Life and Fate Page 10

  ‘All right!’ he said. ‘Sit down, comrades, carry on!’

  It was unclear whether these words were to be taken at their face value. Podchufarov looked both sad and repentant, while Movshovich – the commander of an independent sapper battalion and thus not directly subordinate to Byerozkin – merely looked sad.

  In what struck them as a particularly unpleasant tone, Byerozkin said: ‘So where’s this five-kilo pike-perch, comrade Movshovich? The whole division’s talking of nothing else.’

  With the same sad look, Movshovich ordered: ‘Cook, show him the fish please.’

  The cook, the only man present to have been carrying out his duties, explained: ‘The comrade captain wanted it stuffed in the Jewish manner. I’ve got some pepper and bay-leaves, but I haven’t any white bread or horse-radish . . .’

  ‘I see,’ said Byerozkin. ‘I once had one done like that in Bobruysk, at the house of one Sara Aronovna – though, to be quite frank, I didn’t think much of it.’

  Suddenly they all realized that it hadn’t even occurred to Byerozkin to get angry. It was as though he knew that Podchufarov had fought off a German attack during the night; that he had been half-buried under falling earth during the small hours; that his orderly, the man responsible for the ‘Chinese Serenade’, had had to dig him out, shouting: ‘Don’t worry, comrade Captain, I’ll get you out of there.’ It was as though he knew that Movshovich and his sappers had crept along one particularly vulnerable street, scattering earth and crushed brick over a chessboard pattern of anti-tank mines.

  They were all young and they were glad to be alive one more morning, to be able to lift up a tin mug and say, ‘Your good health!’, to be able to eat cabbage and smoke cigarettes . . . In any case, nothing had really happened – they had just stood up for a moment before a superior and then invited him to eat, watching with pleasure how he enjoyed his cabbage.

  Byerozkin often compared the battle for Stalingrad with what he had been through during the previous year of the war. He knew it was only the peace and silence within him that enabled him to endure this stress. As for the soldiers, they were able to eat soup, repair their boots, carve spoons and discuss their wives and commanding officers at a time when it might well seem impossible to feel anything except fury, horror and exhaustion. Byerozkin knew very well that the man with no quiet at the bottom of his soul was unable to endure for long, however courageous he might be in combat. He thought of fear or cowardice, on the other hand, as something temporary, something that could be cured as easily as a cold.

  But what cowardice and bravery really were, he was by no means certain. Once, at the beginning of the war, he had been reprimanded by a superior for his timidity: without authorization, he had withdrawn his regiment from under enemy fire. And not long before Stalingrad, he had once ordered a battalion commander to withdraw over the brow of a hill, so as not to expose his men unnecessarily to the fire of the German mortars.

  ‘What’s all this, comrade Byerozkin?’ the divisional commander had reproached him. ‘People always told me you were calm and courageous, not someone to lose his nerve easily.’

  By way of answer, Byerozkin had merely let out a sigh; people must have been mistaken.

  Podchufarov had red hair and clear blue eyes. It was only with difficulty that he could restrain his sudden, unexpected fits of anger that were usually followed by equally sudden bursts of laughter. Movshovich was very thin; he had a long, freckled face and streaks of grey in his dark hair. He answered Byerozkin’s questions in a hoarse voice and then sketched out a new scheme for mining the areas most vulnerable to tank attacks.

  ‘You can give me that sketch as a souvenir,’ said Byerozkin, leaning over the table. ‘I was sent for just now by the divisional commander,’ he went on very quietly. ‘According to our scouts, the Germans are withdrawing forces from the town itself and concentrating them against you. And there are a lot of tanks. Do you understand?’

  He listened to a nearby explosion that shook the walls of the cellar and smiled.

  ‘Things are very quiet here. In my own gully at least three people will have been round from Army HQ while I’ve been out. There are different inspection teams coming and going all day long.’

  The building was shaken by yet another blow. Lumps of plaster rained down from the ceiling.

  ‘Yes, that’s true enough,’ said Podchufarov. ‘No one really bothers us here.’

  ‘Right. And you don’t know how lucky you are,’ said Byerozkin.

