“Good day, Tatyana,” he said in rather too jovial a voice, offering her his hand.
She did not stir. Then she put the book down on the windowsill and clumsily offered him her left hand. Her right arm was bandaged. From all the beds curious stares focused on them. They went down into the dusty little garden and sat on a bench with peeling paint.
“So. How’s your health? How are you? Tell me,” he said in the same overly cheerful voice.
“What’s there to tell? You can see. I was hit just toward the end.”
“Hit, hit you say … but that’s nothing at all. And there was that nurse talking about a serious wound! I thought you
He lost his composure and fell silent. She gave him a long look.
“I’ve got a piece of shrapnel lodged under my fifth rib, Vanya. They don’t dare touch it. The doctor says the shrapnel’s of no account — a cobbler’s nail. But if they begin tinkering with it, there’s a risk it could make things worse. If they leave it alone maybe it’ll give no trouble.”
Ivan seemed to be on the brink of saying something, but simply sighed and began to roll a cigarette.
“So there it is…. It has to be said that I’m disabled. The doctor’s warned me: I won’t ever be able to lift heavy weights. And no question now of ever having children….” She pulled herself up short, afraid that might have sounded like an untoward allusion, then continued hastily: “My left breast’s all scarred. It’s not a pretty sight. And I’m missing three fingers from my right hand.”
Tight-lipped, he puffed at his cigarette. Both of them were silent. Then, with bitter relief, she finally let fall what she had perfected at length during long days of convalescence: “Look, Ivan, that’s how it is… Thank you for coming. But what’s past is past. What sort of a wife would I be for you now? You’ll find a good healthy one. Because, in my case … I’m not even allowed to weep. The doctor told me in so many words. For me emotions are even worse than carrying heavy weights — if the splinter pierces it, the heart’s finished….”
Ivan studied her out of the corner of his eye. She sat there, her head lowered, not taking her eyes off the gray sand of the avenue. Her face looked so serene…. There was just a little bluish vein throbbing on her temple, where her closely cropped hair began. Her features were softened and, as if lit by an inner light, utterly different from the radiant, rosy-cheeked girls throwing bunches of flowers on the tanks.
“She’s beautiful,” thought Ivan. “What a tragedy!”
“Now listen! You’re wrong to take it like this!” he said at last. “Why are you so downhearted? You’re going to get better. A fine dress and you’ll find as many fiances as you want!”
She flashed a quick look at him, stood up and held out her hand.
“Well, Vanya, it’s time for the meal. Once again, thank you for coming.
He went out through the hospital gates, walked down a street, then swiftly retraced his footsteps. “I’ll give her my address,” he thought. “Then she can write to me. It won’t be so hard for her.”
He went back into the hospital and started climbing the stairs.
“Did you forget something?” the caretaker called out to him in a friendly way.
“Yes. That’s right. I forgot something.”
Tatyana was not in the ward, nor in the canteen, either. He was about to go back downstairs and ask the caretaker. But at that moment he spotted her dressing gown tucked away in a corner behind a pillar.
She was weeping silently, for fear of the echo between the floors. Behind the pillar a narrow window looked out over the tiny garden and the hospital gates. He went up to her, took her by the shoulders, and said to her in muted tones: “What’s going on, Tanya? Look, here’s my address, so you can write to me….”
She shook her head and murmured with a gulp through her tears: “No, no, Vanya. There’s no point. You don’t want me around your neck…. What use can I be to you?”
She sobbed still more bitterly, just like a child, turned toward him and pressed her brow against the cold metal of his medals. This frailty, these childish tears, suddenly stirred something within him and prompted a surge of joyous gallantry.
“Listen, Tanya,” he said, shaking her gently by the shoulders, “when are they going to sign your discharge note?”
“Tomorrow,” she murmured, drunk with tears and misery.
“Good! Well, tomorrow I’m taking you away. We’ll go to my home and we’ll get married there.”
Again she shook her head. “What use can I be to you?” But without asking himself whether it was his head or his heart ruling him, he happily barked out a laughing order: “Silence in the ranks! To your duties, dismissed!”
