Stalingrad

by Vasily Grossman

  “Of course,” said the political instructor, patting his knapsack. “I nearly got killed on my way to speak to the battery commander, but I wrote down the names of all the dead gunners. Well, it’s a good thing I found you here. No one, needless to say, had thought to put my knapsack in the car. And no one had bothered to put me down on the list for field rations. Really, comrades!”

  “And the situation in general?” asked someone else. His face was covered in stubble and he wore the green cap of a quartermaster.

  The political instructor shrugged. “Chaos. No one even knows where the command posts are any longer. I nearly ended up in a gully occupied by German tanks.”

  Krymov had heard any number of conversations like this. Now, however, they felt blasphemous—all the more blasphemous for their apparent normality. He ran his tongue over his dry lips, gasped with indignant fury and said, “You, a senior political instructor, speak of the death of entire gun crews, and about the retreat of the Red Army, as if you’re a tourist from Mars. It’s as if you’ve flown here for a quick look and in a minute you’ll be going back home.”

  Instead of cursing and swearing as Krymov expected, the political instructor merely blinked and muttered, “Yes, yes, I’m sorry. I was just glad to have found my comrades. Otherwise I’d have had to beg for a lift on some passing truck.”

  Krymov had been ready to come out with some cutting response. Taken aback by this mild reply, he answered more gently, “Yes, of course, I know what it’s like to have to beg for a lift.”

  He knew the laws of army life. He knew how often people’s acts of petty selfishness are redeemed with the sacrifice of their lives. He knew how often such sacrifices are made, calmly and straightforwardly, by the very people who, as they leave a burning city, feel most upset by the thought of a soap dish or packet of tobacco left behind on a kitchen windowsill.

  And yet anything normal and natural was already hard to imagine. The coming weeks—or even the coming days—were likely to prove critical.

  Krymov could see that, for many people, retreat had become almost a habit. The retreat had developed its customs and routines; it had become a way of life. Army tailors, bakeries, food shops and canteens had all now adapted to it. Men thought they could keep retreating, yet carry on with all their usual activities. They could work, eat, chase after women, listen to the gramophone, get promoted, go on leave, or send packages of sugar and tinned food back to their families in the rear. But soon they would be on the edge of the abyss; even one more step back would be impossible.

  Suddenly the air was filled with the drone of engines. Several voices at once shouted, “It’s our Ilyushins! They’re going to attack!”

  At the same time, Krymov caught sight of Senior Lieutenant Sarkisyan, the short, massive-shouldered commander of the heavy-mortar unit. Sarkisyan was running towards him, gesticulating excitedly and shouting, “Comrade Commissar! Comrade Commissar!” He carried on shouting until he was only a few feet away.

  On his face was a look of joy. He was like a little boy who has got lost in a crowd and then, all of a sudden, glimpsed the angry, yet radiant face of his mother.

  “I knew it, I knew it deep in my heart,” he said, a smile across the whole of his broad face and even his thick black eyebrows. “That’s why I’ve been hanging about all day by the canteen.”

  Sarkisyan had arrived at Army HQ early that morning and asked for a fuel warrant from the major in charge of the fuel-supply section.

  “Your unit has been transferred to the Front reserves,” the major had replied. “You have received your assigned quota of fuel and you have been deleted from my list. You must apply to the fuel-supply section of the Stalingrad Front.”

  Sarkisyan’s face took on one expression after another as he recounted this conversation: first horror, then pleading, then fury.

  The major had remained intransigent.

  “So then I looked at him like this,” said Sarkisyan.

  Sarkisyan’s impassioned, unwavering gaze encapsulated the eternal resentment felt by front-line soldiers towards administrators safe in the rear.

  Krymov and Sarkisyan set off together to ask the major to reconsider his decision. On the way Sarkisyan told Krymov about his unit’s recent engagements.

  In the evening, after the brigade had withdrawn, he had taken up defensive positions, even though his unit was some distance from the front line. And in the event he really did have to engage in combat—a nearby infantry unit had left its assigned sector and a German mobile detachment ran into Sarkisyan’s outposts. He was able to repel this attack with ease, since he had been issued with two complete ammunition allowances for his mortars.

