she needs to survive and then, when she gently asks for the truth, tells her his entire life story.

X cries at the end of it, and she sarcastically comments that she never thought she’d see a Nazi cry, which he furiously rejects, insisting most Germans aren’t Nazis but are forced to be under their regime. She then points out that he killed a German to protect two Russians and was good with the Russian patients despite them being Russians. He insists he doesn’t want to kill anyone, and nationality doesn’t matter, which she seems to consider thoughtfully.

X and Tamara get lost in the forest and fight their way through rugged terrain, eating only what they can forage for and sleeping in the dirt. Their grip on reality weakens due to their conditions, and they hold hands to keep themselves from wandering apart. Eventually, they find the remains of a battlefield covered in skeletal soldiers and ruined clothes and weapons; they find canned food in the ruins and devour it, then swap their shoes for the decaying soldiers’ shoes, joking with the soldiers’ skulls while they do so.

The next morning, they exit the woods suddenly and find themselves in farmland. They approach a farm, but the German farmer inside is alarmed by their bedraggled appearance and Russian clothes and rejects them despite his daughter’s arguments. She runs out a side door and hurriedly gives them a loaf of bread and an apple and tells them they are in Czechoslovakia.

X and Tamara make a pattern—they travel at night, sleeping in barns and raiding farmland for food during the day. Tamara grows sicker and sicker over time, so X decides to find her medical help in the next town despite the risks. Their minds begin to slip again, and people begin to act strangely around them. They reach a large town; a woman in a small car approaches them and asks them to open the gate to her house. They do, and she notices that Tamara is ill and agrees to help. They get into the car, and she drives them up to her large house.

The woman is Elena Novak, and she has lived in the town her whole life. It was taken over by the Nazis a few years ago, and her son, Gunter, the mayor at the time, had tried to keep the peace. The Nazis fooled him into giving up information about the Jewish citizens of the town, but when he found out their actual intention, he refused to cooperate and was shot. The Nazis had taken everything except her car and house and had only stopped inhabiting her house two days before X’s arrival. Elena, who is half-German herself, does not hate the Germans but believes the war is the problem.

She communicates this over several days to the duo, whom she cleans up with baths and medical care. Their physical condition has strongly deteriorated, but Elena nurses them back to health and lets them sleep for two days. When they recover, they tell her the truth about their lives, and she warns them to be careful since both sides would kill them. Tamara, who cannot speak more than a little German, cannot communicate with Elena, but X translates for her. They enjoy each other’s company regardless and experience joy, with Elena doting on them in place of her son.

Elena’s house is run-down and damaged by the war but still beautiful, and X grows especially fond of a beautiful sunroom where he plots a future with Tamara and learns more about her. They discuss the stupidity of war together and share their first kiss in the sunlight there.

One night, X confesses that he is relieved that Hals died instead of him, and he feels immense guilt for this. Elena comforts him and assures him that that is a normal feeling, one her son felt, which only made him sure he deserved his execution. They hear explosions in the distance, and Elena comments that the war is chasing them down.

X wakes from a nightmare to hear German voices. Elena hurries in and tells them that the Germans are retreating into the town, and they must leave in the car. They grab necessities as the town comes under fire; they watch from the hill as the town crumbles and explodes. Elena cries and screams uselessly and then announces she will not leave her town since she was born here and intends to die here—or survive the Russians. She insists Tamara and X take the car and leave; X cannot drive, but Tamara says that she can because she has driven a tractor. They kiss her goodbye and leave, avoiding debris and bodies. They stop for a surviving couple, who pile into the back; as they drive by refugees on foot, the refugees curse them for being rich.

The woman they helped says that they should be safe in Grdnov, the next town. Two German men hold them up and steal the car from them, so they continue on foot. The smoke from the burning farmland and cities cast everything blue, and everyone around them, even the army, is in a state of disaster and panic. They eventually walk past Elena’s car, now abandoned, and move on.

The town of Grdnov is overrun with refugees and soldiers, all desperate to get on a train to escape. Tamara and X decide not to wait, but as they go to leave, a German soldier bears down on the street with wounded men, pleading for medical assistance. They decide to help despite the risks. The man is overjoyed and promises that they will be fed for their help. They work tirelessly for hours; eventually, the captain comes over to thank them personally. Despite their fear, X responds politely, explaining that Tamara only speaks Czech, but the captain is not paying attention; he grows distracted and frustrated by the German losses and leaves. X decides the Germans must all be reacting to realizing they are losing the war despite their belief in their power.

