wounded; it could not even warm them. They looked
upward incessantly as they lay on the carts, feeling nothing but the cold. This was a cosmic cold, emanating from distant, indifferent stars.
It was the kind of cold that made the soldiers think they
would never warm up now. Not warm up and not get a
good sleep. Many wanted to die and the general knew that.
He forbade his soldiers to daydream about death.
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‘Whoever of you dies,’ said the general, ‘will end up in
the grave unwarmed.’
There was no answer.
‘He will freeze eternally,’ said the general.
The soldiers walked in complete silence. They were afraid
that their last remnants of warmth would leave, along with the words they uttered. All that sounded were the even
clatter of horse hoofs, the creak of carts, and the crunch of frost under the gun carriages’ wheels. And the groans of the wounded. A while later (their sense of time was dulled, too) a quiet glass-like sound blended in with those other
noises. The general rode off to the side and saw ice chafing against rocks by the water. They had retreated to the Sivash.
The salt-water lake was covered with a thin icy crust.
An explosion rang out somewhere in the distance. And
then closer. Again in the distance. This was the Reds’ artillery shelling. It created the impression that the Reds were shooting at random. The retreating troops did not slow their pace. Sometimes the shells landed a few dozen meters from
the column. They raised pillars of water in the sea that
flashed briefly and gloomily in the moonlight. At times they exploded with a deafening dry bang; the general understood then that the Sivash had frozen solid in places. This discovery made him feel uneasy.
‘General Winter,’ whispered General Larionov. ‘He’s
made his appearance a month earlier than usual.’
They saw distant campfires at around two in the morning.
This did not bode well at all for those retreating and the general knew it. Those campfires meant that isolated Red
units had managed to go around his army from the east
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Sivash had frozen so much in places that the Reds could
cross from the side of the village of Stroganovka. Now they awaited the general’s troops along their retreat route.
Movement continued, though those campfires meant death.
The general did not dismiss the idea that events could
develop that way, though he considered it improbable. He
surmised that the Reds would want to intercept him, but
here he was counting on the Sivash, which did not usually
freeze. His calculation did not hold true. He was left hoping that only the Reds’ vanguard had managed to cross.
The general could not imagine that the cavalry—particu-
larly the artillery weapons—could have crossed the first thin ice. He could not imagine that much of any significant
enemy force could have made its way here during the time
the Whites were on their inhuman forced march. Even
so—regardless of how many of them there were—the Reds
had arrived on the isthmus first. Despite the cold. And the barely frozen Sivash. The general’s army was like a worn-out horse. He had worn it out in hopes of saving it. It was the first time in his life that the general had subjected soldiers to an ordeal like this. It was the first time in his life that he felt the inevitability of defeat.
He scrutinized the soldiers’ faces yet again, as if searching for clues. The cold had smoothed the features of those faces, depriving them of expression. Frost lay on their mustaches and eyebrows. There was nothing in his soldiers’ eyes but
the campfires burning up ahead. Did they surmise what
those campfires meant? Even if they did, the pull of that
flame was so strong that it was already impossible to stop their motion toward it.
And the general did not even try. Stopping here would
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have been tantamount to death. On this bare and completely unprotected plain, his troops would be swept away by the
Reds’ superior forces. Occupying positions on the well-fortified Perekop remained their only chance of salvation. For that, they now needed the impossible: an attack.
‘Prepare for battle,’ said the general, his words drowning in the beginnings of a blizzard.
The general said it loudly and nobody heard him. He
knew it was useless to repeat. He spurred his horse and
galloped off to the leading column.
Why had the Reds lit the campfires? Why did they not
continue moving toward Perekop? Were they unable to?
Had they made a quick stop to warm up? This will remain
one of the war’s enigmas. In Solovyov’s opinion, the Reds
also did not suppose the enemy was capable of ending up
in this sector so early. According to all their mental calculations, the general and his army could not have turned up here until at least the next morning. It is possible the Reds did not expect the general to accomplish the unthinkable,
so had calmly lit their campfires. Even if they had not lit them calmly, though, they simply could not have survived
on a night like that without fires.