  He went on confidingly, genuinely forgetting – perhaps because he was so used to being a subordinate – that he himself was now the officer in command:

  ‘You know what the brass hats are like? “Why don’t you advance? Why didn’t you take that height? Why so many losses? Why no losses? Why haven’t you reported back yet? Why are you sleeping now? Why, why, why . . . ?”’

  Byerozkin stood up. ‘Let’s go, comrade Podchufarov. I’d like to inspect your sector.’

  There was something heart-rending about this little street in a workers’ settlement, about the exposed inner walls hung with brightly-coloured wallpaper, about the flower and vegetable gardens that had been ploughed up by tanks, about the solitary dahlias that were still flowering.

  ‘Do you know, comrade Podchufarov,’ said Byerozkin suddenly, ‘I still haven’t heard from my wife. I only found out where she was on my way here – and now it’s weeks since I heard from her. All I know is that she and our daughter were going to the Urals.’

  ‘You’ll hear from them soon, comrade Major.’

  The wounded were lying in the basement of a two-storey house, waiting to be evacuated during the night. The windows had been blocked up with bricks. On the floor stood a mug and a bucket of water. A postcard of a nineteenth-century painting, ‘The Major’s Courtship’, had been stuck up on the wall.

  ‘This is the rear,’ said Podchufarov. ‘The front line’s further on.’

  ‘Let’s have a look at it then,’ said Byerozkin.

  They walked through a lobby and into a room where the ceiling had fallen in. It was like walking out of a factory office straight onto the shop-floor. Empty cartridge-cases creaked underfoot and the air was full of the peppery smell of gunpowder. Some anti-tank mines had been stacked on top of a cream-coloured pram.

  ‘The Germans captured that ruin over there last night,’ said Podchufarov. ‘It’s a real shame. It’s a splendid building with windows facing south-west. Now the whole of my left flank’s exposed to enemy fire.’

  A heavy machine-gun was installed in the narrow aperture of another bricked-up window. The gunner, a dusty, smoke-blackened bandage round his head, was inserting a new cartridge-belt. His number one, baring his white teeth, was chewing a piece of sausage, ready to return to work in half a minute’s time.

  The company commander came up, a lieutenant. He had a white aster poking out of the pocket of his tunic.

  ‘A real young eagle!’ said Byerozkin with a smile.

  ‘It’s lucky you’ve come round, comrade Major,’ said the lieutenant to Podchufarov. ‘It happened just like I said it would. Last night they made another attack on house 6/1. They began bang on nine o’clock.’

  ‘The CO’s present. Make your report to him.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t see you,’ said the lieutenant, saluting quickly.

  Six days before, the Germans had isolated several buildings in the sector and begun chewing them up with Teutonic thoroughness. The Soviet resistance had been snuffed out – together with the lives of the defenders. But there was one factory building with particularly deep cellars where the Russians were still holding out. Its strong walls stood up to direct hits, even though holes had been blasted in them by grenades and mortar-bombs. The Germans had tried to destroy the building from the air and torpedo-bombs had been dropped on it three times. One whole corner had collapsed. But beneath the ruins the cellar remained intact; the defenders had cleared away the debris, mounted machine-guns, mortars and a light
cannon, and were still keeping the Germans at bay. The building was fortunately situated, with no hidden approaches.

  The lieutenant made his report and said: ‘We tried to get through at night, but it was no good. We had one man killed and two who returned wounded.’

  ‘Get down!’ screamed the soldier on watch. Several men dropped flat on the ground; the lieutenant, unable to finish what he was saying, threw up his arms as though he were about to make a dive, and flopped down.

  The whine rose to a piercing howl and was followed by a series of thunderous explosions that shook the earth and filled the air with a suffocating stench. Something big and black crashed onto the floor, bounced, and rolled between Byerozkin’s legs. At first he thought it was a log that had been thrown there by the force of the explosion; then he realized it was a live grenade. The tension of the next second was unbearable.

  The grenade failed to explode. The shadow that had swallowed up the earth and sky, that had blotted out the past and cut short the future, faded away.

  The lieutenant got back to his feet.

  ‘Nasty little thing!’ said a voice.