Then, leaning forward, he whispered in her ear: “You know, Tanya, I’ll love you all the more with your wound!”
His native village, Goritsy, was almost deserted. He saw the charred ruins of the izbas standing there and the useless wooden uprights beside abandoned wells. The head of the kolkhoz, who had the emaciated face of a saint on an icon, welcomed them like his own kin. They walked together to the place where the Demidovs had lived before the war.
“Well, there it is, Ivan! It’ll have to be rebuilt. For the moment there are only four men here, including yourself. There’s a horse of sorts. But that’s how it goes. I think we can have a housewarming before the fall.”
“The first thing to be done, Stepanych,” said Ivan, gazing at the weathered remains of his father’s izba, “is for you to marry us.”
The marriage was celebrated at the kolkhoz soviet. Everyone who lived in Goritsy — twelve people in all — was there. The bridal couple were seated, a trifle awkward and solemn, beneath the portrait of Stalin. Everyone drank samogon, the rough vodka made in the village. Merrily they cried out: “Gorko!” inviting the couple to kiss. Then the women, with voices somewhat out of tune, as if they had lost the habit, began to sing:
Someone’s coming down the hill,
My lover true, my handsome boy!
Yes he’s the one, now heart be still,
Beating madly in my joy!
He has his khaki tunic on:
The star shines red, the braid shines gold.
Why did we meet on life’s long road?
Now tell me why. It must be told.
The dense summer night grew deeper outside the uncurtained windows. Two oil lamps glowed on the table. And the people gathered in that izba, far away in the heart of the forest, sang and laughed; and wept, too, happy for the young couple but bitter about their broken lives. Ivan wore his tunic, carefully washed, with all his decorations; Tatyana a white blouse. It was the gift of a tall woman with a swarthy complexion who lived in the ruins of an izba at the end of the village.
“This is for you, bride-to-be,” she had said in a harsh voice. “It’s for your wedding. When you came here, we thought you were a town girl. We said: ‘Well there’s one who’s landed Ivan, a good catch and a Hero, too.’ Then he told us your story. Go ahead, wear it and be beautiful. I cut it out myself. I knew you’d find it difficult with that hand of yours. My mother was keeping the material for her burial. The borders were all embroidered with crosses. She kept it in a little chest in the cellar. When the Germans burned the village my mother was burned, too. No more need for a winding sheet. I poked around in the ashes and found that chest there, still intact! Go ahead, wear it. You’ll look lovely in it. It comes with all my heart.
Toward the end of August the frame of the new izba could be seen rising up beside the ruins, filling the air with the scent of resin from freshly cut wood. Ivan began covering the roof. From the little shack they were living in they moved into the corner of the izba that was now roofed over. In the evening, dropping with exhaustion, they stretched out on sweet-smelling hay scattered over planks of pale timber.
Lying there in the darkness, they stared up through the framework of the roof at late summer stars as they soared and skimmed away in a dazzling dance. All through the village the wispy blue scent fr
om a wood fire in a kitchen garden hung over the earth. The already familiar scratching of a mouse could be heard in one corner. The silence was so intense you could believe you were hearing the shooting stars brushing against the heavens. And in one corner, above a table, you could hear the tick tock of an old chiming clock. Ivan had found it in the ruins, all covered with soot and rust, the hands stopped at a time frighteningly long ago.
Slowly they got used to each other. She no longer trembled when Ivan’s calloused hand touched the deep scar on her breast. He did not even notice the scar anymore, or her little crippled fist. On one occasion she held on to his hand and drew it over the folds of the wound.
“You see. It’s in here, in this little hollow, that it’s lodged. The devil take it!”
“Yes. It’s bitten deep.”
Ivan drew her to him and whispered in her ear: “It doesn’t matter. You’ll make me a son and give him the right breast. The milk’s the same….”
The izba was completed in the fall. A little before the first snow they harvested the potatoes, planted late, as well as some vegetables.
The snow fell, the village went to sleep. But from time to time they could hear the tinkling of a bucket in the well and the old dog coughing in the yard that belonged to the head of the kolkhoz.
