One of the houses is smoking; the roof has been blown off another.
“Don’t say anything to them down in the cellar.”
That was how the shells fell when Andreyashin was hit.
Mitya comes up from the cellar with a message from Dugin: “They’ve hit our advance post!” he shouts, as if pleased about it.
All the more reason to hold off.
As my granddad used to say, “Let them croak, the lot of them!” It’s one thing after another.
I’m not responsible for the whole army. Even the commander isn’t responsible for it all. What I have to worry about are these sixty men right here. As Ovsyannikov says, “We’ve gotta take care of our people, and take care of ‘em well.”
We’ll wait a bit longer.
I smoke one cigarette after the other, without thinking, but they only make me feel worse. Some sort of dull stupor has taken complete possession of me; my brain has almost stopped working, and I can’t cope with even the simplest things.
Twenty minutes go by and there’s no more bombardment, so I send Galkin and Kropachov to repair the lines. If they’ve all been broken at once, then the breaks must be right here, by our station. The two men have telephones on their belts so they can call in and check the lines.
Then I’m called to the phone in the cellar again.
It’s the battery commander on our flank: his posts have been knocked out.
Tolochkov thinks that we’ve taken out 415; nothing’s coming from it. There’s still no bombardment. The lines have been repaired, at the spot where Andreyashin’s blood still lies.
The linesmen come back. Great job, lads!
The sound of the German guns is still indistinct, though. The sun is fierce and saps all our strength. Some cumulus clouds have appeared, but they don’t seem to be gathering.
Botnev has taken over the central station from me.
Ovsyannikov is back. He’s covered in sweat and his shirt has dark, wet spots on it. He’s heard about Andreyashin over the phone. On his way back, he came under some heavy fire. He was lying out on some level ground without any cover. Our forward observer has now found a spot behind some stones but is still having a heavy time of it and can’t even raise his head.
Ovsyannikov has taken off his sweaty field cap, and his hair is sticking out in all directions. Still, he gives a very clear account of all that he’s done, speaking in his broad Vladimir accent.
“Go grab a bit of sleep, Vitya,” I tell him. And he goes.
The hours flow by, and from all the racket, the confusion, and the trying to do three things at once, the extreme strain under which you’ve been working begins to sink you into torpor. Your whole being seems to be in fog; your head feels swollen, both from the lack of sleep and the effects of the shell bursts that haven’t yet passed; your head droops, your eyes are red. It’s as if the various parts of your brain and your soul have been torn to pieces and will simply not move back to their proper places.
When night comes, though, you need a particularly clear head. So now I, too, go off to get some sleep in one of the houses. There’s a dirty, ragged blanket on the bed, and the pillow is no better. And there are lots of flies. I put my head down and I’m gone. Sleeping the sleep of the dead.
How long was I asleep? The sun has now moved well across to the other side and is sinking.
I hurry back to the station. There’s Pashanin with his mess tin, just had supper. “Are they back yet?”
In a voice filled with compassion and sorrow, as if he himself were to blame, he tells me: “He died as soon as they got him to the aid station. He was just full of holes.”
So . . . now we know. That’s how it is.
I go down the steps to our instruments to check on the work. All the men look downcast. The new shift is already busy at the tables. The women have stopped their chatter; there’s been a death in the house.
“Anything that could be coming from 415?”
“Not a thing,” says Konchits from the plotting table.
While I was sleeping, it turns out, our boys have twice given the German forward area a heavy shelling, Mokhovoe in particular. And I never heard a sound.
There had been a few breaks in the lines, but our lads were right there to repair them.
Now where’s Ovsyannikov?
He’s gone to our right-hand posts. There’s no stopping that man.
It seems that they’ve stopped plaguing us with their shelling. Still, the torpor hasn’t left me. If they’d just leave us in peace for a bit, I could get back on my feet again. And before it gets dark.
I’ve got no appetite and don’t bother with supper.
A call comes from Boyev to remind me that he was expecting the Forty-second at 2000 hours.
Yes, better not forget that.. . It’s just a bit more than a kilometer, and I can walk it. It’ll soon be after six . . .
Now the firing seems to have almost died out. Everyone’s exhausted.
We’re not making any move forward. And there are no planes in the sky, neither ours nor theirs.
I sit down under a tree. Maybe I should jot down a few things in my diary? I haven’t added a line since yesterday, when I mentioned the gypsies who were with us. But no thoughts will come to me. I don’t have even the energy to move my pencil.
These past four days? A person isn’t equipped to cope with so much. What day was it when that happened? The time frame becomes completely muddled.