  ‘Well, I really did think I’d bought it then!’ said someone else with a laugh.

  Byerozkin wiped the sweat off his brow, picked up the white aster, shook off the dust and stuck it back in the lieutenant’s tunic. ‘I suppose someone gave it to you as a present.’ He then turned to Podchufarov and went on: ‘So why do I say things are nice and quiet here? Because there are no senior officers coming and going. Senior officers always want something from you . . . You’ve got a good cook – you can hand him over to me! You’ve got a splendid barber, a splendid tailor – let me have them! . . . Yes, they’re a bunch of extortioners . . . That’s a fine dug-out – you can climb out of it right now! That is good sauerkraut – have it sent to me straight away!’

  Then he suddenly asked the lieutenant: ‘Why did you say two men returned without reaching the surrounded house?’

  ‘They were wounded.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You were born lucky,’ said Podchufarov as they left the building and made their way through the vegetable gardens. Yellow potato-tops stuck up between the trenches and dug-outs belonging to No. 2 Company.

  ‘Who knows?’ said Byerozkin, jumping down into a trench.

  ‘The earth’s better adapted to war than any of us,’ said Podchufarov. ‘She must be used to it.’ Then, going back to the conversation begun by Byerozkin, he added: ‘That’s nothing! I’ve even heard of women being requisitioned by a senior officer.’

  The trench resounded with noise: people shouting, the crackle of rifle-shots and short bursts from machine-guns and tommy-guns.

  ‘The company commander’s been killed. Political Officer Soshkin’s taken command. This is his bunker right here.’

  ‘I see,’ said Byerozkin, glancing in through the half-open door.

  Soshkin, a man with thick, black eyebrows and a red face, caught up with them by the machine-guns. Shouting out each word, he reported that his company was keeping the Germans under fire with the aim of hindering their preparations for an attack on house 6/1.

  Byerozkin borrowed his binoculars and began scrutinizing the quick flashes of rifle-fire and the flames that flickered like tongues from the mouths of mortars.

  ‘There’s a sniper right there, third floor, second window along.’

  He’d hardly finished his sentence when there was a flash from that very window. A bullet whistled past, embedding itself in the wall of the trench half-way between Byerozkin’s head and Soshkin’s.

  ‘You were born lucky!’ said Podchufarov.

  ‘Who knows?’ replied Byerozkin.

  They walked up the trench till they came to a device the company had invented themselves: an anti-tank rifle fixed to a cart-wheel.

  ‘Our very own ack-ack gun,’ said a sergeant with anxious eyes and a face covered in dust and stubble.

  ‘One tank, a hundred metres distant, by the house with the green roof,’ shouted Byerozkin, imitating the voice of a gunnery instructor.

  The sergeant turned the wheel and quickly lowered the anti-tank rifle’s long muzzle towards the earth.

  ‘One of Dyrkin’s soldiers,’ said Byerozkin, ‘fitted a sniper’s sights to an anti-tank rifle and knocked out three machine-guns in one day.’

  The sergeant shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s all right for Dyrkin. He’s behind walls.’

  They walked further along the trench. Byerozkin went back to the conversation he had started at the very beginning of their tour of inspection. ‘I sent them a food parcel – a very good one. And, do you realize? My wife still hasn’t written. I don’t know if the parcel even reached them. Maybe they’ve fallen ill. Anything can happen when you’re evacuated.’

  Podchufarov suddenly remembered how, in the past, carpenters who’d gone to work for a while in Moscow would return home laden with presents for their women, old people and children. The warmth and security of life at home had always meant more to them than the bright lights and noisy crowds of the capital.

  Half an hour later they were back at the battalion command-post. Instead of going down into the cellar, Byerozkin began to take his leave in the courtyard.

  ‘Provide every possible support for house 6/1,’ he said. ‘But don’t try to break through to them yourselves. We’ll do that by night – at regimental strength.’

  ‘And now . . . ,’ he went on. ‘First – I don’t like the way you treat your wounded. You’ve got divans at the command-post and your wounded are just lying on the floor. Second – you haven’t sent for fresh bread and your men are eating dry rusks. Third – your political instructor Soshkin was roaring drunk. And now . . .’

