Solovyov and Larionov

by Eugene Vodolazkin

up a little, in light of the mortal danger. The machine gunners had already sat down by their Maxim guns. They were

  straightening the ammunition belts and stroking the barrels.

  There was no tension in their movements: on the contrary,

  there was something proprietary, and that irritated the

  general. He looked at his watch but could not figure out what time it was. That was not actually important anyway.

  The machine guns could hit from two thousand paces

  and the Reds were already much closer. They were walking

  with an uncoordinated, hobbled gait, staring at the frozen grass. The soldiers were trying to deceive death, which had already taken up its position beyond the barriers. So as not to attract its attention, they were not looking it in the eye, just as one does not look into the eyes of the possessed.

  Death awaited the young and, thus, seemed insane to those

  soldiers. They saw it and deflected their gazes. The barrels of their rifles were half-lowered. They were not fighting, they were here for something else. They simply walked,

  bobbing on the hillocks. From north to south.

  The general knew this wave was doomed. He wanted to

  give these soldiers an extra minute. Wanted to see them

  alive one last time. Could not look at them enough. Or

  enjoy, enough, observing their awkward forward motion.

  Their motion was a sign of life. Even their wooden strides and even the spasmodic waving of their arms differentiated life from death. That would be taken away from them in a

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  minute. Replaced with the full repose that differentiates

  death from life.

  Everything would happen upon his order. Several dozen

  waves destined for the passage from life to death were

  following behind the first. The speed of their passage

  depended on the speed of the shooting from his Maxim

  guns. Which were stilled in readiness. Everything would

  happen even without his order. These armies could no

  longer exist without one another.

  The general feverishly tried to remember which side he

  was fighting on. He knew this was a useless trick of the

  consciousness and a withdrawal from another question—the

  most important one—but he just could not remember.

  Those around him watched with surprise crossing into

  alarm. The cavalry and infantry were watching. The artil-

  lerymen were watching. Only the wind could be heard.

  ‘Fire,’ whispered the general.

  His command was just a cloud of steam. It contained no

  voice. The next second, though, machine guns hit the Reds’

  forward waves. The artillery began working on the rear guard.

  It seemed strange to the general that these consequences

  could be reached with one brief word. That they had not

  even heard. That they had uttered to themselves. He saw

  how deftly the machine gunners handled the ammunition

  belts. How the servicemen brought crates of ammunition

  with a calm, almost ant-like, focus. Volley followed volley. It was not uplifting for him. There was no more joy of battle in him. He knew (volley) that he already had another army

  now. Or maybe (volley) it was he who was different. Maybe

  his own (volley) sense of devastation had spread to the army and the army had ceased to exist. Died.

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  Everyone in the first wave fell in his own way. Some

  flapped their arms. Others grasped their bellies. Writhed on the ground with inhuman shouts. Some stopped moving

  then fell to the ground silently after standing in an already unearthly calm. Other people entered the gaping chasms

  that had formed. It had been a long time since this first

  wave had been the first. The machine guns became ever

  more precise as another wave approached, mowing down

  an entire wave at once. A new, live wave arrived where the first had perished; to the general’s mind this was a very

  strange celebration of life.

  Some broke ranks and ran over to the barbed wire. They

  attempted to get their pliers so they could at least sever one strand of barbed wire before dying. They did not manage

  to do so. They were killed by shots aimed from several rifles at once. Those who shot nodded approvingly to one another.

  They understood these dead were heroes.

  The machine gunners’ faces were sweaty and stern.

  Angels of death must have faces like that, thought the

  general. The machine gunners played first violin in this

  dreadful orchestra. They poured water into the cooling tanks of their Maxim guns, dipper after dipper, but the water was not fast enough to cool the metal. They could sense its

  temperature even through their gloves.

  The Reds had many men—they did not need to count

  their losses. Never before had the general seen commanders sacrifice their own soldiers with such calm. The Reds had

  been carrying out a frontal attack for several hours already.

  From a military science perspective, the attack was pointless.

  What could they accomplish? Take all the bullets them-

  selves? Cover all the barbed wire with their bodies? From

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  the perspective of dreadful reality, this attack was indisputable. An attack like this could not be countered forever.

  The Reds, who had set out for unprecedented sacrifices,

  knew this. The general, who would never allow himself to

  have victims of that sort, knew this. He saw that a new

  reality constructed on other fundamentals was arriving,

  along with the Reds. He already had trouble understanding

  it and thus rejected it with ever greater passion. And

  continued resisting it.