Ovsyannikov comes back and sits down on the grass beside me. Neither of us speaks about Andreyashin.
“What day was it when Romaniuk shot the tip off his finger?”
“That idiot thought we’d strike him off strength so easily. Now he’s in front of a tribunal.”
“Kolesnichenko was smarter. He ran off even before we began the offensive.”
“And no one’s heard of him since.”
We go down to the stream, strip to the waist, and wash.
So, evening is coming on. The sun is dropping behind the higher houses in the village, behind the ridge, and will soon be behind the Germans. All our observers will be blinded in a moment.
Seven thirty. In an hour and a half our real work will begin. Seven thirty. I’m supposed to go somewhere at eight. That’s right, Boyev called. Should I go? He’s not my commander, but he’s a good neighbor.
“OK, Botnev, take over for a while. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
My head still isn’t working properly.
It’s easy to find my way there—just follow the wire. (Don’t go astray where the wires cross, though.)
I drop through the hollow and then follow the straight road above it. There are about a dozen houses along it, still standing. None of the shells have hit the road. Now that evening’s come on, there is the odd villager here and there, tending to their household chores. A few of them still have some livestock. Farther on, there’s a small potato field. Then another slope, and among the bushes sits the battalion staff truck, a ZIS, its bed roofed over by a homemade canvas cover. They’ve obviously come here straight across the fields, not by road.
Battery commander Myagkov and the battalion commissar are standing by the truck smoking.
“Is the battalion commander here?”
“He is.”
“Any idea why he called me?”
“Climb aboard, you’ll see.”
They’re also getting in. We climb up the small ladder attached to the back of the truck and go through a low plywood door.
All the map cases, maps, and papers that were on the table in the middle have been cleared away and placed in the corners. The table, bolted to the floor, has been covered with a pair of towels sewn together to make a tablecloth; on it are a white, unlabeled bottle and some open tins of preserved food—American sausages and our own tinned fish; some sliced bread and cookies lie on a plate. And there are glasses and mugs of various calibers.
On the left side of his chest, Boyev wears two Orders of the Red Banner, something yo
u rarely see; on the right he has one Order of the Fatherland and one Red Star; he’s not wearing some of his lesser medals. His head isn’t quite round and looks as if a bit has been trimmed off each side, which adds to the solidity of his chin and forehead. He grasps your hand firmly and powerfully; it’s always a pleasure to shake hands with him.
“So you made it, Sasha? Wonderful. We’ve been expecting you.”
“What are you celebrating? We still haven’t taken Oryol.”
“It’s my birthday, you see, the last one before I turn thirty. And this next year will go by so fast, I just can’t put off celebrating.”
Proshchenkov, commander of Four Battery, is shorter than Boyev and is both like and unlike him: he has the same unyielding solidity in his jaw and shoulders, a masculine strength. And there’s also something very simple and innocent about him.
Yet who among us isn’t simple and innocent at heart? Until the war, I had never rubbed shoulders with people like this. Thanks to the war, I came to know them and to be accepted by them.
Myagkov is something else entirely: He is myagkii, a gentle, kind fellow. He’s like a son to Boyev. Their last names absolutely suit them— Boyev, the boyevoi, the fighting man.
The commander of Six Battery has been left at the observation post.
Here I begin to feel myself grow steady and stable. I’m happy I’ve come.
There are benches fastened to either side. People can sleep on them, but now they are seating six—the battalion adjutant, a captain, had also come.
We don’t take off our hats. We are all covered with dust, and the sweat hasn’t dried on a few of us.
Boyev calls me by name, but I address him as “Com’ Major,” though he’s only four years older than I. But I can’t transgress these army manners and, in any case, I don’t want to.
“Com’ Major! If there aren’t any toasts already planned, may I make one?”
Now at last I feel some relief from this whole day of madness and stupefaction. It’s come not from my peaceful walk getting here; it’s from this place itself, from the firm handshakes, from the unexpected little gathering around a folding table and, to be sure, from the fact that no one knows where we’ll be a year from now (I remember Andreyashin’s plan to visit Oryol). Boyev and I have never been close before, yet here we are, friends—all of us, a group of friends.
“Pavel Afanasyevich! In two years of war, I’ve been blessed to meet people like you! And people like you, one doesn’t meet every day.”
I look with admiration at his invariably erect bearing and at his face: How can he have such iron determination and self-forgetfulness when life itself now seems so cheap? Yet he never loses his soldier’s mannerisms for a moment.
“And how did you ever get a last name like Boyev? No one could have hit on a better one. You seem to be completely at home in war. It’s as if you’ve discovered the happiness in it. I can see you firing on that bell tower as if it happened today . . .”