  After losing two small tanks and an armoured personnel carrier, the Germans had retreated. Only at two in the morning did the Soviet infantry unit return to its sector. Had it not been for Sarkisyan, this sector would have fallen into enemy hands.

  During the night the Germans had attacked again. After helping the infantry to fight them off, Sarkisyan asked the regimental commander for 150 litres of fuel. The commander, with surprising niggardliness, had given Sarkisyan only seventy litres, but this had at least allowed Sarkisyan and his eight vehicles to reach Army HQ. He had halted in the steppe, five kilometres to the east of the village, taken up defensive positions once again and hitched a lift to Army HQ to petition for fuel.

  The two men came to a small white house with a battered lorry standing in front of it. “Well then,” said Sarkisyan, “here we are!” Pressing his fists to his chest, he said pleadingly, “I feel timid, comrade Commissar. I’ll only annoy the man. It’ll be better if you speak to him on your own. I’ll wait for you outside the canteen.”

  He truly did seem very timid. Krymov was amused by the lost, confused look in the eyes of this strong, stocky man who knew everything there was to know about firing heavy mortar bombs at enemy tanks and motor infantry.

  The major in charge of the army fuel-supply section was making his last preparations for departure. He was watching a clerk wrapping straw around an oil lamp and tying lengths of twine around pink and yellow folders full of documents. To all Krymov’s arguments he replied politely but unshakeably, “It’s impossible, comrade Commissar. I understand your position, believe me—but I cannot contravene orders. I must answer for each drop of fuel with my own head.” And he slapped himself on the forehead.

  Krymov realized that the major was not going to give in. “In that case,” he said, “please advise me what I should do.”

  Sensing that his importunate visitor was about to leave him in peace, the major replied, “Speak to the general in command of support services. He decides everything. There’s a fuel depot thirty kilometres away, the same size as our own—the general will be able to give you permission. Here, let me point you in the right direction. At the end of the street you’ll see a little house with pale blue shutters. There’s a sentry outside with a sub-machine gun—it’s easy to recognize.”

  As he went with Krymov to the door, he said, “I’d have been only too glad to help, but orders are orders. I can’t exceed my quarterly limit, and you’ve been transferred to the reserves—you’re no longer on our list.”

  For a moment Krymov thought that the major might relent. “All very well to say we’ve been transferred,” he replied, “but the unit was fighting all night long.”

  But the major already had his mind on other things. He said to his clerk, “Not even a week living in normal human conditions, and the commandant certainly won’t be allocating us a proper billet at our next location. No, we’ll be back in a dugout—like the lowest of nobodies.”

  “Dugouts are safer, comrade Major,” the clerk said consolingly. “Less chance of being bombed.”

  Krymov found the little house with pale blue shutters. The sentry with the sub-machine gun called to the adjutant, a young man in a gabardine tunic. The adjutant heard Krymov out, shook his chestnut curls and said that the general was now resting—he had been working all night. Kr
ymov would do better to come back another day, after they’d relocated. “You can see for yourself,” he said. “We’re packing up. The only thing left is the telephone—in case there’s a call from the commander of the temporary admin post.”

  Krymov emphasized the urgency of his request: important vehicles were now stranded without fuel. With a sigh, the adjutant allowed Krymov to enter the building.

  Watching an orderly roll up the carpet and take down the curtains while a young girl with neatly curled hair packed the china into suitcases, Krymov again fell into despair.

  These pretty white curtains, this carpet, this red tablecloth and this silver glass-holder had all had brief airings in Tarnopol, Korostyshev and Kanev on the Dnieper, only to return time and again to their boxes and suitcases to continue their journey east.

  “That’s a fine carpet you’ve got here!” said Krymov. Conscious how little his words reflected his true thoughts, he smiled.

