“Yes, of course,” Bolokhin replied straightaway.
He felt excited. He was happy, not upset, to discover that he had been wrong. He understood now that what he had seen as a simple question of military tactics was, in reality, something deeper and more complex.
And whose thoughts had Yeromenko been voicing?
Were they not, perhaps, the thoughts of the rank-and-file soldiers who, in sweat-whitened tunics, had climbed down the steep slope to the Volga and then looked all around them, as if to say, “Here we are—the Volga! Can we really retreat any further?”
5
OLD PAVEL Andreyevich Andreyev was considered one of the best steelworkers in his factory. The engineers would ask him for advice and did not like to argue with him. He rarely looked at the data provided by the laboratory, which carried out quick, detailed and accurate analyses after each melt; he merely glanced occasionally at the page listing the basic constituents of each burden. Even this, however, he did mainly out of politeness, so as not to offend the chemist, a rather stout man who sounded constantly out of breath.
The chemist would hurry up the steep steps to the shop-floor office and say, “Here you are, I hope I’m not too late.” He appeared to imagine that Andreyev had been waiting anxiously, worrying whether or not he would have a chance to look at the analysis before loading the furnace.
The chemist had graduated from the Steel Institute. After work, he taught at a technical school. Once he gave a public lecture, “Chemistry in Metallurgy,” in the main hall of the House of Culture. There were posters advertising this lecture beside the main entrance, and by the doors to the factory committee, the grocery store, the library, the canteen and the shop floor itself. Seeing these posters had made Andreyev smile. He could never have given a lecture about gas thermometers, methods of thermoelectric temperature measurement, and ultra-fast spectral and microchemical analysis techniques.
Andreyev had always admired educated people. He had felt proud to know such people and he believed that only they could unravel life’s many complications.
The factory librarian had proudly exhibited Andreyev’s library card at a conference. Andreyev was the province’s number-one senior reader, both for the number of books read and for variety of subject matter. Among the books he had read in 1940 were Stalin’s Questions of Leninism; novels by Dickens, Pisemsky, Sheller-Mikhailov, Leskov, Tolstoy, Jules Verne, Kuprin, Dostoevsky and Victor Hugo; Nikolay Ostrovsky’s How the Steel Was Tempered; works of history, geology and astronomy; and a dozen historical novels and travel books, which Andreyev especially loved.
The librarian saw him as one of her best and most honoured readers and she even allowed him to take home books the library only had one copy of, like The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo.3
Andreyev never, however, read a single book about metallurgy and steelmaking, not even a popular-scientific booklet about the physics and chemistry of steel melts. Somehow this escaped the librarian’s notice. Andreyev did, of course, appreciate the importance of the science that underpinned his work—but poets do not need to read textbooks about poetry. It is they, after all, who determine the birth of verse and the laws of the word.
Andreyev never tried to bypass or contradict scientific method. He was never presumptuous or opinionated and he never, like some men his age, tried to play the wise man or shaman. It was as if an understanding of physics and chemistry was present in his hearing, in the lenses of his eyes, in the sensory nerves of his hands and fingers and in a memory that stored the experience of several decades of work.
Andreyev expressed his respect for scientists, order and organization by carefully filling out at night, after completing his work, all the cards and forms he should have filled in beforehand. He made steel according to his own personal norms and proportions. He had his own preferred conditions of time, temperature and relative proportions of pig iron and scrap iron. But his personal timetable and technical norms did not always coincide with the standard timetable and technical norms. And so, out of respect for science, he entered the figures and times required by the instruction manual, doing this after his day’s output of excellent steel had already been taken off to the technical and forging shops.
It was for an explanation of things he thought beyond him that Andreyev turned to books. When his wife and daughter-in-law failed to get on, he had found life at home very difficult; it seemed the two women would never stop quarrelling. His attempts at peacemaking only made matters worse. Then he had taken out a book—August Bebel’s Women and Socialism,4 hoping it would help him to make sense of the situation—the title looked promising. But the book turned out to be about something else altogether.
