Stalingrad

by Vasily Grossman

Semyonov opened the door a little, leaned out so he could look behind him and said, “That’s all we need. A flat tyre. That certainly isn’t going to stop and wait.” He began to slow down, leaving the road and heading for the shelter of some dusty trees.

  “Don’t worry,” said Krymov. “Better here than at the crossing.”

  Semyonov glanced at a shallow trench someone had dug and smiled. “Our drivers are never at a loss,” he said. “They’ll always find a way out. I know one whose condenser broke. And he’d lost his spare. So, till he got back to the repair shop, he made do with frogs. He caught a whole bunch of them. Each frog lasted him five kilometres. And I’ve heard someone else did the same with field mice.” And he burst into laughter. “Yes, there’s no defeating a Russian driver!”

  The trees they had stopped by were still young, but their leaves looked aged. They were grey with dust. And they were close to an important fork in the road—during the last weeks these trees had clearly seen a great deal.

  There were columns of vehicles and caravans of horses and carts heading east. There were wounded marching along in dust-covered bandages; some had hung their belts around their necks, using them as slings for their bandaged arms. Some could walk only with the help of a stick; others carried a mug or an empty tin. No one on this road needed even the most precious of personal possessions. All anyone needed was bread, a mug of water, and tobacco and matches; everything else, even a pair of new box-calf boots, was useless.

  There were men who’d been wounded in the arm, and in the head. There were a few who’d been wounded in the neck. A still smaller number had been wounded in the chest; their white bandages stood out beneath their unbuttoned tunics, which were spattered with black, congealed blood.

  Those wounded in the belly, groin, thigh, knee, calf and foot were out of sight—being transported in open-sided trucks with a plywood roof. To an onlooker it seemed as if men got wounded only in the head, hands and arms.

  From time to time—though not often—the wounded would glance from side to side, checking if there was anywhere they could fill their water mug without going far from the road. Everyone was silent, not saying even a word either to those they overtook or to those who overtook them. Their own pain and their worries about their own wounds isolated them from the pain of those around them.

  Not far from the road, defences were being constructed. Beneath the wide steppe sky, women in white kerchiefs were digging trenches and building small pillboxes, looking up now and again in case “those vermin” were on the wing. The Don steppe was studded with fortifications, though not one of them was being defended.

  The soldiers walking east glanced at the anti-tank ditches, at the barbed wire, at the trenches, dugouts and gun emplacements—and walked on.

  HQs of all kinds were also heading east; they were easy to distinguish. In the backs of trucks, amid tables, mattresses and black typewriter cases sat dust-coated clerks and sad-looking young girls in side caps, holding kerosene lamps and files of documents and gazing up at the sky.

  There were mobile repair units, huge aerodrome support trucks and supply trucks carrying everything from uniforms to plates and cutlery. There were walkie-talkie sets and portable engines; there were refuelling trucks; there were three-tonners carrying bombs in wooden crates. A tractor was towing a trailer with a fighter aircraft that had been shot down. The plane’s wings were twitching—the tractor could have been an industrious black beetle dragging along a half-dead dragonfly.

  Artillery too was heading east. Soldiers sat astride their guns, hugging the dust-covered green barrels as they rumbled over potholes. Tractors were pulling trailers with large metal barrels.

  Foot soldiers were heading east. No one that day was heading west.

  Krymov looked around him. He had seen this eastward flow of life all too often: near Kiev, Priluki and Shtepovka, near Balakleya, Valuiki and Rossosh.

  It seemed that this steppe would never know peace again.

  “But the day will come,” Krymov said to himself, “when the dust raised by the war will fall to the ground, when silence will return, when these fires will be extinguished and their ash will settle, when the smoke clears and this whole world of war—its smoke, flames, tears and thunder—becomes history.”

  The previous winter, in a hut not far from Korocha, his orderly Rogov had said with surprise, “Look, comrade Commissar, the walls are papered with newspapers from before the war!”