  In a whisper, so as not to disturb the general resting behind a plywood partition, the adjutant replied, “It’s nothing special. But our old carpet was a museum piece. We lost it in Voronezh, during the bombing.”

  The young girl, the only person not speaking in a hushed voice, said to the soldier doing the packing, “No, don’t put the samovar down at the bottom—it’ll get dented. And the teapot needs to be in a separate box, how many times do I need to tell you? The general has mentioned this more than once.”

  The soldier looked at her with meek reproach, the way an elderly peasant looks at a city beauty who has never in her life known real trouble.

  “Kolya,” the girl said to the adjutant, “don’t forget about the barber. The general wants a shave before we set off.”

  Krymov looked at the girl. She had rosy cheeks and the shoulders of a grown woman, but her fresh blue eyes, her small nose and her chubby lips were those of a child. She had large hands, the hands of a worker, and she had painted her nails red. Her smart side cap and neatly curled hair did not suit her; she would have looked better in plaits and a calico kerchief.

  “Poor girl,” Krymov said to himself—and then returned to his bitter reflections. He had always seen the desire for petty-bourgeois well-being as a bitter enemy to the Revolution and all progress. This desire was dangerous because it was nourished by the powerful instinct of self-preservation. This pettiness and this hunger for personal well-being were branches of the tree of life. The life instinct fed them with its sap and helped them to grow. Nevertheless, these branches were also enemies of life. They went crazy; they wanted to grow and develop, and in their hunger they crushed and choked one another. They sucked dry the trunk that bore them; they exhausted the roots that nourished them.

  Krymov well knew the power of this instinct. He had felt it the day before, while crossing the pontoon bridge, and he had refused—as he had refused on many previous occasions—to yield to it.

  Somehow, it had to be made clear to the “flighters” that their fate was inseparable from that of their brothers who had been taken prisoner. There was an insidious force that was capable of fragmenting the nation. A man with a car and plenty of petrol could drive further and further east; he could leave behind him one blazing town after another yet barely take in what was happening. He had saved his personal belongings from fire and they were safe in his car. He no longer noticed the vast load that could not be shifted by even the biggest of trains and trucks. He no longer thought about the fate of the people; he no longer thought about the past or about generations to come. His own small fate, he believed, was entirely separate from the greater fate, the fate of the people. He no longer felt any sense of responsibility. Since he was slipping safely away, taking his own little world with him, he thought that nothing terrible was happening.

  It occurred to Krymov that these men ought to be taught, in material terms, that no part can survive without the whole. They needed what could be called an object lesson. The first time they retreated, their curtains would be confiscated. The second time, they’d lose their samovar; the third—their pillows; the fourth—their teacups and glasses. They’d have to make do with tin mugs. It should be made clear to everyone that each retreat would cost them more than the retreat before. In time, a man would be stripped of his decorations. Then he’d be demoted. And then he’d be shot.

  All somewhat primitive, perhaps—but it would put an end to the smug, philosophical calm Krymov had witnessed all too often. No commander would take any further retreat for granted.

  Krymov got to his feet and began pacing about the room. He wanted to smash his fist down on the table. He wanted—like a sentry he had once heard outside a brigade command post—to shout out, “Quick! Alarm! Germans nearby!”

  Puffing on his pipe, a captain came in and went up to the adjutant.

  “Well?” he asked in a solicitous whisper, as if inquiring about a sick patient.

  “I’ve already told you, comrade correspondent, not before fourteen hundred,” said the adjutant.

  Then the captain looked round and said, “Comrade Krymov?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, I thought so,” said the captain. “My name’s Bolokhin,” he continued in the same clipped manner. “You won’t remember me, no, you never knew me at all. But do you remember giving two lectures at the Trade Union School on the Treaty of Versailles and the German working class?”

  “Nineteen thirty-one. Yes, I remember.”

  “And later you gave a talk at the Institute of Journalism. Wait, now, what was the subject? Revolutionary forces in China . . . Or, was it the workers’ movement in India?”

  “Yes, something like that,” said Krymov, laughing with pleasure.

