‘We’re going into an attack …’
‘And so are we.’
‘Well, how are you getting on, Ivan Alexievitch?’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘The same here. I haven’t been out of the trenches since 1914.’
‘Do you remember Stockman? He was a lad, was our Osip Davidovitch! He’d tell us what it was all about. He was a man, if ever there was one …’
‘Do I remember him!’ Valet cried, shaking his tiny fist and crinkling his little bristly face into a smile. ‘I remember him better than my own father. You never heard how he got on, did you?’
‘He’s in Siberia,’ Ivan Alexievitch sighed.
‘How?’ Valet asked, bobbing up and down beside his friend, and turning up his foxy ear.
‘He’s in prison. For all I know he may be dead now.’
Valet walked along without speaking for a moment or two, now looking back to where his company was assembling, then gazing up at Ivan’s chin and the deep round dimple right under the lower lip.
‘Goodbye!’ he said, releasing his hand from Ivan’s. ‘I don’t suppose we shall be seeing each other again.’
With his left hand the cossack removed his cap, and bending down he put his arms round Valet’s shoulders. They kissed each other strongly, as though saying good-bye for ever, and Valet dropped back. His head suddenly sank on his breast, so that only the dark rosy tips of his ears emerged from his grey greatcoat. He turned back, huddled up and stumbling over his feet.
Ivan Alexievitch broke away from the rank, and called with a quiver in his voice:
‘Hey, brother! Brother! You were bitter, weren’t you! D’you remember? You were a strong one … ah?’
Valet turned his tear-stained face, and beat his fist on his bony breast through his open greatcoat and torn shirt.
‘I was! I was hard! But they’ve crushed me now … They’ve driven the old horse to death!’
He shouted something else, but the cossack company turned into a side street, and Ivan lost sight of him.
As the cossacks marched out of the village they began to fall in with wounded, at first in ones and twos, then in groups of several at a time, at last in entire droves. Several carts filled to overflowing with serious cases dragged slowly along. The mares pulling at the traces were terribly emaciated. Their skinny backs revealed the marks of incessant whipping, and in places the bones showed through the wounds. They hauled the carts along with difficulty, snorting and straining, with their nostrils almost touching the mud. Occasionally one would stop, her sunken sides heaving impotently and her head hanging despondently. A blow of a whip would stir her from the spot, and she would drag on again, swaying from side to side. All around the carts wounded men were clinging, assisting themselves along.
The cossack company turned off the road and entered the forest. Until evening they were huddled together under the streaming pines. The rain leaked beneath their collars and wandered down their backs; they were forbidden to strike any lights, but in any case it would have been difficult to do so in the rain. As dusk was falling they were led off into a trench. Not very deep, hardly more than a man’s height, it was flooded with water and stank of slime, of sodden pine-cones and the moist, velvety soft smell of rain. From the trench the company was led on again through the darkling pine forest. They marched along endeavouring to encourage one another with jest. Someone began to whistle.
In a small glade they came upon a long trail of corpses. The bodies lay flung down shoulder to shoulder, in various, frequently horrible and indecent postures. A soldier armed with a rifle, a gas-mask hanging from his belt, stood on guard over them. The cossacks were led close to the bodies, and they caught the cloying scent of decay already coming from them. The company commander halted the company, went with the troop officers up to the soldier, and stood talking to him for a minute or two. Meantime the cossacks broke rank and went over to the bodies, removing their caps and staring down at the forms with that feeling of secret, fluttering fear and bestial curiosity which all living beings experience before the mystery of the dead. The bodies were those of officers, and the cossacks counted forty-seven of them. The majority were youngsters between twenty and twenty-five years old, judging by their looks. Only the one on the extreme right, who was wearing the epaulettes of a staff-captain, was elderly. His mouth was wide open, concealing the mute echoes of his last cry in its yawning depths; above it hung heavy black whiskers; the broad brows frowned across his deathly pallid face. Two or three of them had no covering to their heads. The cossacks stood staring long at the figure of one lieutenant, handsome even in death. He lay on his back, his left arm pressed against his chest, his right flung out and holding a pistol in an everlasting grip. Evidently someone had tried to take the weapon away; his broad yellow wrist was scratched; but the steel had fused to his hand, and they would never be separated. On his curly flaxen hair was a broken cap. His face was pressed cheek downward to the earth, as though fondling it, and his orange-bluish lips were contemptuously, amazedly writhed. His right-hand neighbour lay face downward, his greatcoat hummocked on his back with its tail torn away, revealing his strong legs with their tautened muscles in khaki-coloured trousers and short chrome yellow boots, the heels twisted to one side. He had no cap, nor had he the upper part of his cranium, for it had been cut clean away by a shard of shrapnel. In the empty brain-pan, framed by damp strands of hair, glimmered rose-coloured rainwater. Next to him lay a stout little officer in an open leather jerkin and a torn shirt. His lower jaw rested crookedly on his bare breast; below the hair of his head glimmered a narrow white band of forehead with the skin burnt and shrivelled into a little tube. Between the brow and the jaw were merely pieces of bone and a thick black and crimson mash. Beyond these were carelessly gathered pieces of limbs, rags of overcoats, a crushed leg where the head should have been. Then came a boy with full lips and a charming oval face. A stream of machine-gun bullets had swept across his chest, his greatcoat was holed in four places, and burnt knobs of flesh were sticking through the holes.