  Krymov had laughed and replied, “Yes indeed—and soon they’ll be papering the walls with today’s newspapers. We’ll come back when the war’s over, and you, Rogov, will say, ‘Look, Commissar—wartime newspapers, bulletins from the Sovinform Bureau!’”

  Rogov had shaken his head sceptically, and he had been right: he had been killed in an air raid. He had not lived to see peace. Nevertheless, all this would pass; people would reminisce about these years and writers would write books about this great war.

  Krymov looked at the wounded who had fallen by the wayside, at their grim, tormented faces, and wondered if these men would ever enter the pages of books. This was not a sight for those who wanted to clothe the war in fine robes. He remembered a night-time conversation with an elderly soldier whose face he had been unable to see. They had been lying in a gully, with only a greatcoat to cover them. The writers of future books had better avoid listening to conversations like that. It was all very well for Tolstoy—he wrote his great and splendid book decades after 1812, when the pain felt in every heart had faded and only what was wise and bright was remembered.

  Semyonov put away the jack, the spanner and a black inner tube with red patches; he had a space for them under his dusty seat. Then he listened to the peals of thunder; rather than coming down from above, they were climbing upwards—from a storm-gripped earth into a cloudless sky.

  He looked at the quiet, grizzled trees with regret; he had already come to feel at home in this place, where for twenty long minutes nothing bad had happened to him. “Fritz is pounding away at the crossing,” he said. “We’d do better to wait till things quieten down.” Knowing only too well what Krymov would reply, he started the engine.

  The general sense of danger was intensifying.

  “Comrade Commissar,” he said, “there are burning vehicles on the bridge.” Pointing up at the sky, he began counting the German planes: “One, two, three!”

  The water was glittering in the sunlight—and this glitter was like the vicious grey gleam of a knife. Cars and trucks that had just crossed over were skidding on the slippery sand of the east bank. Men were pushing them on—with their arms, with their shoulders, with their chests—putting all their will to live into helping the vehicles on their way. The drivers kept changing gear, staring fixedly, listening intently to the sound of their engines: would they, or wouldn’t they, reach the top of the slope? To stall, to get stuck in a spot like this, would mean to squander the lucky chance they had just wrested from fate.

  Sappers were laying green branches and boards under the vehicles’ wheels. When a truck reached the top of the slope and got out onto the road, the sappers’ dark faces brightened—as if they too were now free to drive away from this bridge. A moment later, though, they would be laying boards and branches under the wheels of the next vehicle.

  Once on the road, the trucks quickly picked up speed. The more agile passengers clung to the trucks’ sides and, legs dangling, hoisted themselves up and tumbled into the truck’s bodies. Other passengers just kept running, lurching across the sand in their heavy boots and shouting, “Keep going! Keep going!”—as if they truly believed the driver might suddenly brake for them.

  Later, when their truck came to a stop further away, they would climb on board. Out of breath and laughing, they would look back at the river, scatter crumbs of tobacco as they rolled their cigarettes, and call out, “Time to get going again!”

  But their exhilaration soon dissipated; the longed-for east bank had nothing to offer but the same steppe and the same gloomy
faces. There were wrecked cars and trucks. Amid dusty feathergrass shone the pale blue wing of another downed plane.

  Krymov told Semyonov to stop, then walked slowly along to the bridge. He stumbled; the steppe grass, coarse and thick as rope, was catching at his feet. He made no attempt to walk faster. He didn’t look up, nor did he look to either side—only down at the dust-covered toes of his boots.

  There was the crack of an anti-aircraft gun and, high in the sky, the quiet sound of a German plane. And all of a sudden, unbelievably loud, unbelievably piercing—the ear-splitting screech of a Stuka gone into a dive. And then three terrible groans—like three huge axe blows—that seemed to come from deep in the earth.

  There was a pitiful cry—maybe a man, maybe a woman. The ack-ack gun started up again, like a small guard dog intrepidly trying to bite the ankles of thugs too intent on their business to notice it.

