A political instructor in a grey mackintosh ran past, holding up a well-filled knapsack. Then a group of soldiers came past carrying some anti-tank shells on a tarpaulin, together with a few loaves of bread.
The corpse no longer needed bread or weapons; nor was he hoping for a letter from his faithful wife. His death had not made him strong – he was the weakest thing in the world, a dead sparrow that not even the moths and midges were afraid of.
Some soldiers were mounting their gun in a breach in the wall, arguing with the crew of a heavy machine-gun and cursing. From their gestures Krymov could more or less guess what they were saying.
‘Do you realize how long our machine-gun’s stood here? We were hard at it when you lot were still hanging about on the left bank!’
‘Well, you are a bunch of cheeky buggers!’
There was a loud whine, and a shell burst in a corner of the workshop. Shrapnel rattled across the walls. Krymov’s guide looked round to see if he was still there. He waited a moment and said:
‘Don’t worry, comrade Commissar, this isn’t yet the front line. We’re still way back in the rear.’
It wasn’t long before Krymov realized the truth of this; the space by the wall was indeed relatively quiet.
They had to run forward, drop flat on the ground, run forward and drop to the ground again. They twice jumped into trenches occupied by the infantry. They ran through burnt-out buildings, where instead of people there was only the whine of metal . . . The soldier said comfortingly: ‘At least there are no dive-bombers,’ then added: ‘Right, comrade Commissar, now we must make for that crater.’
Krymov slid down to the bottom of a bomb-crater and looked up: the blue sky was still over his head and his head was still on his shoulders. It was very strange; the only sign of other human beings was the singing and screaming death that came flying over his head from both sides. It was equally strange to feel so protected in this crater that had been dug out by the spade of death.
Before Krymov had got his breath back, the soldier said, ‘Follow me!’ and crawled down a dark passage leading from the bottom of the crater. Krymov squeezed in after him. Soon the passage widened, the ceiling became higher and they were in a tunnel.
They could still hear the storm raging on the earth’s surface; the ceiling shook and there were repeated peals of thunder. In one place, full of lead piping and cables as thick as a man’s arm, someone had written on the wall in red: ‘Makhov’s a donkey.’ The soldier turned on his torch for a moment and whispered: ‘Now the Germans are right above us.’
Soon they turned off into another narrow passage and began making their way towards a barely perceptible grey light. The light slowly grew brighter and clearer; at the same time the roar of explosions and the chatter of machine-guns became still more furious.
For a moment Krymov thought he was about to mount the scaffold. Then they reached the surface and the first thing he saw was human faces. They seemed divinely calm.
Krymov felt a sense of joy and relief. Even the raging war now seemed no more than a brief storm passing over the head of a young traveller who was full of vitality. He felt certain that he had reached an important turning-point, that his life would continue to change for the better. It was as though this still, clear daylight were a sign of his own future – once again he was to live fully, whole-heartedly, with all his will and intelligence, all his Bolshevik fervour.
This new sense of youth and confidence mingled with his regret for Yevgenia. Now, though, he no longer felt he had lost her for ever. She would return to him – just as his strength and his former life had returned to him. He was on her trail.
A fire was burning in the middle of the floor. An old man, his cap pushed forward, was standing over it, frying potato-cakes on some tin-plating. He turned them over with the point of a bayonet and stacked them in a tin hat when they were done. Spotting the soldier who had accompanied Krymov, he asked: ‘Is Seryozha with you?’
‘There’s an officer present,’ said the soldier sternly.
‘How old are you, Dad?’ Krymov asked.
‘Sixty,’ said the old man. ‘I was transferred from the workers’ militia.’
He turned to the soldier again. ‘Is Seryozha with you?’
‘No, he’s not in our regiment. He must have ended up with our neighbours.’
‘That’s bad,’ said the old man. ‘God knows what will become of him there.’
Krymov greeted various people and looked round the different parts of the cellar with their half-dismantled wooden partitions. In one place there was a field-gun pointing out through a loophole cut in the wall.