In the morning Ivan went to the soviet, then to the smithy. Together with the other men he was repairing tools for the farmwork in spring. On his return he would sit down at the table with Tanya. He blew on a red-hot cracked potato, stole quick glances at his wife, unable to conceal a smile. Everything afforded him a secret joy. It was clean and tranquil in their new izba. They could hear the regular sound of the clock. Outside the windows etched with ridges of frost a mauve sun was setting. And close beside him sat his wife who was expecting a child, radiant, a trifle solemn, and more attractive than ever in her sweet and serene seriousness.
After the meal Ivan liked to stroll slowly through the rooms of the izba, listening to the creak of the floorboards. He patted the stove’s white walls and would often remark: “You know, Tanyushka, we’ll have a whole brood of children. And when we grow old we’ll keep warm lying on this stove. It’s true, just look at it. It’s no mere stove, it’s a real ship. The shelf on top is even better than the old one.”
The winter grew severe. The wells froze right down to the bottom. The birds, stricken in midflight, fell to the ground as little lifeless balls. One day Tanya gathered up one of these birds just outside the house and put it on a bench near the stove. “It may recover in the warmth,” she thought. But the little bird did not stir. The hoarfrost on its feathers simply glistened in fine droplets.
In April they had their son. “He’s so like you, Ivan,” said Vera, the woman with the swarthy complexion. “He’ll be a Hero, too.” The child was crying and she had picked him up and handed him to his father.
Toward evening Tanya began to feel breathless. They opened the window to let in the cool April dusk. Vera gave her an infusion to drink but nothing brought her comfort. The nearest doctor lived in a village a dozen miles away. Ivan put on his overcoat and set off at a run on the deeply rutted road. He did not return till the early hours of the morning. He had borne the old doctor on his back the whole way.
The injections and medicines brought Tanya some relief. Ivan and the doctor, both of them light-headed with weariness after their sleepless night, sat down to drink some tea. Vera brought a little crock of goat’s milk, warmed it and fed the child.
Before going on his way the doctor downed a small glass of samogon and said: “Now then, if ever her heart falters you must give her this powder. But, strictly speaking, she shouldn’t have had a child, she shouldn’t even knead dough … Yes I know, I know, soldier… when you’re young … I was young once myself” He winked knowingly at Ivan and set off toward the main road.
They called their son Kolka, like Ivan’s baby brother who was killed by the Germans.
In the spring, as ill luck would have it, the kolkhoz s only horse died just before plowing time. Of late they had had nothing to give it but rotten hay and dried stems.
One morning they saw the Party’s local boss, the Secretary of the District Committee, arriving in a jolting jeep. No sooner had he jumped down from his vehicle than he pounced on the head of the kolkhoz.
“So that’s your game, is it? Sabotage, you son of a whore? You want to screw up the entire grain plan for the region? Well, I’m warning you. The perpetrators of deeds like that get shot as enemies of the people!”
He inspected the whole kolkhoz, cast an eye over the smithy and the stable. “Where’s the horse?” he demanded. “What? Dead? Don’t give me that crap. It’s dead? You’re a saboteur!”
They went out into the fields. The Party Secretary continued to fulminate. “Oh! So now he hasn’t enough land for sowing…. There’s no end to his whining, this son of a dog. Look there. What’s that? Isn’t that land? Left in your hands, you filthy kulak, land like this is land gone to waste.”
They had stopped beside a muddy field that ran down to the river. It was strewn with large white boulders. “Why don’t you clear away those rocks?” the Secretary yelled again. “Well? I’m talking to you.”
The head of the kolkhoz, who up to that moment had not opened his mouth, absently tucked the empty sleeve of his tunic into his belt with his remaining hand. In a hoarse voice he said: “Those are not rocks, Comrade Secretary….”
“So what are they, then?” yelled the other. “Are you telling me they’re sugar beets that grew there all by themselves?”
They went closer. Then they saw that the white stones were human skulls.
