Life and Fate

by Vasily Grossman

  But no! No! And again no! Fascism will perish for the very reason that it has applied to man the laws applicable to atoms and cobblestones!

  Man and Fascism cannot co-exist. If Fascism conquers, man will cease to exist and there will remain only man-like creatures that have undergone an internal transformation. But if man, man who is endowed with reason and kindness, should conquer, then Fascism must perish, and those who have submitted to it will once again become people.

  Was not this an admission on his part of the truth of what Chepyzhin had once said? That discussion now seemed infinitely far away, as though decades had passed since that summer evening in Moscow.

  It seemed to have been another man – not Viktor at all – who had walked through Trubnaya Square, arguing heatedly and self-confidently.

  Mother . . . Marusya . . . Tolya . . .

  There were moments when science seemed like a delusion that prevented one from seeing the madness and cruelty of life. It might be that science was not a chance companion, but an ally of this terrible century. How lonely he felt. There was no one he could share his thoughts with. Chepyzhin was far away. Postoev found all this strange and uninteresting. Sokolov had a tendency towards mysticism, towards some strange religious submissiveness before the injustice and cruelty of Caesar.

  There were two outstanding scientists who worked in his laboratory – Markov, who carried out the experiments, and the brilliant, debauched Savostyanov. But they’d think he was a psychopath if he started talking like this.

  Sometimes he took his mother’s letter out of his desk and read it through again.

  ‘Vitya, I’m certain this letter will reach you, even though I’m now behind the German front line, behind the barbed wire of the Jewish ghetto . . . Where can I find the strength, my son . . . ?’

  And once more he felt a cold blade against his throat.

  20

  Lyudmila Nikolaevna took an official envelope out of the letter-box.

  She rushed into her room; holding the envelope up to the light, she tore off one corner of the coarse paper.

  For a moment she thought that photographs of Tolya would come pouring out of the envelope – of Tolya when he was tiny, still unable to hold up his head, lying naked on a pillow, pouting his lips and waving his little legs in the air like a bear-cub.

  In some incomprehensible manner, hardly reading the words, but somehow absorbing, almost breathing in, line after line of the red handwriting of some uneducated clerk, she understood: he’s alive, he’s alive!

  She read that Tolya was seriously wounded in the chest and in his side, that he had lost a lot of blood and was too weak to write to her himself, that he had had a fever for four weeks . . . But her eyes were clouded by tears of happiness – so great was the despair she had felt a moment before.

  She went out onto the staircase, read the first lines of the letter and, her mind at rest, walked down to the woodshed. There, in the cold twilight, she read the middle and end of the letter and thought that this was Tolya’s final farewell to her.

  She began filling a sack with firewood. And – although the doctor in Moscow, at the University Clinic in Gagarin Alley, had ordered her not to lift more than three kilograms and to make only slow, smooth movements – Lyudmila Nikolaevna, grunting like a peasant and without a moment’s hesitation, hoisted a sack of wet logs onto her shoulders and climbed straight to the third floor. The plates on the table clattered as she threw down the sack.

  Lyudmila put on her coat, threw a scarf over her head and walked downstairs to the street.

  People passing by turned round to look at her. She crossed the street; there was the harsh sound of a bell and the tram-driver shook her fist.

  If she turned right, there was an alley which would take her to the factory where her mother worked.

  If Tolya were to die, no one would ever tell his father . . . How would they know what camp to look for him in? Maybe he was already dead . . .

  Lyudmila set off to the Institute to see Viktor. As she passed by the Sokolovs’, she walked into the yard and knocked at the window. The curtain remained drawn. Marya Ivanovna was out.

  ‘Viktor Pavlovich has just gone to his office,’ said a voice. Lydumila said thank you without knowing who had just spoken to her – whether it was a man or a woman, whether it was someone she knew or someone she didn’t know – and walked through to the laboratory hall. As usual, hardly anyone was actually working. The men always seemed to be chatting or reading and smoking, while the women were always knitting, boiling tea in chemical retorts, or removing their nail-varnish.