  Krymov walked on, still looking at the grey dust and the grey leather of his boots, now being burnt by the hot sand.

  Krymov’s face took on a look of cool disdain. This disdain was directed at the Germans bombing the crossing, at the panicking Red Army soldiers and commanders, and, still more, at the life instinct itself, which he could feel raging within him. This instinct was crying out, “Look round! Run! Throw yourself down on the ground! Hide your head in the sand!”

  But Krymov knew that there is a force still more obstinate than the life instinct. He carried on walking towards the crossing, not looking round, not quickening his step, putting his faith in this cruel force of reason.

  Time and again he had stayed on his feet when everything within him was crying out, “Lie down!” Time and again he had walked forward when this instinct for life was furiously urging him to run back. What was astonishing—and he was thinking about this as he walked towards the bridge—was that this life instinct never admitted defeat. Stubbornly and methodically, it went on trying to make Krymov turn back when he was walking forward or drop to the ground when he was standing upright. It was possible, it seemed, to suppress this instinct but not to defeat it. It was invincible and importunate. It was both senseless and wise. It was as irritating as a mother’s insistent admonitions; it was as sweet as these same admonitions, born of a love that has nothing to do with reason.

  Swift black smoke and slow yellow dust covered the carts, trucks and crowds of people on the west bank. The bridge suddenly emptied. Then a hunched-over man without a side cap ran across it. There was no colour in his face and he was using both hands to keep his guts in place, pressing his shredded tunic against his body. His fading consciousness was driven by a single desire—to reach the east bank. He was almost dead, but he kept going—so powerful was his will to flee. He reached the bank, then collapsed. As he fell, others got to their feet. They ran straight past him.

  As Krymov reached the bridge, a puny-looking young lieutenant with a red band on his sleeve ran up to the cars and trucks, pistol in hand, and shouted, “Attention! Keep back! No one to drive onto the bridge till I give the order!” It was clear from the lieutenant’s voice that this was not his first day on the bridge and that he had already yelled these words many times.

  Not bothering to shake the dust and sand from their clothes, the drivers climbed out of the trenches where they had taken shelter, returned to their vehicles and hurriedly started their engines. The vehicles shuddered but did not move forward.

  The drivers were all keeping an eye on the bridge commandant, who did indeed look capable of using his pistol. They also kept an eye on the sky, in case the planes returned. The moment they were sure the commandant was looking away, they would nudge their vehicles a little closer to the bridge—the wooden planks laid across the river had a hypnotic power.

  It was like some children’s game. Each time a vehicle moved even half a metre forward, the vehicle behind would at once do the same. And then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. Had the first driver wished to move back, he would have found it impossible.

  “Back!” yelled the enraged commandant. “Get back—or no one’s going past!” To prove he meant what he said, he raised his pistol in the air.

  Krymov got up onto the bridge. After the difficult sand, it was a relief to be walking on planks. The river’s moist freshness reached up to touch his face.

  Krymov walked slowly on. The soldiers hurrying in the opposite direction slowed their pace, straightened their tunics and saluted. A proper salute at a moment like this was not without meaning—and Krymov understood this. Two days earlier, on this same bridge, he had seen a general open his car door and shout into a crowd of soldiers marching in the same direction, “Where d’you think you’re going? Make way! Make way!”

  And an elderly soldier, forced by the wing of the general’s car to the very edge of the bridge, said with only the slightest hint of reproach, “Where d’you think we’re going? We’re going the same way as you are. We want to stay alive too.” He spoke in the most genial of tones, like one fleeing peasant to another.

  And the general had slammed his door shut, disconcerted by this soldier’s straightforwardness.

  Here, on this bridge, Krymov at once sensed his own power—the power of a man going slowly and calmly west when everyone else is going east.

  Krymov went up to the young commandant, the dictator of the crossing. His face showed the extreme fatigue of a man who understands that any kind of rest is out of the question. No matter what, he must see his task through. Duty was duty, though it would be easier if a bomb put an end to his life there and then.

