Apricot Jam

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The commissar listened to the music, his eyes half closed. He replied benevolently: “Well, Kostya, where can we go right now? It’s the middle of the night—what are we going to do there? Where will we stay? We’ll get up early tomorrow and then be off.”

  And the SMERSH officer, always confident in his every gesture, gave a clear nod of agreement.

  Veresovoy neither objected nor agreed. He continued to stand stiffly.

  Then Vyzhlevsky, to make his idea more attractive, said: “Why don’t you come and eat with us. Another twenty minutes and we’ll be ready.”

  Veresovoy stood and thought. He wasn’t eager to go, himself; these Prussian nights soon made you soft. And there was another factor: First Battalion was here, and it was very short-handed; he shouldn’t abandon it.

  Still, we could catch a lot of flak over this.

  Tarasov was the one who found a solution: “Just break off communications with the army and the battalions. Then, as far as everyone else is concerned, we’re on the move.”

  Well, if an officer from SMERSH is suggesting this, he’ll hardly be the one to turn me in.

  And truly, a trip like that at night was more than he could handle.

  5

  FINE SNOW FELL through the evening, covering the icy road. They moved slowly, not only because of the ice but to make sure the horses didn’t get overtired.

  They said their goodbyes in Liebstadt, and Boyev embraced the commander of Third Battalion, who had taken the northern area.

  Along the way he used his flashlight to check his map. Boyev had to cross to the east bank of the Passarge River and then follow a dirt track for another kilometer and a half. He would probably position his guns beyond the village of Adlig Schwenkitten to leave at least 600 meters clear between them and the forest. That would make it safe to fire at low trajectories.

  The bridge across the Passarge was reinforced concrete and in good shape; there was no need to check that it was passable. The left bank was steep, and there was a ramp down to the bridge.

  They left a beacon to mark the spot for the horse-drawn sleds. Motorized units were not authorized to have horses or sleds, and the higher command assumed that such units had none. But ever since the Oryol offensive, all the batteries would collect any stray, German, ownerless and sometimes owned horses as they advanced and use them to haul their supplies in carts. You just had to put a competent sergeant in charge of such a supply train and he would always catch up with his battery. The Allis-Chalmers tractors were wonderful, of course, but if they were all you had you’d never make it. Later, and particularly as we drew closer to Germany, we got hold of the powerful German draft horses to replace our own medium-sized ones. Those German horses were gigantic. Sleds replaced the carts in winter. Today, for instance, without the sleds, everyone from the gunners to the observers would have had to sweat their guts out along these snowy roads.

  The snow began to ease, but enough had fallen to reach halfway to your knees. Caps of snow had built up on the covers of the guns.

  There wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere. Dead silence. And no tracks.

  Using the headlights sparingly, they came to a tree-lined road. There was no one here either. At last, there was Adlig. Again, those foreign buildings. All the houses were dark, with not a light showing anywhere.

  He gave orders for the houses to be checked. The houses in the village were abandoned, but all of them were heated. The inhabitants must have left only a few hours ago. They couldn’t be far away, then. You could expect the young women to run off to the forest, but here everyone had gone.

  Boyev positioned eight guns along the eastern edge of Adlig, but not all twelve—that would have made no sense. He ordered battery commander Kasyanov to position his Six Battery about 800 meters to the south, falling back at an oblique angle, near the little village of Klein Schwenkitten.

  Still, there wasn’t a soul to be seen. They hadn’t searched Liebstadt, but they hadn’t spotted anyone moving in the village. Now where was our infantry? Not a single one of our brothers-in-arms had showed up.

  It was a real puzzle: If we positioned our guns here, would we be too far away from the Germans? Or, to the contrary, would we be too close? They might be waiting for us right here, in this patch of forest. For the time being, we’ll put in a screening force toward that forest.

  What else could be done? The tractors were roaring. Six Battery was extended along the side road to Klein Schwenkitten. Four and Five Batteries were deploying side by side to form a single front. Each of the crews was busy with their own gun, changing over from column to combat formation and setting out their shells. (And, of course, they’d already scouted out the houses on the edge of the village for a bit of shelter and a nice kip.)