  She was aware of everything, all kinds of trivia, even the paper with which an assistant was rolling himself a cigarette.

  In Viktor’s office she was given a noisy welcome. Sokolov rushed up to her, waving a large white envelope, and said: ‘There’s a ray of hope. We may be re-evacuated to Moscow, together with our families and all our gear and apparatus. Not bad, eh? Admittedly, the dates haven’t been fixed yet. But still!’

  His animated face and eyes were quite hateful. Surely Marya Ivanovna wouldn’t have come running up to her like that? No, no. Marya Ivanovna would have understood straight away – she would have been able to read Lyudmila’s face.

  If she’d known she’d see so many happy faces, she’d never have come to see Viktor. He too would be bubbling with joy, and in the evening he would share this joy of his with Nadya – yes, now at last they would be leaving this hateful Kazan!

  Would all the people in the world be worth the young blood that was the price of this joy?

  She looked reproachfully at her husband. And Viktor’s eyes looked with anxiety and understanding into hers, which were full of gloom.

  When they were finally alone, he said he’d realized at once that something terrible had happened. He read through the letter and said: ‘What can we do? Dear God, what can we do?’

  Then he put on his coat and they walked out towards the exit.

  ‘I won’t be back today,’ he said to Sokolov.

  Sokolov was standing next to Dubyonkov, the recently appointed director of the personnel department, a tall round-headed man in a fashionable, broad-fitting jacket that was still too narrow for his wide shoulders.

  Letting go of Lyudmila’s hand for a moment, Viktor said to Dubyonkov in an undertone: ‘We were going to start on the Moscow re-evacuation lists, but it will have to wait. I’ll explain why afterwards.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Viktor Pavlovich,’ said Dubyonkov in his bass voice. ‘There’s no hurry. They’re just plans for the future. Anyway I can do all the basic work by myself.’

  Sokolov waved and nodded his head. Viktor knew he had already guessed that another tragedy had befallen him.

  There was a cold wind out on the street. It picked up the dust, whirled it about and suddenly scattered it, flinging it down like black chaff. There was an implacable severity in the frost, in the branches that tapped together like bones, in the icy blue of the tram-lines.

  Viktor’s wife turned her thin, cold face towards him. It had grown younger from suffering. She looked at him fixedly, entreatingly.

  Once they had had a young cat. As she was giving birth to her first litter, there had been one kitten she hadn’t been able to get out. As she was dying, she had crawled up to Viktor and cried, staring at him with wide, bright eyes. But who was there in this vast empty sky, on this pitiless, dusty earth – who was there to beg or entreat?

  ‘There’s the hospital where I used to work,’ said Lyudmila.

  ‘Lyuda,’ said Viktor suddenly, ‘Why don’t you go in? They’ll be able to locate the field hospital for you. Why didn’t I think of that before?’

  He watched Lyudmila climb up the steps and explain herself to the janitor.

  Viktor walked round the corner and then paced back to the main entrance. People were rushing along with their string bags; inside them were glass jars full of grey potatoes or bits of macaroni in a grey soup.

  ‘Vitya,’ his wife
called out. He could tell from her voice that she had regained her self-possession.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘he’s in Saratov. The assistant medical director happens to have been there not long ago. He’s written down the address for me.’

  At once there was a mass of things to do and problems to sort out. She needed to know when the steamer left and how she could get a ticket; she’d need to pack some food and borrow some money; and somehow she’d have to get an official authorization . . .

  Lyudmila Nikolaevna left with no food, none of her things, and almost no money; in the general confusion and bustle of embarkation she made her way onto the deck without a ticket.

  All she took with her was the memory of parting with her husband, her mother and Nadya on a dark autumn evening. Black waves lapped noisily against the sides of the boat. A fierce wind blew from downstream, howling and flinging up spray from the river.

  21

  Dementiy Trifonovich Getmanov, the secretary of the obkomfn1 of one of the German-occupied areas of the Ukraine, had been appointed commissar of a tank corps now being formed in the Urals.