  The Reds’ attack ceased with the early autumn twilight.

  It dissolved in the semi-darkness. It subsided like water

  during ebb tide. Unnoticed. Soundlessly. Revealing everything preserved on the ocean floor. Bodies lay everywhere the

  Red waves had been, as far as one could see in the

  approaching darkness. Each lay alone. They lay on top of

  one other. They hung on wires. Some were stirring. The

  general sent a medical team to gather the living. He left

  burying the dead to the Reds. The general was preparing

  to hand over Perekop.

  Solovyov made a very detailed description of the gener-

  al’s preparation for his final military operation. The

  operation consisted of securing the troops’ retreat to the port. In this case, the issue no longer concerned organizing a brilliant victory, as before. The general was working to save his soldiers’ lives. According to historian Solovyov, this was about organizing a defeat with the fewest losses: a defeat no less brilliant, in its own way, than the previous victories.

  The general first dictated a special instruction turning

  over to the White Army the entire fleet of ships assigned

  to Crimean ports. He also designated five ports from which the evacuation would be implemented. They were Sevastopol, 580VV_txt.indd 339

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  Yalta, Yevpatoria, Feodosia, and Kerch. But the main order, which stunned everyone, concerned the White Infantry�
��s

  southerly march.

  They had to act rapidly, without making too much noise,

  without extinguishing the fires, and taking a minimum of

  uniforms. The main and less maneuverable part of the army

  headed toward the ports in secret and began loading onto

  transports. The cavalry, machine gun detachments, and

  some artillery remained. They covered the departure of the White Army’s infantry regiments. Perekop’s defenders

  would need to abandon their positions and rush off, at a

  trot, to the ports at the very moment the last regiment

  reached the port. That was the general’s plan. He set it out for those close to him and nobody objected. They never

  objected to what he said.

  The general walked slowly along the line of defense and

  peered into the faces of those left hanging on the wires.

  Suffering was still present on those faces. The general knew this expression would leave them in a few days. Any expression would leave them. Especially if the weather warmed.

  This was a strange inspection and a strange formation.

  The formation had been disrupted at each step. Those being inspected stood, their knees bent back, heels not aligned, and arms cast on the wire. They stood however they could

  and there was no reason to demand more from them. To

  the general, these people did not seem quite dead yet.

  Decomposition had not yet touched them. He still hoped

  to detect in their facial features at least a shadow of what separates life from death.

  The general stopped next to a cadet who had been killed,

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  had caught on the wire’s barb, not allowing him to fall. The general straightened the cadet’s collar as if this were a real inspection. The collar looked almost natural now: it was

  raised all around. The cadet’s cheek and chin had been torn off: he had fallen on the wire face-first before being

  suspended by his collar. He continued pressing the pliers in his right hand.

  The general immediately recognized the person standing

  beside the cadet. He could not help but recognize him,

  despite not having seen him in decades. He remembered

  his voice as deliberately quiet and remembered his gaze as condescending. That gaze was now more likely one of

  surprise. It was a one-eyed gaze because this man had no

  second eye. A bloody hollow gaped in its place. The general remembered the winter Petersburg night, the vodka in the

  tavern. The sense of weightlessness, the coziness of people who had escaped everyone. The intense unity of co-con-spirators. The unbearable shame of one who had neglected

  his duty. Before him stood Lanskoy.

  Lanskoy stood, his head pressed to a post. Both his arms

  were cast upon the wire. The general thought they hung

  with genuine lifelessness. There was something reminiscent of a puppet theater. Of a puppet conversing with a spectator.

  The comparison appeared to the general to be improper

  but precise.

  What could Lanskoy tell the public? That he was a hero?

  That he despised death and threw himself on the wire? But

  that would be an untruth . . . Lanskoy despised life and

  threw himself on the wire. That was probably the reason

  he had gone to the Reds. The general walked right up to

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  fell with a barely audible crunch but the eye would not

  close. The general embraced Lanskoy. He pressed himself

  to his intact cheek. A tear ran down Lanskoy’s cheek and

  froze in place. It was the general’s tear.

  ‘Bury him,’ ordered the general.

  His troops left almost soundlessly. The squeak of boots,

  muffled by gusts of wind. A farewell symphony, it occurred to the general. The only difference being, he thought, that his people were not extinguishing the fires: the number of campfires needed to remain the same, unlike in Joseph

  Haydn’s version. A reduction in the number of performers

  should not be revealed to the viewer too early. That was

  the essence of the general’s composition.