‘Who … who was he calling for in his hour of death? His mother?’ Ivan Alexievitch stuttered with chattering teeth, and turned sharply away, stumbling as though blind.
The cossacks hurriedly returned to their places, crossing themselves and not glancing back. They preserved a long silence as they passed on through the narrow glades, hastening to get away from the memory of what they had seen. After some time the company was halted close to a dense network of abandoned dugouts. The officers entered one of the dugouts, and the men stood at ease. Darkness closed over the forest. The wind sent the clouds scurrying, and tore them apart to reveal the lilac points of the distant stars. Meantime the commander assembled the officers in the dugout, and opening a packet by the light of a stump of candle, acquainted them with the instructions of the staff command.
While the cossacks were resting in the dugouts the first battalion of the Chornogorsk regiment passed in front of them. The dense forest was heavily holed with shells. The soldiers marched cautiously, feeling the ground with their feet; occasionally someone would fall and curse under his breath. Valet was in the company on the extreme right, and was sixth from the end of the long file.
‘Hey! neighbour!’ someone suddenly whispered to the left of him.
‘Hallo?’ he replied.
‘Going all right?’
‘All right!’ Valet said, immediately stumbling and sitting down in a shell-hole filled with water.
‘It’s dark, devilish dark!’ he heard on his left.
They went on for a minute or two, invisible to each other, then unexpectedly the same hissing voice whispered right into Valet’s ear:
‘Let’s go together. It isn’t so bad then …’
They went on in silence, setting their water-logged boots cautiously down on the slippery earth. Suddenly, a horned and spotted moon broke from behind the clouds, breasting the misty waves like a boat; emerging into clear sky, it poured down a
flood of uncertain light. The damp pine needles gleamed phosphorescently in its light, and the cones seemed to smell more strongly and the wet soil to breathe more coolly.
They hurried along to overtake the file of men. But in the darkness they missed them and somehow got in front. After wandering on for some time they jumped down into a dark cleft of trench zigzagging off into the darkness.
‘Let’s search the dugouts. We may find something to eat,’ Valet’s comrade proposed irresolutely.
‘All right.’
‘You go to the right, I’ll take the left. We’ll search while the others are coming up.’
Valet struck a match and stepped through the open doorway of the first dugout he found. But he flew out again as though expelled by a catapult; inside, two dead bodies lay crossed one on the other. He searched three dugouts fruitlessly, and flung open the door of a fourth, all but collapsing as he heard a strange metallic voice speaking German:
‘Who is that?’
His body tingling, Valet silently jumped back.
‘Is that you, Otto? Why have you been so long?’ the German asked, stepping out of the dugout and carelessly adjusting his greatcoat across his shoulders.
‘Hands up! Hands up! Surrender!’ Valet shouted hoarsely.