  This little house was like a toy. Could it really be a farmer’s house in a village? It looked like a house in town, everything set out neatly, curtains, pictures on the walls. The electricity had been cut off, but they found two kerosene lamps and set them on the table. Boyev sat down with his map. A map can always tell you a lot. If you look at it long enough, you can always find some way out, even from the most hopeless situation.

  Boyev didn’t hurry anyone on. They’d have to wait for the sleds in any case. He’d had to work without reconnaissance before. He’d done it, but it had been in his own country.

  The radio operator had already made contact with brigade headquarters. They replied that they’d be leaving soon. (They hadn’t left yet!) Any news or orders? Nothing for the moment.

  Suddenly he heard footsteps in the entry. A man in a neat officer’s overcoat, the commander of the sound-ranging battery that was under Boyev’s operational command, came in. He was an old friend from the days they had served together near Oryol, a mathematician. Immediately he unfolded his map case by the lamp. Here, he explained, was a direct road leading northeast toward Dietrichsdorf, just over two kilometers away. That’s where we’ll set up our central station and string out our lines from there.

  Boyev looked at the map. He could read a topographical map faster than he could read a book.

  “Right, we’ll be somewhere nearby. I’ll be on the right. I’ll run a line out to you. What about the surveyors?”

  “I’ve got a section with me. But we can’t do much fixing at night. They’ll do a rough fix and then come back here.”

  So that was how they would be firing—approximately.

  There was no time for chatting, he had to rush off. They shook hands warmly, like old friends.

  “Later?”

  Something remained unsaid. His battery commanders were already busy at their jobs and didn’t need him telling them what to do. Now it was a matter of waiting for the horses.

  Boyev lay down on the little sofa: It wasn’t proper to lie in a bed with your boots on, and with your boots off, what kind of soldier are you?

  6

  FOR SOME THE war began in ’41, but for Boyev it began with Lake Khasan, in ’38. Then the Finnish War. And so the past seven years of his life had been nothing but war. He’d been off twice recovering from wounds, but with the war on there was no leave to go back home. It had been eleven years now since he’d been able to get back to his native Ishim steppe, with its hundreds of mirror-like lakes and huge flocks of game birds, or gone to Petropavlovsk to see his sister.

  Only when he’d gone into the army had Pavel Boyev seen some real life. What was there for him outside the army? Southern Siberia was a long time in getting back on its feet after the Civil War and the crushing of the Ishim rebellion. In a good many places in Petropavlovsk the fences along the streets and around the gardens still hadn’t been rebuilt; many had been burned, and those that had been repaired were leaning. Broken windowpanes were stuffed with rags or pasted over with paper. The felt strips of insulation around the doors hung in shreds or had been replaced with straw or bark. Housing was really scarce, and he lived with his married sister, Praskovya. The problem of footwear was no better, and you went on and on mending the soles of your boo
ts but your toes would still stick out. The food supply was worse yet: the bread you got on your ration card did nothing to fill a hungry working man . . . And you had to stand in line for everything, from five in the morning in some places. A mob would rush up to a store, not even asking what they’d be selling. Once a line formed they’d find out. The streets were filled with beggars.

  In the army, though, they’d stuff you full of meat borshch and you had all the bread you could eat. The uniforms weren’t always new, but at least they weren’t full of holes. And the men in the army were the beloved sons of the people. Collar tabs were crimson for the infantry, black for the artillery, and light blue for the cavalry; and there were other colors too (red for the GPU). Life was organized on a precise schedule of drills, forming up, saluting, and marching, and your whole life had a purpose: life meant serving, and everyone had his job. He couldn’t wait to get into the army and joined even before he was called up.

  And so he never had to adapt himself to anything other than army life, and he never married. Then the trumpet sounded to call him to this war as well.