Solovyov attributed the Reds’ mind-boggling carelessness
to their being completely frozen. To the narrowing of blood vessels in the brain as a result of hypothermia. This was
how the historian explained the fact that the Reds did not even have an outpost. They glimpsed the White Army only
when the figure of a horseman emerged in front of them,
out of the blizzard, which was finally running wild.
‘Who goes there?’ they asked by a campfire.
‘Friend,’ answered the general.
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He slowly rode up to the nearest campfire, where those
sitting recognized him. It was impossible not to recognize him. Even in 1920, in the absence of television and glossy magazines, the general was one of several faces everyone
knew. When seen from below, he seemed huge. He looked
like a monument.
Nobody stirred by the fire. People hold their breath like
this when lightning balls appear: they feign nonexistence, hoping it will disappear. But the general was not disappearing. He and his horse grew each time the fire blazed.
The Red commander emerged from the darkness. Stood
still. His hand extended on its own to salute.
‘Your Excellency . . .’
‘At ease,’ said the general.
The general’s army was passing by behind his back but
he was watching those seated at the campfires. For their
part, they were still sitting motionlessly, watching the
general. How his horse stamped its feet, how its flanks
occasionally trembled. The bay horse was turning white
before their eyes. The general was turning white: his military overcoat, his hood, and the reins in his hands. His face was also white. Never before had they seen such a white general.
The cavalry was slowly floating past their very eyes in the drifting snow, as if it were surmounting sediment at the
bottom of the sea.
The infantry passed by. The heavy weap-
onry rode by. This went on for a long time, but nobody
could grasp how long. Time had stopped. When the last
infantryman had passed, the general nodded silently and
vanished in the darkness.
They approached Perekop at dawn. The general ordered
they demolish all remaining structures there and build
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campfires with them. A train with foodstuffs and firewood
was already on its way from Dzhankoy. The general checked
the condition of the fortifications and ordered they stretch barbed wire where there were breaks. At first he wanted to set up camp with tents but he knew that was already impossible. He commanded only that nobody lie in the snow. An
instant later, everyone was sleeping but the posted sentinels.
The sentinels needed to be relieved every hour. People
simply had no strength for more.
The foreign envoys awaited the general in Dzhankoy. The
general felt nothing but contempt for the envoys. He placed no great hopes in his meeting with them but decided to go
anyway. The thought of evacuating the army had made his
decision. He headed for Dzhankoy after leaving General
Shatalov in his place.
The general rode his armored train car along the tracks
he had laid. The warmth in the car and the clacking of the wheels made his head spin. The general felt something he
had felt only in childhood. This was a feeling of joy and
immortality.
‘Joy and immortality,’ he uttered.
This feeling had come to him several times recently, so
the general thought he would most likely die soon. That
was the last thing he had time to think before falling asleep.
A locomotive’s drawn-out whistle awakened the general.
It came from a passing train. They had stopped at a station.
‘Dzhankoy?’ the general asked the valet.
‘Dzhankoy,’ replied the valet.
He was holding a soap dish in one hand, a towel in the
other.
The general went over to the washstand. For some reason,
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the water was cold even in the warm train car, and the
general remembered how he had doused himself with water
every morning in the cadet corps. How his body and his
comrades’ bodies had been covered in goosebumps. He had
a different body then. He took the towel from the valet and used it to rub his face until it was red. It was completely different.
The foreign diplomatic mission employees had gathered
in a small chamber at the city council. They were sitting on bentwood chairs along both sides of a threadbare runner
rug. The rug began at the doorway and led to a long oak
table. Everyone rose when the general appeared, accompa-
nied by an escort. The escort remained by the doorway and
the general walked through the chamber, without glancing
at anyone. He unbuttoned his military overcoat and half-sat on a chair.
‘We are leaving Crimea,’ the general said, in a silent
whisper. ‘We will hold Perekop as long as required to evacuate everyone.’
The diplomatic mission employees looked at the general,
expressionless.
‘I need to save my army,’ the general went on. ‘I need
your help.’
‘How splendid that you take your decisions without
consulting your allies,’ said the British envoy.
The general took a cigarette case from his pocket and
opened it with a melodic sound.
‘I appealed to your king, asking how many people he
would accept in the event of our evacuation.’
Seeing the general had taken out the cigarette, an orderly brought him a match.