‘It’s like a man-of-war,’ said Krymov.
‘Yes, except there’s not much water,’ said the gunner.
Further on, in niches and gaps in the wall, were the mortars. Their long-tailed bombs lay on the floor beside them. There was also an accordion lying on a tarpaulin.
‘So house 6/1 is still holding out!’ said Krymov, his voice ringing, ‘It hasn’t yielded to the Fascists. All over the world, millions of people are watching you and rejoicing.’
No one answered.
Old Polyakov walked up to him and held out the tin hat full of potato-cakes.
‘Has anyone written about Polyakov’s potato-cakes yet?’ asked one soldier.
‘Very funny,’ said Polyakov. ‘But our Seryozha’s been thrown out.’
‘Have they opened the Second Front yet?’ asked another soldier. ‘Have you heard anything?’
‘No,’ said Krymov. ‘Not yet.’
‘Once the heavy artillery on the left bank opened up on us,’ said a soldier with his jacket unbuttoned. ‘Kolomeitsev was knocked off his feet. When he got up he said: “Well, lads, there’s the Second Front for you!”’
‘Don’t talk such rubbish,’ said a young man with dark hair. ‘We wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for the artillery. The Germans would have eaten us up long ago.’
‘Where’s your commander?’ asked Krymov.
‘There he is – over there, right in the front line.’
Grekov was lying on top of a huge heap of bricks, looking at something through a pair of binoculars. When Krymov called out his name he turned his head very slowly, put his fingers to his lips and returned to his binoculars. After a few moments his shoulders started shaking; he was laughing. He crawled back down, smiled and said: ‘It’s worse than chess.’
Then he noticed the green bars and commissar’s star on Krymov’s tunic.
‘Welcome to our hut, comrade Commissar! I’m Grekov, the house-manager. Did you come by the passage we just dug?’
Everything about him – the look in his eyes, his quick movements, his wide, flattened nostrils – was somehow insolent and provocative.
‘Never mind,’ thought Krymov. ‘I’ll show you.’
He started to question him. Grekov answered slowly and absent-mindedly, yawning and looking around as though these questions were distracting him from something of genuine importance.
‘Would you like to be relieved?’ asked Krymov.
‘Don’t bother,’ said Grekov. ‘But we could do with some cigarettes. And of course we need mortar-bombs, hand-grenades and – if you can spare it – some vodka and something to eat. You could drop it from a kukuruznik.’fn1 As he spoke, Grekov counted the items off on his fingers.
‘So you’re not intending to quit?’ said Krymov. In spite of his mounting anger at Grekov’s insolence, he couldn’t help but admire the man’s ugly face.
For a brief moment both men were silent. Krymov managed, with difficulty, to overcome a sudden feeling that morally he was inferior to the men in the encircled building.
‘Are you logging your operations?’
‘I’ve got no paper,’ answered Grekov. ‘There’s nothing to write on, no time, and there wouldn’t be any point anyway.’
‘At present you’re under the command of the CO of the 176th Infantry Regiment,’ said Krymov.
‘Corr
ect, comrade Battalion Commissar,’ replied Grekov mockingly. ‘But when the Germans cut off this entire sector, when I gathered men and weapons together in this building, when I repelled thirty enemy attacks and set eight tanks on fire, then I wasn’t under anyone’s command.’
‘Do you know the precise number of soldiers under your command as of this morning? Do you keep a check?’
‘A lot of use that would be. I don’t write reports and I don’t receive rations from any quartermaster. We’ve been living on rotten potatoes and foul water.’
‘Are there any women in the building?’
‘Tell me, comrade Commissar, is this an interrogation?’
‘Have any men under your command been taken prisoner?’
‘No.’
‘Well, where is that radio-operator of yours?’
Grekov bit his lip, and his eyebrows came together in a frown.
‘The girl turned out to be a German spy. She tried to recruit me. First I raped her, then I had her shot.’