  In the army, Pavel Boyev realized that he was a born soldier, that he’d been meant for the army and it was his home. He knew that army routine—firing exercises, packing up the equipment, moving out, changing your maps, and adapting to new routine—was what life was all about. In’41 they lost some guns and tractors, but that didn’t happen again unless a gun had a direct hit or a tractor was blown up on a mine. War was a job, but one with no days off and no holidays, with his eyes peering through a binocular telescope. The battalion was his family, the officers his brothers, the soldiers his sons, and each one of them was a treasure. He had learned to live with the idea that life was a movement from one dodgy situation to another, that happy moments were short-lived, and that now there wasn’t a turn of events that could surprise or frighten him. He had completely forgotten how to be afraid. And if some extra duty or risky mission came up, he would always volunteer. Under the fiercest bombing and the heaviest bombardment, Boyev never prepared himself for death but tried only to comprehend what he had to do and how best to do it.

  He opened his eyes (he hadn’t been sleeping). Toplev came in. The horses had arrived.

  Boyev dropped his legs to the floor.

  Toplev was still a boy, a bit delicate for an adjutant. But Boyev didn’t want to pull out any of his battery commanders for his staff and so he took Toplev off his post as head of reconnaissance.

  “I want to see Boronets.”

  The battalion sergeant major, Boronets, was a solid, clever fellow whose eyes never missed a thing. He had already anticipated his orders and had set aside all the unnecessary things—the booty they had picked up and other odds and ends—from the sleds. Three sleds were loaded with gear for the observation points—spools of wire, radios, binocular telescopes, grenades, the weapons and packs of the men in the headquarters platoons, and some rations.

  “Did you see anyone on the road after Liebstadt? Any sign of the infantry?”

  Boronets only smacked his lips and shook his large round head.

  “Not a soul.”

  So where was the infantry? Had they disappeared altogether?

  Boyev went outside. The sky was covered in thick cloud, the ground white with snow. The silence all around was complete and unbroken. No more snow was falling.

  All three battery commanders where just were they should be, waiting for orders. One was always with the battalion commander. That would be Myagkov, as usual. Proshchenkov and Kasyanov were each a kilometer away, one to his left, one to his right, at their preliminary observation posts, and they communicated with the battalion commander only through their batteries.

  Well, they had all seen a thing or two and they knew their own troops. Now the most important thing was to pick places for the OPs. But first he had to decide how far forward he could and should site them. And how could he decide that in such darkness, silence, and without any screen of infantry? If they were too shallow they’d be useless; if they were too deep they might well stumble on the Germans.

  “Just keep in mind, boys, that when it’s this quiet and this deserted, things could get very, very serious.”

  To Toplev he said: “Zhenya, you have to find the infantry. Send out all the runners you’ve got to look for them. When you find them, have the CO of the regiment come and see me. Something’s not right . . . They’re taking too long . . . Find out the situation from brigade. I’m going to pick out some OPs and then I’ll contact you.”

  He jumped into the first sled.

  7

  IN THE ABSENCE of the battery commander, the senior officer of Six Battery was the commander of First Platoon, Lieutenant Pavel Kandalintsev. Nearly forty, he was also senior in age to all the brigade’s platoon commanders. He was fairly tall, though without much of a military bearing. His shoulders were somewhat hunched, his hair prematurely gray, but he ran his platoon well. The other platoon commanders called him “Dad.”

  Oleg Gusev, who had grown up among a group of street urchins in the city, had learned a good many things from Kandalintsev, things that could not be learned elsewhere.

  Even before siting all four guns in their fire positions, Kandalintsev had set a screen of outposts in a semicircle fifty meters to their front. The tractors that had towed the guns had moved back and fallen silent, and Kandalintsev allowed the crews to man their guns in shifts. He pointed out to Gusev a small stone barn not far to their rear.

  “Let’s go there for a bit and rest our weary bones.”

  By shifting the location of the battery slightly he was able to give easier access to the nearby houses, and it would be easier to fire from here as well.

  The gun crews off shift came here to sleep as well. Gusev had gone into two houses and twisted the dials on the radios there, hoping to find one that had its own power supply. But none of them was working. Private houses with radio receivers were something new that they found only in Europe. They took some getting used to: in the Soviet Union all radios had been confiscated for the duration of the war, and if you didn’t turn yours in, it was off to prison. But here . . .