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‘He did not even respond to me,’ the general’s words
blended with the cigarette smoke, sounding indistinct.
The British envoy wanted to object but the general raised
his hand as if to save him the trouble.
‘I’m appealing to all of you: accept my soldiers. The
comrades will not spare anyone’s life,’ the general crushed the cigarette in a massive marble ashtray. ‘Not anyone’s. I shall take my leave.’
He walked slowly along the runner rug but stopped just
short of the door.
‘Half a year ago, England prevented me from planting
minefields in Odessa’s water zone. Why?’
He was standing, with his head lowered. He did not
turn.
‘I do not know,’ said the British envoy.
‘Well, I do know. British transports are now exporting
grain from there, purchased for nothing from the Bolsheviks.
That grain is soaked in Russian peasants’ blood.’
The general returned to Perekop late that evening. The
reconnaissance chief reported to him that the enemy had
managed to move significant forces toward Perekop during
the day. The general nodded. He already felt the Reds’ pace and expected their offensive in the morning.
The general gave the wake-up signal an hour before dawn.
He did not announce formation after they played reveille.
He ordered only that the fires be stoked to blazing.
‘Jump over the fires!’ the general shouted and his voice
came back to him in the regiment commanders’ shouts, like
a weak echo.
‘Jump over the fires!’ he shouted again in the quiet that
had set in.
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Several people hinted at slight movement then immedi-
ately dissolved into the overall motionlessness. The army
had fallen into lethargy in an obvious way. The general
rushed to the closest fire and began shaking those who were sitting there. One after the other they stood and looked at him with vacant, weepy eyes. Never before had he seen his
army like this. The general was genuinely frightened for the first time in his life.
He tore around among the campfires, attempting to bring
his army back to life. Pounded soldiers on the face and
in the gut. Shouted that they would be slaughtered like
pigs.
Larionov distributed a half-glass of vodka to each but it
had only a sedative effect. He ordered that a march be played, but the musicians’ fingers would not move in the cold. He
buried his face in his hands and disappeared into the
commander-in-chief ’s tent.
When the other generals approached him in the tent, he
said, ‘This army has died. And will never rise from the dead.’
A distant thundering sounded as he spoke. The Red artil-
lery was beginning to shell. The Reds shelled often but
poorly. Their shells fell either in front of the fortifications or far behind them. The lack of clustering in their shelling showed the Red grenadiers’ complete failure. If there was
anything the general needed to watch out for, it was only
a rogue shell.
The general calmed down once the battle had begun. It
was as if he had forg
otten his momentary outburst: he led
using calculations from the artillerymen, who had deter-
mined the direction for a counterstrike. Their only reliable reference point was the Reds’ heavy weaponry. Using that
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reference point to the fullest, the Red artillery was suppressed twenty minutes later.
In the quiet that set in, the general again walked along
the fortifications and made certain that his order to repair them had been carried out. In some spots, they had dug
out broken stakes. In their places they had installed intact ones that had just been brought from Armyansk. They had
not bothered to remove the cut barbed wire: they just
unwound new wire alongside it.
‘Everything is ready for hosting the comrades,’ said the general.
The comrades did not make them wait. Their first wave arose in the distance as if it had coagulated out of drifting snow; it began nearing the line of defense. The Whites did not shoot. Nor did the Reds. They walked, stooped, like
someone still incapable of straightening up early in the
morning. On a cold, early morning by a putrid gulf. This
is how they would have walked to the factory in their
previous life. Their ashen sleep-deprived faces were already visible. (As before, nobody was shooting.) Some had pliers in their belts for cutting barbed wire; this gave the
approaching men even more resemblance to a crowd of
workmen. But they were not workmen.
Behind the first wave was a second and a third and a
fourth after that . . . The general lost count. It seemed those waves were moving from the horizon itself. They were
creeping in with the indifference of volcanic lava. With the indivisibility of a locust swarm. This was a solid, unified force. The revolutionary masses in their highest manifestation. They were being created somewhere in the depths of
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isthmus. The general knew these masses were enough for
ten White Armies and, in the end, would engulf both his
barbed wire and his machine guns.
He felt the defenders’ gazes and their expectation of his
command. He even seemed to think his troops had perked
Solovyov and Larionov Page 35