Mute with astonishment, the German slowly raised his hands, turned sideways, and stared fixedly at the gleaming point of the bayonet presented at him. His greatcoat fell from his shoulders, his big, work-scarred hands trembled above his head, and the fingers stirred as though playing on invisible strings of fear. Valet stood without changing his position, gazing at the tall, stalwart form of the German, the metal buttons of his tunic, the short boots, and the peakless cap set slightly on one side. Suddenly changing his attitude, he swayed as though being shaken out of his greatcoat, emitted a curt, throaty sound, neither cough nor wheeze, and stepped towards the German.
‘Run!’ he said in a hollow, broken voice. ‘Run, German! I’ve got no grudge against you! I won’t shoot!’
He leant his rifle against the wall of the trench, and rising on tiptoe, stretched his hand up to the right hand of the German. His confident movements reassured the man, who dropped his hand and listened intently to the unfamiliar intonation of the Russian’s voice.
Without hesitation Valet gave him his own hairy, labour-worn hand, and squeezed the German’s cold, limp fingers. Then he lifted the palm. The light of the moon fell on it and revealed the brown callouses.
‘I’m a worker,’ Valet said, trembling with his smile as though with the ague. ‘What should I kill you for? Run!’ He gently pushed the German’s shoulder and pointed to the black outline of the forest. ‘Run, you fool! Our men will be here soon …’
The German stood staring at Valet’s outflung hand, his body a little forward, his ears straining to catch the sense of the incomprehensible words. So he stood for a second or two, his eyes meeting Valet’s, then suddenly a joyous smile quivered on his lips. Stepping backward a pace he threw out his arms, strongly squeezed Valet’s hands, and shook them, smiling agitatedly and staring into the Russian’s eyes.
‘You’re letting me go? Oh, now I understand … You’re a Russian worker? A Social-Democrat like me? Yes …? My brother, how can I ever forget …? I cannot find words … But you’re a fine lad … I …’
Amid the boiling torrent of foreign words Valet caught the one familiar ‘Social-Democrat’. He swept his yellow palm across and slapped it against his chest.
‘Yes. I’m a Social-Democrat. You’ve guessed right, old lad. And now, run …! Good-bye, brother. Give me your hand. We’re brothers you know, and brothers shouldn’t part like this.’
Strongly moved, intuitively understanding each other, they stood with clasped hands, staring into each other’s eyes. From the forest came the sounds of the approaching chain of Russians. The German whispered:
‘In the coming class struggle we shall be in the same trenches, shan’t we, comrade?’ Then he leapt like a great grey animal on to the breastwork.
A moment or two later the file of Russian soldiers came up, a Czech reconnaissance party with the officers at their head. They all but fired at Valet’s companion as he crawled out of a dugout.
‘I’m Russian, can’t you see?’ he cried frantically, hugging a loaf of black bread to his breast, as he saw the barrel of a rifle pointed at him.
Just before dawn the Czech reconnaissance party ran up against a German observation post. The Germans shattered the silence with a volley of shots. At equal intervals they fired two more volleys. Over the trenches soared a crimson rocket, and its purple sparks had hardly died away when the German artillery opened fire. The sound of the exploding shells came from far behind the Russian forces, somewhere by the Stokhod river.
As soon as the first shot was fired, the company, moving up nearly a hundred yards behind the Czechs, threw itself down headlong. The rocket shed a ruddy glow over the ground. By its light Valet saw the soldiers crawling like ants among the bushes and trees, no longer careful of the muddy soil, but pressing against it in their search for protection. The men heaped around every rut, disappeared behind every tiny earthy mound, thrust their heads into every little hole. Nevertheless, when the stuttering machine-gun fire luxuriantly flooded the forest like a May downpour, they could not hold their positions. Their heads buried between their shoulders, clinging like caterpillars to the ground, moving without stirring an arm or a leg, creeping like snakes and leaving their traces in the mud behind them, they crawled back. Some jumped to their feet and ran. Lashing up the cones, splintering the pines, the exploding bullets skipped and tore through the forest, rending into the earth, hissing like serpents.
Seventeen men were missing from the first half-company of the Chornogorsk regiment when it reached the second line of trenches again. A little way off, the cossacks of the special company were also assembling. They had advanced on the right of the Chornogorsk half-company, had moved cautiously, and might have taken the Germans by surprise, overwhelming the outposts. But when the fire was opened on the Czechs the Germans were put on the alert along the entire sector. Firing at random, the enemy had killed two cossacks and wounded another.