Andreyev had his own particular take on family life. To him, the relations between his wife and his daughter-in-law were the same as those within and between states. Here in his family circle he could see the imperfection of the world as a whole. “Lack of space causes much trouble,” he would say to himself. “If only we didn’t all have to live so cheek by jowl.” He saw poverty and lack of space as the cause both of trouble within the state, and of wars between states.
At home, he was demanding, quick-tempered, severe to the point of cruelty. At the steelworks, though, he could rest from the imperfection of the world. There, people did not seek power over one another—the workers expended their energy in seeking power over iron and steel. This power engendered not slavery, but freedom.
Working at the factory, Andreyev felt ashamed that his family was so quarrelsome. Varvara, on the other hand, felt proud of her husband, knowing how much the other workers and engineers all respected him.
There were young engineers and foremen in the factory who had graduated from technical schools and special courses. Their way of working was very different from Andreyev’s; they were constantly visiting the laboratories, sending off samples for analysis, going for consultations, checking the temperature and the gas supply, and glancing at the approved manual and definitions of official standards. And their work was no worse than Andreyev’s.
Andreyev thought particularly highly of Volodya Koroteyev, the melter in charge of the fourth furnace. He was a young man of about twenty-five, with curly hair, thick lips and a broad nose. When he was deep in thought, he would puff out his lips. Three long wrinkles then formed on his forehead, stretching from one temple to the other.
His work always went smoothly, without any mishaps; he set about it simply and happily, as if he were playing. When Andreyev returned to the shop floor during the war, he found that Koroteyev was now a foreman; a young woman, the severe, taciturn Olga Kovalyova, had taken over his furnace. She was doing the job well—as well as the old men now in charge of the other furnaces. Once, on a day when they were following a new recipe, Kovalyova asked Andreyev for advice. After a long pause, Andreyev replied, “I don’t know. We should ask Koroteyev. He’s a true scientist.” Andreyev’s modesty impressed everyone. “He’s a real worker,” people said about him, “and a good man.”
He loved his work with a love that was both calm and passionate. He saw all human labour as equally deserving of respect, and his attitude towards the factory aristocracy—the melters, electricians and machine-tool operators—was no different from his attitude towards the navvies, the manual workers on the shop floor and out in the yard, and those who did the simplest work of all, work that could be done by anyone with two hands. Of course, he sometimes made fun of people working in other fields but, far from being hostile, his jokes were just a good-natured expression of friendship. For him, work was the measure of man.
His attitude towards others was always positive. His internationalism came to him as naturally as his love of work and his belief that work is the purpose of mankind’s existence on earth.
When he returned to the steelworks during the war and the Party secretary said of him in a public meeting, “Here we have a worker who thinks nothing of sacrificing his health and strength for the common cause,” he felt embarrassed
. Andreyev did not in the least feel he was making a sacrifice; on the contrary, he felt happy and well. When he was registering to return to work, he had knocked three years off his age and had been afraid that this might be discovered.
“It’s as if I’ve come back from the dead,” he once said to his friend Misha Polyakov.
He never forgot the late Nikolay Shaposhnikov and their long-ago conversations on the Volga steamer, and he had the greatest respect for all Shaposhnikov’s family.
Shaposhnikov had been right to say to him that, one day, labour would become the sovereign of the world. Now, though, the country was at war. The fascists were advancing, and they threatened to destroy everything Andreyev loved. The fascists were vile and contemptible but for the time being, at least, they had might on their side.
6
ANDREYEV was having supper in the kitchen before going out to work on the night shift. He was eating in silence, not looking at his wife, who was standing near the table, ready to give him another helping—before leaving for work, Andreyev usually ate two plates of fried potatoes.
Varvara Alexandrovna had once been thought the most beautiful girl in Sarepta;5 her girlfriends had regretted her choice of husband. Back then Andreyev had been a stoker on a Volga ship, and she was the daughter of an engineer; with her looks, they thought, she could have married whoever she chose—a ship’s captain, a merchant or the owner of the Tsaritsyn port café.