“That’s where our men tried to break through the ring of enemy troops,” said the head of the kolkhoz in a dull voice. “They were caught in crossfire….”
Choking with fury, the Party Secretary hissed: “All you can do is give me goddamned stories. You’re a fine bunch of Heroes here in this neck of the woods. You’re sheltering behind your past exploits, the lot of you!”
Ashen-faced, Ivan advanced on him, grasped him by the lapel of his black leather jacket, and shouted in his face: “You filthy scum! At the front I shot down bastards like you with my submachine gun. Would you care to repeat what you said about Heroes …?”
The Party Secretary gave a shrill cry, wrenched himself free from Ivan and flung himself into the jeep. He leaned out the window and yelled above the sound of the engine: “Better watch out, head man! You’ll answer for the plan with your life. And as for you, Hero, you’ve not seen the last of me.”
The vehicle made the spring mud fly as it bounced along over the ruts.
They went back to the village in silence. The cool, acrid smell of humus wafted across from the forest where the snow had melted. The first plants were already appearing on the little hills. As they parted, the head of the kolkhoz said to Ivan: “Vanya, you were wrong to give him a shaking. You know what they say, don’t touch shit and it won’t stink. In any case, what we have to do tomorrow is start plowing. And not on account of that idiot’s orders …”
The next day Ivan was making his way forward, leaning on the plow, stumbling over the ruts, slithering on the glistening clods of earth. With the aid of ropes fixed to the draft beam, the plow was being drawn along by two women. On the right walked Vera, in big sagging boots, that looked like elephants’ feet on account of the mud. On the left Ivan’s childhood friend, Lida. She still wore her schoolgirl’s skirt, which left her knees bare.
The morning was limpid and sunny. Busily the crows were taking off and settling again on the plowed land. Fluttering past, hesitant and fragile, the first butterfly shone in a brief yellow flurry.
Ivan kept his eyes on the backs and feet of the two women as they struggled forward. Sometimes the plowshare dug in too deeply. The women braced themselves against the ropes. Then Ivan manipulated the handles of the plow, trying to help them. The steel plowshare sliced through the earth, wrenched itself free, and they continued their walk. An
d again Ivan saw the elephants’ feet and the jackets discolored by the sun and rain. “The war …” he thought. “Everything stems from there…. Take Lidka, hardly married and her husband sent to the front. Straight into the front line, into the mincing machine. A month later the death notice and there she is, a widow. A widow at eighteen. What a crying shame! And look how much she’s aged! You’d scarcely recognize her. And those varicose veins! Like dark strings on her legs. She used to sing so well. The old folks would climb down off their stoves to listen to her, while we, young idiots, used to fight over her like cocks….”
They stopped at the end of the furrow and straightened themselves up. “Take a rest, girls,” said Ivan. “We’ll have lunch.” They sat down on the ground, on last year’s dry, brittle grass, unwrapped their sparse meal from a cloth. Unhurriedly they began to eat.
Spring had come. What lay in wait for them was the great drought of 1946.
By the month of May they had already reached the stage of boiling up the half-wild orache plants that grew by the roadside, tossing in a little scrap of rancid bacon and eating this brew in an attempt to cheat their hunger.
In June the burning wind of the steppes began to blow. The new grass began to shrivel and the leaves began to fall. The sun scorched the young corn to a cinder, dried up streams, struck down the starving people who went out in the fields. Even the wild strawberries that could be found at the edge of the forest had hardened into bitter, dry little balls.
At Goritsy one of the peasants arranged with the head of the kolkhoz to go and see what was happening in the neighboring villages. He returned five days later gaunt, with staring eyes, and very quietly, as if he were afraid of his own voice, and constantly looking over his shoulder, began to tell his story: “At Bor there are only two men still alive. At Valyaevka there’s not a soul in sight. No one to dig graves: when folks die they just stay in their izbas…. You sure get the jitters going into one. Every time you push open a door it’s a nightmare. I met a peasant on the high road yesterday. He was heading for the city. The hunger drove him to it. He told me that where he came from they were eating the dead, like they did on the Volga in the twenties….”
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