Within half an hour a further order came from the regimental staff. After the ground had been prepared by an artillery bombardment, the Chornogorsk regiment and the special cossack company were again to attack the enemy and to drive him out of the first line of trenches.
Chapter Twelve
Twenty-five miles lower down the Stokhod, the river of a hundred ways, the battle was raging. For three weeks the roar of the artillery had continued without ceasing. Of nights the distant violet heaven was shredded with the rays of searchlights sowing dim rainbow beams, infecting with inexplicable uneasiness those who watched from afar the flames and explosions of war.
Meantime the Twelfth Cossack regiment to which Gregor’s company belonged was holding a wild and swampy sector. By day they fired occasional shots at the Austrians lining the shallow trenches opposite. By night, protected by the marsh, they slept or played cards. Only the guards watched the fitful orange outbursts of light where the struggle was being continued, some twenty-five miles lower down the Stokhod river.
On one of those tingling frosty nights when the distant reflections flickered more clearly than usual against the sky, Gregor Melekhov left his dugout and made his way along a communication trench into the forest, which stood out behind the trenches in a grey brush over the black skull of a low hill. He flung himself down on the spacious, scented earth. The air was stifling and oppressive in the dugout, a brown tobacco-smoke hung like a shaggy blanket over the table around which eight cossacks were playing cards. But through the forest on the hill-crest a breeze was blowing, quietly as though fanned from the wings of invisible passing birds. A mournful scent arose from the frost-bitten grasses. Above the shell-sheared forest gathered the darkness; the smoking fire of the Pleiades was burning out in the sky, the Great Bear lay to one side of the Milky Way like an overturned wa
in with the shaft sticking up, in the north the Pole Star gleamed with a steady, fading light.
Gregor stared up at the star, and its icy light, dim, yet strangely prickling to his eyes, caused cold tears to spring beneath his eyelashes. A rush of memory brought all the past years of the war vividly before him. He recalled the night when he had gone to Aksinia at Yagodnoe. He remembered her with sudden pain, the dear yet alien outlines of her face appearing uncertainly before him. With beating heart he tried to recall that face as he had seen it for the last time, distorted with pain, the livid mark of the knout on her cheek. But memory persistently suggested another face, held slightly on one side, and smiling pallidly. Now again Aksinia turned her face confidently and amorously, looking up at him with fierily black eyes, her depravedly avid, crimson lips whispering something inexpressibly caressing; then she slowly turned her eyes, her head, away from him, and he saw the two fluffy curls on her swarthy neck. How he had loved to kiss them!
Gregor shuddered. For a moment he thought he could even smell the fine, intoxicating aroma of Aksinia’s hair, and he dilated his nostrils. But no! It was the troubling scent of fallen leaves. The oval of Aksinia’s face faded and passed. He closed his eyes, pressed his palm to the rough skin of the earth, and lay staring unwinkingly beyond the broken pines, at the Pole Star hanging like a blue butterfly in motionless flight.
Other memories obscured Aksinia’s features. He recalled the weeks he had spent at Tatarsk with his family after his break with Aksinia; of nights Natalia’s greedy, ravaging embraces, as though she were trying to make up for her previous virgin iciness; during the days the watchful and almost challenging attitude of his family, and the respect with which the villagers greeted their first ‘cavalier’ of St George. Everywhere, even in his own home, Gregor caught sidelong, astonished and respectful glances. They examined him as though they could not believe it was the same Gregor who had been such a self-willed and merry lad. The old men talked to him as an equal, and took off their hats when they met him; the girls and women stared with unconcealed admiration at his trim, slightly stooping figure and the cross on his breast. He noticed how obviously his father was proud of him as they walked together to church or to the square. And all this subtle, complex poison of flattery, respect, and admiration gradually submerged and erased from his consciousness the truth which Garanzha had implanted. Gregor returned to Tatarsk one man, and went back to the front another. His own cossack, national traditions, sucked in with his mother’s milk and loved all his life, rose above the greater human truth.
And Quiet Flows the Don Page 35