X and two others begin to dig burial plots while fighting rages in Grdnov. X glimpses Dobelmann walking past, and they lock eyes; X yells Jakob’s name and sees a face turn toward him, smiling mysteriously.

When news comes that a train is coming soon, everyone piles down to wait for it, wounded in tow. They wait for hours, and as the battle looms closer, the train finally arrives. X and Tamara hurry to get the wounded and themselves on board, but the soldiers begin to herd the civilians away, to their horror. A soldier assures the civilians that the wounded must get on first, which calms them down, but once the wounded are on board, the train immediately leaves without letting any of the civilians on board, inciting a riot on the platform. X and Tamara, unable to help, focus on tending to the patients.

They reach Berlin; X sees a convoy of boys only nine or 10 years old being sent to defend the remains of the city and a woman carrying a dead girl in her arms. They reach the station and take in more patients, trading them for capable soldiers who will join the civilian army. The train departs Berlin for a tiny village with a makeshift hospital. Tamara and X make plans to depart before conditions worsen; they assure a wounded woman that they will help find her children, and when they drop off her stretcher outside, they run into the woods.

Tamara and X decide to travel southwest, toward X’s hometown and the American army. They pass a few refugees as they travel and journey with them when they find them; they even stop at a camp that has slaughtered their horse for food and invites them to share the meal. They nearly stop at a village but hear gunshots and decide to avoid the violence, so they sleep in the wreckage of an American bomber instead.

As they share a single apple from a tree, X reminisces about Jakob and tells Tamara about him. They continue through a fierce thunderstorm; a car ignores them and drives past, and they give two of their potatoes to a young woman and a boy who are starving under a makeshift umbrella shelter.

Eventually, they reach a town that seems deserted; they struggle to find their way to a rundown hotel. It is abandoned, so they go into a deserted barbershop, where X jumps at the sight of himself in a mirror and finds a dead German soldier on the floor. They rob the body of necessities and decide to leave, but as they leave, they see a light in a window turn on and then off. As they move, they hear muffled voices, and then a machine gun goes off, hitting X and knocking Tamara backward. American soldiers run out and realize they are civilians—and children—and get X to safety, but he glimpses a coat-covered body and believes Tamara to be dead. They carry him off, shrieking her name.

X experiences time in a haze, with terrible pain in his arm; he cannot genuinely remember anything. He wakes up with bandages and immense pain in an American hospital. He cries out about pain in his arm and receives a shot; when he can finally turn his head to look at his arm, he sees that he has no left arm; it has been amputated.

X later learns that the machine gun bullets had shattered his arm and gone through his mouth, wrecking his left cheek and abrading his left eye. The trauma of losing his arm affects him deeply. His memory slowly returns, but he cannot remember Tamara or her death until she comes to see him in the hospital. He tries to embrace her but cannot due to his missing arm.

Tamara had only been knocked out by a bullet graze but had been unable to find X since few people could speak Russian. They spend time together, but X grows increasingly tense due to his physical state and eventually screams at her to leave him. He tells the nurses to keep her out, which makes her cry and makes the nurses upset with him.

X grows envious of a soldier who dies next to him. Tamara writes him notes, but they only worsen his mental condition. He receives a letter from his mother, whom Tamara had contacted; she writes that his grandmother died and his grandfather’s will to live only returned when he learned X—or Erik—was alive. X cries with relief at the letter.

Later, the doctor removes X’s cast and stitches. He gives X a mirror at his request, and X is horrified by his scarred face. He refuses to let Tamara see him and writes her a letter wishing her happiness and a long life, but upon receiving it, she comes to the end of his bed and tells him that she loves him.

X goes in a wheelchair out to the garden, where he smells narcissus flowers and sees Tamara in a dress. She comes to him and pulls his hand away from his scarred face and kisses him, and he cries.

Germany surrenders; X and Tamara get married a year later in his hometown, which has survived the war, even if the people have not escaped untouched. Tamara and X move to America three years later—from New York to Texas to Seattle. Tamara becomes a nurse, and they have three children: Hals, a social worker; Nikolai, an artist; and Katerina, a doctor. X becomes a history and language professor but is retired in the present, using his time to author this book under Tamara’s encouragement to tell the story that needed to be told.