  Podchufarov listened, astonished at how much his commanding officer had noticed. The second-in-command of a platoon had been wearing German trousers . . . the officer in command of No. 1 Company had been wearing two watches . . .

  Byerozkin ended with a warning.

  ‘The Germans are going to attack. Is that clear?’

  He set off towards the factory. Glushkov, who had managed to nail his heel back on and stitch up the tear in his jacket, asked: ‘Are we going home now?’

  Instead of answering directly, Byerozkin turned to Podchufarov.

  ‘Phone the regimental commissar. Tell him I’m on my way to Dyrkin’s – in the factory, the third shop.’

  He winked and added: ‘And I want you to send me some sauerkraut. After all, I am a senior officer myself.’

  15

  Again there was no letter from Tolya . . . In the morning Lyudmila Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova would see her mother and husband off to work, and her daughter Nadya off to school. Her mother, Alexandra Vladimirovna, worked as a laboratory chemist in the famous Kazan soap factory; she was always the first to leave. As she passed her son-in-law’s room, she would repeat a joke she had heard from the workers at the factory: ‘We, the owners, must be at work by six, our employees by nine.’

  Next, Nadya would go to school – or rather, gallop to school. It was impossible to get her out of bed in time; she always jumped out of bed at the last minute, grabbed her stockings, jacket, textbooks and exercise-books, gulped down her tea, and rushed down the staircase, flinging on her coat and scarf as she went.

  By the time her husband, Viktor Pavlovich Shtrum, sat down to breakfast, the teapot would already be quite cold; Lyudmila would have to heat it up again.

  Alexandra Vladimirovna would get quite angry when Nadya said: ‘If only we could escape from this terrible hole!’ Nadya didn’t know that Derzhavin had lived in Kazan, that Aksakov, Tolstoy, Lenin, Zinin and Lobachevsky had all lived here, that Maxim Gorky had once worked in a Kazan baker’s.

  ‘What terrible senile indifference!’ Alexandra Vladimirovna would say. It was strange to hear such a reproach levelled by an old woman at an adolescent girl.

  Lyudmila could see that her mother remained interested both in the people she met and in her work. As well as a
we at her mother’s strength of character, she felt almost shocked: how could she, at such a terrible time, be interested in the hydrogenization of fats, in the streets and museums of Kazan?

  Once, when Viktor said something about Alexandra Vladimirovna’s youthfulness, Lyudmila, unable to restrain herself, had replied: ‘It’s not youthfulness. It’s just senile egoism.’

  ‘Grandmother’s not an egoist, she’s a populist,’ said Nadya, and added, ‘Populists are good people, but not very intelligent.’

  Nadya always expressed her opinions both categorically and – perhaps because she was always in such a hurry – extremely abruptly. ‘Rubbish!’ she would say, rolling the ‘r’. She followed the reports of the Soviet Information Bureau, kept up with the course of the war, and butted in on conversations about politics. After her spell on a kolkhozfn1 during the summer, Nadya had begun enlightening her mother as to the reasons for the low productivity of Soviet agriculture. Although she usually never mentioned her school marks to her mother, she did once blurt out: ‘Just imagine – they only gave me four out of five for good conduct! The maths mistress sent me out of the class. As I left I shouted, “Goodbye!” in English. Everyone just collapsed!’

  Like many children from well-off families that had not needed to think about food or money before the war, Nadya, after their evacuation to Kazan, was constantly discussing rations and weighing up the good and bad points of the various ration-centres. She knew the pros and cons of each kind of buckwheat, the advantages of oil over butter and of lump sugar over granulated.

  ‘Do you know what,’ she would say to her mother. ‘From today I want you to give me tea with honey instead of with condensed milk. It’s all the same to you and it will be more nutritious for me.’

  Sometimes Nadya would grow sullen and gloomy. Then she would smile contemptuously and be extraordinarily rude. Once, in Lyudmila’s presence, she called her father an idiot. She pronounced the word with such venom that Viktor was too taken aback to reply.

  Sometimes her mother saw Nadya crying over a book: the girl considered herself an unfortunate, backward creature who was doomed to live a difficult, colourless life.