He drew himself up to his full height and asked sarcastically: ‘Is that the kind of answer you want from me? It’s beginning to seem as though I’ll end up in a penal battalion. Is that right, Sir?’
Krymov looked at him for a moment in silence.
‘Grekov, you’re going too far. You’ve lost all sense of proportion. I’ve been in command of a surrounded unit myself. I was interrogated afterwards too.’
After another pause, he said very deliberately:
‘My orders were that, if necessary, I should demote you and take command myself. Why force me along that path?’
Grekov thought for a moment, cocked his head and said:
‘It’s gone quiet. The Germans are calming down.’
Footnotes
fn1 A light biplane.
20
‘Good,’ said Krymov. ‘There are still a few questions to be settled. We can talk in private.’
‘Why?’ asked Grekov. ‘My men and I fight together. We can settle whatever needs settling together.’
Although Grekov’s audacity made Krymov furious, he had to admire it. He didn’t want Grekov to think of him as just a bureaucrat. He wanted to tell him about his life before the war, about how his unit had been encircled in the Ukraine. But that would be an admission of weakness. And he was here to show his strength. He wasn’t an official in the Political Section, but the commissar of a fighting unit.
‘And don’t worry,’ he said to himself, ‘the commissar knows what he’s doing.’
Now that things were quiet, the men were stretching out on the floor or sitting down on heaps of bricks.
‘Well, I don’t think the Germans will cause any more trouble today,’ said Grekov. He turned to Krymov. ‘Why don’t we have something to eat, comrade Commissar?’
Krymov sat down next to him.
‘As I look at you all,’ he said, ‘I keep thinking of the old saying: “Russians always beat Prussians”.’
‘Precisely,’ agreed a quiet, lazy voice.
This ‘precisely’, with its condescending irony towards such hackneyed formulae, caused a ripple of mirth. These men knew at least as much as Krymov about the strength of the Russians; they themselves were the expression of that strength. But they also knew that if the Prussians had now reached the Volga, it certainly wasn’t because the Russians always beat them.
Krymov was feeling confused. He felt uncomfortable when political instructors praised Russian generals of past centuries. The way these generals were constantly mentioned in articles in Red Star grated on his revolutionary spirit. He couldn’t see the point of introducing the Suvorov medal, the Kutuzov medal and the Bogdan Khmelnitsky medal. The Revolution was the Revolution; the only banner its army needed was the Red Flag. So why had he himself given way to this kind of thinking – just when he was once again breathing the air of Lenin’s Revolution?
That mocking ‘precisely’ had been very wounding.
‘Well, comrades, you don’t need anyone to teach you about fighting. You can give lessons in that to anyone in the world. But why do you think our superior officers have considered it necessary to send me to you? What have I come here for?’
‘Was it for a bowl of soup?’ asked a voice, quietly and without malice.
This timid suggestion was greeted by a peal of laughter. Krymov looked at Grekov; he was laughing as much as anyone.
‘Comrades!’ said Krymov, red with anger. ‘Let’s be serious for a moment. I’ve been sent to you, comrades, by the Party.’
What was all this? Was it just a passing mood? A mutiny? Perhaps the reluctance of these men to listen to their commissar came from their sense of their own strength, of their own experience? Perhaps there was nothing subversive in all this merriment? Perhaps it sprang from the general sense of equality that was such a feature of Stalingrad.
Previously, Krymov had been delighted by this sense of equality. Why did it now make him so angry? Why did he want to suppress it?
If he had failed to make contact with these men, it was certainly not because they felt crushed, because they were in any way bewildered or frightened. These were men who knew their own strength. How was it that this very consciousness had weakened their bond with Krymov, giving rise only to mutual alienation and hostility?
‘There’s one thing I’ve been wanting to ask someone from the Party for ages,’ said the old man who had been frying the potato-cakes. ‘I’ve heard people say that under Communism everyone will receive according to his needs. But won’t everyone just end up getting drunk? Especially if they receive according to their needs from the moment they get up.’