I had watched it happen next to that hamlet where Ovsyannikov and I lay, unable to raise our heads because of that bell tower. Some of Boyev’s clever fellows could see what was going on and, under the same fire we were facing, they came out and lit a few smoke pots. A solid gray smokescreen wafted across, though it wouldn’t last long! Boyev himself came out with one gun, using open sights. It was a tricky and risky operation, and he had to make it work: the gun had to be changed from its traveling to its firing position; they loaded it, managed to make out the top of the bell tower when the smoke began to clear, and bang! They reloaded and— bang!—once more. A hit! Then, quick as can be they brought the gun back to its traveling position, hooked it to the tractor, and off they went. The Germans lay down a barrage on that spot, but they were too late. And that was the last of their OP.
“. . . For you, war is existence itself, as if you have no existence outside of war. So, may you live through all this ...”
Boyev listens, astonished, as if he was quite unaware of all this.
We all rise. Glasses clink against tin mugs. All of us feel the fire course through our insides. Vodka after a day like that—you had to watch yourself!
What glorious, rough days! And where were they taking us?
The grand offensive! Over the whole war you could have counted the number of such days on one hand. Our spirits soared. It seemed that we had been filled to overflowing, yet there was still more to come.
Once again we stand, clink our glasses, and drink—to victory, of course!
Mygkov says: “When the war ends, our hearts will all be smaller somehow, just imagine.”
The conversation shifts quickly from one topic to another, everyone putting in his word. Boyev says: “They were the ones to lay hands on us, and they’ll regret it. We’ll make it hot for them.”
The adjutant: “We’ll put their feet to the fire.”
The commissar: “Ehrenburg writes that the Germans are horrified when they think of what’s waiting for them this winter. But they should think of what’s waiting for them in August.”
Everyone is filled with passion, though not with hatred. That’s just for the newspapers.
“You try speaking German to the Germans and they switch to Russian. They’ve learned a lot over two years.”
“What do you think, will anyone understand us when we come back home? Or maybe no one understands us even now?”
“Just think, though, how much of Russia they still hold. It’s monstrous.”
“Why won’t they open the Second Front, the bastards?”
“Because they’re saving their own skins at our expense.”
“Well, they have started the invasion of Italy.”
The commissar says: “Capitalist America doesn’t want a quick end to the war; that would end their profits.”
I suggest something else to him: “It seems to me that we’re going too far off course, moving away from internationalism.”
He replies: “Why is that? Disbanding the Third International was quite correct.”
“As camouflage, perhaps; as a tactical move.” But I change the subject: “Well, I can’t stay any longer. This is when I have to get busy.”
Proshchenkov tells us about an incident from today’s firing. He believes that 423 has been destroyed; there hasn’t been another shot from that position.
“Maybe they’ve just shifted the position.”
A few more things are said about shifting positions. We don’t know about the Germans, but sometimes even when our people are ordered to shift their guns, the blockheads just go on firing and firing from the same spot, out of laziness, until they get blasted to pieces by the enemy.
That’s not the only stupidity. What about those who fire at random just so they can report a number of shells expended?
It happens . . .
Proshchenkov says: “We’ve got ourselves well dug in now that evening’s come on. Let’s hope they don’t move us tonight, at least.”
The light coming through the tiny window in the truck is fading, so the battery-run bulb on the ceiling is turned on.
“Not a bad little shop we have here for our headquarters,” says Boyev, looking around. “What do you think, will the old girl take us right to Germany?” We begin listing the people who won’t be making it to Germany— one, two, three, a fourth sent to a punishment battalion where he was killed.
I’ve spent time with people who were more educated, but I’ve never spent time with people of purer heart. I’m happy to be among them.
“Yes, and later when we remember one another . . .”
We hear the distinctive hoarse and hateful crash of a six-barrel mortar.
The mortar shells howl, and then come six explosions in rapid succession.
“Well, thanks to you, friends, and goodbye. It’s time for me to go.”
And, indeed, it’s already twilight outside. I have to get back before dark or risk getting lost.
~ * ~
All our lines are still in operation.
>
Yemelyanov calls from the advance post: “Now we’re digging in right and proper. But the German’s sending up a lot of flares.”
Even back in the village, we’re being lit up by red flares and white-and-gold ones that hang in the air for a long time.
We’ve recorded the six-barrel mortar, though not very accurately— mortars are always difficult to pick up. Then there’s a gun, target 428, probably a seventy-six, that fires a single shot. We pick it up at once and get a precise fix on it.
Apricot Jam: And Other Stories Page 22