  The commandant gave Krymov a hostile look, ready to say no to all his demands, imagining he already knew what Krymov was about to say: that he was accompanying a seriously wounded colonel, or he had an unusually important document to deliver, or he had an urgent meeting—one that couldn’t be put off for even an hour—with the Front commander, the colonel general himself.

  “I’m going west,” said Krymov, pointing to where he wanted to go. “Can you let me across?”

  The commandant put his pistol back in its holster and said, “West? All right—just a moment.”

  A minute later, two controllers waving small flags were clearing the way for Krymov’s car. Truck drivers, leaning out of their cabs, were saying to one another, “Just go back a little—then I can reverse too. There’s a commander here. He needs to get to the front quick.”

  Seeing how swiftly the jammed-together vehicles somehow made way, Krymov thought about the strength of the desire to regain the offensive—how this desire was still alive in the retreating army. For the time being, though, it was apparent only in small things, in the readiness with which the drivers, the two traffic controllers and this exhausted young lieutenant, half-crazed from the general din and his own endless shouting, had cleared the way for a solitary light vehicle heading towards the front line.

  Krymov went back onto the bridge, waved one hand in the air and shouted, “Semyo-o-onov!”

  Just then they heard a shout: “Air alert!” Several other voices followed suit, “There, up there! Back again! And coming straight for us!”

  Hundreds of men rushed away from their vehicles—into the bushes, into the steppe, along the bank, into pits and ditches they’d made a mental note of beforehand.

  Krymov didn’t so much as turn his head. He just yelled angrily, “This wa-a-ay!”

  He knew that Semyonov must also be wanting to flee. But he could see a small cloud of dust behind his car. Semyonov, probably cursing his boss, was driving towards the bridge.

  By now everyone else was running. They were no longer soldiers—only a panicking crowd. More clearly than ever before, Krymov—alone on an empty bridge—understood the law that made a human mass either disintegrate into a mere crowd or take shape as a collective, as a true army. In this crowd on the bank of the Don everyone was thinking only of himself; everyone was driven only by the instinct for self-preservation. The size of the crowd only made this instinct all the more powerful, all the more overwhelming. Krymov’s
task, as a commissar, was to waken other, higher feelings in these men, to help them to understand that they were part of a whole, of a nation.95

  But this was not a duty he could fulfil at this moment.

  “Semyo-o-onov!” he shouted, stamping his foot. “Quick!”

  Standing on the flat pontoons, their chests against the surface of this floating bridge, were two soldiers. Pontoon duty was considered particularly dangerous—even by the sappers and traffic controllers. More shells and splinters came the pontooners’ way than anyone else’s. And a thin-sided pontoon in the middle of a river was no protection against anything.

  Watching the constant flow of fleeing troops had left these two men with a poor opinion of the human race. Resigned to their impending death, they looked on everything in the world with a mocking indifference. This mockery was their last consolation; they had seen people at a time of terrible weakness and they did not share Maxim Gorky’s belief that the word “mankind” has a proud ring.96

  When there was a particularly pathetic look on the face of someone running or driving past, one of them would simply say, “Did you see?”

  Certainty of their own death had made them careless about many things. Their faces were covered in stubble. They did not even bother to use each other’s names.

  Hearing Krymov call out to Semyonov, one had said to the other, “A real flighter!”

  This, evidently, was their word not only for everyone driving about in a car but also for everyone still hoping to survive the war and enjoy life afterwards.

  In a matter-of-fact tone, his companion agreed: “Yes, flighting to live!”

  Krymov heard all this. When his car reached the bridge, instead of simply jumping in as Semyonov slowed down, he stood in the middle of the road and raised one hand. The car skidded and stopped at an angle. Krymov then went slowly up to the pontooners, squatted down, took out his cigarette case and held it out to them with the words, “Hang on a moment and I’ll give you a light.”

  Krymov could feel his heart beat faster. Stopping on an empty bridge while dive-bombers approached was, of course, an act of senseless bravado.