  Bolokhin winked and put his finger to his lips. “And, between you and me, you asserted that fascism would never take hold in Germany. Yes, you proved it definitively, with statistics of every kind to back you up.”

  He laughed, his large grey-blue eyes looking straight at Krymov. Like his speech, his gestures and movements were quick and abrupt.

  “Comrade, keep your voice down!” said the adjutant.

  “Let’s go out into the yard,” said Bolokhin. “There’s a bench there. Can you call us, comrade Lieutenant, when the general wakes up?”

  “Without fail,” said the adjutant, “the moment he wakes up. Yes, there you are—under that tree!”

  “It’s extraordinary,” Krymov said with a sigh. “People from combat units come to HQ—and it’s as if all we do is get in HQ’s way! But it’s for the combat units that HQ exists . . .”

  Bolokhin shrugged. “Don’t worry about why things exist. Just be sure to get hold of your petrol!”

  Bolokhin worked for a military newspaper and was clearly well informed. Three hours before this he had been at the HQ of their neighbours, the 62nd Army.

  “And how are the 62nd doing?” asked Krymov.

  “They’re crossing the Don, withdrawing to the east bank,” said Bolokhin. “They put up a good fight, they held out for a long time, but they had too much ground to defend. So they’re retreating. The only thing is, they haven’t yet learned the right way to retreat. They get nervy and jittery, and then things go wrong.”

  “I’d say it’s a good thing they haven’t learned how to retreat. Our own lot have learned that lesson only too well,” Krymov said bitterly. “We do it calmly and quietly and no one gets the least bit jittery.”

  “Yes,” said Bolokhin. “And there were days when the Germans were hurling themselves against the 62nd. Yes, like waves against a rock.”

  He looked closely at Krymov. Then he laughed and said with a shrug, “So strange. It’s all so strange.”

  And Krymov understood that Bolokhin was remembering the time when an earlier Krymov—a man very different from this battalion commissar sitting beside him in dust-covered boots and a faded side cap—had come to lecture to the students about the class struggle in India. There had been a poster advertising these lectures by the main entrance to the Polytechnic Museum.

&
nbsp; The adjutant appeared on the porch. “This way, comrade Battalion Commissar. The general knows you’re here.”

  The general was middle-aged, with a broad face. Sitting at his desk, he was getting ready for his shave; where they crossed his shoulders, his braces looked like inlays, almost a part of the white cloth of his shirt.

  “Well, comrade Battalion Commissar, what can I do for you?” he asked. Still with his back to Krymov, he was now examining the papers on his desk.

  Krymov began, but the general went on looking at his papers. Uncertain whether the general had taken in anything at all, Krymov hesitated: Should he go into greater detail—or should he start again from the beginning?

  “Carry on!” said the general.

  Seen from behind, with no field jacket and in his braces, the general did not look in the least like a senior military figure. Krymov sat down on a stool, inadvertently contravening military etiquette. The general, still leaning over his desk, evidently heard the stool creak. He interrupted Krymov mid-sentence: “Have you been in the army long, comrade Battalion Commissar?”

  Not realizing what lay behind it, Krymov took the general’s question as a sign that things were going well.

  “I fought in the Civil War, comrade General.”

  Just then, the adjutant brought in a mirror. The general leaned forward and began to examine his chin. “What have you done with that barber?” he asked. “Don’t tell me you panic-mongers have packed him away in a box too!”

  “The barber is waiting outside, comrade General,” said the adjutant, “and your hot water has been prepared.”

  “Then what are you waiting for? Send the man in!”

  Still looking in the mirror, the general said icily to Krymov, “I’d never have guessed you’ve been in the army for long. I took you for a reservist. You sat down without asking permission. We consider that impolite.”

  A reprimand like this leaves a subordinate confused: Is that the end of it, or will these words be followed by a menacing “Attention! About turn, march!”? Krymov stood up. Standing to attention, he replied with the stolid, weighty calm he could always call upon when needed: “I apologize, comrade General—but to receive a seasoned commissar without turning to face him is also considered impolite.”