Turning to the old man, Krymov saw a look of genuine concern on his face. Grekov, though, was laughing. His eyes were laughing. His flared nostrils were laughing.
A sapper, a dirty, bloodstained bandage round his head, asked:
‘And what about the kolkhozes, comrade Commissar? Couldn’t we have them liquidated after the war?’
‘Yes,’ said Grekov. ‘How about a lecture on that?’
‘I’m not here to give lectures,’ said Krymov. ‘I’m a fighting commissar. I’ve come here to sort out certain unacceptable partisan attitudes that have taken root in this building.’
‘Very good,’ said Grekov. ‘But who’s going to sort out the Germans?’
‘Don’t you worry about that. We’ll find someone. And I haven’t come here, as I heard someone suggest, for a bowl of soup. I’m here to give you a taste of Bolshevism.’
‘Good,’ said Grekov. ‘Let’s have a taste of it.’
Half-joking, but also half-serious, Krymov continued:
‘And if necessary, comrade Grekov, we’ll eat you too.’
He now felt calm and sure of himself. Any doubts he had felt about the correct course of action had passed. Grekov had to be relieved of his command.
It was clear that he was an alien and hostile element. None of the heroism displayed in this building could alter that. Krymov knew he could deal with him.
When it was dark, Krymov went up to him again.
‘Grekov, I want to talk seriously. What do you want?’
‘Freedom. That’s what I’m fighting for.’
‘We all want freedom.’
‘Tell us another! You just want to sort out the Germans.’
‘That’s enough, comrade Grekov!’ barked Krymov. ‘You’d do better to explain why you allow your soldiers to give expression to such naïve and erroneous political judgements. With your authority you could put a stop to that as quickly as any commissar. But I get the impression your men say their bit and then look at you for approval. Take the man who asked about kolkhozes. What made you support him? Let me be quite frank . . . If you’re willing, we can sort this out together. But if you’re not willing, it could end badly for you.’
‘Why make such a fuss about the kolkhozes? It’s true. People don’t like them. You know that as well as I do.’
‘So you think you can change the course of history, do you
?’
‘And you think you can put everything back just as it was before?’
‘What do you mean – everything?’
‘Just that. Everything. The general coercion.’
Grekov spoke very slowly, almost reluctantly, and with heavy irony. He suddenly sat up straight and said: ‘Enough of all this, comrade Commissar! I was only teasing you. I’m as loyal a Soviet citizen as you are. I resent your mistrust.’
‘All right, Grekov. But let’s talk seriously then. We must stamp out the evil, anti-Soviet spirit that’s taken hold here. You gave birth to it – you must help me destroy it. You’ll still get your chance for glory.’
‘I feel like going to bed. You need some rest too. Wait till you see what things are like in the morning.’
‘Fine. We’ll continue tomorrow. I’m in no hurry. I’m not going anywhere.’
‘We’ll find some way of coming to an agreement,’ said Grekov with a laugh.
‘No,’ thought Krymov, ‘this is no time for homeopathy. I must work with a surgeon’s knife. You need more than words to straighten out a political cripple.’
‘There’s something good in your eyes,’ said Grekov unexpectedly. ‘But you’ve suffered a lot.’
Krymov raised his hands in surprise but didn’t reply. Taking this as a sign of agreement, Grekov went on: ‘I’ve suffered too. But that’s nothing. Just something personal. Not something for your report.’
That night, while he was asleep, Krymov was hit in the head by a stray bullet. The bullet tore the skin and grazed his skull. The wound wasn’t dangerous, but he felt very dizzy and was unable to stand upright. He kept wanting to be sick.
At Grekov’s orders, a stretcher was improvised and Krymov was carried out of the building just before dawn. His head was throbbing and spinning and there was a constant hammering at his temples. Grekov went with him as far as the mouth of the underground passage.
‘You’ve had bad luck, comrade commissar.’
Life and Fate Page 52