  Before setting out to join the corps, Getmanov flew in a Douglas to Ufa where his family had been evacuated.

  His comrades in Ufa had looked after his family well; their living conditions turned out to be not bad at all. Getmanov’s wife, Galina Terentyevna, had a poor metabolism and had always been remarkably stout; rather than growing thinner since being evacuated, she had put on still more weight. His two daughters and his youngest son, who had not yet begun school, all seemed in good health.

  Getmanov was in Ufa for five days. Before his departure several of his closest friends came round to say goodbye: his wife’s younger brother, Nikolay Terentyevich, who was the deputy office-manager of the Ukrainian Council of People’s Commissars; one of his old comrades, Mashuk from Kiev, an official in the State security organs; and his sister-in-law’s husband, Sagaydak, an executive in the propaganda department of the Ukrainian Central Committee.

  Sagaydak arrived after ten o’clock, when the children had already gone to bed and people were talking in undertones.

  ‘How about a quick drink, comrades?’ asked Getmanov. ‘A drop of vodka from Moscow?’

  Taken separately, each one of Getmanov’s features was large: his shaggy, greying head, his broad forehead, his fleshy nose, the palms of his hands, his fingers, his shoulders, his thick powerful neck . . . But he himself, the combination of these parts, was quite small. Strangely, it was his small eyes that were the most attractive and memorable feature of his large face. They were narrow, almost invisible beneath his swollen eyelids. Even their colour was somehow uncertain – neither grey nor blue. But there was something very alive about them, something penetrating and shrewd.

  Galina Terentyevna, rising effortlessly despite her corpulent body, left the room. The men fell silent, as often happens – both in a village hut and in the city – when vodka is about to appear. Soon Galina Terentyevna returned with a tray. It seemed surprising that her large hands should have been able, in such a short time, to set out so many plates and open so many tins of food.

  Mashuk glanced round at the wide ottoman, the Ukrainian embroidery hanging on the walls, the hospitable array of tins and bottles.

  ‘I can remember that ottoman from your flat, Galina Terentyevna,’ he said. ‘Let me congratulate you on getting it out. You’ve got a real talent for organization.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ said Getmanov. ‘And I wasn’t even at home when we were evacuated. She did it all by herself!’

  ‘I couldn’t just give it away to the Germans,’ said Galina. ‘Anyway Dima’s used to it. When he comes home, he sits straight down on it and starts going over his work.’

  ‘You mean he comes home and goes straight to sleep on it,’ said Sagaydak.

  She went out to the kitchen again. Mashuk gave Getmanov a broad wink. ‘I can see the woman already!’ he said under his breath. ‘Our Dementiy Trifonovich isn’t one to waste time. He’ll soon be friends with some pretty young medical officer.’

  ‘Yes, he’s a passionate man,’ agreed Sagaydak.

  Getmanov brushed this aside. ‘Come off it now. I’m an invalid.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mashuk. ‘And who used to come back to his tent at three in the morning in Kislovodsk?’

  The guests all burst out laughing. Getmanov glanced quickly but intently at his wife’s brother. Galina came back into the room. Seeing everyone in fits of laughter, she said: ‘I only have to be out of the room for half a minute and you’re all talking nonsense to my poor Dima!’

  Getmanov filled the glasses with vodka. With great deliberation, the guests began choosing something to eat. Looking at the portrait of Stalin on the wall, Getmanov raised his glass and said: ‘Well, comrades, let’s drink first of all to our father. May he always remain in good health!’

  He pronounced these words in a rather bluff, free-and-easy tone of voice. The implication was that they all understood Stalin’s greatness very well, but were drinking to him now as a human being, someone they loved for his straightforwardness, modesty and sensitivity. And Stalin himself, looking up and down the table and then at the ample breasts of Galina Terentyevna, appeared to say: ‘Very well, fellows, I’ll just get my pipe going. Then I’ll bring my chair up a bit closer.’