All that had been forty years ago. Now they had both grown old, yet Andreyev—with his stoop, his sullen face and his wiry hair—still looked sadly out of place beside this tall, bright-eyed, graceful old woman.
“It’s not right!” said Varvara, wiping the tablecloth with a towel. “Natasha’s on duty in the children’s home—she won’t be back till morning. You’re about to go out, and I’ll be all on my own again with little Volodya. What if there’s an air raid? What will the two of us do?”
“There won’t be an air raid,” Andreyev replied. “And if there were, what help would I be? I’ve got no anti-aircraft guns.”
“That’s what you always say. No, I can’t bear it any longer. I’m leaving. I’ll go to Anyuta’s.”
Varvara was terrified of air raids. Standing in the long queues outside food shops, she had heard her fill of stories about the howl of falling bombs, about women and children buried beneath ruined buildings. She had heard of whole houses being lifted from the ground by the force of an explosion and flung dozens of metres through the air.
Constantly afraid as she was, she couldn’t sleep at night.
She had no idea what made her so very afraid. Other women were afraid too, but they were still able to eat and sleep. Some said brightly, “Well, we must just take things as they come!” Varvara, however, could not escape her fears for even a moment.
During her sleepless nights she was tormented by thoughts about her son Anatoly, who had gone missing during the first weeks of the war. And she could hardly bear even to look at her daughter-in-law, Natasha—the girl just carried on as if she didn’t have a care in the world. After work she went gaily off to the cinema. When she was at home she banged about and slammed doors, making such a racket that Varvara went all cold inside, thinking that the German planes had finally come.
No one, Varvara believed, loved their home as devotedly as she did. None of her neighbours kept everything so spotless; there was not a cockroach in the kitchen, not a speck of dust to be seen anywhere. Nobody else had such a splendid orchard or such a rich kitchen garden. She herself had painted the floors orange and hung wallpaper in every room. She had been saving up to buy beautiful china, new furniture, new curtains and lace pillowcases and new pictures to put on the walls. And now a devastating storm was bearing down on what her neighbours called her picture-postcard home, on these three little rooms she so loved and in which she took such pride. She felt frightened and helpless.
It was more than her heart could bear. She had made up her mind: they would pack the furniture into crates and bury everything either in the garden or in the cellar. Then they could cross the Volga and go and live with her younger sister, Anyuta. The German bombers, she believed, had no reason to fly as far east as Nikolaevka.
But she and her husband had disagreed. Andreyev did not want to leave Stalingrad.
A year before the war, the medical commission had taken him off furnace work. He had been transferred to the technical supervision department, but there too the work had been difficult and he had twice suffered attacks of angina. And then in December 1941 he had returned to the furnaces. He had only to say a word and the director would have allowed him to leave. He would even have given him a truck to take his belongings as far as the Volga ferry. But Andreyev had refused to leave the steelworks.
At first Varvara hadn’t wanted to go anywhere without her husband. Then it had been agreed that she would go to Anyuta’s, together with Natalya and little Volodya, and that Andreyev would stay behind, at least for the time being.
That evening, as Andreyev finished his supper, she brought up this question again. For the main part she addressed her words not to her husband but either to their cat, to little dark-eyed Volodya, or—most often of all—to a listener who existed only in her imagination.
“Just look at the man,” she said, turning towards the stove, beside which this sensible, intelligent and trustworthy listener must have been standing. “He’s going to be here all on his own—so who’s going to take care of everything? All our worldly goods will be hidden away—buried in the garden or down in the cellar. I’m sure you understand that this is no time to be keeping things in the house. The man’s old and sick. His hair may still be black, but he’s registered as category-two disabled.6 Is it right for a sick man to work like he does? What’s the very first place the Germans will bomb? What do you think? The steelworks, of course! Does that make it the right place for a disabled old man? And it’s not as if the factory can’t manage without him.”