  He approached one of the fires. Kologrivov, a captain in

  the medical services, was maintaining the fire. The captain was one of those who was staying on Perekop until the

  end.

  ‘Good day, Your Excellency,’ said Kologrivov, standing at

  attention before the general.

  ‘At ease, Captain.’

  He sat across from Kologrivov. He pushed a log that had

  burned through on one side closer to the center of the fire.

  ‘The transition from life to death interests me,’ said the general.

  ‘It is, Your Excellency, inevitable.’

  Patches of light from the fire changed the color and

  contours of Kologrivov’s face.

  ‘I do know that. How does it happen?’

  ‘There are two ways: natural and unnatural. Natural . . .’

  ‘Natural isn’t a threat to us now,’ the general interrupted.

  ‘Tell me about the second way. Let’s go.’

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  He took Kologrivov by the elbow and led him to the

  wire. As they walked past the staff tent, the general took the kerosene lantern that hung there. A broad but dim circle now preceded their motion.

  The attackers had managed to upend one of the supports

  at the part of the barrier they had reached. It hung on the wire, almost touching the ground. Three bodies hung alongside it. They belonged to Red cadets (no longer belonged,

  thought the general). The bodies of several more cadets lay on the ground. Things had come to single combat in this

  defense sector.

  The general cast light on one of the bodies on the wire.

  Somehow, this body was hanging particularly inconsolably:

  arms spread, head nearly touching the ground. Kologrivov

  took the dead man’s shoulder and turned him on his back.

  With a squeak, the two other bodies began swaying.

  ‘Aorta chopped in two,’ Kologrivov said, showing it on

  the corpse. ‘More than one liter of blood flowed out.’

  ‘More than one? How much is that?’ asked the general.

  ‘Three? Five? Ten?’

  ‘A person has only five or six liters of blood. At least two and a half flowed out of him.’

  The general directed the lantern at the ground under-

  neath the wire. It was crimson. The blood had frozen as it flowed out. In concentric circles. Like lava. It was still warm in the body but had frozen on the ground.

  ‘Blood is a special liquid tissue,’ said Kologrivov. ‘It moves through the circulatory vessels of the living body.’

  ‘What does this body lack for being alive?’ asked the

  general.

  ‘Blood, I suppose. Approximately two and a half liters.

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  I’ll use this opportunity to point out that one-thirteenth of the weight of the human body is blood.’

  ‘One can come to understand the combined action of

  the organs, but for me that still doesn’t add up to life,’ said the general. He outline
d a circle with the lantern. ‘Life as such.’

  ‘And one hundred grams of blood contains approximately

  seventeen grams of hemoglobin.’

  ‘But even if you gave that cadet two and a half liters of

  blood, he still wouldn’t come back to life.’

  ‘He wouldn’t come back to life,’ said Kologrivov. He

  crouched in front of one of those lying on the ground. ‘And this person was struck on the skull by a saber. Shine the

  light, Your Excellency . . . As I thought, the right temporal lobe is cut in two.’

  ‘You’ve explained the causes of their deaths but I still

  have no clarity,’ agonized the general, seeking the right

  words. ‘Maybe the whole trouble is that you haven’t

  explained the causes of their life to me.’

  ‘A person’s life is inexplicable. Only death is explicable,’

  said Kologrivov. He stroked the dead man’s hair, which stood like wire. ‘The saber entered about five centimeters into the temporal lobe. In my view, he had no chance. It’s interesting that the right temporal lobe is responsible for libido, sense of humor, and memory of events, sounds, and images.’

  ‘Does that mean that when the soldier was dying he no

  longer remembered events, sounds, or images?’

  ‘He did not even have a sense of humor. And his libido

  was missing. This death belongs in the “unnatural” category.’

  A cannon struck somewhere in the distance; indistinctly,

  as if groggy. Its echo rolled through the sky and went quiet.

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  ‘Come to think of it,’ said the general, ‘who among us

  knows what’s natural and what’s not?’

  ‘I’ll note, à propos, that the human brain weighs an average of 1,470 grams.’

  ‘Maybe death is natural if it comes to a person in the

  prime of his life?’

  ‘And has a volume of 1,456 cubic centimeters.’

  ‘Maybe there’s a certain logic to death at that highest

  point?’

  ‘And it consists of eighty percent water. That’s just for

  your information.’

  ‘Then why bother to wait for the point when the body’s

  becoming decrepit and almost disintegrated?’

  The captain stood up.

  ‘Because, Your Excellency, by then nobody begrudges the

  loss of the body, when it’s like that.’