  ‘That’s right, may our father live for a long time! Where would we be without him?’ said Nikolay Terentyevich.

  Holding his glass to his lips, Getmanov looked round at Sagaydak, as though expecting him to say something. Sagaydak just looked at the portrait as if to say, ‘What more needs to be said, Father? You already know everything.’ He downed his vodka and the others followed suit.

  Dementiy Trifonovich Getmanov had been born in Liven in the province of Voronezh, but had worked many years in the Ukraine and had long-standing ties with his Ukrainian comrades. His links with Kiev had been further consolidated by his marriage to Galina Terentyevna: her many relatives occupied conspicuous positions in the Party and Soviet apparatus in the Ukraine.

  Getmanov’s life had been relatively uneventful. He had not taken part in the Civil War. He had not been hunted by the police and had never been exiled to Siberia at the decree of a Tsarist court. At conferences and congresses he usually read his reports from a written text. Even though he had not written them himself, he read these reports well, expressively and without hesitation. Admittedly, they were by no means difficult to read – they were printed in large type, double-spaced, and with the name of Stalin always in red. As a young man, Getmanov had been intelligent and disciplined; he had intended to study at the Mechanical Institute but had been recruited for work in the security organs. Soon he had become the bodyguard of the secretary of the kraykom, the area Party committee. He was taken notice of and sent on courses for Party workers. Then he was accepted for work in the Party apparatus – first in the organizational and educational department of the kraykom, then in the personnel department of the Central Committee. After a year he became an assistant in the Senior Appointments Department. And in 1937 he became secretary of the obkom, the oblast Party committee – ‘master of the oblast’, as people said.

  His word could decide the fate of a head of a university department, an engineer, a bank manager, a chairman of a trade union, a collective farm or a theatrical production.

  The confidence of the Party! Getmanov knew the immense meaning of these words. His whole life – which contained no great books, famous discoveries or military victories – was one sustained, intense, unsleeping labour. The supreme meaning of this labour lay in the fact that it was done at the demand of the Party and for the sake of the Party. The supreme reward for this labour was to be granted the confidence of the Party.

  Every decision he made had to be infused with the spirit of the Party and be conducive to its interests, whether the issue in question was the fate of a child being sent to a home, the reorganization of a university biology department, or the eviction from premises belong
ing to a library of a workers’ co-operative producing articles made from plastic. The attitude of a Party leader to any matter, to any film, to any book, had to be infused with the spirit of the Party; however difficult it might be, he had to immediately renounce a favourite book or a customary way of behaviour if the interests of the Party should conflict with his personal sympathies. But Getmanov knew that there was a still higher form of Party spirit: a true Party leader simply didn’t have personal likings or inclinations; he loved something only because, and only in so far as, it expressed the spirit of the Party.

  The sacrifices made by Getmanov in the name of Party loyalty were sometimes cruel. In this world neighbours from the same village or teachers to whom one had been indebted since youth no longer existed; love or sympathy were no longer to be reckoned with. Nor could one be disturbed by such words as ‘turned away from’, ‘failed to support’, ‘ruined’, ‘betrayed’ . . . But true Party spirit showed itself when a sacrifice was not even necessary, when no personal feeling could survive for even a moment if it happened to clash with the spirit of the Party.

  The labour of those who enjoy the confidence of the Party is imperceptible. But it is a vast labour – one must expend one’s mind and soul generously, keeping nothing back. The power of a Party leader does not require the talent of a scientist or the gift of a writer. It is something higher than any talent or gift. Getmanov’s guiding word was anxiously awaited by hundreds of singers, writers and scientific researchers – though Getmanov himself was not only unable to sing, play the piano or direct a theatrical production, but incapable even of truly understanding a work of science, poetry, music or painting . . . The power of his word lay in the fact that the Party had entrusted him with its own interests in the area of art and culture.

  No thinker, no people’s tribune could enjoy as much power as Getmanov – the secretary of the Party organization of an entire oblast.