The imaginary listener didn’t reply. Little Volodya went out into the yard to watch the searchlights up in the sky. Her husband didn’t reply either. Varvara sighed, then continued to argue her case: “I know there are women who say, ‘We’re not going anywhere without our belongings. Where someone’s buried their things, that’s where they should stay.’ But can that really be right? Look! Good china, a mirror wardrobe, a chest of drawers—we’re leaving them all behind, we’ve got no choice. Those demons will soon be here with their bombs. But if the man does stay, then at least there’ll be someone to keep an eye on our things. China and furniture only cost money—but you can’t just go and buy yourself a new leg or a new head if that’s what you’ve lost. All the same, if the man really must stay—”
“You’re not making much sense,” Andreyev interrupted. “One moment you fear for my life, the next you want to put me on guard duty.”
“I can’t make much sense of myself either,” Varvara replied plaintively. “I really don’t know what I think.”
Volodya came back inside and said dreamily, “Maybe there’ll be an air raid tonight. There are lots of searchlights!” And then, his eyes bright and shining, “Grandad, will our pussy cross the Volga with us, or will she stay here with you?”
After a brief splutter of delight, Varvara said in her gentle, singing voice, “Volodya, how can you ask? Puss will take care of the housework for him. Then she’ll go and work beside him in the factory. And then she can pick up the ration coupons and go to the shop.”
“Enough of all that!” said Andreyev with sudden anger. “You be quiet now.”
Just then the long bony cat jumped up onto the table. “Down, you little serpent!” Varvara shouted crossly. “I haven’t left yet!”
Andreyev glanced at the clock on the wall and said with a little smile, “Misha Polyakov’s just volunteered for the militia, for a mortar company. Perhaps I should do the same.”
Varvara took her husband’s tarpaulin jacket down from a nail and checked that the buttons were still sewn
on tight. “A fine example to follow,” she said. “Poor old Polyakov’s on his last legs already.”
“What do you mean? Misha’s a strong fellow.”
“Yes, yes . . . The moment he sets eyes on Misha Polyakov, Hitler will turn tail.” Varvara knew very well how much it upset her husband to hear criticism of his old comrade-in-arms from 1918, when they had fought together against the Cossacks at Beketovka.7 But she had always been puzzled and annoyed by the friendship between her sensible, serious husband, who weighed every word he said, and this Polyakov who never stopped joking and playing the fool. And so she went on ridiculing him. “His first wife left him thirty years ago, when he was still a young man. He was a skirt-chaser—women were all he ever thought about. As for his second wife, if she’s still with him, it’s only because of the children and grandchildren. And as for Polyakov calling himself a carpenter, the man’s no use at all. He can’t make a thing. His wife Marya’s got a nerve too. Know what she likes to say? ‘The doctor,’ she says, ‘has forbidden Misha to smoke and drink. And if he does still drink, it’s your Pavel Andreyevich who’s to blame. If Misha goes to visit Pavel on one of his days off, I know he’ll come back home sozzled.’ Well, I can tell you, I just laughed in her face. ‘Your Misha,’ I said, ‘doesn’t need any help from Pavel. From what I’ve heard, he has quite a reputation in his own right. His fame as a boozer has spread as far as Sarepta.’”
Varvara sometimes wondered how it was she wasn’t afraid to argue with her husband during these turbulent days. His temper had often been violent. Now, though, he was quieter. It seemed he understood that, if she was quarrelsome, it was only because she was so very anxious about leaving her home and her husband.
Andreyev had usually been ready to forgive other people their weaknesses, but he had not always shown much patience towards his own family. In some respects, though, he had seemed strangely uninterested in his home: if Varvara bought something new, well, that was all right by him. If something precious got broken, that didn’t really matter either. But once, Varvara had asked him to bring her a few copper screws from the steelworks. “What?” he replied curtly. “Are you off your head?” Later that day she noticed that some pieces of cloth she’d put aside for mending her winter coat had disappeared from the chest. When she mentioned this, he said, “I needed them for cleaning the compressor.” And then he added, “It’s difficult. We never have any old rags for wiping away the oil. And the compressor’s new, it’s delicate.”
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