  Oleg really wanted to find out something about our breakthrough and pick up at least a few more details. But the battery’s radios could pick up only one of our stations, on the long wave, and there was no news at all about the breakthrough.

  Kandalintsev had been called up from the reserves in 1941. He’d had two hard years at war on the Leningrad front, and after being wounded he’d been sent here, to the brigade, where he’d spent nearly two years.

  Kandalintsev would never pass up the opportunity for even a few moments of rest.

  They went into the barn and lay down side by side on the hay.

  How quiet it was.

  “Maybe the Germans have just fainted away, do you think, Pavel Petrovich? They’ve been cut off and pushed back, so now they’re crowding into Königsberg. Is this the end of the war, d’you think?”

  Kandalintsev, though, was by no means exhausted by the war, and unlike the others he was ready to keep at it for a long time yet. “A-hh,” he sighed deeply.

  He was lying there not saying a word. But it seemed he hadn’t fallen asleep.

  Young officers would dream of what might happen: “People are saying that after the war everything at home is going to change for the better. We’ll have a free life! We’ll really start living! And they say that they’ll do away with the collective farms, what d’you think?”

  He didn’t care if there were collective farms or not, but the whole fighting army was filled with such hopes. And, in fact, why shouldn’t they start living better and with more freedom?

  Kandalintsev had heard all this many times before; he had gone through all the party purges hearing about it. In a tired though not contradictory voice, he said: “No, Oleg, nothing’s going to change at home. We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t get worse. The collective farms? No, they’ll never do away with them. The state can’t do wi
thout them. We shouldn’t be wasting our time. Let’s get some sleep.”

  8

  YES, WAR WAS a heavy burden you bore every day, with times of sudden, violent eruptions when a careless man might easily fall on the battlefield or shed some blood. But even in war his heart was never as heavy as it had been when he was a quiet, well-educated man working in the ravaged countryside in 1930 and 1931. While some maliciously calculated plague raged around him, he could only look at the eyes of the dying and listen to the wailing of women and the weeping of children. It was as if he himself had been vaccinated against this plague but also dared not help any of its victims.

  That was what faced Pavel Kandalintsev immediately after his graduation, when he was a young agronomist at a plant breeding station in Voronezh Oblast. He tended the sprouts of the seedlings in the greenhouse, while around him human seedlings of two years or three months were being sent away on sleds in the bitter cold—on a long journey to their deaths. In his own eyes he was also one of the oppressors. And secretly he knew—and could not share his knowledge with anyone—that the peasants who opposed the collective farms were destroying their own stock or grinding up their best seed grain to make flour for their bread. They didn’t hide the fact that they were slaughtering their livestock, and they couldn’t be stopped. Then the grain collectors would come and scoop up every kernel that remained in their granaries, assemble a train of “Red carts,” and drive them into the city: “The peasants bring you their surplus.” There in the city a brass band would march at the head of the procession of carts.

  The impressions of those months and years had caused Pavel Kandalintsev to become desensitized to the life around him, which now seemed somehow inauthentic. It was as if his nerve endings had grown numb, as if his vision, his sense of smell, and his sense of touch had become less acute and would never be fully restored. He felt he might never laugh again. That was how he lived—and with the constant apprehension that the regional committee would grow angry with him for something and fire this unreliable non-party man from his job. He’d be lucky if they didn’t arrest him. More than once they were dissatisfied with him, so with his same benumbed fingers he submitted his application for party membership, and with his same benumbed ears he sat through party meetings. And what a ridiculous chaos of ideas they shoved into people’s heads and people’s souls, beginning with the abolition of the week. The old Monday-Wednesday-Friday-Sunday was done away with, so that no one could count weeks any longer. Now there was the “uninterrupted” five-day week with no common days off. Everyone worked or studied on different days, and there was never a single day when he could get together with his wife and children. Life rumbled over everyone like the continuously moving track of a caterpillar tractor, its oblique treads cutting deep into the earth.